A Poem by Walt Whitman

To a President

All you are doing and saying is to America dangled mirages,

You have not learn'd of Nature—of the politics of Nature you have not learn'd the great amplitude, rectitude, impartiality,

You have not seen that only such as they are for these States,

And that what is less than they must sooner or later lift off from these States.

1860

No Blank Blog

I teach on Thursday nights--ENGL 4207/5207: Literature of the South, a split-level course including both advanced undergraduates and graduate students. Class runs from 5:00 to 7:50. So I usually try to leave the office empty-handed so that I take the rest of Thursday evening off. Friday, then, because I don't teach at all, becomes a catch-as-catch-can day. Here's how it went:

1. I woke up early and got up slowly, which is the way I like it best.
2. had a bit of breakfast--cereal.
3. messed around with some email, read some blogs, general Internet lollygagging.
   
4. went to Willow Springs and "danced my dance" as William Byrd the II used to put it back in the late 17th and early 18th century--meaning, I exercised.
5. came home, shaved and showered.
6. paid some bills and got a couple of deposits ready for the banks.
7. left the house to do some banking and drop the monthly payment off at the Power Board.
8. ate a fish burrito, as I do every Friday, at Barberitos.
9. made it to campus around 1:45, went to the post office and stopped by my office before going to a meeting.
10. met with a task force in the College of Business and Technology, a task force charged with trying to improve the writing performance of the college's various majors.
11. crossed State of Franklin and did some more banking--when I'd stopped by my office I found a royalty check from my publisher, not much money but a nice surprise anyway.
12. returned to my office to take care of more emails.
13. attended a late afternoon lecture on Arthur Miller and Death of a Salesman; we had a visiting scholar from Georgia State University in Atlanta.
14. drove home and got Raleigh and took him to Amigo for supper.
15. took Raleigh home and drove to the Acoustic Coffeehouse for a visit and beer with some of my colleagues and our visiting scholar.
16. drove--not under the influence--to Ingles in Jonesborough for Friday night ice cream.
17. returned home to visit with my brother- and sister-in-law and their granddaughter and to watch a silly movie--Rolling Kansas--with Raleigh.
18. played some guitar with Raleigh while watching some of Letterman's show.
19. read some more blogs and emails.
20. went to bed.

Along about 9:00 or so, before Raleigh and I started watching the movie, I sat down at the computer to work on my blog and discovered my blog page a blank! I thought I'd lost everything. At some point I received an email from Dennis saying that he wasn't seeing anything there either. After the movie, I came back to find my blogspot still blank, and so I wrote the blogger help folks to see what could be done. I knew I wasn't likely to hear from them quickly--it's being a Friday night and all--so I went to my index where I can edit my recent posts. I opened the one for Thursday the 28th, and it was there. I was obviously releived to find that all was not lost. I took a chance and hit "Publish Post," and when it was loaded, I took a look at the blog and everything was there again. What a relief! I soon received another email from Dennis saying that he could see it too and that he was glad I was back. I'm glad to be back!



243.6 / 241.8

Rain and Reading

A friend and I stood at the door of our office building and watched the storm that passed over campus at a little after three o'clock in the afternoon. Lightning flashed, and the thunder was less than a hung breath behind it. "I miss it," my friend said, meaning both the intensity of the storm and his native Alabama. I knew what he meant, even though I've lived most of my life in these mountains, where thunderstorms tend to be so corralled by the ridges that their intensity is felt only if they pass directly overhead. I learned during my years in Nashville that in flatter lands thunderstorms have free reign and are able to grow as strong as they can, even to the point of spawning twisters. I remember once being at the house of an acquaintance in Nashville. Although I can't recall who the person was--we were trying, unsuccessfully, to cowrite a song--or where in town the house stood, I clearly remember the storm. Its intensity called us out of the house and onto the porch, where we watched the flashes of light and the pouring of the rain. The storm was right on top of us. A particularly close flash of lighting brought thunder so strong and quick that I still remember feeling it on my face, as if an angel standing nose-to-nose with me had said, "Pray."

http://faculty.etsu.edu/codym/song_thunder_and_lightning2.htm (Click the link that follows the lyric to hear an mp3 of the song.)

I didn't stand watching the rain all day. Most of my time was spent in the office, where I was reading what is now my favorite Mark Twain novel, Pudd'nhead Wilson (1894). It's a stumbling and often morally confused dark comedy about the complexities of Missouri slave culture in the mid 1800s, when miscegination had progressed so far as to make the complexion of many slaves the same as that of the slaveholders, allowing one particular slave, switched at birth with the master's child, to "pass," for a time, as a member of the dominant group.


246

Comedy Central Links

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=75919
The Daily Show==>John Oliver==>"Outrage vs. Dignity"

http://www.comedycentral.com/motherload/index.jhtml?ml_video=75902
The Colbert Report==>"The Word"==>"Good Morning"

SPEAKING OF FAITH: The Gods of Business

Although I really needed to spend this afternoon reading Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, I worked on my class for Wednesday Night Live at Cherokee UMC. This week I've chosen the Speaking of Faith program called "The Gods of Business." In a show last aired on 23 February 2006, host Krista Tippett interviewed Prabhu Guptara "about global business ethics." What follows here, briefly, are some choice bits from the program.

from a speech Guptara delivered in London and published under the title Ethics Across Cultures: "I have no issue with people earning lots of money. I do have a problem when, for example, in the richest country in the world, the U.S.A., we have a population in which 70 percent has no net wealth. Over the past 20 years, real wages have declined for 80 percent of the population. And this is not an issue only in the U.S.A., it is a worldwide trend today. I think most of us have no problem with a system which allows reasonable accumulation of wealth gained in return for the exertion of intelligence, industry, risk-taking and sheer effort. But I think most people in the world do have a problem with a system which allows unlimited accumulation of wealth at the same time as allowing millions of people to have nothing when they are exerting as much energy and intelligence as other people. Three thousand five hundred children died today because they had no food or water. Three thousand five hundred will die tomorrow for the same reasons, and the day after and every day — until you and I decide to do something about it. What was merely a tragedy yesterday is today a tragedy as well as an obscenity, for we live in a time of oversupply of all basic goods for the first time in history, which makes it entirely unnecessary for anyone to starve or have no clothes or to have no roof of some basic sort over their heads."

from this week's interview: I think of this dear lady, whom I've never met, whom I don't know, who exposed the whole of the Enron scandal. It was one woman. So individuals have enormous power. And we are fed consistently, somehow, by our culture the devil's lie that we have no power and it's only poor old me. Yes, it is only poor old me. But poor old me, poor old [--] I have enormous power if I'm willing to keep my eyes open and keep my ears open and act at the right time when it's necessary to act to clean things up or to improve things. Things may be perfectly clean, but they could be improved a bit. So individuals with vision, that's what we lack.

from an address at a 2002 business seminar in Cambridge, England: Positive steps can be taken to ensure a good future for us all. It seems to me clear that the following steps would give us some sort of minimum agenda for creating a better sort of globalization:

1. inculcate a culture in which there is a high place for the idea of enough

2. self-restrain or penalize demands for higher wages and profits

3. move away from a fascination with economic expansion for its own sake

4. replace the notion of private limited companies with publicly authorized companies, which take seriously the environment, labor, consumers and civil society.

We need a new generation of people willing to be transformed as individuals, willing to create a new sense of community, ready to pay the cost of working for the continued transformation of our global society, and of transforming our companies from engines to make even richer those who are already rich to engines that work to produce wealth for the globe.

