I’m getting into the blogging business! Aren’t I amazing? From now on Grondy’s Columns will be posted on Blogger instead of on Fire Emblem Wars. Also, I realize that the layout is rather sparse and unoriginal right now, but bear with me, I haven’t had any time to spice it up yet. Blogger has all sorts of fun features I can play around with that will hopefully make Grondy’s Column more interesting to read. So why don’t you try reading this article there right now, eh?

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<dd>My parents like to tell stories. Specifically, they like to tell stories about China and their lives before they moved to the States with me. It’s a quick way to remind an immigrant child of his past, I suppose. It didn’t really work all that well, but then again quick things usually don’t. <br />
<p><dd>One story that always stoked my interest, though, was the story of my family tree. You see, the Chinese are crazy about their families. At every Lunar New Year, my father used to attend a large family reunion, which would end with everyone kowtowing to a painstakingly maintained parchment detailing our entire family tree. This ritual was as unshakable to him as fireworks on the 4th of July or presents at Christmas. </p>
<p><dd> Then, when he was twelve, Maozedong whipped up the Cultural Revolution, a movement calling for the eradication of everything associated with pre-Communist China. Mao’s Red Guards threw out everything that reflected the millennia of imperial rule … and a family tree spanning all those millennia was certainly suspect. </p>
<p><dd> So my grandfather burned it. </p>
<p><dd> I exploded the first time I heard this part. “He burned it?” I simply couldn’t comprehend such an act, yet I grew up in an America apparently absorbed in preserving its own past and where ugly purges like the Cultural Revolution never happened. I did not understand how he could destroy thousands of years of his own history, but neither did I have heavily armed radical Communists banging on my door. Now I know that it was a necessary evil, just as it was necessary to change his name because the last character meant “wealthy,” obviously a sign of a diseased capitalist mind. </p>
<p><dd> Even in the west, we have an obsession with degrading the memory of our past and replacing it with someone shinier. “Out with the old, in with the new!” I’ve always thought of myself as a very forward-thinking, positive person, but I must say that this disruptive and frankly nonsensical hobby irritates me to no end. </p>
<p><dd> What’s wrong with heritage? What’s wrong with things that are old and perhaps somewhat worn? The writing industry these days avoids clichés like the plague, but what is a cliché but an idiom that helps to characterize a language? It’s part of English’s heritage – perhaps an overused part, but a part nonetheless. I’ve never had any beef with clichés, and I delight in digging up uncommon ones which I can lob at my unsuspecting readers. It’s the blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar which so amazes me about these “rare clichés” and about traditions and customs in general. </p>
<p><dd> There’s another Chinese tradition that I adore, that of a “generation name.” Every family has a generation poem, an epic written by the founder of the family, and every male in every succeeding generation takes as part of his name a character from the poem.
<p><dd> I know it sounds odd, but in China generation poems are flowing pieces of art, and hearing their succession awes me and instills a deep respect for the glory and traditions of the culture that culminated (arrogant, aren’t I?) in me. </p>
<p><dd> My family’s generation poem was lost, though there’s a branch in another province that probably saved it. Still, if I somehow get careless and beget a son, I fully intend to track down that branch and bequeath upon him his rightful generation name. That’s how determined I am to preserve the sanctity of my history. After all, we are our father’s sons, our mother’s daughters. We are the children of humanity and we should never forget the feats, tragedies, and dramas that our ancestors have played out on this earthly stage.</p>
<dd> To forget our pasts and the ancient memories of who we have been, even if it meant peace, would leave us hollow and spiritless. Every race, every culture, every country, every religion – all of them have their heroes and their villains, and none should forget them. To live in the past is folly, but to efface it is even more so. Honor the past, cope with the present, and hope for the future. Such is balance.
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Grondring’s written two straight columns of deadly serious stuff, and he’s getting a little tired of it. The next one will be stupid, he promises.

I'm not a huge fan of my heritage-one side gives me a good quarter german, but the other is mixed from at least...eight or so generations back, as that's when my greatgreat...so on moved to America.

Also, I love the idea of a blog format-but willl you still at least post the column here?

Maybe, depends. Come on, visit the blog! Spread the word! I need more readers. :P

Oh, and I just noticed your userbar. An atheist, eh? You wanna go? Come on, I'll take you up. Fisticuffs! :lol:

I did visit the blog. I'm just wondering if you're still going to post here. If not, I insist on a regular schedule :P

I'll answer the second comment in the same way i answer any of the idiots(not that you are one) at my school who say 'Wanna go?' whenever I insult them:

Where are we going?

I'll probably move permanently to Blogger after a bit, just because I can post by email (which will be helpful for reasons that are too ultra confidential super top secret to say here). Still, I'll keep on maintaining a regular schedule - Sundays, without fail. If you like I can set up some sort of email notification system or, depending on your technological ability, you can use the RSS feed.

