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knoxcotn-digest Wednesday, February 21 2001 Volume 01 : Number 177
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 10:34:02 -0500 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: Re: [KnoxCoTN] why we do what we do... Thanks for sharing that essay! I've always felt it an honor to have been chosen by my ancestors (my belief) to remember them and share them with others.
At 09:25 PM 2/15/01 -0500, AhhaTex@aol.com wrote: >I enjoy 'Sunday Afternoon Rocking' so much. I thought this might touch each >of you as if touched me. <snipped> ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Feb 2001 19:56:48 -0500 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] New e-mail address for me... I've decided to bail out on USIT after all these years. They used to be wonderful, but now they're horrible. Please update your address book to my new e-mail address: knox@tngenweb.org If there's something critical that you need me to receive, but you don't think the address above is working right, you can try the USIT address for a while. It will probably still be working for 90 days or so. After this many years wiht one address and being so active on-line, it will take a lot of effort to change things over. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Feb 2001 15:40:46 -0500 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Knoxville's Sesquicentennial Program I've scanned the 50-page program booklet from Knoxville's Sesquicentennial (150 years) celebration in 1941 and produced it in Acrobat (PDF) format. It's loaded with history, names of participants (even school children), photos, and local business advertisements. My goal is to put the material on the Knox County TNGenWeb site eventually. But, if anyone would like a copy of the booklet on CD-ROM, I'll be happy to distribute them. Send $5.00 to cover the cost of the CD and shipping to Billie McNamara, POB 6764, Knoxville, TN 37914-0764. I can turn PC-format CD-ROM's out pretty quickly, but I have to get a friend to make Macintosh CD's for me. So, those will be a little slower. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 15:06:35 -0500 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Outlook 2000 SR-1 E-mail Security Update If you are using Microsoft Outlook, and you haven't yet done something about the security holes that let viruses get through, there's something you need to read: http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/2000/downloadDetails/Out2ksec.htm Note that this has an effect on attachments that you may want to receive...so be forewarned. The best protection is probably still to install and regularly update a virus-scanner that reads incoming mail and attachments. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 17:36:59 EST From: KSSOONERS@aol.com Subject: Re: [KnoxCoTN] Outlook 2000 SR-1 E-mail Security Update In a message dated 2/19/01 4:35:28 PM, KS SOONERS writes: << In a message dated 2/19/01 2:18:03 PM, knox@tngenweb.org writes: << If you are using Microsoft Outlook, and you haven't yet done something about the security holes that let viruses get through, there's something you need to read: >> AOL users need to know that AOL does not use Outlook, therefore they can ignore this message. sbd ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 09:27:45 -0500 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Fwd: WEAVER Please write to Helen if you can help her.
>Delivered-To: knox@tngenweb.org >From: "Helen" <waldo@coastalnet.com> >To: <knox@tngenweb.org> >Subject: WEAVER >Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 22:13:42 -0500 >X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 > >I am searching for information on the family of Will Weaver m Callie >Brookshire who were living in the Knoxville area in 1940 until..... >Would appreciate any information! >Thank you, Helen ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Feb 2001 10:29:49 EST From: KSSOONERS@aol.com Subject: [KnoxCoTN] Outlook In a message dated 2/20/01 7:56:58 AM, knox@tngenweb.org writes: << Good point -- hopefully they realize that...but AOL users are particularly susceptible to viruses because many don't realize they need to have a virus scanner installed -- they think AOL takes care of it! >> I don't know that that is necessarily true. I have a virus scanner installed, and I know other AOL users who do. I just thought it should be pointed out that AOL users didn't need to install this patch. sbd ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 14:21:02 -0500 From: "Billie R. McNamara" <knox@tngenweb.org> Subject: [KnoxCoTN] 16 Feb 2001 Sunday Afternoon Rocking Sorry for the delay in getting this forwarded...Billie =============================================
