Wrestling Life

Last night (Sunday), my son went to a going-away party for a young man, a youth group friend, who left today for basic training in one of the branches of the military. While I was sitting in my car waiting for Raleigh to say his goodbyes, another of his friends was standing at my window, telling me that my son is a glutton for punishment. I didn't really know what he was talking about until we were on the ride home and Raleigh was telling me about how the boys at the party did some wrestling and how he lost something like ten falls in a row to the friend who was going away. A glutton for punishment?

I remembered that I used to wrestle like that with my cousin and a handful of other boys from around the rural mountain village where I grew up. Always the biggest guy in the gang, I often had to take on two or three at a time. I remember kicking their butts regularly, although they might remember it differently. While wrestling remained an interest in the years that followed, by the time our five county schools consolidated to form one school with enough money and participation to have a wrestling team, I was too deeply invested in basketball, and if I remember rightly, the two seasons ran at roughly the same time. So, I never wrestled in any organized--or skilled--way.

I've often wondered what happens to old wrestlers, not the "pro" kind (or maybe them too) but the guys like the ones I went to school with who were on the team and loved the sport. How do they continue doing what they love? Can they? In my late 40s, it's still relatively easy to get together with a group to play some half-court basketball or a few innings of softball, and even though I've grown a little brittle, I can still join my peers for a game of touch football if one happens to start up. In Willow Springs Park, I often see a group of our friends from south of the border--be they legal or not--gathered into two teams and skillfully kicking a ball around. But I think it would be awfully difficult for an old wrestler to continue "playing" his (or her) sport in such social way. How would I respond to somebody who walked up to me at the park or the gym and said, "Wanna wrestle?" I can think of several things I might say, none of which would approach "yes" (even if I was interested), and that's gotta be sad for the true lover of the sport. Maybe there are clubs out there somewhere.

Anyway, my wrestling has mostly undergone a metamorphosis into metaphor. Regardless of your interest or lack of interest in the sport--whether or not you include the circus of today's "professional" entertainment version--wrestling is an accurate metaphor for life. Life is a physicalmentalemotional struggle. We grapple with problems--relationships, finances, morality and so on. We have our skills, and we face skilled opponents. Wrestling is much more human, I think, in its metaphorical qualities than, say, the loneliness of long-distance running or the touch-me-and-it's-a-foul rules of a team sport like basketball. Wrestling is up close and personal; it's hands-on and messy, forcing us to become intimately involved with those things with which we grapple--even when God is the one we wrestle with. (One of the strangest and most affecting stories in the Old Testament, for me, is Genesis 32: 22-32, where Jacob wrestles with God--an angel in some versions. Take a look at that passage, and wrestle with what it says.)

As Raleigh and I rode home from the party, he said, with neither anger nor amazement in his voice, that ground-fighting exercises in tae kwon do didn't prepare him for what happened when he wrestled with his friend. (Keep in mind that Raleigh is a third-degree black belt in tae kwon do.) Ground-fighting, as I've seen Raleigh and his fellow students practice it, uses prescribed holds and escapes that all participants practice and use. With its variety and messiness, catch-as-catch-can wrestling took Raleigh by surprise. Life will do that to him over and over and over again, life by turns sneaky and brutal and overpowering. My hope is that he won't quit when he discovers wrestling life is messy and unpredictable, that he'll come back and come back again, even when life has beaten him to the ground ten times in a row. I hope he won't be a glutton for punishment, a stupid man never learning from his defeats, but a tenacious human being who will keep trying his strength against life until he overcomes.


244.8 NWT

A Bruce Cockburn Song

The Trouble with Normal

Strikes across the frontier and strikes for higher wage
Planet lurches to the right as ideologies engage
Suddenly it's repression, moratorium on rights
What did they think the politics of panic would invite?
Person in the street shrugs -- "Security comes first"
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Callous men in business costume speak computerese
Play pinball with the Third World trying to keep it on its knees
Their single crop starvation plans put sugar in your tea
And the local Third World's kept on reservations you don't see
"It'll all go back to normal if we put our nation first"
But the trouble with normal is it always gets worse

Fashionable fascism dominates the scene
When ends don't meet it's easier to justify the means
Tenants get the dregs and landlords get the cream
As the grinding devolution of the democratic dream
Brings us men in gas masks dancing while the shells burst
The trouble with normal is it always gets worse


http://cockburnproject.net/songs&music/ttwn.html

A Poem (from a non-poet)

Morning in Fayetteville

Is this the way it is
in the war-torn countries of the world?
An old man sits and reads an old book.
Women talk of the day and its work.
A child plays with toy ponies on the floor.
The old man looks up, listens and turns a page.

