Ancestry.com

 This is what Ancestry.com indicates:

 

- Rev Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island (originally Anglican priest, founder of American Baptists)

born in Cowley, Middlesex England, died in Providence, Rhode Island 1603-1683 

- Daniel Williams, 1640 -1712 Rhode Island

- Peleg Williams Sr., 1678-1744 Rhode Island

- Peleg Williams Jr., 1719-1809 Rhode Island

- Peleg Williams, II, 1740-1821 Rhode Island served at Valley Forge

- Providence Williams, 1773-???? married Abigail Hazeltine

- Laura Williams, 1796-1858 daughter of Providence, married John Hunt in 1823

The Hunts:

 - John Providence Hunt, 1825-1910 

-  Anna G Hunt, 1878 -1952, married Charles Burgess, grandfather

- John (Jack) Robert Burgess, 1909-1989

- Robert, 1954-...  

 

 

 

My Opinion Maker Piece for Next Wednesday

Everyone’s favorite time of year has arrived!  No, I am not talking about Valentine’s Day.  Nor am I referring to the solemn religious days of Lent, Passover, or Ramadan.  Nope, I am not talking about folks who live for downhill skiing season.  As far as the latter, the older I get the more I am impatient for the arrival of spring flowers, the return of the robins, and just plain being able to go outside in shirt sleeves without bundling up like Quinn the Eskimo.

No, I am talking about tax season!  Your favorite time of year!  Of course, I am being very sarcastic when I say that tax season is everyone’s favorite time of year.  I suspect that for most people tax season is a stressful time and a pain in the lower extremities.  Some exceptions may apply.  I suppose parents of modest income, who anticipate large refunds because of the earned income tax and child tax credits, may look forward to their IRS refund to help them catch up on bills.  Or maybe their IRS refund will help them come up with a down payment on a more reliable used vehicle.

The IRS just made tax season a little more challenging this year for millions.  How?  Well, last year President Trump signed an Executive Order concerning payments from federal agencies, and particularly the IRS this time of year.  What did the President’s Executive Order 14247 require? 

The President’s order requires the phase out of paper check refunds from the IRS.  Now, the IRS states that 94 percent of taxpayers receive their income tax refunds through direct deposit and they want you to keep doing so.  However, the IRS issues more than 100 million refunds annually.  So, 6 percent or six million or more taxpayers have been receiving paper checks when they get their refunds. 

Taxpayers can still receive paper checks this year, but you will have to jump through hoops to get a refund the old-fashioned way.  According to the IRS, a taxpayer who requests a paper check refund, “…will then receive a CP53E notice in the mail requesting a response within 30 days, either to provide banking information or to explain why such information cannot be provided.”  Trust me, CP53E notices have nothing to do with Star Wars or C3PO.

And don’t we all look forward to receiving notices from the IRS!  I can hear it now: “Oh joy, honey we got a notice from the IRS in the mail today! I was wondering why our refund was taking so long.”   If you were looking for a simple way to provide the IRS with your direct deposit information after you already filed, the Taxpayer Advocate at the IRS states “IRS employees cannot take this information over the phone or in person.”  You will then have to become familiar with a site like ID.me to sign in online with your IRS account.

Unless you love receiving notices from the IRS, you may want to think about what you can do to avoid this stress.  The most obvious is to ensure that when you file your taxes this year you ask for a direct deposit of your IRS federal refund.  (If you just get a paper check refund from Michigan Treasury and nothing from the IRS, as Bobby McFerrin sang: “Don’t worry. Be happy.”)

If you do not have a bank account?  The Taxpayer Advocate suggests you do one of the following:

“Taxpayers without bank accounts can still receive federal payments as the IRS transitions away from paper checks by using prepaid debit cards, mobile apps, or low-cost banking options. The IRS recommends using FDIC-insured accounts found at FDIC: GetBanked or MyCreditUnion.gov, or setting up direct deposit with services like PayPal Debit Mastercard….Prepaid Debit Cards: Many cards, such as the Walmart MoneyCard or PayPal Debit Mastercard, offer routing and account numbers for direct deposit.”

Apparently, the President’s Executive Order was issued because it costs more money for the IRS to issue a paper check than it does to get a taxpayer a direct deposit refund.  There is nothing wrong with saving taxpayer dollars.  Also, I have read that paper checks are more susceptible to theft than direct deposit.  Maybe that is true.

