The Salt Mine

King Charles II: We're Not Gonna Take It

2012-01-08T16:50:00.000-06:00

Is it just me, or did King Charles II of England look like a middle-aged member of a 1980s hair metal band?

This observation struck me recently while deep into Magnus Magnusson's Scotland: The Story of a Nation (Grove Press, 2003).

Charles II -- who was actually king of Scotland, England and Ireland -- was the guy who was put back on the throne after the Brits ditched the Cromwells and went back to being a monarchy.

This immediately brings to mind Twisted Sister's "We're Not Gonna Take It" as the theme of the Restoration.

With his flowing hair, Charles II also bore resemblance to the Pittsburgh Steelers' Troy Polamalu, only with a mustache.

Photos: Portrait of King Charles II by John Michael Wright, hanging in Britain's National Portrait Gallery. Photo of painting in the public domain and used here via WikiCommons. Photo of Twisted Sister from Hair Metal Mansion Ning.

The Peebles family of Emanuel County, Ga.

2011-07-31T14:34:00.004-05:00

I'm a newbie at this Flash stuff, y'all, so my apologies if this isn't the best-looking thing you ever saw. Plus, this isn't the best-looking group of folks in the world, either. But they're my family, and you don't get to pick your family, now, do you?

If the text is hard to read, you can see this a bit bigger, too, by clicking on this link.

No more Cambodias

2011-02-14T22:54:00.001-06:00

Seeing countries go through periods of revolution -- like what has happened in Egypt and Tunisia recently -- always brings both excitement and anxiety. The new governments there, whatever they turn out to be, could bring positive change for those societies, but there's also the risk that things could get much, much worse than they had already been.

I hope that the changes in both Egypt and Tunisia will be positive for all the people who live there, and that they will be able to live from now on in an open, democratic society that respects human rights and freedom of conscience and speech for all.

But while all this revolution has been going on, I've been thinking a bit about a revolution that went very, very badly for everyone involved: Cambodia in the 1970s.

Several months ago I read the awesome book Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare by Philip Short. I really didn't know that much about Cambodia before then.

You couldn't have made people believe it if you had written it as a movie script:

"OK, so there's this country, right, and these people come to power who are like Communists. Only they're more like a splinter Communist group because they've got some wierd beliefs about restarting human history at 'Year Zero' and converting to an all-agrarian society. And their leader is this guy who's not real smart or even really charismatic. And they take over the country, and everybody who has any kind of education, they kill them, because they don't want smart people in their country. And for the people they don't kill, they make them all leave the cities and basically work on these collective farms, only they're kind of like borderline collective farms/internment camps. And they made millions of those folks starve to death and tortured and beat them."

Hard to believe it was real life.

Of course, someone did make it into a movie, The Killing Fields, which I just saw several days ago. I'd put off seeing it for a long time, and I'm glad I finally saw it after reading the Pol Pot book, because it made much more sense to me. (Wait, I take that back. It didn't make any more sense to me, because so much of what happened was senseless. Let's just say I understood the history behind it better after reading the Pol Pot book.)

The only thing I didn't like about the movie was the use of John Lennon's Imagine at the very end. Imagine is such a hopeful song, and I just couldn't believe that anyone who had just lived through what Dith Pran had lived through would have such a positive outlook on the world right then. Maybe later on, but not right then. There is always hope in this world, yes, but while he made it out alive, certainly he had seen horrors brought upon himself and many people. If I were him, I'd have been relieved, and excited to see my family, but God, I'd have been depressed and angry, too. I think I'd have been a walking basket case, frankly. I wouldn't have cared about the world "living as one" right then. There'd have been too many dead people to have seen that rosy a future.

(You can see the real Dith Pran talking about his experiences in this New York Times video at this link. He passed on a couple of years ago of cancer.)

But here's one thing that blew me away when I read the book (the very end of the book): A lot of these top Khmer Rouge dudes are still alive and still have not yet been tried on criminal charges. Nuon Chea -- "Brother Number Two" -- as well as Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan are all still alive and are awaiting trial from the UN on charges related to the Cambodian genocide.

What the heck, UN?

Time once again for the Tennessean Three-Star Forum Banquet

2010-05-14T16:39:00.008-05:00

There an awful lot of things I miss about Nashville, my adopted hometown, and one of them is happening tonight: The Three-Star Forum Banquet.

Once a year, The Tennessean newspaper holds a sit-down dinner to honor the people who wrote the best letters to the editor of the previous year. It's been held almost every year since back before World War II. In my 14 years at the paper, I think I went to maybe 8 or 10 of them. And for the last several years I was at the paper, I was the idiot in charge of coordinating the newspaper's this-is-almost-as-big-as-the-Second-Coming coverage of the event.

Now, I could get all syrupy here about what a wonderful time it was to spend in the company of the people who wrote in letters to the editor -- and I did indeed have some very nice times and meet some interesting people at the tables I hosted. But more than anything, I came to love the Forum Banquet as part ritual, part family reunion, part theater of the absurd.

I'm not old enough to have lived through The Supposed Good Ole Days when Halberstam and Wicker and Kovach were regular bylines, but when I came to the paper as an intern in 1994, The Tennessean still thought of itself as a family. And one of my first assignments in my first week on the job was learning how important The Forum Banquet was and being part of the crew that covered it.

If the paper was, and is, a family, then the Forum Banquet is the annual family reunion. One night a year, everyone puts on their Sunday clothes and hauls over to the Maxwell House, dons the red flower and nametag in their lapel, looks on the board to find the table they're hosting, and hopes they get good people at their table.

Times change, people come and go, the size of the paper gets skinnier and there's a redesign every few years, but the Forum Banquet remains. And at the end of the night, everyone gets up and sings Auld Lang Syne. Mr. Seigenthaler did it, Halberstam and Wicker and Kovach and all those guys probably did it. I believe it is the newspaper's single most lasting tradition in the community. (For a more complete history of the Forum Banquet, I would point you to the piece written a few years ago by my friend and colleague Andy Humbles, if you can still find it online. There was also an interesting piece in Time magazine published in the 1940s that is online.)

I did meet some very nice people at the tables I hosted. I talked about what was going on at the legislature with a volunteer lobbyist for a local advocacy group. I once had three older gentlemen at my table, all in their 70s and 80s -- all of them repeat Forum Banquet attendees -- and, in conversation, we discovered that two of them had been in attendance at a legendary Vanderbilt football game in the early 1950s or so, and the third gent had listened to the game on the radio. At my last Forum Banquet, in 2008, I had at my table Mr. Foster Shockley, who was at either his 24th or 25th Forum Banquet.

The people who write letters to the editor are the most regular readers we have. In an era of news from TMZ.com on your iPhone, they not only read the paper, they take the time to write something and -- gasp! -- they attach their real name to it. Not drunkdawg68 or govolsgo2005. Their real names. Remember when people actually had to stand behind the things they said and wrote? And if they responded to someone else's opinion, they had to say something more substantive than "You and your whole family are s---heads"?

