Touching Greatness

(Sorry the photo is a bit blurred.)


Yesterday, I met Larry McMurtry. He and Diana Ossana were discussing their screenplay collaboration at the Tucson Book Festival  It was a packed audience.

And I had gone because I wanted to "clap eyes on him".

It was special to me not only because I admire his work, but because I'm actually a relative too. His great, great grandfather (maybe there's another great in there) and my great, great grandmother were brother and sister; the children of James McMurtry. The McMurtrys traveled through Missouri before settling in Texas and started a cattle dynasty. The saying goes, "If you talk about cattle in Texas, you're talking about the McMurtrys."

My gr, gr, gr, grandmother didn't make the Texas trek. She married and stayed in Missouri.

Larry grew up on a cattle ranch, but he didn't like it. So he's the Maverick of the family, I guess, taking to education and writing instead.


















Anyway

After the session was over, some people were crowding around the stage and after some hesitation, I joined them. I wanted to touch him. I NEVER want to touch someone, but I really had the urge to shake his hand and look into his face. So I did. I said, "I'm your cousin." and explained how we were distantly related. He smiled politely and I wondered how many people had said that to him. The McMurtrys were/are a big family. This has happened to him more than once, I would bet.

His handshake was firm, warm and polite. He smiled. And I felt somehow an odd ancestral loop of some kind had been closed.

He and Diana Ossana have a new blog that promises to be a delight. It is called Flash and Filligree and can be found at http://flashandfiligree.com

I'm super excited about the finding of Richard III's bones.  Since I started chasing ancestors, I've found many lines back to the Plantagenet family.

Although mine had moved out of the powerful mainstream by the time Richard came around,  they were lesser to minor royals by then.

Records were well preserved within the titled people, so if you find a solid link, it's not that hard to go back to the Conqueror. And his line goes back to Charlemagne. Even then, it's not that unusual to discover the descent--probably half of Europe could do this.

What I did find amazing is the huge number of French, Spanish, Russian, Scandinavian, Irish and Scots I've found. Even links to the real Blackadder family in Scotland!

All just on my mother's side.


Can't wait to see what Richard really looked like.

And I hope they also test the little skeletons found under the stairs in the Tower. Now it's going to be easier to identify them for sure.

Pie

Every year at this time when I make the pies for Thanksgiving, I have this thing I wonder about.

My mother always cut the top pie crust in a design that looked like either a Fleur de Lis or Prince of Wales feathers. For years, I thought everyone made their pies this way. Then I began to notice that none of my friend's mothers put distinctive designs on their pies.

I asked her once and she said that that's just the way the pies were cut. Her mother did the same design.

So, was it a Loyalist symbol? I know people who supported the Crown in England quietly signaled to others their political sympathies in subtle ways like this. Is the design the three Prince of Wales feathers? If so, who did this? Maybe it was from the Scottish side of the family in support of Bonny Prince Charles.

Or is it a symbol of the French Fleur de Lis? My mother's grandmother was named de Bord. Was she showing her French heritage? Maybe she was from a Huguenot family??

If you compare the Fleur de Lis and the Prince of Wales feathers, they are very similar.

Our genealogy traces her famly to the Sanford family and back all the way back to the Plantagenets. Their symbol came from a plant known as common broom. It grew wild and the founder of the French branch of the family liked to wear a sprig of the plant in his hat.

Could the family have held onto this design for generations?

A sprig of the broom plant that the name Plantagenet refers to.