I am on my way out the door to care for family in Tennessee, but Tim asked me to post to these lists each Sunday our Sunday Afternoon Rocking column that began on Stewart and Dickson County lists and has since moved to a number of other lists as well. All of you have permission to pass on any of these you find meaningful, along with proper crediting. Our goal in writing them is not monetary, but in touching hearts. Cher and I hope you enjoy them. -jan Afternoon all, Well, I hesitate to embark on the subject all media seems already to have disected and scrutinized in every way possible, but then just maybe no one has exactly talked about the new millenium and the turn of a century in quite the same way most of us would be considering it...maybe no one has rocked about it on the front porch...you think?? One hundred years...sounds like such a very long time, and yet a very short time too. Now that I am fast approaching half that, does not seem that it can be so long at all. Doesn't really seem so long ago I ran up and down the dusty roads of Tip Top, pigtails flying, Old Ring at my heels...not really. And so twice that period of time cannot be so long...can it? A hundred years such as the hundred which have been, in actuality is more than a thousand of previous years...in terms of changes it is. Some things would be true with every century that has ever passed for our people. Within a hundred years we have lost a lot of folks in our families, many we never knew...yet a hundred years is not so long that we do not know who they are, and have heard stories of them. Within a hundred years we have welcomed a lot of folks in our families, some we are responsible for bringing into the world. Within a hundred years a lot of tears have been shed, a lot of hours have been spent on knees, a lot of laughter has warmed a family's rooms, and a lot of changes have taken place. But a hundred years such as this hundred...is something entirely different. The world we know is far more different than another country would have been to our folks of one hundred years ago. Yes, in a manner of speaking, a hundred years is a very long time. A hundred years ago my grandmother wore dresses to her feet and shirtwaists that buttoned firmly at her throat and her wrists...she would do so for another twenty years. A hundred years ago my grandfather had a buggy and a wagon, and this is what he traveled in... he would do so for another forty years...and never own an automobile. A hundred years ago my family had never seen light other than that produced by kerosene or a fire, had never known heat other than that from a fireplace or a wood stove, had never known what running water was other than that they pulled from a well. A hundred years ago my family was nursed on the herbs and woodland plants my grandmother and great grandmother knew how to make into medicines. A hundred years ago my family knew death as a regular visitor when those medicines failed, as did yours. A hundred years ago my family depended on barter for the goods they could not produce themselves, as did most of yours. A hundred years ago my folks still knew living folks who could speak of the Battle of Fort Donelson and even of the natives that had lived on the land before them, and so did yours. A hundred years ago none of my family had traveled more than fifty miles from home since the first pioneers of the family settled the area...and that is true of many of your folks as well. Within a hundred years we have lost folks in two World Wars, and several others besides...some never to return. Within a hundred years those same wars took boys from this tiny pocket of "safe" civilization and opened their eyes for the first time to just how tiny was the corner of the world in Stewart Co. Within a hundred years our folks have known migrations that flung the family to the farthest portions of the United States and even the world. In this century our people saw an automobile for the first time, marveled over a telephone, gazed unbelievingly at an airplane, realized for the first time how small the world was when they saw it literally step right out of a tiny box and into their living rooms. Within a hundred years we have moved from an agrarian society of folks who made their living from the land and depended upon their own self-sufficiency and the caring of their neighbors to survive...into an industrial age in which people moved around a bit and learned in factory cities a different culture from that they had always known before...and then into a technological world... where you and I converse around the world on a daily basis at the speed of light, where you and I, many of us cousins learning we come from the same cabin household of over a hundred years ago, have finally been able to make that connection lost generations before...and be family again. A hundred years ago, all of my people, maternally and paternally with the exception of only a very few families, lived in Stewart County...it was bursting at the seams with folks who were my ancestors or closely connected...and today I can count on four fingers my closest blood kin that yet lives, and lives there. More populate the cemeteries than live. Within a decade I will more than likely have only one first cousin once removed still where my people settled in the late 1700's and early 1800's....and very few that close or closer blood-kin anywhere at all, other than those I brought into the world myself. But something has taken the place of that...and my family is now larger than ever before. I have often wondered what the mutual ggg grandfather of many of you, and of myself, would think and say, if he could know that the descendents of the children he nursed under one cabin roof had somehow rediscovered one another, thousands of miles apart, and over one hundred years later, and yet....family again...conversing on a regular basis, caring for one another again, knowing the lives of one another as surely as he conversed with the neighbor down the road or the cousin next door... I have often wondered if the gg grandmother that was my own and the gg grandmother that was yours, and whom the census records tell us were neighbors...could know that today we too are neighbors. We are a thousand miles apart perhaps, and we don't gather talk quietly together over a quilt in progress, we don't slip in one another's back door to help nurse the sick, we don't climb a hill together to bury the dead in a grave we dug together...but we are neighborly and caring of one another on a daily basis just the same. What would they think? Would they not sit in wonder at it? At the sheer wonder of KNOWING that somehow their roots had lived on, and not just survived, but found each other once again? Would they not wonder at the continuation of something they themselves, a hundred years in a grave, had begun? These people, these people we search out so desperately are the VERY the bonding between people generations later who descend from mutual ancestors and neighbors...and we know each others dreams and heartbreaks as surely as my gg grandmother knew those of yours. A hundred years... a long time...and yet not so long...the changes in this century make it a tremendously long time in terms of what timelines of history tell us have occurred in each...and we can see that this century has obviously been equal to many previous ones in terms of changes. A hundred years...and yet the VERY changes that make it such a tremendously long time...also have ironically made it a SHORTER time. We have somehow stepped into a gap in time and stitched it together... When else in history has the information and communication ever been available that the descendents of roots planted one hundred years before, two hundred years before...can find each other again? Can care for one another again? Can BE family and neighbors again?? Much as we long for the times that have past, much as we rue the changes...WE WE have been blessed, have been given a gift that no other generation before us in the history of the world has had the opportunity of, that no other generation before us could dream of. WE WE alone can find the family that has been through the eons of time lost to one another after a hundred years or so... Why? And does not this put upon us an element of responsibility? Does this not bring forth the startling realization that we TRULY are family, that it is entirely credible that we can be family to anyone on earth? Yes, we knew that...but now we KNOW that. If the last hundred years forced the realization that the grandparents who lived long ago are the very bond for the relationships we are discovering now....may another hundred years force the realization that WE were the bond and the beginning of the realization that the world is a family, in entirety, and there is no room left for anything but peace among us. Let us be the beginning of a new bond... and a hundred years from now let it be known where it began. But let us also remember that we are the first generation of our knowledgeable past ones to know a new millenium...and it will be yet another 1000 years before yet another of our own know a millenium...pray there will be one, what we do with the next hundred years may well be the foundation for whether that ever happens. just a thought, jan John 3:16 Listowner: [email protected] [email protected] A 1999 Stewart Co Santa (HO, HO, HO!!! and thanks!) Listowner: [email protected] John 3:16 Listowner: [email protected] [email protected] A 1999 Stewart Co Santa (HO, HO, HO!!! and thanks!) Listowner: [email protected]