February 2026 – Into the Woods

What we can learn from our DNA

From the island of Gometra in Scotland. Photo from a trip in 2018. My DNA shows that my ancestors lived in places like this for 4,000 years. Click for high-resolution version.

The most important thing to know before choosing a DNA test is that there are three types of tests. They vary in cost, and each provides different information.

1. Autosomal DNA. About $100. This type of test looks at an individual’s DNA from both parents. It’s most effective for the past 300 to 400 years of ancestry. It estimates ancestry components, such as how much Germanic, Scandinavian, or African ancestry an individual has.

2. mtDNA. About $200. This is maternal DNA. Mothers pass it to all their children, but only daughters pass it on. It helps trace the path of maternal migration and contains information that can be traced thousands of years into the past. It does not provide ancestry percentages.

3. Y-DNA. Up to $500, depending on how many steps you want to sequence. This is paternal DNA. It is passed almost unchanged from fathers to sons. Mutations occur at a statistically predictable rate. It can show migration paths for thousands of years. It does not provide ancestry percentages.

Brick walls

When people research their ancestry through written records, things often get murky a few generations back. In the U.S., courthouse fires burned a lot of birth records and wills. Information on ship arrivals is incomplete. Amateur genealogists make a lot of mistakes. People often hit “brick walls” and can’t reliably trace a line any further.

My surname is Dalton. Records show pretty reliably that the first male Dalton arrived in Tidewater Virginia around 1699. His first name is not known for certain, but he’s known as “Timothy 1.” No one has ever been able to find records about exactly where he came from. For me, that’s a brick wall. We do know that his descendants migrated up the river valleys to the Charlottesville area, and then southward down into the Blue Ridge Mountains, where my father was born.

I recently bought an upgrade at FamilyTreeDNA to do the maximum possible sequencing on my Y-DNA. I waited more than two months for the results. The raw data is complicated, but now we have AI tools to help us interpret it. I use ChatGPT.

Because I have a great many genetic connections with Ireland, for some years I though that Timothy 1 might have come from Ireland. The new information from more detailed sequencing changes the story. Timothy 1 almost certainly came from northern England, probably Lancashire or Yorkshire. There are still a good many Daltons there.

Celtic to the bone

But here things get really interesting. I will never know their names or anything about their lives (other than what can be surmised from where they lived). But because Y-DNA is particularly useful for studying migration paths, we know where they lived for more than 10,000 years.

My paternal ancestors, then, were Celts. They arrived in Britain long before the Romans — around 2,000 BC.

Where were they when the wheel was invented, around 3,500 BC? They were almost certainly in the grassy steppes of Russia north of the Black Sea — maybe Ukraine. Much earlier, they migrated out of Africa and gradually spread across Eurasia. It was about 4,000 BC when they migrated through Turkey.

Thank you, wheel

It was the wheel that helped enable their migration westward into Europe. By 2,500 BC they had reached Germany and Poland. They probably crossed into Britain around 2,200 BC. Until Timothy 1 left for the American colonies, they lived in Britain for 4,000 years, most of that time in northern England. They were in Britain for the final stages of the building of Stonehenge.

Because of my love of languages and the history of language, the migration data allows some pretty accurate guesses about the languages they spoke. Working backward: English → (Early Modern English) → Middle English → Old English (Anglo-Saxon) → Brittonic Celtic (Cumbric/Common Brittonic; closest living cousin is Welsh) → Proto-Celtic → Proto-Indo-European.

Curse you, Iona

When were the poor souls Christianized? They probably were Christianized around 650 AD (or CE, as we now say). There were monasteries (such as Lindisfarne) that spread Christianity into northern England. It was in 635 AD when Saint Aidan came from the island of Iona (in Scotland) to found a monastery. I visited Iona in 2019, and I hated the place for the atmosphere of smug righteousness that clings to it. It was almost as though I realized, from somewhere deep in my genes, that the monastery at Iona had something to do with beating Christianity into my contentedly pagan ancestors.

They survived, obviously

Plagues and wars brought an end to many family lines. Between 1347 and 1351, the Black Death killed roughly 30–50% of England’s population. In some regions, mortality was even higher. My ancestors would have witnessed and survived the Norman Conquest — 1066. They probably took the Dalton surname between 1,200 and 1,400.