Check out the program at the following address:
http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/godsofbusiness/index.shtml


244

A Short Cut to Mushrooms

Okay, so the title from a chapter early in Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring doesn't really have a lot to do with my day. I wanted a way to introduce pictures that I took in my yard during a break from mowing today, and mushrooms and hobbits came to mind. Actually, I don't even know if these are called mushrooms. This could be a situation like that between toads and frogs or between the pine, the fir and the spruce. I don't know. I just thought it a striking little thing, so I took a picture. And then I mowed it down.

The day was busy in general. On and off throughout I read back and forth between Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. I had two meetings--one over lunch--with publishers' reps hoping the department will buy their books for our freshman and sophomore classes. At home, I cleaned out the gutters, trimmed the yard with the weed-eater (or whatever they call it these days) and mowed. Then I showered and went back to campus to catch the last of an Honors potluck in the courtyard outside the Center for Physical Activity. I picked up a sandwich at Subway for Raleigh and picked up Raleigh at tae kwon do. More reading followed, which was in turn followed by the Daily Show and a bit of the Colbert Report.

Jon Stewart's team on the Daily Show, new "reporter" John Oliver (British) to be exact, offered a wonderfully funny and telling report on the president's attempt to understand and reinterpret the Geneva Convention's identification of "outrages against human dignity" in defining torture. Stewart also conducted a pretty decent interview with General Pervez Musharraf, President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Musharraf said that a lot of external pressure is put on Pakistan by groups--like the USA--that know nothing about the country, its people and how the world works there. Stewart's final question--the "Seat of Heat" question--went something like this: If George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden were running for some mid- or upper-level government office in Pakistan, which would win? Musharraf said, "They would both lose miserably." If video clips from the show are up on Comedy Central's site tomorrow, I'll try to provide links.


244

Sunset

Today was a good day, a simple day (more or less) from start to finish. I went to work, did some reading, went to class, had some lunch, did some more reading, led a committee meeting, read some more and then went home. (Okay, I like my job a lot!)

Tonight was comfortable at home, eating the regular Monday night pizza and watching King of the Hill, hanging out with my family, talking with my cousin on the telephone, watching the Daily Show and now sitting at the keyboard.

It was all good.

My favorite part was the hour of sunset. The year is moving into my favorite time--autumn. (I've often said that I could live in October forever.) A little after seven o'clock this evening, as the sun was going down and its warm orange was striping the walls in the house, I dressed out in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, put on my mp3 player and headed out to Willow Springs Park. The sky hung clear and blue above me, and the air held that autumn chill I love.

As I walked and ran to the rhythm of the music, the vault of heaven grew deeper and deeper blue from west to east. The stars appeared, clear and sparkling. Having worked the dayshift, the moon--just a sliver in its current phase--hung low in the West.

The movement (even of a 47-year-old body), the greeting of and from people met on the track, the wonder of song in the ears, the chill in the air, the ever-changing light all around me--for a little over an hour, these things came together for a lovely evening out.

It was all good.


PS--The sunset above isn't local, and it isn't my photography (obviously). I picked it up from www.comcast.net.

The American Soul

I've been going on at length the last few posts, so here's something short and to the point and not by me.

Our world, so we see and hear on all sides, is drowning in materialism, commercialism, consumerism. But the problem is not really there. What we ordinarily speak of as materialism is a result, not a cause. The root of materialism is a poverty of ideas about the inner and the outer world. Less and less does our contemporary culture have, or even seek, commerce with great ideas, and it is that lack that is weakening the human spirit. This is the essence of materialism. Materialism is a disease of the mind starved for ideas.

Jacob Needleman,

from The American Soul

Listen to philosopher Needleman on Speaking of Faith's 2005 program exploring "The Religious Roots of American Democracy."

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/democracy/index.shtml

One More on Raleigh and 9/11

My son turned fifteen this morning at 1:03 EDT. He was at an overnight youth lock-in at Cherokee UMC when this moment passed. From what I hear, it didn't pass unnoticed. At that point--or at some other point during the night--a few of his friends held him down while everybody sang "Happy Birthday." Today he slept the whole event off, and in the evening Leesa and I took him out for steak. He opted for the steak burrito at Barberitos.

It's a happy day without doubt, but some sense of uneasiness haunts those back corners of my mind, those back corners where the future hides. Something--the motion of a hand reaching out of the shadows or a whistle--beckons us forward breath by breath through days that can be either tedious or pleasant in their sameness. Something else can leap from these same shadows and shout, "Surprise!" And then new paths open up through laughter and renewal. And something else again can leap out with sudden and stunning savagery and wrestle us to the ground (or further down).

Here's one more excerpt from my journal, written on Raleigh's tenth birthday:

23 September 2001 (Sunday)

Raleigh turned ten today. My baby boy is getting away from me. He wants to grow up, I know, but I just want to be able still to pick him up, to hold him close, to kiss his cheek more than just at bedtime. His physical growth is fairly slow at the moment, but his mind and spirit are growing faster. My feeling is that I'll not handle his teenage years well, and I don't want to feel what I will feel.

I can't shake the feeling that I'll send my baby boy to war before he has lived another ten years. I'm angry about that. It's not fair that in this age, which seems as if it should be grown beyond such pettiness and violence, we stare in the face more frightening and confusing means of warfare than ever before. Suddenly the good old days of two lines facing each other in an open field--a mode of battle I always thought stupid--would be a comfort. The enemy was clear; the weapons were visible and expected; the soldiers tended to make up a majority of the dead and wounded.

I think about a man on a flight with his daughter--a girl Raleigh's age--feeling helpless and wondering where the hijackers were taking them, wondering what their demands will be, wondering if he'll be paid for the time sitting in the plane at some dusty airport waiting for the hijackers' demands to be met . . . wondering why they are flying so low over New York City.

I think about a woman at her desk in the first tower struck. The keyboard clicks quietly beneath her fingertips as she answers email that came in since she left work the evening before. Trying to figure out the phrasing of a sentence, she looks up, looks out the window at the airliner less than 100 meters away, its nose pointed right at her. What a train wreck of mental questions, declarations, and screams. She blinks two or three times in disbelief or wonder, and each split-second focusing of her eyes only brings the airliner closer. She has that moment we've all had in dreams, that moment of breathless aching when we realize there is no escape, no place to hide, no time. Her mouth moves without sound, like in those dreams she, we--all of us have had. We wake up sweating, breathing hard. She dies, vaporized by the explosion.

Are these people I think about the lucky ones? They had their moments of terror and awful realization, moments I can barely imagine. But then all was over for them. How quick an end! Those of us who survive, however, grow sick at our stomachs from our imaginings, the sudden senations of fear they bring, from the distant throbbing terror that stalks the backwoods of our minds, from our waking up over and over again in the night with only the hint of the confused or fiery images projected on the backs of eyelids that can close for no longer than a blink over the next minutes or next hours.

I don't want my son to go to war. I'll never sleep, and I'll throw up all the time.

God help us all.

Author Press

Yesterday's post was about pictures for publishers, and I had some interesting responses. Leesa and I took some more shots tonight, but we're too tired now to make a decision about them. They're probably very similar but with all the clutter removed from the wall and the top of the piano.

Another part of my agent's request had to do with any kind of press or reviews related to my music career. I did a little digging this afternoon and came up with some stuff that was fun to read and absolutely amazing to remember. Here are some brief excerpts.

