Writing Life

Songwriting . . . and Singing

2012-01-07T10:54:00.000-08:00

I haven't written a song since "This Love," a musical toast I wrote for my older son's wedding in 2005 or 2006--I don't remember which. Before that I hadn't written a song since I co-wrote "She's a Wild One" with the Chesshir brothers early in the 1990s. I began defining myself as a songwriter back in 1970s, so I've now had several years of questioning and redefining my identity.

In 1989, I became a husband and the father of a 13-year-old boy. In January 1991 I started back to school, beginning the journey to where I am now, and in September 1991 I became the father of a baby boy. Not long after that, the band I was in dissolved and I quit making music altogether. I'm sure all of these changes required an intense degree of redefining in order to ward off--or cover up--a monumental identity crisis.

Although the writing of one song in 20 years is a measely achievement, I've continued to write other things--a novel, some short stories, a lot of academic writing, blogs, some poetry to be pitied. Some of this writing has stirred me nearly to the degree that my songwriting did for all those years. But nothing quite compares for me.

About 18 months ago, when I was 51, I decided that the song I'd written over the years didn't deserve to end up on both real and metaphorical shelves, ultimately to be lost. I have my fans, but my sons aren't among them. What I've done is likely to be over and done when it's left to them. So, I decided to start playing live, showcasing the songs and in the process trying to become a better singer and performer.

I'm most fully alive when I'm playing my songs. My written word becomes the sung word, words married to music for an intense elevation that is physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. I know of nothing exactly like it. I've experienced nothing exactly like it. Of course, the perfection of all this exists only in the rarest moments, when I'm not thinking about anything else. This often happens at home, and it seems to be happening more often in public performances, where it is helped along by energy from the audience and the degree to which I can let go my self-consciousness.

As I'm moving toward a career change--moving from mind-numbing administration back toward teaching and writing--I'm beginning to see little sparks in the mind. I remember these.

They kindle songs. Or they can if I nurture them into a flame.

2012

2012-01-01T13:11:00.000-08:00

I have one resolution this year, which is to write more, including blogging. I don't intend to put myself under a lot of pressure, but I would like to average at least one post per week. I'd like that one post to be something significant, although not necessarily long. So, this is my start.

As I wrote in my previous post, 2011 left a generally bad impression, even though lots of good stuff came my way. I'm not looking for a perfect life in 2012, but I would prefer that the world not fall apart in the way it does in the film 2012. Lots of people have made dire predictions based on the Mayan calendar, but others have refuted these same predictions. Either way, it's not something I can do anything about, so I'm not going to worry about it.

The only thing I really dread already about 2012, is the election process. We have become a parody of our best selves. The media will batter our ears and eyes 24/7 with all the crap swirling around in the clogged bowl of an election system entered by candidates who are neither of the best minds nor the best morals. Spin doctors will continue to work their wickedness from both sides until what is actually spinning is our heads. Candidates will say and do stupid things. Americans will continue to be drunk on that dangerous cocktail made up of equal parts arrogance and ignorance. Few if any will recognize that this country and this world are different from what they were in 1776, in 1876, in 1976; most will continue to act as if this is not true. We have difficult questions to face, the answers to which will not be found in the "good old days" or the golden age or, truly, in the things of this world.

All right, you can see how I feel about the national and world scenes.

Here's a list of things that I'd like to see happen in and around my life in 2012: I want to continue to be happy with my family (wife, older son and family, younger son). I want them to continue to be happy--and happy with me. I want to be healthy and continue regular physical activity at the gym. I would be thrilled to see my mom standing upright and walking without a walker. I want to relieve my brother and aunt more in the work they do to keep Mom going. I want to be happy again with my work at ETSU. I want to be a better teacher, and I want to keep learning. I want to read more. I want to continue making music, and I want to get better at it. I want to continue to write fiction and poetry and get better at that as well. I want to start writing songs again. I want to play the flute more. I want to continue being part of a church (Cherokee) that seeks to do the difficult work of helping our community and the world.

I guess that's enough to keep me busy for a year or so.

2011

2011-12-31T20:04:00.000-08:00

The clock shows that it's less than an hour until midnight and 2012. I'm watching an encore presentation of Austin City Limits--Tom Waits from 1978, the year that I turned 20. With a background of guitar, bass, soft drums and muted trumpet, Waits is in a gas station setting on stage. He shows up between two old gas pumps, and he's smoking a cigarette. He moves forward and takes a seat on a tire and starts telling a story in that voice of his.

2011 wasn't a banner year. Sure, it had its moments, but the stretch from January 1 to tonight is mostly colored by difficulties--I was denied promotion to full professor, a slap in my professional face that came completely out of the blue; my first surgery ever (hernia), followed by the most serious health issue I've ever faced; late in the year the death of a good friend and colleague; and finally head lice.

But it had its great moments as well: I published a poem; I had some great gigs at Good Stuff Grocery, Korner Kopia, Iron Horse Station and Acoustic Coffeehouse; I had a great couple of gigs for the honors students at Yoakley Hall, ETSU; I played the Waller in the Holler with the White Water Band and did a good solo set there as well; I reunited with Mark Chesshir for a great little duo gig at Dennis Cope's birthday party; I enjoyed teaching Native American literature through the fall semester; some fine times with friends, particularly with (in addition to those listed or implied above) those great folks from up on the mountain in Erwin.

Tom Waits has his band on the stage. He has a guitar now, and he's singing with that voice and laying down some lyrics:

"And at night when it's raining, it's pouring
The old man is a-snoring
Now I lay me down to sleep
I hear the sirens in the street
And all my dreams are made of chrome
I have no way to get back home
I'd rather die before I awake
Just like Marilyn Monroe
Why Lord you put my dreams out in the street
And let the rain make 'em grow"

Christmas Day, 2011

2011-12-25T06:56:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday morning. It's Christmas. I've been playing my 12-string. Leesa is getting ready for church. Raleigh is skyping with his girlfriend, who is spending the holidays with her mother in the Czech Republic.

Merry Christmas to all!

The House on Antioch

2011-10-12T06:21:00.000-07:00

On Sunday the 9th, we were driving home from a great brunch with great friends, and on Antioch Road we passed a house that we've passed hundreds of times since moving into that area back in 2002. Over the years, the house has from time to time drawn my attention for one oddity or another. Once the unknown folks who lived there put up a little house in a stretch of yard that spreads to the east of the house. It seemed to me that a woman was opening up a little shop there, a permanent yard sale, a "cent-shop" like that of Hepzibah Pyncheon in Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables. But that soon disappeared, shut down, I imagined, by those city or county officials who would identify it as a business and raise zoning objections or force her to pay Tennessee's excessive sales tax. Later a large rectangular portion of the same yard was stringed off and became the home of a pony or miniature horse. (Is there a difference?) He grazed the grass down and weathered the elements until one day somebody was out inside his stringed pasture petting him and the next day he was gone.

On Sunday as we approached the house, we could see a couple of cars parked along the roadside and in the yard and two cars from the Sheriff's office parked in the driveway. One officer had the trunk of his car open and was removing cases (like CSI cases, we said) and a duffle bag . We glanced at the house and saw the yellow crime scene tape wrapped around the entire front and across the entrance of a basement door that I've always thought must lead to an apartment. We turned around a couple of times but couldn't come up with an idea of what was going on—or what had gone on. It seems to me that while we were away at church and in the company of friends, somebody's life blew apart.

This morning I drove through the dark on my way to the gym and passed that house, wondering again what had happened there. On the rest of the drive I put these lines together in my head and wrote them down on a napkin when I parked in the gym lot.

The house sits in the darkness before dawn,
against a black backdrop of scattered trees,
a dim image of roof, façade and walls
held together by yellow crime scene tape.

That's all I have for now. We'll see if it goes anywhere in the future.

2011-10-11T13:21:00.001-07:00

Okay, so I'm currently not real pleased with the apparent formatting limitations of my blogger word processor. Every time I use enter for a return, it skips a space, which makes for some airy-looking poetry (see my 1 October haiku). I don't like this, so I'm trying an experiment. I'm going to type that same haiku in Word and try two things: 1) pasting it directly from Word into the blog processor and 2) composing in Word and then using Word's blog publishing function. Let's see how it works.

Night, windy with leaves—
filled with song and beer, I drive
through the dark mountains.

All right. That was composed in Word and then posted to the blog via Word's blog-publishing function.

2011-10-11T13:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, here's another thing that I'm going to try to do before attempting Word's blog-publishing function. I'm going to type directly into the "Edit Html" and see what happens.

Night, windy with leaves--
filled with song and beer, I drive
through the dark mountains.

Word Processing Frustrations

2011-10-11T13:12:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm currently not real pleased with the apparent formatting limitations of my blogger word processor. Every time I use enter for a return, it skips a space, which makes for some airy-looking poetry (see my 1 October haiku). I don't like this, so I'm trying an experiment. I'm going to type that same haiku in Word and try two things: 1) pasting it directly from Word into the blog processor and 2) composing in Word and then using Word's blog publishing function. Let's see how it works.

Night, windy with leaves—
filled with song and beer, I drive
through the dark mountains.

All right. That was posted directly from text typed into Word and then pasted to the "Edit HTML" window of the blog.

October Game: Slow Start

2011-10-07T05:09:00.000-07:00

Okay, here it is the 7th already, and I've got no game. Although I won't give up totally for this month, I'll admit that I'm likely to have poor writing percentage this season. I wonder what a November Game would look like. Then again, I might just back off to posting a bit of writing every day that I can--a poem, a brief prose poem, a shortshort fiction, etc. Maybe something like this:

The sun rises in Nashville and shines in two yellow strips on the wall of my hotel room. I imagine the hundred or thousand never-will-be stars that inhabit the sludge beneath the country music industry, imagine them as they fumble sleepily, drunkenly with keys at the doors of old houses and trailers, of cars made in the '70s, '80's, '90s. They crawl into creaky beds, into sleeping bags on couches, on floors, in back seats, pulling their dreams over their eyes as I watch these strips of sunlight brighten and slide down the wall to disappear into the floor.

October Again

2011-10-01T15:08:00.001-07:00

Last year at this time I played the October Game. What I tried to do was write a poem every day and post it to this blog. I did okay, creating, I think, 21 out of 31. This seemed pretty good to me, but as one of my friends pointed out, it wouldn't necessarily make for a very good batting average in baseball or field goal percentage in basketball. Still, I got a publication out of it. The poem "Columbus Day," written for October 12, was recently published in a journal called The Howl.

Last night I played a gig at Iron Horse Station in Hot Springs, North Carolina. It was a noisy restaurant, and few people seemed to be listening. But I had a table of the loyal right in front of me, which helped tremendously. They're lifesavers, but little by little I'm learning just to do my thing the way I ought to do it, without worrying about who's listening. I ended up with $45 in tips, so I guess some folks appreciate it.

Anyway, this morning I woke up with this haiku taking shape in my mind. I was thinking about the windy night I drove through to get us home after last night's gig. A haiku is maybe not the best omen for success to begin the October Game, but it's what I've got.

Night, windy with leaves--

filled with song and beer, I drive

through the dark mountains.

By the way, the guy from whom I got the idea of the October Game died this year. He was an artist, and he tried to create a piece of art—a drawing or a painting, I think—for every day in the month.

More from the WESTERN MONTHLY (1830)

2011-08-24T09:55:00.000-07:00

The conclusion of this 10-page article:

Let it not be said, that we do not cordially respect a competent legislator; or that we do not consider it the duty of every man, to obey the distinct intimation of the will of the country, that he should serve it. But when we see what miserable timber is wrought into the political ship, how many bipeds are sent to our legistatures, who ought never have aspired to any thing, beyond finding the way from the bed to the fire, we cannot but feel a certain humiliation in this degradation of our country's character, apart from its bearing on the point, for which we contend. Our consolation is, that every thing changes in our country. The fashion of belles lettres, literature and the fine arts, will come round in its turn; and mean while, knights of the quill must toil on, with what courage they may.

Given that the condition of our electioneering and politics in 2011 seems so similar to that of 1830, I conclude that either our political life hasn't changed or the final prophecy that a better character will "come round in its turn" has come and gone and is to be hoped for again at some point in the future.

2011-08-24T09:03:00.000-07:00

What follows is an excerpt from an article appearing in the May 1830 issue of an American journal called Western Monthly. The context of the article is an attempt to refute exaggerated negative impressions of all things American appearing in the British periodicals of the time. (Sorry about the archaic gendered language.)

Though in travelling through our land, little interest or excitement is seen in any thing, but electioneering and politics; that is on the surface of society, although the columns of our newspapers are occupied with little else, we know, that there is in our country a numerous body of men, isolated though they may be, and personally unknown to each other, who view this order of things with the deepest regret; who would rejoice to see a regard for literature, the fine arts, the lesser morals, and the charities of life, replace this barbarous and Gothic public taste, this relish born in a tavern, nourished with whiskey, and developed and matured in the electioneering arena. If these men, who would rejoice to see another and an infinitely higher interest excited among us, could know each other, and become possessed of each other's views, and could unite their bearing and influence, they would not be without their effect, in kindling a better excitement, a more refined national taste. We know, that there are thousands of the most talented and respectable men, who are worn out, and disgusted with the nauseating and incessant clatter of electioneering and politics. Would, that their voices could be heard, that their influence could be felt, and that we had a great national society, to keep peace, and put down babblers and demagogues; and that papers, which inculcate literary taste, and diffuse literary information, and a regard to the lesser morals, and the domestic charities, could come into favor, instead of the thousand vehicles of fierce and noisy politics.

