King Rat

Cassville Cemetery

While in Wisconsin earlier this month, I wanted to find out some information about my great great grandparents, Clara and Anton Weiss. I knew when Anton died because of some scriblings in a book a cousin found at my great Aunt Babe’s house:

from the inside of 2010 Popular Quotations of Emo

Most families at the time wrote down births, baptisms, christenings, deaths, etc. in their family bible. The Weiss family? That’s the inside of 2010 Popular Quotations of Emo, a book published in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Why that? I don’t know. My second cousin Christopher Weiss thankfully snapped a photo of that page. I now know whoever wrote that, but it was between 1911 and 1914, because it has Anton’s death but not Clara’s.

I looked through the microfiche holdings of the Wisconsin Historical Society and found a copy of Anton’s obituary a few days after his death in the Cassville Index. I was going to include that obituary here, but I just found out that it didn’t upload properly or something to my archive, so I do not have a copy! Fuck!

Edit: I requested a copy of the obituary from the Wisconsin Historical Society. They didn’t even charge me the normal fees for research and copying (I had a a complete cite including the microfiche reel catalog number), and they emailed me a copy before I woke up. Huzzah for the Wisconsin Historical Society!

Anyhow, the obituary stated that Anton had been buried in the Cassville Cemetery. So I drove two hours to Cassville that night and got a room in a really rundown motel. As best as I can tell, there are only two places of lodging in Cassville, which has about the same population today as it did in the 1880s. The people at the restaurant there were not friendly either.

The next morning, I drove up the bluff to the cemetery outside of town. I’d guess the cemetery is a three or four acres in size. Not super-large, but not tiny either. I parked and looked around.

The rows aren’t particularly neat, and I didn’t immediately see the marker. My fear was that the graves would be unmarked. I could have written to the cemetery association, but the turnaround time would have prevented me from getting a reply before I returned home. Tombstones tend to blend together so I went systematically. I walked crosswise to the rows, straight out from about where that photo was taken. Got to the end, moved over about 10 feet, and walked back. It was on the second return leg that I looked over (outside of my 10 foot range) and saw the headstone a ways off. You can see it in that photo just behind the tree.

Here’s the plot close up.

That’s a huge headstone! Pretty much my entire family in Washington is buried at Evergreen Memorial Park, which means flat markers. The Sorenson markers I found at Forest Hill Cemetery in Madison were actual tombstones, but they were maybe 6 or 8 inches tall. That thing is about 4 or 5 feet tall and wide, and around 18 inches deep above the base. It is a massive piece of rock!

Buried in the plot are Anton and his wife Clara. She died in California 3½ years after him at the home of one her daughter Celia Klindt in Ontario California. I took the year of death from the marker and went back to the Historical Society and looked up her obituary to find that out. Also buried there are two of their daughters, Mary and Agnes. I know Mary died in Colorado, and Agnes in Cassville.

After getting a few shots of the individual markers and the headstone, my next task there was to photograph every tombstone in Cassville Cemetery. Yup. Every damn one. I suspected that I’m related to additional people buried there, but I didn’t know who. Since I won’t get back there for a while, I figured I might as well walk the entire cemetery. I’d purchased an 8 GB memory stick for this, which gave me room for about 2,600 photos. I took about 1,550 photos there.

The side with the older markers took a long time. Some of the markers are nearly unreadable. So I took multiple photos from different angles hoping to catch the shadows different ways so I could read them. At first I tried to dictate into my phone some of my guesses as to names while I was there to actually touch the markers and feel the words. However, after one such marker I decided I didn’t have the patience for that and stopped.

In addition to the Weisses, I also found the graves for Clara Weiss’ brother Peter Voigt and his family, and the first husband of one of Clara’s sister. I’ve barely begun to track down the Voigt branches. Also buried in the Cassville Cemetery are a couple dozen of the Grimm family. I’m not directly related to any of them, but William Hugo Grimm Sr. was the first husband of a third great aunt, Julia Elizabeth Ryan. They had one child and then divorced. Theirs is one of the earliest divorces in my family tree. Julia Ryan remarried and moved to Colorado with her husband and William Grimm’s daughter.