From Tony Kiss, Asheville Citizen-Times, Sunday, 11/19/1989-- . . . singer-songwriter Michael Cody has also made an impressive local debut, playing both 45 Cherry and McDibb's in Black Mountain. . . . Cody works in two ways: as a solo performer with guitar, and with his own electric-folk band. That diversity--and his talent as a sharp songwriter--should insure him of many local gigs. This man could easily develop a national following. He returns to 45 Cherry Dec. 9.

From Lynne Lucas, The Greenville News (SC), Friday, 3/9/1990--Prospects for a quality night of rock 'n' roll look good at Studion B March 9. Performing there will be Cody, a five-piece band based near Asheville, N.C. . . . A six-song demo tape sent from leader/songwriter Michael Cody, who also performs solo occasionally, displays a mature sense of well-crafted rock 'n' roll. With resemblance to Bruce Hornsby melodically, and Bruce Springsteen vocally, the band's music is described by Cody himself as "elements of folk in the melody and lyrics, but the rhythm of it is straight-ahead rock 'n' roll."

From Brian Mansfield, Nashville Scene, 5/3/1990--One of the great joys of my life is receiving a wonderful, unexpected demo good enough to play repeatedly in my car. (This could be because I get so many useless ones.) So when I put on "Dizzy From the Distance," the first cut on a five-song demo by former Nashville songwriter Michael Cody, I was a happy man for the rest of the day. Cody, as his North Carolina-based band is called, has sort of a Hornsby/Mellencamp sound, fronted by Michael's gruff but honest voice. Some may remember Cody's "The Jaws of Modern Romance," one of the more promising tracks on last year's Nashville Entertainment Association sampler, The Last Great Pop Planet. The band, which I haven't seen but will recommend on the demo's strength, plays the Cannery, Stage Right on May 4.

From Karen Le Van, Louisville Music News (KY), 6/1990--The Saturday Scene magazine said to be sure to check out Michael Cody at Butchertown Pub on Tuesday, May 15. Cody, a singer-songwriter from North Carolina, with a penchant for minor-chord hooks that tug at the heart, sounded like my kind of singer-songwriter. My first thought was, "Hey, maybe he'll be another David Wilcox-style writer," so I was set to hear nice lilting love ballads. Wrong. Cody, the band, was setting up when I arrived. The group consisted of three electric guitars, one bass and drums. No, it definitely was not going to be a David Wilcox night. What I heard instead was a driving beat and several good up-tempo songs of love. "Dizzy from the Distance," "Rain on the River," and "Angeline" all had the sparse but enthusiastic audience moving to the beat. . . . [Here the reviewer mentions "Thunder and Lightning" and tries to quote lyrics that she probably wrote down on a napkin as they boomed from the sound system. She actually gets pretty close, given the conditions she was working under. In the following list, she mistitles a couple of songs, and I've corrected her in brackets.] Other good songs were "Counting the Days," ["Fresh Horses"], ["There Was Always a Train"] and "Heard It on the Radio." Cody consists of Danny O'Lannerghty on bass, Gene Ford and Mark Chesshir on lead guitar, and Steve Grossman on drums. Lead guitarist Ford really cooked on ["Best I've Ever Seen"] and "Heard It on the Radio." Things are getting close on a record deal so it may not be too long before we'll be hearing Cody on the radio. From the response of the audience, I think we can look forward to hearing Cody in Louisville again soon.

A blurb from Asheville's Out 'n About, June 28-July 12, 1990--CODY, 45 Cherry, downtown Asheville, 9 p.m. Free. This five-piece Asheville band performs in a style resembling Bruce Hornsby and Bruce Springsteen and "evoking images of city streets and wide-open landscapes. The lyrics deal with life and love and coming of age in the 1990s." Cody's music has been performed on The Nashville Network, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and the Pat Sajak Show. Record company representatives will be on hand to check out the band live.

From Tony Kiss, Asheville Citizen-Times, Sunday, 7/22/1990-- . . . Of the area's many gifted musicians, who will be the next to break out big, to get that national contract, to be discovered? So many deserve that shot. But it could go to Michael Cody, a folk-rock guitarist/songwriter, who has built a loyal local following for his many solo and group performances. I'm sticking my neck out here. But if there's any justice in the music biz, Cody will get that national break. I'm convinced of it. This guy has such a style, such a way with songs, and such a catchy cross-over sound that it's hard not to like him on first listen. Cody and his band were in town the other night, doing another gig at 45 Cherry. According to club buzz, a record company rep was there for a listen. This was a friendly crowd, but Cody had them in his total control, first with a couple of solo acoustic numbers, then with his four bandmates. Together, they reeled off one great tune after another, all originals. Many in the club jumped to their feet and danced the night away. This doesn't happen too often, when a local club crowd responds this way to new music. But this night was an exception. Cody's music is difficult to describe. It's not rock and it's not country. It's a little of both with folk influences. The songs have neat guitar hooks and thoughtful lyrics. If you haven't caught him yet, no problem. Cody and the band play 4-5 p.m. Saturday in Pritchard Park, during the city's popular Bele Chere festival. The gig should expose him to a larger audience: the folks who don't normally go to clubs. All he needs is a chance to get his music out there on radio, on records and in clubs. With some marketing and solid backing, Michael Cody could soon be on top around the country. But remember where you heard him first.

A letter from Brian Maloney, Program Director at Kiss (WSKF) FM, 4/1/1991--

Dear Michael,

I just wanted to express my thanks for your participation in the Kiss-FM/Coors "RiverRock" album project.

Sales of the album are quickly approaching the 1,000 mark. This is an incredible number for a local album project. I know for a fact that a large portion of the sales and overall public interest in this project is due to your song "Thunder & Lightning!"

"Thunder & Lightning" has become a top-requested song here at WKSF, in many instances outnumbering requests for most of the national "superstar" acts. The song has consistently placed in our Top 5 requests for the week during the past 5 weeks.

"Thunder & Lightning" goes well beyond just a "local hit song." This is a song which has tremendous potential at a national level, and I have the research on hand to verify that. . . .

I'm sorry to be blowing my own horn here, but it's an old horn, interesting mostly because of its nostalgic sound. These written memories also brought to mind days of being recognized around Asheville as if I were some kind of celebrity. And I guess I actually was a celebrity in that very localized scene. I remember more than once being with out-of-town friends or relatives in Asheville restaurants and having somebody come up to the table and say, "Aren't you Michael Cody?" I remember Raleigh was born a little over five months after Brian Maloney wrote his letter, and the radio station made a big deal about it. I guess he and Lane and Leesa were sort of local celebrities too for a while.

To be honest, I'd forgotten most of this stuff. It was a heady time, to be sure, but even as it was going on, I was already back in school at UNC-Asheville--returning in January 1991--and stepping onto the path that after more than 15 years has brought me here to this place and moment in time.

Amazing. . . .


243.4

Author Photo

Last week I received an email from my agent. The last draft of my novel "Gabriel's Songbook" works for him, so he's preparing a list of publishers to approach. He asked if I could send him stuff like a CD to show that I have some musical credentials--the novel features a songwriter whose music is surprisingly much like mine. Reviews of performances and such will also help, he said. And he asked for a picture, which caught me a little by surprise. I've seen pictures of authors on book jackets, but I wasn't expecting to need to send a picture along with manuscript submissions to publishers.