65

2011-08-11T06:51:00.001-07:00

Some of this will be disjointed, fragmented, based as it is on fleeting night-thoughts and dreams.

Fifteen years ago, my dad died suddenly at the age of 65. He was a quiet man, and we were never that close, especially if closeness is in part measured by the words that pass between. Maybe it's because of that clear space between us that he has never really faded that much in fifteen years. I think of him often. Sometimes we talk in dreams, but as is often the case in the aftermath of these I can't remember the words.

During the night just passed, I was with him in the living room of the old house in Walnut. I actually don't know if this was a dream or if I was just thinking about it on the edge of sleep and in the context of a possible poem I was musing on. My mom's loud crying—a wailing—could be heard from behind her closed bedroom door. I must have been young, or maybe in my teens, because Dad's words came to me in a comforting tone: "She'll be all right. She just needs to cry." And he would have said this without looking at my grandmother, whose words under her breath—maybe about the length of my hair or the holes in the knees of my blue jeans—most likely brought on the tears. But then maybe the comment, whatever it was, was innocent, offhand even, and Mom took it the wrong way, either accidentally or willfully. He sat there, able only to bear with the situation, his jaws clenching and unclenching.

But don't get me wrong—such incidents, although somewhat chronic, were nevertheless not common.

Then in the early hours of this morning, after I'd been up once at four o'clock trying to get our computer working again (which I think I did!), I dreamed of Dad. We were in, of all places, a Kentucky Fried Chicken. Not that it looked like a KFC, not that we were eating that childhood treat—you know how it is in dreams when you just know the place you're in or you know that a person in the dream is a particular person in your life, even though in the dream he might not look anything like he does in your waking life. Anyway, we were eating something that looked like a flattened bologna and egg biscuit—don't ask me why—and talking, but I can remember nothing of what we said. Then suddenly we were in a car, he in the passenger seat and I behind the wheel, finishing off some French fries. Again I don't remember what we were saying. Then I was still behind the wheel, but he was sitting on a porch above me. The only words I remember from the dream were only thought, not spoken. I wanted to ask, "Do you miss the baby I was?" Phrased just like that. But I never said it, because as I was thinking it I was rolling backward, turning, rolling forward, leaving.

I suppose that my missing my younger son as a baby, now that he's grown and mostly gone, made me wonder if my dad missed me in that way.

But maybe that's too linear a thought process for such a dream.

The Cars Live!

2011-08-10T06:36:00.000-07:00

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

80

2011-08-06T20:56:00.001-07:00

My mother turned 80 years old yesterday, 5 August 2011, and tomorrow, on the 7th, we'll have a birthday party for her. I'm sure it'll be a fine event, as my aunt, Mom's sister, younger by three years, is good at putting this sort of thing together. I wish my uncle, her brother, older by two years, could be there, but he's down in Shelby, NC, and not doing all that great. Still, she should have lots of guests.

The only unfortunate thing about the day is that she will have to celebrate at the Brian Center in Weaverville, NC, a nursing/rehab facility where she has been since the 5th of July. The day before, she was getting dressed to celebrate our nation's 235th birthday and did something screwy to her right arm that resulted in a hairline fracture in whatever bone is cuddled in between her bicep and triceps. So, for over a month now, she's been at the BC, as my brother calls it, watching TV and doing rehab and talking to her roommate (she's had two so far) and her caretakers and physical therapists and waiting for visitors.

I'm saddened to think of her there, but as I'm writing this I realize that, as sure as I am that she wants to go home, I'm sure that at some level she's enjoying the company. At home, she lives alone, and she is alone most of the time. One Saturday afternoon when I was at the house with her, she wished she had somebody there all the time to talk with and laugh with, but that's not possible these days. But since being at the Brian Center, she has had that. It's got to count for something, but I doubt that it makes up for not being home.

Her current roommate is leaving within the next day or so. I hope she's able to stay for the party, but I know she's anxious to get out of there. Imagine being there in Weaverville, having come down from the west coast of Michigan to visit relatives, and suffering a heart attack, going through surgery and being placed in the Brian Center for rehab before she can leave to go back home. Fortunately, many of Mom's brothers and sisters moved to Michigan, the east coast (in the thumb), to find work in the 1940s and '50s, so she's had plenty of experience with that northern state, the character of the people and their accent. I think Mom'll miss this woman.

Her first roommate was a local woman who moved to the assisted living wing of the Brian Center, where she's now a permanent resident. She and Mom got along well too. My favorite quirk about her was that she is obsessed with the local channel 13 weatherman. Old enough to be his grandmother, of course, she had pictures of him on her wall. She had a signed note from him that she had received at some point in the past. And she watched the news casts all evening for a glimpse of him. (Mom understood to some degree, but she said that watching the local newscasts every day from 5:00 till 6:30 was a little much.)

I'm now 52 years old, three years younger than my dad when he had multiple by-pass surgery, thirteen years younger than he was when he fell asleep one Wednesday night in November and never woke up. Although this world can be wearying and it's certainly troubling most of the time these days, I think 80 sounds better to me than 65. I think I'll go for it!

Moonlighting

2011-07-17T20:57:00.001-07:00

So, by day I'm an English professor at East Tennessee State University, and for the next year, I'm also the Director of the University and Midway Honors Scholars Programs. Although I've had my ups and downs with this career recently, the job remains something that I'm thrilled to be doing. In addition to teaching courses in early American and Native American literature, I research and write articles on our culture, hopefully contributing in some small way to our understanding of ourselves. For much the same reason, I also write fiction and poetry.

Having come to a happy and stable career, I've been glad to be afforded the time to revisit a previous happy and not-so-stable career: that of songwriting and performing. I don't do any songwriting these days, but I'm enjoying the opportunity to perform my songs--and my versions of the songs of others--in various venues in the area. The more I do this, I think, the more likely it is that I'll beging writing a song or two again sometime soon.

I've not been doing enough of this to call it actual moonlighting, but I'm going to make a push in that direction. Not that I want to be playing a lot. I think I would enjoy playing somewhere in a 50-100 mile radius a couple of times a month, especially in the summer months. To that end, I'm trying out a site for performers called REVERBNATION, which is a space from which I can promote the music a little bit and seek out friendly places to play. I already have the wonderful Good Stuff Grocery in Marshall, North Carolina, so I'll be looking for a place or two in Asheville, a place in Greeneville, maybe somewhere up in Virginia or Kentucky. Geographically, this seems as if I'm traveling far afield, but that's one of the advantages to living in an area that is close to so many borders.

Check out the REVERBNATION page at http://www.reverbnation.com/michaelcody.

I'm also trying to decide if I want to try to play a regular public gig here at home in Johnson City/Jonesborough. I think I'd like to, but somehow that almost seems like it brings my day job and my moonlighting in too close proximity. We'll see.

Father's Day

2011-06-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

I've talked to both of my sons today. Lane and his family are vacationing in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Raleigh is spending the weekend in a recording studio on Asheville, North Carolina. Both of them--all of them--make me a good Daddy and Granddaddy. I'm proud of them and blessed to be a part of their lives.

I was thinking about my great-grandfather in my last post. I'll add here that my grandfathers were Amos Stackhouse Reeves (maternal) and Caney Hobert Cody (paternal), both of whom left this world some two weeks apart in the summer of 1968, when I was nine years old. My father was Plumer Jean Cody, who would have been 80 this year had he not passed out of this life at 65 in 1996. Although I don't think about my grandfathers all that often, I think of my dad a lot, and I miss him.

So, my Father's Day wasn't too different from most Sundays. I got up early and took a shower. Grabbed my guitar and gear and headed for Cherokee Church for 7:45 band practice before the 8:45 service. I taught Sunday School. I then went to lunch at Jack's City Grill with my wife, after which I came home and took a nap. After my nap I drove up to Bristol, Virginia, and watched the new film The Green Lantern. While this is unusal for a regular Sunday, it isn't so much for my Father's Days. Usually Raleigh is with me, and we go from one movie to another, seeing two or three back-to-back. But Raleigh wasn't with me today, so I just saw the one and then came back home.

All-in-all a good day, "my day," as I claim it, although I share it with Plumer and Stack and Caney and lots of family and friends.

Mallie Reeves

2011-06-17T18:30:00.001-07:00

The generations are long in my mother's family. Mom was born in 1931, when my grandfather, Amos Stackhouse Reeves, was 48 years old. (He and his wife Lottie would have one more child, my aunt Ernestine, three years later.) When Papa Reeves was born in 1883, his father, my great-grandfather Mallie Reeves, was also 48, having been born in February 1835. My cousin Ken Reeves recently sent me this obituary for Mallie Reeves, who died at the age of 77 in February 1912. The obituary was published in the county paper on 29 February 1912.

Mallie Reeves, the well known old soldier of the Cross and one of the oldest citizens of Walnut, who was stricken down with paralysis, died Friday night Feb. 16th. The funeral was conducted on Sunday Feb. 18th by Rev. J. L. Hurdt, followed with short remarks by Dr. A. J. McDevitt, B. E. Guthrie and H. Chandler. He was then laid to rest in the Walnut cemetery on his 77th birthday. This ended the career of one of the most Godly and faithful men that we have ever known. He has done more good throughout Western North Carolina by his praying and singing in revival meetings, perhaps, than any other layman of his day. He deserves the praise of the following scripture. "Well done, thou good and faithful servant, thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

In the context of the history that I know, he was born the same year as Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and about five years after Emily Dickinson. Nathaniel Hawthorne was about 30 years old and writing some of his best short stories. Ralph Waldo Emerson would publish Nature the following year, in 1836. Closer to home when Mallie was born, the Cherokee were in the midst of trying to keep their homelands and avoid the Trail of Tears. Mallie died two months before the sinking of the Titanic and two years before the beginning of World War I.

I've heard that Mallie Reeves could be working in his fields or garden and somebody would come along the road to say he was needed to sing in a revival at such-and-such a church. He would drop everything and go to lead singing at the services. I wonder how that sat with my great-grandmother, whose name was, I think, Julina.

[I might have written about this before, but I wanted to get back to the blog and this was on my mind.]

the winter of my discontent

2011-03-26T13:01:00.001-07:00

I've had a difficult couple of months—physically and professionally. Generally I'm a fairly happy camper, and life goes on more or less smoothly. I know lots of people and places have much more difficult times than I, so griping is little more than selfishness. But I'm gonna do it anyway.

Okay, no I'm not. It just seems too small and pointless. Suffice it to say that I was turned down for a promotion at work, turned down in a senseless way that feels like the old music business rejections all over again. Then I had hernia surgery on 8 February, and I have yet to recover. Through it all I've been terrifically busy everywhere—at Honors House, in the Department of Literature and Language, at home, at church. I've been on the road not feeling well in Gatlinburg, Philadelphia and Charleston.

More later.

Benjamin Franklin & the National Bird

2011-01-26T10:24:00.001-08:00

On this day in 1784, Benjamin Franklin wrote a
letter to his daughter saying that he was not pleased about the choice of bald eagle as the symbol of America. He wished it had not been chosen as a "representative of our country" because, he said, it is a "Bird of bad moral
Character." Franklin wrote about the eagle: "Like those among Men who live by Sharping and Robbing, he is generally poor, and often very lousy."
There was a different fowl that Franklin championed as a true representative of the budding United States: "The Turkey," he wrote 227 years ago today, "is a much more respectable Bird, and ... a true original Native of America."

"The Light in Your Eyes"

2011-01-25T17:05:00.001-08:00

Today it rained and the world was cold.
The wind was high and the sea was rough,
and now I'm feeling tired and old.
I'm lonely in the darkness, looking for a light,
waiting for the dawn to come
and end this long and heartless night.
When out on that horizon comes a star into my view,
guiding me to safer waters
and pulling me in to you.

I see the light in your eyes,
and I'll always be
like a sailor in the night,
safe out on the sea
as long as I'm in sight
of the light in your eyes.

Diamond blue and deeper than the sea—
they move me like the tide
when your love comes washing over me.
Angel, if I could I would hold back the dawn
and keep you in one perfect night
to last forever, on and on.
Never fade away, never lose sight of our love,
'cause deep inside I fear
that alone I'm just not strong enough.

I see the light in your eyes,
and I'll always be
like a sailor in the night,
safe out on the sea
as long as I'm in sight
of the light in your eyes.

When the storm clouds gather, when the hurricane blows,
keep me one step ahead of the wind and the rain
and within sight of home.

I see the light in your eyes,
and I'll always be
like a sailor in the night,
safe out on the sea
as long as I'm in sightof the light in your eyes.

Good Stuff @ Good Stuff

2011-01-23T19:27:00.000-08:00

Last night I did a little gig at Good Stuff Grocery in Marshall, North Carolina. I know that I've said it here before, but it's so great to see Marshall in 2010-2011. Not that the opportunity to sit in Good Stuff or Baccus Bistro and drink a beer makes today's Marshall great (although it's great to be able to do so). It's just a cool place--Zuma Coffee, included.

