Frank Dodd (Tony) Smith, Jr.:

was conceived

on Shavuot, 6-7 Sivan, 5700 ( 12-13 June 1940 ) ( year of Metal and Dragon, month of Horse and Water, day of Dog and Fire, hour of Rat and Earth ) in the Braban Hotel in Cartersville, Georgia, USA;

( The Chinese Horoscope images on this page were made using cards/tiles and information from The Chinese Astrology Kit, by Derek Walters (writer) and Helen Jones (illustrator), Journey Editions 2001. )
and was born
 

(thanks to the efforts of Dr. Sam Howell - I was tangled in the cord and coming out backwards, my mother was anesthetized, and my father asked Sam to try to get me out whole and alive. Sam was very good with his hands, and he succeeded. My mother was quite ill for a while, but, with sulfa drugs, she pulled through. Sam's son Harvey was my doctor for many years, and relieved a severe GI obstruction in my mother with a pyloroplasty (without vagotomy) that made her life much happier until strokes and broken hip complications ended it. Harvey's son Sammy was also my doctor for many years, and helped me to get into remission from lupus.)

 

on Purim, 14 Adar, 5701 ( 13 March 1941 ) ( year of Metal and Snake, month of Rabbit and Metal, day of Monkey and Metal, hour of Rat and Fire ) in Cartersville, Georgia, USA, at about 1 AM Eastern Standard Time, the son of Billie Ham Smith (1915-1995) and Frank Dodd Smith (1906-1986). This Bunny was presented to my mother when I was born. Others, including

Grizzly and Uncle Teddy, came along later.

As time passed:

I was taught how to count to 20 (11,12,13 were very hard) by Jack Kellogg. He and his wife Ella (I called her Stella - she seemed like a star) gave me an 1879 silver dollar.

They lived in a part of my neighborhood

(green on the map) known as Summers Hill, and Jack helped Father Kalb build the St. Francis Catholic Church across the street from my house. (Later, in the 1990s, the Roman Catholics moved to a new church site, and the church is now the Greater New Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, which was founded by some members of the Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church, to which my doctor Sammy Howell belonged.)

I went with my father to iron, manganese, and barytes mines where he worked. One of my favorite types of iron ore is Specular Hematite, which is shiny-silvery-black in solid form but red-brown when ground into a powder. (The map above is from the GPS display on my 2003 Yukon XL Denali, which is a color called "metallic carbon" but which to me looks like Specular Hematite.)

I was graduated from Cartersville High School in 1959.

I received A.B. degree (mathematics, summa cum laude) from Princeton University in 1963. While I was in college, Jack Kellogg came down with cancer, and it was necessary to find a hospice so that he could be comfortable in his final days. However, the hospices that he and my father first contacted turned him down because of his race. He and my father told Father Kalb about the situation and Father Kalb got Jack admitted to Our Lady of Perpetual Help Home. They made Jack's final days as comfortable as they could be, for which I am eternally grateful.

I attended the University of Georgia School of Law in 1963-64.

The Georgia Bulldog may have come from Yale. According to a U. S. Army web page, ".. [ Abraham Baldwin was born on ] 23 November 1754, at Guilford, Connecticut ...[and]... graduated from Yale in 1772 ... In 1783 ... he left New England for the frontier regions of Georgia, where he established a legal practice in Wilkes County near Augusta. ... Governor [of Georgia] Lyman Hall, himself a Yale graduate, was interested in finding a man of letters to assist in developing a comprehensive educational system for Georgia. He apparently asked Yale's president, Ezra Stiles, to help him in the search, and ... Abraham Baldwin ... was persuaded to accept the responsibility. Baldwin ... won a seat in the lower house ... During his first session in office he drew up a comprehensive plan for secondary and higher education in the state that was gradually implemented over succeeding decades. This plan included setting aside land grants to fund the establishment of Franklin College (today's University of Georgia), which he patterned after Yale. ...". Georgia's colors are red and black (like specular hematite) rather than Yale's blue. Around 7 April 2003, a UGA flag

flew at a Presidential Palace in Baghdad;

was admitted to the bar in Georgia in 1965, 38 years after my father received his law degree from Cumberland (then in Lebanon, Tennessee) in 1927 and then passed the Georgia Bar exam.

