The Common High Ground

As we tiptoed our way to the finish line of this most colossal of presidential elections, slinking silently lest we be the ones to jostle the universe enough for the whole house of cards to fall apart for our candidate of choice, it became abundantly clear to me that seeing of each other as the labels we wear -- Democrat, Republican, pro-choice, pro-life, Lefty, Righty, Black, Beige or Whitey -- is the lead foot mashing the gas on the Human Oblivion Express.

By meticulously probing between every innuendo and potentially offensive comment, we have been able to discover all the things that we absolutely cannot stand about one another in this Zeus-forsaken world of ours. This, of course, sketches a perfect blueprint for the construction of a Twin Towers' worth of explosive arguing when we should be thinking about ways of scraping our collective manure together.

So, let me inject -- directly into the aorta of the Mrs. Mia Wallace that is our Future Outlook -- an adrenalin shot of inspiration. I propose our first brand new coalition of the new political era be forged between two distinct groups towards a single fundamental ideal -- the fundamental ideal as far as I can tell-- the rescue of the environment in which we plan to live for more than a couple more centuries.

Now don't figuratively cast me into the tear-proof garbage bag with all your other recycled-paper solicitations from Sundance and the boys down at the NRDC, this is gonna be fun.

I'm proposing that the under-50 masses that consider themselves Environmentalists should let down their anti-Conservative guard as well as their ponytails. In my opinion, to save the environment, the Tree Huggers have to sit down at the table with the -- Gasp! -- Gun Nuts. 

Anyone who has ever watched buffalo or elk graze in Yellowstone National Park, and I'm sure the ponytails number in the millions for this experience, ought to bend over and kiss the grass at the feet of the ghost of the gunslingin' 26th president of the good ol' U.S. of AAAA-mer'ca. Teddy Roosevelt showed that you can love the environment and kill things in the environment at the same time. He essentially invented the National Park. There are plenty of modern-day Teddys(ies?) exercising their Washington-given right to bear whatever arms they durn well please. Most of them just love to kill 'em some Furry Forest Creatures, but just so we're clear, many of them actually understand that for there to be FFCs (as no one calls them), there must be forests.

Without hunting, spear, bow or otherwise, there would have never been the protein rush that infused enough brain goo into our ancient ancestors ridged skulls to finally inspire them to Paint the Walls. Killing is part of life, and guns are the way we kill. We shouldn't be trying to disarm the public, we should be trying to keep educating them -- and learning from them.

Now certainly this also requires some understanding on Captain NRA's side as well, but I honestly believe if he's spoken to with the simple respect anyone should give any other human being, we could really get to work on saving at least one tree or two here or there. Just don't everybody go walking out there in November without your orange on.

To sum up, if these two groups could meet on some common high ground and demand the preservation of wild areas, then we could be well on our way to glossing over our other differences about things like prayer in school, 'Bortions, hom'sexyuls, and Sin's Original Recipe and its requirement of an Extra Crispy afterlife.

We don't have to focus on every difference we have in every conversation we have.  We don't have to gauge each other's I.Q. based on a harmless turn of phrase or a particularly bold fashion choice. We can potentially find respect for both sides of an issue that truly has two (or 20) sides. 

And then we can start working on ways of convincing each other that some things are just plain wrong.

Taker or Leaver?

I warned you that I wasn't done talking about my relationship with Ishmael, but after coming to the end of it, I'm almost hesitant to think about it anymore for a while. Almost.
According to the book, Man has lost touch with the natural world and the Natural Law. He has decided not to follow it -- to simply ignore it. Man has come to the conclusion that He is the epitome of evolution (well, that only goes for the ones who believe in that wacky concept of evolution). All agree that Man is the Lord and Master of all he surveys, and all the plants, rocks and creatures are our humble subjects (Bow down to us!) and that he can really do ANY thing to the world that he wants.
Ishmael purports a position that the fossils show that our ancestors boned it by settling down and letting that oversized head sponge really get to absorbing. About 10K years ago, JoMoe Sapien and his brothers and sisters sat on a rock that would one day be in Baghdad, and voted to become Takers (of everything they could get their hands on, and in astounding quantities), and the few poor souls who have since escaped enslavement by the resulting Europeans continued their three million year journey as Leavers. The Leavers have been traditionally recognizable by way of their scandalous grass and leaf wardrobe in innumerable, legendary National Geographic photo spreads, and their ability to live outside for over TWO days in a row.
For the last week, I have been trying to escape the inescapable depression that sits at the middle of the premise of Ishmael like a swirling vortex. The thought that we are simply "doing it wrong" -- an all-star cast of 7 billion Mr. Mom's trying to drop off the kids at school in the wrong direction -- terrifies me. That we are on a collision course with mass extinction, and that that would be the standard option for Maw Nature to exercise, is less than heartwarming bedtime reading. And the end of the book does little to ease the conscience. "Teach 10 people about what you have learned." That's all you got Danny Quinn? The best I've seen for this is a guy on youtube that's getting stoned people to read the book three pages at a time into the camera.
Anyway, no one is going to switch back to being a Leaver at this point, so what is there to do about this Taker Extraordinaire culture that we are camped out in the middle of? Since I am far too lazy to take up arms in violent revolution, and because the only thing I could do worse than farming is soldiering, I've ended up stumblin' and bumblin' right into the 'Teach 10' brier patch.
I get up in the morning and I teach a whole bunch of kids the best I can. Well, probably not the 'best.' if I was working on a powerpoint, or reading a little ahead, or figuring out how the associative property works, instead of blawgin' -- columning -- here, I could likely cram another couple of Great Lessons in each day. But at least we've moved on to the next stage after Ishmael, a book by a smartypants professor named Jared Diamond called Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Don't worry, I'm not going to spoonfeed y'all every book we read, so don't look for another book report next time, but luckily for the Lazies, the National Geographic Channel has your spoon if you just don't have time for the book. You can put the G,G,&S DVD series in your Netflix queue, and get all smarted up without having to lift your butt up off the couch.
Instead, I think it's time to get back into the South -- come to think of it, my class is also starting To Kill a Mockingbird -- Maybe I can slip back into some downhome columnizing next time. Hopefully, I can open with a joke about the trouncing of Alabama by the Georgia Bulldogs.