Let's see, I've now taken part in five musical events in Marshall since June 2010. I played with the Sugardaddy band from Bakersville--one of whom, Jim Stapleton, is also a White Water Band veteran--at a Marshall event called "French Broad Fridays." The town puts on one of these every month from June through September, and the Sugardaddy guys and I played the first of these this past year. We set up on the courthouse steps, which was awesome, and rocked the lawn and the main intersection for a couple of hours. In December, I joined Nashville songwriter Larry Cordle and Marshall songwriter/storyteller Joe Penland for a guitar-pullin' or songwriters-in-the-round event. The three of us sat on stage at the Madison County Arts Center (the public library when I was growing up) and took turns playing our songs. It was a great night. The other three performances were solo events at Good Stuff Grocery.

My posse and I met for dinner in wonderful Weaverville ("Reeferville" when I was a teenager) at Blue Mountain Pizza. We were all impressed! I had "The Obama" pizza and a locally brewed coffee stout on draft. Wow! After this, we walked down the street to the Well-Bred Bakery. Then it was off to Marshall and Good Stuff. I decided to pull out a couple of songs that I probably haven't played since the old Cody band days of 20 years ago. "The Light in Your Eyes" was fun to play again, and the folks listening were really taken with it. I also pulled out "One Desire." I meant to strap on my harmonica for this one, but halfway through I realized that I'd forgotten to do so. Anyway, as I was introducing the song, I thought I might talk about the most striking image I have in my mind when related to this song, but I could feel myself getting choked up and went ahead kicked it off. The image: my father-in-law dancing with my mother-in-law on the dark dance floor of 45 Cherry. I don't usually play "Rain on the River" either, but I did last night and it went over well.

Thanks to everybody who was there. I had a blast!

Snow Day

2011-01-10T05:18:00.001-08:00

What does a 52-year-old man do with a snow day? I suppose I could go out and play in the snow--build a snow man, make snow angels, pick a snowball fight with the nest of redneck, dead-end boys who live with old Pete in the cul-de-sac. I suppose I could go the park and walk in the snow and pretend that I'm walking miles to fetch medicine or a doctor from somebody ailing in a back bedroom, just like the old mountain days. I suppose I could find some abandoned parking lot laid out in front of some abandoned out-of-business strip mall, or the parking lot at my church, and spin mindless doughnuts for an hour or two. (Will front-wheel drive vehicles with anti-lock brake systems do doughnuts?)

Instead, I think I'll go back to bed for a little while. Then I'll watch an episode or two of Battlestar Galactica (the more recent version). Maybe I'll write a little bit, if I can gather enough shreds of concentration and moments of privacy. Maybe I'll what the first of the Lord of the Rings movies, which I've wanted to do all Christmas break and didn't. Maybe I'll read the rest of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

But it's back to bed first!

1/1/11

2011-01-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Walt Whitman from Leaves of Grass:

YEAR that trembled and reel'd beneath me!
Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,
A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken'd me,
Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,
Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?
And sullen hymns of defeat?

2010 was a year full of ups and downs. It didn't feel like a rollercoaster, at least not most of the time, but it had its clearly defined highs and lows. Sometimes the rise and fall was almost undetectable. Sometimes the highs were simply moments of clarity and exhilaration, and sometimes the lows were just a fading away that went almost unnoticed.

I guess I should say that the year was fairly balanced.

The first day of 2011 hasn't been that great, but I hope for balance in the other 364 days to come.

It was 30 years ago today . . .

2010-12-08T07:04:00.000-08:00

The Snow Man by Wallace Stevens

2010-12-06T10:52:00.000-08:00

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold for a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

1923

Food Court Flash Mob!

2010-12-01T07:23:00.000-08:00

52

2010-11-25T06:18:00.000-08:00

I considered writing a poem about my 52nd birthday, but maybe I ought to let it happen before trying to write about it. So here's some other stuff, personal and not, found with a Google search of "52":

I turned 52 years old at 1:57 a.m. I was awake until 1:22 and then woke up for a moment at 2:22. So I slept through the birth moment, which was probably not a bad thing, given that 1:57 a.m. in 1958 was very likely a damned traumatic time for me.
http://52brews.com/
Year 52 (LII) was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Sulla and Otho (or, less frequently, year 805 Ab urbe condita). The denomination 52 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. (from Wikipedia)
In early October, when I started Weight Watchers, I had (approximately) 52 pounds to lose in order to achieve my lifetime target weight of something in the 190s.
52 was a weekly American comic books limited series published by DC Comics that debuted on May 10, 2006. 52 consists of 52 issues, published weekly for one year, each issue detailing an actual week chronicling the events that took place during the missing year after the end of Infinite Crisis. The series covers much of the DC Universe, and several characters, whose disparate stories interconnect. (from Wikipedia)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJgvJvIo2-U 52 Girls (B-52s)
US 52 in Iowa http://iowahighways.home.mchsi.com/highways/us52.html
I have 52 weeks to be 52.
The 52nd song on my writing web site list: "Soul Mates" http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_soul_mates.htm

Last but not least, Psalm 52 from The Message (large print edition):

A David Psalm, When Doeg the Edomite Reported to Saul, "David's at Ahimelech's House"

Why do you brag of evil, "Big Man"?
God's mercy carries the day.
You scheme catastrophe;
your tongue cuts razor-sharp,
artisan in lies.
You love evil more than good,
you call black white,
You love malicious gossip,
you foul-mouth.

God will tear you limb from limb,
sweep you up and throw you out,
Pull you up by the roots
from the land of life.

Good people will watch and
worship. They'll laugh in relief:
"Big Man bet on the wrong horse,
trusted in big money,
made his living from catastrophe."

And I'm an olive tree,
growing green in God's house.
I trusted in the generous mercy
of God then and now.

I thank you always
that you went into action.
And I'll stay right here,
your good name my hope,

in company with your faithful friends.

Anno 1621: First Thanksgiving

2010-11-24T09:54:00.000-08:00

What follows is from William Bradford's Of Plymouth Plantation, his history of the pilgrims who settled in Massachusetts in 1620:

They began now to gather in the small harvest they had, and to fit up their houses and dwellings against winter, being all well recovered in health and strength and had all things in good plenty. For as some were thus employed in affairs abroad, others were exercised in fishing, about cod and bass and other fish, of which they took good store, of which every family had their portion. All the summer there was no want; and now began to come in store of fowl, as winter approached, of which this place did about when they came first (but afterward decreased by degrees). And besides water fowl there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many, besides venison, etc. Besides they had about a peck a meal a week to a person, or now since harvest, Indian corn to that proportion. Which made many afterwards write so largely of their plenty here to their friends in England, which were not feigned but true reports.

Bradford makes no particular mention of a feast, with or without the native population, only that after that first brutal winter (the starving time) they had enough to eat for the winter of 1621-1622. Bradford's account characteristically celebrates subsistance but also acknowledges that the land of plenty isn't a land of endless plenty.

Apparently the foundation of the Thanksgiving feast and the comes from a letter written by Plymouth Plantation resident Edward Winslow and sent to an acquaintance in England. The letter is dated 11 December 1621, but no specific date is given for the event:

Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor [Bradford] sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruits of our labours. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor and upon the Captain and others.

There you have it. Happy Thanksgiving to all and to all a good feast!

Early Birthday Surprise

2010-11-23T14:45:00.000-08:00

I arrived at Honors House this morning to find that the several of the students had been up to something. They'll be gone from campus on my birthday--on Thanksgiving this year--and decided to decorate a little bit before they left. This is my office door in the old house. The floor upstairs was full of "Happy Birthday" balloons, and red and yellow streamers flew in the breeze at both entrances. They even threw one of the smallest kids in the program up on the first-floor roof to tie streamers to the downspouts that run down from the third floor to the second.

from Tuesday, 17 November 1987

2010-11-17T13:48:00.001-08:00

I'm back in Nashville and looking forward to the holidays when I can get out of here again. Things here are okay but a lot of little turns out to be a bigger bother sometimes. One problem is with work. It's now slightly strained between Cathi and me after I told her a few weeks ago that I would prefer she think of herself as my publisher and not as my manager. That didn't go over near as well as I expected and I wasn't even expecting it to go over well. She was hurt, thinking, I suppose, that strong belief and money spent make a manager. They may make one but not necessarily a good one. I had hoped not to put all my eggs in one basket again and it looks like, for better or worse, I've done just that. I feel good about it except I always have that nagging feeling that the money is about to stop. I imagine at my contract's end Cathi will have my catalog and will probably try to sell it while I walk away and try to do whatever is next. I can't say that I'll be sorry. She has been a good friend but she has never been that real to me. . . .

My car broke down finally an it took $225.96 to replace the distributor. I was back in Percy-Warner Park when it happened and had to walk out to Belle Meade to call a tow truck for the car and Kevin to come over and get me. I put the bill on my folks' Mastercard and will pay them off for it over the next couple of months.

Hopefully I can write a little when I'm home. I haven't written one thing since I moved into this little place in August. And you know how I get when I'm not writing.

I also just want to be home in North Carolina again. I've been on two trips lately but I haven't seen NC since the latter part of August. I can hardly wait. . . .

Mom and Dad and Pansy and Edison came down here to Nashville at the end of October. They were here for three days and had a good time I think. We didn't really do that much together except go out and eat. They visited tourist shops and the Grand Ol' Opry on their own. One night we had dinner with Mark, Becky, and JB at the West End Cooker and that was good. . . .

In other news, one week from tomorrow I will be 29, my last stop before 30's. I'll try to think about it and fill you in on my feelings but I can say right now I don't feel very complete. . . .

One week from tomorrow, in 2010, I'll be 52, and I feel mostly complete.

Franklin (NC)

2010-11-07T18:42:00.000-08:00

My colleagues and I were returning to Tennessee from Georgia and chose to take the scenic route up Highways 441 and 23. In Franklin, North Carolina, we saw these bumper stickers attached to vehicles sitting side by side in front of us at a traffic light: the car on the right, "Home Improvement Begins with the King James Bible"; the car on the left, "Extremely Rightwing" and "God Bless Our Troops . . . Especially Our Snipers."

Atlanta

2010-11-05T19:43:00.001-07:00

I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, at the annual conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA). This morning, at the first session of the conference, I presented a paper on Spokane/Coeur D'Alene author/filmmaker Sherman Alexie's 2002 film The Business of Fancydancing. As is usual, I didn't finish writing the paper until an hour or so before the panel began, so I hadn't eaten anything. When the session ended at noon, I walked out along a cold and windy Peachtree Street (NE) and after a couple of blocks found a little place called Noodle. After taking a seat at the bar, I looked at the menu only for a moment before something caught my eye: a bowl of kimchi fried rice for $9. I could add beef to it for $2, so I did and then added a Korean beer called "Hite." Good lunch!

Afterwards, I returned to the conference hotel for the session that began at 2:45. Because of my strong interest in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, I attended a panel focused on his last completed novel The Marble Faun, published 150 ago in 1860. It was a fine panel with three insightful and interesting papers. Having been somewhat bitten by the poetry bug in October, I couldn't help write down some thoughts that came to me during the session.

At SAMLA, 2:45-4:15

We sit in this small room
on an unnumbered floor
in a hotel in downtown Atlanta,

a room filled with a few ordered chairs
and fewer scattered people.
Two smart plain women and a pretty
nervous one read essays
on the beautiful Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I nod, nearly dozing, thinking I must
read his Marble Faun again.

Haunted Sabbath

2010-10-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

Again I wake on a clear blue Sunday
morning in the Christ-haunted United
States of America and join the throng
--if twenty percent can be considered
a thronging--that passes through the wide doors
of its tired multitude of divided
denominations, all of which lay claim
to the same Jesus, who doesn't transcend
their ceaseless bickering, their politics,
conservative exclusion, liberal
inclusion, their prosperity preaching,
their doomsday teaching, their self-righteousness.

I go wakeful into this Sunday night,
which is also Halloween, preached against
this morning from thousands of pulpits
while some souls starve, commit soul suicide,
seek peace, belonging, comfort in trouble.
After two thousand Christ-haunted years,
what does it mean to follow? to serve?
This Halloween night I left the lights off.
I sit in the dark, an old cat purring
on my belly, listening to the clocks tick
in syncopation, listening to the dogs'
reverberating barks in outer dark.

Well, that about does it. I didn't make a poem every day of October, but by my count I went 21 for 31, which I guess isn't a bad percentage. I learned what I hoped I would learn, that I can write something almost every day. Not that it's going to be good, necessarily, but--for a man who fancies himself a writer--anything is better than nothing. At least I can create something most days that's potentially worthy of rewriting and rethinking and rewriting again.

Thanks to those who read these and put up with my musings.

Untitled

2010-10-29T10:54:00.001-07:00

I met him twice or thrice, this man, my age,
who died beneath a clear October sky,
a Sunday in New Mexico. He was
the husband of a good woman, father
of two near grown girls, and left his home
in Pennsylvania to go hiking
those arid plains and hills, not intending
not to return--not even suspecting.