After all that, I drove to three more cemeteries, two of which I also photographed in their entirety. Although they were smaller. And the bugs started getting to me so I gave up 80% of the way through the last one. But it’s 1:45 now, so end of story.

Weiss Hardware

While looking for information on Robert Weiss, my second great uncle, I came on some advertisements for his business. If there’s a family business, it’s being a hardware dealer. Second great grandfather Anton Weiss was a hardware dealer for a while after initially running a tinning business when he immigrated. His sons Joseph, Robert, Theodore, and Frank were all hardware dealers. However, after that generation, I don’t know of any who continued in that profession.

Robert was the oldest. Somewhere around 1880 he moved from Cassville to Jenny and started a hardware business. There, he married and had one child who passed away. The following is an advertisement for his hardware business that ran in the Lincoln County Advocate on 12 Jan 1880.

By 1894, my great grandfather Joe Weiss had also moved to Merrill, as Jenny came to be named. There he joined Robert in the business.

The Merrill Advocate could print much nicer graphics by 1894. The business would remain in Joe Weiss hand’s until he moved to Madison in 1907 where he also dealt in hardware. Robert moved to California and Utah by 1900. There he worked as a hardware dealer and occasionally as a prospector.

tablet mobility and cemeteries

The mobility of my Xoom tablet was a major plus for me yesterday. I’m staying a few extra days in Wisconsin after Wiscon (more about Wiscon later perhaps) in order to do some genealogical research. I decided yesterday to search for graves. I first went to Resurrection Cemetery to find the graves for my great grandparents Weiss. The cemetery office printed up a helpful map and I found the plots with little difficulty.

Then I went across the street to Forest Hill Cemetery, where many of the Sorenson’s were laid to rot (“laid to rest” is the euphemism of choice I suppose). However, by that point it was after their office had closed. The burials records for Forest Hill are online though. I hadn’t written down the locations, but I was able to look up everything online while wandering the cemetery.

At this point, having the tablet with me only made up for having been lazy and not having written down the locations ahead of time. Which is awesome by the way. Anytime technology allows me to be lazier I am all in favor. But it was really useful beyond that. The locations at Forest Hill aren’t exactly easy to find. Some sections are on a grid. Some use rows and tiers. Some just numbered the plots semi-sequentially. They did not mark plots with their locations (Pacific Lutheran Cemetery in Seattle does). What I could do was look at names on markers and look them up as I walked, giving me their locations and thereby guesstimating how far away I was from the ones I sought, and whether I was getting hotter or colder.

At Resurrection Cemetery, in addition to my great grandparents Joseph Weiss and Frances Ryan Weiss, the plot also had the marker for my great uncle Joe Weiss, who died young. A family member had told me he thought Joe Jr. died around 1926, but that turned out to be 5 years off. The marker had his year of death as 1931. That allowed me to find his obituary (page 1 in 2 Madison newspapers).

At Forest Hill, I found my great great uncle Theodore Weiss and his wife Anna Franey Weiss. Then while walking away I serendipitously found my great grandfather William Solle, who I hadn’t looked up yet. Forest Hill is a giant cemetery, so that was kind of weird. Other graves found there included my great great grandparents Nels and Katherine Sorenson, their son Alfred Sorenson, daughter Marie Bouchard, son Emelius Sorenson and wife Anna Bjelde Sorenson, and other relatives William Martin Sorenson, Elmer Bouchard and Elizabeth Frutiger Bouchard, Edward Bouchard and Donna Moran Bouchard, and Carolyn (or Carlynn) Bouchard. I also photographed the space where Mae Sorenson should be buried, but there was no marker. I still don’t know if this is the ex-wife of Alfred or someone else. Today’s project is to research Alfred and Mae at the Madison Library.