A breeze sings softly in the chimes.
And beyond the woods out back,
somewhere--not far away--beneath the blue sky
artillery rumbles.
The glass in the windows rattles,
and a family picture falls from the wall.

The Heat Is On

Yesterday, at 2:45, Leesa, Raleigh and I flew out of Johnson City and descended into the Low Country of South Carolina--I think that's what it's called. I waved at Columbia, where studies at the University of South Carlolina earned me my doctorate. At about 8:45 or so we delivered our son into the hands of his youth group leaders and his youth group friends. All seemed so happy to see him. Our pastor and the youth director (his wife) seemed a bit weary but happy, as did the other leaders. The week seems to have gone well so far, and I hope it continues to do so. Leesa and I had to go to Target to pick up some stuff for Raleigh, and two of the youth went along to exchange some stuff they'd bought earlier. We had a nice conversation with the son of our friends, checked out the candle-making that was taking place and then headed out into the night to find our motel--the Red Roof Inn, where we watched a movie late and then slept.

This morning, Leesa went out to find the local Curves and had quite an adventure--she wouldn't use so nice a term! The location closest to our motel was closed, and some other patrons there gave her bad directions to another Mt. Pleasant location. She got lost. Anyway, when she was finally "home" safely, I took a dip in the pool, and then we got ready and checked out.

I could not be so close to the ocean without taking a short look at least, so we drove out to Sullivan's Island. I found a shady place to park, and while Leesa sat in the car, I worked up a powerful sweat walking down the beach access and across the long stretch of sand to stick a toe in the water.

We arrived in Fayetteville at around 5:00, went out to eat with our family here and then sat and watched Capote.

Another day of driving and we'll be home.

"On the road again . . ."

First to Charleston, South Carolina, where I'll see the ocean for the first time in four years, and then to Fayetteville, North Carolina, where I'll see my son and his family for the second time in a week!


240.4 NWT

A Tuesday in July

First, an interesting aside about the "Weekend in Sparta" post. Alleghany [County] High School is in the town of Sparta. They call themselves the Trojans, which seems rather odd to me given the "fact" that Sparta and Troy were on opposite sides of the Trojan War. Seems to me that the Alleghany Spartans would've been more appropriate. After all, the Spartans were known for their physical power, which ought to fit nicely with most any high school sport (male or female). Maybe they thought that naming the school the Spartans privileged the town over the rest of the county. Or maybe they just thought that Sparta and Troy could be easily lumped together as parts of the ancient world--which actually suggests a certain lack of thinking. Why am I going on about this? I really don't know! -- 11:48 a.m.

Richard Roberts--"running for Congress"--frightens me! (I just heard one of his hyper-conservative TV messages from the other room.)

Apart from the little blurb above, I spent most of the morning in my office reading Charles Brockden Brown's Edgar Huntly; or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker (1799). Not a great novel. But what a great job! Then, after I brought Raleigh home from school, I mowed the yard. Raleigh had tae kwon do tonight (6:30-8:30), so we were off to north Johnson City for that. He's a third-degree black belt, by the way.

While Raleigh was working out, I went to Kroger and ran into a student I had in American Literature I last spring. His name is Sam, and he's trying to finish up a degree in Accountancy, I think. We had a good talk. He's an older student, usually a pleasure for those of us teaching at the college level. While one older student in Sam's class wasn't a pleasure (she looked like she was my age, near 50, and she stunk of beer at 9:45 every Tuesday and Thursday morning), Sam was great. He's looking to go after his Master's degree, and I told him that, if he was as good with accounting as he was with early American literature, he ought to go for it.

Once I picked Raleigh up and got him home, Leesa and I nudged him through getting packed for tomorrow's trip to Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina. His youth group at church has been there since Sunday, carrying on with their mission trip. Raleigh's in school, so he wasn't able to go for the whole week, but we'll leave right after school tomorrow and take him to meet them. He'll join them for their last work day on Thursday, their play day on Friday and their trip home on Saturday. He has ideas of going into construction of some sort one day, so he's excited about getting to work at least one day while there. He loves that stuff!

