(December 1, 2010 at 7:00 pm)orogenicman Wrote: Hmm. Interesting. Now that I think about it, there is a certain familiar resemblence. What I mean is that my ex-wife's mother is originally from North Carolina (Raleigh-Durham, I think). Her family has a similar history, and I believe, also came out of Romania. They are a small family, but are spread out all over the country today. I know of one that is in Chicago, another in Boston or New York, while some are still in N.C. The Ex is from San Francisco. Her father was a converted Episcopalian, but is of Portugese ancestry. Her sister still lives in San Francisco. The are members of the Bnai Brith.
Somehow I totally missed this.
As far as I know, my dad's side (the Romanian one) - we have no clue what's going on there. His mother is Romanian. His father was part Austrian, I think (we've been trying to figure out where our last name came from - if it was changed during immigration, we might be SOL). There is no information coming from that quarter - what I do know is they all live in the woods of Ohio and half of them still speak Romanian. My grandmother is less than unreliable when it comes to telling stories. I think the last thing I heard before my parents got divorced was that the men used to run shine up there back in the day. Classy. (Could be why the last name has no record past the 30's that I've dug up...yet...)
On my mom's side, I think both parents' families came through Ellis Island. I'm not sure where the Berensteins (maternal) went off to after that, but the Cohens (paternal) settled in NY and Louisville, where my great grandfather lived to be 97-98. My great-uncle still lives there. I think that's where my grandfather met my grandmother and combined the two families - they eventually moved to Columbus, OH, where my mom was born, and when she was 16 they moved to Los Angelos, where her two siblings still are. It was on a trip back to Ohio for something that my mom met my dad in (of all places) a backgammon bar. Since he was in the military, I was actually born outside of the Panama Canal and we hopped up to Fort Knox and then Charlottesville, and finally Manassas when I was 5 and that's where we stayed. I ended up in Charlotte because I hated Northern VA and my ex was originally from NC (albeit the slightly more "Deliverance" side of it) and we moved here when he got a job with Weyerhauser. After I left him, I stayed. North Carolina is really a beautiful state, and Charlotte's a wonderful city for a young person to be in.
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Min: he thinks I let myself get corrupted by Spinoza and I let him believe it because I don't feel like fighting about it in the workplace.