His good wife and I, when we were twenty,
together with a busload near that age,
traveled Europe for a summer--mid June
to early August, from London east to
East Berlin, south to the isles of Greece,
then west again to fly home from Madrid.
We saw each other often in the years
that followed--her wedding and my wedding,

reunions at her place sometime back and
then again this past summer in DC.
In DC, I remember her joking
with her best friend from that trip, saying they
would leave their husbands and live together
in some small village perched on the white cliffs
of coastal Italy where she and he
could escape from their American lives

of struggling businesses and sexual
politics--a moment of levity
in a happy time that I hope neither
of them will remember and taste regret.
I found a note from her in this morning's
email. The message in soft blue letters
read that she and the dead and their daughters
"had excellent goodbyes with no regrets."

I think about how wide this world and how
we move through it, separate but connected.
That Sunday when he died and she answered
the call that carried the news, I was on
the road in Illinois, in Kentucky,
in Tennessee, at table with a friend
for lunch in Nashville, alone for supper
in Knoxville, home with my wife by midnight.

I've been working on this one for the last few days, in between student advising appointments.

White Noise Sleeper

2010-10-26T20:17:00.001-07:00

I think I started needing noise to drown
my ringing ears after those loud, loud nights
in the club with the band when the music
roared out of us and blew back the '80s
stylings of the dancers and drinkers at
45 Cherry and Douglas Corner,
small clubs in Asheville and Nashville.
Ear plugs were unheard of. I wailed, "Whoa-whoa-
whoa-whoa," and the band--Mark, Gene, Danny, Steve--
thundered the E that opens the intro
of "Rain on the River." In my twenties,
then, I had my hour--and more--on the stage,
fronting that storm like the wind that led this
morning's gale-force elemental attack,
the rain hissing sideways, smacking the house,
that wind roaring up out of the southwest
to fell a neighbor's pine tree three doors down.
Like the fuses the band blew out one night
in a high school gym, the power went out.
It was still out when I climbed into bed.
In my fifties, now, my ears still ringing
with life, I lay in the absolute quiet,
awake the long night, no white-noise defense
against days of youth and loud, loud music.

Listen:
http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_rain_on_the_river.mp3
Lyric:
http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_rain_on_the_river.htm

Marriott to Motel 6

2010-10-25T11:09:00.000-07:00

In three nights spent
at the Kansas City Marriott,
I saw nothing like the man--
with the yellow-stained white
mullet, standing shirtless
in the doorway of his room
and smoking--seen
upon my late arrival
for a one-night stay
at the Motel 6
in Mt. Vernon, Illinois.

Busy days make for short poems!

Lunch in Kansas City

2010-10-22T20:33:00.001-07:00

Melody serves my steak and beer
at Ted's Montana Grill:
"Kansas City Strip"
(bison cooked medium,
bleeding a little),
Corona Extra,
salt-and-pepper onion rings,
"vine-ripened tomatoes" (so called).
All is good
when it comes,
except that the tomatoes
are little more than ghosts
of tomatoes,
except that I feel
vaguely guilty
eating bison.

Cold Hands

2010-10-21T19:36:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's the wind in Kansas City,
where I'm writing from, maybe October,

anticipating my chilly winter,
maybe the distance that this night finds me

from one who holds them out of love, out of
habit or fear that I will disappear,

slipping away in the darkest passage
of the path, or that gravity will fail

and then one or both of us will be flung
from the world to spin off into space.

But these hands hold on, grow warm as I write
and the blood surges to my fingertips.

Good Stuff

2010-10-21T06:12:00.000-07:00

South of the dogleg in downtown Marshall,
east side of Main Street, in part of a large
building that was, many years ago, home
to a thriving Chevrolet dealership,
Jon and Amy run Good Stuff Grocery--
on the east wall a tall rack of good wines
(and on the back side of that, the kitchen),
in the northeast corner a small section
of chips and cookies, a cooler of beer
(good beer: Java Stout and La Fin du Monde),
beneath the cash register, candy bars
(Snickers, Mounds, Almond Joy, Butterfinger),
left of these, along the north wall, the bar
of dark polished wood, where sit two sisters,
young, blond, drinking with the village loafer,
who sits between them, grins and strokes his beard,
through the western wall of glass, the last glow
of daylight mingled with the first of night.
Along the southern wall, where once hung tools
(sockets and wrenches for fixing Chevys)
now hang the works of local folk artisits,
and in the southeast corner, near the wine,
is the performance space--a piano,
a PA and mic, a small guitar amp,
a tip jar--where Friday or Saturday
evenings, I'm sometimes found--with guitar
pressed against me, lips near kissing the mic--
singing to my friends and friendly strangers,
while Jon keeps the bar, Amy the kitchen
(chili $3.95 a cup). Good stuff.

(for Friday, 15 October)

2010-10-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

Here in the middle of the month, beginning on the 15th, life stepped in and stopped the game, put me in the penalty box. Five for fighting--Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday? I've had ideas but no time to write. I hope to get back to the October game tomorrow with at least one poem, maybe a couple of make-ups.

Haiku

2010-10-14T04:08:00.001-07:00

white half moon--lazy
liquid eye of a god in the
October night sky

Long day. I thought about writing something about Wal-Mart, but I didn't have it in me tonight.

Open Mic

2010-10-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

I didn't hear the poets
at the Open Mic tonight
--a previous engagement--
but imagined them there
in the smokeless colored light,
the weave of the microphone
too strange and too close.
I imagined, too, the poems
that they read or recited,
careful words about fathers, mothers,
wives, husbands, children, strangers,
flowers, beer, politics, skies,
the homeless couple walking
slowly toward their tent hidden,
for now, in the trees beneath the Interstate,
walking in the cool October twilight
that is like a warm quilt
compared to the coming winter
out of doors, the mixed martial arts
studio, in which the red-
and-black-uniformed lawyers
and construction workers and
secretaries try to beat each other
into submission,
the train's call along the valley,
the white noise of wheels on the highway,
the roar of jet engines that
murmur from thousands of feet
overhead, the children's voices,
speaking Spanish as they play
in the sand of an abandoned
volleyball court, the singsong
rhythms of the night bugs.
I sat and watched and listened
--waiting for my previous engagement--
to some of what the poets spoke
into the weave of the microphone.

Columbus Day

2010-10-12T08:30:00.000-07:00

I try to put myself in the shadows
with them
as they stand beneath the trees
at the edge of the beach,
naked
and brown, black eyes
watching
approaching sails as white as bone.

In our speech we have no word
for "sails,"
and bone has never risen
out of the horizon of water,
never,
except, perhaps, in
stories
or in dreams. But there! Look!

The bones collapse upon themselves.
The beast
has birthed a child into the sea,
and on its back rides ghost
or god.
It comes, and we murmur our
wonder
to each other in the shadows of the trees.

Neither ghost nor god he wades
ashore.
Covered with color that swirls
around him in the sea breeze,
a white
man stands upon the sands
and shouts
gibberish to something in his hands.

He thrusts a spear into the beach,
piercing
our heart with fear. Atop the spear
more wind-whipped color waves--
red, white--
white, red--and, unknown to us,
forfeit
were our lives and homes and futures.

Why Does a Squirrel

2010-10-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

Why does a squirrel,
halfway across
the leaf-scattered asphalt,
with a car approaching,
stop--
freeze--
turn--
and scamper back
the way it came,
dead in the path
of the oncoming monstrosity,
instead of running onward
--the coast clear--
toward the prize
of a safe
destination?

Answer that and
then run onward
(if you can)
to this question:
Why are so many of us
like these squirrels?

Sabbath Servant

2010-10-10T19:33:00.000-07:00

So out of sleep and creature dreams, arise
before the east awakes with light, arise
soul stiff and hungry, body longing, lost, arise
in spirit and in truth, arise
in spirit and in truth, arise
and sing.

To be honest, I thought that this would be longer, that there would be an alarm clock and a shower, a building, a steeple and all the people, a message and a prayer. Maybe it will be longer one day, but for now it captures something, a moment, as well as I can capture it.

Strange for Marshall

2010-10-09T19:47:00.000-07:00

Here are 10 things that I wouldn't have seen
in Marshall back in 1968:

a Wi-Fi coffee shop where Leonard Baker's Home Electric
used to be—his son now buying a Saturday morning cup there;

a collection of people my Papa might've called hippies
and long-hairs, celebrating and singing themselves;

a steady stream of wheels and jerseys and tight black shorts
that Pat said the sheriff's deputies should wear;

a new bridge across the French Broad, a bridge
without an intersection in the middle;

a high school where the rooms in which we took algebra
and English have been turned into studios for artists;

a bistro in the old Rock Café selling pizza and pasta
and imported beers and good wines;

a courthouse missing a statue of blind Justice,
the statue atop it lost to last winter;

a pirate watching the cyclists, a cell phone talking to one ear,
a live parrot on his shoulder talking to the other;

a small grocery and pub in the old Chevy dealership,
where music is heard every weekend night;

and me—51 years old, big of belly, gray of beard, earringed
and pony-tailed, writing and enjoying a cup

on a sunny October Saturday morning.

Marshall, like so many other Appalachian towns, was dying when I was growing up in the 1960s and '70s. But then something very cool began to happen. A person, or a group of people, in these towns began looking for some way the the place might survive, might not only live but also thrive.

Today Marshall is a mix of old and new. The old hardware is still there, as is Penland's department store. The Home Electric, where my folks bought their appliances, is now Zuma Coffee, and the big building that housed the Chevy dealership is now apartments and a neat grocery store called Good Stuff. When I play there, if I understand it rightly, my stage area (not elevated) is in the garage portion of the place, where the cars and trucks were serviced.

Friday, 10/8

2010-10-09T19:37:00.000-07:00

I slept in the room where I slept growing up,
slept not in the same corner or in the same bed,
but with the same indirect morning light
through the window, the same hill rising behind.
In the years when my uncles and aunts were children
here (some of them at least), the room slept two,
and the children (some of them at least) were conceived
there. I didn't think of this as I slept last night.
Nor did I think that my grandfather died
in that room—when he was 86 and I was 9—
as did his older brother, the fabled Uncle Joe,
back in the '40s. I slept with this history
without thinking about it. Instead I thought
about sitting on the bed and writing songs,
about wrestling on the floor with Danny,
about the first time I heard "Sweet Home, Alabama"
on the radio late one Sunday night,
about once sleeping with my wife in the same corner,
in the same bed where I slept growing up.

Thursday, 10/7

2010-10-09T14:51:00.000-07:00

Granddaughter sings loud
in the back seat, laughing in
between silly songs.

Another haiku for a busy day.

October Evening

2010-10-06T20:08:00.001-07:00

The warm sun of an October day

fades into color that blooms

from behind the low mountains.

The blue sky pales in the burst

of fading light and darkens

slowly, east to west, into the night.

Written in the car while sitting in the parking lot at Cherokee Church, waiting for band practice to begin.

[Is There a Draft in Here?]

2010-10-05T20:24:00.000-07:00

I'm listening to an atheist,
whose ideas are reductionist,
his knowledge of humanity seems flawed.

The host is being kind
to let him speak his mind--
that morals come from science, not from God,

who blessed his folks with slavery,
supported them in knavery
and killed those who opposed him with great ease.

The scientific morals of
the atheist are devoid of love
and leave us all less human by degrees.

Some potential in the topic, I think, but this is a weak draft. One thing such a poem might ultimately say is that somehow without God what is most human in us is gone.

No Human Bones

2010-10-04T19:38:00.000-07:00

At the Gray Fossil Site
the record of life here
in these foothills goes
one hundred thirty-five
feet deep. All of it,
except the surface
dug by road-building machinery
(to discover the first skull)
or walked by farmer or
lover, is untouched
by humans.

In spite of the power
of the sabre-toothed cat,
the power of the Tennessee alligator
(the skull discovered first),
in spite of the violence
of their hunger and will,
how peaceful must that
one hundred thirty-five
feet of vegetable and bone
gone to earth
have been as,
over four-and-a-half million years it
shifted,
sifted,
settled.

My seven-year-old granddaughter is visiting our house for a few days during her fall break, and we spent part of this afternoon at the Gray Fossil Site. So this not-so-good poetry effort grew out of that. I almost went preachy on this as I was writing it out on a sheet of paper but stopped myself. As you can tell, the between-the-lines suggestion of the poem is that Tennyson's "Nature, red in tooth and claw," was a different kind of violence than that which humans use to destroy one another, physically, socially, spiritually, economically, culturally--the violence of ideology (religious and political, in particular), of greed, of us vs. them, the self-righteous "I," the conspiratorial "THEY." None of that inhabited those prehistoric swamps, fields or forests, because none of us were there to bring these things to that world.

There, I've gone preachy anyway.

1st Black Cat

2010-10-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

black cat at sunset
stretches in wide strides across
the road that leads home

This isn't the poem I intended to write for the first Sabbath in October, but if I read the rules of the October Game correctly, the first black cat of the month must be represented in the game of the day that it is seen. I suppose I could've written a Sabbath poem that included a black cat somehow, but it's been a long day. I was up at 6:00 this morning and at church for band practice by 7:45. We played the 8:45 service, and then I taught Sunday School. After that, I left to pick up my granddaughter to bring her home for a few days, so I've been driving almost half the time I've been awake today.

