Well, lemme see, now.

My father's side of the family came from Orkney, so that probably means Celts or whoever the hell was there before the Celts came along (had a penchant for standing big stones on end, for some strange reason—does that have any relationship to tossing the caber?), liberally mixed with the Norsemen who used to use the islands as a staging ground for raids on the rest of the British Isles and points south. My mother was a full-blooded Swede whose parents immigrated to the U. S. from Dalarna. I was born in California and spent the first nine years of my life there, then the family moved to Seattle, which my parents regarded as home.

I took three years of French in high school, but I can't speak it for purple poop because I never had an opportunity to use it. I don't speak Italian, but when I read lines from an opera libretto, I'm told my accent is near perfect, although half the time I have only a foggy idea of what I'm saying. I spent over a year in Denver, where I ate a lot of grits (even though that's hardly The South, and it wasn't by choice), and I never did find a decent chiliburger in the whole city. I love most kinds of seafood, and I love Chinese and Indian food, but basically, I'm an omnivore. I do eat oats from time to time, in cereal and bread and oatmeal cookies (with raisins and—I hope—chocolate chips!). I think it was Samuel Johnson who said that oats are "a grain fit only to be fed to horses and Scotsmen." I like the pipes, and when riled, I can swing a claymore with the best of 'em.

Any national characteristics in that mess?

I've lived most of my life in Seattle, but since I was born in California, does that make me an artificial Seattlite?

Don Firth