It's like finding out somebody somewhere still actually takes the effort to make Coca-Cola with real cane sugar in it. You think, this is great. This is so much better than what we have now. Why did this ever go away?

And like all newspaper traditions, the Forum Banquet has its own folklore. Several longtime newsroom staffers claimed to have been the person who had a lady at their table who, in an earlier era when wine flowed freely at the banquet, got drunk. Maybe as many people claimed to have hosted that lady at their table as claimed to have been the victim of one of Jerry Thompson's backward-named fake obit jokes. (There's just no way you could all be telling the truth. When I was younger, I believed all of you who told me that. Now that I'm older, I don't think I believe any of you.)

The quality of the guest speakers varied, though they almost always spoke on the importance of the First Amendment and free speech. More than the content of any of the speeches, I remember when the speaker for the evening was to be a retired high-ranking military man originally from Nashville, whose father had headed Metro's water system when our editor, Frank Sutherland, had been a young reporter covering City Hall. When Mr. Sutherland introduced our speaker that night, he recalled how our speaker for the evening had been taken prisoner during the Vietnam War, and how Mr. Sutherland had gotten a bracelet bearing our speaker's name, the type of which was commonly distributed back then in remembrance of American POWs. Mr. Sutherland said he had kept that bracelet all those years, and that night at the podium at the Forum Banquet, he pulled out the bracelet and gave it to the man whose name was on it.

But nice gestures and small talk with longtime readers aren't all that the Forum Banquet offers. It's also the wildest show in town.

The greatest tradition of the Forum Banquet has to be the open-mic period: Every letter writer in attendance is given the chance to stand up at a microphone and talk for one minute on any subject of their choosing. Some don't, but most of them do, and the resulting hour or so makes the American Idol tryout shows look like MacNeil and Lehrer.

Some of the letter-writers make totally comprehensible statements taking traditional left/right stances on major issues like education, the war on terrorism, city government and the like. Yeah, yeah, yeah, boring, boring, boring. Bring on the crazies!

One guy got up a couple years ago and asked that we all listen to one minute of silence, after which he stood at the microphone for the remaining 45 seconds or so and said nothing. Another got up and observed that it was Arbor Day, and said that people in the Netherlands referred to it as "Plant a Wooden Shoe Day."

People say whatever comes to their minds, or whatever obsession or rant they're on that day. Some of it's comprehensible. Some of it isn't. The story we used to publish in the following Sunday's newspaper -- in which we were instructed to quote each letter-writer who spoke -- always had a substantial section at the end that could have easily been subheaded "miscellaneous," because we couldn't group the joke-tellers and thank-yous and randomness under any other topic heading.

Sometimes people get up and respond back to what an earlier letter-writer had said at the mic. Thankfully, no punches were thrown at the banquets I attended, though I was concerned at the 2008 Forum Banquet, when one speaker got up and told us that he thought most of us in the room were guilty of sedition that he wanted to meet another letter-writer on the battlefield and put a bullet between his eyes. And then, as the dude left the mic and sat down, he hurled a few comments back at an earlier speaker at another table who had dissed President Bush, ending with the very adult command "So shut up!" (The guy was a Metro employee. Doesn't that make you feel better now?)

Some people go up to the mic to thank the paper for picking their letter and inviting them to the banquet. One lady wrote and recited her own poetry. Yes, about the banquet. Some people shoot questions out at the Tennessean editors on the dias or spew criticism at the paper.

People also ask questions of the prominent figures delivering the keynote address. I remember when the speaker a few years ago was Metro Police Chief Ronal Serpas. Most of the letter-writers had had their say and sat down, but there was an older lady who got up and went to the microphone on the right of the ballroom. She addressed her comments to the police chief. Her name, she said, was Virginia Trimble.

Say whatever you want to say, but say it in 60 seconds, or you'll get gonged. Yes, they time it. Religiously. well, there's no gong, but there is a brass bell that's rung at the end of your time.

And when all the letter-writers who want to speak have spoken, it will be time to sing Auld Lang Syne. The lyrics are printed in the program in your chair, and the pianist for the evening will give everybody some idea of the tune. And then it will be time to go home. At least until next year.

How a San Francisco cable car makes a U-Turn

2010-04-11T17:05:00.000-05:00

I shot this with a handheld Flip cam last October when I visited San Francisco for the Online News Association conference.

Podcast: My idea that might make you rich -- and Twitter clients, too

2009-08-02T22:52:00.001-05:00

The JP Podcast kicks off with discussion of an idea that I'm giving away that could make someone very wealthy. Click here to listen in.

Steve McNair: He earned Nashville fans' respect

2009-07-04T23:17:00.000-05:00

When people pass on, there's a natural inclination to glorify their achievements. So let me preface this by saying that I had thought about writing these comments about a year or two ago, well before today's terrible and shocking news.

The relationship between Nashville and Steve McNair is not just one of a town and a famous athlete. For those of you outside Nashville, let me explain a little bit about it.

I remember when the NFL's Houston Oilers first moved to Nashville to become the team that is now the Tennessee Titans. Back in those days, the team just wasn't very good. They had some potential, but they struggled constantly. This team we're getting from Texas, I thought to myself, they're not much to celebrate about.

I remember in particular that the team had two young men vying for the starting quarterback's job: Two guys named Neil O'Donnell and Steve McNair. They both had potential, but like their teams, they seemed to struggle constantly. I remember one particularly bad outing for McNair -- I can't remember whether this was in Memphis or at Vanderbilt Stadium -- but the home-field fans booed him for poor performance. I remember my friend and mentor Dwight Lewis wrote a column about it.

Today, it is hard for most of us to remember, or even believe, there was ever any doubt whether Steve should have been starting QB. And I don't recall the people of Nashville ever booing Steve McNair on the field ever again, as I recall.

Steve McNair earned the respect of the people of Nashville. And he didn't just do it by being part of a winning team. He worked his behind off for it.

Steve McNair wasn't one of those overpaid star quarterbacks who took off running for the first down and then slid toward it when a defensive player came within 20 yards of him. Steve would go running for that first down marker, and when those two defensive players grabbed him, he'd keep on running. He'd take those guys with him another 5 yards or so and just keep going. It'd take another defensive guy or two to pull him down. And even then, he didn't make it easy for them.

As a passer, Steve wouldn't ground the ball when the linebackers started to close in on him. I remember seeing linebackers grabbing him and hanging on to him as he looked around for a barely-open receiver downfield, and he'd still pull off some miracle completion.

Steve wasn't some athlete who made a zillion dollars a year and sat around on his behind and then whined about being disrespected. Steve worked. Steve earned his fans' respect by going out there and always giving his all, even when he was hurt and the odds were just unbelievable. Steve earned his pay every Sunday. Everybody knew who led that team on the field to all those just-barely and how-did-they-do-it victories.

