It was always there. Wasn't it?

The realization came to me tonight as I watched a 2010 Netflix movie starring Ewan McGregor, "The Ghost Writer," that is shot primarily at a seaside house.

I love the sea.

I spent many hours standing on the forward passenger observation deck of the Alaskan ship, SS Malaspina, on one of my many voyages on the Alaska Marine Highway System. The cold sea splashing against my face, the rolling of the ship in the waves - sometimes rather violent waves - and the faces of the other travelers inside, looking a me. Wondering what crazy person was sharing the boat with them. It reminded me of the few months I spent on a ship at sea in the Navy long ago.

I love the sea.

Why did the realization take so long?

Who knows...

Here we are, 11 days into a new president and his administration and you would think the world has been knocked off its axis. Things we thought we knew and things we took for granted like a certain level of civility among the professional political crowd has been disappearing for some time...and now seems to be totally gone.

Did the sun rise in the East this morning? I do not know; I have not seen the sun in several days.

We used to welcome immigrants because we are a country of immigrants. We now have a president that has banned immigrants of one religion from seven countries, none of which, by the way, among those with whom he does business.

None of their residents or citizens have inflicted terrorist acts on the United States, but they are on the list, anyway. On the other hand, the one country that was proven to have 11 of 19 hijackers on that fateful day, September 11, 2001, Saudi Arabia, is not on the infamous List of Seven.

Of course, the reason that country is not on the list is that the president has business relations with them and they still produce a whole lot of our oil. Bad idea to piss them off.

Yet no matter how violent their citizens, no matter how extremist and antiquated their legal system, no matter how much they ignore basic human rights - things we used to support back when - no matter how far their efforts go to fund and push extremist Muslim beliefs worldwide go, irritating the Saudi royal family is not a good thing for Trump. He is all about Trump and would stand to lose a lot of money. He does not care about what happens to the American middle class or the cost of gas we pour into our gas-guzzling vehicles or even his own family. He does not care about Melania or Barron or being president.

He only cares about Donald J. Trump.

He now has more power than any one man in the world, in addition to his money. He has stacked his own National Security Council with his insiders as he has stacked his incoming Cabinet with professional billionaires, Wall Street insiders, military generals, and others with no governmental experience at any level.

He says he want to "drain the swamp."

But instead of depending on the counsel of his appointed department heads to do anything like "drain the swamp," he relies, as he always has, on a very small, very tight group of insiders, including his own son-in-law, to do what he wants. He sees himself as the CEO of a large company called the United States and he expects his underlings to do his bidding, right or wrong, legal or illegal, factual or alternative factual. Without question or delay. Or hesitation.

That got him into a bit of heat - which he loves and attention he craves - when he fired an acting head of the Justice Department, a former Obama Administration appointee who was kept on, after she failed to tow his line on a Draconian immigration prohibition policy that was written by his insiders and, strangely enough, senior staff of congressional representatives, without having the new ban vetted by experts who know what they're doing.

If there was ever an indication of the need for spiritual rebirth, this is going to be yet another one for us. We lived through the 1960's, when people in the United States rebelled against war and the politicians who created them and we survived - barely - a president who committed criminal acts and became the only president in United States history to resign in disgrace.

Much of what Trump is doing is now being compared to three people in history: Andrew Jackson, a president very much like Trump; Richard Nixon, a president who was a paranoid and distrustful as Trump; and Adolph Hitler, a man who seized power through a one-man coup and who, in my view, committed acts and came to power in ways very akin to the actions that Trump is taking.

I think it is a time to be afraid.

I am now a domain owner

Sure as can be, I bought and am now the owner of a new Internet domain, www.wilkinsongenealogy.info. I am not really sure why I did it; doing so will cost me $12 per year just for the name and if I create any email addresses attached to it, they will cost and additional $5 per month. Somehow, I thought owning a domain related to my new, soon-to-be-created blog about my family tree journey was something I needed to do since others have done it.

