Huff’s Blog

All the entries from this weblog have been imported here:

www.stevenhuff.net. 

They’re still here, too, but all new blogging will take place at the address above.

My wife is the genealogist in the family, and she’s pretty damned good at it.

She’s been doing it for a while, and to tell the truth, when we first got together I learned more about her ex-husband’s family history than I’d ever wanted to. She’d gotten her start with the hobby by doing his genealogy, and at the beginning of our relationship neither of us had time to do things like the heavy research the pursuit requires — but — Dana still liked to talk about genealogy, so after a while I was as up on Dana’s ex’s family tree as he was. (Her ex is a very nice guy, by the way, and a good dad to my stepdaughter.)

Eventually Dana either sensed my inner voice whining “hey, I have a family history too,” or I just said it flat-out, I don’t remember, and she started researching Huffs, Boltons, Lanes, and Ledbetters — my family names on my father’s and mother’s sides, respectively.

It turned out that some of my family’s tracks through time were pretty tough to find. Just one example of the kind of sleuthing Dana had to do to find anything on one particular Huff can be read here.

Overall, though, there’s a pretty helpful and large online community of genealogists, and Dana has, fortunately enough, encountered some relatives of mine through that community. One of them is Bobbye Phillips, a first cousin once removed of my mom’s, second cousin of mine.

Today, Dana was able to view some old family photos Bobbye uploaded to a genealogy site. I was strangely struck by the one you see on the left.

She was pretty and young. Her eyes were narrowed as if against bright light. She looked as if she might smile, just a little, in the next moment after the shutter on the camera closed.

The woman in the photo was my great-grandmother, Rosanna Belle Beasley. She was my maternal grandmother’s mother.

The photo above was dated January 27, 1901. It was taken the day 20-year-old Rosanna married her first husband, a man named Jasper Buchanan.

Jasper and Rosanna would later divorce, and Dana just told me as I was writing this that Jasper was murdered after that. Clarence Ledbetter, Rosanna’s second husband, was my great-grandfather.

So many of the photos I’ve seen of my greats and great-greats were of weather-beaten folks with drawn cheeks, wearing baggy clothes. On both sides of my family, they were laborers and farm folk, people of crops, of hard time under the sun, of milking cows before sunrise and gathering eggs as the dawn mists cleared.

Often they had firm, joyless sets to their mouths, as if it was a sin to even think of smiling. Often, they were old.

To see Rosanna, just barely out of her teens, already a little serious but maybe not too serious yet, was moving. It brought home for a moment certain truths I have sometimes missed not just about long-dead ancestors in fading photos but about elders still living.

The truth that once they too were quite young, and cameras were kind to them. The truth that once they could at least think of smiling as a January waned and a century dawned. The truth that all of them had moments when they were about to see their choices through, regardless of the wisdom or stupidity inherent in the choices.

Rosanna died a long time before I was born, so I never knew her at all. I don’t think I even knew her first name until about a year ago.  Any photos I’d seen of her before now were taken decades after the one that accompanies this post.

When I think of her again, it will be that photo from 1901 that I recall. It will be her moment before a smile, before her first try at holy matrimony. It will be that glimpse of young Rosanna before the rest of the century began to set itself in stone.

I think I need a break from blogging.

When you’ve been blogging as long as I have — and 6 years is a long time in the blogosphere, I’m pretty sure — it ain’t got squat to do with what others have to say about anything I had to say. It’s about me figuring out what I need to be doing. Both in practical and spiritual (for lack of a better word) terms.

Part of this feeling, I am certain, comes from the typical subject matter I cover as a crime blogger. Who in their right minds would NOT need to decompress? Add to that the fact that I have dealt all my life with depression, and it’s amazing to me I haven’t taken any real break that I can recall from the subject of true crime in more than 2 years.

Another part of what I’m thinking about does sometimes have to do with readers and other bloggers, but not perhaps in the way you’d think. I’ve begun confronting this feeling here and there in the last year. At first I didn’t know what to do with it. Essentially, it is a thought that will run through my head along these lines: “What the HELL makes you think any of this is so important, anyway?”

Writing online seems so temporary. I know enough about the way the Web works to know that it isn’t, necessarily — still, I wonder, sometimes. What someone says about you or to you online very rarely matters in the real world. Oh, there are certainly instances where it has made a difference, don’t get me wrong. But most of the time, it doesn’t.

There are people on the Web who try to say awful things about me because they don’t like me or my crime blogging. They’ve irritated me before, pissed me off, and on one occasion worried me — but I’ve stuck around long enough that I’ve also seen how the majority of that sort of b.s. just doesn’t matter. I’ll never be blasé about the issue, exactly, but I think I have a pretty healthy perspective. I’ve had friends who become obsessed with what someone says to them in a blog comment or about them in a message board thread. On one level, that makes sense to me, but on another — well, I’m going to lead my life, and people will always talk. I dealt with it before I ever even heard of the Internet, so nothing much is going to change, now. Try being in college and in a highly sociable major like vocal music, and breaking up with your significant other and then dating her former roommate. You are automatically guaranteed for a time that people are talking shit about you, including your professors. If you’re smart, you build up some thick hide quick to deal with it, and if you are savvy, you remember how to do that later, if crap flies your way again.

