Comments Off on Sally Lucille (Irwin) Buntyn (1942-2022)

Sally Lucille (Irwin) Buntyn (1942-2022)

Posted November 4th 2022 by sbuntyn

My Mama passed away this spring. I wrote her obituary for the funeral home. Shee is buried in Brookside Memorial Park, Houston, Texas, next to Daddy. They share a lovely double memorial stone.

Sally Lucille Irwin Buntyn, age 79, of Houston, Texas passed away April 10, 2022. Sally was born October 15, 1942 in Houston, the second child of Fred Mendel Irwin (Fritz Mendel Israelske) and Grace Varine Clements. She lived in the Denver Harbor area in her formative years, attending Elliott Elementary School, McReynolds Middle School, and Austin High School. Sally worked as a keypunch operator for a downtown bank, and as a shoe model for Foley’s Department Store, before she married her sweetheart, Joe Buntyn, on March 14, 1964.

After a few years living in the Montrose area, the young family moved to the Sheldon area in 1967, where they reared three children. Sally enjoyed working as a “Quinby girl” for several years, working temporary jobs all over Houston. She was a Den Mother with her sons’ Boy Scout groups and a Troop Leader (“Mrs. Bunny”) for her daughter’s Girl Scout groups during late 1970s and early 1980s. She enjoyed traveling with Joe, and having fun with her grandchildren. Sally was an avid genealogist and family historian, and enjoyed helping others connect with their roots.

Sally is survived by her son Scott Buntyn of Houston; daughter Sara Buntyn, her husband John White and their two children — Connor and Sionna — all of Houston; and son Steve Buntyn, his wife Kandy and their three children — Seth, Alex, and Karissa — all of Humble. She is also survived by loving in-laws, nieces, nephews, and a host of long-time friends.

Sally was preceded in death by her husband, Joe Buntyn; her parents; her elder brother, Joe Irwin; and younger sister, Sydney Irwin Hudson.

[Originally published at Sally Irwin Buntyn Obituary – Houston, TX (dignitymemorial.com)]

Tags: , ,
Posted in Family, Genealogy

Comments Off on Joe Stanley Buntyn Jr. (1940-2021)

Joe Stanley Buntyn Jr. (1940-2021)

Posted November 4th 2022 by sbuntyn

My Daddy passed away last summer. I wrote his obituary for the funeral home. He is buried in Brookside Memorial Park, Houston, Texas.

Joe Stanley Buntyn, Jr., age 80, of Houston, Texas passed away June 15, 2021. Joe was born October 21, 1940 in Houston, the eldest child of Joe Stanley Buntyn and Alma Louise Ware. He lived in the Denver Harbor area in his formative years, attending Elliott and Pugh Elementarys, Edison Junior High, and Austin High School. After attending South Texas Junior College, Joe transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, working to pay his own way through college, eventually earning his B.S. in Psychology. Returning to Houston, he married his sweetheart, Sally Irwin, on March 14, 1964.

After a few years living in the Montrose area, the young family moved to the Sheldon area in 1967, where they reared three children. Joe worked in the comptroller’s office of Texaco Inc. in downtown Houston for over 35 years, retiring in 1999. After retirement, he enjoyed traveling with Sally, and having fun with his grandchildren. Joe was an active member of the Gus A. Brandt #1296 / Galena Park #1290 Masonic Lodges for 57 years. He had the distinction of being a recipient of the Golden Trowel Award and being a Past Master. He was also active in Scottish Rite. Joe was a six-year pancreatic cancer survivor and a 24 year survivor of prostate cancer.

Joe is survived by his loving wife of 57 years, Sally Buntyn; son Scott Buntyn of Houston; daughter Sara Buntyn, her husband John White and their two children — Connor and Sionna — all of Houston; and son Steve Buntyn, his wife Kandy and their three children — Seth, Alex, and Karissa — all of Humble. He is also survived by his sister Rachel Curington and her husband Bruce, of Rapid City, South Dakota; and brother Jan Buntyn of Montgomery, Texas; loving in-laws, nieces, nephews, and a host of long-time friends.

Joe was preceded in death by his parents and sister, Nola Buntyn Wajdak Suarez.

[Originally published at Joe Buntyn Obituary – Houston, TX (dignitymemorial.com)]

Tags: ,
Posted in Family, Genealogy

1 Comment

My journey into name collecting as part of genealogy research

Posted January 7th 2019 by sbuntyn

“Hi, I’m Sara and I’m a name collector,” is how I imagine walking into a meeting of Genealogists Anonymous.  “Hi Sara, welcome to our judgement-free zone,” is the imagined response.