So, most likely, even without the spotting of the black cat, a haiku is about all I was going to be able to muster today anyway. The haiku is a Japanese poetic form consisting of only three lines--the first made up of five syllables, the second of seven and the third of five. It's goal is not so much to make rational sense but rather to place an image in the reader's mind.

I think it probable that the haiku form will appear a lot in this October Game.

At the Blessing of the Pets

2010-10-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

they sat in semi-circled folding chairs,
the people and their pets—eleven dogs
from small to large, the larger on the floor,
and two suspicious cats, still as Christmas mice,
unsure if they were to be blessed or turned
to chew toys, limp and lifeless, slobber-slicked.

The spirit of Christ's church prevailed, and war
between the species didn't come to pass.
The fertile, crescent seating arrangement
inspired the people to mythologize
their pets into small gods—or maybe themselves.
But no . . . damn imperfect hermeneutics!

To take another tack . . . the hour filled
with touching stories of abiding love—
of Anni the cat, an anniversary
gift from a husband, now gone, who never
wanted a cat; of Candy, a small bitch,
defending Master as he lay abed

dead and defenseless against EMTs;
of little Missy, child of the childless
couple that adopted her the year the man's
father died, who somehow had her grandfather's eyes;
of Sebastian fireball; and of Magic,
who sawed in two a man's wooden heart and

put it back together again, beating.
There were tears, and the people sang their hymns—
"All Creatures of Our God and King" and "All
Things Bright and Beautiful." Beautiful, but
not all peaceful, for like a preacher's kid
the preacher's dog would not behave.

Five stanzas of six lines each, mostly in iambic pentameter. Certainly nothing great, but maybe a decent first draft.

I sang at the Blessing of the Pets this morning in the Gathering Space at Cherokee Church. Having done this last year as well, I didn't think it a silly event. But initially I wondered at its importance, given the dire straits our church finds itself in these days. You can catch a little of that in the playfulness I tried to put into the first lines of the poem. I served mostly as background music while each person introduced her or his pet and told something about it. Each story was, in its way, amazing! These little beasts come to their people in surprising ways, much like God is said to do. And they do wonderful things--gifting joy in times of sorrow, mending broken lives, encouraging the strong to be stronger, the lonely and bereaved to be comforted.

Mythologized into small gods? Maybe that's not too far from the truth.

October

2010-10-01T19:40:00.001-07:00

Overhead,
clouds graze, fat and lazy, across the bluest sky—
torn between the fading heat of the sun
on one shoulder and the cooling kissing
breeze on the opposite cheek, I'm
ecstatic that the haunting daytime crickets have
returned to be soundtrack for brilliant dying leaves.

A simple acrostic, in which the first letter of each line spells a word. Admittedly, not a great start to the game, but a start nonetheless. The basic idea came to me this afternoon as I walked across the parking lot at Barnes & Noble, the sun burning down on my left shoulder and a cool breeze puffing at the right side of my face. October is one of those in-between times, the evening of the year, sort of a month of twilight.

I had a couple of other things I considered writing about. First, Jimmy Carter. Today was his birthday 86th birthday. Today's Writer's Almanac had a couple of interesting details about him that I thought worthy of a little poetry--for one, he was the first US president to be born in a hospital; for another, his family used to bring books to the supper table and sit there eating and reading in silence.

Then we had the opening ceremony of ETSU's centennial celebration this morning. Not a bad show. My favorite part was the bluegrass band. But I was also impressed by a kind of haunting video in which old photographs from the university's history were alternated with color shots of contemporary life on campus. The haunting part is seeing, for example, a black-gray-white girl walking out of a campus building--like Burleson Hall--and slowly she is backdropped by the red brick of the building and surrounded by colorful students talking on cell phones and listening to iPods.

I also had a physical this afternoon, which I thought I might write about. It was a complete physical, and since I'm over 50 years old, it included the finger treatment. But I didn't really want to go there, especially since I was so late getting around to trying to create something.

Regardless of what Blogger's time stamp says, I'm posting this at 10:57 pm. Day One of the game completed, if not that well played.

The October Game

2010-09-30T17:04:00.000-07:00

In this past Sunday's Johnson City Press was an article about a man named Bill Counts and his "October Game." Counts is a painter with a day job, and the past few Octobers he has played this game: he paints a picture every day of the month and puts it on his website (http://www.billcounts.com/), along with a caption about the picture's creation, which caption might also stray into musings on art, culture and so on. The paintings are created each day in anywhere from 30 minutes to four hours, depending on how much time he has that day. Most of them, he says, are awful, but be that as it may, each painting must be put up on the Internet for all to see (for better or worse).

Because I think this is an interesting idea, I'm going to try something similar. Instead of paintings, however, I'm going to try and write a poem or some short prose piece and post it every day of October. This seems to me like something I won't be able to do, but I'm going to give it a whirl anyway. Counts apparently paints October scenes such as leaves, pumpkins and black cats, so I intend to do the same with my writing. I might write about the October leaves or the October moon, about Columbus Day, about Halloween, about something that happened that October day. We'll see.

When I was a songwriter, October was always an inspiring month, a time for reflection, and many of my favorite songs were written during that time. The month has certainly remained for me a time of deep reflection, but, again, we'll see if it remains a time of inspiration.

My rules: 1) write something complete every day, trying to keep the writing more or less related to October and autumn; 2) try to provide some short description of each piece of writing; 3) post this to the blog by midnight each calendar day.

I begin tomorrow!

"Maybe Montana"

2010-09-29T07:54:00.001-07:00

Last Friday morning I woke up to a beautiful day after having, the evening before, attended a wonderful musical performance by Dougie MacLean in Asheville. I felt good that morning and posted on Facebook that I "almost" felt like writing a song. One of my friends in the Department of Literature and Language responded, "Ooh! Write one about me!" Well, I'm afraid that "almost" was as close as I got (sorry, Dr. Cajka), but I started thinking about my songwriting days and all the people that swirled around my life back then and ended up in my songs. I wrote entire songs about some people. I wrote verses or lines about others. I wrote some people into the songs as just passing images.

Then I got to thinking that I have no certain knowledge of my ever having appeared in somebody else's song. But I like to think that I made an appearance, as one of those "passing images" mentioned above, in the song of an old friend of mine in Nashville.

When I was a songwriter in Music City, especially in those years when checks from my publisher provided enough money for a single man to be somewhat unfettered, I used to take off to Montana every chance I got. I loved it there—Missoula in particular. At some point—I don't remember exactly when—I became enamored with a woman I heard perform at the Bluebird Café. She was one of the best songwriters I'd come across, and somehow, shy as I was, we became friends. Although our relationship sometimes leaned in the direction of becoming more than friends, it never seemed right, so we decided not to go there. And we didn't. I wrote her into a few of my songs from that period, and that was that.

One day not long ago, I was walking in the park near my house, my mp3 player blaring in my ears. A favorite song by this former female friend played, and I listened as I walked. The song is about a woman trapped in her life and yearning for escape. As you might expect, near the end of the song, she just leaves, and neither the singer nor anybody else in the song seems to know where she went. The lyric at that point muses, "Maybe New York, maybe LA, / Maybe Montana . . . she never did say." As small and quickly passing as it is, I like to think that I inspired that "Maybe Montana" phrase. That doesn't seem too much to ask for all that I've written about other people.

But I'll never ask my friend about that phrase. She might just laugh and say I had nothing to do with it. She might just laugh and say it sounded better and more romantic than "Maybe New Hampshire" or "Maybe Wisconsin" or "Maybe Chicago" or "Maybe Atlanta." I couldn't take that. Not for a few minutes, at least (after which I would probably be fine).

A Little Jon Stewart for Mark and jb?

2010-09-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Meet the Depressed

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

A Poem by Ranier Marie Rilke

2010-09-21T07:00:00.000-07:00

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

More of My Favorite Terry Jones

2010-09-11T16:35:00.001-07:00

Terry Jones and Terry Jones

2010-09-09T13:55:00.001-07:00

What is Christ-ian about this Terry Jones?

I like this Terry Jones much better!

Hmmm

2010-09-06T16:05:00.000-07:00

We're told that Jesus was a carpenter. Would he choose to attend a Carpenters for Christ event at a local Baptist church?

from THE DAILY SHOW

2010-08-21T06:58:00.001-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Is it "sound byte" or "sound bite"?

2010-08-14T10:45:00.001-07:00

Whatever. Here's one:

"Should there be a mosque near Ground Zero? Beats another American Apparel!" (Stephen Colbert)

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

The Word - Weapon of Mass Construction

http://www.colbertnation.com/

Colbert Report Full Episodes

2010 Election

Fox News

The Week That Was

2010-08-13T13:14:00.001-07:00

Monday: A perambulatory morning. I walked to work. I'd had a heck of a weekend filled with lots of running. Saturday morning found me in Knoxville to buy my son a computer for college. I stood in line 45 minutes at the Apple store. Not bad. Then I drove to Walnut, North Carolina, and did my mom's chores. When those were finished, I changed strings on my guitar, took a shower and, after my wife arrived from Tennessee, drove over to Marshall to meet Sam and Sharon for supper at Bacchus Bistro. After supper, I played a three-hour gig at Good Stuff Grocery. We got home at 12:30 a.m. I was at church the next morning at 7:45 to play with the band and teach Sunday School. Then we went back over the mountain to my mom's 79th birthday party, after which I sang ("Thunder and Lightning") at the funeral of my brother-in-law's father. In addition to all this, I was still angry at those I felt at least partially responsible for the loss of my friend Jimmy the drummer. So, I hoped the walk would do me good.

Although the morning was warm, it wasn't too hot yet when I set out on the 3 ½ mile trek from home to campus. Along the way, I attracted a good deal of bovine attention as I strolled alongside the barn and pastures a man I think of as Farmer Brown—he's quite tanned. I think the bovine attention might have been due in part to the red t-shirt I was wearing, which seemed to bring them to the fence to stare at me. Thankfully no bulls seemed to be around. During the first half of the walk, while the road runs narrow through the countryside unaccompanied by a sidewalk, I didn't wear my headphones so that I could pay attention to what was approaching and passing. Instead of Yes's "Roundabout" or Springsteen's "Gypsy Biker," I listened to the crowing of roosters, the barking of dogs, the bellowing of cattle.

On Antioch, not far from my house and right up against the edge of a park called Willow Springs, a place where I often walk, I passed the Islamic Center of Northeast Tennessee. (You can see one of the aforementioned bovine creatures cooling in the pond and watching me and my red t-shirt go by.) Seeing the center put me in mind of all the controversy rising these days around the building of mosques and Islamic centers across the country—in New York City, in middle Tennessee, in Wisconsin, in California. I don't recall any protest to this center. Perhaps northeast Tennessee is simply more progressive than the rest of the country. Or perhaps while it was being built the downright ignorant and prejudiced were distracted by something shiny.

Tuesday: I was sitting at my computer in Burleson Hall when one of those lift buckets rose into view outside and two Mexican men began prying out my window. That's odd, I thought, but then I remembered that all the windows in my building were being replaced this week. At the end of the day, I met the gang at the Acoustic Coffeehouse for the regular 2nd-Tuesday meeting of the Four O'clock Club. We shared pitchers of 1554, Fat Tire and something else, while the usual laughs and weirdness prevailed.

Wednesday: The band at church practiced for this coming Sunday. In attendance was my friend and friendly auto mechanic Chad, who will be sitting in on the drums this week in the ongoing absence of the lost Jimmy. I'd never heard Chad play before, but I knew that he plays regularly with a popular band around town. I wasn't disappointed!

Thursday: The band at church practiced for the Wednesday Night Live kick-off event (September 8) and the celebration that will follow Impact JC (September 11). We worked mostly on U2 stuff: "Pride (In the Name of Love)," "Beautiful Day," "With or Without You," "Mysterious Ways," "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "One." The lost Jimmy was there to practice for these events, as he told us he would be when he announced that he was leaving. We had a couple of awkward moments at the beginning, but soon everything smoothed out and we were all friends and music folks together and having fun.

Friday: Lunch at El Charolais!

Little Drummer Boy?

2010-08-05T10:18:00.000-07:00

Well, no, Jimmy's not a little drummer boy. He can be quite the powerhouse behind a drum kit. We've been playing in the church band together for several years now. Come to think of it, I've probably spent more time working with this drummer than any other I've worked with in the past. We've been bandmates and friends. We've had a good run, and I'm sorry to say that it's over.

This good friend of mine is leaving our church for another. This means, of course, that he's leaving the band as well. I don't agree with most of his reasons for making the move. His main reason, having to do with his family, I can get solidly behind, but the other reasons--reasons I won't go into--don't strike a chord with me. Still, I respect his decision.

That respect, however, won't keep me from missing him and his pa rum pum pum pum. I'm sure that we like to imagine that we'll keep in touch and maybe even play together again from time to time, but eventually that'll fade away and we'll separate in the inevitable drift that takes place in life.

That's a shame.

That's life.

Brighten the Corner . . .