I can’t go home again

My first trip to Ireland was in 1996. As I explored the country lanes of County Kerry, drove over the mountain of Carrauntoohil, and looked out over the Atlantic toward Skellig Michael, again and again I had the feeling — this is home. It was some years later before I explored and thoroughly hiked similar terrain in Scotland. I’ve been all over England and much of Wales. As much as I love the Appalachian Highlands, it’s Ireland and the British Isles that feel most like home to me. Cows, the scent of the cool springs where milk is stored, cows in green pasture, heaths and bogs, the Atlantic crashing against rocky cliffs, potatoes, cabbages, oats, barley, hot soup, warm bread — I do believe these things are somehow implanted in our genes.

I’d move back there in a flash, if I could. But the realities of the modern world make that impossible. Timothy 1 could get on a ship and sail to America with no legal niceties to stop him. I can go back and visit, but the legal niceties are such that visas are good for only six months of a year.

If I could go back in time, I’d go find Timothy 1. He probably was a carpenter and small farmer. He probably didn’t inherit much. He probably heard that Virginia was a wide open land of opportunity (which it was). But I’d say to him: Please don’t do it, Timothy.

Note: ChatGPT 5.2 analyzed my DNA data and helped with the research for this post.

Demonize them, and tax them out of existence

Illustration by ChatGPT 5.2

Paul Krugman’s Substack dispatch this morning, Billionaires Gone Wild, is about how, starting with Reagan, then worsening after Citizens United, billionaires are taking over the world. This is not just an American phenomenon. The lead story today at the English edition of Le Monde is France’s 13,335 millionaires who pay no income tax. France’s Finance Ministry tried to deny that this was true. But further digging confirmed it.

Billionaires can afford propaganda, of course. And they are increasingly buying up the media to turn them into organs of propaganda. Millions upon millions of Americans — who at least can see that their lunch is being eaten — are bamboozled by the propaganda and believe the lie that it’s poor, brown-skinned immigrants who are eating their lunch. Americans are taught to admire and almost worship the rich. How can they be shown who it is who is really eating their lunch?

Right-wing politicians and propagandists use demonization against their political enemies very effectively. Just look at how they treated the Clintons and the Obamas — demonization based upon lies, lies, and more lies.

Progressives have no choice but to learn to do this. And progressives don’t have to lie to demonize the rich. Just telling the truth would do the job. As Krugman points out, it isn’t just that the super-rich are using their power to make themselves richer. They’re also spreading fascism — though Krugman uses milder language: “Unfortunately, their non-monetary goals are often worse than their greed.”

Democracies will never be safe until the super-rich are demonized instead of worshiped and taxed out of existence. Wealth taxes are a start. And something, of course, must be done about the U.S. Supreme Court.

Jon Ossoff: ‘Hiding in plain sight’

All of a sudden, Jon Ossoff, a U.S. senator from Georgia, is on the presidential radar screen.

Keith Duggan, Washington correspondent for the Irish Times, has noticed him: Flickers of Obama: Is Georgia senator Jon Ossoff a Democratic presidential runner? Also Newsweek: Is Jon Ossoff the Man Democrats Have Been Waiting For?

What got their attention was a rally speech that Ossoff gave on February 7 in Atlanta (link below).

Not only is Ossoff qualified, he is not an easy target for Republican demonization. Not only is Newsom from the state that Republicans hate the most — California — he’s also from San Francisco. Pete Buttigieg is gay. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is an unapologetic socialist. (I think that Buttigieg would make a fine secretary of state. And AOC has definitely earned her way into the cabinet of the next Democratic president.)

Whereas if Ossoff has any such political baggage, I’m not aware of it. He has the perfect education — Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, and the London School of Economics. The Wikipedia article has more on his past and his political positions. Just imagine having someone in the White House who actually knows something about the world!

Once upon a time, it was a rule with the Democratic Party that there had to be a Southerner on the ticket. Democrats foolishly forgot that.

Ossoff is in rally mode in the video, and that’s fine. But it’s high time now that someone does a sitdown policy interview with him.

Update: Jennifer Rubin also writes about Ossoff in her Substack post today: Undaunted in Georgia.

Here come peak demand electric rates

The insides of an Aquanta water heater timer.

I received a letter from my electric company saying that, starting April 1, they will be switching to a peak demand rate plan. If you’re not already on such a rate plan, you probably will be soon.