Call me, Ishmael.

School started again. I'm in a situation I have been working toward for quite a while. I have the school humming along nicely and I get to spend my mornings, and many afternoons, teaching again. Since I took over the administration, New Year's of '07, I've had to concentrate on so many different distractions, I haven't been able to put much effort into the classroom side. Now, I have a 'class' of two adolescents.
They are both super smart and motivated, but it is the content of the class that I want to talk about (type about?).
We are reading Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Yeah, I read it about a hundred years ago too. If you haven't gotten around to it, let me give you the quick rundown...
The student finds a teacher who is an expert on captivity. The student is walked through a basic concept of humans being divided into two groups: Takers and Leavers. Basically, everyone was a Leaver until about 10,000 years ago. Somewhere around that time, Joe-Mo Sapien said (grunted?) "Things fall off plant, go in ground, grow back again, make more food." Or something to that effect, we haven't recovered the audio of that yet.
So, the Agricultural Revolution begins. This new race of people starts growing food. They settle down, they start to specialize in different areas. Their knowledge increases. The better nutrition increases brain capacity, and the species starts to be wildly successful. The freedom generated by agriculture gives us a sense of control over this world. For three billion years, we had been living in balance with nature as it worked. Our numbers were controlled by the same laws that governed the entire rest of the world, but we got too smart for that.
We built walls and better spears to better kill anything that threatened our safety. Which is, of course, a perfectly rational response to being attacked. However, after we stopped having to worry about anything being higher on the food chain than us, we had to start preying upon, and protecting ourselves from, one another. The huge food surplus had generated another effect to add to this advancement in thought and control. The population of Homo Sapiens started to multiply at an unprecedented rate.
Everywhere this race went, it wreaked havoc on the established nature, and it continued to increase its power over that nature. And they learned how to grow even more food. And that made more people.
And when the number of people got too big, they killed each other off. And on, and on. Except that in the process of this cycle of surplus to scarcity to surplus again, Man decided that he was put here to use the Earth in any way He liked. He decided that God had put him here, and given him all these resources to plow through and throw away. It became an adversarial relationship.
The whole reason for the mess we've made is because we stopped living by the Laws of Nature. We decided we could 'Take' as much as we wanted, not needed, wanted. The few 'Leavers' that still exist in the world are far enough into the jungle to still understand the Law, but we'll get us a mission'ry in there to stamp that out soon enough.
What's funny about reading Ishmael again after all these years is that I had forgotten that someone told me this stuff once. The book is such a part of the way I think, I couldn't even separate the story from my worldview.
Anyway, I'm about halfway through it with my class, so when we meet again, I'll probably need to say a little more about it.
In the meantime, see if you see any examples of Man being at war with the Earth.

Professional Courtesy

Sorry for the delay, I had to travel and then come back and start the school year. I also got caught up in a Steinbeck book and convinced myself that if I couldn't write like that, then it wasn't worth writing at all. Then I realized that if everyone thought that way, there wouldn't be much to read in this world so why not go ahead and try to write like me instead. So here we go...

The last thing I really want to do in this column is to talk about politics, but in this kind of environment, it seems to seep into my thinking. I promise to just make it as quick as I can.
I have an open-minded view of the world, and most of the people with which I associate share this view. That's why we become friends with people, I guess. Or, as is the case with me, you just grow up together and share the same experiences, so therefore you end up with similar views.
Whenever anyone talks about American politics, it comes down to the same thing. There's a liberal view, spoken on and defended at length by intellectuals that alienate half the population. Then, of course, there is the conservative side defended by a gun-lovin', abortion hatin' cowboy (white hat, size 8 n' three quawta please). They pummel the given issues, the same ones over and over, and walk away hating each other more. It's pointless, and nothing ever gets done, or if it does get done, it doesn't get done well.
The obvious solution is to ease up a little bit and be a little more tolerant and to practice a little more give and take. The keyword is courtesy. If we can start being more courteous to one another and respectful of their position as a human being, we can have an honest discussion about almost anything. In such a situation, there is less chance of someone losing their cool.
This courtesy has to extend itself into the dealings between the haves, the have nots, and the have enough to make my mortgage payment, but dang, college is gonna be a strains. With a little more courtesy in that dialogue, the chance for violent revolution by the repressed masses decreases. The other central tenet is certainly the issue of religion.
I freely admit that I have many biases and even more of what Socrates called 'cherished beliefs.' They are critical to the foundation of the thing that I call me. I believe what I do because I have interpreted the signs on the side of the diverged road I have chosen. I'm a victim of every turn I have taken since birth. But I am not closing off the possibility that I read something wrong. I did have to get glasses a few years ago, and I don't feel like that much less of a man because of it. Maybe I need something to clarify my spiritual vision as well.
And Socrates said flat out that I have to learn to doubt my cherished beliefs. They have to stand up to scrutiny. I have to advocate for my own personal devils, and I have to be able to accept their assault from other humans of opposite view. This is called being open-minded.
I should note that my wife would disagree with my declaration that I have an open mind, but there's clearly a right way to put a roll of toilet paper on the roll. I'd be willing and able to organize a rally to march on the Capitol to defend that truth.
Which reminds me of a line by the late comic Mitch Hedberg: "I'm against picketing, but I don't know how to show it." Check him out, he's hilarious. And check out some Costaki Economopoulos while you're at it, that guy's good too.
Sorry, I will tangentify on occasion.
So, my point was that if we could try and stretch toward courteous behavior with one another, we could meet in the middle every once in a while and progress forward. Conservatives have to accept that our earth cannot eternally take wholesale pillaging, and liberals have to accept that people are going to get rich and try to stay rich. It's really about the pollution that is left behind as this great machine runs. We live in a world with almost 7 billion other people. If we can't elect leaders that can communicate, then we are going to end up in one big overcrowded mess.
Those who drive the machine have to be able to see through the smog to know where we are going. Pay attention and maybe they will let us sit on their lap and steer every now and then.

