Too much TV in the family’s life lately, so I took everyone out for some sightseeing. Man, what a town! Hey, did you know there’s a Simpsons movie out now?

Egged on by a tinge of pride and the taint of vanity, but mostly just seeking another signature to brand the world with, I wanted a family coat of arms. A quick look at the Internet Machine came up with a “Dorsey crest” but it won’t do at all.

For one thing, you’re paying some company money for a piece of artwork — on a scroll, a plaque, stationery, a necktie and/or a keyring — that is probably about as authentic as the Internet’s retail department. Maybe it’s got some actual historic basis, maybe it doesn’t.

For another thing, the one I saw offered at two websites (which might well both belong to the same company) is full of crosses and a five-petal flower I don’t recognise. The bull is fine for my wife Ae, a Taurus, but that could be amalgamated in other ways in a different design.

I’m not even impressed with the knight’s helmet (though everybody’s crests on these websites seem to have one). Christianity and war certainly go hand in hand, but that’s why I’m not thrilled about having either one in my house.

I don’t mind the motto too much — “Un dieu, un roi” — “one god, one king”. But I figured I could do better than that too. There’s more!

Having followed Clan Dorsey through the good times and the better and then right into the swamp during the English Civil War, which almost did them in, we find the family granted a second chance across the Atlantic, where the story gets interesting again during the War Between the States.

The Union-vs-Confederacy punch-up has fascinated me since I was kid, possibly something to do with reincarnation. I often suspected I’d been on the losing side in that civil war too. I had a rebel cap when I was a kid, a present from an aunt in New York, no less. Slavery was an abhorrence, of course, but I get all weepy when I hear “Dixie”.

The most moving “theatre” experience of my life was on a visit to Stone Mountain outside Marietta, Georgia, where they have a light-and-sound show against the massive rock itself depicting Generals Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Confederate President Jeff Davis, as well as the Stars ‘n’ Bars. Whatever guilt any northerner might feel watching it melts away when Willie Nelson sings “Georgia on My Mind” and they play “Dixie”. Not too far away is the site of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, where Sherman wasted 3,000 Union lives trying to show off.

It would be a rare thing to be reincarnated with your name intact, but at any rate, the soldiers named Dorsey I’ve come across in US Civil War accounts have come from both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line. There’s more!

Found my ancestor on the Bayeux Tapestry. How about that?

Hours of painstaking research (three of them) have got me a little bit closer to being actually able to actually look in the face of an actual person and actually thank him, actually, sincerely, for the use of the name “Dorsey”. This epic hunt for the owner of the name’s copyright will not cease until he is pried from his coffin and showered with ululations while I dance around his grave waving his bones in the air.

And what a scene for the Discovery Channel, right?

The search goes on and on and on for three specific reasons:

* My inability to decide between a dark-haired Gaelic fellow called O’Dorchaidhe and some Frenchman from a place called Arcy.

* My inability to find Arcy in France, even though every genealogist in the world seems to know where it is.

* My inability to pronounce “O’Dorchaidhe”.

Here are the results so far of my climbing family trees and rooting for the family, as it were, beneath them:

THEORY ONE: The French Connection There’s more!

A memorial montage by my nephew, Dan Parsons.

oday would have been my mother’s 90th birthday had cancer not tripped her up back in September 2001, just as al-Qaeda was diverting everyone’s attention. My sister and I half-joked that she wouldn’t be too pleased with the crowd at Heaven’s gate, but she’d be able to help some of those New Yorkers.

She’ll always be missed, of course, even as those who live after her keep trying to piece together the bits of life’s jigsaw and make sense of the big picture. She was already well on her way to figuring it out. There’s more!