I received my J.D. degree from Emory University in 1966.

I was a partner in Neel and Smith law firm until 1987.

I was in the United States Air Force Reserve 1965-1971, with Extended Active Duty 1968-1969;

I attended an IAMP meeting in Berlin in 1981, where A. W. (Bill) Saenz, of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D. C., told me that David Finkelstein was at Georgia Tech. I contacted David and he let me attend his seminars and learn about Clifford Algebras. At some times during the 1980s and 1990s I was enrolled as a graduate student, but I failed the Fall 1991 comprehensive exam for the physics Ph.D. program, and received no degree.

I have in the 1990s been informally associated with The Center for Theoretical Studies of Physical Systems at Clark Atlanta University.

Although I have lupus (hence I usually wear a wide-brim hat for protection against ultraviolet radiation), I have mostly been in remission from the 1980s to the present. However:

60th aniiversary of conception on Shavuot, 6-7 Sivan, 5760 (9-10 June 2000) (year of Metal and Dragon). The bear is named LX (Roman Numeral for 60, pronounced Alex).

The glass (by Young & Constantin) has a green color rim (cross-sections (Tohu) of lightcone where gauge boson links live) and a blue color cone (lightcone). The cone vertex has Compton Radius Vortex bubbles around a red color Event Horizon.of a fundamental fermion (Vohu) stone at a vertex in the water of spacetime. There are about 21 lines of bubbles, corresponding to the 21-dimensional Lie group Spin(7). Each line has about 16 bubbles, corresponding to the 16-dimensional full spinors of the Clifford Algebra Cl(8) and its D4 Lie algebra Spin(8), to 16-dimensional U(4) that contains the Conformal Group SU(4) = Spin(2,4), and to the 16 eyes of IFA. There are a total of about 336 bubbles, corresponding to the group SL(2,7). The Octron (by Swarovski) in the bottom of the cone is a truncated tetrahedron that is related to a 3-dimensional HyperDiamond Lattice. The round mirror base has 8 marks, corresponding to the 8-fold periodicity of real Clifford Algebras. Each mark has 3 arrows (one long (D4 vector) and two short (D4 half-spinors), for a total of 3x8 = 24 arrows, corresponding to the 24-cell and to the 24-dim Leech Lattice. The 8 marks have 2^8 = 256 subsets, corresponding to the 256 Odu of IFA. The checkerboard has 8x8 = 64 squares, corresponding to the I Ching.

From LX Bear, counterclockwise, are: Guardian Angel Bear, Yankee Bear, Princeton Tiger, Eli Bear, Tennessee Tech Eagle,Baylor Bear, Auburn Tiger, Halloween Bear, UGA/Yale Bulldog, Red-Headed Woodpecker on The Blue Planet Book, and Meek Lamb.


The house in which I now live, and in which I have lived most of my life,

is at 79 Cassville Road (the Old Dixie Highway, which was US Highway 41 when I was a child), Cartersville, Georgia. Cassville Road runs down the valley between Summers Hill to its east and Howard Heights to its west. On the west side of Howard Heights, Pettit's Creek runs toward the Etowah River.

The Howard family not only owned Howard Heights, but also most of the land east of Cassville Road and west of Summers Hill, including my home place (shown by the flag) which was built in the 1880s by D. W. K. Peacock, who bought the site (of about 2.5 acres) from J. J. Howard (deed book Z, page 213, Bartow County records). At one time, D. W. K. Peacock owned with my grandfather James M. Smith the east half of lot 332 of the 4th district, 3rd section, of Bartow County, Georgia, on which property some ocher and manganese may have been mined (according to A Preliminary Report on the Manganese Deposits of Georgia, by Thomas L. Watson, Ph. D., Geological Survey of Georgia Bulletin No. 14 (1908)). My grandfather James Madison Smith was a Deputy Sheriff of Bartow County, Georgia, for four years under Sheriff Charlie Smith.