Scavenged by the Buzzard God

We were standin' on a mountaintop
Where the cactus flowers grow
I was wishin' that the world would stop
When you said we'd better go
-Robert Earl Keen

I finally realized that the reason I started writing again was so that I could tell some funny stories. That's what I like to read at least, so let's skip the pleasantries and get down to brass tacks.
Mike, Kurt, Texas Bill and I were gorging on a Tuesday night pre-Thanksgiving feast in an Austin apartment built to shelter people that were younger than we were in 1995. It had been agreed upon on the night before the previous Super Bowl that we would all quit our jobs and move to Austin, and now we were celebrating the bounty of fading youth.
Filled and fattened, we turned to see Bill stride into the post-turkey and Natty Light haze to announce that we were all getting in the car and driving to Big Bend National Park to hike 27 miles through the backcountry. Now, this trip had been planned for the approaching long holiday weekend, so don't count that as crazy, but departure was technically scheduled for the following morning.
Nonetheless, the Fandango set off into the darkness. The car was running on not only gas refined from the fields of Arabia, but also that created by the sweet potatoes and green bean casserole. The air rushing in from the repeatedly opened windows offered a taste of West Texas Desert Dust.
Eight hours later we were fully stocked by the general store in Marathon, the last town for ninety miles in the wilderness north of the remote Big Bend of the Rio Grande.
We pulled in and hit the trail that morning, the back way. Anyone bothering to consult a park map can see that the loop is designed to go up into the mountains gradually, but our way was five straight miles of vertical switchbacks. I'm sure the peanut gallery will have something to say about this, but I think a rest stop every five minutes isn't too excessive when there's fifty pounds strapped to the back of the average fast-food eating American that I know myself to be.
At any rate, we spent the days gawking across the Santa Elena Canyon and the evenings under shooting stars so big we could hear them breaking up in the atmosphere. We dodged enormous piles of Black Bear muffins and jumped at every crunch of leaves, and finally finished the trail after four days. We set up camp in the desert before taking Robert Earl Keen's 'rowboat across the Rio Grande' to Boquillas, Mejico. We ate outside and bellied up to a bar that had horses lashed to a hitching post outside. As the sun was swallowed into the Mexican peaks in the distance, we smuggled aboard the leaky rowboat our contraband, 750 milliliters of undeclared Cuervo Gold.
As a point of order, I should say that at this juncture, the story takes on a color no more racy than your average George Jones drinking song, but definitely saltier than your average Boquillas margarita. Maybe put the kids to bed before you go on.

Descent into madness

As the stars started popping out and the crescent moon slipped toward those gluttonous mountains, the flu bug that had been nagging at the once-zealous Texas Bill dragged him gently into that goodnight. With all due sympathy to his weak system, this created an even bigger problem for the rest of us in that the campfire spot he had vacated instigated a new rationing system from Señor José. What was going to be divided by cuatro was absorbed with a number of canned peach chasers by the tres remaining caballeros.
The walk from the campsite to the Hot Springs on the shores of the Rio was confused enough itself, but after sinking into the magic waters, everything simply took on a new hue. There were escape swims across the border, and laughs that rang into the night; and all the while the figurative worm at the bottom of the bottle (Tom Robbins' buzzard god) was chewing his way into our hearts as our personal defenses crumbled like the walls of this ancient magic spring that had so seductively absorbed us.
And then the peace was broken.
A busload of interlopers descended upon the waters. By the hundreds of thousands they invaded, Southern Baptist by the looks of their hair and conservative swimwear--not a bikini among them. The tiny pool was suddenly filled with Holy Spirits--a swirling cocktail of Hay-Seuss and José. That's one they don't serve after Saturday midnight at my local watering hole, I can promise you that.
Now, it would be funny enough, except I forgot to mention that we left every square centimeter of our clothing on the riverbank. For us this meant sweatshirt, sweatpants, sandals...and boxers. Our pile was up there somewhere, somewhere on the far side of the Blessed Flock.
There were no options. They weren't leaving and we were already parboiled. Overcooked, in more ways than one, we could no longer maintain our stabs at polite conversation. Our stumbled mumbles of apology were followed by our surprising revelation that the Pagan Desert Underwear Fairy must have dived in and absconded with our lingerie, but we was gonna have to go anyhow. And off we glided like the sculpted Greek nudes of old, Kurt leading the way with a splash. He went straight to the pile of clothes, put on more than he brought and, as we would determine later, packed everything up in the nearest backpack and took off into the desert night. I soon followed, in even less admirable fashion, to the pile. My boxers were still there at least, and my sandals, but there were no sweats to be found. Mike and I wove back toward the campsite amidst final farewells to the faithful, and I landed promptly in some sort of coyote waller of a mudpit. After struggling for what seemed like ages while Mike looked for Kurt, I gave myself up for dead and drifted off to what I was sure was going to be the miserable afterlife to which those folks back at the springs knew I was doomed. Fortunately for those of you who want to hear the ending, I woke seconds later to Mike dragging me to my clay-encrusted feet.
We made it back to the campsite ahead of Kurt and were able to watch him emerge from the darkness. Our campsite flashlight revealed his attire slowly. It was the funniest thing I ever saw.
Kurt was wedged into a purple, flowered windbreaker. Size Youth Petite. His arms were pinned further back by a backpack--a backpack he was convinced was his.
"Take off the backpack Kurt, it's not yours," Mike yelled.
"Iss too, iss my bagpack."
"Show us what's in it!" We couldn't wait.
Assuming a smug grin, Kurt slowly pulled out my sweatshirt, and then my sweatpants, and then a pair of little girl's jeans with flowers on them. In fact, they looked strangely similar to the ones on the windbreaker. The image burned into a flash in front of my eyes just as someone turned out the lights. When my eyes reopened, I was halfway down in my sleeping bag with the sun seeping in through a tiny hole at the other end.
I woke up dirtier than I have ever been as an adult. I was picking clay from my calves as Kurt emerged from the tent in a far worse condition. It was a long ride home to Austin that Sunday. You don't have to know much about Karma to know that Kurt spent the better part of the morning reliving the wrath of José from the inside out. It was probably almost enough to pay back the 10 year-old that had to ride the bus back to her campsite in her wet bathing suit with no windbreaker to keep her warm. God bless her and let's hope her faith helped her process the horrifying sight she had endured the night before.
Like you said, I better go. Adios Amigos.

