There She Stands, and The Gratitude Campaign

Veteran's Day has passed, but not without two moving e-mails from friends, both coming with videos.

The first video comes from perhaps the first girl I ever kissed, too young even to remember (though I do have this vague memory of sitting on the parsonage steps holding her hand), but reminded of it often enough by my mother to think I do. She has a beautiful family of her own these days, and looking at a photo of her, her husband, and their children recently, I know myself well enough to know that if her daughter's face is any bit a reflection of her own at an even younger age, she likely did steal (and just as likely break) my too young heart. How fast time flies.

The second I'll offer here because, newly retired, it's time for me to start saying "Thank you" to those who remain in uniform, carrying on the job I no longer have the privilege of doing. It hasn't been that long though, just over a month now. And it hasn't been three days since someone saw the parachute team sticker on my rear window or the HALO plate on my front bumper and said "Thank you for serving" to me. Even now, retired, the thank you's come.

But really, it's my turn to say thank you for younger hearts, stronger arms, even greater sacrifices than were ever asked of me or my family. If you've known me long, you know I think we ask too much, these days, of our young troops. Not as a nation, for I think the public is grateful in a way never before seen. But the people in Washington, the people running the war, the people making the decisions . . . they ask far too much with too little appreciation of the cost.

So if you have the chance to say thank you, do. I will. And if you ever think it doesn't matter, think again. It moves them, it moved me, often, to hidden tears.

The video can't be embedded, but if you'll click here, it will take you to the short movie. It's worth it. And I owe thanks for this to a newer but equally dear friend in the Pacific Northwest.

Election Aftermath: Obama Supporters

Okay, this falls in the category of LMFAO. Stolen from Buck, this is too good not to pass on. Be sure to pay attention to the text that changes in the lower corner of the screen as the video progresses. Oh, too funny. Way too funny. All my conservative friends who have been beating me up for the last couple of months will love this one.

What College is For

Just over a month ago, I wrote a long e-mail to a student of mine. He would say, I expect, that he was having trouble coming up with a thesis for an essay. I would say, he wasn't really trying. In my composition courses, I construct my writing assignments so that there are clear guidelines about the type of paper one should write (evaluation, cause & effect, proposal, etc), but I leave the selection of topic open. Everyone announces his or her thesis in class and we refine them as a group and everyone learns from everyone else's trial and error.

Not this student. He wanted me to tell him what to write about. He was unable even to come up with a poor thesis that I could help him refine. Sports. Basketball. That's all the help I could get from him. The essay in question was a comparison/contrast essay with two works of art as topic. It could be two films, two books, two poems, two buildings--you get the picture. I suggested he compare sports films, Remember the Titans and Glory Road, I think. When he sent me an e-mail basically throwing up his hands with regard to how to find the films and what to write about in their stead, my response was probably more than he was bargaining for.

For yucks, we'll call him Jake. I reprint this here, not for what it says about Jake, but for what it says about college, just in case I have any readers out there thinking about college, or who have offspring of an age to think about it. The choice to go to college shouldn't be a mindless one. It should be, rather, a choice. I reprint this here for the little help it may be to some facing that choice, or to others in understanding the true import of a choice they've already made.

Jake,

READ THIS CAREFULLY. IT PERTAINS TO MORE THAN JUST THIS COURSE.

You need to decide whether college is for you or not. And I don't mean this in terms of, "It's a cool thing to have a college degree," or "I like to play college sports." Higher education can be just a means to an end, i.e., the degree and a better paying job, but the whole assumption behind the degree being worth a better paying job is that a college graduate's mind will function differently from that of the person who only graduated from high school. Just as there is a similar assumption that the person who sticks with it and graduates from high school has something in their character and intellect that's missing in the dropout. (The fairness of either assumption can be the topic for another debate. For our purpose today, we need only acknowledge that these assumptions/prejudices exist and govern the playing field.)

College is only partially about storing away history, facts, and formulas, Jake. Done right, it's more about learning how to think. That is what you need to decide whether you want or not. Do you want to learn how to think? If what you really want is just to _do_, and to leave the thinking to others, then why drag yourself and your teachers through the next four years?

I'm not suggesting that you should leave. What I'm suggesting is that if you are going to stay, you begin to understand and engage in the process you signed up for by coming here. This letter is part of that process. Not every student needs to be told these things, but you are not the only one who does need to be told.

You say you don't read. Start. If it's difficult, get help. If it's difficult, come see me and I will help you get help. I am happy to participate in your educational journey. I will not, however, carry you. That is not my job.

I give my students flexibility in choosing the topics for their essays because they do a better job on things that interest them. It doesn't work if you rely on me to spoon-feed you. I didn't assign you those films, I suggested them because you were unable to come up with anything on your own. I could spend the time I've spent writing this letter trying to come up with a thesis for you as well, and trying to figure out how you can get access to those films, but, again, that is not why I'm here. That time is better spent writing this letter, inviting you to grow up, grow out, grow beyond the limited expectations you seem to have had for yourself to this point. Take charge of your life, your mind, your education. I will be happy to help you. I cannot do it for you. As Morpheus said to Neo, "I'm trying to free your mind. But I can only show you the door. You're the one who has to walk through it."

You are on your own for locating the movies if you still want to write about them. (I'd start at the library though.) You are on your own for devising a thesis. I will help you refine a thesis. I will not give you one. I refine student's theses. Rarely do I pluck them from thin air. Take the assignment description from your syllabus and go to the Writing and Learning Center. Perhaps they can help. But if you do, go for their help. They are not there to do it for you either, although they may try.

If you are still stumped by the time of our conference on Friday, I will assign you a thesis and we'll see what results. It won't necessarily be on something you'll like writing about, but I'll try to see that it's on something you need to write about.

It's early in the semester for us to be at this point, but better now than after you've wasted weeks in an academic highchair. I want you to come in and sit at the big table. Welcome to college.

He left shortly thereafter to try his luck, I hear, at a community college for a while. Not because of the letter above, so far as I know. Whatever the reason though, I approve of his choice. He needs, I think, a little more time to adjust to the idea of seeking knowledge of any sort for its own sake. A recruited athlete, my sense of him from the little time we shared was that he was here for all the things that being a college grad represented; but, almost wholly unaccustomed to abstract thought, he had little interest in the process underlying his attaining that status. My hope is that in a few years he may return, ready this time for the journey he's signed on to. Paradoxically, he may have demonstrated more maturity in his decision to leave, for now, than a great number of students occupying the chairs of college classrooms show by staying. Either way, I wish him luck.

Have Something to Smile About: Sungha Jung

Go ahead. Give a listen. You won't be disappointed. More rewarding by far than anything I'm likely to write today.

Hat tip: Jay

It's Done

Busy over at the WLA blog today.

Cannot possibly express how glad I am that I will no longer (please, please) have to sort through all the warnings from my conservative friends that an Obama victory will herald the end of days. With luck, they'll be too busy now filling their fallout shelters to fill my inbox. For the record, I'm not in favor of all the man's positions. But I greatly prefer someone earnestly wrong to someone hysterically so. The former can be reasoned with. The latter can only be sedated or ignored.

Did I Mention That . . .

Not that this synchronized video contributes anything new (its point is that neither do the candidates, for the most part), rather, it's just fun to watch. Especially now that it's almost over.

Hat tip: Buzzard.

Snapshot: "I'm Not Dead"

A day at home, dedicated to the paperwork that ends a marriage. Funeral rites.

