Any list of ancestors is incomplete. We are all one another’s ancestors. We are all creating the world they created and the world they left us. It is also we ourselves whom they have created left to this life and so we are among their greatest gifts. They continue, as we will continue, forever and always into the spinning dust of the Universe.

Remember, you are a child both of Earth and Starry Heaven. A child of your ancestors. Who are they? The ones you know and the ones you cannot know in this life? Who are they?

These, this incomplete list,these who come to my memory today, these are some of my ancestors.

I speak their names. They are not forgotten. And those I do not list today I honor nonetheless.

my father John Dawson Carl Buck

my grandmother Ann Elizabeth (Elizabeth Ann) Dawson Torrey

my grandmother Florence Antonia Finder Birmingham

my grandfather Earl Buck

my grandfather Leo Van Birmingham, son of Bridget and John Patrick Birmingham

my great-grandfather, Zeta’s husband, Carl Buck

my great-grandfather John Douglas Dawson

my great-grandmother Annie Elizabeth Hull Dawson

my aunt Kristin Bennett Birmingham

my aunt Cecilia Birmingham Mydlowski

my aunt Doris Joann Birmingham

my Irish forefather, first of the Birminghams of whom I know, Patrick Birmingham

my Irish foremother, married to Patrick, and the mother of Birminghams Mary Birmingham

the first woman’s name on the first Birmingham genealogy I ever read Elizabeth Strattegiere

An early Birtmingham John Birmingham

Carl Buck’s wife, Zeta Beeton Buck. (They were wards of the state who met in what was then a version of the foster care system)

ancestor – Isaac Hull

ancestor–Ezekiel Hull, named for his deceased older brother

ancestor — Martha Hull Jackson, sister of Ezekiel Hull