A Scattering of D'advice

As most of y'all already know, one of my very oldest and closest friends is about to become a daddy for the first time. He's looking for a baby girl this fall, and the last time we were together he was asking me serious questions about what it's like. I don't think I gave a thoughtful enough answer, but I thought this might be a good place to explore it, and also to invite you other dads out there to throw in with some advice for our friend.
The obvious opener is that you have to fall in love with the young'un as quick as you can. Momma has already been tied, literally, to her for three-quarters of the year. This means you have to spend time with the little blob and talk to her and let her get to know you. You don't realize it, but she is sucking up everything like a Tarpon Springs sponge. Everything. They will not end up as distinct memories, so it's still ok to slip up and cuss now and then without her repeating it back to her therapist in 20 years, but it's the foundation of a person that she is building inside that sponge, so be smart about it.
For the first couple years, she is gonna want things. Milk, attention, sleep, basically your basics. The way she is going to ask for them is in the soul-piercing javelin of the cry. You have to respond to this, with words so she can associate what she wants to tell you later, and then go on about your important bidness. That's going to be your whole relationship for a while.
Then, as I am painfully reminded of this every day at the Montessori school where I work, You must develop an immunity to the power of your child's tears by the time they start talking. Whining and crying to get what they want has to be squelched, with a capital Q. Now it's Momma that's going to have the hardest time with this, so you have to keep an eye on her too. (I don't worry about ticking off my wife with this, because she knows it's true). If y'all are on the same page, and all kiddie whining and 'carrying on' is met not with acquiescence (with a lower case q), but rather with denial -- and carefully veiled rage -- it will all but disappear in a couple of days. It will certainly end a lot quicker when it does happen, and you don't always wind up buying the piece of crap that is only going to end up as closet liner within a week.
Now, my buddy's little girl is destined to have one of those Mommas that want to play dress up with the baby, and wants to pamper and pet and protect. These are all important things for Momma to do, but Daddy's job is a little different. Daddy has to be impenetrable in his kid's eyes. You never give your kids things to worry about. They don't need to see you scared, and it's fine if they want to think you could beat up the dad of that bully kid should the need arise. Dad's got to be strong and honest and provide a good example. And personally, I recommend being an ongoing source of trivia. Toss out some random but interesting facts at the dinner table once in a while. It ain't gonna hurt 'em.
Never hit the kid. When they're little take away things that are important to them. I'm talking mostly about privileges and treats, rather than food and shelter. When they get old enough, always go with the guilt trip and responsibility and that you 'feel like your trust was taken advantage of,' That's always a winner.
All in all, it's not as hard as changing the line on the weedeater, but it's harder than setting the clock on the DVD player. Plenty of good folks are brought up by bad dads, but why not give your own flesh and blood as many advantages as you can? That's what you signed up for.
Let me close with an embarrassing display of my knowledge of girly music. There's a John Mayer song that has always hit home with me, it came out the same year my daughter was born:
Fathers be good to your daughters,
Your daughters will love like you do,
Girls become lovers that turn into mothers,
So mothers be good to your daughters too.
Yeah, the lovers part creeps me out too, but just try not to think about that for at least a dozen or so years.

The Publisher Dies Hard

I hope those of you perusing this at work when you're supposed to be, well, working, don't begrudge me the fact that I am currently on summer vacation from school. There is no doubt that one of the best things about being in education is the leisurely pace of summer. The only thing I can compare it to is being unemployed. Which reminds me...
Before I get into the story of my final days as a newspaper publisher, I should point out that I have no idea what the laws are about libel in a forum like this. I haven't researched, or asked anyone for that matter, but I guess I'm going to assume that if I talk about someone or something, it had better be true. Now, I'm not going to use any real names of the figures involved in this story, but in a small community, it is hard to disguise all that well. So, I guess what I'm saying is that I ain't trying to hurt nobody's feelin's, but I need to get this off my chest.

I had started out in Avery County, North Carolina as an alien. I made it my home. I tried my best to fix what seemed like it was broken, and along the line I made a lot of people happy and I made a lot of people angry. I've mentioned some of this before, but when I started at that paper, I did what I was told by the editor to do. After I took control of the paper, people started coming to me with information, and I ended up realizing that I was doing the work of a bona fide political machine that had been running this place, well, forever. Through the editor with whom I worked and who I later supervised, I was helping that small group of people maintain control of the county. As days and weeks passed, I heard more and more about the things they had done, and it ended up being an ongoing conflict that I chronicled weekly in my column.
This went on through two of the most interesting years of my life, and just when the wife was set to pop with number two, out of nowhere swoops General Media Conglomerate Limited Corporation, Incorporated. The week they announced the purchase of my paper and all the other local papers, I gummed up the works. I threw a 'monkey in the wrench,' as Lt. John McClain would say.
The Republican primary was on the following Tuesday, and a woman came into my office. She said she had been involved in a relationship with the Machine's candidate for some office or another. I told her I would publish a letter to the editor if she would swear that it was all true. I published it, the candidate went crazy, the machine got on the horn with my new bosses. And my corporation-saturated bosses listened to it all. They talked to their lawyers. They huddled together and talked conservatively and quietly, and they decided that they had one inherited employee that wasn't quite ready to grace the cover of GMCLCI Quarterly. They didn't have a taste for the controversy that my adopted community craved. After they took my column away, they waited a few days to see if I'd quit, but that usually doesn't go over so well when the Missus is at eight and a half months. However, before I really got wound up to suck it up and stay, they trundled into my office in Newland and gave me the proverbial axe. There was some cozy severance, and a pretend promise of a job at one of their other papers, but I knew our brief but tangled tango had come to an end. So, I had six months of baby, writing, paperwork, and straight up Michael Keaton Mr. Mom moments, all on the government. There's really nothing like it. Except, as I mentioned, summer vacation.
One more thing, if it's bugging you who John McClain is, it's not a typo. The monkey in the wrench is the hero who foiled the Nakatomi building robbery in 'Die Hard.'

