Connections and dis-connections

I am wondering about tomorrow and whether I should attend court to ensure that I am not in contempt when the case for Mr. Kennedy and his corporation comes up for hearing. I had hoped that the Kennedys would get new counsel after Mrs. Kennedy fired me from representing them. That has not taken place so far. Oh well. I guess I will put a suit on in the morning.

I need to start working on Todd Hughes' titles for the Thursday closing. It shouldn't take that long. The Seller bought a lot of his properties in groups of properties. I think a lot of these properties were bought at the same time.

I was thinking about my great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Baynham (formerly John Thomas Baynham). I wonder why he changed his name? I mean, I know why he changed his name, but at the same time, I still wonder what caused him to do so. Was John Thomas too plain a moniker? Did he want to align himself with his famous relative? Did Thomas Jefferson lend more cachet in the agricultural world of Western Kentucky and Middle Tennessee?

I know that his parents were proud but rather lazy folks. I have pictures of them somewhere in the house. Both have proud, almost haughty faces, without a smile or common look. But it is quite possible that they suffered from the pride evidenced in their faces. The story I have always heard is that as soon as my great grandfather got old enough to support the family, my great-great-grandfather just sat down and amused himself. My great-great grandmother was pretty good for birthing babies, but that was about it. There is an apocryphal story about my great great grandmother throwing out a barrel full of sugar because it began to harden into sugar balls due to moisture in the barrel. My great grandfather was apparently furious at his mother for throwing out perfectly good sugar because she thought it "had spoiled." My great grandfather, as the oldest son, tried to run herd over his parents and worked to keep the family together. Quite an accomplishment.

If you look at a family tree for my family, you will find that a lot of the sons are named "Thomas Jefferson". Is that after the third president, or are these branches on the family tree actually named after their distant relative, my great grandfather? I would like to think that they are named after my great grandfather, although I think the lure of famour ancestors is probably greater than the desire to claim kinship with an upstanding, but humble great uncle, just a simple tobacco farmer in Southwestern Kentucky.

I have always heard that my great-grandfather always rode a white pony, wherever he went. If that is so, then he was a better horseman than his great-grandson. One summer in my youth, my grandfather bought a pony for my brother and me to learn on, but I couldn't make that pony do anything he didn't want to do. One afternoon when my parents allowed me to ride the pony on my own without any supervision, I hopped on the back of the pony and headed down the lane toward the open fields. As we headed past the cistern the pony turned abruptly and headed back toward the house. As we trotted down the gravel drive, away from my intended route, the pony finally tried to run me off on a nearby barbed-wire fence. In an effort to avoid being caught on the fencing, I lifted my leg off the side of the burlap sack my grandfather had provided for a preliminary saddle. As the "saddle" fell off the back of the poney, my body swung around the pony and I, holding on to the neck of the pony with everything I had, found myself facing, face to face with the pony. I finally gave up and let me body fall beneath the pony, said animal trampling on me as he galloped forward, took an abrupt left turn, and headed back to the stable.

Later, my brother Frank attempted to ride the pony by himself. The recalcitrant pony ignored my brother's proddings and verbal orders to go where Frank wanted him to go, and instead simply carried Frank back into the dark, musty stall to stay, leaving Frank, who was fairly young and too short to climb down off his back by himself, stranded on the pony's back. The combination of my adventure with the pony and the barbed wire fence and my brother's inability to control same and subsequent stay in the stables, caused my grandfather to sell the pony. That was the last time we ever tried to learn how to ride a pony or horse or otherwise.

It is sad that the farm is no more. I have a lot of wonderful memories of a childhood dappled with trips to my grandparent's house at the farm, just outside of Clarksville, Tennessee, off the Guthrie highway. Everything about the area was interesting to me and so familiar. It felt like a big part of me, like a secret part of myself that made me different from the other school children at Nora Elementary or Mastin Lake Elementary or Dunwoody Elementary.

And the trips to the farm were a return to a place where I belonged and was loved and had kin in every hollow and pasture and little town street. It always amazed me that I so many relatives down every little street in Hopkinsville, Clarksville, Trenton, Princeton or some other little town in the area. I remember eating supper with my grandmother one time in a little restaurant in Cadiz and being amazed when my grandmother spoke to the hostess and discovered that she was one of my second or third cousins.

I know I was really amazed when my second cousin, Les Baynham, with whom I had conversed by email late one night, sent me a family tree he had compiled which showed myriads of Baynhams all over Kentucky, Texas, Tennessee, New Jersey and Virginia. I finally spoke with one of my cousins, "Jeff" on Halloween, from his law office in Tyler, Texas. Despite his rather loud Texas accent, he was born in the little town of Cadiz, Kentucky. I guess my Georgia accent is somewhat different from what I would have sported if I had stayed in that area.

People don't stay around much anymore. I am reminded of a time when a group from our church went to a nursing home in Griffin to sing for the senior citizens. One of our group had an elderly aunt in one of the rooms and entered the room, only to find another member of our group speaking with his elderly aunt, the same woman. Neither of them knew that they were related to each other. We are more connected than we think.

That is why I always try to find the connections when I speak with other people. I want to see those family and geographical and genealogical connnections, even if they are very distant. I have often thought that our differences might be more readily resolved when we see each other as kin, rather than strangers. The desire to differentiate and individuate is strong and has a lot to do with our growth and maturation. But these desires has a tendency to alienate us from each other and we need to be able to see the similarities and connections equally as strongly.

It is easier to resolve differences when the people with the differences see each other as related. When we are related we tend to want to resolve the differences rather than allowing the differences to remain a part of our lack of connection.

Earlier in my life in the church I attend and in which I am a member, there was a schism which developed. The causes for the schism were many, but the reason for the failure to resolve the differences, I believe, arose because the church had been allowed to fracture into factions which saw no connection. The individual members didn't see themselves as brothers and sisters, instead, they developed cliques which caused many members to disassociate themselves from the church. It was only after the church shrank to a size where the members couldn't avoid each other that the rift began to heal. Unfortunately, for the members who had left, most of them stayed gone, in new churches, or no churches at all. For some, the wound would not heal.

That is why we should all look for connection.