And all for the Thread… (from the "Sunday Afternoon Rocking" series) Whether he had it in mind all along, or happened upon an impulse, I am not sure anyone ever knew. The day began innocently enough. My great grandmother, not much more than a child herself, had taken on the responsibility of raising the younger siblings of her young husband. In the course of a morning of mending, she found herself in need of a spool of thread. It was young Mack, eleven years old at the time, that she sent to the store to obtain it. A few hours later a freight train roared by on the tracks near the house…and a spool of thread was tossed from the open door of one boxcar, and straight into the open hands of my great grandmother. I can imagine her open-mouthed astonishment as she watched the train thunder on down the tracks, Mack holding on with one hand and waving good-bye with the other. It was fifty more years before the family knew what had become of Mack. He turned up, older, wiser, and ready to return to the family that had never forgotten him. The boy had "hobo-ed" his way to California, finished raising himself, and then a family of his own. He had done well…and one day his roots called him home. His family was waiting. I have often imagined my great grandmother through the years, worrying over what might have befallen the young boy, and asking herself, "What if I had not sent him to the store that day for a spool of thread?" And I have just as often imagined the dapper distinguished gentleman of the photographs beginning more and more often to find that the rolling hills of Tennessee were on his mind, the faces of loved ones frozen in time and engraved upon his memory. I have imagined how it finally was that some "homing instinct" led him at last to be able to do nothing but return…and what mixed emotions must have been his when he gazed upon faces he remembered as youthful now aged and lined with the cares of time. How bittersweet to clasp hands and receive hugs from those whose joy told him they had never forgotten, and how painful to realize how many he remembered were now gone. How infinitely precious what years there were left would seem to be now, and what a strange realization would descend as he realized that nothing "had stayed frozen in time" except for his own memory! I do not profess to know what kept Mack from home so long. Perhaps he was having so many youthful adventures that home was the furthest thing from his boyish mind. In fact, I suspect he did have a good many adventures! Perhaps he had not the means for a very long time to return home, and perhaps he worried for a time what his reception would be if he did. Perhaps he had too much pride to return until he could do so armed with success. Perhaps he felt guilty. And perhaps, after a while, it simply seemed preferable to always think of the place and the family "as it was", forever "frozen" as he had last known it all, no tearful good-byes, no pleading…simply a clean break with one world, a step into another, and memories held like photographs in a scrapbook to be looked at now and again, then shelved. That part of the story never came to me, and I know only its beginning and its ending. The beginning is one that can be guessed at and partially understood, for many young ones it was of that time that took up the life of a "hobo". Well it would have appealed to an adventurous young boy who had not a parent. I do not fully know the reasons for the beginning, but the ending is one I understand very well. I find meaning in, and identify strongly with those feelings Mack had late in life…and I suspect, so do many of you. There is a time in our life when nothing is more fascinating than the adventures of the present, and the possibilities of tomorrow. The past, we believe, is far away and nothing to waste energy upon when there is so much before our eyes in the today. Then comes a time in our life, when we may still enjoy our adventures and our possibilities, but somehow we have also come to terms with a good many of them…and our roots begin to call us home. More and more, in skimming the chapters of our lives, we find comfort in its beginnings, and we begin to look for a thread that led us to our present. In the desire to truly understand a life's theme, we begin to wish to bring it all to a satisfying resolution. More and more we find ourselves taking out that "scrapbook" of memories, bits and pieces, gazing at them and thinking of them, sometimes with tears, sometimes with laughter…and always with longing to remember more than we possibly can. The day Mack left home, he tossed the thread of his life into the open hands of my astonished great-grandmother. He waved good-bye, but fifty years later came back to pick up the thread of his life. That, I believe, is what most of us are doing. Perhaps we are doing it in less dramatic terms, but picking up the thread of our lives is indeed what we are doing every day that we pour over old records, search lists for cousins, write down our findings and our memories. When it comes down to it, it is all for the thread… Just a thought, jan Copyright ©2001JanPhilpot ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (Note: Afternoon Rocking messages are meant to be passed on, meant to be shared...simply share though e-mail as written without alterations...and in entirety. If planned for a publication, permission must be granted by the author. Please forward sufficient information concerning the nature and intent of the publication. Thanks, jan) Sunday Afternoon Rocking columns are distributed weekly on the list Sunday Rocking. This is not a "reply to" list, and normally only one message per week will come across it, that being the column. To subscribe send email to Sundayrocking-subscribe@topica.com Comments about the content of these messages can be sent to unicorn@sun-spot.com ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ------------------------------ End of knoxcotn-digest V1 #177 ******************************
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