From Bremen to Boone

It all started changing with TV. All the small towns that had once been protected - or was it sheltered - from the world, got keyed into the idea that there was something else out beyond the county line. Now, most of it was awful, mind you, this stuff they started pumping in. They thrust it into homes in the form of a hypnotic box. There was killin's, and wars, and hate, and grease, but there was also Milton Berle, and Lucille Ball, and WKRP in Cincinnati, and Love Boat, and Wendy's and Panera Bread. And all of a sudden, just like it happened in the suburban Atlanta where I spent my school year, the little west Georgia towns, like Bremen and Moreland, were annexed into the United States of Generica by General Eisenhower's Interstate System and RCA's little living room box o' fun. Boone's headed that same way now, but we were far enough from I-77 to hold out this long.
Of course, this here internet is the TV of this century. It used to just be America, but now we can see everything that's going on from every 'corner of the globe.' (That's got to be the silliest saying ever.)
I can get on here and type anything I could think of to type, and some 14-year-old in the Kingdom of Bhutan can pull it off, throw it into a translation website, and read the whole thing. Now, I'm not saying it's plausible, but it's possible. Quick trivia, "Atop which mountain range is the Kingdom of Bhutan located?" Answers come at the end of the 'column'. (I don't see any reason to change 'column' to 'blog', I'm fighting the power of the internet vocabularists. These words are still stacked line upon line. That makes it a column.)
I also love that y'all can just post and say anything you want. Which reminds me, I was talking about Generica because the Boone of today and the Bremen of today and the Bhutan of tomorrow are all going to be the same. It's awful in a way, but I think there may be an upside. If we all have a few things we can identify with, then it can be easier to build bridges between otherwise rival populations. The future is going to be global, the present already is. The problem, of course, is whether you want to build a bridge out of McDonald's French Fries, or out of conversation and open dialogue. We have to be able to say whatever needs saying, and we have to be able to communicate clearly with one another in the coming days. People are too sensitive and high-strung, and they are keeping us from having a conversation. So, the last I'm going to say about it is this: I think it is OK for there to be a Chick-Fil-A in Hanoi, but I also want a Vietnamese joint in Boone. CFA can put all its subliminal religious paraphernalia out to the billions of children of Asia, and the Vietnamese menu can have a Buddhist quote on it, or maybe even a yin-yang. Everybody gets something unusual and tasty to eat, and everyone gets a few more points of reference to have in common when we have to figure out how to cooperate and share the limited resources available on a planet of 7 billion inhabitants.
Unfortunately, we currenly send the same first Am-bastard-or to all these countries. I'm sure the people of the world can recognize the Golden Arches quicker than the American Flag. That's our face out there, Mickey-D's. "Beware young Ang-Yin, America is going to seduce you from the inside with all white-meat nuggets and a Kung Fu Panda action figure. Now, go play with the big yellow clown. For he is America, your saviour!"
I'm sorry, that felt like a bit of a rant there. Just goes to show you can say anything you want on these innernets. Which was not the case with the newspapers with which I was involved.
That became quite clear for me in 2002 when The Avery Journal was bought out by the multimedia conglomerate corporation from Tennessee, and the Glenn Grizzard column ended up at the center of the negotiations.
Oh yes, Bhutan sits high in the plateaus of the Himalaya. Pronounced there as "Him-All-Ya" much like here we say "Appa-Latch-Uhn," I reckon. But maybe someday, we'll all say everything the exact same way. I gotta go, I'm hungry for nuggets now.

My Journal of Avery County

Everybody's talking about gas prices these days, but I guess it's still better than if that Y2K had happened, huh? We laugh, or simply forget, about it now, but I wrote a front-page profile on a guy out on the highway that opened an actual Y2K store. You could buy giant tins of powdered everything and water tablets and gas masks and all. Whenever I think about him, I wonder whether he was ticked that it didn't happen. I think we can at least assume that he's holed up in the same bunker to this day either way.

Meanwhile, a mile away from the Y2K store, up on Dick Watson Road, when the calendar turned on all four of its dials. . . The perfesser was nine and a half months pregnant. I was named publisher of the Avery Journal. My son was born. I turned 30. And all this before the end of February.

I was knocking out a column for each week's paper, and I had plenty to write about. And sometime, when I wasn't looking, I became the eye of the hurricane. I quickly realized that things that are taken as obvious and acceptable in Athens, and even Boone, are still frowned upon in Newland, North Carolina.

Take, for example, drinkin' beer by a river with your buddies. "What's better than that?" I asked my Avery County audience in one of my weekly diatribes...Now, I had a radio show out of the A.M. in Newland, and that week's show was a barn burner, I tell you what. Was I unaware that demon spirits is the hand of Satan in the world? Why yes, I was unaware of that. "Mr. Gizzard, don't you realize that alcohol destroys families and takes Daddies away from the Lord Jesus?" Um, I hadn't thought of it like.."No you haven't!!"

But the best was the Baptist minister who stood in front of the cameras that Sunday, and broadcast to his congregation and his dozens of local cable access viewers, that 'the feller down at the Avery Journal has sinned.' He held up the paper and quoted my heathen words: "What's better than sitting by a river with your buddies and drinking 10 or 20 Budweisers?" Then he balled it up and threw it across the front of the church! If I were you, I would think this was an exagerration, but someone sent me a videotape of it. I'll see if I can set up a link to it someday.