Coffee on the pier. Gray day. Sluggish backward flow of an incoming tide near high. Quiet trickle of leftover stormwater from a pipe hidden by pier planks. Brown pelican passing at medium height, winging lumberous down the upstream toward open water. Sound of slow wings. The egret beneath ingresses between marsh walls, stark white against muddy banks and brown reeds.

All the while a wake of buzzards holds congress, lining the siderails of the pier reaching from across the way, stacked on roofline and chimney next door, and nearest and thickest perched by the dozen in a dead tree stretched over dead water. All this under overcast sky. Darkly hopeful watch they keep. Fit weather and fit fowl for this day's labors.

And when one circles close to see what sits so long without movement, taking it all in, a flashback. Dark bird to bring such a light thought and true. Not dead. Not yet. Not hardly.


And clearly, I need to replace that lost camera.

A Little RW

It stands for "Relative Work." It means getting 2 or more skydivers together in the air to build formations.

That said, here's a political cartoon a skydiver can really appreciate:

"Which Tooth Hurts?"

Moods are a funny thing.

I wear grief today like the lead apron the dentist's X-ray tech drapes over you just before they tell you to "Bite down please" on a Lego block the dog chewed earlier.

Get behind the wall, get the shot, and get this off me--I'm ready to be done.

Voting from the Couch

A couple in New Mexico plan to vote for opposing presidential candidates for the first time in their 25-year marriage, and they've posted "his" and "hers" campaign signs in their front yard. Both campaigns are making a big push to get their supporters to the polls on Tuesday.

Lead photo from an article on getting out the vote. I should think if ever there were a place for a secret ballot, especially this year, the bedroom might be it.

Listening to McCarthy's The Road

A little over a year ago, my family and I made what would be our last annual trek anywhere as a family. We drove from Colorado Springs to Sunset Beach, NC. We took two vehicles, my Jeep Grand Cherokee and my oldest daughter's VW Beetle. For much of the journey, whoever rode with me in the Jeep consented to listen with me to an audible book. Somewhere just west of Nashville, I finished the book I had been listening to, and began listening to a work I'd already read, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

I'd had little success in interesting my spouse in anything McCarthy had written. His works are too violent and dark for her. Fair enough. But this book had been one of Oprah's selections, so I thought it might at least be tolerable. Still, that wasn't the primary reason I wanted to listen to it as we made that last day's journey. The more important reason would be that, driving I-40 across the Appalachians, and knowing that McCarthy never writes about a place he hasn't personally set foot, I knew that much of the terrain we would be covering would be that which McCarthy had in mind when he envisioned the post-apocalyptic world of this novel. And though I suspected it was not the NC coast at which the father and son finally arrive, I knew nonetheless that the dunes of Sunset Beach were much like those described in the book. I knew that the topography we would traverse, crossing the French Broad River east of Knoxville, and shadowing the Pigeon River through the mountains, and transitioning through the NC Piedmont and Sandhills and into the Coastal Plain, would mimic the journey of father and son in the book.

By the time we arrived at the coast, so had they, father and son. And when we finished it, finally, on the road one day from Sunset Beach up the coast to Wilmington where my eldest would begin her college career in another month, I was sad that it was over--much sadder than I had been the first time through it, in print.

Most ironic of all to have made that journey, already suspecting in my heart that it would be what it was, listening to a book whose central point may be that love is the only place where hope resides.

I look forward to the movie.

Slàinte an Rìgh, na Bàn-righinn, 's an teaghlaich rìoghail!

Or, if, like me, you need that translated: Health to the King, the Queen, and the royal household!

I'm behind and likely to stay that way in my reading of friends' blogs, but I took a moment over cappuccino this morning to catch up a little, and I learned that good friend Jay, aka "The Piper," celebrated a birthday a few days ago. I promised him a toast today, and in fulfillment of that promise, I here submit the proof: my glass sitting on the pier that projects from my abode into Shem Creek, across the harbor from Charleston.


The quality's not so good, having lost my real camera on the trip west with my daughter back in May. But you get the point. Jameson, on the rocks with a twist of lime. While pipes are decidedly Scottish, I've reason to believe that the "King" in this instance, prefers his whiskey Irish, and has the good taste, I think, to lean toward the distillery who's work is melting the ice in that glass.

Were it high tide, all that marsh grass would be awash, but such is not the luck at my morning and evening walks just now. Give it a week.

I was trying to explain to a friend (in the flesh) the other day how remarkable it feels to now consider some of my best friends to be folks I've never actually met in the flesh. Such is the blogosphere. But Jay, I have met, and his family. And I'll have to concur with Wayman Tisdale, a fine family it is.

Happy Birthday, Jay. Better late than never.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, Now a Movie

What rock have I been living under?

On the way to the Charleston airport yesterday to drop off a good friend who'd had business in town, we stopped at Barnes & Noble for him to purchase a book for the trip. Walking the center aisle, I came upon a stand of books bearing this image

and promising that the film, starring Viggo Mortensen (that's him on the cover), will be out in November. I didn't even know they were making one.

And, according to most of the press on it thus far, making it well. For a really good read about the movie, the actors, the process of filming it, a NY Times article from this past May is about the best thing I've found out there.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about that article is the high praise is lavishes on the young actor, Kodi Smit-McPhee, who plays the son. "Lavishes" may be the wrong word. More accurately, it simply reports the near awe with which the rest of the cast and crew came to view Kodi,

an 11-year-old Australian who plays the son and bowled everyone over when he tested for the part, greatly reducing the anxiety filmmakers feel when casting a child. Some of the crew privately referred to him as the Alien because of the uncanny, almost freakish way that on a moment’s notice he switched accents and turned himself from a child into a movie star. Days after the filming of a climactic, emotional scene, people on the set were still marveling at Kodi’s performance. A couple said they had puddled up just from watching the monitor and needed to sneak a tear-dabbing finger behind their sunglasses.

With luck, this movie may prove as rewarding an experience as No Country for Old Men did. It will be interesting, though, to see what nods go to the screenwriter on this one. The Cohens won an Oscar for Best Adaptation of McCarthy's novel. I thought that particularly ironic, given that McCarthy originally wrote No Country for Old Men as a screenplay, nearly three decades ago. One can't help but wonder just how much "adaptation" they had to do. This time around, Penhall likely faced a more significant task.

The script for “The Road,” by Joe Penhall, is for the most part extremely faithful to Mr. McCarthy’s story of a father and son traveling alone through this blighted landscape and trying to keep alive the idea of goodness and civilization — the fire, they call it. The script does enlarge and develop in flashback the role of the man’s wife (played by Charlize Theron), who disappears quite early from the novel, choosing suicide rather than what she imagines will be starvation or worse. And of course the script lacks Mr. McCarthy’s heightened, almost biblical narrative style.

Some of that could be suggested by the look of the film, Mr. Hillcoat said, but mostly the nature of the bond between the man and the son, who in the script, as in the book, speak to each other in brief, freighted moments, would have to come out in the performances.

There are few movies I care enough about to attend on opening night. But this may be one.

Provided, of course, I get out from under my rock often enough to know it's happening.

Heaven Help Us

Over at Enrevanche, Barry's post today struck a nerve. What follows is my comment, posted over at his place.

See? See, Buck especially? See? This is why I'm fed up with my former party. This is the same BS as claiming that Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex. Low, dirty, shameful lies. Anyone who allows, "I'm (insert name here), and I approved this message," to go on the air with something like that can't be trusted to wash windshields at a stoplight, let alone serve in public office.

What shall I do? I dislike Obama's policies just slightly less than I despise McCain's, and now Dole's, tactics. Sitting on my file cabinet is a flag flown over the capital for me by Dole. Like Tommy Lee Jones's character from In the Valley of Elah I am tempted to fly it . . . upside down.