Leesa and I will stay in Mt. Pleasant's Red Roof Inn tomorrow night (Wednesday) and on Thursday morning drive up to Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a vising with our granddaughter Mackenzie. We saw Lane and Morgan this past weekend, so this overnight in Fayetteville is mostly to be with the little one. Then we'll travel back home on Friday.

Day is done, plans for tomorrow are made, and the bed is turned down. All in all, a good solid day of human being. -- 10:59 p.m.


240.6 NWT

Weekend in Sparta

Leesa and I picked Raleigh up at school on Friday and away we went for a weekend in Sparta, North Carolina, a somewhat strange little town in the southern Appalachians. Why strange? Maybe "strange" is too strong a word. I'll say that it's interesting to stand in the line at Hess (gas & convenience store) behind golfers and working poor and earthy hippies and a square dancer in full regalia, all of whom are, at 11:00 at night, buying as much beer as they can carry. By the way, I was buying two Snickers ice cream bars, one for Raleigh and one for me.

The occasion of this jaunt to Sparta was a surprise birthday party for our older son Lane. He turned 30 on Sunday the 23rd. Here's a picture of him with his wife Morgan (in the black with the camera) not long after they arrived and the surprise was sprung on Friday night. Morgan had invited several of Lane's friends--and Lane's parents and little brother--to join the celebration. The event took place at a house on the New River. (Leesa, Raleigh and I stayed at the Alleghany Inn in Sparta.)

The weekend consisted of the surprise on Friday, accompanied by lots of finger food and alcohol, followed by a long night of laughing and drinking around the fire (after Leesa, Raleigh and I had returned to our motel). Saturday included tubing on the river with alcohol for the partiers and Pepsi for Raleigh, a general nap time in the late afternoon, a barbecue dinner with alcohol and another long night laughing and drinking and who knows what else around the fire. The "kids" had a blast, but the ones I saw on Sunday morning were awfully weary of body and red of eye.

One of the Friday night events apparently included teeing up some golf balls and whacking them across the river. Of course, with all the alcohol--and perhaps some naturally weak golfing skills--lots of ball were dribbled into the shallow water near the bank. While most of the crew napped on Saturday afternoon, Raleigh was out in the river searching for golf balls like a bare-handed fisherman. He would find three or four, take them up on the bank and tee them up for himself. He dribbled a few in the river himself--not from inebriation but from having just started learning to swing--but the last couple he hit were straight and long, one landing in the shallows at the foot of the opposite bank, one far surpassing that and disappearing in a field between the opposite edge of the river and a road that runs along the foot of the hill beyond.

So, my little family's trip lasted from Friday afternoon when we left Johnson City to Sunday afternoon when we returned. In between, we joined a good bit of the merrymaking. Leesa and I also took time out for walking the track at the high school Saturday morning and eating lunch together at a place called The Riverside Grill. Of course it's now that time of the month--financially speaking--so we'll have to see how well the good time there holds up against the time here between now and payday!

Into the West: Prelude (continued)

The itinerary for my trip is set. More or less. It's a lot of driving, which seems crazy with gas prices like they are, but it'll be nice to see the West again. Although it gets a little squirrly in the middle, here are the basic stops:

8/7--Indianapolis, IN

8/8--Walnut, IA
I chose this stop because it's farther along than Des Moines, and I grew up on Walnut, NC.

8/9--Mitchell, SD
8/10--Chadron, NE
This is where it might get squirrly. Last night I tried calling the South Dakota Codys, and the number that they've always had now belongs to somebody else. I'll go to Mitchell for the night and then drive to Rapid City, to the address where my relatives have lived for years. If they're no longer there, I'll do some asking around to see if I can find out anything about what happened to them. If I find nothing, I'll drive south to Nebraska and stay the night there.

8/11--Denver, CO
8/12--Castle Rock, CO
This night will be spent with Jack York and family. Jack grew up in California, and we met on the European tour twenty-seven years ago. We've been friends ever since.

8/13--Witchita, KS
8/14--Tulsa, OK
8/15--Little Rock, AR
8/16--Nashville, TN
My old stomping grounds where I'll stay with my friend Mark Chesshir and his family.

