On Gardners, redux

TL;DR -- David T. Gardner has made progress in his work and now has a timeline that is interesting for several reasons. One is the scope, back to the BCE era. But, it brings up twists to Gardner history that are going to be fun to study. Say, one that ties Rome and London. 

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We have mentioned the work of David T. Gardner a few times: Welsh poems; Research, using the Internet and AI; Sir Christopher Gardner. These are from late 2025. There are earlier posts that will come into play, as well. 

After several false starts related to getting GenAI/LLM to act right, David has been working now bringing out the content of long-lost material that has been digitized. The tools from GenAI/LLM can be remarkable, from a distance. I say that since my computer career dealt with things requiring precision from the data side of things and from algorithms, especially routines supporting the form, fit, function requirements of engineering of critical parts for major systems. 

Then, loosy-goosy GenAI/LLM came along. The head of one prime company shrugged the other day when he was asked about his tool not being able to calculate time functions, not even to the extent of establishing the current time at a locale. That's one small issue; huge ones have been documented. 

On the other hand, David is pulling out materal, using OCR to get it digitized, and various analysis methods to determine the content, significance, and possible ramifications of the data. 

I have been watching loosely as the work progressed. David is keeping the necessary requirements in mind, such as establishing provenance. Anyone who works knows that it takes energy and is tiring. Even brainy work. And, long hours in surgery? (I know, having been introduced by working in the surgical side of an Army hospital in my late teens - in the operating room. But, I can talk about digging ditches and doing concrete - in the old days of manual labor.). 

David has produced a timeline: Guardians of Liberty: Kingslayers of the Counting House. Guardians? With a millenial view? Yes, consider the Latin phrasing and a new view of Gardner comes to fore. One of particular interest ties Rome to London in the early days of legionairre prominence. We will be looking more closely at this. 

Right now, I want to mention a couple of entries in David's timeline that we looked at earlier; when I saw the new material being brought out, it caught my attention. 

• Sir Christopher Gardner -- 1625. 1630 on the timeline. Let's just say that the story from John Winthrop does not match up with some of the newer material. Pending further research on David's material. 
  
• Johnson Gardner -- 1820s, 1830s on the timeline. Naturally, the movie Revenant got our attention. With all events and places in the interior of the U.S. over the 1800s, we look for potential New England or Gardner links. 
• ... 

There are more events from the time of "origins" which are actively under study and from even before. We appreciate the breadth of David's scope in this regard. 

Remarks: Modified: 04/11/2026

04/11/2026 --  

Some notes on AI/ML

TL;DR -- GenAI/LLM has been on the scene for over three years. Lots has happened which we have participated in and watched. Things are getting interesting on all of the sides to the story. This post stops and posts a few links related to using Spinoza's thoughts to ponder this modern puzzle. 

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AI/ML (known too as GenAI/LLM) has been on the scene now for over three years. In terms of the total picture, the history and data are there for us to study. What's happened in 2026 is a type of acceleration. The split of 'yeah' and 'nay' is still there. But, other dynamics came into play that changed the game this year. 

We're still using "AIn't" to depict this wannabe attempt. I quit using any of these systems in early 2025 when the "agentic" came prominent. Why? We prototyped lots of the ideas of that approach four decades ago (in the "knowledge" era) and did good stuff within the constraints of the time. So, I will get to documenting that from my experience and according to what I observed. What we learned there is apropos. 

For instance, the NNN is known as a general function approximator. And, functions are a focus, say from the work related to the functional software approach (Haskell, et al - but, Lisp early, okay?); functions are mappings as we see with category theory; automated processes (basis for the web and SAAS) are from the knowledg era and encapsulated the behavorial/active aspects of objects/classes within the computational sphere; ...

What follows is a list of links related to technical and philosophical themes. These are not disjoint concepts. For each, there is a little comment. 

