A Conversation with Elizabeth
1998
Missing S's

From:          Elizabeth
To:            mixsonl@acm.org
Date:          Mon, 23 Mar 1998 13:53:04 PST
Subject:       Missing S's
 
Have you gotten your missing S's situation straightened out? I'm not sending mail to Pet.com, as I imagine by now you might have it changed. When I started here, an announcement was put in the paper and they printed my degree incorrectly. I think they put M.S.L instead of M.L.S., but perhaps people just thought that was Masters of Science in Libraries and didn't notice it. Boogie Nights was an incredible movie, and I can't quit thinking about it. Basically it was about the pornographic film industry in the 1970's and 1980's, at the time videos started becoming popular. The film covers that transition. Because it is about the industry, it contained a fair amount of graphic material, which is why I think people walked out. Have you seen it--I just gave that a thought as I rave on about it?
 
Last night was one of my favorite X-file episodes, the one in which a man born with a congenital tail can also shape shift his body, and he shape shifts into Fox and almost seduces Scully. I'm still reading on Neuromancer, but with a little more difficulty. I'm having difficulty following the plot, and have to backtrack at times to try and pick up a thread of what's going on.
 
This is my last week of classes before Spring break which is next week.
 
Then I have one week of classes and then finals. I spent a lot of the weekend already studying for one final, Domestic Relations, by organizing and consolidating my notes. I'd really like to shoot for the
Highest Paper award in the class, but I have to do better than two entire sections of students to achieve that. I don't think I can do it in my Contracts course as the material is less interesting to me and secondly my friend is determined to get it.
 
Sunday I went to a Lenten concert downtown in one of the very old Episcopal churches which has a pipe organ. Most of the pieces were Bach. I really enjoyed it as except for one brief ending prayer, it is/was not a religious ceremony. I went last year as well and look forward to going every year that I am here. This year the church performed one of my favorite pieces which is Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring.

It is a short piece, but I like it quite a bit. I have a piano version at home. It sounds like simple music in a way, but for all I know it might be complexly structured. I thought about you learning to play it if you could, not that I would ever hear it.

Yes, the missing “s” in my last name, an annoyance I had to deal with my whole life. It got particularly bad when Nixon was president in the early 70’s. For years people not only left out the “s” but spelled my name “Nixon”. Not yet 17, I couldn’t vote in the 1969 election. After coming close to being drafted to go to Vietnam, I sure didn’t support Nixon and, come the 1972 election, I voted in my first presidential election for George McGovern. Unfortunately, Nixon won, and I would suffer through years more of my name being misspelled. At least Nixon resigned early because of the Watergate incident, but it still took a few years after he resigned for people stopped using the “N word” but leaving out the “s” persists to this day.  Mixson with or “Mixon” without the “s” has the same genealogy, going back to John Mixon the 1st coming to America in 1650. Many branches of John’s descendants added, left out, and then added back the “s” in the name. In the 1900’s, with better record keeping, the surname become more consistent in the different branches extending from John the 1st. Even as late as the 1935 Florida State census my grandfather, Wilbur Darlington Mixson, name was recorded as Mixon.

Breaking rules