God help us all.

Mountain Bound

Light blogging this week. Mid-term grades were due. Light this weekend. Supposed to do two demo jumps: high school football game Friday night; college game Saturday afternoon. Both in the NC mountains. Neither likely to happen with the rain and low ceilings rolling in, but I'm due a trip to the mountains anyway. May just have to cuddle up and stay in. Life is rough. ;-)

See ya'll on Monday. Maybe.

Banned SNL skit

Apparently, reaction of Dems to this skit was so strong that NBC pulled it and is exerting every effort to make it disappear. But this is not 1984. Yet.

Click on the link. Go see it while you can.

Hat tip: JPL

More Alike Every Day

"You think your personal tragedy makes you special? It doesn't. What it does is make you like everyone else."

--A third-hand paraphrase of the truest thing I've heard in the last few months.

The Al Smith Dinner

This post pretty much duplicates one over at Buck's place, but I don't think there's a whole lot of overlap in our readers, so hat tip to Buck and here goes.

The following two clips from last night's dinner in NYC are worth watching. McCain's is worth watching because if he gives up politics, he could have a job as the next Bob Hope. His writers are awesome, and his delivery not only does them justice, but makes good lines even better.

Obama, not so much. Obama had decent lines, though probably none so good as McCain's, and then his delivery was just off--as if he were reading the stuff for the first time, and getting it with the crowd.

At any rate, here are both clips. Compare and judge for yourself. Heck, McCain's is funny enough to watch twice.

Abraham Obama

Riiiight.

From the Colorado Springs Gazette:

An art piece that combines the face of President Lincoln with the face of Sen. Barack Obama can remain on the walls of local businesses.

. . . . . . . .

After a short investigation, the department decided that "Abraham Obama" is art and not a political endorsement, which would have violated city sign ordinances.

"It was decided that it was a mural," said Sue Matz, revocable permits coordinator for Colorado Springs.

Awesome Photos

I'm not even sure how I arrived at this site, but it's worth a visit for the photos.

Photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand will bring his work back to the United States - to New York City for the first time in 2009. Aiming to inspire people to think globally about sustainable living, Arthus-Bertrand has been photographing unique views of our planet, seen from the sky, since 1994 - and has produced an exhibit of over 150 4-ft. by 6-ft. prints which will be on display in New York City at the World Financial Center Plaza and along the Battery Park City Esplanade from May 1, 2009 to June 28, 2009. When completed in New York City, the Earth From Above exhibit will also move on to California in 2010.

Jim Cramer on Colbert

After watching JT on Colbert, I decided to catch yesterday's Colbert. The guest was Jim Cramer. To see the earlier meltdown that Colbert refers to in the interview, pop over to Barry's place and see this post. Both are worth watching.

"My last prediction that was cut off was that your ATM will stop working. You'll go and there'll be no cash." --Jim Cramer

James Taylor on Cobert

Remember that trip back across the country in May? The one that included a stop for a James Taylor concert in Raleigh? Well, my daughter pointed out to me that he was on The Colbert Report a week ago. To watch the full episode, click here. The JT interview starts at about 15 minutes and runs to the end.

Enjoy.

Why I'm Leaning Toward Obama

Leaning, mind you. Much can change in the next few weeks.

There is an axiom that goes, “Show me a young conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains.” (And it was not Winston Churchill who said it, though he’s frequently given credit.) If it’s true, that axiom, then like most of my life, my politics are backwards.

I’ve been a lifelong Republican. I think, for the most part, I still agree with most Republican principles, though these days, I consider myself an Independent, sick to death of the false dichotomies which rule two-party politics. Politicians of either major party I find to be a lot like too many evangelical Christians I know, backed by a philosophy and principles I can understand and appreciate, but that have too little effect on their daily conduct.

I know that some people stress that a vote for party rather than person is, in effect, a proper vote for those principles. I’ve bellied up and bought into that in the past. I don’t think I can this year. As much as I find myself on the side of Republican principles, I don’t think I can find myself on the side of Senator John McCain. I think that probably, once upon a time, there was a man and warrior named John McCain who would say exactly the same thing about the person the politician has become.

The reason an ad hominem argument is considered a logical fallacy is that it substitutes attacks on an opponent’s character for worthwhile disputation on the issue(s). Admittedly, in a presidential race, character is an issue. Sadly though, every attack I’ve seen thus far (in mainstream ads or chain mails) on Obama’s character has done more to turn me against the attacker than against Obama. The end result has been to make me a somewhat reluctant Obama defender. And in those instances where the attacks have come from the official McCain campaign apparatus—the ones that finish with “I’m John McCain, and I approved this message”—those have convinced me, in the end, that McCain made a conscious decision at some point that honor was a thing he could dispense with in order to win the White House.

Earlier today, I got a link to a video from a good friend. I’ve not hyperlinked the foregoing phrase because I want to qualify the video before anyone heads off to it. About the most insightful thing you’ll find on the page with the video may be this comment left by someone who had seen the video earlier: “Just one more proof that racist, idiotic ideas are not the province of one race or gender. This guy is a nutcase and his momma was a nutcase if she instilled vicious racism into her son. Sickening.” I couldn't have said it better. While certain historical facts contained in the video rant you’ll find there may be truthful, the interpretation of them, laden with prejudice, name calling, and utterly despicable inferences about the character of a woman the speaker never knew, are worse than sickening.

And, as near as I can tell, a number of the historical assertions made about specific events are true, but the conclusions one draws from those events can vary widely. I don’t recommend watching the video, but if you do, and if you’re curious to know more about the facts behind it, I would suggest going here, to a January 2007 article in the Daily Mail. The gist of that article is that most of the assertions in the more recent video are true. So? (Of course, the Daily Mail itself deserves some qualification as a source. I had thought of lamenting that journalism is not what it used to be, but then I decided, more likely, it is exactly what it has always been. See here for information on the Daily Mail, including details of more than one episode of its having been sued for running stories that were less than factual. So it goes.)

I can hear some of my friends already protesting a double standard. “How can I take McCain to task,” they ask, “for furthering falsehoods about Obama, and yet let Obama off the hook for being less than truthful about his father?” Well, how shall I answer? Like so: In the one case the falsehoods are designed to make a political opponent appear a less decent, less admirable person than he probably is, and to attribute to him actions he didn’t take and views he doesn’t hold; in the other, the falsehoods are designed to cast a family member, the teller’s own father, in a better light than he probably deserves. Can you seriously question the difference in degree of these two falsehoods? For me, they are telling.

The argument can also be made that, in some ways, the somewhat mythical construct of father that Obama has offered to the public has more relevance to his character than does his true sire with all of his human flaws. Obama appears to have had a loving mother who, for whatever temptation she may have had to give Obama the brutal truth about the man who sired him (and I’m sure there were moments when she was tempted), gave him instead an image of a father that gave us the Obama whose fate voters will decide in November. The truth is that both are relevant: the real Barack Sr. and the maternally constructed absent-but-better man each had a role to play in the creation of Barack II.

The Daily Mail article offers two good reasons to suspect this, both equally related to the roots of Obama’s ambition:

A family friend said: "He is haunted by his father's failures. He grew up thinking of his father as a brilliant intellectual and pioneer of African independence only to learn that in Western terms he was basically a drunken lecher."

This ugly truth, say friends, has made Mr Obama ruthlessly determined to use every weapon that he has to succeed, including the glossily edited version of his father's story.

And the article's observation on a passage from The Audacity of Hope:

This tome contains one telling paragraph, in a section in which he fumbles to try to justify his abrupt leap into the national political arena: he is, he says, chronically 'restless'.

"Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes, and I suppose that may explain my particular malady."

So, bottom line, while I might be a Republican at heart, in another month, I’m likely to cast a vote for character, and I find Obama’s more admirable, in the end, than McCain’s, or, more accurately, less suspect than what McCain, whatever he may once have been, has become. Because let’s face it, American politics of late has become even more a science of what to vote against than what to vote for.

Perhaps it was always so.

So Many of Me

[Note: It was a dark week last week, and this was written in the middle of it. But things got better by week's end. Exercise, I think, may have cured it--helped anyway. Did Crossfit workouts four of five days (more about that later). Too sore to be depressed. Thanks Lex.]

There are so many of me these days.

There is the teacher. He enjoys what he does. He enjoys his students, the freshmen particularly. He enjoys the works. The craftsmanship of Shakespeare never ceases to astonish. Things yet to comment on, unnoticed by others, and no time in which to do it.

There is the colleague. A recluse, mostly, these days. In early, office door closed. There late, office door closed. Wan smile and untrue answers protocol requires of polite questions. Deflection as defense against the rarer real concern. Never before so private. Never.

There is the neighbor. Friendly enough. That guy walking the beautiful dog morning and night. Politely conversational, yet unprying. Hardly gregarious, yet kind enough. Comfortable. Gone early most days. Home in the late afternoon and then home all through the evening. Quiet. Gone nearly every weekend. No one knows where.

There is the father. What to say? “The most important thing a father can do . . .” wasn’t enough. Now just to stay. To ride it out. To one day nap on a couch with a grandchild’s sleeping head tucked under his chin as once its mother’s was. Sustaining vision.

There is the son. There are two even. One almost his father’s clone, in mannerisms, in voice, in aspirations and resignation. Not wounded there, whatever Eldredge may think. Exception that, in so many ways. The other, wounded to the core in ways he’ll likely never fully understand and labeled “angry” over it.

There is the soon-to-be-ex. Him, I have no idea how to describe at all. He just wants it over. He isn’t bitter; just sad. He isn’t determined; just resigned. He wouldn’t go back; nothing has changed. He failed, somehow, at the one thing he thought most important. He isn’t procrastinating; he is paralyzed. He will be seeking help for this, for inertia he must yet cannot overcome. As fascinating, that, as psychosomatic pain. Phobia in another form. Shameful. Infuriating. And no object for disdain or fury but self.

Lou was right.

But there is one more. Tender. Hopeful. Sheltered. Understood. Under repair. If not whole, then at least gathering the pieces. Focused on, mindful of, longing for the one place where everything works.

Palin as Palin

It seems only fair, if I'm going to post Tina Fey's genuinely wonderful skits as Palin, to also post this video, edited for The Huffington Post, of some of Palin's own genuinely solid moments in past debates:

I think this is likely to be one of the most, if not the most, widely watched debates in American political history. It may be that there is nothing less than the election itself at stake. I don't believe the McCain/Palin ticket can win it tonight, but I think they could see it slip completely beyond their grasp if Palin doesn't redeem herself. High stakes.

Tina Fey is a Genius

Tonight's debate will no doubt either help dispel this image or seal it for good. In the meantime, enjoy:



Hat tip: Barry

Under All

With the Air Force vs Navy game approaching, it seems the Navy's exchange cadets in Colorado Springs came up with an answer to the new Air Force slogan, "Above All." Over at Lex's place, he posted this today.
Now that is potentially the best inter-service spirit mission I've seen in 31 years.

Guest House

There are those to whom explaining ourselves is useless. There are those to whom we can explain ourselves and rejoice that they get it. And, for some lucky few of us, there are those who get it so well that they explain us to ourselves. This, from such a one to rescue me from my own all-too-frequent-lately dark days:

Of course there are days where you would feel depressed. You have had the rug ripped out from under your feet. It's the shock of facing of reality versus expectations you once had. At 49, you would have thought you would be willfully sharing your retirement and second career with the original Campbell Clan under one roof, that you would be there to coach into flight your youngest as she begins preparations for college, that when you came home there would be someone who had likely at least started formulating an idea about supper and who could not wait to see you, you thought you would be Christmas shopping for your wife and with your wife, you thought you would still be jumping out of airplanes (THAT is what is wrong with you right there), and you thought you would be living in a place surrounded by good friends. Even your transitional aspirations of a yellow walled cottage with a porch have shifted considerably.

Instead, you are working for peanuts, up to your eyeballs in debt, getting a divorce, living in a white walled box with just your dog, working for a place that pretends to be more military than it really is, you have no idea where you'll be next year, there is no warm body in your bed (regardless of whether it puts out or not), and when you walk in to your apartment it is the wrong kind of quiet. Both your kids live far, you are constantly shifting your schedule to put others' needs before your own, the weight of tax and divorce paperwork presses, student grading and curriculum planning presses, and day to day, you go without the healing touch of another human. Swats on the back don't count.

And with the diagnosis came a prescription:

You need to re-read Rumi's poem Guesthouse. It is just for times like these.

So, for those of you who've never read it, here is Rumi's "Guest House." Peace ya'll. Doc.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jelaluddin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
(from http://www.gratefulness.org/poetry/guest_house.htm).

Touch Me, Please

An article in yesterday's USA Today, states:

A new study from researchers in Utah finds that a warm touch — the non-sexual, supportive kind — tempers stress and blood pressure, adding to a growing body of research on how emotions affect health.

To which, all I could think of to say was, "Well, duh."

I have seen people holding everything inside let it go like a dam bursting because someone finally took their hand and looked into their eyes and said, "It's okay. I understand. I'm here for you." And it wouldn't have been the same without the touch. Touching--gently, firmly, calmly, reassuringly--says to a person, "I am willing to connect with you. I am not afraid of you. You needn't be afraid of me. It will be okay."

Of course, there can be too much touching, and there can be unwelcome touching, and I would never encourage anyone uncomfortable with touching to do so. There was more to Spock's Vulcan mind-meld than Roddenberry likely knew-- touch someone and they will know things about you, and you will know things about them. And for that reason, I'd never encourage anyone uncomfortable with human contact to go on a touching spree anytime soon. Anxiety is just as transmissible as calm through touch.

But calm is transmissible. Our souls can resonate with another like a guitar string next to a tuning fork. And to those whose natural pitch is calm, I would say, you are welcome to touch me anytime. The luckiest of us know someone like that and can't get enough of being near them. They touch us and the jangled dissonance of our stressed out psyches falls into sympathetic tune.

This is a case, I would say, of research merely quantifying what most of us already knew. Modernity and science "discovering" what many have known all along. Those many are called "touchy-feely" for a reason you know.

Or, as my favorite tuning fork remarked when I pointed out the study, "We're all really just mammals at heart."

So go ahead. Scratch my head and just see if I don't wag my tail.

Snopes This

Oh, but to stop the world a week or two. A month and I'd be caught up, and swear to stay that way for the rest of my life. But, alas . . .

There'll be light blogging ahead. I'll be on the road this weekend, flying halfway cross the country to see my youngest perform on stage. Yay!

Meanwhile, though I know half or more of my readers I likely share with my cousin anyway, I want to point the few of you who may not be regular readers of Enrevanche to this post. If I had but time, I'd write a fictional snopes.com analysis to go with it. Enjoy.

Rap Translated

I suspect this is what happens when English professors have too much time on their hands (of course, the only time that's possible is when they're unemployed).

http://view.break.com/569516 - Watch more free videos

Hat tip: Chap

Hanlon's Razor

Over at Enrevanche, cousin Barry has finally explained, in today's post, why I've felt Murphy was sniping at me from a Saruman's tower. The proposition is that I've been mistaking a confederacy of dunces for supernatural Irish marksmanship. Maybe. I'll still give Murphy credit for orchestrating the confluence of so many for whom the Peter Principle seems to have been no impediment whatsoever.