• DeepAI -- this is their GitHub site which collects some of the offerings behind some of the work that we will be refrencing. GitHub is an on-line system for managing information that is continually be updated and managed, such as code (but some have used its facilities for a collection of technical, topical essays. 
• What Kant and Spinoza can teach us about AI -- Two of Demis Hassabis’s favourite philosophers, Spinoza and Kant, help illuminate the conundrum: can AI turn chaotic data into intelligible, structured reality? ... I have mentioned these two philosophers quite a lot in posts on Linkedin of late. And, my use of AIn't comes directly from agruments by these guys. And so, there are discussions still pending.  
• One view of many on Spinoza by an artist -- interesting take on things; lifting us out of the technical for its own sake.  
• ..., will be splitting this list --- Spinoza (Wikipedia) ; Spinoza (SEP) ; Gutenberg (text) ; Gutenberg (Ethics) ; 
• Mapping Spinoza's Ethics -- offers mean to visualize the "argumentative structure". 
• DeepAI on Spinoza -- they have several philosophers covered which we will get to. 
  
• Chat Spinoza -- when we first saw this, we thought that it was cute; but, we also like how things are interconnected so as to allow analysis. 
• ... 

Uriel de Costa

This post will be a reference for us, too, as we go forward with the 400th, 250th, and the history of the U.S. and technology (say remembering Gibbs, the American, who cntributed to thermodynamics and caught the eye of the illustrious James Clerk Maxwell of Scotland. But, taking things into the 20th Century, we will have to bring up Planck. Why? His early thermodynamics work that quoted Gibbs and also explained the basics from a chemical sense.  

Remarks: Modified: 04/11/2026

04/10/2026 -- Added words and links. 

April Awareness Day - English

TL;DR -- Awareness is a good thing. Days abound with respect to official recognition. Women's History month just completed. Black History month was before that. Besides looking at history and current affairs over the years, we can be aware of the reads that are taking place daily. 

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We have been paying attention to awareness months for a few years. For each month of the year, the focus can be on many themes. For instance, one theme in March was Women's History (06 Mar 2026 post). We have a post that we will be updating each year: Awareness months. 

So, April has Mathematics/Statistics. But, it also includes the English Language Day on the 23rd which is related to the birth and death days of William Shakespeare. Another day is Easter Sunday was this past weekend but can occur as early as March 24th. In April, it can be as late as the 25th. 

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Now, we would like to switch to another type of awareness which relates to readership counts with respect to our blog and other publications. The image comes from a snap of three views that are always updated with presentation of the information (position in image and title): Left - All time, popular; Middle - Recently popular; Right - Last week. 

Post read count
by period

In order to support our Portal to Truth (to be defined and described), we have been adding an image to each post. This helped us determine an icon for the post to use in lists. The order relates to the number of reads. Starting from the left, "All time, popular" goes back to the start of the blog. For a long time, the post "Posts of interest - 2011" was the most read. It summarizes the status of the blog at the end of the 2nd year or the 2st full year. But, in 2014, after the discovery of the marriage record for Thomas Gardner and Margaret Fryer, that post slowly crept up and has been most read for quite a while. 

In the middle column, "Recently popular" looks at the same collection of posts but only counts reads within the past month. It is a different list. Early on, there was an overlap between all time and recent. But, of late, things have changed so much, and we have new readership due to Linkedin posts, the lists are different. We are happy to show that "Women's History Month, 2026" is on this list. 

On the right are the posts most read in the past week. So, these are mostly topical. One that we want to call attention to is "Truth, what is it?" which is also on the "Recently popular" list and deals with technology's (TGS focus) recent influence that mostly caught everyone by surprise. Even the vendors had no clue. But, from our view, we immediately saw the potential unwanted side-effects. That is a long story which will be even more of interest as the hype gets tamed down a little. "knowledge" systems have been really effective from day one. That is AI with an emphasis on expert humans as opposed to a general search for machine intelligence that might compare with what humans do. 

There is a lot of work to be done in this regard. Our basis goes back to a project that accomplished the first digital design of a major airplane (this was in the '80/'90s - the Boeing 777). We will only touch upon a few details as our focus is not the plane; it's on the process that got the work done which resulted in a plane that astonished those who saw it up close (this we'll briefly touch upon, too). 

Jumping ahead, though this has already been expressed, the run after AGI and its issues would not have been troublesome at all had the "knowledge" proceeded a few decades ago. We will tell the tales in that regard about decisions and their ramifications. This will be from a general viewpoint mostly presented in terms of a "dialog" covering the whats and what ifs. 

In the "Last week" list as well are two older posts: Descendants of Sarah; Old Planters, Beverly. These relate to the Salem 400+ theme for 2026. Sarah married Balch who was an Old Planter. Some of Thomas' children and grandchildren married Conant. There were other families who intermarried, as well, at that time. 