Around 1940, my father, Frank D. Smith, bought the house (and lot of about 4 acres) from H. W. Tribble (deed book 76, page 561, Bartow County records).

In July 1941, my father Frank D. Smith gave the house to my mother Billie H. Smith (deed book 77, page 598, Bartow County records). I inherited the house from my mother after her death in 1995.


Here is another image of the picture of my parents, showing the Blue Bird above them:


Like my Uncle Taxi and my Cousin Tom, I have been a student at Georgia Tech, but they and I never received a degree. I like the old friendly soft-and-fuzzy Yellow Jacket

a lot better than the newer fierce-and-mean one

.

 


My paternal grandparents James Madison Smith (Jim) ( born 10 June 1877 ) and Clara Mae Dodd ( born in 1881, attended Shorter College in Rome, Georgia, and received her degree in 1901 from a college in Anniston, Alabama ) were married in 1902. They are buried, along with an infant child, their son Sidney, and my parents, in a 7-sphere plot in

Oak Hill Cemetery, Cartersville, Georgia.

My uncle James Warren ( later known as Taxi ) was born to them on 9 October 1904.

My father Frank Dodd was born on 19 December 1906.

My uncle Sidney L. was born on 15 June 1912.

My aunt Miriam was born on 2 February 1917.

My father's mother Clara died on 29 January 1919 of the 1918 flu. She was pregnant when she fell ill, and her infant child preceded her in death by about a week. My aunt Miriam went to live with my grandfather Jim's aunt and uncle, Jessie Harling Gemes and Tom Gemes, who had three daughters: Mary Gemes, Dot Gemes Martin, and Lib Gemes Jackson.

According to some deed records and some recollections of my aunt Miriam, around 1920 my grandfather Jim moved into Overlook as a tenant of Mrs. Caroline D. G. Granger. Overlook is described in the book Images of America, Bartow County, Georgia, by Michele Rodgers (Arcadia 1996): "A. O. Granger served with General William Tecumseh Sherman during the War Between the States and camped on this property while traveling with the army. At that time only a small cabin stood on this hilltop. A number of years after the war Granger chose to relocate his family to Cartersville and purchased the property he had visited years before as a soldier. Though the cabin had been expanded during the intervening years, it did not suit the needs of the Grangers, so they made extensive additions to it.

The most unusual addition was an observatory, known at the time as one of the largest in the southeast.". According to Historic Bartow County, Circa 1828-1866, by the Etowah Valley Historical Society (1981), Overlook was "... Begun as two rooms, circa 1857, by James C. Young ... A story has it that after the war, the Grangers invited guests to a party in honor of Sherman on a return trip to the South. None of the invited guests attended. ...".

Here

is a photo of the front of Overlook.

 

In 1921 my uncle James entered Georgia Tech at the age of 16. He got the nickname Taxi as a freshman at Georgia Tech because he took a taxi-cab to get to the finish line of a cross-country race, and from then on he was known as my uncle Taxi. After one year at Georgia Tech, Taxi transferred to Mercer University Law School.

My grandfather Jim married Lilybelle Lavender ( born 8 November 1889 ) in 1922.

My uncle Taxi received his law degree from Mercer in June 1925 and ( since Mercer was an accredited 3-year law school in the State of Georgia ) he was immediately admitted to the Georgia Bar without examination. Taxi moved to Miami to seek his fortune in the Miami real estate boom. My father Frank, who was then was 18 years old, also moved to Miami. According to a 27 May 2001 GoPBI.com web article by Eliot Kleinberg:

"...  On July 26, 1925, the Miami News published a Sunday edition that at the time was the fattest newspaper in world history. It weighed 7 1/2 pounds and boasted 22 sections and 504 pages. Much of it was advertisements, sometimes covering multiple pages that trumpeted one real estate development after another. It was a heady time for those who poured into Miami - and West Palm Beach and other South Florida boom towns - to make their fortunes. Neighborhoods like Coral Gables sprang up, and across Biscayne Bay on Miami Beach developers were bulldozing mangroves and sand to build luxury hotels and mansions. ...