Computercate

Other than astonishment at my own age, I did come away from that AF birthday celebration the other day with something interesting. Likely I misheard, but I like the way I heard it so I'm going to share. The guest speaker was challenging a roomful of future officers to get out from behind their future desks and mingle with the troops. And especially not to hide behind a computer and command through e-mail.

I think what she said was that "you have to do more than communicate like that," but what I heard was "you have to do more than computercate like that." If that is what she said, then she's on the cutting edge of language--the Webster's Online definition of the word is barely two months old.

Either way, I like it.

Cheerwine: "The Nectar of North Carolina"

I managed, in a 27-yr Air Force career, to be stationed in or next door to North Carolina for ten of those years. The other 17 were split between Colorado and California. During the 10 years in Colorado, I used to get my "southern fix" in a couple of different ways, largely with the help of my Dad. Sometimes he just made sure when I was packing up to drive back from a visit that I wasn't forgetting essentials. Other times, he would ship those essentials to me. Essentials, in this case, translates to cases of Cheerwine and gallon jars of Duke's mayonnaise--two of the first things to enter my fridge in the new place here on the SC coast.

So, I thought it worth noting that there were two articles in the hometown paper Thursday about the soft drink I grew up considering a natural part of the world. The first regards "a new branding, packaging and marketing campaign" and the second tells us that, "Cheerwine has taken a foothold in New York City."

I couldn't help but smile at both of these. I could smile because it doesn't sound, for now at least, as if the company is trying to make itself into anything new. Rather, it sounds as though they're wisely attempting to do a better job of marketing what Cheerwine has always been. The article's quote from the company's CEO pretty much nails it: "Those who know and love Cheerwine have always connected the brand to simple and relaxed times, hanging out, eating Southern barbecue and being laid back." So long as they don't mess with that, I don't expect too many people will get bent out of shape about new packaging. It's changed before.

And that image of what Cheerwine is really all about is why I also had to smile at the second article. I recently had a series of conversations with several friends about the difference between Yankees and damned Yankees. You can't really fault a person for the geography of his or her birth. But you can sure fault them for their attitude, blue and grey alike. I have good friends who are Yankees; damned Yankees give me a fairly wide berth.

Here's why. Throughout my sojourns into over a dozen foreign countries through the years, I've tried, everywhere I've gone, not to be the obnoxious American (I'd have said Yankee here, but it might have muddied my point, despite the upsetting behavior being pretty much the same in either case). I've tried to make it clear that I've been interested in learning about the culture of the place I was visiting, in occasionally immersing myself in that culture, in appreciating it for its own values and pace. I have tried, studiously, to avoid giving any impression that I expected that culture to conform to my values, my pace, my concept of the shape the world should hold. I have tried, tried consciously, carefully, consistently, not to be a "damned Yankee."

I've noticed, especially now that I'm back here in the land of y'all somewhat permanently I hope, that some of these people are noticeable before they say a word. They wear an expression much as if someone had just waved a teenager's unwashed sneaker under their nose a good month into gym class. They hate it here. The pace irritates them. The culture we treasure, they revile. They cannot understand why, if the North won the war over a century ago, the South should remain so utterly foreign a place to them. They want quick service, they don't want to know how you're doing, and would rather you didn't ask about them. Their desire, their expectation even, is that we should have been just like them by now. On the whole, they are a good example of the very things that make the stereotypical obnoxious American abroad obnoxious. They are, if you think about it, a good example of some of the most misguided features of American policy abroad: the inappropriate drive, not to thoroughly understand a foreign culture and work within it to emphasize the better qualities, but to reshape it wholesale toward an American model. I'm well aware that we don't always get it this wrong, but on the whole, I think we far too frequently do.

But, I digress. My point is simple. The war goes on folks, never doubt it. It's not for real estate now though. It's for hearts and minds. The culture is both the battleground and the prize. And in that war, food is one of our main weapons. So when I read in that second article:

Brother Jimmy's Barbecue, which has six restaurants in New York, has begun offering Cheerwine with its traditional North Carolina-style barbecue and hush puppies. 'We have finally brought the nectar of Carolina to New York City,' said Jim Goldman, an owner and founder of Brother Jimmy's BBQ.

I couldn't help but smile. I had to smile at Brother Jimmy's slogan too: "Put Some South in Yo Mouth." Yeah! Take that ya'll.

The Coming Crash

Cormac McCarthy was right when he said in Suttree: "There are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse."

I've been saying for some time that, economically, things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better. Part of that has been a carry over of a general sense I had, and have commented on before, that this year, the world as we know it, was going to change. Not a small change, but a major shift on its axis, the kind that leaves us measuring time in a new way: before the change, and after. It's not a personal shift I have in mind, but a shift for all humanity. It will feel personal, very personal. But our personal perception of it will only be a part of something larger.

I've been speaking from the gut, from personal experience, from a strange sense of foreboding and little else. Over at Enrevanche, Barry posted a piece in toto by someone qualified to speak on the economy from more than his gut.

If you need to keep your head in the sand in order to avoid despair, then don't read this. If you believe that knowing what's coming doesn't really make it any worse, if you're committed to seeing the crisis through to the other side by simply putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, then, by all means, read it.

We look back on history and we wonder how some of the worst things could have been allowed to happen. Where were the good Germans during the Holocaust? Why didn't someone stand up to Joe McCarthy sooner? How was the massacre in Rwanda allowed to happen? You can find your own example of something, I'm sure, that you just know you'd never have allowed to take place on your watch. Well, it's our watch now. In the coming days, probably years, there will be ample opportunities to show our mettle, or to burrow into a corner in the interest of self-preservation. I had said "cower in the corner," but I'll not cast that stone. For some, saving one life will mean putting other lives for which they're responsible at risk. The firefighter who's a sole breadwinner for a family does that every day. Not everyone faces that dilemma, and not everyone facing it decides for altruism.

We look back on history and wonder. When our children and grandchildren look back on the coming days and wonder, it will fall on us to explain. If we can.

Be kind to one another. Putting one foot in front of the other will carry our bodies through this. Nothing less than kindness will ferry our souls across.

Happy Birthday USAF

Went to an Air Force birthday celebration today. Created by the National Security Act of 1947, your Air Force is now 61 years old.

I came away from said celebration with a single significant realization: having been initially sworn in back in June of 1977 and just under two weeks from true retirement, I've been in the Air Force more than half of its life. Crossed that line with respect to my own life (having been in the AF more than half of it) about eleven years ago. Maybe there's something to all those jokes Buzzard likes to make about my age after all.

Bhut Jolokia; Gotta Get Some of 'Dat

Foodie Jay will appreciate this one.

As I strive to find some sort of routine in my life, I've begun to breakfast in front of the computer, scanning not one paper online, but about eight. Occasionally, something other than a headline distracts me. Like this feature from the Charleston Post & Courier about the Bhut Jolokia pepper.

This pepper has a flowery aroma and taste similar to a Habanero, but the similarity stops right there. Heatwise, the Jolokia, at 1,001,000 SHU (Yes, that's right. That's not a typo.), blows the doors off the typical Habanero, which can muster only a paltry 250,000 SHU. Even the Savina Habanero can put out only 577,000 SHU. The Jolokia's flavor is like a sip of nectar ... with a napalm chaser.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

Striving for Second Worst

Yesterday's blog post and the news story that spawned it reminded me of a story published in the Raleigh News & Observer back when I was a grad student at Chapel Hill.