Anyway, the drankin' stuff was just the beginning. Turned out that the county had been dominated by a rampant, conservative political machine for years and years. There were two parties, the good ol' boy mountain republicans and the newcomer Floridian republicans. As a regular opponent of corruption, and an advocate for the greater good, I ended up falling in with the Floridiots, and I mean that in the sweetest sense of the word, for you Floridiots that might be reading this. So the old mountain machine (or the 'Green Hat Gang,' as I dubbed them due to their leader's choice in haberdashery) came to despise me. I've got a million stories about the showdowns, but the best was when one of them stood up in front of a meeting of about 100 good ol' boys in the courthouse and blamed all their problems on 'that Gizzard at the Avery Journal.'
Or maybe the best one was the $500 bounty to anyone who gave me a beating. Really.

Of course, the number one story might have been the meltdown of the relationship between me the publisher and the matronly Southern lady that had served as the 'editor' of the paper for the last couple decades. As a member of one of Avery's old-time families, she was more comfortable in the pocket of the Green Hats. In a matter of weeks, we found ourselves on opposite sides of the campaign to remove the sheriff and replace him with a former sheriff that the Green Hat Gang could control. The HI-larious part was that they were accusing the current sheriff of embezzlement and beating prisoners, and the one they wanted to return to office had resigned after admitting to embezzlement and beating prisoners. And there was another guy who had just been sheriff, and had barely lost the election and had never been accused of beating anybody! By the time the meeting of the committee that decided the outcome rolled around, I had already played Lyle Lovett on my radio show and dedicated it to her..."I don't love you any less, but I can't love you anymore..."

So Y2K may not have seen the end of our technology-driven world (but hey, maybe when the oil runs out, we can pull out the powdered turkey and dressing after all). My year 2000 started a couple of crazy years when my writing brought truth to many, and frustration to almost just as many, and it was a rush. And I was selling papers at the same time.

Of course it's nothing compared to the influence my words are having on the six of you out there reading this. See y'all in next week's Journal.

Appalachian Word Association

Sorry to have missed you these last couple weeks, I was free-loading at a friend's in Hollywood with the family and couldn't sit down long enough to pontificate. But we're back, and with our time, I'd like to take you to the place my wife's psychology professoring job would take me. So, in the spirit of psychology...
I'll give you a word, and you say the first thing that comes into your mind...
Appalachia.
What'd you say? I didn't hear ya. Don't worry, I said the same thing in 1996.
Somehow or 'nother I ended up following my girlfriend to somewhere called Boone, North Carolina for her to teach at a place called Appalachian State University. Now don't get me wrong; I was in no way prejudiced against the Salt of the Earth homefolk. I had hewn my accent over stints in Bremen and Carnesville, Georgia, but Appalachia? I had a full-blown, ignorant, bigoted idea of moonshine stills and barefoot overall-wearin' Jed Clampetts.
Turns out I was mostly off. They got TV here too, and now that there internet, and Applebee's and Panera Bread, so you have to mostly let go of the corn cob pipe guy you were picturing when you thought of Appalachia.
And, by the way, you're pronouncing it wrong. Anyone who watched any sports programming over the past year has probably heard about half the announcers correctly pronounce Appa-LATCH-un, when they recount the tale of the greatest football upset in the history of mankind. And a big sorry it had to be you to those Michigan fans out there, but in addition to making Boone a lot more popular, I think it was also instrumental in the domination my Georgia Bulldogs provided the underdog Hawaii Rainbows in the Sugar Bowl.
But, outside of football, in the "regular old world," Boone is pretty great. It's way cooler than Atlanta here on June 19 (in the thermometer sense of the word), the mountains and the creeks and the animals ain't bad, and it would be Boone that gave me a chance to tumble backwards into the newspaper business.
There wasn't a teaching job to be found. Too much competition, too many old ties, for whatever reason, I took a job instead as a sports reporter for the Watauga Democrat. I convinced them to let me start writing a weekly column in addition to typing in the agate type of the Northwest 4-A Girls' Volleyball standings and spending Friday nights at the Watauga Pioneers' game.
Speaking of putting together the scoreboard page for the Democrat, and getting back around to football, I was sitting there every Monday morning, making all the columns line up under the right headers (real high-skill use of the 'TAB' key) and I would take the time to read over the statistics for the teams in ASU's conference each week. So every week, there was this kid from Marshall University, a freshman, putting up ridiculous numbers: 200 yards receiving, 3 receiving TDs, two kick returns for TDs, just week after week. I made a point of remembering his name so that I could keep an eye on him when Marshall made the highlights. I still remember that freshman, it was Randy Moss.
The columns I was writing, on the other hand, let me express a little more imagination than the agate page, but thanks to the conservative leanings of the administration of the ironically-name Democrat, I was barred from telling any stories that involved raucous behavior or the things that contribute to such behavior. Now, being a Grizzard, I was none to eager to cut that much funny right off the top. Apparently, since I covered high school sports I was supposed to be a role model for teenagers. So I quit. (To keep the irony fairy busy, I would end up teaching teenagers once again, and be forced back into the role of model once again, but that's after almost a decade in the paper biz.)
I went on to start a local entertainment paper, and then fell back into the clutches of the newspaper company when it turned out I needed to be making money as well as dribbling pearls of wisdom onto 5,000 copies of PEEK Magazine each week. I started laying out The Avery Journal, the red-headed, freckle-faced stepsister paper of the Democrat.
And that, dear readers, is where I finally found Appalachia.