[ While Frank and Taxi were in Miami, back in Cartersville, on 14 January 1926 ( (deed book 62, page 487, Bartow County records) my grandfather Jim bought the cotton field bottom land (about 60.5 acres) below the Overlook residence from Mrs. Caroline D. G. Granger for $5,000.00. On 16 January 1926 (deed book 62, page 488, Bartow County records ), he sold that bottom land to Mrs. Foster Brooke for $7,000.00. ]

[ My uncle Jack Madison was born in Cartersville on 24 April 1926. ]

[ Also in April 1926, my uncle Taxi left Miami, moved back to Cartersville for a short time, and then moved to Albany, Georgia, where he practiced law. According to the article Taxi!, by James V. Davis, in Albany Magazine of May 1995: "... Taxi ... served as Mayor of the City of Albany ... in 1949-1950 and again in 1953-54 ... Taxi was a close friend and supporter of Herman Talmadge ... [in the 1960 Democratic nominating convention for U.S. President, Taxi was one of Georgia's]...

Kennedy Democrats ...

... Taxi's ... friends ... includ[ed] ... John Ringling North ... Albanians had the privilege of seeing their Mayor ride the elephant

in circus parades in Selma, Montgomery, Columbus, and Albany. ...". The color part of the elephant image was scanned from part of a painting owned by his niece Clara, daughter of my aunt Miriam. I put the picture of Taxi on the elephant on the web on Monday, 27 December 1999. One week later, Monday, 3 January 2000, Taxi died. ]

... But by 1926 the [Miami] boom was already teetering. Railroads and ships couldn't get building materials down fast enough. The government was cracking down on con artists. The stock market was shaky. ... Life in South Florida, then an area of about 300,000 people, carried on. Work continued on the new University of Miami, set to open for business in October. ...

[ The University of Miami raised some of its startup money by selling bricks to be used in its first buildings. My father Frank was one of those original supporters. I don't know exactly which brick is his, but I have inherited his feelings of support for the University of Miami. ]

... But a storm that formed in the Cape Verde Islands, off Africa - the birthplace of so many monster hurricanes - was moving through the Atlantic in mid-September and tearing up the islands. ... That morning of Sept. 17, 1926, The Miami Herald carried a 4-inch-long front-page story that said the storm would miss Florida. But the afternoon Miami News reported storm warnings had been instituted at noon and "destructive winds" were expected that night. ... the storm pounded Miami. It ripped buildings, brought torrential rains and washed boats ashore. The morning of the 18th, a wind meter atop a Miami Beach hospital recorded a 5-minute sustained wind speed of 123 mph before it was blown away. The storm surge sank or drove onto land at least 150 boats and ships. Downtown Miami's waterfront was flooded for two to three blocks inland from Biscayne Bay. Up to 5 feet of water stood in homes, shops and hotel lobbies. The Miami River overflowed. ... When the eye arrived, about 6 a.m. on the 18th, thousands of people emerged from shelter to eyeball the carnage and hit their knees in gratitude for having survived a storm they presumed was over. Cars began crossing from Miami Beach across the bay to Miami. ... less than an hour later. At 6:45 a.m., the second half of the storm arrived, more vicious than the first. People who'd run into the streets were cut to pieces by flying debris, and the cars heading off Miami Beach were washed into the bay. Houses already damaged finally collapsed. Young Jane Wood - the mother of Janet Reno - was a young child struggling to get back home in the high winds. She reached down and snatched a snapper swimming down the street; it became the family's dinner. ... The storm had damaged or destroyed every building in Miami's business district. Miami Beach's hotels and casinos were battered and surrounded by standing water. ... Everybody was looking for a drink of water - and there was none to be had ... The 1926 hurricane damaged the historic Gamble Mansion in Bradenton before crossing the Gulf of Mexico and making a second landfall near Mobile, Ala.; Pensacola experienced 20 hours of hurricane-force winds and much of its waterfront was shattered. The storm moved west through Mississippi and Louisiana before breaking up in Texas. ... But the most profound victim was the city of Miami itself. The Florida East Coast Railway offered free rides out, and many took advantage. Workers leveled unfinished homes, and real estate prices plummeted to a rate of one penny on the dollar. The University of Miami opened on Oct. 17, 1926, only two days late, with 560 students, but during the next two decades it struggled through the Depression and came close to folding, at one point filing for bankruptcy protection. When the school's football team took to the field for the first time in the fall of 1926, a team member suggested a nickname inspired by the great storm, the Hurricanes, and the team adopted as its mascot the ibis, ...[