Not only was he a really good quarterback, but Steve played hurt nearly every game in some of the Titans' best seasons, and I don't mean with some little small injury. Steve often played with serious injuries that would have sidelined most people. But he nearly always went out there, and if he went on the field, he played his heart out. It was as if you expected to read in the paper on Wednesday that he'd broken his back and was in traction but was expected to practice with the team Saturday for Sunday's game. Sometimes he was so hurt, as I recall, he wouldn't be well enough to practice with the team at all in the days before the next game -- but he'd still go out there on Sunday and pull off an incredible victory, usually at some great physical cost to himself.

And he'd go out there and he'd practically break his neck for the win. Just because he was hurt, he didn't give an inch. You'd see him limping sometimes, running back to the sidelines, and you knew he was in pain, but it never seemed to cause him to throw passes shorter, or to run slower, or to give it any less than he would physically than if he were healthy.

For all of that, Steve earned the Nashville fans' respect.

Now, Steve was not a saint. Very few people are, of course. As I recall, Steve got caught drinking and driving a few years ago. That's wrong. He shouldn't have done that. And when he was found to be drinking and driving, Steve may have gotten preferential treatment shown to him by local police officers because of his football hero status. That's also wrong. And, if what is being reported is true, it sounds like Steve was dating a woman while also still married to his wife. Also wrong.

But his achievements were still many. And that's why he's a huge sports hero to the people of Nashville.

We still don't know what happened. As of this writing, The Tennessean is saying that police say it appears to have been a murder-suicide -- Steve was shot several times, while the woman he was with was shot once.

Rino is still god -- and launch the Shawn-O-Meter

2009-06-10T20:36:00.000-05:00

The power of television to make the world smaller cannot be understated. For one thing, it can make a girl from Warrenton, Ga., who not only had never been to Chicago but didn't know anyone from Chicago and didn't know anyone who had ever been to Chicago, into a Chicago Cubs fan.

Yes, my Braves have always had my greatest loyalty. I was taught to pull for them by my grandfather, who despite his sheet-metal-plant worker's paycheck and his dislike of expense on himself, was one of the first people I knew in Warrenton to subscribe to cable television -- all so he could watch the Braves games without bad weather disrupting the signal from what used to be Channel 17 out of Atlanta.

But the coax cable that carried the Braves games to Warrenton also carried the Cubs games on WGN, and especially in those pre-lights days at Wrigley Field, the two teams' games rarely overlapped. In summertime, I could watch the Cubs on WGN in the afternoon and then watch the Braves that evening.

It's the mid-1980s from which my Cubs memories are strongest. While I got my Braves loyalty from my grandfather, but when I think of the Cubs, I remember watching with my dad. He was police chief then and, about four days a week, he reported for his shift very, very early in the morning and got off at 1 or 2 in the afternoon. "Ryno is God" was one regular Bleacher Bum sign we loved to chuckle at -- of course, that's in reference to Ryne Sandberg, the second baseman who was the Cubs' major star of that era; he's now in Cooperstown (.289 career batting average, 282 HRs). And there was another, the "Shawon-O-Meter," a frequently appearing sign that sought to keep track of the offensive exploits of a younger player, shortstop Shawon Dunston (.269 career batting average, 150 HRs).

The Cubs' manager of that time was Don Zimmer, who would later be one of Joe Torre's helper-coaches in the Yankee dugout, maybe most famous for his awkward attempt at fistcuffs with Pedro Martinez, which got him impersonated on the next broadcast of Saturday Night Live. (By Horatio Sanz, as I recall.) I tend to think that's more public exposure than any bench coach had ever gotten in the history of all baseball.

I remember Mark Grace was the first baseman. And one of our favorite players was the catcher, Joe Girardi, who has since replaced Torre as skipper of the Yankees.

My memory may be fuzzy on this, but I remember watching Girardi perform a tremendous feat one day, one that -- sadly -- I never did see written about by the baseball press when Girardi was hired in New York.

Girardi started the game at his normal position, catcher. As the game progressed, some other Cubs players had to be stricken from the game, and Girardi was called on to fill in elsewhere on the field -- I want to say he subbed for one of the infielders, but he might have been in the outfield. Then, as innings passed, the Cubs confronted another staffing dilemma, and Girardi was dispatched to the mound to pitch. I remember Harry Caray saying Girardi had broken a major league record for most positions played in a single game. I think he may actually have gotten a batter out as pitcher, but I'm not certain of that. (Any baseball savants out there remember this? Am I mis-remembering?)

Needless to say, Harry Caray was as much a part of watching a Cubs game as the players on the field. (An interesting, and sometimes funny, thing to do: When the Braves played the Cubs, sometimes my dad and I would turn on two TVs, one tuned to the Cubs' broadcast on WGN, and the other tuned to the Braves' broadcast on TBS, where the play-by-play announcer was Harry's son, Skip Caray.) I also remember that the WGN broadcast team seemed as intent on finding attractive young women in the stands displaying their cleavage as they were interested in the progress of the game.

I bring all this up because I finally got to see the Cubs play, live and in person, last night -- in Houston, against the hapless Astros. Rino is a minor league manager now, and Minute Maid Park doesn't quite exude the vibe that I imagine comes fromf the bleachers at Wrigley Field, but it was good to finally see them play. They won, 7-1, on a night when the Astros, not the Cubs, looked like the doormat of the National League.

Wouldn't Steve Goodman be proud?

Some thoughts on the Indy 500

2009-05-24T16:03:00.000-05:00

To me, summer officially begins when I hear Jim Nabors singing "Back Home Again in Indiana" at the start of the Indianapolis 500.

Now that the race is ending, some thoughts:

The Indy 500 just does not have the iconic place in American culture that it did when I was a kid. Open-wheel racing folks have allowed themselves to be plowed over by NASCAR in the national popularity contest. How many people other than me were actually watching this broadcast?

When I was a kid, we always turned on the Indy 500 at my house -- though I remember it more often on my grandparents' TV in Emanuel County. Watching the race was a ritual. This was the late '70s and early '80s -- I remember names like Rick Mears and Al Unser Sr. and A.J. Foyt in his orange car. How many average people today could name one person, just one person, who raced in the Indy 500 today? OK, maybe some can name Danica Patrick, because she's on commercials everywhere. How many others could they name?

I went to an IRL race once, a few years ago, in Nashville. It was pretty cool -- Tony Kanaan won and did a burnout right in front of the grandstands where I was sitting before being presented with a customized Gibson guitar as a trophy (hey, I'd much rather have that than get a grandfather clock from winning at Martinsville). I tried to follow the IRL a bit more closely after that, but it just could not keep my interest the way NASCAR could.