2010-07-27T07:19:00.001-07:00

In 1913, Ina Odgon wrote the song "Brighten the Corner Where You Are." The title says it all really. But if you want a more thorough explanation of the main idea, you can Google the lyric or, better yet, read the scripture on which the lyric was based—Matthew 5: 14-16. I've decided that, first, the corner where I am—at any given moment—is all I can brighten and, second, that corner is worth brightening.

The broader scenes of American politics and American culture are tending toward a bad end, I believe. Our political life is polarized beyond repair or recovery, and our culture is prostituted beyond rehabilitation or reclamation. We can still vote, sure, and we can avoid participating in the downward spiral of American life. But votes are wasted on political figures who have no words of wisdom, whose promises can't be realized, whose ideology is, in truth, a front for—as Machiavelli suggests—gaining power and keeping power. As for culture, we can hold on to parts that still make sense to us, be those what they may, and try to ignore the destructive encroachment of stupidity and pointless celebrity—the Lindsey Lohan syndrome, if you will.

So I turn away from political stagnation and cultural degradation and try to brighten the corner where I am. I do this as I can with my friends and family. I do this as I can in the classroom. I do this as I can at Cherokee Church. I do this as I can in "the Tri." These are my corners.

Upcoming is an event called "Impact JC." It's a day of service in Johnson City—all kinds of service, from helping those who help youth, to caring for the military and its families, to building and repairing homes for the poor, to giving blood. (Check it out at http://johnsoncity.rethinkchurchevents.org/.) I don't have skills or gifts that will address many of these needs as well as they might be addressed, but I can make a little music. So, I'll be part of the band that leads the celebration at the end of the day of service. I hope to help lift a few spirits and, in that, brighten the corner where I am, where I live.

2010-07-24T17:58:00.001-07:00

For the lovers of song lyrics:

Great Idea!

2010-07-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

Jack York, CEO of IN2L, has been a friend of mine since we met on the AESU trip to Europe 31 years ago. He has put heart and soul into this project, this company, since the 1990s, and I think this great idea just might be ready to break big!

Two Interesting Anniversaries!

2010-07-20T11:22:00.001-07:00

It was on this day in 1969 that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon. They were part of the Apollo 11 crew. An estimated 600 million people watched live coverage of the moon landing.

It was on this day in 1875 that the largest recorded swarm of locusts in American history descended upon the Great Plains. An estimated 3.5 trillion locusts made up the swarm. It was about 1,800 miles long and 110 miles wide, ranging from Canada down to Texas.

Swarms would occur once every seven to 12 years, emerging from river valleys in the Rocky Mountains and sweeping east across much of the country. The size of the swarms tended to grow when there was less rain, and in 1873, the American West began to go through one of its driest periods on record.

The land was still relatively dry on this day in 1875 when farmers just east of the Rocky Mountains began to see a cloud approaching from the west. Some farmers noticed the distinctive color of the cloud, glinting around the edges where the locust wings caught the light of the sun.

People there that day said that the locusts descended like a driving snow in winter, covering everything in their path. Some people described the sound of the swarm landing as like thunder or a train. The locusts blanketed the ground, nearly a foot deep. Trees bent over with the weight of the insects, and large tree limbs broke off under the pressure.

They ate nearly every living piece of vegetation in their path, as well as harnesses on horses, the bark of trees, curtains, and clothing hung on laundry lines. They gnawed on fence posts and railings, and they especially loved the handles of farm tools, which were left behind polished, as if by fine sandpaper. Some farmers tried to scare away the locusts by running into the swarm, and they had their clothes eaten right off their bodies.

In the wake of the swarm, settlers on half a million square miles of the West faced starvation. Similar locust swarms occurred in the following years, and farmers became desperate. But by the mid-1880s, the rains had returned, and the swarms died down. Most scientists predicted that the locusts would return with the next drought. Mysteriously, they did not. Within a few decades they were believed to be extinct. For most of the 20th century, no one knew what had happened to the locusts, but recent evidence suggests that the cultivation of the land on the Great Plains changed the geography so much so quickly that the Rocky Mountain locust was unable to adapt. The last two live specimens of the Rocky Mountain locust were collected in 1902, and those specimens are now stored at the Smithsonian Institution.

Michigan Reunion

2010-07-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

On Thursday afternoon, 15 July, I left my Tennessee home and headed north: I-26 to I-81 to I-77 to Akron, Ohio. On Friday morning I stopped in Cleveland and picked up my cousin Mark Plemmons (who also has a Tennessee home in Kingsport), and we made our way to Marysville, Michigan. I think our only stop along the way was in Toledo, Ohio, where we at lunch at Tony Packo's, a hot dog place made famous by Klinger on Mash. My "original dog," actually half a sausage sliced longways, was good, but I didn't think it anything particularly stunning. But he beer--Dortmunder Gold, from Great Lakes Brewing Co.--was quite good!

In Marysville, Mark and I stayed with my cousin Ken Reeves and his wife Louanne from Friday afternoon until Monday morning. The reunion itself took place in a park in Port Huron on Saturday afternoon. We had 50+ Reeves-related folks in attendance, good food, good weather (mostly) and well-behaved children and dogs. Most of the Reeves relations there are descendants of my maternal aunts and uncles, who left the mountains of western North Carolina in the 1930s, '40s and '50s and went north to the Detroit area to find work. Eventually they ended up being concentrated in and around Port Huron/Marysville/St. Clair.

On Saturday evening, Ken and Louanne took Mark and me on a sightseeing tour along the St. Clair River and the furthermost southewestern edge of Lake Huron. Flat country and blue water. Even the river is blue, which is an unusual site for a man from southern Applachia. In this picture, at my left ear, a 1,000-footer moves north on St. Clair River and passes beneath the Blue Water Bridge that connects Port Huron to Sarnia in Canada. Beyond the bridge is the open water of Lake Huron.

All during the evening sightseeing tour Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" played in the back of my mind!

We ate our Sunday brunch at a local Marysville restaurant, and afterwards Mark and I hit the road, heading back toward Cleveland. I dropped him off at the car rental area near the airport and made my way south on I-77. When I reached Marietta, Ohio, a neat little town on the Ohio River, I got a room at a Best Western and went to see a movie (Predators -- 2 out of 5 stars, I judge it). This morning I'm still at BW, relaxing, taking my time before hitting the road for the last leg of my journey.

"Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
"In the rooms of her ice-water mansion. . . ."

From Today's Writer's Almanac

2010-07-13T07:31:00.001-07:00

the finger by Charles Bukowski

the drivers of automobiles
have very little recourse or
originality.
when upset with
another
driver
they often give him the
FINGER.

I have seen two adult
men
florid of face
driving along
giving each other the
FINGER.

well, we all know what
this means, it's no
secret.

still, this gesture is
so overused it has
lost most of its
impact.

some of the men who give
the FINGER are captains of
industry, city councilmen,
insurance adjusters,
accountants and/or the just plain
unemployed.
no matter.
it is their favorite
response.

people will never admit
that they drive
badly.

the FINGER is their
reply.

I see grown men
FINGERING each other
throughout the day.

it gives me pause.
when I consider
the state of our cities,
the state of our states,
the state of our country,
I begin to
understand.

the FINGER is a mind-
set.
we are the FINGERERS.
we give it
to each other.
we give it coming and
going.
we don't know how
else to respond.

what a hell of a way
to not
live.

Can't Sleep

2010-07-11T21:10:00.000-07:00

Maybe it was the afternoon nap. Maybe it is because our air-conditioning isn't working properly in this hot July. Maybe it was the bad news from a friend this morning that keeps swirling around in my head. Maybe it was the vampire movie watched this evening (no, not that Twilight stuff). Maybe it is having lost a rhythm that I had for awhile. Maybe it is the suspicion that so few _______s are true.

One's first guess is often correct: probably the afternoon nap.

Another 9 July

2010-07-09T12:28:00.000-07:00

I discovered the following in one of my journals. I was writing on 22 August 1991 and doing some catch-up on stuff that happened since my previous entry. One paragraph focuses on Tuesday, 9 July 1991, and it describes a pivotal moment in my life:

On July 9, in a rehearsal hall in Nashville, we performed a great set for representatives of MCA Records and SBK Records, both of which turned us down for reasons that had NOTHING to do with music and EVERYTHING to do with our [society's] warped sense of entertainment values. MCA said we didn't look right (image problems), part of which was I appeared too fat. SBK said our performance wasn't exciting enough to watch. Both companies said great band and great songs. I'm still chewing on my frustration with the state of things in our popular culture. Make mine mindless. Make mine mindless. Make mine mindless. Make mine mindless. Make mine mindless. Make mine mindless . . . mine mindless . . . mindless . . . less . . .

U2charist #3

2010-07-09T06:22:00.000-07:00

On Saturday evening at 7:30, APB (Arise Praise Band) will offer a third U2charist. Like the ill-fated one on 30 January--ill-fated but fun!--this one will take place at Nelson's Fine Art Gallery downtown in Johnson City. The band is practiced up and ready with the following set list:

MLK
New Year's Day
With or Without You
Mysterious Ways
Moment of Surrender
Beautiful Day
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Yahweh
Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Magnificent
One
40
Where the Streets Have No Name

Randy Frye, DS of the Johnson City District of the Holston Conference of the UMC, will deliver a brief homily and lead the Eucharist portion of the event (aided in the latter by Madonna Flanders).

It'll be fun!

A Song by The Call

2010-07-04T17:26:00.000-07:00

Chorus:

When will America, become America
When will America, become America
When will the home we loveMean freedom for everyone
When will America, become America

When will the killing stop
When the last child has dropped
How long must mothers’ tears
Rain down on streets of fear
When will the home we love
Mean justice for everyone
When will America become America

(Chorus)

When will the struggling poor
Walk with their heads held high once more
Children playing on haunted streets
Where dogs and vultures eat
Politicians weave their spell
Promise spoken from the mouth of hell
When will America become America

(Chorus)

With their very lives they gave
Soldiers, the young and brave
Shame for the world to see
A mystery to you and me
Angels will keep their watch
Heaven will count the cost
When will America become America

(Chorus)

2 Days Ago

2010-06-28T06:09:00.001-07:00

It was on this day in 2000 that rival scientific teams completed the first rough map of the human genome. Scientists had discovered the structure of DNA back in 1953, but it took the Human Genome Project to begin to pin down exactly how human DNA makes us who we are. Every cell in the human body contains 23 pairs of chromosomes, and each chromosome is a bundle of DNA. If all of the DNA, bundled up inside every single cell in our bodies, were unfurled and strung out in a single strand, it would be about six feet long. Those six feet of DNA contain the instructions for the creation of all the physical aspects of our human bodies: everything from our blood to organs, our brain, our eye color, our fingers and toes, and so forth.

The question scientists wanted to answer was how those instructions give rise to people and why the instructions sometimes make mistakes. The Human Genome Project began in October of 1990, and it was estimated that it would take 15 years and about $3 billion. But because a private company got involved and speeded up the process, the map was finished five years ahead of schedule.

Something we learned from the Human Genome Project is that the entire 6 billion-member human species goes back 7,000 generations to an original population of about 60,000 people. Our species has only a modest amount of genetic variation — the DNA of any two humans is 99.9 percent identical.

On this day in 1818, John Keats wrote a letter to his brother Tom about a hike through the Lake District of England. He wrote: "We walked here to Ambleside yesterday along the border of Winandermere, all beautiful with wooded shores and Islands — our road was a winding lane, wooded on each side, and green overhead, full of Foxgloves — every now and then a glimpse of the Lake, and all the while Kirkstone and other large hills nestled together in a sort of grey black mist. Ambleside is at the northern extremity of the Lake. We arose this morning at six, because we call it a day of rest, having to call on Wordsworth who lives only two miles hence — before breakfast we went to see the Ambleside water fall. The morning beautiful — the walk easy among the hills. [...]

"I shall learn poetry here and shall henceforth write more than ever, for the abstract endeavor of being able to add a mite to that mass of beauty which is harvested from these grand materials, by the finest spirits, and put into ethereal existence for the relish of one's fellow."

It was on this the day in 1284 that, according to legend, the Pied Piper lured children out of the city of Hamelin, Germany, and to their death. The story goes that at some point earlier in the year, a man dressed in a colorful coat appeared in Hamelin, offering to get rid of the rats that were plaguing the town. The townspeople agreed to a set price. The man played a song on a flute and lured all the rats out of the houses and barns and into the nearby River Weser, where they all drowned. But the townspeople were annoyed at his unconventional methods, and refused to pay him.

On June 26, he returned to town, dressed like a hunter with a red cap. It was a Sunday, and all the adults were in church. He got out his flute and began to play, and 130 children followed him out of the town, through a gate and into a mountain, and were never seen again.

The legend of the Pied Piper was first written down in a chorus book in the 14th century, but that book was lost a couple of hundred years later. The oldest surviving account is from the 15th century, and it says: "In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul on 26 June, 130 children born in Hamelin were seduced by a piper, dressed in all kinds of colours, and lost at the place of execution near the koppen," the hills around the city. The Brothers Grimm later wrote down a version of the legend and the town's response to it.

To this day, no one knows exactly what inspired the legend of the Pied Piper, but it is clear that it is based on a historical event in Hamelin's history. One theory is that it was some sort of plague or epidemic, possibly even one that would cause children to dance, and that the Piper was a metaphorical representation of Death. But these days, most research supports the theory that the legend refers to the historical colonization of Eastern Europe, which began with Lower Germany. The town's citizens, or the "children of Hamelin," were being recruited to settle throughout Eastern Europe, and the Piper was probably just a landowner, who lured them away with promises of land.