There is a theme to readdress. Thomas was not on the "old planters" list. One family suggested that he had returned as some moved from Cape Ann to Namkeag. Other tales need some attention. Our recent work involves the timeframe for the family that will show that Thomas and Margaret had the time to come over here for the year plus. What are those specifiics? Well, finally, we have a starting point and will use that to begin again in looking at Origins.  

In terms of topic and focus, we will do a more regular periodic look at these lists this year. 

Remarks: Modified: 04/06/2026

04/06/2026 --

Salem 400+

TL;DR -- During the time that we look back at the years from 1626 to 1629, the Thomas Gardner Society, Inc. will focus on the story of Cape Ann as well as that of Salem. 

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It's here. Another 400th in the timeline of Massachusetts. This time? The movement from Cape Ann to Naumkeag which was renamed to Salem in 1629. 

Salem 400+ on Facebook

We have a lot of reseach to do that is related to this theme in terms of the stories accumulated over the years. In 2023, a thorough study of digitized records from Dorset, UK showed that Margaret and Thomas had all of their children in the UK, except for the last child, Seeth, who was born in Salem. 

The WikiTree page has a record of the research and discussion. The Thomas Gardner profile was split into two: the Thomas married to Margaret is one: the other refers to an unknown person. We have made many comments about what supports the notion that there was one person involved as Thomas Gardner.  

So questions abound: how long were he (or they) here?; if they, what conditions did they face?; .... 

An example is the gap between the births of John and Samuel which was sufficient to allow Thomas (with or without Margaret) to be here. Notice for John, there is a "minor" extra marking which may have indicated a later than normal report. As in, John was born here and was introduced into Dorset records when the family returned. 

John and Samuel Gardner

In any case, the Thomas Gardner (and Margaret) of Salem was here in 1636 and documented by many over the years, including Dr. Frank. Their children are in the records. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/22/2026

03/22/2026 -- Clarified the TL;DR section. 

Salem, 1626

TL;DR -- The 250th is well-known by now. So, it's time to get back to the 400th. 

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The 250th is everywhere now getting attention which is great. We are not yet to the Day of the Declaration of Independence so ought to be paying attention to the events that came before July 4 of 1776. Our last post on "Knox Sunday" is an example. We will have more posts with the team but have been covering the 250th for over a decade. 

May we step back to the 400th? With regard to Essex County of Massachusetts, the initial settlement attempt was in the 1623/24 timeframe. Gloucester celebrated their 400th in 2023. 

As the story goes (told by many), the crew that came over with attempt of Thomas Gardner, for a couple of years, made a go of it without much success. For one thing, the land was not suitable for farming. Evidently the fishing and some planting/forging went well for subsistence. But being a commercial enterprise, the "money" behind the effort expected early returns. 

Roger Conant came to town to get things right but could not overcome the obstacles; he got permission to move to what became Salem. 

Roger and some of his crew did that move in 1626. So, we have been waiting for this year. We wrote of the transition earlier in a post about Massey's Cove in 2019. We included this painting which was done in the 20th century to accompany an article on the perils of this attempt. 

Of course, later there were various criticisms of the painting. For one, the houses were better configured than we know from reality. We wrote of that recently quoting the reaction of Anne Bradstreet as she got off the ship that was with the Winthrop Fleet. This was her introduction to Salem.  

Anne noted that some in London had mislead them: Hype, 1600s. What we got out of the stories was that Winthrop was feated in the "Governor's" great house. Anne and others went to Cape Ann to pick wild strawberries. The Governor would have been John Endicott who came in to replace Roger Conant. 

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Where was Thomas? Evidently, he had returned after his intitial effort to London. He and his family returned sometime before 1635 as his last child was born here. At the time of Cape Ann, it would have been Margaret and the older boys. See "Themes that persist" to watch for particulars as we go along. 

We have mentioned Roger Conant several times and will relook at the start of Massachusetts this year as we continue with the 250. As the commemoration of the Revolution continues through 2033, we will step through the early years of Naumkeag which became Salem in 1629. The next year, Winthrop came through and did not like the area. So, he went further down the coast to Boston. 

