lately i've been in the business of using ancestry.com to find the barest outlines of distant relatives' lives, to figure out who's still out there, whether they are as distant as third or fourth cousins. I've always said that we should at least recognize these relatives if not reach out and say, we're here, we're still family, etc.

in times where i needed something, like the diary of a great-great grandfather, i've actually reached out to them, and that's how i found this one guy, maybe fourth or fifth cousin, but living in Turkey. It turned out he was the same age as me, also from illinois, so i got a strong sense of there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-i. I could have very easily given up on this country, married some person from another land, found a new homeland, but i didn't, and now the fascist revival is coming to swallow us up. ah well.

but here's another one. this one is maybe a third cousin, or because we are dealing with his daughters, third cousins once removed. one of them called me back when I was in texas (2012-2016) and we had a long talk. i remember a lot from that call but some of it i may not remember correctly. she was in long beach california (there-but-for-the-grace-of-god-go-i), had turned her life around, and was trying to contact old relatives and reestablish connections.

it struck me even at the time how profound this turnaroud was, as if she'd been in the depths of hell, which of course she didn't share, but was now seeking a much more positive relationsip with her environment and her world. there was a boyfriend/husband in the picture. turns out there was a kid too. and there was a sister too, who she implied was still in the depths of hell and i probably wouldn't be seeing too much of her.

i became friends with her on facebook and no sooner did i do that, than she died. her facebook is still there, with connection, deep within it, to her sister, who even back in ~2015 looked a little sallow and serious. somewhere in there i thhought i saw her fatehr, a guy whho looked a little like me but sligthly older. there is no record in ancestry of his marrying anyone, and their birth records are very vague about both their mother and their father although it appears they have both. the picture i get is of estrangement from the mother, as if who knows what happened, and lives of great tribulation and hardship on the streets of Long Beach. it's not clear what she died from, or whether either of those parents are still around.

i feel like reaching out, but i have no reason at the moment, nothing to offer except hey, i'm your third cousin once or twice removed, how's it going. the sister is not actively using facebook, the kid would be maybe eight. they'd be able to tell me more, i'm sure, usually it comes out eventually. none of this is secret, but a lot of it goes undocumented and takes a little effort to recover.

big storms are gathering here. i do this genealogy stuff because it seems to go with the rest of what i do: hours and hours of door-dashing, taking fast food across town for people endlessly, sometimes better food, sometimes way out to the country or to a nearby town. i like to think about these other people's lives or about historical things while i do it. and it has to be the kind of activity, unlike writing, that i can set down at moment's notice. like right now, i have to pick up my son, quick before the sky opens out.

lately i've been studying the german side of the family, specifically the ancestors of my grandmother on my father's side, who i never met because she died of breast cancer three years before i was born. her brother was a doctor but she couldn't get his advice, or support, because her mother, one lizzy singelmann mauer, had a feud with this brother and wouldn't allow him in the house. yet it was she who was staying with grandma velma. i've been uncovering the secrets of what might have made her so difficult.

meanwhile a son came to chicago and parked himself in an airbnb with his wife and two grandchildren. i drove up there (three and a half hours) and also to gary to drop off a friend of my son. gary traffic was a nightmare. chicago's was too, and on the way home a couple of wrong turns and i ended up way deep in the south side, quite a ways from where i wanted to go.

back when i lived in chicago in 1994 that south side going down all the way from comiskey park to beyond 95th, was all black. at the 95th street station it looked like seoul, very busy, but all the people coming and going were black. i think what happened was that the strong black majority simply got a little displaced as ethnic people of all kinds moved in and set up camp. the south side i got lost in seemed to be a conglomeration of races and economic positions. it didn't seem hostile, though.

just cleaned out my hearing aids, and now for the first time i believe i'm hearing the cicadas.

have you heard them? have they arrived where you live? i'm genuinely curious about everyone's experience. and unlike most people, i actually like them.

sure, they are annoying, especially if they are eating everything in sight. my family complains about trees laid bare, wooded areas depleted to dead-looking trees, etc. (not sure this is cicadas, could be moths or another kind of pest) and also, people are not generally crazy about the sound. they also find that the skeletons hang around and crunch under your feet for some time. what is there to like?

one is that the cycles are odd: seventeen=year, thirteen-year, and the possibility, this year, that they might mate - what would happen? would their offspring become an average, fifteen-year? would this happen only in the limited areas that have them both?

maps show that the seventeen-year are up here, in western illinois, and in iowa, in the northern midwest, whereas down where we used to live in carbondale, the thirteen-year dominates. but maps also show that certain counties don't have them at all, and there are a few counties that have them both - as if the cicadas somehow respect these county boundaries. i have no doubt that their population is somewhat patchy and that these maps are doing the best they can to reflect that. but it makes me curious: is it because one species manages the hard winter better? or they don't like the windmills that have sprung up, a thousand per square foot in counties that allow them, and none in counties that don't?

i always thought the sound was cool, a little off tune, like an orchestra's violins tuning, but nevertheless relentless and interesting, and a sign that nature's cycles have come around. now, i've lost much of my hearing, and without hearing aids tinnitus is like a field of cicadas. but just now i asked my wife if she heard them (it seems to me that i'm hearing them now, and she said no. nor have we really seen them, and i know that when they do show up, you see them everywhere. i know some people around the country have seen them. but where are ours?

the hot weather is just starting here. june is sinking its teeth into the ecosystem. yesterday i mowed the last of my three yards, the biggest, and i could see evidence of bugs in general. but no locusts, yet. i haven't seen a single one.

when i do, i'm going to take some pictures. what i'd like you to remember is this: every creature has to eat; making noise is the best way to mate and perpetuate the survival of your species; any bug that is not hiding under your refrigerator or scurrying away when you turn on the kitchen light in the middle of the night, is basically living off nature and you don't have to consider it disgusting; and, finally, evidence of cycles and the return of cycles is basically good, and reassuring, like the sunrise, part of something we should be grateful for: that life is carrying on, as it did when we were children and as it hopefully will continue to do, for our descendants, if we don't blow it big time.