From The Writer's Almanac for 26 June 2010

Ahoskie's Tomahawk Motel

2010-06-26T17:19:00.000-07:00

We always stay at the Tomahawk Motel when we're in Ahoskie. I just went out to take a picture of the place to send to my email so that I could download and post it here. Then I remembered that this is another place in my life where ATT doesn't, in fact, have more bars. Ahoskie has more bars in town than ATT--one named Chubby's, where tonight is "Raggae" night. (Maybe more bars exist around here, but that's the only one I know the name of.)

I wanted to post a picture of the Tomahawk. Our room here has some improvements over the last time I stayed. (Granted, I don't come to the reunion every year.) We have a little refrigerator in our room and a microwave. Obviously we also now have wireless Internet. But some things don't change. The television set has a significant blue tint. Everything looks like a dark episode of CSI: New York. On top of it lies an essential component of each Tomahawk room: the fly swatter. Thankfully, for this near-100-degree heat, we have a great air-conditioner. My son and daughter-in-law just walked in and mentioned that it felt "like a meat locker" in here. I'm comfy.

Back to the cell phone issue in Ahoskie. Last night we drove out through the countryside--we have a lot of flat countryside here--and came upon a signal. This was no single bar of signal but a full five bars. Who knows where it came from! Anyway, we parked in this little pulloff in the midst of some farmer's soybean field and made a couple of telephone calls, sent a couple of texts.

Blogging Ahoskie

2010-06-25T10:49:00.001-07:00

My father-in-law grew up in Ahoskie, North Carolina, a little town in the northeastern part of the state. The landscape is flat, big on farming and hunting. Because I have no cell phone signal here, I can't take a picture of the place, send it to my email, download, upload, etc. I did an Internet search of pictures for this place, and many of the pictures that came up involved either rows of tobacco and cotton or men in camouflage beside the bodies of animals they'd just killed, holding their heads up so that they seem to be looking into the camera along with their killers.

Anyway, I'm hanging out in the Tomahawk Motel here, reading and writing in the quiet before the weekend reunion chaos kicks in. This evening my granddaughters will arrive, and tomorrow I'll take them to see the new Toy Story movie, an entertaining escape from the heat, I hope. Tomorrow evening we'll have the big pig-picking. The beast will be on the cooker from early tomorrow morning. Eastern North Carolina barbeque is my favorite—not a tomato based sauce but a spicy combination of vinegar and Tabasco. Love it!

I've been away from this blog for too long (and hope not to be so again), so here's the bullet list of events, some of which I might write up in more details:

at work, finished up spring class, grading and honors recruiting . . . but enough about work

okay, sort of about work, my annual trip with the sophomores to Washington, DC, in the second week of May

a research trip to Kent, Ohio, to work with a typescript biography of Charles Brockden Brown, in preparation for writing a chapter about his early biographers for an Oxford University Press publication

rehearsals for and the performance of a rock-and-roll show for the Mermaids in Marshall celebration in the French Broad Friday series of summer celebrations in Marshall, NC; I got to hang out and play with Sugardaddy from Bakersville, NC, which was a lot of fun; the show itself was a blast, and Marshall seemed to love it

an extraordinary meeting of the 4 O'clock Club on June 12, Next Door at the Acoustic Coffeehouse; I played some music, we had some good beer and good cake in celebration of the event, which also included a celebration of my wife's birthday

a trip with my wife to Washington, DC, where I was reunited with a group of people with which I toured Europe 31 years ago

And now I'm in Ahoskie!

Blogging Charleston

2010-03-23T11:05:00.001-07:00

I'm sitting in the courtyard of the Lodge Alley Inn in Charleston, South Carolina. Although the sky is a beautiful blue and the sunshine is clear and bright, the air is a little breezy and cool. The palmetto trees are dancing in the wind and light. The brick fountain in the center of the courtyard is splashing and spraying. I have on shorts, but I also have on two t-shirts and a light jacket. Altogether a nice day in one of my favorite cities.

We're not doing much except relaxing on this trip. I walked for an hour and a half this morning—out on the pier, down along the Battery, through the narrow streets that connect East Bay and Church and Meeting and King Streets. I've written a bit on my latest short story—"The Flutist." Soon we'll go to lunch at Magnolia's and then walk around town some more. This afternoon around four o'clock, I might sit somewhere and have a beer while my Four O'clock Club friends in Johnson City are meeting without me. I hope that their weather is nice and that they're able to sit outside in sunshine.

As seems to happen every trip to this wonderful place, we discovered our new favorite restaurant last night. It's on East Bay, right across the street from Lodge Alley Inn. We'd seen it before but had never eaten there. It's called Slightly North of Broad (S.N.O.B), and we both had fine meals there. I enjoyed their shrimp and grits, which is something I've tried and like in a lot of different places here. This dish was more varied than others I've had. In addition to its namesake components, it had some great sausage (made on the premises), ham, tomatoes and spices. I could tell that I'd be wanting a beer with this dish, but the initial list that our waiter ran down for us didn't excite me too much. Then, as I sat looking over the menu, I listened to a couple of the staff talking in the corner behind me and distinctly heard the phrase "Fat Tire" a couple of times. I asked the waiter about it, and she said it was available. I was able to down a couple over the course of the meal. Nice!

Another Park, Another Sunday

2010-02-21T19:34:00.001-08:00

After a stretch of winter that seems to have lasted since the weekend before Christmas, blue skies looked down on us today, and the temperature soared up toward the 60s. The sky was clear when I came home last night, when I woke up this morning, when I went to church, when I went to lunch, while I took a nap and when I went for a walk. Willow Springs was beautiful, and it was filled with people walking and running, playing basketball and riding bicycles, walking dogs and kicking balls to dogs.

The day was a whisper of spring in the midst of winter. The girls behind the counter at Atlanta Bread spoke to each other and to me as if this one beautiful day would last and last. But rain is forecast for tonight, and cold and snow are expected later in the week.

But what the hey, it's February! Still, as Bono sings, "It was a beautiful day! / Don't let it get away!"

Seed of a Short Story

2010-02-06T06:24:00.001-08:00

This evening—a little bored and depressed, home alone, sick of all the rain and tired of listening to the sump pump under the house running every 45 seconds—I decided to hit the soggy streets and find something to eat. I had a good hamburger on my mind. A bar called The Cottage is rumored to have the best hamburger in town, so I initially drifted in that direction. But then I realized that one of my favorite places—Mid City Grill—was open. During the week they don't open until eleven o'clock at night (and close at five o'clock in the morning), but on weekends they open early—five o'clock in the afternoon.

I had a book with me and took a table where I could read until I ordered and then again until my food came. This was around eight o'clock, so not many people were in the place—a couple of tables of four or so college-aged folks and a table of folks the same age but likely not in college. At this one table to my right was another lone wolf like myself, and he's the seed of the short story.

He wore running or walking shoes (walking, I think, given his apparent age and obvious stiffness), sweat pants and a t-shirt that read on both front and back: "1959 Tour / [some concert hall] / Kingsport, TN / Webb Pierce / Red Foley." His hair—gray and crumpled like used wire—was thin on top but sprawled down over his shoulders in back. In front, a long beard almost identical to the hair, sprawled over his chest. He sat, when I first saw him, with his forehead in one hand and a coffee cup in the other.

On the table in front of him was another coffee cup besides his own, two empty yellow packets of sweetener and six little cream containers with their tops peeled back. A red jacket was draped over the back of a chair, and an umbrella leaned against the table. Either he'd already eaten or he was there only for the coffee.

He raised his hand . . . "Miss?" he said loudly. "Miss?" . . . The waitress who had seated me came over to his table . . . "Want some more coffee?" . . . "The Jimi Hendrix tour back in '68," he said. "What went wrong?" . . . The waitress didn't seem surprised by this . . . "Whose tour?" she said . . . "Jimi Hendrix. What went wrong?" . . . "Drugs?" . . . "What kind of drugs?" . . . "Heroin?" . . . "No. Acid."

She walked away to check on one of her tables, but in a few minutes he had his hand up again. "Miss?" This time he asked her about Chicago. She didn't at first know that he was talking about a band. She said that she'd download some of their stuff and put it on her iPod. He asked her about the band's original guitar player, Terry Kath, and his accidental death by gunshot in 1978 and then tossed out some trivia about Jimi Hendrix's praise of Kath's guitar skills. Once he called the other waitress over and asked her what happened to rock-n-roll on Christmas 1954. "Somebody died?" she said. He went on to talk about the death of Johnny Ace, who died playing Russian roulette that Christmas day. He asked her about her earliest memory of rock-n-roll, and she, being probably in her mid 20s, said it was of the first album she'd bought in the '90s. He said rap and hip-hop were bullshit. The manager ignored this guy when called to—"Joe?"—but the waitresses were patient and sweet. I got the feeling they'd been through this trivia mill a time or two.

He was still sitting there with his coffee when I left and walked back out into the rain.

With or Without You

2010-01-31T19:03:00.000-08:00

We had a difficult time making the decision whether or not to go ahead with the U2charist after the snow and ice came. Some said that if the band could get there, we ought to do it for those who would come, even though we knew attendees would be small in number. Others said that we ought to postpone in the interest of safety and the interest of making a big splash and receiving a larger donation for our causes. I could see the points of both groups, and I was torn. In the end, the decision was left up to the band. One was indifferent (in a good way), one didn't want to do it (and didn't come), three wanted to go ahead. I wanted to go ahead with it but was okay if we didn't (especially as I had our Minnesota visitor covered).

So we went ahead, ready to play for a handful--wives and husbands and so on. While the actual turnout wasn't what it might have been in good weather, we still ended up with 50 or so enthusiastic folks and had a great time. You know the scripture about where two or three are gathered--well, the spirit was great!

U2charist

2010-01-29T16:20:00.000-08:00

Well, the set list is prepared and rehearsed. We've been planning this event on the 30th (tomorrow) for several months now. And here we are . . . with snow . . . a winter storm predicted to last until three and a half hours before the event, although the snow is predicted to continue beyond that and into Sunday morning.

The set list:

MLK
New Year's Day
With or Without You
Mysterious Ways
Moment of Surrender
Beautiful Day
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Yahweh
Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
Magnificent
One
40
Where the Streets Have No Name

This service is to take place at Dick Nelson's art gallery downtown in Johnson City, and donations are to go to Nothing But Nets and to Haiti (via UMCOR). Hopefully we can do a little to help.

(Ruth, if this thing gets snowed out, I'll come to Dennis and Marie's and play all these songs for you unplugged. It won't be the same, but it'll be something.)

Your Best Life Now?

2010-01-12T07:45:00.001-08:00

One of my past professors often sends me the "Fwd" emails that go around (and around and around). These emails vary from funny to silly to moving to cautionary to beautiful (the pictures some people capture!). Here's an excerpt from one received this morning. It begins with a silly part about a Chinese doctor (represented by grammar that is racially stereotyped) responding to health and fitness questions and generally poking fun at fitness and diet obsessions. (Example: Q. Is swimming good for your figure? A. If swimming good for your figure, explain whale to me; Q. Is getting in shape important for my lifestyle? A. Hey! "Round" a shape!)

The concluding portion has something interesting in it, something that suggests a little deeper meaning:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, screaming "WOO-HOO, what a ride!!" - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out.

It continues:

For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat
      and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat
      and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine
      and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine
      and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of sausages and fats
       and suffer fewer heart attacks than Americans.

CONCLUSION:

Eat and drink what you like.
Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

Something to all this? I think so, even though the notion of balance and moderation is absent. When I'm in the gym, I can't help but wonder if the people around me (students and others) devote the kind of energy and conscious effort to their studies and their lives as they do their bodies.

2010

2010-01-01T07:39:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to one and all!

The first 24 hours:

watched the ball drop in Times Square; while I'm glad Dick Clark is still around, I don't necessarily think he ought to show up on TV
a decent night's sleep
a quiet morning as the family slept in, breakfast, exercise
two movies in the afternoon: A Christmas Carol and 2012
evening at home watching a couple episodes of Lost
discovering that the home computer has screwed up

Something New

2009-12-29T18:21:00.000-08:00

My old Guild six-string was a Christmas present from my parents in 1975. I bought my Muramatsu flute in 1978, when I was a music major at Mars Hill College. Somewhere along the line, I became as good a guitar player as I'm ever going to be. And when I left MHC in December 1979, I was a far better flute player than I am now. In the 30 years since, these have been my two instruments. I generally play them as well as I can, and that's generally been good enough for what I needed to do.

But a couple of months ago, I decided I wanted to try something new, and that turned out to be harmonica. My mom had one around the house as long as I can remember, but I never developed an interest in playing it. So I don't know what possessed me recently to pick one up at my local music store. I bought a cheap one ($8.50) in the key of G and then another in E, and as I sat at my desk and played along with my songs in those keys, I found out that I kind of liked it. So the band at church was doing this particular song in D, and I had an idea that a harmonica might sound good on it. I bought a nicer one in D (in the $20 range). Now I have a handful of decent harmonicas in these keys: E (a new one), A, D, G (a new one) and C. For the most part, that covers the keys I play in.

