Well, Gladys Ward, my grandma died two weeks ago and rather than the death being on, of, a personal greiving and greif over the statistic that NY is one of the worst states for rescuing life from emergency procedures (she promximately died due to simple faliure of the doctors in Eire PA and Dunkirk/Fredonia NY to carry through her bowl softener meds, which I watched her take for years but was not even inquried about, but as she was probably going to die sometime later (anytime within a few years at max, she was 96) as a synthetic artery did not work and gangrine was grinning) it became the conflict once again that lead my grandfather (he passed a decade ago) to adapt to agnosticism and marry the unbeliever Gladys (with a baby from a first marriage)teaching normal school evolutionary theory to her and others rather than find any comfort in his 7th Day Adventist parents.
My grandmother had long roots, reaching back to the brother of the Ward who competed with George Washington for charge of the revolutionary force, and grew up moving from Batavia to Buffalo and then to Fredonia for a "finishing" of a music degree at a school(with orginal Masonic influence) started about the same time Cornell was begun.
But rather than being about all this interesting stuff my Mother (who moved into Christianty in part to rebel from her mother) made a "deal" with her unbeliever brother (my uncle Roger) to retain this picture, I think, only to scare us kids (my two brothers and sister are all afraid of the thing) and our own kids. Well, I think she has a more removed reason for keeping the thing around but I would rather it suffer the fate the old mosquito repellant&ball jars.
This message has been edited by Brad McFall, 04-06-2006 06:52 PM