8/17--Home (happily! by then, I'm sure)


242.6 NWT

Into the West: Prelude (A Musical Interlude)

Dizzy from the Distance

I'm running through a pastel desert,
And that ol' sun is straining hard sending the heat down—
Bleaching all bright colors from the land and the living things
For miles and miles around.
The only sounds are the whining of my wheels on the highway
And the roaring of the wind in my ears.
This whole scene is looking like a painting of my life,
A painting of my life when you're not here—
And I'm dizzy from the distance.

Well, I watched you take the dive
Into that sea of light, and you never once came up for air.
So I put my number in a bottle, tossed it, and then I turned
And I got away from there.
Sometimes you're on the line to say you miss me
When the frantic boomtown rhythm has nigh driven you to tears.
In this western quiet I am reaching out for you,
Still reaching out for you when you're not here—
And I'm dizzy from the distance
Fallen in between us—
I'm dizzy from the distance
Fallen in between us.

I stand on a windy ledge,
These empty arms outstretched;
I'm calling out your name,
And the echo is promising a change
Gonna come around someday . . . someday.

Well, I'm late to meet the morning train,
With a broken rose in hand, red-faced and out of breath.
Must've been some bad connection down the line;
The train pulls out, and I am left.
And I wonder why love comes in pieces hard to put together,
With directions that are anything but clear.
From the station to the highway through that desert in the night—
There's a desert in the night when you're not here—
And I'm dizzy from the distance
Fallen in between us—
I'm dizzy from the distance
Fallen in between us.


244.0 NWT

Into the West: Prelude

I fell in love with the landscapes of the American West in the latter half of the 1980s. Several times during those years when I worked as a songwriter, I would cash my monthly paycheck, throw my guitar in the car and, as Huck Finn says, "light out for the Territory." I found a couple of towns that I liked (Missoula, Montana, especially), but for the most part the wide open spaces were what grabbed me. I was reading a good bit of Texas writer Larry McMurtry (Lonesome Dove and others) and Montana writer Ivan Doig (This House of Sky and others) and listening to a lot of American composer Aaron Copland and songwriter Bruce Hornsby, whose first album The Way It Is featured several tunes that seemed to capture the wide open feeling of the plains. Anyway, I left Nashville headed west every time I could until I headed east in 1989 to get married. Since then, I've traveled west only once, sometime around 1992, I think.

My dad's brother JC served many years at Ellsworth Air Force Base in Box Elder, South Dakota, just east of Rapid City. Before my first visit to JC's, I'd never been further west than Memphis, Tennessee. Dad's family has never been very good at keeping in touch with one another, not in comparison with my mom's family, at least. From the time JC and his wife Sonya and two sons Paul and Bob lived briefly near us in Marshall, North Carolina (probably sometime in the years between 1966 and 1970), and then returned to South Dakota, I don't recall seeing them again until my brother Jerry and I traveled to the Black Hills around 1985 or 1986. Afterwards, in those last few years of the 1980s, I saw JC, Sonya and Bob fairly often. Paul lived in Australia--still does, I believe.

Early in the '80s, JC had been diagnosed with a bad case of lung cancer and given some six months to live. I remember praying every night for his health and healing. The cancer never went away, but miraculously, JC outlived my dad, who died in November 1996. But die JC did, eventually, a couple of years after Dad, I think. (For whatever reason--probably PhD studies--I wasn't able to go to the funeral.) JC's death left Sonya and Bob there in Rapid City, far away from Paul, from JC's family in the North Carolina mountains and from Sonya's family in England.

Now we seem to have lost touch with them. Letters and cards to their longtime address come back as undeliverable. The email address no longer works. Telephone calls have gone unanswered.

So, I'm going into the West to try and find them. . . .


244.0 NWT

We'll Leave the Light on for You?

I'm sleepy and on the verge of heading off to bed, but I thought I'd write just a bit before I go. This evening I've been trying to map out a trip I'm planning for 7-17 August. It's my time away for this year, and I've decided to go on something of a family mission trip to Rapid City, South Dakota.