However, I do wonder if there was a better way to go about this way of phasing out paper checks.

Maybe somebody should have asked C3PO?  May the Force be with you this tax season.  And if not, call your congressman and ask, “Where’s my refund?”

Sojourner Truth: Ain't I a Woman

 Probably the most famous of Battle Creek, Michigan resident Sojourner Truth's speeches:

Ain't I a Woman 

Some of her friends:

William Lloyd Garrison, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Susan B Anthony.

Political meetings:

Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S,. Grant 

Battle Creek has a monument dedicated to her:

https://www.battlecreekvisitors.org/listing/sojourner-truth-monument/2454/

At least the National Park Service as yet have not taken it down.  Part of their prologue:

Born into slavery in 1797, Isabella Baumfree, who later changed her name to Sojourner Truth, would become one of the most powerful advocates for human rights in the nineteenth century. Her early childhood was spent on a New York estate owned by a Dutch American named Colonel Johannes Hardenbergh. Like other slaves, she experienced the miseries of being sold and was cruelly beaten and mistreated. Around 1815 she fell in love with a fellow slave named Robert, but they were forced apart by Robert’s master. Isabella was instead forced to marry a slave named Thomas...

1851 Stone Church, Akron, Ohio, Women's Rights Convention:

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? [member of audience whispers, "intellect"] That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say.

https://www.nps.gov/articles/sojourner-truth.htm

Jackson Five

"Even though the pain and heartache

Seem to follow me wherever I go
Though I try and try to hide my feelings
They always seem to show
Then you try to say you're leaving me
And I always have to say no
Tell me why (Tell me why)
Is it so (Is it so)

That I never can say goodbye, no, no, no, no, ooh (never can say goodbye girl)
Never can say goodbye (never can say goodbye girl)..."

https://youtu.be/en34tJYd5A8?si=XLSfVj30pGZXW5iu

Hamnet Twice

Pretty sure Hamnet is the first movie that I have gone twice to the theater since E.T. in early 1980s.

The first time is better to experience the surprise. But the emotion of Jessie Buckley's acting still intense.  

Hope the studios continue to grant her exceptional roles.

Rockin' Robin

 Does not seem like it was almost 50 years ago. At KMTH Armed Forces Radio and TV Midway Atoll, there were three or four Navy Journalists who manned the TV and radio stations. Midway is some 1,200+ miles to Honolulu. I am sure our low power AM station did not reach the Hawaiian Islands.

 

In those days, our only connection to the outside world was spotty short wave radio and the AP or UPI news bulletins. Twice a week a flight from Hickam Air Force base would bring supplies, mail, and our boxes of TV shows (months, some years old from the states: M*A*S*H, All in the Family, etc.)

 

We would get fairly current news and sports programming on the forerunner of VHS tape. Major sporting events like the Super Bowl or Major League Baseball's All Star game we usually broadcast about a week after the actual event.

 

One of our DJs had earned the nickname Gramps. He was a few years older than me, but had one of those faces that made him look much older than we were. Gramps was a wonderful DJ who loved to play country music. I actually learned to appreciate Buck Owens, Conway Twitty, Tammy Wynette and other such country singers because it was fun to listen to Gramps spin the discs. He was good and obviously took great pleasure in his skills and love of music.

 

Before I went on the air the first time on what was then an afternoon DJ on KMTH-AM, Gramps gave me the nickname from this song since he knew I was going to follow his morning or midday show with rock'n'roll. In fact, he introduced me to the islanders with the song:

 

"He rocks in the tree tops all day long

Hopping and a-bopping and singing his song

All the little birdies on Jaybird Street

Love to hear the robin go tweet tweet tweet..."

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6yGhe2gQxw

 

Although, it was likely the Jackson Five version.

Brief Aspects of Michigan History

As we approach Black History month, let me share some of the history of my home state.

I was born in Owosso, Michigan.  From the Autobiography of Malcolm X and the Michigan Advance:

"Racism is historically entrenched in Owosso. Minister and civil rights activist Malcolm X in his autobiography referred to Owosso as “White City,” describing it as a place where Black Americans and marginalized groups were threatened with racist violence if they were there after dark.