Tejas

So, if you're saddling up and riding to Texas, you have to decide whether you're going to be the Gus you want to be or the Call you ought to be.
If you've never read 'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry, you should get up from the computer right now, and then sit down again and go to Amazon, and order yerself a copy of that there book. If'n you ain't got the energy to take up such an assignment, you should at least click over to Netflix and get them to send you out the best mini-series ever made.
To summarize for those who have foresaken my encouragement and stuck with this epistle, Gus and Call are old cowboys in Old Cowboy Texas and the challenge is to ride that there herd of cattle all the way to Montana. Now it might not seem on the surface to be much of a plot, but there are both hijinks and adventures that ensue -- plus the most attractive 'sportin' woman' and the scariest Native American ever captured on the printed page -- and you, dear reader, will find yourself carried away to an America that is so foreign to the one in which you live, that you might just start mixing a little rye whiskey in with your Starbuck's Mega Grande.
Your two main compadres in the story are the wild and whimsical Captain Augustus McCrae and the decidedly practical Captain Woodrow Call, both heroes of the fabled Texas Rangers. They get sucked into old Jake Spoon's stories of a magical wild land to the North, and Gus and Call have no choice but to saddle up and go find what's out there for them in life.
Which reminds me, I was in the middle of the ongoing autobiography of an overeducated redneck boy that was on his way to the biggest state in the lower 48.
With public school teaching behind me and a surprisingly serious girlfriend befuddling my mind, I went about the business of shutting down my Eastern life and setting my sights on Tejas, the Spanish translation of the Caddo Indian word for 'friends.'
As I stumbled my way towards Atlanta, and argued with myself over the implied advantages of I-20 to Dallas vs. I-85 to Mobile, it really hit me. I was leaving Georgia. I was taking my little provincial production "on the road." Oh sure, I had spent the last couple of summers in Boston with the boys, and I had logged my share of road trip miles, but I always knew that if I really needed my passport or my old softball glove, my stuff was in a bedroom, basement or under a loose floor tile somewhere between Bremen, Marietta and Athens. Now, Texas,... Texas turned out not to just be a continuation of the story. Tejas turned out to be a whole 'nother' story.
I sent out the applications like a good little boy. I hit all the districts in Austin metro, and all the counties within driving distance. Surely, I thought, my next teaching job will come as easy as my first. I mean, almost as easy, since I got that one in an phone interview sitting in my boxer shorts in a Boston summer sublease. But, yee-haw son, turns out life in the slightly bigger city than Athens ain't all soft butter and hot cornbread. First of all, there's 10,000 annual UT education school graduates who have no intention of leaving this city I've just discovered is the center of the universe, and they're all hotter than me. Secondly, two years of teaching experience in nowhere Georgia is not the job seeker's equivalent of a Visa Gold Card. And, most importantly, I knew that Austin was a one-year semi-retirement, and I wasn't going to convince any public school H.R. person that I was doing anything more than messing with Texas.
I already knew I was going to end up wherever the girl did. Somehow, over the course of my year of (T)Exile, we managed to hold it together. When my retirement money ran out, I had started subbing in the neighborhood daycare center. I took care of babies as little as 6 weeks old. I specialized in nap and snack, but mostly outside time. My buddies ended up in the same line of work as well. It seemed so odd at the time, but fast forward to when my own kids came, and later when I ended up running a school for kids ages 1-12, everything seemed to make a lot more sense.
When I tell the good stories about the year in Texas, it sounds like an extended frat party, and in a lot of ways it was. But really, we had to dance that final Fandango (ooh, after 'Lonesome Dove' get Netflix to send you 'Fandango' starring a much cooler than you think Kevin Costner). That last round at the Showdown Saloon on Guadalupe left me certain that going with Lisa to Boone, somewhere in the North Carolina mountains, was the only thing for this cowboy to do.
And somehow I knew they weren't going to have a teaching job for me either. But I knew that going after my own Clara Allen would be the only way for me to continue to be the Gus I had to be. And settling back into a nice, quiet newspaper job was the most practical way to be the Call I ought to be.

Schoolteacher?

So, I ended up teaching middle school in Carnesville, Georgia. If you've never heard of Carnesville, don't feel too bad, I never had either, and I'd been living within a half hour of it for 7 years in Athens. Really, the only thing you need to know about Carnesville is that when you pass the exit on 85, you're almost to Lake Hartwell, and Baty's Barbecue (Fri-Sat Only) just south of town is now closed, so don't get off the highway and go looking for it.
I'd finished enough beer in Athens, and I'd already pocketed a pair of teaching degrees, so it seemed that Growing Up was the only option short of a Ph.D., and I just ain't that kind of studier. I figured a state paycheck made more sense than going in on the bottom rung of the newspaper business, which, barring a Southern-Fried Seance so that Lewis could tell the publishers of the Atlanta Journal about his offer, is where I was headed at that point. I'd written one article for the Red & Black newspaper on campus. One article in 7 years -- my lone newspaper columnist basket was full of scrambled eggs.
But whether I was lucky or just practical in my schoolin', here I was, headed into my own middle school classroom. Now, there may be a story or two worth telling about this period on down the line, but suffice it to say for now that, like Lewis' exile in Chicago, for two years I was posted in the wilds of Franklin County on a reconnaissance mission of epic proportion. I discovered that rural East Georgia shared many things with rural West Georgia, and the greater proportion of these things leaned a little more to the Right than your humble narrator. The night before the Super Bowl of 1995, me and a couple boys decided that we were too big for The East to hold us anymore. We were gonna have to move to Texas.
Now most people pulled in by the gravity of Texas are lusting after that dusty land of cowboy hats and J.R. Ewing, but we were pulled to a different Texas. I must admit, that we were originally pulled to the Great Barrier Reef and kangaroo-coated Australia, but it turned out that my matched contributions to the Georgia state employees' pension were only going to pay for the first four letters of the dream. At 25 and with $3,000 in the bank, I was retiring to Austin to live down the road from Governor George W. Bush.
It was a tearful farewell from Franklin County Middle School, but it was time. This preceded the dropping of the shroud of standardized testing upon our public schools, and I was already rubbing against the conformist grain of the System. I loved those kids too much to teach them the way the gubb-ment said was best.
And just when it seemed like everything was falling into place for the Big Plan, and just when I was about to trade in my teacher tie for a Texas t-shirt, this chick from Virginia Tech stopped by with friends for an evening in Athens. Who would think that it's possible to fall for a Hokie chick? They weren't even in the SEC. For Herschel's sake, they weren't even in the ACC then! But fall I did, and it was going to land me in more than just trouble, it was going to eventually land me in Appalachia...and back in the newspaper business.

