Well, exactly. I guess I'm just an old fart in my own way. My particular interest in the stones is a pedantically "practical" one: can studying the stone pushers (as well as many other times and peoples) tell me anything about how the world in which I live got to be the way it is? Probably I've missed out on some very important literature and sources. This is, after all, more of a hobby than anything. But from what little I've read, the answer seems to be, only pretty tenuously at best.

It all reminds me of the folks who get those family coats of arms for their playrooms. And perhaps strikes a chord because I've just spent a few months unravelling some wonderfully tangled up, mythologized and totally silly actual family history of my own. [http://lovebunnies.luckypro.biz/genealogy/ for a real hoot!] So I've just had a marvelous experience with "ancestry," and you and littlestone's [Hello hello, littlestone!] contrasting an american's ancestry experience with a Brit's seemed rather romanticized and hardly the hard headed and curmudgeonly outlook I've come to expect.

Getting soft in your old age?