Insert Cirrus word play here

Earlier today John posted that he needed to do a quick run to Skagit and asked if any of his funemployed friends wanted to ride along. For those who don’t know him, John owns a flight school training people to fly small planes. So a quick run to Skagit with John means hopping into a small plane, rather than driving. I’ve done that trip driving many times, it’s not so exciting. Flying it probably isn’t for John either. But I’ve only been in small planes twice that I can remember, and once in a helicopter.

So I hopped in my car and drove to Boeing field. I watched John and Chase pull the plane out of a hangar barely big enough to hold the plane, and go through what appeared to be a very thorough checklist. John had me sit in front, rather than Chase. Which meant he explained to me how to kill the engine and deploy the plane’s parachute in the unlikely event that he went unconscious and we were headed toward the ground. (Which he did not.)

Plane ride was uneventful, other than the normal taxiway in Skagit being closed so we had to take 5 to 10 extra minutes to go the long way around to get to the airport buildings.

On the flight back, John let me fly the plane for about 10 minutes. I don’t think I showed it, but I was hella nervous beforehand. I played Microsoft Flight Simulator in like 1991 and things did not go well. But I figured he wouldn’t be letting me do anything I couldn’t handle, so what the hell. It was fun. If I was that kind of rich, I’d totally blow money to buy a plane and learn how to fly.

French Leek Pie

The French Leek Pie I made for Pie Night was gone in 11 minutes. It was super easy to make. I used the French Leek Pie recipe at allrecipes.com, with some minor adaptations.

1 pie crust
1 tablespoon butter
3 leeks
1 pinch salt (to taste)
1 pinch pepper (to taste)
1 cup cream
1 1/4 cup shredded Gruyere cheese (more or less)

preheat oven to 375°
grate the Gruyere
chop the leeks
melt butter in a large saucepan over medium-low heat
add leeks
cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes, or until soft
reduce heat to low
add salt and pepper
stir in cream and shredded Gruyere cheese
heat on low until mixture is warmed through
pour mixture into the pie shell
bake for 30 minutes, or until the custard is set and golden on top

Contacting relatives

Friday night I took a few minutes while pies were baking to check a few additional sources for a branch of the family that I’d thought more or less completed. One of those sources is mylife.com. That’s what reunion.com has become. They charge an arm and a leg to reveal personal information for people. I won’t pay them, but just their teaser information provides clues.

For the person in question (still living, so I shan’t reveal names), they had a few people with the same last name as him that were attached as associated people. Two of those people were ones I didn’t have in my database. So I plugged those names into other sources, and they had lived at the same address as my first guy many years ago. Meaning they are very likely his children. I had two other children through a birth database, but the two additional people have earlier birth dates. I’m guessing they are his kids, born before he moved to the state that had public birth records.

Anyhow, the wonders of the internet have given me a current address for one of the kids. It’s in Sammamish. There are related, living Weisses around here! He’s a third cousin; we share the same second great grandfather. So I’m going to contact him for sure. But how? I have an address and a phone number. Do I write? Or do I call? Or ask someone at his employer (I know many) if they’ll forward an email to him (since I don’t have an actual work email address for him)?

So far, my experience with contacting people is that if I know they are doing genealogy stuff they’ll respond. That’s all been by email, and I’ve got half a dozen relatives I’m in contact with that way. I’ve contacted one person out of the blue, and got no response whatsoever.

Apricot Couscous Pie

This was one of the pies I made for last night’s Pie Night. It’s delicious. Recipe adapted from Icebox Pies, which Sharon gave me last year. It’s turned out to be quite the excellent pie book.

Ingredients

3 cups half and half
6 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 large egg yolks
3/4 cup couscous
1/2 cup dried apricots
1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 crumb crust
1/2 cup apricot preserves

lightly beat egg yolks
chop dried apricots finely
combine half and half, sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan
bring pot just to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low
slowly drizzle about 1/2 cup of the half and half mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly
whisk the egg yolks into the saucepan
add the couscous, dried apricots, and nutmeg and stir to combine
simmer, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens and almost all the liquid has been absorbed (about 5 to 7 minutes)
remove the pan from the heat
stir in the vanilla
scrape the mixture into the crumb crust
in a food processor, process the apricot preserves until smooth
spread the preserves over the pie with a spatula
wrap in plastic wrap
refrigerate at least 3 hours

No photos, because I didn’t have space on the memory card for my camera.