Some thoughts on why IndyCar is not as popular as NASCAR: Not as many races. It's harder for me to tell the cars apart during the broadcast -- I don't know if that's the fault of the IRL or of ABC's broadcasting; part of it may be the racing teams' tendency to assign identical color schemes to all their cars, such as the orange-and-white scheme on the Penske team's cars. Many of the drivers are from other countries -- which I think is cool, but I have a feeling that it could bother some American fans. I mean, we live in a country where NBC felt it necessary to remake The Office with an all-American cast and setting. If we have to have The Office remade in our image, we ain't gonna cotton to pulling for a sport where the Brits and the Brazilians outnumber us.

Some thoughts on Danica. I like Danica, and I want her to win -- her 3rd place finish just now is the highest ever for a woman at Indy, and I was pulling for her. But she's in danger of being deemed overrated. She won a race last year, the first ever by a woman in IndyCar, but it's just one race. The amount of media attention she gets is a little bit more than I think her record deserves. She's got to get up there and win another one, or, within a year or two, I predict the media is going to start saying she's seriously overrated.

Again, I want her to win, and I like her -- she's sharp, she's focused, and when you see her on the track or in interviews, she carries herself with seriousness. I like that about her. But I have my criticisms of her. I don't like the swimsuit pictures. I don't like the wink-wink, nudge-nudge GoDaddy.com commercials. I know she has said in past interviews that if her sex appeal helps her career, she's willing to use it. I really disagree with that approach, and I don't think it's positive for women in general. The message being sent is, "I'm a woman and I can get ahead if I'm hot-looking and I act in a sexually suggestive fashion." Call me an old fuddy-duddy, but I want a woman driver to be respected because she's a good driver, not because she's a hot babe.

Thing about it is, I think Danica is good enough to be respected for being a good driver alone. I wish she would let the other stuff go.

Helio: I can't help but like Helio. He's really the Roberto Begnini of motorsports -- and not just in his victory exuberances (substituting fence-climbing for seat-jumping). I often don't have sympathy for rich people accused of income tax evasion, but when Helio and his sister-business manager said they really didn't know what they were getting into, I found them actually pretty darn believable. I get the feeling he's a nice guy, and sometimes an inadvertently funny guy, and he can sure drive a race car, but he probably can't balance a checkbook.

Other thoughts: Good Lord, didn't Vitor Meara have an awful race -- first he gets set on fire, then he's in a hellacious wreck.

Some great albums

2009-03-09T08:13:00.000-05:00

Some favorite all-time albums of mine -- because I need to test the "bullets" function on my blog for something we're doing at work. (Criteria: No greatest-hits compilations allowed.) And keep in mind, this is not a complete list.

Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen
Otis Redding Live in Europe, Otis Redding
Dancing in the Parlor, Stephen Wade
Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette
Traveling Without Moving, Jamiroquai
The Band, The Band (the "brown" album)
Area Code 615, Area Code 615
Licensed to Ill, Beastie Boys
Solo Banjo Works, Tony Trischka and Bela Fleck
New Dimensions in Banjo and Bluegrass, Eric Weissberg and Marshall Brickman

Transparency Camp '09 is awesome

2009-03-01T12:49:00.000-06:00

I'm in Washington, D.C, for Transparency Camp, an "uncamp" being led by the Sunlight Foundation at the Center for Politics, Democracy and the Internet on the campus of George Washington University. (And the subject is government transparency -- no, friends on Facebook, I am not learning how to make myself invisible. But thanks for the laugh.)

This is my first uncamp, and it's really awesome. I've met a lot of really cool people doing really cool things -- and it reminds me how behind the times I am! Read more by searching Twitter for hashtag #tcamp09. I'm tweeting as Texas Watchdog.

I' just checking e-mail right now during the lunch break. More updates to come when I can.

ALSO: It's supposed to snow like crazy here starting ... Now.

ManyEyes and MLK's 'I Have a Dream' speech

2009-01-19T12:53:00.001-06:00

I've been messing around a little bit over the past few weeks with the Web site ManyEyes, a project of IBM. It's intended to let people visualize data, and one of the things it lets you do is upload a piece of text (like a speech) and map it out.

I went over there, and someone had already uploaded the text of the "I Have a Dream" speech from 1963, which CNN just replayed a little while ago. Below is an interactive of how Many Eyes charts it out, using "dream" as the keyword.

ManyEyes is free to use. Go over there and have some fun.

From the road

2008-09-22T17:46:00.000-05:00

From Arkansas.

Smallest fish in Harpeth River caught by world's worst angler

2008-08-11T08:02:00.000-05:00

Had a good time fishing with Miss Anne and Warren and their friend Tony at Newsom's Mill in Bellevue yesterday.

I (heart) Skip

2008-08-05T20:39:00.000-05:00

He spoke with a voice that reached across the miles and enlightened countless thousands.

He educated and inspired untold scores of followers.

His passing is a great loss.

Solzhenitsyn? Heavens, no. I'm talking about Skip Caray.

I cannot believe I will never turn on another TV or radio and hear him call another Braves game.

His voice is an integral part in one of my most cherished childhood memories, watching the Braves on TV with my grandfather on hot-humid summer nights, him in the easy chair and me laying on the carpeted floor, with the windows up on the screen doors to my grandparents' house and the ceiling fan going, but never fast enough to actually cool the room off.

I remember when the Braves would play the Cubs and you could flip the TV back and forth and hear both Skip and his father call the same game.

I remember all those games, year after year after year, when the Braves were so bad that if the opposing team failed to show up at the ballpark, they'd still manage to find a way to lose.

I remember him yelling "Braves win! Braves win!" when we finally won the World Series.

I was an unabashed fan. I will miss Skip Caray. My prayers are with his family.

My city was gone

2008-07-24T17:50:00.005-05:00

I can’t remember when Blundale, Ga., ever was much of a town. It was before I was even born. Heck, it was really before my dad was even born. Even when he and his parents moved there in the 1950s, Blundale was well in decline.

But it was still sad to drive through the old town over the July Fourth holiday and see how time has continued to wear it down.

Blundale, Ga., is no more.

This little teeny-tiny itty-bitty town was on the far northern edge of Emanuel County. In its time, it had a little downtown, with a sort-of main street and a store and railroad depot for the Wadley Southern Railroad. The railroad stopped running in the ‘50s, leaving only a raised berm that had been the railroad bed; I remember my father walking me over there as a small child and showing me where the tracks had been and telling me how the train had come through every afternoon.

Now, even the berm is gone. The ongoing widening of the highway folks there just call “Number 1” has wiped out what remained of it.

I drove between the orange barrels and turned off into Blundale’s little downtown. You couldn’t miss Miss Pumpkin’s house – an old Victorian with a huge wrap-around porch – now covered in vines and surrounded by 10-foot tall brush and weeds. Miss Pumpkin’s real name was Lumpkin, Delmar Lumpkin, and she was living in that house when my grandparents moved to Blundale from Swainsboro in the mid-‘50s. Her husband had been a supervisor for the workers on a huge nearby farm, my grandmother recalled. When I was little and she would visit with my grandparents, I called her Miss Pumpkin, and Miss Pumpkin she remained to us for the rest of her life.

