I am not a very family-oriented sort of chap; most of my relatives on one side of the family have passed on to the Eternal Embrace of the Old Easeful, and most of my relatives on the other are completely unknown to me. So I was delighted to learn, owing to an e-mail from one of these dimly connected relatives, that I have, as of 2012, a relative named “Kennedy Julee Potemra.”

This is wonderful in two ways: First, I can now casually drop into conversations a mention of “my Kennedy relative”; and second, the misspelling “Julee” bespeaks a thoroughgoing Americanization of the Potemras. (Misspelling names is a dead giveaway that someone is not a recent immigrant, but perfectly at home in America. It’s like not voting.)