Unfortunately, I've picked the worst time to visit the Black Hills of Dakota. Up the road from Rapid City, in Sturgis, the 6th through the 13th (roughly) is the time of the Rock & Rally (or something like that). It's a big motorcycle event and concert. And it must really be BIG! The hotels are practically booked up in a 100 mile radius (or so it seems), and the rooms are being sold at ridiculous prices. For example, other than a couple of $250 per night rooms in Rapid City, the closest opening I found for a person traveling west on I-70 was at the Motel 6 in famous Wall, South Dakota, and that room was going for $130 per night--a Motel 6!

I'll probably write later about the potential family difficulties involved in this trip. Suffice it to say for now that as I currently have the trip planned, I'll have to pull up short in Mitchell, South Dakota, on Wednesday, 9 August, hit Rapid City in the middle of the day on the 10th and then proceed to Chadron, Nebraska, for that night.

I've had enough of playing travel agent to myself for one night, so ho-ho-ho-hum it's off to bed for me. (Sing that last bit to the "pirate's life" tune.)


247 NWT

A Jaunt to North Carolina II

I read recently on a friend's blog that her work schedule--I don't think I know what she does--sends her off to sleep at 8:00 pm and wakes her up at 2:00 am. This reminded me of a story my uncle--a United Methodist minster (retired)--once told from the pulpit. My grandfather, Amos Stackhouse "Stack" Reeves (known to me as "Papa") was one of those folks in the rural mountain community of Walnut, NC, that Thomas Jefferson would have identified as a member of the "natural aristocracy," local leaders who are sought out not because of political or military campaigns but because of their natural abilities. Well, one fellow in the community was often coming 'round to ask Papa this or that question about farming (planting times and methods, etc.). The interesting part about this fellow's visits was that they were always at the first sign that Papa's house was astir in the morning. As soon as the first light appeared in the window, this fellow's voice would break the predawn stillness, calling from the yard, "Stack?"

The story goes that Papa and his youngest son (Joseph MacDonald Reeves, known to me as "Mack", the one who eventually became the Methodist minister) decided to go to this fellow's house in the middle of the night to see just how early he got up. Arriving at their planned observation point at 2:00 am, Papa and Mack were surprised to find their neighbor's house already lit up in the darkness. So, they quickly thought of a question they could ask him and went and knocked on the door. When the fellow's wife answered, Papa asked if her husband was home. She responded (at 2:00 am, mind you), "Well, he was here earlier this morning, but I'm not sure where he's gone off to right now."

It was to Papa's house, now Mom's house, that I went on Friday. I was surprised to find a little reunion going on there. I have two living Reeves uncles (out of seven), and both were to be at the house on Saturday. My mom and my aunt still live in Walnut, and the four of them--Harold (from St. Claire, Michigan), Mack (from Shelby, NC), Mom and Ernie spent some time Saturday afternoon just laughing and telling tales of the old times with Papa and Mama Reeves.

Except for one sister in poor health up in Michigan, these four are the last of a family of eleven--seven boys and four girls. Like my cousin Dan, who, with his two sons Josh and David, drove Harold down to the homeplace from Michigan last week, I wondered what images--with what variety of shadings of memory--played through their minds as they sat there together. I also wondered how often during that short afternoon of laughter the thought stirred in some dark corner of their minds that this might be last time all of them would be there in that house together. Truth be told, it's possible that it won't be. The oldest in that gathering was 83; Papa lived to be 86 and Mama Reeves lived to be, I think, 93.

So, I went to visit my mother for a night and experienced a wonderful little reunion of uncles and aunts, my brother, a couple of cousins (my favorite, Joe, included) and their children, my wife and son and me.


248 NWT

A Jaunt to North Carolina I

Over the river and through the woods, over the mountain and through more woods. . . . I'm off to my mom's for an overnight stay. It'll be nice to be there in the quiet tonight and then sleep in tomorrow before running errands for her.

Back tomorrow night.

243.6 NWT

Mowing

I love mowing the yard. I love the way it looks when it's finished, but I also love the act of mowing itself. My teenage son should be taking care of this chore, as I did when I was his age, but I'm too selfish. The roar of the mower cuts me off from the world, so you could say that the time I'm protective of is my time away. Sometimes I listen to music while I mow; sometimes I just put the earplugs in, which dulls the roar of the motor and also lets me hear the thud of my own footsteps as I make progress over the couple of hours it takes to finish this.