( image from a hurricanesports web page )

]... the bird that according to folklore is the first to return after a hurricane passes. ... The hurricane gave Miami a three-year head start on the Great Depression. And for about a half-century after the Depression, the region would undergo another population boom, all the while without a single strike by a major hurricane. It was a stretch of good luck that Andrew ended in 1992. ...".

An article in USA Today lists "... The top 10 most-damaging hurricanes ... normalized to 1995 dollars by inflation, personal property increases, and coastal county population changes. (1925-1995). ...". The top two hurricanes are listed as: "...

Rank Hurricane Year Category Damage in billions
1. SE Fla.,Alabama 1926 4 $72.303
2. Andrew (SE Fla.,La.) 1992 4 $33.094 ...".

My father Frank was among those who left Miami around the time of the 1926 hurricane. He entered the Law Department of Cumberland University at Lebanon, Tennessee, about 10 years after 7 October 1916, the date that ( according to a 27 September 1002 article by Brian Woodson in the Bristol Herald Courier )

"... Cumberland ... Bulldogs [ colors Maroon and White ] will always be known for Oct 7, 1916 ... It's been called The Game of the Century ... in 1916 ... the Bulldogs ... had set up a game between Georgia Tech and Cumberland ... but a new [ Cumberland ] college president arrived and decided to drop the program ... Heisman ...[ at ]... Georgia Tech, refused to ...[ cancel the game ]... citing the terms of the contract. According to the pact, Cumberland was guaranteed $500 if the game was played, but would have to pay Georgia Tech $3,000 if it didn't happen. There was also the matter of revenge. In 1915, Cumberland's baseball team defeated the Yellow Jackets 22-0, and Heisman learned the 'Dogs may have used professionals in the contest. Coach Ernest "Butch" McQueen and Allen took the 14-man Bulldog squad to Atlanta, a team that is said to have included a few willing fraternity brothers and even a sportswriter playing under an assumed name.

...[ According to a Cumberland web page, "... This is the only known picture taken for the 1916 Cumberland University vs. Georgia Tech game. (Photo courtesy of Mrs. Lena Dugat) ...". ]...

... Heisman split his 38 players into two squads, and the group that scored the most points would receive a steak dinner. Georgia Tech led 63-0 after one quarter, 126-0 at the half and 180-0 after three periods. ...[ the final score was ]... Georgia Tech 222, Cumberland University (Tenn.) 0 ...". According to a web article by G. Frank Burns, Cumberland University Historian: "... On October 7, 1916, Georgia Tech played Cumberland in Atlanta. Tech won 222 to 0, the worst walloping in the history of American college football. ... Cumberland's longest gain was NOT a two-yard loss; there was one forward pass completed for a ten-yard gain. Unfortunately it was fourth and 22 at the time. ... Neither team made a first down. Cumberland couldn't, and Tech scored every time it got the ball. ... A book about the game, You Dropped It, You Pick It Up by Marcel and Jim Paul, contains exactly 222 pages. ...".

My father Frank was always happy when Georgia Tech's football team lost. He got his law degree from Cumberland on 1 June 1927. Since Cumberland was not in Georgia, he had to take the Georgia Bar examination, which he passed the first time. After practicing law in Atlanta for a short time, he moved back to Cartersville.