“Name collecting” has negative connotations in the genealogy community, a feeling that you aren’t doing your research in the “right way”, maybe just grabbing at shaky leaves at a certain site, maybe failing to document sources.

My version of name collecting is a little different – it’s an extension of the tried and true FAN club principle – (Friends, Associates, and Neighbors), aka cluster research or collateral research.  In my case, I use the technique on families that I currently have no connection to, in hope of eventually finding a connection.

The background

For several years, I have been working on an informal “not-quite-one-name study” of variant spellings of my surname. My family has consistently used the spelling of BUNTYN for over 200 years.  But there are many spelling variations of the name – notably BUNTING, BUNTIN, and BUNTON, but also BANTON and BENTON.  Spelling just really depends on how one hears a name pronounced and interprets it.

I used to note spelling variants only in the specific counties my family has lived in, mainly across the Southern United States.  We started out in records in North Carolina in the 1790s, spreading south and west over the generations – Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas…

My branch of the Buntyn family migrated to Texas from Georgia in the l890s.  But they weren’t the first of the family to come here. A great-uncle had migrated to Texas from Mississippi before 1850.  I had no luck looking for members of that branch in census records and the like after 1860.  A family using our spelling of BUNTYN had popped up in Mason County,  Texas, on the 1880 census, but I couldn’t link them to our tree.  For a long time, I researched records in only those counties in which I had found our family spelling, looking at variants as well – Cass, Hill, Johnson, Lee, Mason, Milam, Wilbarger, and Williamson Counties.  I found some records, but nothing that really linked us together.

The plan

This past summer, I decided to expand my research.  I’m going to look at all records for all variants of Buntyn in all of the record groups/databases digitally available at FamilySearch for the state of Texas.  I’ll supplement this research with “clue-finding” at FindAGrave.  I chose Texas because it’s the end-point of migration for my Buntyn branch.  It’s an ambitious project that will take me quite some time to complete.

I’ll be honest – it is name collecting.  I’m going to put people in my RootsMagic database that may end up having no connection to my family.  That’s okay – I may very well end up connecting all of us over time. And I’ll document EVERYTHING – every fact has to have a proper source.

The progress

I started off with World War II draft registration cards. I entered records for all name variants of Buntyn, making notations of next of kin, etc.

I moved on to marriage records – and stopped about 1/4 of the way through.  I realized I first needed to connect these brides with their parental families, before I go crazy entering marriages.

So I moved on to census records.  So far I’ve input names for 1850 (5 families), 1860 (17 families), 1870 (21 families) and 1880 (41 families).  I’m currently working my way through the 1900 census (no family count yet)

The results (so far)

I’ve already had success, of sorts.

The David BUNTING family settled in Gonzales County, Texas, around 1846, having migrated from Nash County, North Carolina. My BUNTYNs lived in the swampy borderland between Edgecombe and Pitt Counties some 50 years earlier, with extended family in Halifax, Martin, and Nash Counties.  Are these families connected? My intuition says yes – more research will hopefully establish the connection.

By browsing census images for the counties, I found non-Buntyn families that I had not yet looked for in census records.

The 1850 enumeration of Bastrop County, Texas, listed the families of my 3rd great-grandfather Elias STANLEY, his brother John, and their MEEKS and HOLLY sons-in-law living a few pages away from Lyndon Baines Johnson’s 1st great-granduncle, Desha BUNTON.

The 1850 enumeration of Gonzales County, Texas, listed the families of the aforementioned David BUNTING and his WOODS and BOON/BURKETT sons-in-law in the midst of BARBER, IVES, MALEY, and STEPHENS/STEVENS families (my kinfolk on my mother’s side, who had all migrated from old Liberty County, Texas), and just 2 pages later, the family of William Henry Harrison BALDRIDGE (who had “gone to Texas, no further information” in the records of my husband’s Missouri kinfolk).

The future

I’m going to enter families for the 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930 and 1940 censuses. Then I’ll go back to marriages, then births, then deaths.  Then any other Texas record sets available at FamilySearch.  This project will take me at least a year, maybe even two, of daily work.

Eventually, I’ll repeat similar research in the records of other Southern states, reversing our migration path back to North Carolina.

