My initial thought about former Prince Andrew being removed from the line of success to the throne is about the immediate Royal family dying in some catastrophic event, and there he is - the next Royal standing. More of a plot from the 1500s or 1600s, don’t you think? Or not, given the urgency there seems to be to remove him.
We focus greatly on the Royal succession. Then I wondered this question? Who walk among us today as the living relatives of some of our most revered humans throughout history? Leonardo da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Galileo Galilei, William Shakespeare? Let’s start somewhere and find the closest living relative to Leonardo da Vinci.
From the Smithsonian Magazine:
Fourteen people (men) alive today, ranging in age from 1 to 85 years old have a direct genetic link to the famed Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci. Only one of these knew about their link to da Vinci. There are other relatives that are mostly indirect from the female line - that includes Franco Zeffirelli. They can’t help with information about Leonard’s DNA - particularly on the Y-chromosome which is transmitted to male descendants and remains almost unchanged for 25 generations.
Narrowing down the list of Leonardo’s blood relatives is time-consuming, complicated work. Leonardo never married or had children, so there are no direct descendants. The scientist and artist was born out of wedlock to Ser Piero, a Florentine notary, and Caterina, a young peasant woman, in 1452. All told, Leonardo had an estimated 22 half-siblings, including 17 from his father’s multiple relationships.
So the next question is: So what? That means: What is there to learn in this DNA revelation? The project doing this gruelling research wants “to understand how his extraordinary talents, such as visual acuity and creativity, may have been influenced by his genetics…The project’s findings could reshape the way the art world thinks about authenticating works and provide a deeper understanding of da Vinci’s genius.” There’s an idea that his elusive DNA may be right here in his art work.
I finished my presentation on Great Public Gardens in Your Own Backyard. Then I realized that I had omitted a very important but tiny garden in St. Catharines. This is the Harriet Tubman Memorial Garden at the Salem Chapel, BME Church on Geneva Street. The picture is from 2014 when I was a garden volunteer taking care of the tiny Memorial Garden that held this statue of her. This was her church from 1851 to 1858.