On 31 October 1927, my grandfather Jim bought Overlook from Mrs. Caroline D. G. Granger (deed book 64, page 411, Bartow County records). The deed recited "... the said tract hereby conveyed being now in the possession of second party ...", so my grandfather Jim must have been living there as a tenant, possibly as a caretaker, but I don't know for how long. The deed was executed by Mrs. Granger in Blairstown, New Jersey. The purchase price was $12,000.00.

My uncle Frederick Lavender was born at Overlook.

My grandfather Jim died of cancer on 29 November 1932.

On 14 December 1933 my father Frank and my uncle Sidney, as exectors of the will of my grandfather Jim, sold Overlook (plus a nearby building lot) to Max Scheuer, Earl B. Scheuer, L. M. Scheuer, and A. B. Scheuer (deed book 70, page 40, Bartow County records). The total acreage conveyed was about 17.80 acres. The deed stated: "... the property ... is held by The Cartersville Building & Loan Association under a security deed ... and said property is now being advertised by said Association under a power of sale in said deed ... Executors ... warrant that they will from the consideration ... pay ... said Building & Loan Association ... ". The consideration was $3,250.00.

My uncle Sidney died of pneumonia in 1934. At that time, Sidney was living with my father Frank and the Bohannon family near Pine Mountain, where they were involved in small-scale mining operations.

Later in the 1930s, my father Frank spent some time in Cuba and some time working for American Cyanamid in New York. By 1939-1940, my father Frank was back in Cartersville where he met my mother Billie who had come from Valdosta to teach Pitman shorthand and bookkeeping at Cartersville High School. With the outbreak of World War II, demand for iron, manganese, and barytes increased, and my father Frank was active in mining, even providing some limonite shielding for Mike. However, later, during the 1960s, the USA determined that it preferred to import iron ore from South America and Africa, and domestic USA iron mining ceased (except for some Lake Superior taconite operations supported by Minnesota Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey), and my father Frank did no more active mining.

Lilybelle, a student of Percy Granger at the Chicago Conservatory of Music, was a gifted musician. She taught music for many years, living in Cartersville until her death on 10 January 1984.

My father Frank died of liver failure, due to cancer, on 17 September 1986 ( 60 years to the day after the 1926 Miami Hurricane ) in Cartersville, Georgia. His death was a sudden collapse, followed by diagnosis of liver failure due to cancer, and death about 3 weeks later.

My uncle Taxi, who had survived colon polyp cancer, died on 3 January 2000 at the age of 95 in Albany, Georgia.

My uncle Jack died of liver failure (Jack, somewhat like my father, collapsed suddenly, followed by diagnosis of liver failure of unknown cause, and death about 2 weeks later) on 16 April 2002, leaving his daughter Sarah Frances Smith Barnaby (born 31 March 1955) and his son Frederick Madison Smith (born 18 March 1958). Jack's wife, Mona Lankford Smith (born 5 July 1932), had predeceased him on 28 December 1996, dying suddenly of an aneurysm. The Atlanta Journal Constitution's obituary for Jack said:

"... Jack Smith ... knew more stories than you can imagine. ... Some stories might be about his Navy service in World War II. ... Being on convoy, Mr. Smith served in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans during the war. He worked out an elaborate code with his mother to let her know where he was, essentially by telling her what they were eating aboard ship ... Others reached farther back: His great-great-grandfather, Samuel Mitchell, donated Land Lot 77 for the railroad terminal that later became Atlanta. Mr. Smith would tell old lawyer jokes or talk about characters in his native Bartow County, where he was born on his father's estate, Overlook. ...".

The USA flag presented at Jack's funeral had flown on the guided missile frigate USS John L. Hall (FFG 32) during operations against Iraq in the Gulf. Its namesake, Admiral John L. Hall, Jr., commanded amphibious landings on Omaha beach and Okinawa in WWII, using amphibious landing craft based on the amphibian Model IV Alligator tractor invented in 1937 by Donald Roebling ( great-grandson of John Roebling, builder of the Brooklyn Bridge ) on Florida's Gulf Coast.