Next to Miss Pumpkin’s house was the old Blundale store. It had been abandoned well before Miss Pumpkin had passed on. It, too, was grown up, weedy and forlorn.

There were a few houses about 100 yards down the way, and some people were outside cutting the grass. I would have stopped to talk but I had a long drive back to Warrenton, and a cloud was on the horizon, and I opted not to bother them on July 4^th.

But saddest to me was my grandparents’ house.

The grass was all grown up. What little I could see of the backyard looked to have weeds and grass practically as high as my head. Someone had plopped a chain link fence back there, but to hold in what, I’m not sure, ‘cause there was nothing to hold in back there but weeds and what looked like a child's inflatable swimming pool. The tin roof was peeling back over part of the old garage, which will cause it to rot from the rain inside. I couldn’t see the old smokehouse or the old store building in the back, much less my granddad’s garden behind it -- it was too grown up.

At least the row of crepe myrtles are still there, in full pink bloom in the summer sun.

I wonder if my granddad’s gourds are still hanging from the wire across the backyard. I wonder if those spiky plants my grandmother brought from Florida are still back there. And the place where my father buried his two dogs behind the old store, and chiseled their headstones for them by hand out of rocks he found.

Two songs are in my head as I write this. The first is My City Was Gone by The Pretenders:

I went back to Ohio

And my city was gone

There was no train station

There was no downtown …

I went back to Ohio

But my family was gone

I stood on the back porch

There was nobody home

I was stunned and amazed

My childhood memories

Slowly swirled past

Like the wind through the trees.

The second, I’ll close with. It’s I’m On My Way Back to the Old Home by Bill Monroe:

I’m on my way back to the old home

The road winds on up the hill

But there’s no light at the window

That shined long ago where I lived.

View Larger Map

(I’ll try to blog again some more later on about my trip to Emanuel County for the Fourth.)

Hot chicken

2008-07-24T14:43:00.000-05:00

You gotta eat good on vacation, even when it's just a stay-cation. So I headed on down to Prince's Hot Chicken Shack today at about 1:30 -- trying to get on the tail end of the lunch rush. Had about a 20-minute wait (I was No. 36; the first number called after I arrived was 17).

I got mine as a take-out order and took it home to eat it. Was it good? Of course.

Missing in action

2008-07-21T15:31:00.000-05:00

Does anyone know what has become of the Emanuel County (Ga.) GenWeb page? It's disappeared. The links refer to you to a nonexistent page on Ancestry.com .... ???

Some more random thoughts and unsolicited endorsements

2008-06-16T20:04:00.004-05:00

While I wait for my Palm Pilot to soft-reset so I can try to reinstall my screwed-up password-storing software:

Spray-on suntan lotion may be the greatest thing since sliced bread. Especially for a person like me who burns easily.
Firefox might be even better than sliced bread. Can't wait for Version 3 to come out. The many add-ons for Firefox are awesome, and I can even install them on my work computer without having administrator privileges on my machine. I'm running the Del.icio.us add-on, 1-click Weather, Abduction, Copy Link Text, FireShot, GMail Space, Scrapbook, ScribeFire, and as of today, TwitterFox. Why did I wait so long to switch from Internet Explorer?
Google Reader is up there with Firefox. Almost as good as Google Reader is Google Notebook. I am just now starting to make use of Google Documents and Google Sites.
Apple needs to stop trying to sneak its Safari browser onto my PC when I update my iPod software. No fair. I thought better of you, Apple.
I would be willing to make more use of iGoogle if it loaded faster. What gives?

Some random thoughts for no reason

2008-06-11T08:07:00.003-05:00

+ FedEx is doing away with the Kinko's brand name. I'm not happy about that. Kinko's is an American icon. You tell someone, "I have to go to Kinko's today," and they know you're going there to make copies or get something printed. You say, "I'm going to FedEx" -- what, to pick up a package?
+ Why did Bath and Body Works recently stop selling the Cotton Blossom line? Now they sell Sea Island Cotton. It's good, and it's almost as nice, but it's not Cotton Blossom, which was my favorite. I know they have to change out their inventory every now and then to keep things fresh, but I hate it when things I like go away. Maybe it will come back.
+ I'm really enjoying Firefox lately. I've become a committed Firefox user.

Trying again with the palm tree video

2008-06-08T22:03:00.001-05:00

It's good to be home

2008-06-08T21:55:00.004-05:00

The Miami airport is a zoo. The seat-belt fabric barriers must go on for miles and miles and miles.

Live from the ocean

2008-06-07T19:02:00.003-05:00

The sky is not as cloudy here now as it was a while ago. Hope this short video works. This is my first time trying to send video to the blog remotely. If not, I'm also enclosing a still pic.
NOTE, AS OF SUNDAY AFTERNOON: No, the video didn't make it onto the blog. I'll have to try to upload it the old-fashioned way.

UPDATE AS OF SUNDAY NIGHT: Got it fixed. The fixed, working palm tree video is now at this link.

This is NOT a transcript

2008-06-07T17:51:00.002-05:00

I'm sitting in on the Q&A at the end of a panel on public documents. Once you get a record, I think someone asked, what do you do then?

Well, the first guy said, you have to verify that it's real (think CBS and Bush's National Guard records). But, the other panelist said, if you have a legit record, the interview subject will rarely try to say it's not real.

True, but it does happen. I remember an instance from a few years ago in which a reporter gleaned from a government agency (via FOIA) a document that suggested that a public official had done something they shouldn't have done. The record clearly was a transcript of a telephone conversation including that official, with the official quoted in it as saying that the agency involved should do the thing they shouldn't have done -- and the document had a header up at the top that said TRANSCRIPT (actually it was something like "TRANSCRIPT OF SO-AND-SO CONVERSATION"). When the reporter tried to talk directly to that official, they wouldn't talk, and referred the reporter to the agency spokesman, who, when asked about it, said basically, "That's not a transcript."

I don't think the PIO could ever explain what that document was supposed to be if it were not a transcript, but that was the official line.

We used it in the story, along with the PIO's response. I think the reader could make the judgment for themselves.

Some other random observations as the conference winds down:

* The sky is clouding up outside and it looks like it will soon rain.

