L and M came home from Brownies yesterday (M is a Brownie, L is the troop leader) with a car trunk full of Girl Scout cookies. Yes, they’re in business for the season. They got PB Patties, Thin Mints, Thanks-a-Lots, and Lemonades, right now. L says they can get other kinds too if wanted. Yes, I’ll take orders for them if you like (Austin area only, please).
A scanned scissors makes the taped Elmer mortified. Fnord.
and now it appears I got it. I haven’t been paying any attention to what I eat and I haven’t been exercising, so now my blood glucose numbers are way off. This morning’s wake-up stick was 186.
L’s mother called us this morning with a dual purpose—to wish us a happy new year, and to let us know that L’s grandmother died early this morning. It was certainly no surprise; Tink turned 96 two weeks ago, and she’s been in a slow decline for several years. I can’t help but feel that death was a blessing and a release; she was very feeble, deaf as a post, and generally lacking anything that could have been called quality of life.
There’ll be no immediate funeral; Tink willed her body to the medical school, and whatever’s left will be cremated, then taken down to Reedville (at the end of the Northern Neck of Virginia, where her family came from) this summer for a memorial service and burial. L and M will go up; T, we’re sure, won’t be able to take time away from managing the store; and I haven’t any idea what I’ll be doing.
Mary Biddlecomb Harry
17 December 1911 – 1 January 2008
Last night L and I were woken at WTF-thirty by the noise of a car being driven down the Avenue in front of our house, at a dangerously high speed. The Avenue is a typical older-neighborhood residential street, with cars parked on both sides and about a lane-and-a-quarter’s worth of space in the middle; “unsafe speed” begins somewhere around thirty. I don’t know how fast this guy was going, but it sounded like speeds in excess of R17*. Right after him came either five or six police interceptors running Code 3, which is an epochal event; even one unit at Code 3 in the neighborhood is unusual, much less six.
This morning I learned from Blissfish that the commotion was caused by a late-night carjacking at Epoch. Now the only remaining question is where the chase ended, and exactly how. Maybe I’ll find out on the neighborhood listserv in a day or so.
Mail the labeled scorpion to the computer tape. Fnord.
*“R is a velocity measure, defined as a reasonable speed of travel that is consistent with health, mental well-being and not being more than, say, five minutes late. It is therefore clearly an almost infinitely variable figure according to circumstances, since the first two factors vary not only with speed taken as an absolute, but also with awareness of the third factor. Unless handled with tranquillity this equation can result in considerable stress, ulcers and even death.
“R17 is not a fixed velocity, but it is clearly far too fast.”
– The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Last night I finally admitted to myself that I’m in a depressive episode, probably have been for a month, don’t quite know when I’ll climb back out or what that will entail. It isn’t a BAD one: no suicidal ideation (no matter how bad I’ve been, I’ve NEVER had that), but no energy, frequent attacks of sleepiness, “don’t-care” about doing much of anything, and so on. That’s certainly enough to qualify me, I think, for Major Depressive episode diagnosis.
My next psychiatrist appointment isn’t until February 20th, but I intend to call him once Christmas is over and discuss what medication options there are, besides not many. The only medication I’ve tried that doesn’t utterly kill my libido is Wellbutrin IR, which I’ve been on for years; dammit, my sexuality is important to me! However, I’m at maximum therapeutic dose. Any more, and my risk of seizure rises dangerously. There is no other anti-depressant NDRI (the class Wellbutrin’s in), the only SDRI there is (Effexor) has high sexual-dysfunction side effects for me, as does every SSRI I’ve tried (and I’ve tried a LOT).
I’ll try to make more sense about this later.
A couple of months ago I ran across a LibraryThing-like site called Rate Your Music, a cataloging/rating site for recordings of all kinds that you own, used to own, wish you had, u.s.w. (Incidentally, a tip of the glengarry to Celine for pointing me to LibraryThing; that’s next on the list of Things to Explore, ’cos L has been wanting some way to catalog our home library and that looks like it might be just what we were after.) RYM is a moderated site, with a crew of volunteer site admins and moderators who review and approve submitted material, trying to keep up the information quality rather than letting it degenerate into a Wikipedia-like state, with good information and bad jumbled together and no way to tell them apart.
After a VERY short period of experimenting with it, I started serious work toward entering the music we have, and it’s turning out to be more than I realized. At this point, I’ve cataloged 598 vinyl LPs*, 115 CDs, and 24 cassettes, and I’m now working my way through the 45s and 78s. The 78s are really challenging, because many of them are orphans and singletons out of albums, and those that aren’t are indifferently documented online. Release dates are a particular bugbear, because many of the listings are for-sales at commercial sites, and a link that was valid in Google last year may be long gone by now, along with the information I was hoping to capture.
But even though I’m not done—the 78s will take me another week or so to finish—it’s complete enough to be interesting. G’wan . . . satisfy yer curiosity about what I’ve listened to . (You know you wanna . . .)
* Many of the pre-1972 LPs are from Jaxon’s collection. When we all got gentrified out of our cozy slum-with-a-great-address (Bellevue Avenue, in a little cut-off corner of the Rosedale neighborhood) back in 1996, he and Tina didn’t want to haul Jack’s several hundred LPs, to which they mostly hadn’t listened in years, to their new house, and were ready to throw them in the trash. I almost had a coronary at that idea, so Tina said “If you want them, take them,” and I did, hauling them across the street in a wheelbarrow to our place.