So, for the next few years, we will focus on the origins of the crew at Cape Ann plus resolve the issue of the unkown Thomas Gardner who was a Cape Ann in light of the Thomas Gardner who came over in the mid-1630. Ann is a descendant of Roger both Conant and Thomas Gardner. Those relationships will be looked at as well, as we go forward. 

With technology as a major focus, we will use some of the modern stuff. Mainly, it would be to discuss the issues related to use and misuse which is a common characteristic of people and their involvement with all matters of life, it seems. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/21/2026

03/08/2026 --  Some correction of typos and phrasing mishaps (as in, touch typist - fingers walking the keys following ruminations in the mind - one reason that publishing processes have proofreading - rather than the know-it-all-ish nature ot the buckets'o'bits). 

03/21/2026 -- Made link with Salem 400+. 

Women's History Month, 2026

TL;DR -- We provide information about Women's History Month for this year as well as a link to an article on women of the Manhattan Project. 

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March 8th is International Women's Day every year. We have had a post related to the theme of this day since 2022. The theme in 2022 was motivated by the Gairdner Foundation awards that year as well as their reminder of the day's focus. We also mentioned Drew Gilpin Faust and Prof. Emmy Noetther plus provided a link to the StreetsofSalem (blog) which listed "Books for Women's History".   A listing of our posts can be found later in this post.

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This year we are pointing to the website for the primary organizing group. Plus we link to an article on the women scientist who supported a major project during WWII. 

• Theme -- with a theme of 'Give to Gain' the focus is on the "power of reciprocity and support". 
• Events -- a website allows search for events or for the registering of events. To quote the site, their intent is to "Support the Supporters" for "forging women's advancement worldwide". 
• Manhattan Project -- written by a retired physicist, the work of many women is noted including that of Leona Harriet Woods (pictured second from right in the middle row). 

March is Women's History month in the U.S. and many other parts of the worlds. The following are our posts since 2022. 

• Women's History Month, 2025 
• Women's History Month, 2024
• Women's History Month, 2023 
• Women's History Month, 2022

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Since the TGS, Inc. has a technology focus, coverage of work by women will be technical for the most part. 

Remarks: Modified: 03/06/2026

03/06/2026 --    

Knox Sunday

TL;DR -- Coming up is Evacuation Day which closed out the Siege of Boston that had started in the Spring of 1775 and continued until March of 1776. A blogger in Salem, MA attended a relook at the role of Knox in bringing success to the event by obtaining and transporting cannons from upper New York. 

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We have enjoyed the StreetsofSalem blog since our research brought it to our attention. It is time to add to review the blog again (our earlier posts) as there are many overlaps of our points of interests. 

Today we looked at their posts from the past few months and found one on Gen. Knox and his cannons (our posts on the subject - latest - Nearing the day of the Evacuation). Washington suggested to Knox in late 1775 that the troops needed armament and powder. Fort Ticonderoga had been captured earlier in the year and had military pieces available, if they could be moved. Knox volunteered. After going to upper New York, he made preparations. There were tons and tons to move through western Massachusetts late fall.As we mentioned, the feat requires regular attention which we will provide through the next few years. We have a few, as peace with England was not obtained until 1783. The map was drawn 150 years later and shows the distance traveled while pulling tons of metal. 

The Knox Trail as laid out
in 1926/27 by the 
States of New York and
Massachusetts

The blogger had gone to relook in early February. Below, we provide a link to her post from which we obtained links to the images of this blog. 

"Knox Sunday" - "... I’ve been watching online as commemorations of Knox’s Noble Train of Artillery moved across large swaths of New York and Massachusetts on its way to relieve the besieged citizens of Boston but had not made it to one live event—and Evacuation Day (better known as St. Patrick’s Day to those of you not in Massachusetts) is only a little over a month away. So I decided to drive out to Framingham to see some cannons and Patriots before the other Patriots took the field. ..."

" ... Knox Trail 250 is an initiative of Revolution 250, which bears the motto: Your Town, Your History, Our Nation so the commemorative events of the past few years have always been community-based in terms of organization and participation. This particular event was a Middlesex County affair, with representatives from all the towns surrounding Framingham (Marlborough, Southborough, Wayland ) present. ..."   

Remarks: Modified: 03/04/2026

03/04/2026 --