* I see more and more need for journalists to have computer skills -- and I don't mean being able to sort in Excel. There is so much of a use for, and need for, people who can do real computer programming, such as designing ways for databases to be hooked to Websites to be publicly searchable, do mashup maps, create dynamic presentations of social networking analysis diagrams and other ways to present raw data -- databases with thousands and thousands of records -- online. I feel so behind-the-curve. The problem is, so many people in journalism like me can't do the computer stuff, and the real computer experts often come from outside-of-journalism worlds and can't make the two mesh. Reporter 2.0 may be blogging, posting their own live audio and video a la Al Franken as SNL's one-man mobile uplink unit, but Reporter 3.0 needs to be truly cross-trained in IT. Information technology -- we journalists are all about the information, but we have to keep up with the technology, too, if we want to continue to reach the public and not just be over in a corner talking to ourselves.
* I'm in the membership meeting right now, and one of the board candidates just said how much she's gotten out of IRE. I second that. IRE is a great organization, and I have gotten so much from the hands-on computer training, conferences and other programs it puts on, along with its repository for stories done by other IRE members and tipsheets, its guidebooks on reporting topics, its listservs, I could go on and on.
* I got through the conference and bought only two books from the book sale. This may be an all-time best for me at an IRE/SPJ conference. I have a hard time saying no to the book sale tables and then a harder time having to lug my new library home. I got held up at the ticket counter at LaGuardia three years ago for having overweight luggage on my way back from the SPJ convention in New York, and a substantial part of my belongings had to travel back to Nashville in Frank Gibson's suitcase. The only ones I bought this year were the two for sale by David Cay Johnston, formerly of The New York Times, who authored a great quote that is somewhere else on this blog. I wanted to hear him speak yesterday, but I stopped off at the ladies' room first and found I had a run in my stocking so big that I basically had more hole than stocking. I wound up back in my room, changing into my khaki slacks. Darn.
* I have put in my order for the audio of the conference sessions. I have done this in the past and it's very helpful. If you're an IRE member and didn't attend the conference, you can order it for $15 plus shipping from IRE.
* Blog readers: Fender says hi.
* You are supposed to be able to read more about the conference at, I think, http://training.ire.org. It's supposed to be a conference blog. Haven't had a chance to check it out yet. (ADDENDUM: Yes, that is the correct URL, and it's a very good blog.)
NOTE: I went back into this post on Sunday, post-conference, and fixed some typos and added some links. So it's changed a little since I first posted it.

Glorifying the everyday grunt work

2008-06-07T15:51:00.003-05:00

I can't say enough about the value of getting and going through otherwise-routine public records on a routine basis. You could glean that from any number of sessions here at the conference, but I'm inferring it again from the excellent session by Jim Neff and Ken Armstrong of The Seattle Times about their series, "Victory and Ruins." This is always vindicating to hear -- especially given the very bad memory I have from a few years ago, when our then-top boss banned us from FOIAing any records in any instance in which we did not already have a specific tip or allegation of explicit wrongdoing. That edict, many Salt Mine readers will recall, nearly made my head explode. But it's great to come to IRE and hear the word preached -- it is like going to church, in the religion of journalism -- and my head is un-exploding now. Can I get an "amen"?
NOTE: I went through this post on Sunday and updated it to fix some typos and add some links.

By the Bay

2008-06-07T14:14:00.002-05:00

Dave Barry's speech was great. In Miami, he said, they could just inaugurate their public officials and indict them at the same time. Sounds much more efficient.

Update from IRE

2008-06-07T10:52:00.002-05:00

Weather is nice here, conference is great. Some random thoughts:
* Great stories often involve a little bit of luck, but are more the product of hard work than anything else. That's one thing I'm picking up from all the speakers at these sessions.
* Our system of government was created with checks and balances - the ones we all learned about in civics class - but there is no greater, stronger check on our government than the press. I thought about that while listening to a reporter from the Detroit Free Press talk about his coverage of the mayor up there and the private e-mails/text message scandal there, which has led to further revelations about contract-steering and nepotism/cronyism in city government. The legislative branch of city government would never have worked to ferret out that story. The courts? Well, the courts are involved NOW, but only because the press fought so hard to run the story/stories down.
* Editors talking about editing can be really boring. Editors talking about stories is much more interesting. The process of editing, although it is my job, is not that interesting to me. Stories, and finding out new facts or making some great revelation or realization, are what interests me.
* Walt Bogdanich, NY Times reporter and Pulitzer winner, looks incredibly like my friend and former colleague Jay Hamburg.
* When trying to decide which sessions to attend at a professional conference, don't decide based on topic. Decide on the quality of the speakers doing the presentation. A session with some folks on the panel for whom you've never heard of or you've never heard of their work, there's a chance it'll be a really good session, but it also has a good chance of being a dud. A session with great speakers, it'll be a good session, no matter what the topic is.
* I really enjoyed the session last night that included an advance screening of an episode of the upcoming HBO miniseries "Generation Kill," which is based on a book by a Rolling Stone reporter who was embedded with the Marines in Iraq. I think I'll watch the miniseries now.
* I have been thinking for several weeks now about document retention and filing for journalists. Covering government, we routinely get 1,000-page document dumps in response to our FOIAs. Some of that material is immediately useful, some is more useful weeks or months down the road and some is, quiet honestly, not useful at all for our journalistic efforts. But keeping that material, keeping it organized, and keeping it findable over a long term is a challenge. Filing was one of the major issues talked about yesterday on the very good panel about "building the ongoing investigation," in which all the participants shared their personal memories of the late, great Bob Greene. And someone just asked a notes-storage/retention question in the session I was just in about coaxing great writing from reporters. A common piece of advice: Always type up your notes and write memos to yourself after interviews.
* Everyone, everywhere, seems to be being asked to do more with less. Why is it that we live in an era where, thanks to new technology, we have more and more media in the world, but there are less and less resources for the most important work the media does, which draws the greatest attention from the readers/audience and has the greatest impact (see bullet point above about Detroit)?
* The conference hotel is super-nice. I am so excited to hear Dave Barry speak at lunch!
NOTE: I went through this post Sunday afternoon, fixed some typos and added some links, so it's changed a little bit since I first posted it.

I'm here

2008-06-06T11:16:00.002-05:00

Miami is huge. The airport is huge, huge. The conference hotel is huge and very nice. It's right on the ocean. They charge you $4 for a little teeny bottle of Coke.

It would be too obvious to say 'I'm so glad we had this time together,' but I'll say it

2008-05-29T22:14:00.003-05:00

There were few things I enjoyed as a child more than the beat-up swingset in our back yard. I swang and I swang and I swang. I swang in cold weather, with a jacket on. I swang in warm weather in shorts and flip-flops. Some of my best childhood memories are of swinging in the late summer afternoons, with the shadows growing long, and being surrounded by the sound of the cicadas buzzing in the trees.

There wasn't much that could tear me away from that swingset. But at 6:35 p.m. every weeknight when there wasn't a Braves game on, I had to be in front of the TV.

Carol Burnett was on.

Now, I'm a child of the '80s. Pac-Man. Michael Jackson and Thriller. MTV. All that. But for whatever reason, TBS, for several of my most formative years, decided to air decade-old re-runs of Carol Burnett and Friends at 6:35 p.m. every weeknight when they weren't showing a Braves baseball game. I rarely missed it.