Because of the content of the novel, he asked if I had any pictures of myself in a C&W outfit. I promptly wrote back to say that the closest I could--or would--get to that was to wear something from my bolo tie collection. He wrote back to say that was fine but suggested that my guitar be somehow in the picture. Okay, I responded, that I could do.

I've seen the pictures of authors that appear either on dust jackets or on the back covers of paperbacks. They're rarely that good in comparison with publicity photos of recording artists or actors. They most often seem like decent quality candid shots that maybe a husband or wife took. The background sometimes has to do with the content of the novel, but often it's just something obscure or something literary like a wall of books. Okay, I'm thinking, that I could do.

But a couple of agent blogs have me second-guessing myself. See, for example,

http://www.bigbadbookblog.com/2006/09/07/how-to-make-the-camera-love-you-author-photos/,

which says to hire a real photographer for this kind of thing. The problem is that I don't have the money to do that, so I have to give it a go on my own. A mistake? Probably!

Anyway, I tried to get a good photo tonight . . . and failed. Not that the pictures themselves are completely bad. I kind of like this one, for example. Although it's posed, it doesn't strike me as stiff. The bolo tie is there, and I like the guitar in the background. All that works for me--as a basic concept, at least. But my lack of attention to detail, my inability to think about the shot in a holistic way that extends beyond me, the tie and the guitar, hurts the picture. Why, for example, didn't I think to move the hooded sweatshirt off the back of my chair? And why is that globe growing out of the back of my head?


This is Leesa's favorite of me (from this batch of self-portraits). She likes my expression, the bolo tie and the fact that my earring is somewhat visible. But she pointed out that the picture as a whole has a number of problems. First, the guitar looks better in my arms than it does as just a neck sticking up from the bottom edge of the frame. Worse than that, the background is a mess. The cork board and its various hangings might be nice in a photo framed differently. Then there's the clutter on top of the piano. I feel certain that a real photographer could compose a shot that would make these messy elements work in some interesting way, but I'm not a real photographer.

So, we like the tie and the shirt. We like the piano in the background. We like the guitar in the arms. We apparently like the left side of my head. Tomorrow night, we'll try again, with Leesa framing the pictures live this time (instead of my using the timed delay) and both of us trying to be aware of the shot as a whole, not just aware of me. I'm not going for a Glamour Shots product here, but I'd like to get it better. We'll see what happens.


243.4

A Wednesday in September

It's a lot later than I want it to be. In place of some cohesive post, here are some tidbits from the day.

• The Quest class finished up our reading of Plato's Gorgias this morning. Like Jesus, Mohammad and Confucius, Socrates never wrote anything, but he appears as the central figure in the work of his student Plato. The dialogues in this book present Socrates arguing with three "orators"--Gorgias, Polus and Callicles--in an attempt to understand what constitutes the good and just life. One of my favorite ideas comes from near the end of the book where Socrates makes the argument that in a bad government no individual who is unlike the government can prosper. This is something like Henry David Thoreau's idea that in an unjust society the only place for a just individual is in jail.
• The afternoon was filled with a lot of administrative stuff--enough said.
• The evening brought a chill to the air, making the soup served for the church's Wednesday Night Live! meal seem so appropriate.
• The WNL! class on Speaking of Faith was an interesting one. The particular program--"Conservative Politics and Moderate Religion"--inspired a good deal of discussion. The concern former Missouri senator John Danforth expresses in one part we listened to has to do with the fact that one party, the Republican Party, has allowed itself to be aligned and identified with conservative Christianity. While conservative Christianity in and of itself isn't bad--it keeps a lot of real social ills before us, although Danforth wishes it would do so with more "humility"--its tendency when blended with Republican politics is toward a conservative politician's claiming, "My position is God's position." Certainly in the United States people with other belief systems--Jews and Muslims and atheists, for example--support the Republican political agenda. Where does this party alignment with conservative Christianity leave them? Perhaps the most powerful statement in the program is that "the love commandment"--the commandment regarding love for God and neighbor--"trumps rules." The show ends with the quote from yesterday's blog pointing out the difference between the public display of religion and the private practice of it.
• After a short rehearsal of Sunday morning's music, I came home and flopped in front of the television to watch CSI: New York and Criminal Minds.

Lots more happened today: "Life's a long song" (Ian Anderson and Jethro Tull).


243.4

Tuesday Prep for Wednesday Night

While Leesa and Raleigh watched The Unit and a new show called Smith, I was listening to the Speaking of Faith program that I'll present to my little Wednesday Night Live! class tomorrow night at church. This particular installment is called "Conservative Politics and Moderate Religion" and features Krista Tippett's interview with former Missouri senator John Danforth. The following is a quote from Danforth's new book, Faith and Politics.

So it seems we live in a godless age and we feel deeply that we must reverse this. We must restore God. And we seize upon public religion as a way to do this. School prayer, the Ten Commandments, the teaching of creationism or intelligent design, and crèches in front of public buildings all become parts of an effort to reverse our moral course and return our country to a time of public decency.

It is a worthy objective. The problem is that public religion is not up to the task. An innocuous prayer has no power to make us more godly. A display of the Ten Commandments will not make us obey the commandments. What public religion can do is create an appearance that faith is a formality contrived to impress people more than God. The practice of religion is an effective antidote to the disease so apparent in our society.

People who practice their beliefs will live according to moral and ethical standards their religion teaches them. They will be witnesses against the tawdriness of the culture around them. They will be examples of the people God expects us to be. They will be that because they understand and live by the tenets of their traditions. That is the practice of religion. It is different altogether from the public display of religion.

243.4 NWT

More on 9/11

Below is an excerpt from my journal entry a week after 9/11.

Tuesday, 18 September 2001

I don't want my son to go to war. He's nine years old still, and while he has developed strong interests in weapons and war, I know he fears the reality behind his games. His fears are my fears too, fears both childish and mature at once.

I don't want my son to go to war. Okay, since when do we send nine-year-olds into battle? Others do that, but we don't. I'm thinking of two things here. First, my son's imagination will draw him into the war, in spite of his nine years. The war will appear in the television he watches, the movies and video games, conversations with his mother and me and with his friends and with God. War will be in the air from now till who knows when, and he will go to it at nine, ten, eleven and beyond. Second, given the kind of war this must be, it will continue till he's old enough to choose or be made to go. I don't want to seem him faced with the choice or the command.

But he will be faced with one or the other if he lives to the ripe old age of eighteen. I guess what I really fear is what that event—his going to war—will do to me. I can say I'll be proud, I think. I can say I'll be afraid. I'll probably be both and more. More, certainly. I'll be confused. I'll feel regret for yelling at him to go to sleep when I had work to do at night. I'll feel sad that my bright boy must offer his life for an ignorant world—hmm, that sounds familiar. I'll feel anger at the injustice of it, that my son should be taken from me to fight in a war based largely on ignorance and prejudice—theirs and ours.

Okay, so where was the justice in the deaths of those wanting only to fly to the West Coast? Where was the justice in the deaths of those just going to work—sitting behind a desk, going masked into a burning avalanche of steel and glass and desks and people? Can my son be an instrument of justice in a world that seems without
justice?

I don't want my son to go to war. But he will go to war, and I will pray every night he's gone that he'll come home safely.

Maybe I'd better start getting my knees—and heart and mind—in shape for that now.

Bigfoot!

www.bfro.net

A sasquatch by any other name still smells . . . apparently. According to a recent report, a Bigfoot even might have taken place "at the Wolf Creek Campground" here in Tennessee. "Several men heard loud and unusual screaming accompanied by a fowl [sic] odor. . . ."

