The Queen is dead; Long live the King

As with almost everything else, my thoughts on Queen Elizabeth II are complicated

This was in my living room when I moved back to Long Island. My paternal grandmother loved the Queen.

I think all my opinions are complicated. Life is complicated.

My ancestry

A few years ago, my mother and I sent our DNA to Ancestery.com. Truth be told, if they could not tell we were related, I would know they were full of crap. Luckily, they could tell and my faith in the service was restored. When I first got my results, it showed three percent African. It didn’t say where in Africa but I was super excited because that sounded more interesting that the English/Scottish/Irish mix I had always heard about.

A few weeks later, they sent me a revised report showing what I thought all along; I may be the whitest person on the planet.

My father’s family was always really into our English heritage. This had its own irony as my grandmother, Verna Gill, worked at the Old Barracks Museum in Trenton, New Jersey. One of the most famous things that happened there was the Hessians were attacked by George Washington on the day after Christmas. That battle was seen as a turning point in the American Revolutionary War. The group that would later be known as the “Culper Spy Ring,” was instrumental in this victory. That last part is only interesting because those spies were based in Setauket, New York (next to Stony Brook).

I never thought I had any real opinion of the royal family in Britain. I think all monarchies should be abolished but who cares what happens in the lives of the royals? Then I watched Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on Oprah and had nightmares about it. I dreamed I was going to meet the Queen and was told I would have to curtsy. In my dream, I said, “to hell with that! We fought a war so I wouldn’t have to do silly things like that!”

Who screwed up the planet? Probably my family