The Importance of Roots to the Exceptional Species
One of the exceptional attributes of the human race--unknown in any other species in the universe--is the importance we place on our personal and family histories. No other species worries about who grandma was or the circumstances that led to their birth.
I learned first hand the emotional tug of roots this weekend when I had the opportunity to speak in Providence, Rhode Island. You see, Rhode Island is crucial to the family history that led to my being. Here is this part of my family's story in a nutshell:
In 1910, a 16-year-old girl named Gulia Betti arrived in Pawtucket from Italy to work in her aunt's bakery. Her purpose was to save her family from desperate poverty and bring them all to America. Through hard work she succeeded, and soon her mother, brother, and two sisters were safely in Rhode Island.
Within a few years, she had met and married Enrico Micheletti, an ambitious immigrant from the same area of Italy as Gulia (The mountains around Lucca in Tuscany). They married. In 1915, Bruno Micheletti was born, followed in 1917 by Leona. Leona would later marry a man named Wesley Smith. They are my parents.
Enrico died young in 1924, leaving the family without a breadwinner. Gulia rolled up her sleeves. The family owned a tenement building where she rented rooms. She also ran a store on the bottom floor and a beauty parlor on the second floor. Gulia was helped by her sister Marianella and her husband, who had three children; Rico, Elba, and Ezio. Ezio was the baby and was treasured by the older cousins. The two families were extremely close and kept each other going during the Depression.
After the Great Hurricane of 1938, Gulia and Leona were weary of the Rhode Island weather. They decided to try California on for size. Leona got a job at the Los Angeles Examiner where she met a soldier on leave from his duty who took a temporary job at the paper to earn some extra money. He fell heads-over-heels. After a rocky courtship, they married shortly after Pearl Harbor, knowing he would soon be going to war. He shipped out in April 1942 and she didn't see him again until after the war in 1945. Eventually, they had me.
Whilst in Providence, I had a reunion with Ezio (photo above) who still lives in RI. He and my mother are the only survivors from those years. He took me to where it all happened, which was a pretty awesome experience. As usual, I took some pictures:
The first picture below is the tenement house in which my uncle and mother were raised.
Next is the grave marker of my grandfather, my great grandmother, and my great aunt. The years 1924-1925 were especially hard for the family.
The old snapshot was in Ezio's album, and I had never seen it. It shows my father (the man on the left with suspenders, with his hand on my mother's arm), and my uncle kneeling in front, in Los Angeles in 1939. Dad was only 22 and mom 23. Amazing to me.
posted by Wesley J. Smith @ 1:08 PM
5 Comments
5 Comments:
We also share our ancestory with chimpazees. Our last common ancestor lived about ~ 6 million years ago. Also we need to eliminate human racism.
We are a different species regardless of any common ancestor millions of years ago. We have tens of millions of biological differences, and indeed, cannot interbreed with chimps, and so by any measure, they are not us.
But, HKR, since you are bound and determined--for reasons that escape me--to reduce humankind to mere fauna, let's go all the way. In fact, why limit our perceived commonality to denizens of the animal world? We also share a common genetic ancestry with flat worms and carrots. Indeed, let's go all the way to human reductionism and unexceptionalism and agree that there is no distinction to be made between us and any life form on earth since we are all made up of carbon atoms.
I appreciate this story, WJS.
The most fascinating thing in my heritage beyond my extant family, actually, what fascinates me most, is we have a legend that James Fenimore Cooper's story the "Deerslayer" was in part based on one of my ancestors. I've dabbled in the research thus far to see if there is a kernal of truth to it all.
Sorry, no thoughts on human exceptionalism, not here though. Although, the research might be a bit faster if I were centaurion biocomputer and could plug my finger into the internet socket.
What is remarkable is that my family's story is unremarkable. Immigrants work. And it pays off. When I graduated law school and received my diploma from Senator Cranston, I looked out into the audience and my grandmother stood up, she was so proud. I almost lost it then and there.
The fact that I care so much about this, which is a general human trait, has something to do with our success as a species. It does distinguish us and there would seem to be great value in this aspect of our natures.
HKR -
Here's another way to look at it.
We are truely children of the stars, created by the same carbon they emit, and through the miracle of evolution, we have become an enhanced, intelligent, beautiful race full of diversity and variety, leaving behind the animal world roughly 6 million years ago, to become the exctptional species that we are - the only species capable of understanding, appreciating, and dare I say it? - loving our history. We are truely an amazing species, and should love every member of our species as our brothers and sisters based on the innumerable odds we beat to come into being.
Wesley -
My dad's family hails out of Naples and Roccodaspide (spelling? anybody?) and my grandmother came over in 1917, when she was seven. She got a factory job at the beginning of World War II. She had my father in 1939. Hee. So I know how you feel about looking back at your family line and being amazed.
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