As the Stomach Turns. Tim Conway as the character known in my house as The Little Old Man. Carol Burnett as Miss Wiggins, who couldn't operate the intercom, and Conway as her stressed-out boss. They were as familiar to me as any characters on any of the popular television shows of the mid-1980s, if not more so. They were a fixture in my house. Even my parents, who were busy people and stayed stressed out most of the time, would sometimes watch.

And we weren't the only ones. At school the following day, the kids in my class would be reciting lines or funny scenes from the previous night's re-run. I don't think we really understood that ol' Carol and her crew had been cancelled by CBS some years before. The loud '70s clothing, the wide ties and leisure suits -- well, we weren't really old enough to catch on how out-of-date they were. Carol and company might as well have been still on the air, along with The Dukes of Hazzard, Knight Rider or whatever else 10-year-olds were watching in the mid-'80s.

But I think we understood, or at least I know I did, that Carol Burnett's show was awesome.

I remember when Tim Conway, as the little old white-haired man who always shuffled around, appeared as a dentist trying to treat patient Harvey Korman, only to stick himself with the Novocaine needle and put all his limbs to sleep. I remember laughing at Carol and Harvey Korman doing their version of Max, the baldheaded butler, and Nora Desmond, aging movie star with her overly stretched-out face, years before I ever saw the original film Sunset Boulevard that they were parodying. And this punchline stood on its own in my house: "Stroke! Stroke! I'm having a stroke!" I won't even bother to try to explain it. You had to see it to understand.

But the highlight of any Carol Burnett episode in my house was The Point At Which Tim Conway Would Make Harvey Korman Crack Up. It was never a question of whether Harvey would lose it. It was a question of when he would lose it. If Tim Conway were on that night, it was coming. You just had to wait for it.

Today, out in California, Harvey Korman died. He was 81. He was awesome, and I just wanted to write this.

Charts, anyone?

2008-05-27T22:55:00.003-05:00

In response to the recent blog post by my friend DJ Ron, graphically interpreting some popular songs, here are some more, leaning heavily toward the country side, thanks to GraphJam.com:

more graph humor and song chart memes

Note: This next one should rightly say "Things you can do to Carl Perkins."

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

more graph humor and song chart memes

The morning after the Forum Banquet

2008-05-17T07:46:00.002-05:00

Thank you to all who followed my spur-of-the-moment live blogging from the Forum Banquet. I apologize that none of the audio I tried to post last night worked. I do have audio of one speaker at the mic, though it's not really high quality (recorded it via my Palm Pilot), but I'll try to get it uploaded today as soon as I figure out how. And I should have turned off the comment-moderation feature. Sorry about that.

Auld Lang Syne

2008-05-16T21:16:00.003-05:00

Yup, it's over. With any luck, here's a sound file of the great old Robbie Burns song being sung by us, the attendees.

UPDATE, SATURDAY MORNING: Well, I blew it on this one. Not only did I not get the audio uploaded remotely from the banquet, but the audio didn't even save on my Palm. So I don't have this to post. I hate that like heck, because singing Auld Lang Syne is such a tradition at the Forum Banquet. I'll try again next year.

Winding down

2008-05-16T21:11:00.002-05:00

The open-mic period continues but the lines at the mic are getting shorter. A speaker just got up and said he thought many of the attendees were guilty of sedition and reiterated his desire to meet another letter-writer on the battlefield and put a bullet between his eyes. Now there's something you don't often hear at a celebration of free speech.

Some audio from Mr. Foster Shockley

2008-05-16T20:48:00.003-05:00

fostershockley attached

UPDATE, SATURDAY MORNING: Oops. Both of my attempts to post audio to the blog from my Palm Pilot at the banquet failed, including this clip I was trying to post of Mr. Shockley speaking during his open-mic minute. The good news is, I can see the clip did get saved on my Palm. So I'll tinker with it and try to upload it later today.

'Can we not see eye to eye?'

2008-05-16T20:39:00.003-05:00

Picture is of reporter Jaime Sarrio fulfilling the time-honored tradition of covering the Forum Banquet.
UPDATE: I should point out that the speaker whom Jaime is interviewing in this picture is frequent letter-writer and previous Forum Banquet honoree Phil Michal Thomas.

The open mic period is begun

2008-05-16T20:25:00.002-05:00

We've had 4 speakers so far, and 3 of them got bell-runged by Liz Sharer for going over. This may be a record.

Mayor Dean speaks

2008-05-16T19:50:00.002-05:00

Mayor Karl Dean is delivering the keynote speech.

Dessert was called "Chocolate Confusion." It was very good.

Dinner is underway

2008-05-16T18:42:00.002-05:00

I'm honored to have sitting at my table Mr. Andy Brown, who sat with me last year -- this is his 11th banquet -- and Mr. Foster Shockley, who is at his 24th or 25th banquet.

Live from the Forum Banquet

2008-05-16T18:35:00.002-05:00

Live from the Maxwell House ...

Now THIS is paying at the pump

2008-05-08T07:33:00.000-05:00

One tank of gas: Just under $50.

Some random stuff I've meant to blog about

2008-03-30T08:02:00.003-05:00

All in one blog post 'cause I'm way behind:

I saw nine engines on one train the other day in the Gulch. My dad and I have a running contest to see who can spot the most engines on one train. The current record, held by me, is 11, but nine was the old record. These were mostly Union Pacifics, but there were a few orange-ish colored NLCX engines mixed in.
I want to see the Hank Williams family exhibit at the Hall of Fame. I'll have to let you know how it goes.
I'm no longer the biggest TV celebrity from Warrenton, Ga. I've been surpassed, thankfully, by Jamie Ellis and his bees. Read more about it on my Warrenton blog. Speaking of which, I was pleasantly surprised to learn the other day that Warrentonians have their own group on Facebook. I'm proud to be a member.
Went to roller derby last night with Monica and Ellen at the State Fairgrounds. It was a lot of fun. The crowd chanted the name of one of our star players, who calls herself Rambo Sambo. My favorite part was the halftime show, with a dance routine performed by the Nashville Rollergirls' crack cheerleading squad.
Shot the old .38 yesterday morning at TWRA's public range out by Percy Priest. I shot about 150 rounds at the five-yard target. Annie Oakley would have nothing to fear from me, trust me.
I'm getting really, really sick of our local weather patterns, where it's warm and beautiful during the week, but then it turns cold, crummy and rainy on the weekends.
The body shop wants $1,900 to fix the dashboard in my truck where my stereo was ripped out. Yikes!
I'm really enjoying the John Adams miniseries on HBO.

Monet: That's what I want

2008-02-24T18:46:00.001-06:00

Went to see the “Monet to Dali” exhibit at the Frist today and greatly enjoyed it. Rodin, you da man. I never knew his The Thinker was supposed to be based on Dante. Man, Dante must have really been one chiseled, muscular dude. Did they have Pilates back then or something?