Xoom – Initial thoughts

Xoom Home Screen — photo by Yining Zhang (CC By-NC-ND)

I bought myself a new toy on Monday, a Motorola Xoom. I got the 3G version rather than the WiFi only version. It’s possibly I could get by with the WiFi version, as my track record with my smart phone is that I rarely use much cell phone data with it, and I’ll be carrying the Xoom around less. I’ll be taking it with me to Madison at the end of the month, so we’ll see how much cellular data I use on the trip. If I don’t need it, I’ll cancel my wireless data plan. I paid full price, rather than the subsidized price, so that I wouldn’t get hit with an early termination fee if I ended up doing this.

Here’s some initial thoughts.

The form factor is mostly nice. It’s a little bit on the heavy side to hold up for extended periods of time. For reading, for instance, I’ll be propping it on my lap or something like that. It wouldn’t be so bad if there were a little stickum on the back to make gripping it easier.

I also bought the multimedia dock for it. The Xoom does not slide easily onto it like my Droid slides onto its dock. It usually takes me a bit of working it to get it to settle onto the USB and HDMI sockets.

The graphics are really crisp. The browser appears to be a limited version of Chrome, with way more features than the browser on Android smart phones. I really like the new Gmail application, which is good because K-9, which I use on the Droid, doesn’t work well in tablet size. The GMail application still lacks the ability to save attachments unless they can be opened by another application though. That really sucks. However, the web version of Gmail is accessible, and I can save files from it.

There aren’t a lot of tablet sized applications for it it yet. A few of my applications that I use on my Droid don’t resize at all. Some resize, but badly. Most of them are set to use the standard Droid application buttons. Those buttons don’t exist on the Xoom. Instead, they are put inside some on-screen menu spots. Those spots are not convenient to my thumbs when holding the tablet by the side. In particular, the Google Reader application is cumbersome to use because of this. If it had gesture controls, it would work much better. Applications really need to have gesture/swipe controls on a tablet.

When applications for the tablet do not auto-rotate, it’s even more of a pain than when they don’t for a smart phone. The application market only works in landscape mode. Some of my applications only work in portrait.

I installed the Flash plugin. Most web site flash stuff is a pain with a touch screen. It’s also not very responsive on the Xoom hardware. Provided I can press a button or something like that in a Flash application, the computer won’t respond to that press for several seconds at least. Luckily, even with the plugin installed, I can set the browser to only run Flash applications I click on.

Battery life is really pretty good so far. I can read news with Google Reader and my standard web sites for about 90 minutes, and the battery level drops from 100% to 87%. Flash sucks the battery, even when it’s just a container to play video. Supposedly video actually doesn’t kill the battery when viewed in a native application, but I haven’t tried that yet other than a couple of short Youtube videos.

Even though it’s on the Verizon cellular network and it nominally uses a phone number, I can’t use it for phone calls (not surprising) or even text messaging (a little surprised by that). I can’t even install the Google Voice application only to listen to my voice mails. I can use the Google Voice web site at least. The lack of text messaging means I can’t install Mobile Defense, which is the application I put on my Droid that lets me track it remotely (and control it remotely too).

I have installed six different book applications on it. This was the reason I bought the thing. My Nook died hard after Guinevere knocked it off the shelf. Rather than stick with one book platform, I could use all of them and buy a book wherever it was cheapest. Or even available. So I have the Nook and Kindle applications. The Nook application uses gestures for reading, so I’m happy there. I haven’t tried the Kindle application yet. It also comes standard with the Google Books application, which I haven’t yet tried either. I also installed the Aldiko reader for reading epubs and the occasional Adobe Digital Editions format. I’ve used it on my phone. Maybe the Nook or Google Books applications can be side loaded, but I didn’t bother to look.