I also bought one of those around-the-neck harmonica holders that I can use to play harmonica and guitar at the same time. That's fun, but not as easy as I figured it would be: breathing in and out, moving my mouth back and forth across the harmonica and working the guitar hands--chords and rhythms--at the same time. So far, my best achievement is playing Neil Young's "Heart of Gold."

I don't expect to master the harmonica any more than I have mastered guitar or flute or my own voice. But I can fully expect this new addition to increase and enrich the joy that I've experienced over 30 years of making music.

Walmart World?

2009-12-26T08:05:00.000-08:00

By 10:03 a.m., 26 December 2009, Walmart had pulled all Christmas cards and was beginning to stock its Valentine's Day cards. I suppose this is to be expected from such a crassly commercial establishment--in such a crassly commercial nation. Although I can't say that I was surprized, I couldn't help being a little shocked and saddened.

How quickly do we put away Christmas and move on?

2009-12-24T08:16:00.000-08:00

Happy Christmas Eve!

Follow the link below for some beautiful pictures taken this past Friday night (12/18/2009) in one of my favorite western North Carolina towns: Waynesville.

http://www.theridgerunner.com/snowville/index.html

* * *

From today's Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1914 that the last known Christmas truce occurred, during World War I. German troops fighting in Belgium began decorating their trenches and singing Christmas carols. Their enemy, the British, soon joined in the caroling. The war was put on hold, and these soldiers greeted each other in "No Man's Land," exchanging gifts of whiskey and cigars. In many areas, the truce held until Christmas night, while in other places the truce did not end until New Year's Day.

Wednesdays Without

2009-12-23T09:00:00.001-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to fast every Wednesday. Today is my third time, and I guess it's gone well so far. Without doing any research on this, I decided to go with the style of fasting my Muslim friends use during Ramadan—a small meal before sunrise, no food or water throughout the day and then a light meal after sunset. This was, of course, a good time to begin such a fasting regimen, given that yesterday was the winter solstice so these recent Wednesdays are among the shortest days of the year. Sort of like cheating, I guess, but maybe I'll be able to work up to those long Wednesdays that will come my way when summer arrives.

What am I getting out of doing this? So far, I'm only scratching the surface of the possibilities. For one thing, this practice is helping me get my weight somewhat under control. In a little over two weeks, including the two previous fast days, I've lost six pounds. That's good, I think.

Although I haven't yet dug deeply into what fasting has to offer spiritually, I've sensed its being able to help me feel what so many people in this world feel minute by minute, day after day: hunger and thirst. I can get at least an inkling of what this condition must be like for them. And this evening when I eat and drink and tomorrow and the next day, maybe I'll carry a little bit of that inkling into the world with me to curb my selfish behaviors somewhat.

This practice also helps me see how I can have a little backbone in the face of temptation. (To be honest, I'm generally putty in the hands of temptation.) My first fasting day, 9 December, passed more or less in secrecy. Nobody knew what I was doing. But last Wednesday and today, a friend has contacted me about going to lunch at our favorite restaurant—on the 16th he didn't know about my fasting; today he just forgot. On both days, I've been able to say no. And I didn't say no by saying I had something else to do, that I was busy or whatever. I let him know I couldn't go because I was fasting. What that means, I don't know, but it somehow feels important.

So, it's just a little before noon. I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. My lips feel a bit dry—I'm even trying not to use lip balm to remedy this. Already I'm looking forward to that first drink of cold water and wondering what I might eat to break the fast. But the trick is, I think, not to be looking forward to these but rather to focus on what I'm experiencing now, to feel what this is like, to let it clear my head a bit so that I can live more fully in the moment. But I could be wrong.

Serious Snow . . . for the South

2009-12-19T05:09:00.000-08:00

51

2009-11-25T04:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, back when I was 50, I decided that I was tired of waking up to NPR. Not that I actually listened to the news as I struggled awake--I was just tired of waking up to chatter (although waking up to NPR's chatter is admittedly far less annoying than waking up to those "funny" DJs). Anyway, I twirled the dial until I found one of the local "classic hits" stations, 102.7. This morning, I woke up to the following sequence:

at 6:oo, the radio came on with one of my favorite bands of the '80s, Big Country (from Scotland) and its first MTV hit, "In a Big Country"; a beat or two after the music came on, the first snippet of lyric I heard was "stay alive"
next came one of my all-time favorite bands/songs: The Doobie Brothers/"China Grove"
next, one of my favorite New Wave grooves of the '80s: The Fixx's "One Thing Leads to Another"
Blue Oyster Cult's "Don't Fear the Reaper," a nice thought for my 51st
and the set closed with one of my favorite grooves from the '70s: Edgar Winter's "Frankenstein"

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert

But I can live and breathe and see the sun in wintertime . . .

In a big country dreams stay with you

Like a lover's voice fires the mountainside

Stay alive

U2charist: Phase One Complete

2009-11-16T19:03:00.000-08:00

The U2charist was a tremendous experience. As involved as I was with the planning and the execution of it, I believe I was as moved by it as anybody present. The band played well, and my voice held up throughout all the chasing of Bono's melodies. Sam did a great job putting together the visuals--lyric slides for the big screen, a slideshow backdrop for the band. Michelle led the Communion service wonderfully.

We had 153 people (or thereabouts), which is roughly double the usual attendance of the 9:00 service. And $783.89 was donated to Nothing But Nets, a project to provide mosquito netting to Africa in an effort to reduce the spread of malaria.

The next event--extended by a handful of songs--will take place at 7:30 on Saturday, 30 January, at Nelson's Art Gallery downtown. More on this later.

U2charist @ Cherokee Tomorrow

2009-11-14T04:32:00.000-08:00

Since its 1980 album Boy, the Irish rock band U2 has played a vibrant role in popular culture, their music and image evolving to fit changing times and tastes. But through the years and the changes, two things have remained constant with U2: first, the same four individuals who formed the band so long ago are the same on tour around the world in 2009 and 2010; second, and more importantly for this morning's service at Cherokee, the band's recordings and live performances remain infused with distinct and challenging Christian imagery and spirituality. This longevity of character and belief is evident in the music you'll hear today: "40" is from U2's third album War (1983); "Magnificent" is from the thirteenth album No Line on the Horizon (2009); other songs come from the range of albums in between.

The U2charist combines the music of U2 with the celebration of the Eucharist to create a service that has been described as "meaningful and fun." The first U2charist was held in 2004, and since then variations on the service have been held around the world and across denominations. U2 is aware of these services and allows its music to be used without licensing cost. The band asks in return that the event be a worship service, not a concert, and that a donation be collected to support the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, among which are the end of poverty and hunger, the promotion of universal education, of child and maternal health, gender equality and global partnership.

The organizers of the first U2charist at Cherokee United Methodist Church have chosen to donate today's special offering to a program called Nothing But Nets, an approved project of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries. The pennies and dollars donated this morning—100% of them—will go to purchase and distribute protective mosquito netting to help prevent the spread of malaria in Africa, where a child dies of this preventable disease every 30 seconds and a million children and adults die of it every year.

Welcome to the U2charist! Sing along! Dance! Worship!

U2charist @ Cherokee

2009-11-05T03:07:00.000-08:00

Songlist for the U2charist coming up on 15 November at Cherokee United Methodist Church:

"Beautiful Day"
"Pride (In the Name of Love)"
"Yahweh"
"Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own"
"I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"
"Magnificent"
"One"
"40"
"Where the Streets Have No Name"

Return to DC

2009-10-28T09:58:00.001-07:00

I'm in Washington, DC, for the third time in 2009. Two colleagues from ETSU's Honors College and I drove up yesterday for this year's conference of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC). It was a nasty day for driving. Rain, rain, rain, all the way from Tennessee to DC, over 400 miles of rain from the sky and spray from beneath the tires of fellow travelers. We left Johnson City a little after noon—causing me to miss my second 4 O'clock Club meeting in October—and arrived at the Grand Hyatt on the corner of 11th and H Streets at a little after seven o'clock. As a consolation for the 4 O'clock meeting, my colleagues and I went across the street to eat (and drink) at Capitol City Brewing Co., where I had some calamari, a fine turkey burger and a couple of glasses of their "Prohibition Porter."

This morning I woke up a little before six o'clock (as usual), but after staying up for a bit, I went back to bed (not as usual) and dozed until around nine. Then I got up, put on my walking clothes and headed for the Mall—not the shopping mall—where I did a bit of walking and jogging. The place was splashy and smelled of earth after the nearly two inches of rain that fell here yesterday and last night. I passed by the Washington Memorial and the World War II Memorial. As is my wont, I paid an emotional visit to the Lincoln Memorial and then headed back toward my hotel. On the way, I stopped at a little diner called Ollie's Trolley (http://www.olliestrolleydc.com/) for a breakfast of French toast and bacon.

It's now nearly one o'clock, and I'm heading out to find some lunch and walk around the city. The rain has moved out. The sun is shining from a blue sky. And I'm hungry.

17 October 1814: Act of God?

2009-10-19T06:07:00.000-07:00

From the Writer's Almanac:

The London Beer Flood occurred on this day in 1814. At 6:00 on a Monday evening, a torrent of beer came rushing through the streets of the St. Giles district of London.

It started at the Horse Shoe Brewery at Tottenham Court and Oxford Street, where there were huge vats of porter perched on top of the roof. They contained beer, which had been fermenting right there for months. The wooden vats were enormous — some as tall as 22 feet — and were structurally supported by large iron hoops, dozens of them. They sat on the roof of the Meux Brewing Company, each of them containing hundreds of thousands of liters of beer.

The largest vat had started to strain under the weight and pressure of all that porter, and on this day, around 6:00 p.m., one of the iron hoops gave way and all the porter in the 22-foot-tall vat came gushing out. There were about 600,000 liters of beer in there, and when the vat burst and all that beer came exploding out, there was a chain reaction and the surrounding vats on the roof also burst. More than a million liters of beer toppled the brewery's brick wall (it was 25 feet tall) and began flooding the streets of St. Giles.

People came out onto the streets of St. Giles with mugs and buckets and pots and pans to collect the free beer; others leaned over and drank directly from the streams gushing down the streets. But many people were injured by the torrent and sent to the hospital, where inpatients smelled the beer and nearly rioted to get their share.

Nine people died. About half were children who drowned or sustained fatal injuries from the flood, which had also crushed the roofs of buildings near the brewery, adding heavy timber to the gushing rivers of beer. One man died a few days after the flood from alcohol poisoning. Trying to prevent all of it from going to waste, he had drunk a lot of beer in the span of a few days. People brought a lawsuit against the Meux & Company Brewery, but in court the flood was ruled an Act of God, and the brewery was not held legally responsible.

In 1919 there was a molasses flood in Boston, Massachusetts, after a massive tank of molasses crumpled and burst. The molasses flood destroyed houses and trains and killed 21 people.

Mushroom

2009-10-12T04:28:00.001-07:00

2009-09-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

From today's Writer's Almanac:

Today is Constitution Day in the United States, because it was on this day in 1787 that the final draft of the Constitution was signed. There were 55 delegates working on the Constitution, and they had been showing up day after day for almost four months to the State House in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Nashville Years II (Related Diary Entries II)

2009-09-10T05:47:00.001-07:00

Here's a diary entry I ran across. It's not related to my experience with Ron or Earl, but I thought it worth posting. I'd forgotten this event, so I was surprised by the reminder and the remembering. The entry is from 6 December 1981:

As seems almost usual for me on Sunday morning, I woke up ill at the world. The Lord knows how hard it is for me to get up before 11 AM. I almost decided not to go to church, like every Sunday, thinking that I got nothing from the small, country service. Then I realized, as always, that they are my people and, even though I may get nothing from the service but seeing them and feeling their friendship, that is enough. Then I also came face to face with the fact that the singing I dread with such passion is for them and not for me, and that, being graciously given the gift from God, it is my duty to sing for them. It should also be my desire to do so.

Well, Allen met me at the door asking if what he heard about me signing with Capitol was true and he was followed closely by Butch asking the same. I quickly gave them my practiced explanation about Townhouse [Records] but they were still pleased.

When time came for me to sing came around, as I was getting my guitar, Raymond spoke up about my struggles with my music and my witness for the church and my hopefully impending record deal. Then totally unexpectedly he suggested a standing ovation for me and I was overwhelmed. If it is not the Lord's will that this all go through all right, He sure is planning to teach me a great lesson in disappointment. Evan at that, though, this morning was a great blessing and I am very thankful for all the people there. . . .

Oh, in church I sang "A Song for Carolina" and "Dear Mother."

Although I've mostly lost track of Butch, Allen and I are friends on Facebook. Raymond is dead now, as are most of the people who were there that December Sunday morning in 1981. In the end, I left that little church behind without much in the way of second thoughts or regrets. But the reminder of this moment fills my plate with a range of emotions—a pinch of nostalgic joy, a big helping of nostalgic heartache, a spoonful of anger at God (along with a double spoonful of confusion) regarding this "great lesson in disappointment." Such thoughts and memories raise questions, and their answers are not forthcoming.