Feeling happier today. All life's uncertainties are still uncertain, but, hey, you can't fret all the time.

I had Tibetan food for the first time last night. There's this place over on University Ave. called Cafe Tibet that's gotten very good reviews. Been wanting to check it out for ages. I always love getting the chance to try a new type of cuisine.

I had Tibetan tea (I forget what it's called in Tibetan). I'll give that a pass next time: it was basically salty, buttered chai, and I didn't much care for it. The rest of the meal was superb, though. I ordered momos, which are little filled dumplings, sort of like pot-stickers. There were three kinds: one filled with ground beef with curry-like spices, one filled with mushrooms, cottage cheese, and herbs, and one filled with spinach, cottage cheese, onion and herbs. I liked the last kind best: the herbs were tangy and the spinach was fresh and not horribly overcooked. Yum.

As I've mentioned a few times, I think, my recreational reading of late has been a couple of books about the French and Indian War and its immediate aftermath, the Indian rebellion against the English led by Pontiac. It's fascinating stuff: the kind of history that makes you spin all sorts of counterfactuals. What if either the French or the English had persuaded the Iroquois to side decisively with them instead of maintaining neutrality for so long? What if the French administrators of Canada had been less corrupt and their outposts had been supplied properly? What if the French had backed Pontiac? What if the English had pursued a policy of more respectful relations with the Native Americans?

[I'm seesawing back and forth here on using 'Native American' and 'Indian'. I prefer 'Native American', since it's more accurate and unambiguous (my first thought on hearing 'Indian' is, well, 'people from India'). But the books I've been reading are older, and use 'Indian', and nobody calls it the 'French and Native American War'.]

It's hard to imagine that the end result of American colonization being much different: in the end, England sent far more people to its colonies than France did, and those people were incredibly hungry for land, and more or less incapable of seeing why they shouldn't take that land from the natives who 'weren't using it.' I think that would have ultimately overwhelmed any resistance that the French or the Native Americans could put up. However, there are plenty of crucial moments where a little more luck or cluefulness might have resulted in things going differently for a while.

It might have been really interesting, for example, if the Iroquois League had remained politically united and strong, or if Pontiac's fragile alliance of the more western tribes had actually solidified into a kind of nation state. From the point of view of an amateur political theorist, the Iroquois League was really fascinating: it was clearly on the way to becoming a kind of nation state, and it would have been cool to see how it evolved in the absence of European interference.

An amusing note: there's a brief part played in the events of Pontiac's War by a French Canadian carpenter named Peter (Pierre, surely?) Desnoyers. I wonder if we're related. I had a great-grandfather who was named Desnoyers, who was French Canadian and gained his US citizenship by fighting for the US in World War I. Given that only about 10,000 people (according to one source) emigrated from France to French Canada during the time of the French regime there, and that Desnoyers is not a terribly common surname, it's just possible that Pierre Desnoyers is a relative.

I don't know if anyone's ever traced that branch of the family very far back. The real family genealogist was on my dad's side of the family, and the Desnoyers are my mom's side. Great-grandpa Desnoyers married a Chevrolet, and we know at least a bit about Chevrolet genealogy because automobile historians are interested in that. (Yep, it's that Chevrolet. My great-grandmother was the sister of Louis Chevrolet, who co-founded the Chevrolet motor company, and Gaston Chevrolet, who won the Indy 500 in 1920.)

It's kind of weird to google your great-great-uncle, and come up with a bulletin board post from someone wanting to know if a photo of the car he was driving the day he died is a collectible. I mean, I knew in a vague sort of way that he was a well-known race car driver, but to me he's part of family lore: my grandfather's named after him, we have family stories about the Chevrolet brothers, and the old yellowed newspaper clippings about his fatal car crash used to hang on the wall in my grandparents house. The idea that a total stranger should want a picture of his car is just...weird.

Ah, well, I've blathered on about family genealogy enough. Have a great day, all.