It's Been a Few Weeks

Sorry, it's been a few weeks since last I was able to post. I was sick -- if it was not one thing, it was another. So what have I been up to since last we spoke? Genealogy and Stephen King.

About a year ago, I was tooling around on the internet, and remembered Ancestry.com. I was a member quite a few years ago, but lost interest for awhile in the whole genealogy thing. I ran into some dead ends and tripped over a few false leads. I continued to receive emails from them, those spammy type emails begging you to sign back up . . . hurry now, and you'll receive a two week free membership . . . then it became a month. What finally got me was three free months. So I signed up, and after a week or so of browsing and filling that family tree, I eventually lost interest again. Forgot about it, until the three months was up and I got an email from Capital One, letting me know there was a charge on my card for a bit of money. I checked my statement, and realized that with the three free months of Ancestry membership, I had also signed up for a one year membership (15 months for the price of 12!).

So over the past few months, I've dawdled here and there, digging through census records and public trees and tracing back family as far as the 1600's in Massachusetts. But something strangely incredible happened a few weeks back. I recieved a message through Ancestry from a woman named Natalie, in Woodland, CA. Woodland is located directly north of Davis, CA, and to the northwest of Sacramento. I-5 runs through the center of town.

Natalie is a photographer in Woodland, and was looking through photos in an antique store when she stumbled upon a photo of a Wilbur Francis Peavler. She very kindly mailed me the photo, which I have posted to the right. There were two gentlemen by the name of Wilbur Francis Peavler: Senior (my great-grandfather) and Junior (grandfather). After a minor bit of investigation, I came to the conclusion that this is a photo of Senior. Lightly written in pencil on the back is his full name, the cost of the photo (which was $1), his age (4 months) and Aunt Belle.

Aunt Belle seems to be the mystery. I can find no record of either of his parents having a sibling named Belle, or Isabelle, or any other variation of Belle. This has opened up a new chapter in my search and I have been spending free time digging through the Ancestry website.

In other news, I finished Carrie. The book was much better than the movie, filling in the blanks of her mother's insanity and the overall death toll was much higher. 4 out of 5 stars is my rating, as much for its entertainment value as for the thoughts it conjured while I was reading it. Its a quick, demented read about a young girl snapping.

It's interesting to think about Carrie from a modern perspective. Keep in mind, this was Stephen King's first published novel, released in 1974. In our overcharged society where any instance of school bullying is met with severe punishment, when everyone is so sensitive to the idea of school shootings and teenagers snapping, I could not help but wonder if Carrie would ever see the light of day in today's publishing world. If a young struggling English teacher at a Maine high school tried to publish a book today about a young bullied girl snapping and killing everyone at her high school prom, would that teacher be praised as a "modern master of horror" or would he be suspended without pay pending a psychological analysis? The opening scenes deal with menstruation in a high school shower. That teachers would be accused of being a pervert and chased out of town on a rail.

Carrie is one of the most challenged books in America. On a list of 100 books which was compiled by the American Library Association of the books that have faced the most challenges since 1990, a list that includes works such as Catcher in the Rye, the Harry Potter series, and American Psycho (as well as Cujo, another Stephen King work that I will be touching on in tomorrow's edition), Carrie was ranked as the 77th most Challenged book. The ALA compiled this list of books as part of Banned Books Week, and the books are ranked by the number of official challenges each title has faced in regards to being removed from library shelves.

So I ask again, if Stephen King were a young, thirty-something English teacher today, in the year 2012, would he be able to publish a book like Carrie? I honestly do not think a book like Carrie would see the light of day today.

Sticking with my old friend Stephen King, I decided to pick up, and have since, completed reading 'salem's Lot, Stephen King's second published novel, and his ode to vampire classics of the past. This is a real vampire book, there are no glittery vampires, no "vegetarian" vampires, no vampires living amongst humans and having crazy vampire sex. It's blood and gore and stays true to vampire lore. Catholic priests fighting with holy water, men driving wooden stakes through hearts, Van Helsing references -- all that was once good about the vampire genre.

But I will save that until tomorrow, good friends.