I’m sure I’ll link many families together, even if I never connect them to mine.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Genealogy

Comments Off on 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2019 – #1 “First”

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks – 2019 – #1 “First”

Posted January 6th 2019 by sbuntyn

I recently joined Amy Johnson Crow’s 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. I’ll receive a prompt for each week to write and share something about an ancestor.  This week’s prompt is “First” – it can be interpreted however I choose.  I’m going to write about the first time I learned about family history and genealogy, in other words, what started me on this lifelong journey of family exploration.

In 1984, I was in the 9th grade at C. E. King High School in Sheldon, Texas.  My English teacher gave my class an assignment to fill out a family tree chart (just myself, my parents, and my grandparents, if I remember correctly). The chart was basic, asking for names, and dates of birth, marriage and death.

I enjoyed looking at old family photos with my grandparents, but I didn’t pay attention to details about either side.  I brought the chart home and my Mama, Sally, sat down to help me with what she knew.  Three of my four grandparents (Grandpa Buntyn, Grandma Buntyn, and Nana Irwin) were living at the time, easy to visit during the upcoming weekend and ask questions of them directly.

Mama shared information about her father, Fred Mendel Irwin (1899-1977).  Pawpaw Irwin died when I was 8 years old, and I didn’t have a lot of strong memories about him.   My memories of him mostly revolve around food, funnily enough – he loved making fried baloney sandwiches for us grandkids, walking us down the road to get ice cream, and taking the bus to downtown Houston to sit at the lunch counter in Foley’s Department Store.

Mama told me that Pawpaw was born with the name “Fritz Mendel Israelske”. Wait, what? I was floored – I didn’t know that my grandfather had a totally different name; it had never been mentioned to me before.

More information Mom shared that I didn’t know:

  • Pawpaw was born in Denver, Colorado on 28 October 1899 (he was 43 when my mom was born)
  • He had been married to and divorced from another woman decades before he met my Nana
  • He had sons my Mom had never met (her half-brothers)
  • He was a polyglot, fluent in 3 languages (English, German, Yiddish) and passable in 4 more (Spanish, French, Italian, Hungarian)
  • He had “ridden the rails” during the Great Depression (he was a “hobo”)
  • He had worked all over the country as a “carny” in traveling carnivals
  • He was a non-practicing Jew – he didn’t keep kosher and rarely attended religious services

I was fascinated! I had no idea my Pawpaw Irwin had lived such a colorful life and I wanted to know more about him and his branch of the family.

My other grandparents shared interesting details about their own lives:

  • My Grandpa Joe Stanley Buntyn (1909-1985) dropped out of high school, put himself through law school, passed the bar exam, and became a practicing attorney in Houston in the 1930s.
  • My Grandma Alma Louise (Ware) Buntyn (1912-1997) moved from the countryside of Pflugerville, Texas, to the bustling suburbs of Dallas in her early years.  Alongside her mother and sister, she sold bread door-to-door during the Great Depression.  She moved to Houston by herself in the early 1930s.
  • My Nana Grace Varine (Clements) Irwin (1915-2006) lived in tents in the oilfields of northwest Texas as a young girl.  Her father worked in the oilfields with a team of huge horses. After her mother died in 1923, Nana was pulled between her mother’s family and father’s family before ending up in the Reynolds Presbyterian Home in Dallas.  She graduated valedictorian of her class at Vickery High School. After dropping out of nursing school at University of Texas, getting married and having a family, she eventually went back to school and became a licensed vocational nurse.

All of these little details of the lives of my elders sparked an interest in me to learn more, an obsession that has continued for nearly 35 years.

#52Ancestors #FamilyHistoryObession

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in Family, Genealogy

Comments Off on Pectus Excavatum (as seen on Olympics swim coverage)

Pectus Excavatum (as seen on Olympics swim coverage)

Posted August 12th 2016 by sbuntyn

Watching Cody Miller bring home a bronze in the men’s 100m breaststroke at the Rio Olympics this week has brought back some memories of summer swim league.

Miller has received a lot of press coverage about swimming with a chest deformity called “pectus excavatum“.  He was diagnosed early and was told swimming would be a good way to keep his lungs and heart healthy.  He has some photos about his story here.

My son, Connor, also has pectus excavatum (PE).  When he swam competitively in summer swim league from 2011-2012 (age 12-13), he was very self-conscious of his sunken chest and extremely tall and lean body.  He enjoyed swimming, was good at quick races like 50m or 100m, but didn’t have the stamina to do well at 400m.  When the time came to commit to year-round swim team, he decided to stop swimming competitively.