But $12 a year is an expense I can bear and who knows? Maybe I will find a need for it. Until I do, I can spend some time designing and building it as a home for my new Blogspot genealogy blog...though I am pretty sure it does not need a 'home.'

Where does the time go? No, really. Where?

As I write this, the day is January 13, 2017. The first Friday The 13th of the new calendar year. That has no relevance to me since I am not superstitious (knock on wood :) ) and think any result from my actions or inactions result from them, not from the day of the week. Nonetheless, I have not written here since August 2016. That is too long; one wonders where the time goes. And why I chose not to spend as much time here as I should or wanted to.

Keeping in mind that one of my stated purposes was to write more for stress-reduction purposes, I might just get my chance to do exactly that.

As a reader might know, I have been working on my own family tree for a few years. The reason is pretty simple. As I age, learning more about my near- and far-ancestors becomes more important to me. I grew up somewhat detached from my grandparents and all relatives living in the United States because I grew up the son of a US diplomat in the Middle East. I spent those formative years mostly in Jordan but also in Beirut, Lebanon and Ankara, Turkey. Those were experiences I would not change but they were not all positive. Looking back, I see how much I missed; not really having a "home town" or lifelong friends or, really, even roots. I recently read that the only person whose name I remember from my time in elementary school in my parents' hometown of Wilton, New Hampshire, before leaving for Jordan, Harley Savage, has died. He was one person I hoped to visit; I cannot do that now and that leaves me a bit sad.

It is the connection to my past through my parents and Wilton, New Hampshire, that has driven me to try to sort out the leaves on my own family tree. Formally, doing so is called genealogy, the study of family history. I have joined and spent money on the largest of the genealogy source sites, Ancestry.com. This organization is closely tied to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah, the largest, most accurate repository of genealogical records in the world. The Mormons have been serious genealogists, professional and otherwise, for their entire history and have collected family histories for that long. They make much of it available to the non-LDS public for free and their Family History Center in Salt Lake City can be very helpful doing family history searches.

Until the advent of the Internet and recognition of a possible revenue source, one had to visit there in person. Now, however, companies have been created to funnel some, if not all, of that information around the globe. So it is with Ancestry.com. And so it was with my becoming a member.

A few days ago, a Facebook contact of mine, a professional genealogist, recommended that I start a blog as a non-professional 'beginner.' She thought my description of my journey to fill out my family tree would be valuable for other beginners. Since I like to write and have been looking for ways to increase the time I spend writing - in hopes of improving my skill - starting another blog sounded like a good idea.

I gave some thought to just adding to this one, but quickly enough cast that idea aside. This blog is really a place for me to vent, to keep these fingers typing, and to be a bit of therapy. Whether anyone reads or not is not the purpose and, honestly, is not that important. It is for me. Writing a 'genealogy for beginners' blog would have an entirely different purpose. Finding readers would be important, so I decided to create another Blogspot blog.

That is the first of many steps and I plan to spend this day, Friday the 13th, working some of the details out. I have a support system; remember that Facebook friend I mentioned? The professional genealogist? She is probably a cousin since her maiden name is also Wilkinson and she writes a very popular New England genealogy blog. She has offered her help, has given me the contact information for some other bloggers, and knows that what I would write would fill a bit of a void...not many bloggers are from the area of southern New Hampshire my own ancestors lived in.

So there it is, dear reader. I have an idea, a laptop, a desktop, time, energy, and the willingness to put all of them together for a purpose. Doing a new blog will be difficult, frustrating at times, and almost always entirely enjoyable. I will explain what I do in my own family history search, what I find, how I validate a finding, why I reject any that do not meet my comfort level, what roadblocks I encounter and how I overcome them, if I do.

Hopefully, you will come along on the journey with me. Road trips alone can be just a trip from Point A to Point B. Road trips with others can be a journey, almost a vacation. Let's make it together. Heck, I might even pique your own interest in learning about your own ancestors.