EDIT: And we're going... to HELL! Bwahaha! Take that, atheist! :P

My god... That was um... insightful... I wanna say good but it was rather cruel...

It makes me apprciate that I never lived in Japan like my grandfather did. (There was a war going on then so I'm kinda going with that as my base for it.)

(Yes I'm asian... my mom is American and my dad is Asian... I got the American looks... so I don't get bragging rights.)

EDIT: If you could make an email notification I would love it... or some way to tell me when you post them on the Blogger...

Lemme guess-you can't access anything but a school e-mail on certain computers or some-such?

Either way, as long as you keep to schedule it works for me.

By the way, hell(if it exists) wouldn't be too bad a place until the (if it happens) rapture.
As a 'virtous non-believer', at least according to that one test, I'd be sent to Limbo.

Okay, I'll get to work on an email notification system.

Aha! Limbo! Limbo limbo, lim-BO!

... I think it's time for me to go to sleep before I embarass myself any more.

I went to your blogger thing, I would've waited to read it before I post, but I saw your "atheist suck" and that kinda pissed me off :P.

I'll proablly edit my thoughts in here, and if I like it, I'll mass spam others, NOW THATS GOOD AVERTISING EH!?

My heritage is sort of unknown to me. My father was adopted, and all I know is he is half Irish and half English. From my mother's side, I know she was 25 percent Irish, seeing as her father was, but her mother's side is a bit more blurry. My mom knows that she had alot of Native American blood in her. It's strikingly obvious from my whole mother's side of the family that there is alot, too. However, my mother's grandmother always denied being Native American, due to racial predjudices and what not.

Heh, comment'd and in the first 5 words I screwed up, that's a sign of things to come >_>...mabey

I'm not sure why we're all saying what our parents are, but what the hell.. My dad's Mexican, and he's not sure what the other half is, (which is weird if you ask me >_>) but he thinks Irish or Greek. My mom's Puerto Rican and American. The races are kinda messed up, but if you'd know how it happened, it'd make a lot of sense, but I'd rather not give out personal details like that <_<.

I have drops of what seems like everything in me.

My moms has Canadian, Native American, Irish, English, and Scottish blood.
My pops has English, Irish, lil German, some spanish, and various others I don't wanna track down.

As for teh column, I CAN"T COMMENT! And I ain't joining it, so...*ish screwed* But I liked it. I'm personally someone who doesn't see uses for past and heritage, being I'm going against my family's, but that's me.

Yet again, Bravo Grondy. Looking forward to next sunday of reading when I shoulda been in church.

For the last time, people, "Canadian" isn't its own bloodline, really. :/

I'm... half Irish, a quarter English and a quarter French. Pretty basic compared to, uh, everyone else's.

And Grondy, I prefer serious columns, actually. I like being provoked into thought. :P

*tell my family it's not a bloodline...Yeesh*

You're half Irish, Sara? Hey, so am I!

... okay, that's a total lie, but I just like to say that. :P It's sort of a running joke in real life. Anyway.

Lades, you should be able to comment on the Blogger thing, I made the settings so anyone can do it. Huh. And you shouldn't skip church because of me, that really grinds my gears. :lol:

I'm mostly Irish, but there's some Scottish, English, and German in me too.

It's a wonder I'm not Italian...

I am one hundred percent Mexican.

It's not only what ethnicity you may be, though. Your heritage is also what your ancestors have done in the past, what sort of people they were. That's why it's frustrating for me, because I really have no idea; all our family records were destroyed. I do know that my family name comes from a Chinese duke, though. So be more respectful, you commoners! :P

My family...um..we...er...

Did nothing of significance. But I noticed somewhere on the German side is the name "Fryberger" Fry Burger? Maybe we started Fast Food.

My entire family line is Japanese (until this latest generation started going out with non-Japanese, the rebellious bastards. :P).

We've done nothing out of the ordinary. ^_^ Unless black trees have some significance. :lol:

Nah, I'm sure if you did far back enough, all of you have ancestors who have done something interesting.

Racially, I'm 100% Dominican. But I'm so ethnically mixed it ain't funny. My great-grandfather on my mom's side, grandma's father, was one of four spaniards named Calcano who came to the Dominican Republic some time ago. And four people begets a lot of family in the Dominican Republic. It's perfectly normal for a Dominican man to have more than one wife in his lifetime... dominican's are quite virile... indeed. Some of my family on my mom's side is somewhere or another part Chinese(so somewhere along the line, I'm part asian!)... there's a lotta Chinese people in the Dominican Republic. They cook better dominican food than Dominicans... 0_0.... Most of my mom's side of the family is euro-fied white. My dad's side of the family, conversely, is the complete opposite end of the spectrum. I don't know that much bout my dad's family history, cept he's descended from Africans, I think Ghana, somewhere around there, and somewhere mixed with Hatians. They embody blackness... really... they do... and there's the answer to the question, if you're dominican, chances are you're from everywhere... our foremothers got raped by all the peoples of the world.