Yes, I still push a mower. My step-father-in-law gave me a riding mower about four years ago. I used it for two seasons and enjoyed it pretty well, but now it sits rotting under the pines at the back of my lot. I missed the physical exertion of pushing that mower back and forth and back and forth, so last year I went out and bought a new "walk-behind." The "sit-and-mow" hasn't been started since. (When I mowed the yard around the house where I grew up, I always had to push. Once I was off to college, Dad bought himself a rider.)

Maybe next summer I'll make the boy do the mowing, at least for part of the season. I'm sure it'll be as good for him as it was for me. In fact, I'm probably doing him a disservice by not making him get out there and drop sweat all over the yard and share the feeling I get when I look back on a yard well mowed.

I said earlier that mowing cuts me off from the world. It does. And I need that. What a world these days, eh? I'm glad to be cut off from it--the American wars, our President and his embarrassing talk about eating pig in Germany, the Middle East and its perpetual violence and on and on. I once thought we'd be better than this by now--better at being human, better at living together, better at looking toward the future with hope. Maybe it was Star Trek and Captain Kirk that put the idea in my head. I don't know. I've come to believe that to the extent that I thought we'd be better (to that extent, at least), we're becoming worse.

And so I mow, perhaps to cut myself off from this chaotic world and, at the same time, maintain a bit of order in my own.

I can hardly wait until the grass needs me again as much as I need it.


NWT 243.6

Disappearing Years

This morning at about 7:40 I stood and watched my son Raleigh disappear through the doors of his new school, University High (UH), and at that moment he officially became a freshman in high school, a full blown teenager. He's been going to school here in Johnson City since the 4th grade (Southside Elementary and Jonesborough Middle School), and in the short amount of time it took him to go from then to now, he'll be graduated from high school. I find that difficult to believe--and difficult to think about.

NWT 247.0

27 Years Ago

I spent most of the summer of 1979 in Europe, traveling the continent with a tour group called American-European Student Union (AESU). We arrived in London on 16 June, stayed there a few days and then headed out across the continent. I kept a journal throughout the trip. Here's the entry recorded 27 years ago today:

11 July (Wednesday): Day 25
Thessaloniki, Greece – Delphi, Greece
JOURNAL:
This morning I was a little late for breakfast. Finally on the road but no stations have gas. We run out of gasoline in the country outside Thessaloniki, but coast to a station, also out. We are near the sea, so I take a walk. . . . After several more tries and donations of 15-120 liters, finally had enough to make lunch and Aegean Sea (actually an inlet of Mediterranean). Here we swam and played Frisbee for about 45 mins.; then ate a large lunch with watermelon and then swam with Frisbee for 1½ hrs. We left and rode through beautiful countryside, winding roads climbing up out of the plains (remember the fortress on hill overlooking sea). Tolkien must have been here for many of his descriptions; it was really undescribable. Huge mountains rising tall, rugged and sheer out of the plains. Only bushes (80 million olive trees) grow on them and most show almost half solid rock.
NOTES: Rooming with Joe in #3 Delphi, Greece
Tonight walked streets, went to shops and finally back to hotel to rest
We arrived in Delphi, Greece just before sundown

I was 20 years old and in Europe for the summer!

If you'd like to read more about the trip, here are a couple of links. The first will take you to a basic description of the trip; the second leads to my day-by-day journal.

http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/autobiography.htm#SumrAbrd_text
http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/auto_AESUjournal.htm

NWT 244.0

Identity

Have you ever met somebody whose name or birthday is the same as yours? Lots of us know people who share our first name ("Christian" name or given name), and many of us know people unrelated to us who share our last name (surname or family name). But how many of us know people with whom we share both a first and last name? In these days of identity theft--a real and serious problem--I'm now and then made aware of the curious phenomenon--usually not a problem--of what I'd call "identity sharing."


I have friends named Mike or Michael. Believe it or not, I always feel a twinge of uneasiness when I'm talking to them and the need arises to speak their name aloud. What kind of twinge is this? I think it must have to do with such dark feelings as jealousy and selfishness. But what am I jealous of? What am I being selfish about? The name, I'm sure. But maybe it's my identity too. Because I go by "Michael" these days, I tend to try to call my "namesakes" by "Mike." I suppose it's my attempt to establish some difference between us, to avoid as much as possible sharing an important component of my identity with him. And if, for whatever reason, I have to call him "Michael," I tend to do so in some sort of playful tone that makes light of his apparent attempt to steal my name.