When I went home this weekend, I found the front page of the News Record & Sentinel sporting a full-color image from the famous (or infamous) 1967 "Patterson Footage" of a great hairy beast strolling alongside a jumble of forest debris. And why was this on the cover of the county weekly? Well, apparently Madison County has been the sight of some Bigfoot activity, and credible information, including sightings, brought a team of some 20 researchers (paying adventurers) into our area to do a little investigating.

A local family, the roots and branches of which "have lived in Madison County for generations," has been noticing signs of a strange presence in the woods. Although the newspaper article didn't mention the name of the family (which wishes to remain anonymous) or specific signs found locally, the list of evidence that brings in the trackers generally includes "distinct tracks, hair and large scat that could not be made by any known species."

Most of the activity--the human activity, that is--was centered on Hot Springs, where the field researchers met for the sold out weekend. A local businessman suggested that the leaf season tourism could be supplemented with "t-shirts and Bigfoot burgers." Even the sheriff made it into the article, saying, "'No one has reported anything about a Bigfoot that I know of, but I can say that in the 16 years I've been in law enforcement, just when you think you know something for sure, you're proven wrong." (The sheriff is running for reelection in November, and I can't help but wonder how or if his comments will affect that his campaign.)

Anyway, it all sounds like great fun! And it's taking place only a short distance from us, as the crow flies. If you can't fly by crow, you can drive there--to Hot Springs, I mean--in just a little over an hour.

It also sounds as if it has the makings of any interesting short story.

Over the last year or two, Raleigh and his neighborhood friend have spent a good deal of time looking for Bigfoot in the woods near the end of our subdivision. Hmmm. . . . Well, if in Madison County, why not here?!?

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. . . .

Hamlet in Hamlet (I.5)

More on Writing, Grandfather II, &c.

Okay, I've slept on it and decided that I'm going to try to incorporate some of my fiction into the blog. I've appreciated the venue for writing that I've found here, and I've gotten into a fairly good rhythm. So, seems to me that to devote at least one blogging session a week to the drafting of some work of fiction (short story, novella, novel) or creative nonfiction will be both productive and fun (for me at least). It'll be good discipline as well, something that I struggle with as a writer. I'm thinking that this should probably be one of the weekend entries--a Friday, Saturday or Sunday. We'll see. My task over the next few days will be to come up with the idea, something that will work in this kind of space and not require much if any research, something I can create in the same way I create my regular blogs (writing wardrobe details aside).

"Grandfather II"? I got a call from my older son Lane yesterday to say that he and my daughter-in-law are expecting their second child in April 2007! Leesa and Raleigh and I are quite excited.

Speaking of Raleigh, he just started the first of three three-week breaks built into his new "year-'round" schedule. He doesn't go back until the second Monday in October.

I'm heading over the mountain to spend the weekend in North Carolina with my mom. Raleigh's going with me. First, of course, he and I will swing by Barberitos for Fish Friday! If I can get access tomorrow, I might post an entry from the Madison County Public Library in Marshall.




241.0 NWT

Some Thoughts on My Life as a Writer

Although I had the usual youthful aspirations of being a pilot or a pro basketball player, I think I always wanted to be a writer of some sort. When in the sixth grade at Walnut School (c. 1970), I wrote a little piece about Columbus discovering America in 1992. I have only a vague recollection of what he found in particular, but I seem to remember something about Indians living in teepees, smoking pot and talking like Cheech & Chong. My classmates loved it. My teacher, whose husband was a semi-famous mountain musician, tried to get a national kids' magazine to publish it. She wasn't successful. I don't know if the piece really wasn't all that great or if the subject matter wasn't acceptable; either way, I think my interest in writing began there, despite the failure to publish.

In high school, when music set up a dictatorship in my brain, I started writing songs. I wasn't very good, but my high school rock band included a couple of my original songs in our set list of Kiss and Doobie Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd covers. When I left the band in the summer between my junior and senior years, a move intended to allow me some semblance of a "normal" last year in school, I began to focus more and more on my songwriting, which was improving but still not much good. (I-at-the-time, of course, thought it was awesome!)

I went into college as a music major (flute) and continued to write songs. I transferred to another college as a music business major and continued to write songs. I transferred to yet another college as an English major and continued to write songs. In the middle of my first semester at the third college, I decided to give up school, eventually returning to Nashville--college number two was there--to make a precarious living as a songwriter. I wasn't good at the start, but I liked what I was doing by the end.

During this period, as I got better and better at what I did, much (or most) of my identity became defined by my writing. Writing was what I did. I was a writer.

When I left Nashville and became a husband and father and student (again, picking up where I left off at college number three), songwriting slowly--and necessarily, I think--faded away. But it was replaced by the writing of short stories and academic essays, by draft after draft of a novel (begun in 1992 or so and finished in 2006), by a dissertation that with only a little coaxing became a book.

But the whirlwind of life has--for the time being--scattered all my papers, so to speak, and, to be honest, done a serious eraser job on my identity.

I'm hoping this blog will help me keep in touch with writing until such time as I'm able to write again, whenever that might be. In the meantime, I'm thinking about how years ago, in the heyday of magazines, novels used to be serialized, and I'm thinking about the possibility of serializing a story--even a novel--here in this blog. I could pick one day a week, for starters, and have my blog for that day be the lastest installment of my story in progress. I have something of a precedent for this. When I first moved to Johnson City in summer 2001, a fairly famous writer and teacher in Florida began an Internet experiment in which he was online via webcam once or twice a week and writing a story. Viewers could watch and listen as he moved from inspiration (a picture and inscription on an old postcard) through regular drafting to an end product. I don't want a webcam involved, as I'm typically in my underwear when I'm blogging, but it might be interesting to find a bit of inspiration and push myself through some writing here, on a regular schedule, housing the work in progress in my Writing Life.

It's late. I'll sleep on it and see how the idea strikes me tomorrow.

P.S. In the old days of paper and pencils, a writer who didn't--or couldn't--write well or seriously was called a scribbler. In these days of computers, the same writer could be called . . .

242.2 NWT

"September Song"

I heard an instrumental version of this somewhere yesterday, and it has been in the back of my mind ever since. Rare and beautiful stuff. I think I need to learn this one.


"September Song" (Kurt Weill / Maxwell Anderson)

When I was a young man courting the girls
I played me a waiting game
If a maid refused me with tossing curls
I'd let the old Earth make a couple of whirls
While I plied her with tears in lieu of pearls
And as time came around she came my way
As time came around, she came

When you meet with the young girls early in the Spring
You court them in song and rhyme
They answer with words and a clover ring
But if you could examine the goods they bring
They have little to offer but the songs they sing
And the plentiful waste of time of day
A plentiful waste of time

Oh, it's a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short when you reach September
When the autumn weather turns the leaves to flame
One hasn't got time for the waiting game

Oh, the days dwindle down to a precious few
September, November
And these few precious days I'll spend with you
These precious days I'll spend with you

http://www.seeklyrics.com/lyrics/Frank-Sinatra/September-Song.html



244.4 NWT

To our national dismay . . .

Speeches about saving our civilization in the streets of Baghdad or taking sudden interest again in Osama bin Laden roll fluidly from the pens of presidential speechwriters. And the president delivers them so much better than he does his extemporaneous thoughts (or nonthoughts, as the case may be), even though his overtly careful articulation (except on "nuclear") stiffens the delivery.

