The Third Niece or Nephew’s Mom

We’re meeting her on Sunday. I’m really, really nervous, which I know is kind of stupid, but I want her to like us. We’ve been really fortunate so far that, even after my brother’s baby-mammas come to figure out that they don’t like him, they don’t cut us off from them.

I hope that continues to be the case.

In related news, it’s a good thing the house is clean because my parents couldn’t get a hotel room because of CMApocalypse. They need to stay at the house.

So… yeah… no stress or anything this weekend.

The Macons

Oh, an interesting tidbit I learned. Okay, Jack Macon’s similarly aged owner was William Macon, whose dad was John. John seems to have had something of a drinking problem and so, long before he died, he divvied up a lot of his slaves among his children and the slaves were sent out to work and their income funneled back to the children. He even, it seems, set up a kind of conservatorship where his youngest children would have someone–not him–managing their money until they were old enough to make those decisions themselves. And then he threw himself into drinking himself to death. (Which he either didn’t exactly succeed at or it took a long, long time, since he lived in Maury County with the family of an established, adult child.) So, that was kind of heartbreaking–I’m going to ruin myself, but I’m going to take steps to protect my family from the financial costs of it.

But it gives me more evidence that Bobby Lovett is right–Jack probably never was freed. (First bit of evidence was seeing first hand that the second petition at the TSLA was not for Jack to be able to stay in the state after being freed, as some sources report, but for William to not be prosecuted for letting Jack continue to practice medicine.) So, with no evidence of him being freed and a family history of hiring out slaves to work and send money back and a well-documented practice of slaves living in Nashville and working while their owners stayed out in the countryside, I think we have to believe this was probably Jack’s situation.

But the other bit is this: John’s brother was Nathaniel Macon, who you probably don’t remember, but is the Macon of, say, Macon, Georgia and Randolph-Macon College. Which makes the claim that Polk was heavily influenced by Nathaniel Macon all the more interesting, when you consider that the two families certainly had to know each other, what with John sitting right down the street from all of Polk’s aunts and uncles.

Buffy’s Mom

One thing that’s surprised both the Butcher and me is that, upon this viewing of Buffy, we really dislike her mom. We were talking about whether we disliked her when we first watched it and neither of us remember finding her so appalling. But, I’ll be honest, I also don’t remember Buffy being so obviously traumatized and depressed from the start. I wonder if those things are more noticeable when you’re viewing all at once.

But it’s really weird to watch and see that something is obviously going wrong for that girl and how her mother, even after she knows Buffy’s the slayer, seems to actively take steps to avoid helping her daughter cope.

Anyway, last night, we watched the one where Giles and Buffy’s mom eat some candy and start acting like kids again. It was pretty fucking delightful.