My aunt Miriam died on 30 August 2003. Her burial was arranged by Mayes-Ward-Dobbins funeral home. Among the funerals conducted during the same time period was a Vedic cremation. She was buried in St. James Episcopal cemetery in Marietta, Georgia, on 2 September 2003, 8 years to the day after my mother was buried in Cartersville. Tom Martin, son of Dot Gemes Martin and Junius Martin, conducted both graveside services. ). Miriam's daughter Clara lives in Atlanta, Georgia. Miriam's son Bev (Robert Beverly Irwin, Jr.), died of colon/liver cancer on 22 September 2001, 4 days before his 61st birthday, 26 September 2001. Miriam's granddaughter (Clara's daughter) Dorothy, who is married to Phillip Walker, gave birth at 2:06 PM EDT on Monday, 19 May 2003, at Piedmont Hospital, to her daughter

Lilla McIntosh Walker, who was a little over a day old in the above picture, taken by Phillip Walker.

My sole surviving uncle is my uncle Fred, who worked at Lockheed in Marietta for many years and lives in Cartersville.

 


My maternal grandparents George Clinton Ham (born 16 September 1875) and Julia Dixon Stewart (born 29 August 1886) were married on 28 July 1910. They are buried in Sunset Hill Cemetery,

North Oak Street, Valdosta, Georgia.

My aunt Anna Frances (Tita) was born in Statenville, Georgia, on 18 July 1911.

My mother Billie (Willie Julia) (Bubber) was born in Statenville, Georgia, on 26 September 1915.

My grandfather George died in 1951 in Valdosta, Georgia.

My grandmother Julia died in 1967 in Tifton, Georgia.

My mother Bubber (Billie, Willie Julia) died on 29 August ( the birthday of her mother ) 1995 in Cartersville, Georgia.

My aunt Tita (Anna Frances) died in May 1999 in Tifton, Georgia, leaving her daughter Julia (JuJu) Hutchinson Young ( born 10 August 1946 ) (husband Mike Young and daughters Amy Young Duggan and Laura Young) and her son, Hilton Sims (Hil) Hutchinson, Jr., ( born 30 May 1942 ). Hil died on St. George Island, Florida, on 20 February 2002.

 


Having no brothers or sisters, my cousins Bev ( 6 months older ) and Hil ( 1 year and 2 months younger ) were my closest-in-age contemporary relatives. Now they are both dead, and I feel sort of like what Tura Satana said in 1992:

"... Now it seems all the people I knew are dead.

I'm just waiting for me to go.

I figure I've got a long way to go yet. ...".

 

 

 


Shavuot is the anniversary of Moses receiving the Torah on Mount Sinai, and also, as the two days after 7 weeks (49 days Omer) after Pesach, is a celebration of harvest.

Purim, which celebrates the story of Esther, begins at sundown on Erev Purim (13 Adar) and lasts for two days, Purim (14 Adar) and Shushan Purim (15 Adar). In years with two Adar months (leap month to synchronize lunar and solar calendars), Purim is celebrated in Adar II.

The Jewish Calendar that I used is freeware Jewish Calendar V2.0 by Frank Yellin, 510 Beresford Avenue, Redwood City, CA 94061, based on algorithms by N. Dershowitz and E. M. Reingold.

 

Is it OK for a non-Jew to study the Torah ?  

"... a non-Jew who studies the details of the seven Noahide laws, which are incumbent on him, deserves the honors due a Kohen Gadol (Sanhedrin 59a). The study of the seven Noahide laws may lead him to study most of the precepts of the Torah (Meiri to Sanhedrin 59a; see Responsa, Rama section 10). ...

... Noahide Laws - the seven commandments given to Noah and his sons, which are binding upon all gentiles. These laws include

(From Talmud Bavli / Tractate Chagigah, The Gemara, The ArtScroll Series / Schottenstein Edition, Mesorah Publications Ltd. (1999) 13a 3)

 


 

 

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