Bleeding Red and Black

I was lounging in a vast church family center this afternoon letting my blood drain out through a tube, setting it forth on its journey to somebody else's veins. I got to thinking about that first entry I made on this little page. I hope it didn't sound like I was setting up a Lewis Grizzard Tributarium. I'm hardly qualified to be the guy to run something like that.
Lewis and I share a great-grandfather, a number of aunts and uncles, and a very few face-to-face conversations. We share a Georgia heritage, down to the bleeding of Red as well as Black, and like Lewis, I have spent more than my share of time on a newspaper deadline. Other than that, I don't desire, nor do I deserve, to be compared to that boyhood friend of Weyman C. Wannamaker, Jr., but I do have to let myself think that I can string a few words together that might make someone giggle when they're supposed to be printing out the T.P.S. Reports.
To that end, I have to give you a peek into my little corner of Bulldog Nation. It's a land where a bunch of guys, in a quest to stave off middle age and cling to what The Boss referred to so perfectly as the 'Glory Days', whittle away the hours compiling and sorting through limitless information on one topic -- and one topic only -- the Football Program of the University of Georgia. When a new nugget of innuendo is released into the CyberEther, that rumor is immediately dispersed through an email network that would rival the communications system of any Third-world principality. Whether it be the potential last second signing of a the second-best punter in southern Alabama who was just about to sign with Friggin' Auburn, or even that yet another Gator tight-end has been arrested for shoplifting lingerie from the Gainesville Mall Victoria's Secret, I know about it . . . almost before it happens.
Today's big news was the annual release of the Southeastern Conference Helmet Schedule. A Microsoft Excel chart of who the Dawgs, as well as the rest of the greatest conference in college football, will be playing -- some four months from now. The Helmet Schedule is like visual ice cream for my buddy Keith. He savors the colors and shadows. His eyes stare at the matchups until they glaze. It matters not that he has known Georgia's schedule backward and forward for months. Actually looking upon the logos in faux three dimensions makes that stretch from Tennessee to LSU to Florida to Auburn seem all the more real, and suddenly September, and the national championship run, doesn't seem so very, very far away.
All our blood will run hotter in the Fall. Football will happen to us, and our poor wives, again in just four months. As our Dawgs suit up for a summer of practices in the hot Athens sun, I am reminded of a column I wrote in 1987. I was covering sports for the Times-Georgian in Carrollton, Ga., and one Friday I typed a few words about parents putting too much pressure on their kids out at the local high school football practice. 'Blood pressure can be deadly,' I wrote. I actually received an honest-to-Herschel piece of fan mail thanking me for the column. With my big head wobbling atop my thoroughly un-linebacker-like 17-year-old shoulders, I strode into a book signing at Cumberland Mall in Marietta. I walked up to the table and handed the paper to Lewis Grizzard.
"I just thought you might want to see how the next generation was coming along." I said, before practically sprinting off into the food court before my embarrassment could settle in. About a half hour later, Lewis was leaving and saw me on a bench. He asked me what my plans were, and he didn't hold back a smile when I told him I was on my way to Athens when the summer was over to get started on my journalism degree. He told me right then not to bother with it. He said to go over and get a degree in whatever I wanted, to enjoy college, to root on the Dawgs and to give him a call at the Atlanta Journal when I got done. He said he would get me going in the newspaper business if that was what I wanted to do then.
Seven years later, I was on my way out of Athens with a Master's in education and a cooler full of stories I was ready to pop open and pour over the heads of the greater Atlanta area. About the time I rolled past Stone Mountain, there was an update on the radio. Lewis's heart had finally given out.
It's been more than a decade since then, and I'm finally getting around telling that story. I promise, the next one will be a lot funnier. I can feel it in my blood.

Are you any kin to Lewis?

It used to be every other day.
Then Lewis died, and after a few years it started to get to be about once a week.
All my life, I'd introduce myself to someone in Georgia, or anywhere in the Southeast, and I'd get some version of: "Ya' any kin to Lewis?"
These days, I still get it, but it's not more than once or twice a month.
It's understandable really. I think the folks that loved him the most aren't getting out to the same places I do much anymore. I know they're still out there, but I'm 38 now, and don't leave Boone all that much. Although, when I go down to Athens for game weekend, I'll still talk some pretty serious 'Lewis' with one or another of the alumni. Or, when I'm stomping around in west Georgia for one family function or another, I realize that they are still out there.
By 'they,' of course, I mean the Lewis Legions.
I have to believe that there are still people out there waiting for the next collection. Waiting for a lost manuscript to turn up. Somehow holding on to a belief that Lewis never really left us, but somehow pulled an Elvis and is still cruising the 'Open Sat-Sun' barbecue joints of the rural South on warm summer weekend nights.
Now, I can't say for sure, but I have to believe there is a little bit of Lewis still out there. Every once in a while when I get outside the little box of my world, I get to see it. The grandma weeding in the garden between her flowers; the young'un getting licked in the face by an old hound dog; and certainly the old man in the shade of a pecan tree sipping from a cold, sweating glass.
Lewis captured the South of my youth in a way that no one could even approach. I want to hear that he is remembered -- that his recordings are being played for sons and daughters (when they're old enough to hear the one about Uga licking himself on the 50 yard line), and that books still hold places of prominence on the shelves of homes from Richmond to Atlanta to Dallas. I just want to make sure that whether they speak his name improperly as if it rhymes with 'Lizard,' or, preferably as 'Lewis Grizz-ard,' or even better - 'Grizz-ahhd' as they do in 'Chahlston' - just speak it, and keep speaking it. Because Lewis is worth remembering.

If you have stumbled upon this during a Google search, we appreciate you stopping in. Please leave us a note and have a cold one on us, and check back on us soon. --Glenn and the Grizzard family of Boone, NC.