November 6
Laura M., age 15, North Carolina
November 6, 1997
Wore kinda tight pants and didn't like it. Saw people looking at my legs. Went 2 Renée's with Ashley and Chrissi. Sean, Mike, Tim, Eddie K. came. Mom came at 3:30. :( Did homework and story. Me, Em, and Eddie B. went 2 Jasper's. Home at 7:00. Did more homework and "Friends." Talked 2 Courtney and Ashley.
Marcy S., age 47, North Carolina
November 6, 1971
Insights often come when I get up in the night to go the bathroom — when I’m not quite awake. This popped into my head the night before last — I’m afraid to be myself in the most basic relationship of all — with Harold. Just as I was afraid to be myself with my parents as a child. Because every time I tried to assert my independence I was punished — often by the “deep freeze,” which was the most devastating form, I guess. Everything was fine as long as I was a sweet docile, obedient, completely dependent little girl. No wonder I lost my identity and began to feel like an appendage of my mother. There was often a sense of unreality about everything.
Which is the way I feel now with Harold. We’re playing a game about ignoring his drinking problem — pretending it doesn’t exit. Even when I have faced it and confronted him, he denies the problem and we start playing the game again. We’re both acting like children. The other day I determined that the next time I saw him coming out of the closet with a glass or heard him closing the drawer where he keeps his bottle I was going to tell him very calmly and without anger or judgment that I know what he was doing and that I just had to be honest about it. But did I? — no, it was like it always has been — he looks like a little boy who thinks he’s getting by with something and it would be cruel of me to make him face reality. I’ve always been chicken-hearted — could never bear to show anyone up or see them put on the spot. At least not someone I cared about so maybe I really do love Harold. No, maybe it’s not that I care so much as it is that I’m afraid. Because we played games when I was child — Mother and Daddy and I — but being a timid, insecure child I never had the courage to call them. I feel the same way now, even though I’m a grown woman and Harold is my husband, not my father.
Anna L., age 75, Illinois
November 6, 1960
Had made arrangements for Mrs. Merchant to pick Carrie up as we were going out to work a little for the sale. Later came home had something to eat. Were on our way out, again we overtook Geo. He was coming to have Lo drive him, he’d been in an accident riding with Chicago folks and were hit by a Jeep. Geo’s shoulder hurt, having therapy for it.
Henry S., age 26, Michigan
November 6, 1887
The baby was sick the most of last night and we got a short amount of rest. Neither of us went to church and it was a good thing as Kate was taken with a violent headache and has been sick about all day. Jessie Neill and Grace and her baby were here a while this afternoon. The wind is blowing a fearful gale tonight, which shakes the house “right smart.” It has been warm all day. I wrote a letter to ma tonight.
*(R. Henry Scadin Collection, D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, UNC Asheville)
Cornelia H., age 26, North Carolina
November 6, 1862
Very cold this morning, wind from the North. Mr. Henry & Joe Russell started to the sale this morning. Russell staid here last night. I finished another shirt this evening which makes three & two more to make. The bosoms, collars & wristbands are done of the two. Mr. Henry says things went very high today at the sale. Old Mr. Corn stays here tonight. Mr. Henry is not so well tonight. He has caught cold I think as it was very cold this evening.
*(Fear in North Carolina: The Civil War Journals and Letters of the Henry Family, Eds. Karen L. Clinard and Richard Russell, used with permission.)
Samuel P., age 34, London
November 6, 1667
Up, and to Westminster, where to the Parliament door, and there spoke with Sir G. Downing, to see what was done yesterday at the Treasury for Tangier, and it proved as good as nothing, so that I do see we shall be brought to great straits for money there. He tells me here that he is passing a Bill to make the Excise and every other part of the King’s Revenue assignable on the Exchequer, which indeed will be a very good thing. This he says with great glee as an act of his, and how poor a thing this was in the beginning, and with what envy he carried it on, and how my Lord Chancellor could never endure him for it since he first begun it. He tells me that the thing the House is just now upon is that of taking away the charter from the Company of Woodmongers, whose frauds, it seems, have been mightily laid before them. He tells me that they are like to fly very high against my Lord Chancellor. Thence I to the House of Lords, and there first saw Dr. Fuller, as Bishop of Lincoln, to sit among the Lords. Here I spoke with the Duke of York and the Duke of Albemarle about Tangier; but methinks both of them do look very coldly one upon another, and their discourse mighty cold, and little to the purpose about our want of money. Thence homeward, and called at Allestry’s, the bookseller, who is bookseller to the Royal Society, and there did buy three or four books, and find great variety of French and foreign books. And so home and to dinner, and after dinner with my wife to a play, and the girl — “Macbeth,” which we still like mightily, though mighty short of the content we used to have when Betterton acted, who is still sick. So home, troubled with the way and to get a coach, and so to supper and to bed. This day, in the Paynted-chamber, I met and walked with Mr. George Montagu, who thinks it may go hard with my Lord Sandwich, but he says the House is offended with Sir W. Coventry much, and that he do endeavour to gain them again in the most precarious manner in all things that is possible.
*(The Diary of Samuel Pepys M.A. F.R.S., edited by Henry B. Wheatley F.S.A., London, George Bell & Sons York St. Covent Garden, Cambridge Deighton Bell & Co., 1893.)