The same situation doesn't seem to exist with the family name. When I meet or hear of people with the last name of Cody, I seem to have a greater willingness to share with them. I might even feel a sense of kinship, even though it's highly unlikely that any traceable kinship exists between us. I've always felt somewhat proud--until recently, at least--of sharing Cody with the Western hero Buffalo Bill (William Cody). More recently, however, as I've read a good bit of Native American literature and thought about the ways the American West was won and lost, I'm not so proud. Still, I'm not jealous of sharing the name. I sometimes have students in class with the last name of Cody. I always want them to do well. Sometimes they do, and sometimes they don't.



Similar to this is my feeling about people with my last name as their first name. "Cody" has become popular as a first name in recent years. I think my son had two first-name Codys in his eighth grade class. Somehow this kind of sharing seems like an honor of sorts--as if it were this way: "We like your name so much that we're going to name our child that--after you."

I've thought about this from time to time in the past, but I was reminded of it yesterday and again this morning. Leesa and Raleigh and I went last night to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. I walked up to the window and asked for three tickets for the 9:00 showing. The young man on the other side of the glass experienced some difficulty bringing up the tickets, so I had a moment just standing there watching him and what he was doing. He kept making a sequence of entries on his keypad, but something didn't seem to be working the way it was supposed to. This went on for only a few seconds, I'm sure, but it gave me time to notice his name tag: "Cody M." My name is often listed just like this--alphabetical lists, for example. My email name at work is "codym." Somewhere in my mind was that little shock of recognition.

But how many of us know people whose full names--first and last, at least--are the same as ours? On the darker side of this issue is the telephone call I received this morning. A Ms. Williams from suchandsuch company, a collection agency, called because a seriously past due credit card account in the name of Michael A. Cody (my middle name is Amos) had been turned over to her for collection. A balance of almost $900 had been outstanding since sometime in 2005. Oddly enough, I had a credit card with the company in question just a year or so earlier. My card had been paid off, I was certain. But they had my telephone number! Slowly Ms. Williams and I went through the process of realizing that this wasn't my account. The last four digits of the account number were oddly similar--mine 2991, the other's 6991. But even though I had lived in Goodlettesville and Nashville in the past (the 1980s), my current address wasn't a PO Box in Madison, TN, nor did the last four digits of my Social Security match the one on file for the account. The company had looked for a current telephone number for a Michael A. Cody living in Tennessee and come up with mine. The situation gave me a few tense moments but ultimately left me curious and thoughtful, which in turn led to this rather odd post.

Things can get weird with same names. I once dated a girl whose parents had the same name, phonetically at least--his Carroll Anderson, hers Carol Anderson. I publish essays and such on literary topics, and a Michael J. Cody publishes in the somewhat related field of linguistics. When I lived in Nashville, the Attorney General of Tennessee was named Mike Cody. I remember a couple of times getting calls from news services. Thinking that I was somehow included in a general poll, I would answer a question or two related to state business before I realized that the interviewer probably thought I was the AG. (Once in a particularly wicked mood, I went ahead with the entire interview, even after I realized whom the person on the other end thought she was speaking to.) I guess that the reporter's assumption was that the state attorney general would live in the state capital, which in Tennessee is, of course, Nashville. But if I'm not mistaken, Mike Cody lived in Memphis. I guess reporters back then--the 1980s--simply called "information" and for a number; my "Cody, Michael A." was the first of three or four Michael Codys listed in the Nashville telephone book at the time.

To a lesser degree, our birthdays are connected with our identity. In June 1979, I flew from New York to London for a student tour of Europe. This was only my second flight ever--the first having been the day before when I flew from Charlotte to New York. I sat beside this one fellow all the way over the Atlantic, but I don't recall speaking a single word to him. (I was a shy young Appalachian man of 20, stepping out into the big world for the first time.) As we approached the airport in London, the stewardess passed around these little cards we were supposed to fill out. I was diligently working on mine when my neighbor nudged me with his elbow and held his card out for me to see. Except for the years, we shared the same birthday--11/25/19--. Suddenly a sense of connection developed between us, and although we had little time to talk at that point, I felt not so alone in the world.