Just for some wicked fun, I've pasted something from the 2004 campaign below. According to the web site linked at the bottom, the interviewer here, Mark Trahant, is "Editorial Page Editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. He is a member of Idaho's Shoshone-Bannock Tribe and former president of the Native American Journalists Association."

Bush stumbles and then recovers (sort of) and finally makes no sense at all in answer to the question. I don't want to claim that I could do any better, but, then again, I'm not the President of the United States.

Enjoy . . . or not!

MARK TRAHANT: Most school kids learn about government in the context of city, county, state and federal, and of course, tribal governments are not part of that at all. Mr. President, you have been a governor and a president, so you have unique experience looking at it from two directions. What do you think tribal sovereignty means in the 21st century and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and state governments?

GEORGE BUSH: Tribal sovereignty means that, it's sovereign. You're a -- you're a -- you have been given sovereignty and you're viewed as a sovereign entity.

MARK TRAHANT: Okay.

GEORGE BUSH: And therefore, the relationship between the federal government and tribes is one between sovereign entities. Now, the federal government has got a responsibility on matters like education and security to help. And health care. And it's a solemn duty. From this perspective, we must continue to uphold that duty. I think that one of the most promising areas of all is to help with economic development, and that means helping people understand what it means to start a business. That's why the Small Business Administration has increased loans. It means, obviously, encouraging capital flows, but none of that will happen unless the education systems flourish and are strong. That's why I told you, we spent $1.1 billion in reconstruction of Native American schools.

You can hear it: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/10/149259#transcript

245.8 NWT

Thinking Back Five Years . . .

Like many, probably most, I'm feeling unsettled this morning. I usually write this blog late at night, but today, being the anniversary that it is, I thought I'd write a little more in the moment.

In September 2001, I was in my first semester at ETSU. I'd lived through 41 9/11s and had no reason to think the one that year would pass any differently than the others. I'm sure that I awoke early in the house we rented on Franklin Street, kissed my wife goodbye and got Raleigh to school, maybe driving him or walking with him or following in the car as he rode his bike. I remember it was a beautiful blue Tuesday morning.

My teaching schedule included two Tuesday/Thursday sections of ENGL 1010, the first semester of freshman composition course; one met 9:45-11:05 and the other 11:15-12:35. I was in my office preparing for class by 8:30 at the latest--door closed, computer on but ignored. While all the events of that catastrophic morning were taking shape, I was completely oblivious. I knew nothing about the lives changed in the first moments of the hijackings and the turning of the planes toward New York City and Washington, D.C., nothing of the struggle to retake control of Flight 93. I was in my office when the WTC was hit and in class when the Pentagon was hit, when the twin towers fell, when Flight 93 crashed. I've been told that the world changed that morning, but nothing changed in the light or the air to warn me that a threshold had been crossed.

I never really liked that 9:45 class. All semester I would come into the room and find them sitting there quietly without the lights turned on and without speaking to one another. If any of them knew that the towers had been hit that morning, they said nothing to me about it. And so we carried on with business as usual. The first thing I heard about any of the events that morning was some comment from a student in the hall as I passed by on the way to my 11:15 class. I don't remember what the comment was, but I remember thinking that something must have happened--another plane crash, another reason for my not liking to fly. The 11:15 group was much more alive and began talking to me about what was going on as soon as I came through the door. But as I recall, I thought their intention was simply to get out of class early. They'd been talking excitedly--and I'd been listening--for about ten minutes when my department chair knocked on the door and told me that the university was closing. Only at that moment did I realize that something serious had happened.

I went home to join millions of people on couches around the world, and we all sat and watched the bad news together. . . .

2-4-6-8

One of the neat things about blogging is the ability to respond to or carry on a conversation with other blogs and the people behind them. And so I'd like to echo my friend Roz's note about our pastor at Cherokee UMC. I happened to have a picture Roz didn't have access to. Here's the pastor with a chain saw one not-too-long-ago winter morning as a group of us worked on the playground at the new church. (By the way, that's me standing on the piece he's trying to cut and probably making the work much more difficult!)

David's a good man, a good preacher, a good friend. We've had some fine times together in the years since my little family and I started attending Cherokee (not long after he and his family arrived there). The various whirlwinds that make up our lives these days have now confined most of our times together within the walls of Cherokee, but that's as it should be and marks those times as highly valuable.

This morning, when members and nonmembers of the church were standing to say what they appreciate about David and his family, I had so many things I could have stood and mentioned--sermons, laughs, Chinese food, help when I was stranded on a highway away from home, Angee's friendship, her music, her amazing willingness to do God's work, her banana pudding(!), any moment of wonderful conversation or play with Rachel and Laura. (Thanks to Rachael B. and April M. for mentioning Angee's music and her musical leadership, to John Q. for mentioning David's preaching, to Sam B. for mentioning the love of good food that David and he and several others of us have in common.)

Leesa wanted me to stand and say in particular how much we appreciated the way David--and through his example, Cherokee as a whole--welcomed Raleigh when, as a ten-year-old, he wanted to participate with the ushers. That has meant a lot to him (and to us) and has led me to believe that someday he might just enter the ministry himself. Leesa said she couldn't say this without crying. I told her I couldn't either.

2-4-6-8, who do we appreciate? You've heard the cheer and, if you attend Cherokee or you're a local firefighter, if you cross paths with the Woody family anywhere, you know the response.

Speaking of Faith: Hearing Muslim Voices Since 9/11

At Cherokee United Methodist Church, I'm part of a Sunday School class called Tapestry. This morning our lesson was on "Reconciliation." In addition to readings from our text and references to Milton's Paradise Lost and Robert Hayden's "Those Winter Sundays," I brought in some quotes from a this past week's program of my favorite public radio show, Speaking of Faith (available here only via the show's web site, speakingoffaith.org).

I'll probably write some more about 9/11 tomorrow, but I thought I'd record here the following quotes from recent--or relatively recent--guests on the program:

Mr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr: . . . no Muslim is any different from an American or a Swede in the basic human desires and needs. They’re human beings who want to have a family, who want to be able to live at peace and so forth and so on, and gradually things would work themselves out. But the reason you have so much tension is that you have pressure from an outside civilization in practically every domain of life of the Islamic world. And since Islamic civilization is not dead, it reacts.

And so what happens is that a number of misguided people who begin with a love for their faith end up in the hands of the devil, in a sense, of taking recourse to extreme action, doing things which are against Islamic law. For example, killing the innocent is specifically banned in the Qur’an. The Qur’an says to kill one innocent person is like killing the whole of humanity. It’s a hideous act. So to save the sharia, they’re going against the sharia.

Mr. Vincent Cornell: For myself, the Islam that I accepted through the Qur’an and through now over 30 years of study of classical Islamic works throughout Islamic history, is to a large extent not the Islam that I see on TV and being expressed by many people in the Muslim world. The desire for revenge, the desire for glory, the desire for personal heroism, the desire to eliminate all norms of decency and ethical behavior in the cause of a political goal, all of these things that are being expressed by Muslim extremists are specifically mentioned as aspects of pre-Islamic society that Islam came to end and eradicate. And so for Muslims like myself, what makes this particular time so painful is that everything is in a sense reversed. The world is upside down. You know, it’s a 180-degree reversal.

Here's one more idea, picked up, I think, from the journal of the show's host:

U.S. culture tends to define a religion in terms of what its adherents "believe"; this is a very Christian-oriented approach. But Islamic tradition is non-hierarchical and non-doctrinal. It is not primarily a religion of beliefs but of practices, of piety woven into the fabric of daily individual and communal life.