 

Connor 2012 Connor 2012

We were somewhat disappointed, envisioning him as the next Michael Phelps, but respected his decision.

Connor’s PE first showed up around age 3, but our pediatrician never made it into any big deal (even during the two years of summer swim) until around age 16, when he looked at PE as well as other physical traits to send Connor to the Kleberg Genetics Clinic at Texas Children’s Hospital to have an initial evaluation for possible Marfan Syndrome.

After a physical examination, the specialist determined that Connor didn’t have enough physical markers for Marfan Syndrome (he needed just 1 more) and sent him for genetic testing.  When those results came back, it showed that he didn’t have Marfan Syndrome or related disorders (based on the gene markers currently tested).  He was tentatively diagnosed with “unspecified connective tissue disorder.”

Next week, my daughter goes for her turn at the Genetics Clinic.  She also has PE, as well as other physical characteristics similar to her brother.  We’ll see what she gets diagnosed with.

The moral of this story is – ask questions of your doctors, get answers, help your kids.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Health, Kids

Comments Off on “Mimi and Dona”, or “Grace and Dorothy”

“Mimi and Dona”, or “Grace and Dorothy”

Posted December 23rd 2015 by sbuntyn

I watched a documentary on PBS tonight called “Mimi and Dona”.  It is part of the Independent Lens documentary series.

The film follows Mimi, the elderly mother and care-giver of Dona, her intellectually-disabled adult daughter.  Mimi can no longer care for Dona and must find her a new home.

I cried my way through this film.  I had to explain to my kids that I was crying because this could have been the story of my Nana Grace and her sister Dorothy May, if circumstances had turned out differently.

Let me lay the background.  My grandmother and her siblings, Freddie and Dorothy, were “orphaned” when their mother died in 1923.  Grace was about 7 years old, Freddie was about 4, and Dorothy was about 1.  Their father worked as a teamster in the oilfields of West Texas and was unable to care for them, so they were taken in first by their mother’s relatives, then by their father’s relatives, before finally ending up in the Reynolds Presbyterian Orphanage in Vickery, TX about 1925.

At the orphanage, they were separated: Grace went to the girls’ dormitory; Freddie, to the boys’ dormitory; and little Dorothy, who was sickly, to a babies’ home closer to the hospitals in Dallas.

Dorothy suffered an accident as a toddler that caused her to leak fluid from her ears and be “slow to learn”.  My grandmother told me that Dorothy had fallen down an elevator shaft, about 1 floor, and that had damaged her brain.  I have not been able to verify this.

Dorothy was placed in the care of the Texas mental health authorities at a very young age, living in the state home in Mexia for several years, then in group homes. Once my grandmother was married and settled in Houston in the 1940s, Dorothy began to make regular visits, traveling via bus from group homes.  In the early 1970s, on her last visit, she didn’t want to go back to her group home, instead wanting to live with my grandmother.  My grandmother requested that the group home limit Dorothy’s visits to her, as she felt they were disruptive to Dorothy’s well-being, and my grandmother was not financially or physically able to care for her permanently.

My grandmother’s brother Freddie was the family contact person for the state records.  When he died in the mid-1970s, his widow told the state she wanted nothing to do with the decisions made about his sister Dorothy.  She did not inform my grandmother of this, and when my grandmother contacted the group home to set up Dorothy’s next visit, she was informed that the family had requested no-contact, therefore no visits could be made.  It was too late, according to the state, to regain access to Dorothy.

This situation haunted my grandmother for decades.  Before Nana Grace died in 2006, she asked me to find out if her baby sister was even still alive.

I contacted the state mental health department and got quite the run-around, transfers to multiple departments and being told no one could help me due to privacy laws.  In late 2007, nearly a year after my Nana died, an state employee (who shall remain anonymous) called and gave me a lead on Dorothy, that she might be in a nursing home in Athens.

In Spring 2008, My mother and I went to Athens and found the nursing home.  Standing there in person, they confirmed that Dorothy May resided there.  The staff told us that if we had called, they would not have been allowed to tell us anything, again due to privacy laws, and also because Dorothy was a ward of the state with a non-family guardian.

We were allowed to visit Aunt Dorothy.  When we walked through the door of the dining room, Dorothy recognized my mother immediately, despite not having seen her in over 30 years.  She thought that I was my Aunt Sydney (whom I greatly resemble), being unaware that Sydney had died in 1993.  She thought that my 2 year old daughter was me, as that was the age I was when last she saw me.  She was understandably upset to learn that her sister had died.

