I yam what I yam

Submitted by Michael S. (United States), Mar 27, 2014 at 17:45

Polish Dan Pipes!

What a riot! Popeye the Sailor said "I yam what I yam!" I have ancestral roots in the western Ukraine, which was at that time part of Austria. Before that, it had been Polish; and afterwards it again became Polish, before becoming first Soviet and then Ukrainian. All that happened to the country, but not to my ancestors. My ancestors left the "homeland" to become, like many Mexicans are today in my country (the US), servants and field workers. They had been Jewish and Galician, and became Catholic and Slovenian. Then they came to America, where my mother was born and learned to speak the language of her playmates, a language her mother also understood: German. In school, she learned to speak English, which she spoke flawlessly. My father left when I was very small (He was a Yankee). When I would ask my mother what nationality he was, she would reply that she didn't know, that he was a mixture, and that, as her mother used to tell her, "People are people". That's who I yam. I yam a people -- and I thinks Dan Pipes is a people too.

Shalom shalom :-)

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