Grandfather Mountain

Today I traveled with the Cherokee United Methodist youth--and some parents--to Grandfather Mountain in North Carolina. Our mission was to hike about half of the Grandfather Trail (as far as Attic Window Peak and back). The hiking is described as "very strenuous" and includes not only walking but also climbing with the help of cables and ladders. I'd never done anything like this before!

Raleigh and I got up early, not quite as early as we do for school every day but close. After showers we headed out for a quick breakfast at Bojangles and then headed toward the church to meet the rest of the folks signed up for the outing. I suddenly realized as I drove that I'd forgotten to bring a hat from home. With the ol' mop getting awfully thin on top, I knew I needed one to avoid burning. My pastor almost saved the day, but the hat he thought he had in his office turned out not to be there. (He was at the church early for the monthly second-Saturday men's breakfast, an event I reluctantly missed.) The day was actually saved by Joe G and Dennis and Marie C, who found a hat for me in the Shepherd's Storehouse, a hat that would both keep me from burning and reduce my chances of being lost or shot in the wilderness (see below).

The drive from the church to Linville, North Carolina, is surprisingly short. We reached the area in less than an hour and began the drive up and up toward the mountain.

Our first stop was at the museum and animal habitat. My favorite piece in the museum was a dendrochronological (see below) display that showed the timeline of the world around this tree as it grew. Various rings--from the center outward--were identified with events in American (and world) history, beginning almost at the center with 1729, when North Carolina became a British royal colony and ending near the outer rings with 1969, when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Outside in the habitat area were cougars and eagles and bears (oh my!) and some otters and deer.

From there we drove up a narrow road made up of a series of switchbacks to the top parking lot where the Grandfather Trail begins. First we took a trip across the mile-high swinging bridge, which is a mile high in elevation and not, as some strangers I overheard thought, a mile above the ground. It's also solidly constructed and, thankfully, swings very little. Once back over the bridge, we had our lunch and then hit the trail--not the dusty trail but the rocky trail.

In addition to what I said before, the trail is said to be "blue-blazed," which means that periodic blue paint markings on rocks and trees show the hiker the way to go. I won't try to describe the entire thing here, but I'll try to relate what was to me the scariest moment. We climbed to the foot of a rock face, somewhat like the first picture above but a steepsteepsteep slope only somewhat like the sheer cliff. A series of four ladders secured to the face of the slope--okay, it felt much more like a cliff as I climbed--takes you from the bottom to the top. The first couple of ladders rise up through the trees rooted at the base of the rock face. But as I hit the third ladder, I began to feel uneasy. A sense of space opening up at my back seemed to want to pull me off the wall. I turned, and sure enough, I was, it seemed, hanging in space. To my left the ladder moved closer and closer to an edge beyond which was nothing but air through which I could fall and tall to the teeny tiny road apparently 100 miles below on a valley floor. I put my nose to the ladder--almost through the ladder to the stone--and climbed.

Raleigh and I at MacRae Peak, up about 5,900 feet. This is after my rise up the ladders, and what you can't see is that the hat--did you notice the hat?--is drenched with cold sweat, even to the front edge of the brim.

More fun and tense moments awaited along the trail, but ultimately we made it to the Attic Window, near which we rested a while before, like Wise Men, taking a different way (mostly) back to the van. I don't know what I would've done if I'd had to "back" down those cliff ladders!

We drove down the mountain in a sprinkling of rain that had thankfully held off until the hike was over. In Newland, NC, we stopped for an early supper at Papa's Pizza, then hit the road again to arrive back at Cherokee right around six o'clock.

I'm tuckered out and heading for bed sooner rather than later this Saturday night.


dendrochronology: the science of dating events and variations in environment in former periods by comparative study of growth rings in trees and aged wood

http://www.grandfather.com/index.php

http://www.grandfather.com/nature_walks/crest_trails.php#grandfather

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

I don't watch a lot of television, especially in the off season. But yesterday morning I was home for a while, and my wife had the thing on. She was off doing something else somewhere else in the house, and I was the one that got distracted by the morning version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Because I teach a night class on Thursdays this semester, I'd done my exercising in the morning and was trying to get ready to leave for the office. As I was getting out of the shower and such, I could hear the dramatic music that the show is famous for, could picture the setting and the lighting, just as famous as the music. But one time passing through the living room, I was caught by the exciting moment when a new player is selected.

Now, as I recall from the show's big primetime splash a few years back, players were prescreened through some kind of telephone system. Hopefuls had to call in and answer a certain number of questions in a certain length of time to see if they were up to a shot at the big chair across from Regis. But success on the telephone didn't guarantee their shot. If they got on the show they had to compete with others in some kind of flash round, the winner of which got the chair and the chance at $1,000,000--the number is even exciting to type!

Yesterday's selection was different. I don't know if it was a one-time deal or not, but if it wasn't, it should have been. Apparently the audience had numbered bracelets, and Meredith, the show's host these days, read out the randomly selected number. The young woman wearing that number stood and screamed and jumped and screamed, and I remember thinking to myself, 'This ain't The Price Is Right, lady.' (My next thought should have been to turn off the TV, but I was captured--for a few moments at least.) Keep in mind that unless the entire audience had been prescreened as potential players, no prescreening was done for this group. Although I didn't see the end of this woman's session, I can't imagine that it ended well.

Like all other contestants, she was to be asked a series of questions that could potentially lead to her winning--here we go again--$1,000,000. Along the way, she had the safety net of three "lifelines" to use in case she got stuck on a question and needed help. These lifelines are as follows: poll the audience, 50/50 (when two of the wrong answers are removed, leaving one wrong answer and the right one) and phone a friend.

Meredith asked her if she was familiar with the game. The contestant said that she certainly was, that she watched at home, that she pretended to be on the show and practiced her "Final answer" in the mirror, that her answers were usually right. And so, Meredith proceeded.

The first question, the $100 question (not nearly as fun to write as the earlier number) asked what document in American history had the date July 4, 1776 at the top. "The Declaration of Independence," the woman said. "Final answer."

The second question, for $200, I think, asked about a kitchen timer that usually had three or five minutes on it. The only two choices I can remember at the moment were "egg timer" and "toast timer." I wasn't under the pressure of the audience and the lights and the cameras, but it seemed pretty obvious to me that the answer was "egg timer." The contestant, however, used her first lifeline and polled the audience, 95% of whom answered "egg timer."

The third question, for $300, I think, asked what kind of shoe is 25 inches long and at least 12 inches wide. I remember three of the four choices: "ice skates," "galoshes" and "snow shoes." Given the description, the answer seemed obvious, but to my surprise she used another lifeline--the 50/50. This left two options--"galoshes" and "snow shoes." 'Surely to goodness,' I thought, and then stood stunned as she used her last lifeline to phone a friend, her father Willie. When he came on the line and his daughter was getting ready to ask him this question, I could stand it no longer and, with a grimace, turned off the television. Even if her father helped her with that question--without saying something mean to her for calling about something like that--I can't imagine that she lasted through the $500 or $1,000 questions. I hope she did. I tell myself to be fair; she came from Florida and so maybe didn't know what galoshes or snow shoes are. Maybe.

Just maybe.