Dorothy had been waiting years for a visit from family.  No one had ever told her why her family never came to see her – that the family didn’t even know where she lived.

She took us to her room and showed us the old family photos framed on her dresser.  She told my mother that she was ready to go, she just needed to pack her suitcase. This broke our hearts, for she believed that the family had finally come to bring her home.  My mother told her that she had to stay there, that we would come back to visit soon.

Mama had left her contact information for the state-appointed guardian, who contacted her and told her not to return without written approval, because her visit had been disruptive to Dorothy’s life.  Although Mama requested another visit, the guardian did not approve it.

Sadly, Dorothy died in 2009, a few months after our visit.

If circumstances had turned out differently, this could have been story of “Grace and Dorothy”.  My grandmother would have been the elderly care-giver of her adult intellectually-disabled sister.  We would have been richer for Dorothy’s day-to-day presence in our lives.

If circumstances had been different.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Family, Genealogy

Comments Off on 1940 Census, Buntyn Households

1940 Census, Buntyn Households

Posted June 19th 2015 by sbuntyn

I find so little time right now to work on my genealogy. Sometimes it seems like months go by without a chance to do any online research.  And forget going to Clayton Library – I haven’t had a free afternoon to do that in a couple of years.  But tonight I was looking at a few families in my genealogy database and realized that I had 1930 census data for them, but none for 1940.  It has been 3 years since the release of the 1940 data and it has been fully indexed, so what took me so long to get around to searching through it?!

I’m using the free 1940 index at FamilySearch, since I let my Ancestry subscription temporarily lapse for the first time in about 15 years of usage.

Let’s start by finding out how many households in 1940 were headed by someone surnamed Buntyn, then go on from there…

54 heads of families with exact spelling of Buntyn, in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas.

203 people with exact spelling of Buntyn

None of my grandfather’s immediate family is listed with the proper spelling of our surname.

=====

10,457 people with spelling variants of Buntyn, including Banton, Buntan, Bunten, Buntin, Bunting, Bunton (all part of Soundex code B535)

Narrow to first name of Joe: 396 people

Narrow to residence of Texas: 19

Ah, there’s great-uncle Joe Clarence Buntyn enumerated as “Joe C. Bunten” in Harris County, Texas.

But where’s my grandpa, Joe Stanley Buntyn?  I’m not locating him at all.

So I’ll go about this a different way.  I’ve been told that my grandpa lived down the street from his sister Fayne Leatherwood Gibson around 1940.  Can I find her?

Yes, I found Aunt Fayne, with the proper spelling of her name, how about that?  She is included on film number 005458105.  Clicking on the film number takes me to a search page for that film, 37,946 people indexed on it.

Narrow to first name of Joe: 1,846 people

Narrow to birth year of 1909: 25 people

And there’s grandpa, listed as “Joe Bentzen” with his spouse “Alma Bentzen”.  Not in the same Soundex range at all (Buntyn and variants have Soundex code B535, Bentzen has Soundex code B532).

Aunt Fayne and her husband apparently lived in a duplex with my grandparents, as they share the same house number, but are enumerated as a different family number. Interesting…

Joe Buntyn household and Harold O. Gibson household, 1940 U.S. Census, 6925 El Paso Street, Tract 7, Houston, Justice Precinct 1, Harris County, Texas.

Joe Buntyn household and Harold O. Gibson household, 1940 U.S. Census, 6925 El Paso Street, Tract 7, Houston, Justice Precinct 1, Harris County, Texas.

I’ll be working on adding the census information for my extended families to my database for several months…

Tags: ,
Posted in Genealogy

Comments Off on Summer fun, not in the sun

Summer fun, not in the sun

Posted June 11th 2015 by sbuntyn

We are a bowling family.  It is the athletic sport of choice for our son.  It is recreational and good exercise for the rest of us.

One of the things I love most about bowling is the action always takes place indoors, in the blessed air conditioning!  We were a summer-league swim family for two years, frequently sitting outside under awnings with fans, or inside sweltering natatoriums, waiting hours for the few minutes our child would swim.  So we know from experience that in the Southeast Texas sun and heat, we’d rather be indoors than outside!

We spend serious money on bowling equipment, league fees and practice.  Our bowling year runs September to August, and so far this bowling year we have spent about $2800 on the sport.

I’m always looking for ways to save a little money on our activities.  Hundreds of bowling centers across the country offer free summer bowling programs.  For the past 4 years, we participated in Kids Bowl Free, which includes independent (non-chain) bowling centers.  A similar national-chain program is AMF Summer Games.