I remembered today something that the art students I knew at Vanderbilt often said: Don’t put a fancy frame on your paintings because it overshadows the picture itself. I accepted their wisdom at the time. But seeing all the Monets and Picassos and Van Goghs today, I noticed how many of them were displayed in huge, ornate frames – the stuff you pay the major cash for at the frame shop. So, was the advice incorrect? Or is it that when you’re Monet, the rules don’t apply to you?

I tend to think it’s the second, not the first. Breaking the rules – wasn’t that what Monet and Picasso and all those guys were trying to do with their art anyhow?

I'd vote for that

2008-02-12T08:07:00.000-06:00

As suggested by Peter Cooper: Earl Scruggs for mayor, Kentucky colonel and homecoming queen. Let the campaign begin.

It was a heck of a week

2008-02-10T19:03:00.000-06:00

Last election night -- the September 2007 Nashville mayoral runoff -- we had an election and an execution.

This election night - Feb. 5 presidential primaries -- we had an election and tornadoes.

My prediction for next election night: Election + Wolf Creek Dam will break.

Check out the handiwork of my colleagues at Tennessean.com. And here's some stuff on YouTube:

Messing around with Google Maps again

2008-02-04T11:26:00.000-06:00

I worked up a Google Map to go with our Political Datebook column this week. Let me know what you think.

View Larger Map

Vote early with our Google Map

2008-01-29T13:03:00.000-06:00

I've been tinkering some with Google Maps lately, and here's one I'm proud of: It's a map of early voting sites in the Nashville area that I did for Tennessean.com. Click on the balloons and it should tell you when you can vote there, links to the sample ballot (if that county's is online) and contact information for the county Election Commission. And because it's a Google map, you can also plug in your own address and it will give you driving directions.

View Larger Map

'Chuck Norris is always in control'

2008-01-22T07:40:00.001-06:00

I laughed 'til I cried reading ChuckNorrisFacts.com, as mentioned in today's Online Buzz column in The Tennessean.

Quote of the day

2008-01-10T21:24:00.001-06:00

Serious journalism is vital to maintaining our society and our freedoms. ... Digging out hidden facts and making them understandable energizes me.
- New York Times reporter David Cay Johnston, as quoted by the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat & Chronicle. Seeing this quote this morning really lifted my spirits, and I sure needed it.

Here, have a Stage Plank

2007-12-08T17:50:00.000-06:00

Driving back to Nashville after Thanksgiving, I pulled in to a little gas station in north Georgia to fill up my tank and get a Coke, and instead wound up making quite a find: Uncle Al's Stage Planks. I hadn't had a Stage Plank in a zillion years. They're pink-frosted gingerbread-y cookies, big and flat. I remember getting them from the convenience store in Warrenton where I used to work.

Via Google, I noticed a blogger in Savannah described Uncle Al's Stage Planks recently as "frightening." Respectfully, this is undeserved. However, the gas station where I found the Stage Planks was also sellling barbecued fatback as a snack. Now, that's frightening. (You can read more about people like me who enjoy a quality Stage Plank on this message board.)

Worker 11811, where are you?

2007-11-21T08:23:00.000-06:00

Saw the German silent movie Metropolis this weekend at the Belcourt. It was good. I'd try to explain the plot here, but you'd never believe it. When the slave laborers were being herded up the steps and into the machine in the early part of the movie, I couldn't help but think it was an eerie foreshadowing of what would happen in that country just a dozen years later, with masses of innocent people led to their deaths in work camps.

Rock Star Movement No. 6 ...

2007-11-19T22:16:00.000-06:00

Blue Man Group were awesome. Saw them at the Arena on Friday night.

Delbert Mann -- movie director, Oscar winner, Vanderbilt alum

2007-11-13T07:12:00.000-06:00

He died out in California over the weekend. I got to interview him once for the student newspaper at Vanderbilt, for which he had served as co-managing editor when he was in school. He seemed like a really nice man.

They're still making typewriters ...

2007-11-06T20:28:00.000-06:00

I started college with an electric one, and I've still got the little Royal manual portable that my mother took to the Women's College of Georgia with her in 1965. Yep, it still works.

Banjers on 'SNL'

2007-11-06T20:11:00.001-06:00

Three banjos were being picked on stage on Saturday Night Live this past Saturday when the singer Feist performed her song 1234, which is also used in an iPod commercial.

Why is it so hard to find this stuff?

2007-11-06T20:05:00.000-06:00

+ Cinnamon Altoids. Is it just me, or have a lot of stores stopped selling the cinnamon flavor in favor of the dark chocolate dipped Altoids? I think it's true. I hate dark chocolate. And I hate peppermint Altoids. I looked far and wide for the cinnamon flavor, but found them only in the candy aisle at my local Walgreen's.

+ Women's jeans that aren't skin tight or low-rise. I can understand that trends come and go, but is it really necessary for all the major stores to get rid of all the clothes that don't fit the trend, as though shoppers don't want anything that's not trendy?

Just a thought.

Fishing on Priest Lake

2007-10-27T19:49:00.000-05:00

Miss Anne and I took in the women's fishing clinic today at Long Hunter State Park and had a good time. She caught three, but I didn't catch any. But I enjoyed it.

Good to see an old friend again

2007-10-27T08:46:00.000-05:00

I was in the first aid section of the pharmacy at Wal-Mart yesterday morning when I looked up and saw something I hadn't seen in a long time: Band-Aids in a metal flip-top box. Looks like Johnson & Johnson is putting out some of the metal boxes again as part of the Band-Aid's 85th birthday.

Claiming this blog through Technorati

2007-10-26T23:18:00.001-05:00

Technorati Profile

Go Commodores!

2007-10-22T08:48:00.000-05:00

Susan and I made it to homecoming weekend-before-last, and sat there and watched as our likely victory evaporated and was finally kicked away by the Georgia field goal kicker as time ran out. But the Commodores knocked off No. 6 South Carolina this past weekend.

All hail the arch

2007-08-23T22:09:00.000-05:00

A picture I took on my way to mapping training in Missouri, from which I returned just a few days ago. The arch was indeed very arch-like.

Absolving themselves of their carbonated responsibility?

2007-08-23T20:37:00.000-05:00

It's been happening more and more over the past few years: fast-food restaurants are rearranging their interiors so that customers are handed a cup at the counter and then pour their own drinks at a drink "station."

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that you're more likely to get a "flat" soft drink, or a drink that's mostly soda water and little syrup, at these do-it-yourself drink stations?

I wonder if, when restaurants move these drink thingees out to the customer area, the staff is less watchful of when the Coke taps need to be changed out so that they give out the right mix of syrup and carbonated water. As I encounter more and more of the do-it-yourselfer places, I get fewer and fewer soft drinks that actually taste right.