One last thing: Whenever I teach Frederick Douglass's 1845 autobiography of his life as a slave in the American South, I spend a good bit of time focusing on the fact, discussed in Chapter One, that slaveholders tended not to allow slaves to know their specific birthdays. This was part of the system of stripping away things that might suggest an individual--and therefore special--identity.

Saturday Work & Music

Since around 10:00 this morning I've been busy with the only part of my job as an English professor that I don't love: GRADING. It's now approaching 6:30 EDT, and in the time between mid morning and now, I've graded twenty-one sophomore American literature exams. My eyes are tired, and my brain is strained. I didn't go straight through without a break, though. I divided them up into four groups (one of six and three of five) and took breaks in between. At the end of the first group, around 12:00 or so, I walked outside for a couple of minutes and ate a Snickers before settling in again. At the end of the second group, I took a long walk to the student center post office and then circled across campus to Backyard Burgers, where I ate lunch before coming back for round three. The break before the last batch was just a stretch, a drink of water and another Snickers. Now I'm almost finished. All that's left to do is record the grades on the official sheet and turn that in to the Office of the Registrar. And as I can't do the latter until Monday, I'm going home in a few minutes.

Before I go, however, I thought I'd let it be known that I didn't make it through the day on Snickers alone. I've listened to a lot of interesting music that I'd like to mention. I subscribe to a music service called Rhapsody. In one area of the service, I can listen to various "radio" stations. Basically these are selections of streaming audio from the service, put together thematically--formats like '50s Hits, Acid Jazz, Christian Alternative, Old School Rap, Polyester Palace, World Picks and many others.

One nice feature in the radio area is that I can put together my own station by selecting up to ten artists. The program then streams songs from these and other similar performers. I've put together several stations that I listen to at different times, but I'm fairly restricted in what I can listen to when I'm grading. I can't listen to familiar stuff, especially not familiar stuff with lyrics; listening to these, I can't concentrate on what I'm reading.

So, I have this one station I created and named "Mostly Instrumental." The founding ten of the station are Enya (ethereal pop), Acoustic Alchemy (contemporary instrumental), Sacred Spirits (Native American), Philip Aaberg (solo piano from Montana), Mark O'Connor (instrumental virtuoso), Ladysmith Black Mambazo (African township, I think), James Galway (classical and popular flutist), Douglas Spotted Eagle (contemporary Native American flutist), Ian Anderson and Angels of Venice (a wonderful discovery). I've listened to these performers all day, and they've drawn an interesting mix of performers from similar genres in Rhapsody: Floyd Cramer and Chet Atkins, Clannad and Mambeaux Sambonesia, R. Carlos Nakai and Dolores Keane, Jethro Tull and Fairport Convention.

I survived grading with a little walking, some nasty fried food, some sugar (chocolate) and a lot of great music.

Now I'm going home and celebrate the end of the a summer session and the coming of a teacher's summer vacation!

Another Attempt at Writing Life

I've always tried to keep a constant diary. I remember having an official diary when I was a kid, a little book with something like "My Diary" stamped in gold on the cover. I have no idea where that might be now, so I can't say how successful I was in maintaining it. When I began studies at Mars Hill College in August 1977, I did my best journaling or diary-making. For a good long time, entries went into half-sized spiral notebooks almost daily, and ultimately a decent percentage of the years from 1977 to 1990 is recorded in them.

Sometime in the mid 1990s, my wife Leesa gave me a wonderful full-sized notebook with spiral binding at the top instead of the side and a picture of two children--a boy with a flute, a girl beside him--sitting and looking a piece of sheet music that seems almost the size of a poster in comparison to them. I wrote sporadically in this for the next ten years or so and finally filled it up a couple of years ago. Now I have an ETSU notebook. The first entry in it is dated "Friday, 5 November 2004" and the most recent "Wednesday, 10 May 2006"; counting these dates, the notebook has 29 entries. That's fairly pitiful, I think.

Maybe a blog will inspire me to be better at keeping up with things. I'll try to write about the things that make up my life--family, work, church, writing, music and travel.

So, welcome to anybody who might stumble across this. I'll be happy to hear from you if you should have any comments or questions about what I write.