Our favorite bowling center is Max Bowl East and it now has its own program, the Summer Kids Club.

You’ll get 2 free games per day for children up to age 15. Adults and children 16-18 can get a family pass – $29.95 for up to 4 people to have 2 games daily.  If you need to rent shoes, that is $3/pair.  The hours will be Monday-Friday until 6 p.m.  The program began June 1st and runs through August 28th.

You might think this sounds pricey, but if you bowl even just 1 day per week, you will save money.  The usual price of daytime bowling at Max Bowl is $4/game, so two games plus shoe rental would be $11.  Bowling once a week times 11 weeks (remaining in the summer) could cost $121/person.

Summer bowling is a great way to spend time with family and friends.  It’s also a great way to find out if your kids love bowling so much that they want to keep doing it after the summer ends. So come join us at Max Bowl East this summer and sign up for the Summer Kids Club!

 

Posted in Uncategorized

Comments Off on Car woes

Car woes

Posted June 4th 2015 by sbuntyn

Today I took my 2007 Hyundai Entourage minivan to the Humble Hyundai service department to have a couple of things looked at:

  1. The air bag light came on about 10 days ago and never went off. This is a big deal because the air bag won’t deploy in an accident when the light is on.
  2. The a/c was cycling a lot and not really gettting cold.  In some climates, you might not care to have it checked.  In Houston, at the beginning of the summer, it’s a must-do.  I spent several summers in old cars with no a/c here, and swore to never do it again.

The service manager told me it would take about two hours to check everything out, so I waited.  There is a comfortable waiting room with free bottled water and a big screen tv, so it wasn’t a hardship.

At about two hours, the manager came to give me the lowdown.  The air bag is fine – the sensors are all working, so they reset the computer.  The a/c is not that bad – needed a new cabin air filter and a system flush.  Total cost $300.

Then he said “BUT” – while examining the engine, the technician saw that the valve cover gaskets were leaking oil onto the alternator.  And the oil pan gasket is leaking.  Replacement of all the said gaskets and the alternator, another $1200.

I need my van, so it has to be fixed. Comparing $1500 to fix it vs. $5000-7000/year for 5 years for a new vehicle is a no-brainer.  We don’t have car loans and we’re not interested in a new vehicle for another 2-3 years.  We are not mechanically inclined folks – so neither my husband nor myself is going to fix it.  So my van is in the shop for one-three days, depending on when the service techs can get to it.  There are a lot of flood-damaged vehicles ahead of me.

I did get a loaner car from the shop.  Very nice, a 2015 Hyundai Tucson with a lot of bells and whistles, only 220 miles on it.  We were thinking about buying this model in a few years to replace our other vehicle, a 2005 Ford Escape.  My 6’1″ hubby and 6’6″ son checked out the leg- and head-room in the Tuscon tonight and were pleasantly surprised that there was plenty of both.  So this might be our new vehicle, later.

I don’t love the Tucson – it’s so small compared to my van that I felt like I was driving a clown car.  But that’s okay, since I don’t drive the Escape unless I have to. :)

This repair expense has me on edge, wondering what’s going to hit us next.  This week has been expensive – CT scan, cremation bill, hotel reservation, car repair… still have to pay for the kids’ x-rays tomorrow.  Having to add more debt to what we are already paying down is depressing.  But we’ll get through it.

Tags: ,
Posted in Home

Comments Off on “TCM Presents Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir”

“TCM Presents Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir”

Posted June 4th 2015 by sbuntyn

I enrolled in the above-named course at Canvas Network after a friend posted the link on Facebook a couple of weeks ago. (Thanks, Christy P.!)

The class started on 6/1/15 and runs through 8/3/15.  It’s using TCM’s Summer of Darkness film festival as its main source.  I am a cord-cutter and haven’t had cable access in over 5 years, so I don’t get TCM (Turner Classic Movies). The professor has made allowances for that – those without TCM access are directed to specific public domain movies available at the Internet Archive.

However, I do have a Roku, with a host of free channels (including Cafe Noir), and I pay for access to Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

My goal this week will be go through the list of over 100 movies to be shown during the TCM film festival and determine if they are available to me through another service.

I already found the first one – “M” (1931) directed by Fritz Lang.  It is available through Hulu. YAY!

So, if you like film noir or want to learn more about it, come join me in the class!

Tags: ,
Posted in Family
« Older Entries