Seems North Carolina had had the distinction of sporting the second worst SAT scores in the nation, then SC, who had been worst, moved up a notch, knocking us to the very bottom of the list. Comment from the state's education head? Not that we needed to look at the programs of the states near the top of the list and see what we could apply to The Old North State. No. In a remark that really revealed more about the roots of the problem than it was probably meant to, the person in charge of educating our Tarheel children remarked (and I may paraphrase here, after 19 years or so, but not much, if at all): "We clearly need to find out what South Carolina is doing, and do more of that."

Yeah. Second worst is so much better than the bottom.

If you get ambitious (I have the ambition, but not the time) and look up the original story (sometime between summer 89 and summer 91), I'd love to have a link.

Things I Wish I Still Didn't Know

From today's Post & Courier:

South Carolina suffered more violent crime than any other state last year, matching its dismal performance in the FBI's annual report for the second year in a row.

Now you tell me.

Jill Greenberg: True Evil

I don't have a lot of time to blog these days. I don't even have enough time to keep up with the blogs of my friends who do. I will, again, eventually. But this transitional time is busy, sleepless, crucial, overwhelming, exhilarating, and terrifying all at once.

Still, now and then I have a second to peruse my old haunts. And tonight over at Lex's place, I hit a thread I almost wish I hadn't. Lex ran a post about Jill Greenberg's portrait of John McCain for the October Atlantic. That led me to a post in American Digest that contained the outtakes causing all the hubbub. Even this didn't get my ire up. Politics is ugly. What she did is unacceptable, base, unprofessional, etc, but not necessarily evil.

Then, somehow, I found my way to a site about Greenberg's End Times. I learn there that this is a woman who intentionally invoked anguish in children.

Photographer Jill Greenberg has whipped up a storm of controversy with her new exhibition, End Times. The pictures in the show, for which she deliberately provoked tearful outbursts from children by taking away lollipops she had just given them, have been described by some as tantamount to child abuse.

Greenberg herself insists that the children had the sweets returned within 30 seconds, that no lasting harm has been done, and that her concern was to depict what she says reminded her of the "helplessness and anger I feel about our current political and social situation."

I'm sure this issue has been covered to death already. But I'd not heard of it, and maybe some of you hadn't either.

I'd like to know, just for the record, Ms. Greenberg's position on the interrogation technique known as waterboarding. And I'd like to ask her about those photos again, just as soon as her panic subsided with no lasting harm done, say, 30 seconds after the towel was removed from her face.

Interesting difference here between me and her, I guess. There are complicated reasons, that, though I'm not in favor of the practice, I wouldn't consider waterboarding a terror suspect "evil." Yet, deliberately inducing anguish in children, even temporarily, I do think of as deserving that label pure and simple. For her, I guess, it's the other way around. There's room for both of us to be wrong, but I sleep just fine on my side of that line. I wonder about Ms. Greenberg's slumbers.

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

Charleston. Thanks for asking.

Building a new life, while still awash in the detritus of an old one.

More grateful than ever for friends. New and old. Including soon-to-be-ex-spouse. We got along better than 4 of 5 couples I knew while we were married. We get along better than 9 of 10 couples I know going through a divorce. (Okay, so technically, I don't know 10 couples getting a divorce, which means, in truth, we get along better than 6 of 7 divorcing couples I've ever known.) Know what? Still sucks. But it could be so much worse.

Anyway, eventually, I'll take up the keyboard again more regularly. Beginning to see the first glimmers of a routine into which daily writing here will hopefully fit. Meantime, I am still alive. I will have much to say about lots of stuff.

Treading Water

You'll find my name in here somewhere.

I'm about 10 days behind. Literally. Had hoped to move in on the 10th. Secured a place that was supposed to be ready on the 13th, then the 15th, then the 18th, then I finally said screw it and found another place to live, but by the time I did, and moved in on the 21st, I was 10 days behind where I needed to be. The ripples from that will last until October. Literally. So blogging will likely be light to non-existent for a while. Sorry.

Oh the stories I'll eventually tell though.

The Ugly: When Blogspot Goes Bad

What was temporarily posted here yesterday was about one-third of a post that took hours to write. As such, it was incomplete and I've deleted it. What happened to the other two-thirds of probably the longest post I've written in a year . . . beats me. In the end, everything turns out okay. Maybe I'll eventually have time to re-write. Doubt it though. It was a purgative exercise. It worked. Maybe it just wasn't meant to be. It was funny, tragic, painful, and all ok by day's end. But it was, as I said to start with, a long story that I certainly don't have time to recreate now.

Best to all. Doc.

The Bad: Jen, the "inaccessible" Realtor

I had every intention of naming names, complete with links, but Fate is kinder than yours truly, so Jen will be spared that for now.

I've already mentioned that I thought, briefly, on Saturday night last, that my search for a place to live in Charleston was finished. Of all the places I'd seen during the day, only one had merited the comment, in my semi-legible scrawl on the bottom of the MLS printout, "Could live here." That place, we had seen early in the day, about sixth or so on the list of places we'd visited.

From the beginning, we'd had no luck getting through to the listing agent, Jen. There was a lock box on the property, but a call to the listing agent is a common courtesy. No answer, but no big deal--courtesy was still satisfied. Until, that is, the combo for the lock box turned out not to work. More calls to Jen went unreturned. I walked around to the back of the townhome while Sue continued to try to reach Jen. Then, peering in the back window, I saw Sue walking through toward me. "The front door was unlocked," she said, as she let me in the back door. "Still nothing from Jen."

It was a great place though. (You can find photos of the neighborhood here, and you'll have no trouble seeing why my daughter thought it was way cool, the kind of place where it wouldn't be possible to forget you lived at the beach. "That other place [in Byrnes Downes] is more like living in Fayetteville," she quipped. 'Nuff said.) Three stories. (Floor plan here.) Living, dining, kitchen, half bath on the ground. Small, fully fenced, gated patio with small grass area in back for Sydni. Parking behind the building. Two bedrooms and two baths on the second floor, with a way cool balcony off the master. Easy to picture myself out there in the afternoon, reading in prep for the next day's classes, gin & tonic on the arm of an Adirondack chair. Then one more bedroom on a third floor. (It would be one more guest room. I didn't plan to cart my desk up all those stairs. More likely would be having the study as part of the main living area on the ground floor.)

The place still smelled new. Some people hate that smell. I always loved it. When I moved out of my first home in 1985, it still had that smell even after three years of me living in it. I especially loved the new smell considering that at least four of the places we'd seen earlier in the day had been inhabited by smokers. Blehhhhhh!

Anyway, I left the place after that initial viewing (my daughter was having a well-deserved morning of sleeping in), knowing that if I didn't find something closer in and less expensive, this, at least, would do. I could look forward to coming home to this every day. Balcony. Gin & tonic. Sunsets overlooking a lake. Yeah.

But it was the second farthest out from town of everything we looked at during the entire day. You could figure that a gallon or more of gas used each day, round trip, would add about $100 monthly to the cost of living there, already at the upper end of what I was willing to pay. So the search went on . . . all day.

Several times during the day, because we wanted to confirm that Sydni would be acceptable as a tenant, Sue continued to try to call Jen. Never any return calls. Later in the day, I called myself, both her mobile and her office number. Left messages. When, as the sun was setting, I drove back out with Jacquelyn to show her the neighborhood and she gave it a huge thumbs up, I tried yet again. Finally, I let Sue know I'd decided. This was it.