Additionally, I installed the Overdrive and Audible applications for audio books. I’ve used Overdrive’s desktop platform to get audio books from the Seattle Public Library before, but I couldn’t transfer many of them to my Droid due to DRM. I hadn’t realized they’d finally gotten an Overdrive Android application until I ran into it this time. I will likely add it to my Droid too. I haven’t used the Audible application yet.

I may install the Kobo books application if I ever find a book there that I want and can’t get anywhere else.

I plan on leaving my laptop at home on my upcoming trip to Madison. Going to see if the Xoom and Droid will be sufficient for my needs on trips. I even got a Bluetooth keyboard for the Xoom so I could take notes quickly.

High taxes?

One of the myths that the Cato Institute and the right wing in general likes to push is that taxes are too high in the United States. That we’re on the wrong side of the Laffer Curve. Have you heard of the Laffer Curve? Pardon me while I do a quick explanation.

The Laffer Curve (courtesy of Lawrence Khoo)

The theory is based on the idea that if people are taxed at 100% of their income, they won’t work any more than required because they don’t see any additional benefit to their work. Because of that, tax revenue is $0. If you lower the tax rate, then people have some incentive, and tax revenue goes up significantly.

If not used properly, the logic leads to the absurd proposition that the government lowers the tax rate to 0%, then government revenue is maximized. This is obviously not true either. Where the tipping point is can’t be determined exactly, but the best current research puts the optimal (for government revenue) tax rate at somewhere between 60% and 80%. If tax rates are lower than that, lowering them even more results in less revenue to pay for government programs.

This argument was actually made and a big part of pushing through the Bush tax cuts in the early part of the last decade. If we cut our tax rate, we’ll actually have more tax revenue because it will spur the economy so much that people will be working hard and making so much more money that the taxes on that extra growth will make up for the money we would have gotten in higher taxes.

The argument didn’t hold water then, and it doesn’t now. That’s because effective tax rates were well on the left side of that curve, and are even more on the left side of it now. Sometimes in debates, Republicans put out scare figures that we have the highest taxes in the world. It’s just not true. The United States is a low tax country already. We’re not a tax haven, like the Grand Caymans, but taxes are pretty damn low.

As a share of GDP, we’re near the bottom of industrialized countries in total taxes:

General Government Receipts as a Share of GDP (chart from CBPP.org)

The taxes of the people subject to the highest tax rates are effectively very very low.

Effective Tax Rates on Wealthy People — Effective federal tax rates on wealthy people (chart from CBPP.org)

Here’s the nominal tax rates the wealthiest pay. Even the highest rates that a person could pay on a part of their income are lower than at any time since the 1930s.

Top Marginal Tax Rates, 1916-2010 (graph from VisualizingEconomics.com)

I’m not arguing here that rich people don’t pay their fair share. That’s for another rant. The point of this is that those rates are way to the left of the peak of the Laffer Curve. Now there’s possibly an argument that rich people will spur more economic activity with the money than the government would, but I don’t think that’s proven.

The next time a Republican tells you taxes are too high, ask them some questions. Ask them to define too high. Ask them what the criteria are for too high. Ask them what the economic goal is for lowering taxes. Because it looks to me like our taxes are pretty lenient.

Game of Thrones (TV)

I haven’t really watched television in a while, but my cousin had a viewing party for Game of Thrones and I’ve heard a lot of hype, so I decided to go and see.

Short verdict: The characters are well-written, and the story is reasonably interesting though kind of unoriginal. Haven’t we seen the rough and tumble northmen and the Calormen in the south before? There’s more boobs and head chopping than in the Narnia tales though. It also got in some of the requirements for medieval movies too: the band of horsemen riding through the narrow walled passages scene, and the drunken debauchedness feast scene. Casting was decent. Really liked the opening credits, though the steampunk ethic doesn’t seem to fit with the story.

Haven’t read the books, by the way. Definitely won’t until he’s done with the series, and I’m not likely to make that kind of investment anyway given that I am not a huge fan of swords and sorcery fantasy.