This sense of what you say being temporary and of questionable value extends into blogging, in my mind. Sometimes I really just think — “why bother?” — even if I truly believe I’ve got something new to reveal information-wise, or a new point of view that others may not have expressed.

And I have the unusual privilege of being asked to appear on TV sometimes to talk about stories I blog about, which you’d think would work against that sense of “why bother?”

It doesn’t.

Sometimes I just think I need to move away from the mostly sole-focus on crime and blog about whatever suits me, and damn the torpedoes. That would mean ignoring crime stories unless they are of strong interest to me, personally. That was what I was doing when I first labeled an archive of personal weblog entries “true crime” back in 2004.

I don’t just blog about crime stories that I find fascinating in a subjective way now. I blog about some things because readers write me privately, asking if I will. I sometimes feel I don’t have room to grow bored or impatient with a story, and wish that I did feel I had that room. I blog about some crimes because I find some detail everyone missed, and it might be pertinent. Others, I just don’t understand why there isn’t more coverage, and I try and provide that coverage. The stories on my crime blogs that are peculiarly interesting to me as a person are actually the minority, at this point.

I don’t know what I will do. At the moment I feel frustrated, but that could pass as a story snags my interest and I become engrossed in digging up something that maybe the mainstream press missed first time around.  I may just not bother with anything blog-related for a few days then see what I feel like. I might even just shut down all the sites and just re-direct everyone to Google.

But I kinda doubt it, there.

Ironically, I may even make another blog entry here later today. And then, after that, I’ll think about what I wanna do.

My life is sometimes very strange.

I am writing this from the green room at NBC’s Atlanta bureau office, on the 11th floor of an office building on Peachtree, pretty much in the heart of downtown ATL. I It sometimes puts me in a weird position, though. For one thing, people who find my crime blogs after seeing me on TV think I’m more connected, or a “bigger deal” than I am. I am not a “big deal,” in my opinion. Still, they write me and ask me to “look into” cases, like I am truly an amateur sleuth a la, I don’t know, Hong Kong Fooey or somebody, or perhaps more appropriately for me, some strange melange of Fred and Shaggy from Scooby Doo wrapped up in one person. (Red-headed and kind of dippy like Shaggy sometimes, once upon a time a jock-y, “hey gang, let’s have an adventure” sort like Fred.)

I have some ability to ferret out info others may not have, but I’m not a pro. I’m intuitive, tenacious, and sometimes just very lucky. I hope I have some small writing ability that adds to the whole deal. So… I sometimes feel a little stricken when I am asked to “look into” something by another private citizen. I can only do so much, and damn, I have a family life, too, not to mention continuing to sing.

I am NOT complaining. Just observing.

What’s funny is that I worked in TV for more than a decade. Usually pushing buttons, watching monitors, taping stuff, wearing headsets. Often, it just wasn’t a well-paid job, but man, in hindsight, I LOVED it. When I’m in a studio again (there are editing suites, etc., here at NBC’s Atlanta office), I want to shuttle beta tapes, push buttons. Instead, I’m in front of the camera, talking about what I blog about.

I don’t have time to adequately illustrate the surreality of that, I guess.

Another entry will be posted here later today about something else entirely, but I wanted a chance to, I don’t know, “live blog” the moment. And really take a minute while it is fresh on my mind to just remark on the… eh, the strangeness of it all.

I’ve noticed search engine hits on this blog today for Paul Potts, the British tenor I wrote about in this blog entry.

Potts is the schmoe who wowed the audience and judges for another Simon Cowell talent show, Britain’s Got Talent. He sang “Nessun dorma,” the big tenor aria from Puccini’s massive opera, Turandot.

I’ve sung with the Atlanta Opera before, both in secondary roles and as part of the chorus. Since writing sort of “took off” for me, I have not been able to participate in much singing around town at all, save for church. In fact, I was pretty sure the AOC didn’t want to work with me any more, because I’ve had conflicts like traveling to NYC in association with my writing and even just appearances on TV shows that had me in studios in front of cameras when I could be rehearsing.

This morning I got a call from the chorusmaster for the company, Walter Huff (no relation), asking me to come to a chorus rehearsal tonight for Turandot! That’s right, the AOC is doing it again — the last time they produced the opera was about 11 years ago (no wonder — it’s a huge dog & pony show, requiring massive choral and orchestral forces — therefore a big budget).

Where this particular opera is concerned, I don’t care what I do, as long as I can sing in it. That’s how much I love the music. So, Walter’s call made my day, to say the least. I am committed to writing, but I have been missing singing, so the timing just couldn’t be better.

I’m going to be singing the bits I already know from this opera in my head all day.

NOTE

To the asshole who left the comment: I may be a “shite,” but you’re a dick who doesn’t read very closely. If I were bitter, would I express any support of Mr. Potts at all? No. And I did. I said, I hope he wins it all. I just wanted it clear — people who are calling the guy the next Pavarotti know nothing about opera. What I’m saying has much more to do with listening to opera, in particular tenors, since I was 16 — 23 years. And if you think I’m bitter about anything, you clearly have no clue whatsoever about who I am or what I do. I’m quite happy, dumbass. Dry out before you leave any more blog comments, and actually read what I said.

And yes, your stupid comment was deleted. This blog is like my home, and you’re the loudmouthed subhuman I just kicked out of the living room. That you left your message from a .ie address made me a little embarrassed to have Irish blood in my veins.