At that point, she began an even more intense effort to reach the listing agent, Jen. Phone, no response. E-mail, no response. In the end, she e-mailed the agency Broker. That worked. Minutes later, she got a call back from Jen. "I'm sorry. I've had guests in town and I haven't been very accessible today," is what Sue related to me was Jen's excuse. Excuse me? If that were my property, I'd be a little disappointed to learn that my Realtor was "inaccessible," ever, for an entire day without someone being really ill. Forward calls to another agent. To a central office. Somewhere!

Now I realize that everyone deserves to have a life. Even Inspector's General deserve a life. But guess what: some jobs require that you be accessible, or make arrangements for someone else to be so. Being an IG is one of those jobs. I should think that being a Realtor would be one as well. Apparently not though. At least, not for Jen.

It gets better though. If you've read the earlier post, you know that when she did call, it was to say that she'd offered a lease to someone the day before. Well, thank you so much! Had she been "accessible," she could have saved my Realtor a trip out there with me that morning. She could have saved us the 30 minutes spent walking through, imagining myself in it. She could have saved me and my daughter the trip back out there at the day's end. She could have saved me the false relaxation of thinking the search was over. She could have saved everyone a lot of trouble and time. She could have, in short, done her job. But no, her job, as she conceives it, apparently allows for inaccessibility when it suits her.

Like I said, I'd have no problem naming names here, but I've temporarily misplaced the MLS printout with her full name or the name of the listing agency. Maybe another day. Maybe an update. Maybe she should consider other work, as a favor to us all. Please.

Things That Make You Go "Hmmm."

I'm inaugurating a new label for posts: "Things that make you go Hmmm." And to start things off right, here's what elicited that reaction today:

The handicap spaces at the grocery are closest to the door because, ostensibly, the handicapped patrons have mobility issues. (Of course, sometimes they're a little further away because the ramp onto the sidewalk is further from the door.) At the Food Lion in Sunset Beach however, all the parking is in a large lot separated from the store itself by the fire lane. So, the blue-marked handicap spaces are at the end of each row, as close to the door as you can get. Funny thing though: if you're handicapped, and you happen to use a shopping cart to get your groceries to the car, you'll need to venture another five or six spaces into the middle of the lot to properly return your cart. Hmmm. Or, you can just leave it in the handicapped space next door like a very elderly man I watched do so today. I would have too--even if I weren't worried about my younger wife driving off without me, which he probably was, since she didn't even wait for him to close the car door before she was backing that Caddy out of the space. Hmmm. >-)

The Good: Super 8 Motel, Nashville, TN

Spend three days crossing the country and there will be bright spots and potholes. Bright spots are more fun, so we're going to start with one of those.

I think of Super 8 Motels as being just one step above Motel 6. There is, after all, no Motel 7. Crossing the country alone, I used to make a habit of staying where they left the light on for me. Traveling with a family full of women, we usually opted for a Best Western or Days Inn. Coming across the country this time, and spending nights we hadn't really planned for on the road, I opted for economy in lodging. At least, so I thought. I am going to tell you, and my daughter would be happy to verify, that the Super 8 Motel at 720 Royal Parkway, just off I-40 at exit 216, has more in common with a Hampton Inn than a Motel pickanynumber.

It has to do, I suspect, with the Wyndham chain being the corporate overlord of the Super 8 brand. For the most part, I'm sold. Though I'm still not likely to re-visit the Super 8 in Asheville, NC, that caused me to associate them with Motel 6 to begin with. But that's not a pretty story, so we'll just skip it for now. :-)

Sunset Gourmet, Sunset Beach, NC

New Yelp review posted for Sunset Gourmet. Great little place. Sat there for a while this afternoon and worked. Had lunch (shredded, sharp cheddar w Jalepenos, grilled on a ciabatta roll, homemade potato salad, dill pickle; dessert was a chocolate chip muffin with white icing and shredded coconut; beverage was dark coffee you could just hover over and breathe). Great people too. Then sat outside here after they closed and worked until my battery died and watched a few dozen people come up and try the door and go away disappointed. They close at 3, but not for lack of business. Everybody deserves a life. ;-)

As I Lay Dying, Redux

I recently completed what had to be one of the most challenging trips I'll ever make, driving from Colorado Springs, home for the last four years, to Charleston, home for at least the next nine months. I made the trip driving my Jeep Grand Cherokee, towing a 6 x 12 U-Haul trailer, loaded to its recommended max weight. Following close behind was my teenage (for a few more months) daughter in her VW Beetle.

We'd made the trip in the opposite direction a few short months ago at the end of May, both of us in the Beetle. We made it in two and a half easy days. I anticipated that we'd be a little slower eastbound. I had no idea.

It wasn't possible to drive that trailer above 60 mph without it developing a mind of its own. I gradually learned how to dampen its contortions while slowing to a speed where it would settle into straight trail again, but, let me tell you, that was work. Hard work by the end of a long day on the road. And it was frequent, even at 60. So I didn't push it. Anything encouraged it. Uneven road. Big trucks with bigger bow waves. I was careful never to let it approach the point where it would be in the driver's seat, but I could sense that it would be happy to take that position if I ever pressed it. The result was long, slow, exhausting days. What had been two and a half, ten to twelve hour days westbound became three, solid, twelve to fifteen hour days eastbound. Plans to stay with friends had to be abandoned. We arrived in Charleston after midnight at the end of the day I'd planned to be there by lunch, already half a day behind in my search for a new place to live. (I had begun looking for a place to live at least a month before, but had given up hope of finding the right place before my arrival because the best ones, the ones I had any interest in, always rented within days. So, I resolved to keep an eye on what was available, but knew that really making a decision would require being there.)

After just four hours of sleep, I met the world's kindest Realtor (who, if I ever have the opportunity to buy a home in Charleston, has my business, hands down) at 0800 the next morning and began a long day of looking at houses, condos, townhomes, and apartments. I can never sufficiently repay her for that day. That search itself may be the topic of another post altogether. It could have been much more painful. It didn't seem painful at first. We narrowed it, by day's end, to two places. I finally chose one based on the fact that it was far more accommodating to visits from my daughters, especially the one in Wilmington, who would, I was sure, drive down several times with friends if I chose the one I did--opting, at the same price, for twice as much space, newly constructed and "beachy," vs the much closer in, half as large, nearly as old as my parents, but in the neighborhood everyone wants to be in (for the same reason everyone wants a Gold Card). Everyone except me and Billy Bob Thorton. It would be worth the drive, I explained, to be in a place my daughters would look forward to visiting--even for only nine months.

Anyway, called to tell the Realtor my decision, and she began to really press the other agent to return our calls. All day, from the initial showing, we'd been trying to reach her and not had our calls returned. Once I decided that was the place I wanted, the real press began. It finally took an e-mail to the other Realtor's broker. Result, delivered to me at dinner, finally relaxing with my daughter after the long day of searching: it rented the day before. Back to square one. Especially when my daughter said, "Don't take the old one. That's not where you're supposed to be."

So, Sunday morning, the search continued. On my own this time. After looking at a house only blocks from the Citadel, I decided to drive by a place I'd discounted early on because of the lack of a yard. Almost instantly, Jackie started nodding yes. Only a few more blocks from the Citadel, it was, for all practical purposes, new. I can't imagine what was left of the original building other than the frame itself and the stairs. One building, four apartments, two up, two down, with interior entrances from a central foyer. New brick facade exterior, new walls, new floors, new ceilings, wiring, pipes, cabinets, counters, appliances, etc. Seriously, I can't imagine what other than the frame and the stairs is original. Off street, gated parking on oyster-shell lot, common area w gazebo, grill, bar.