Both the letter I received from the electric company, and the information on their web site, was irritatingly vague. It took some time for me to figure out how the peak demand charge is calculated each month. I won’t try to explain it here because the rules will vary from electric company to electric company.

My electric company, Energy United, is a small regional co-op. I tend to trust them more than I would ever trust the energy giant in this part of the country, Duke Energy. Still, a co-op that doesn’t generate any power itself must buy it, and I assume that Energy United buys primarily from Duke Energy. I assume that Duke Energy charges Energy United more for electricity during peak demand times.

The marketing angle is that peak demand pricing “gives you direct control of your bill” and can save you money. Is that true? It’s possible, but only if you avoid pulling a lot of power during peak demand times — winter mornings and summer afternoons.

That won’t necessarily be easy. Winter mornings between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. is when most people are up, re-warming their houses, and making breakfast. And summer afternoons between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. is when cooling systems work the hardest and people are home from work and making dinner.

Some electrical usage is optional, and some is not, of course. Obviously it would be a bad idea to run a clothes dryer during peak demand time. To some degree, we can manage heating and cooling with our thermostats.

Small electric loads such as lighting or televisions won’t add much to your peak demand. The biggies are heating, cooling, dryers, ovens, and water heaters. If those big loads all run at once, your peak demand could be very scary.

Electric water heaters use a lot of power. If a water heater switches on during peak demand times (as is very likely), it will add about 5,000 watts (5 kW) to your peak demand. I estimated that, given my electric company’s rates, if my water heater switched on even just once during the monthly billing period during peak hours, it would add $22 to my bill for that month. Getting control over the water heater is an obvious way to save money. A water heater timer would soon pay for itself.

After talking with the plumber who replaced my water heater a couple of years ago, I decided to install an Aquanta “smart” water heater timer. Amazon has them. They’re not cheap ($164), but the older mechanical timers seem too unreliable and inaccurate. The Aquanta timer can be monitored and controlled from a phone app or from the Aquanta web site.

These new rates seem pretty unfair to working families who don’t have much choice about when they use electricity. For retired people like me, it’s easier. When the new rate scheme kicks in, I’m guessing that a lot of people who weren’t paying attention to the change are going to be shocked when they get their first bill.

Still, it’s entirely rational that electric companies are moving to rate plans that factor in when you use electricity as well as how much electricity you use. Nationally, peak demand is growing faster than overall usage is growing. Yes, AI data centers have something to do with it.

For what it’s worth, here is the letter from my electric company. It’s mostly marketing language, leaving it up to you to figure out how you will be affected by the new rates. Click here for high-resolution version.

What a woke dog whistle sounds like

Paul Krugman links to this video in his Substack dispatch this morning — America will not die in darkness. The video has been watched almost 13 million times. Krugman writes about the video, “A few commenters on this video called it ‘woke propaganda.'”

It must be a terrible thing to be the kind of person who feels threatened by a group of happy young people singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” But they hear the subtext, I think, and even a slow and illiberal mind catches on to the implication that the lion is going to wake up. It’s a woke dog whistle.

Until now I thought that the original of this song was the 1961 version by the Tokens, which reached No. 1 on U.S. charts. But actually the song was composed in 1939 by a Black South African, Solomon Linda. The subtext, I think, has always been there. Linda grew up desperately poor under apartheid.

The theme of Krugman’s dispatch is that fascist blacksliding in the U.S. has been remarkably fast compared with other fascist backslidings. Krugman quotes Steven Levitsky on Hungary: “Orbán doesn’t arrest journalists. And in Hungary if you walk the streets of Budapest or other Hungarian cities, you will not find heavily armed masked men abducting people. That doesn’t happen in Hungary.”

The upside, as Krugman points out, is that the backlash in the United States has been huge and took the White House by surprise. We know now, months in advance, that Trump will try to stop or steal the November mid-terms. We also know now what will happen if he tries. It won’t just be Minneapolis that MAGA will have to reckon with.

Oh great. February.

Click here for high-resolution verson.

Last week’s ice storm was followed by bitter cold, which was followed by a blizzard, which was followed by more bitter cold. There was no mail delivery all last week. Everyone has had to watch out for frozen water pipes.

The only positive thing I can say is that we never lost power here. If we’re lucky, after one more cold night (13F), starting Monday we should return to ordinary February weather — merely semi-miserable rather than miserable.