And in the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan was heavily active there  — they rented office space in a building in Owosso’s downtown area"

It was not just in the 1920s.  Up until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Owosso had a law on the books that African Americans could not be on the streets after dark.

My best friend my senior year in high school, Juan (John) Hinajosa, had me have my first taste of Mexican food prepared in his uncle's restaurant in Owosso called the Taco House.  Juan (he preferred John) went on to a career as a deputy with the Saginaw County sheriff's department.  Our hometown had been a Native American meeting ground for Ojibway and Ottawa tribes. My hometown's name was based on the Anishinaabemowin and meant "place of the Big Rock".  The glaciers thousands of years earlier had deposited huge house size boulders which became the sacred meeting place of the tribes.

Since before World War II, my rural hometown in Saginaw County just north of Owosso, had an annual festival called Showboat.  There was an actual Showboat which traveled maybe a quarter or half mile down the Shiawassee River before it docked in front of an amphitheater of about 5,000 seats.  Some nationally famous entertainers (comedians, singers, magicians, etc.) would perform there as well as local Michigan professional and amateur talent. 

The Showboat was based on the Mississippi river boat minstrel shows.  So, there was a Showboat captain and endmen.  The endmen performed in the 50s and into the middle 60s in blackface.

In the mid-1960s, the NAACP of Saginaw City objected to the blackface performances and they were ended.  My neighbor, the Showboat captain and a former endman himself, was livid.

After the 1967 riots in Detroit, there was fear among some that the rioters would visit our rural area which is about an hour and a half drive north of Detroit, perhaps 90 miles from the city. 

In 1968, I remember some local folks being almost gleeful when Dr King was assassinated

Now for some good about Michigan.

Slavery in Michigan was banished in the constitution of 1835.  Slavery had been present in the state (Detroit and other areas including some parts of SW Michigan) before then.

Cass County was a prominent location of abolitionists and the underground railroad primarily due to the presence of the Friends, i.e., the Quakers.  To this day, there is an Underground Railroad Society in Cass and historical markers and a home that can be toured in the summer months as a former location on the underground railroad.

https://www.urscc.org/

Battle Creek, about an hour and a half east of us, was the home and burial place of Sojourner Truth who was born a slave, escaped north, and helped with the underground railroad.  There is a monument to Sojourner, a 12 feet high monument:

https://www.battlecreekvisitors.org/blog/post/meet-sojourner-truth-a-michigan-heroine/

Of course, Rosa Parks later in life moved to Detroit.

And finally, while Henry Ford was an notorious antisemite, his legacy has done some good.  Dearborn, the home of Ford Motor Company, now hosts the Jackson Home where Martin Luther King planned the march from Selma to Montgomery with his colleagues:

 https://www.thehenryford.org/visit/greenfield-village/jackson-home/

 

 

There's No Place Like London

Streaming a favorite musical:

"I have sailed the world, beheld its wonders

From the Dardanelles to the mountains of Peru,
But there's no place like London!...."

- Anthony

"You are young.
Life has been kind to you.
You will learn.

There's a hole in the world like a great black pit
And the vermin of the world inhabit it
And its morals aren't worth what a pig could spit
And it goes by the name of London.

At the top of the hole sit a privileged few,
Making mock of the vermin in the lower zoo,
Turning beauty into filth and greed;
I too have sailed the world and seen its wonders
For the cruelty of men is as wondrous as Peru,
But there's no place like London..."

- Sweeney Todd

Johnny Depp version:

https://youtu.be/xamDprXBtBg?si=aBJ7c4bA90-pr3kY

Rubber Soul

The Beatles released Rubber Soul 60 years ago today.  The LP had two of my favorite Beatle songs: Norwegian Wood (with George first introducing the sitar to pop/rock audiences) and this one which was the first 45 record I ever purchased:

He's a real nowhere man

Sitting in his nowhere land

Making all his nowhere plan for nobody

- John Lennon

https://youtu.be/8scSwaKbE64?si=Sgih1-YoQIRv3HjP

Show me the way at 50

Album released this day 50 years ago:

I wonder how you're feeling

There's ringing in my ears

And no one to relate to sad to see...

- Frampton Comes Alive

Guessing I first heard it on the Midnight Special which was shown on tape and Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.  Maybe this episode?

https://youtu.be/o6xGqi5itxs?si=ZXyQa7Ehqv0gVOXZ