My daughter had said at dinner the night before, "Don't worry. That place (the one I thought I'd settled on) is rented because that's not where you're supposed to be either. There's a better place waiting. You'll see." The kid is clairvoyant. Less monthly rent, more space, walking distance to work, virtually new construction, and new construction in a class nothing else had approached (new hardwood floors, new stainless appliances, granite counters, all stone tile bath (of the sort my airline captain friend used in constructing his 6000 sq-ft "captain's house"), chair molding throughout the main living area. So I'll have to walk Sydni several times a day. Big deal. We'd started that already anyway. Good for both of us. And easy to do when you can walk to work in ten minutes.

So, happy ending to the house search. Only hitch, the two finished units were, of course, already rented. But the site supervisor promised one of the remaining units would be done by this Wednesday. "I guarantee it." Watching him work, on Sunday no less, I chose to believe him. I still do. We'll see. At any rate, I signed a lease.

All of this, of course--especially the happy ending--would seem to belie the title of this post. Trust me. Stay tuned. I'll get around to some of the other adventures that kept giving me flashbacks to images of a mule's four stiff legs rotating into the air as its bloated corpse floats by on the flood (unless I mis-remember my Faulkner). Eventually, I hope to have time for a good, bad, and ugly post of some of the "highlights" of this journey.

I'll say this up front though. Beyond good, beyond beautiful, beyond completely irreplaceable, has been the company of my oldest daughter. I've missed my youngest every step of the way, but I've been cheered throughout by the older of the two. We have similar tastes in most things, similar wit, similar peeves. We've laughed, stewed, and generally had a grand time, despite trials beyond any I would have willingly put her through. She's been a trooper of the most remarkable kind, never complaining. This is the daughter who sulked for a solid year after we moved the family to Fayetteville, NC, back in 2002. This nomadic odyssey? Nothing but good cheer, tolerance, always a step ahead when I needed help, fun. Fun even when everything else around us was anything but. As a result, for all its "just shoot me" moments, it'll be fun to look back on and remember. Always.

UPDATE: My new place will be ready Monday. Meanwhile, there's a park bench I've had my eye on just outside the gate to the Citadel. Doesn't get more convenient than that. Sydni will keep watch.

Back in the Land of "Ya'll"

One of my most vivid memories from one of the most vivid expenditures of however many lives I seem to have is climbing out from under my totaled 1975 Carmine Red Spitfire, upside down in a field of corn in eastern North Carolina in 1983, brushing the dust from my shoulders and hair, staring at the underbelly of my car and thinking, "Who can I get to help me turn this thing right side up so I can drive on back to Goldsboro--I've got to fly tomorrow" (never mind that the rear wheels were almost touching in the middle, the point of impact with the telephone pole having been about even with those rear wheels, except about three-quarters of the way through a roll) then turning to walk out of the field and being greeted immediately by a middle-aged, African-American woman of substantial girth, arms raised in praise, eyes wide and white and shifting between God's heaven and the ghost I suspect she thought she saw before her, and voice proclaiming for a now gathering crowd (I'd taken my time crawling out from under that totaled shell, taking inventory of limbs to make sure everything moved and was still attached--something I'd learned from having read Fleming's entire Jame's Bond series over the past year while killing time on nuclear alert waiting for WWIII), "HE'S ALIVE! HE'S ALIVE! PRAISE GOD ALMIGHTY HE'S ALIVE!"

I remember smiling warmly, struck by the enthusiasm of her earnest rejoicing at my fate, then asking politely, "I don't suppose ya'll might have a phone I could use?"

The rest of that story I'll save for another day, but I've told that much because her voice keeps echoing in my head today. My own inner voice keeps paraphrasing her chorus, but the enthusiasm matches her pitch just perfectly, "HE'S BACK! HE'S BACK! PRAISE GOD ALMIGHTY HE'S BACK!" Back in the land of "ya'll," the land of pine, azaleas, dogwoods, sundresses, 30-second-shirt-soaking humidity, red clay, cotton, soy beans, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Doobie Brothers, Charlie Daniels, and Jack too. Home. Slightly off target perhaps, landing here in Charleston, South Carolina, rather than 3 hrs north, nearer Kannapolis, North Carolina, but closer than a lot of Soviet re-entry vehicles I think, and close enough that the language is the same, the customs much the same, the heritage much the same.

Charleston will have its own character that I may never fully understand--I got that much (and more) from Conroy, but this is still the South, with a capital S. And the differences from place to place in the South stand out far more starkly to someone who's never left it than to someone who's been too much out of it in the past three decades. I see far more similarity across its regions than I ever might have if I'd never left.

So, I'm back. And tomorrow, with the aid of a truly incredible Realtor, I hope to find the right place to live for a bit--nine months at least, while I fill a position as a Visiting Professor at the Citadel--longer maybe, depending on what fortunes the coming year brings. One step at a time.

I'll say this though, coming in those last 20 miles, I found the FM station that became the first new preset on my car stereo. Q104.5, Charleston's Classic Rock, is the clearest station I've ever heard. Ever. I'm nearing half a century. That station must broadcast with enough power to reach nearby galaxies. Classic tunes, crystal clear. I'd been three of the longest days ever on the road, pulling a six-by-twelve-foot trailer heavy enough not to like traveling faster than 60 mph without developing a mind of its own. Last time I'd crossed the country at that speed it was in that Spitfire and I was busting the national speed limit by 5 mph at the time. Having grown used to speeds closer to 80 mph on long trips, I'd forgotten how long such a road trip really can be. (And I have to offer a hat tip here to my teenage daughter who dropped out of warp to follow that trailer at that crawling pace in the same VW Beetle that the two of us had used to make the same trip in only two days heading the other direction only two months ago. Just another half day longer and they have needed to commit us both.) So when I was moving through the dial, looking for static so as to listen to an Audible book from my Palm Treo broadcast on FM, I was stopped in my tracks by the clarity of the sound, then riveted by the appropriateness of the words, as Bob Seger voiced my very thoughts, "And you don't feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through."

That was my welcome to Charleston around 1 a.m. this morning. About the time I was thinking, "This trip almost is through," and about the time I was hearing that big, beautiful, booming, woman's voice in my head, and thinking, "Yes. Yes. Yes. Praise God Almighty indeed. He's back."

When You Think of It That Way . . .

Last night I was enjoying what will be one of the final evenings on my front porch with the friend who's really taught me the most about appreciating a good cigar. It was one of those windless nights after a sweltering day, but it was cool enough to be comfortable. He usually brings along whatever book he's enjoying at the moment. These days, one of the three books I'm reading (always at least that many at once) is The Art of Racing in the Rain, a recommendation I got from the same friend about a month ago when we met for breakfast.

Last night, he brought along Merle's Door, another book centered on dogs (The Art of Racing in the Rain is narrated by a dog). When I asked how he learned of Merle's Door, he replied that he'd read about it in Bark, "my dog magazine."

"Let me get this straight: You don't own a dog, but you subscribe to a dog magazine?"

Without even a blush, he nodded and said, "Yeah."

Then I thought about it for a second. I remembered that there were plenty of months in college and immediately after that I'd not had a girl friend, or even the prospect of a date. Yet, the entire time, my best friend and I made a birthday tradition of giving one another subscriptions to Hugh Hefner's monthly celebration of "the girl next door." I said as much to my friend, and then said, "So, when you think of it that way, I guess if you love dogs there's really nothing odd about subscribing to a dog magazine even when you can't claim the daily companionship of one."

That said though, as my friend is just beginning what promises to be a contentious divorce, I will worry about him if he subscribes to Modern Bride any time soon.

:-)