241.8 NWT

The Week That Was (Continued)

Thursday, August 31st -- The highlight this day was getting started with my Literature of the South course. The class is made up of six graduate students and around eleven undergraduates. I tried to do the music discussed in one of my recent blogs, but it didn't work out. The equipment in the electronic classroom wasn't being cooperative. I had some intense religious singing from an African American group on one of the east coast islands, some humor from the Appalachian foothills over in Wilkes County, North Carolina, and a couple of other audio renditions of pieces in our anthology. But when it came to my idea of playing Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd and such, the CD I made on one computer--the one in my office--wouldn't work on the one in the classroom. So we ended up just looking at lyrics, which worked fairly well. I now have the music in another format and will introduce it from time to time as the semester goes forward.

Friday, September 1st -- I just worked around the office, for the most part. In the evening, Raleigh had a demo team performance at the tae kwon do school, but other than that, things were fairly quiet.

Saturday, September 2nd -- This is the building that was Walnut United Methodist Church, where on another Saturday, September 2nd (back in 1989), Leesa and I were married. Our 17th anniversary celebration was fairly low key. We drove over to North Carolina, where we first dropped Raleigh off at my mom's and then headed up to spend some time together in Asheville. We had plans for a movie and a fancy meal at Bonefish Grill, but in the end, we ditched those ideas and just hung out together. A student of mine--for whom I'd written an apparently successful recommendation letter--had given me a giftcard for Panera Bread. So we went there and ate. Then we went to visit a friend who lives in Givens Estates and had a wonderful time just sitting and visiting with her for an hour or so. When she had to go to church at the big First Methodist downtown, Leesa and I headed for the place that had been our destination since coming up with the idea of an Asheville anniversary: Cold Stone Creamery. It's just off I-240, in a new shopping area where an old bleachery used to be. After ice cream, we went into the Wal-Mart that anchors the area. Isn't the 17th traditionally the "give the gift of Wal-Mart" anniversary? Leesa bought me a couple of shirts, and I bought her some Dixie Cups that she likes for her coffee. After Wal-Mart, we went downtown to Marble Slab Creamery to carry out a taste test. MSC is quite good, but we both prefer CSC. Then it was 8:00 and time to get Raleigh and head back over the mountain to our Tennessee home.

Sunday, September 3rd -- The morning at Cherokee United Methodist Church was the highlight of this day. I got to make some good music with friends, hear a friend preach an interesting sermon based on the Song of Songs and then laugh and talk with yet more friends in Sunday School.

Monday, September 4th -- This morning, believe it or not, I finally finished unpacking from my trip into the West, and in the process I discovered that somewhere along the line I left the wrestling shoes I use for indoor exercising. I'd had them a long time and was bummed to find that I had them no longer. Just after noon, Leesa and I dropped Raleigh off to see a movie with friends, and while he was at the theater, we ate at Smokey Bones and then shopped for a new sound system for her home salon. (We seem to be replacing these little shelf systems every too-few months.) In the evening, we went to a party hosted by one of my colleagues in the English department and her husband. Raleigh initially went with us, but as he was approaching the people gathered in the garage and under tented tarps, he said, "I see people with canes." I had told him there probably wouldn't be anybody his age there, and when he and Leesa got back in the car so that she could take him home, he said to her, "I don't think there's anybody your age there either." We had a good time and enjoyed the company and the new people we met.

Tuesday, September 5th -- Still in progress at this moment but almost over. I spent much of the day in the office, making one trip out to Cherokee to meet with the music director about songs for the coming Sunday services. Now it's almost 9:00, and I'm going to publish this and read more Plato before going to bed. . . .

The Week That Was

The first week of school is always a hectic one, and this just past was no exception. Class meetings, class preparation, meetings with students and such filled the weekdays since last Tuesday (when I last wrote here). Here's a basic recap of what went on. I'll get caught up and then hopefully move forward without many more such lapses.

Wednesday the 30th -- The Quest class met today in its usual time slot, 10:25-11:45. We focused on two dialogues written by ancient Greek philosopher Plato. The first was from a book called The Republic, an excerpt commonly called "The Allegory of the Cave." The gist of it is that we are asked to imagine that a group of people sits in a cave. They face a wall and by some means or another are unable to rise up or even to turn their heads from side to side. This is all they've ever known. Somewhere behind them, unseen, a fire burns, casting its light on the wall. Between the fire and the back of the group a troop of beings carries figures of animals and such back and forth, and these figures create shadows on the wall. To the cave dwellers who know nothing of what's behind them, these shadows and the echoes of voices and movements make up the world for the people in the cave.

We are then asked to imagine that one of the people is set free so that he can stand and look around. He can move. He sees the fire and the figures and realizes that the reality he has always known is false. Then he is made to leave the cave and see the world as it is, to see the sun and all other things that have been at most only partially represented by the fire and figures below. It's a painful experience. On the physical level, the light of the sun hurts his eyes; on the intellectual and spiritual level he's hurt by the loss of all he once held to be true and stable. But once he becomes accustomed to the light, he revels in new knowledge and understanding and wants to stay in that world forever.

Ultimately, however, this gift of sight demands that he return to the cave and try to show others that what they see and believe is false. They, of course, do not like hearing this, and they're just as likely to put him to death as not. Despite this danger, Plato believes that the philosopher must act in this way, because all he has learned is of no use without action.

The final suggestion is that our leaders are supposed to be those who have escaped the cave and seen the light and returned to save us from our ignorance and our restrictive conditions.

So what happened to this idea? Do we have any leaders who fit this description of something like a philosopher king? If not, why not?

In "Euthyphro," Socrates (one of the characters in Plato's dialogue) tries to get Euthyphro, a self-proclaimed expert on what is pious, to identify the essential feature or characteristic of piety (or, if you wish, the good). Euthyphro begins by saying a thing is pious because it is loved by the gods. But Socrates points out that the gods that fill the Greek heavens are a contentious bunch and that a thing might be loved by some of them and hated by others. So, that definition doesn't work. What Socrates wants Euthyphro to do is come to the understanding that the gods' loving a thing doesn't make it good but that they love it because it is already good. If the good or piety of a thing can be separated from the love of the gods, then a study can be made to find out what essence of good is in the thing itself. Euthyphro fails to provide any answers; Socrates provides some clarification but in the end raises more questions than he answers.

I'm of the firm belief that the Underworld didn't become Hell until Socrates arrived with his endless questions.

It's late. . . . (to be continued)

Two Poems by Billy Collins

Here are two of my favorite poems by Billy Collins, recent Poet Laureate of the United States of America. Collins is fairly straightforward with his language, so the poems are easy to read. What strikes me as so wonderful about them is the precision of their imagery and their humor.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones. Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag, and even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps, the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay. Whatever it is you are struggling to remember, it is not poised on the tip of your tongue, not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen. It has floated away down a dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall, well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle. No wonder you rise in the middle of the night to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war. No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted out of a love poem that you used to know by heart. (http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=8221&poem=168339)

And here's another. It's fun to try and picture this in my head.

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark that he barks every time they leave the house. They must switch him on on their way out. The neighbors' dog will not stop barking. I close all the windows in the house and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast but I can still hear him muffled under the music, barking, barking, barking, and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra, his head raised confidently as if Beethoven had included a part for barking dog. When the record finally ends he is still barking, sitting there in the oboe section barking, his eyes fixed on the conductor who is entreating him with his baton while the other musicians listen in respectful silence to the famous barking dog solo, that endless coda that first established Beethoven as an innovative genius. (http://www.poemhunter.com/p/m/poem.asp?poet=8221&poem=168155)

Not only do I like the imagery and humor here but also the way the poems capture the familiar.