A candled rose melts on a silicon cyan checkerboard. Fnord.
The next biography is my father’s father’s father. (Sounds like the Moody Blues, doesn’t it?)
John D. Waring, Sr. was born in Summerville, South Carolina 7th August 1872, the descendant of an early Colonial family; his ancestor Benjamin arrived in Charles Town, Carolina with his wife, family and servants in 1683. John D. attended school in South Carolina and came to Texas in his early manhood, settling first in the Beaumont area. Later he moved to Cleburne, where he married Flavia, the daughter of Col. Joseph Hall of that city, on 9 February 1898. The young couple moved to Dublin, where John D. worked as a bookkeeper for Utterback & Harris. Their first two children, John D., Jr. (1898–1954, married Frances Carson of Frederick, MD) Marion (1900–1990, married Tom F. Reese), were born during their time in Dublin. Later the family moved to Hico for a short time, where another daughter, Laura Lu (1903–1993, married David Bruton), was born. The family finally settled in Comanche around 1904. A year later their fourth and last child, William Hayne (1905–1996, married Helen Barritt) arrived.
In Comanche John D. first worked for Neely-Harris-Cunningham as a bookkeeper, and in 1906 became partners with Thomas Dunlap to open Waring & Dunlap, an insurance firm. Several years later he joined with J. R. Eanes & Co., a real estate, abstract, title, and insurance firm, and became a director and officer of the Comanche National Bank in the early 1920s. After Mr. Eanes’s retirement, John D. remained an active participant in the insurance business until his own retirement in 1944.
Flavia was one of the organizers of the Comanche Study Club and was also active in church, social, and civic affairs. Her later years were marred by an extended period of illness, and she died 12 April 1936 in Fort Worth.
John D. was a leader in both civic and church affairs, serving as mayor of Comanche as well as on the vestry of Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church and participating actively in the affairs of the Diocese of Dallas. He was a member of Masonic Hope Lodge #437, Chapter, and Council.
After his retirement, John D. lived with his daughter Laura Lu in California, where she worked in the scripts division of MGM. In his last years he lived in Houston with his son Hayne, where he died 8 November 1952 following a long illness.
This is something that’s bloody difficult to admit to, and I’ve bloody well never done so before. There are various reasons I can’t deal with the stuff listed here; some physical, some financial, some emotional. Some of it I could perhaps do if I didn’t have to do it by myself. The sheer size of the projects daunt me.
Eventual, long-term stuff that I can’t deal with (’cos of money or manpower shortages):
There. I said it.
Recently I had to write several biographical sketches of family members, to be included in a county-genealogy mugbook that’s to come out next year. No one but Mother is still living in Comanche County, but for more than a hundred years both my parents’ families were significant in the county’s history, and I thought someone ought to acknowledge and recognize that. Mother didn’t have the time to write anything and my brother had neither the patience nor the skill to do it, so the job fell to me. And now I think someone besides county families and their descendants ought to get to read about it, so I’m going to post them here. The first one is my mother’s paternal grandfather.
John Franklin Tate was born 21 September 1865, near Fort Payne, Alabama, and came to Comanche County in 1871, along with his parents and ten brothers and sisters still living at home. After a short residence in the Newburg community, near his aunt and uncle Susie and James Cunningham, the Tates settled in the Board Church community, farming a quarter-section of land which they claimed under the Homestead Act of 1873. John married Martha (Mattie) Wetzel 16 January 1890 at Board Church.
John and Mattie first owned and lived in one room of a cotton gin in the Dingler community, but after the gin burned in 1895 along with all their belongings, they moved to Comanche and John opened a general mercantile store on the East side of the square in 1896. Long-time Tate Brothers employee C. E. Straley said that John started out in a wooden stand on the square, and during his first months in business Mattie often threatened to come down, clear the stand out and carry off the stock in her apron—and that she could have done it!
John and Mattie first lived on East Central Street, where their two sons, Karl Franklin (1897–1989, married Angeline (Angie) Slack), George Preston (1900–1979, married Nima McArthur) were born. In 1903 they built a large new house at 705 N. Lane, where Flossie Minerva (1907–1974, married J. V. Carter) was born.
After a fire in 1902 that claimed much of the east side of the square, John and his brother George bought the vacant corner at the south end and expanded Tate Brothers. They divided the stock in 1918; George took the dry goods and moved to a new location, while John kept the grocery and hardware part of the business and remained at the southeast corner. John took his son Preston into the business about 1920, renaming it J. F. Tate & Son. In the early 1930s Tate & Son became a tobacco wholesale business, and in 1937 John sold the corner location to C. B. Baxter, moving into a space at the rear of the building. Several businesses operated from that small storefront: J. V. and Flossie (Tate) Carter, who owned several movie theaters including both the Old and New Majestic Theaters in Comanche, and Preston’s long-time friend and associate J. Vasco Lee, who ran a tobacco and vending machine business.
John continued to “mind the store” while Preston traveled several routes, serving customers throughout North Central Texas. He died at home 25 January 1949, after putting in a full day’s work.
Don’t let me be fnord tonight.
Gráinne’s back on line, after five hours’ worth of arguing and fighting with stupid, stubborn, un-cooperative hardware.
Get your Badge!