AlphaLima

I was headed downtown to pick up my new Festool sander from Asheville Hardware, and I had to stop at the intersection by the Mellow Mushroom. Over across the way, these two guys were very agitated about something, and matters escalated to the point where they were exchanging blows!

Well, exchanging blows is too hyperbolic for the martial display I saw. They were scuffling? No, that’s not it. They were flailing their arms at one another, but neither lifted his arms above navel height during the slappiness that was this epic battle. Hairy Guy was wearing a really tough-looking (ahem) corduroy blazer, and Neatly Bearded Guy was wearing (my brain is filled with a rush of fear as I type this) slacks, a white dress shirt, and a tie.

Neatly Bearded Guy climbed into his SUV, and as he was getting in Hairy Guy shoved the door in such a fashion that it kind of closed on Bearded Guy. The door didn’t latch, and when it opened again, the flailing resumed. The light turned green and I headed up the road.

I wonder what was going on there, over by the Mellow Mushroom. Probably a turf war if I am to believe newspaper accounts.

We dropped the kids off at their respective schools on Friday morning and headed east towards Wilkesboro to attend Merlefest, a weekend-long festival on the campus of Wilkes Community College. We set our chairs up at a little after 10 and listened to music for the next 12 hours.

One of the nice things about the festival is the selection of stages, thirteen total, and the fact that everything is spread out pretty well so you don’t really feel overwhelmed by people.

We watched the last half of the set by Ryan Shupe and the Rubberband, a group I first saw in Telluride a couple of years ago. They are witty and skilled, and my only disappointment was not seeing them perform their cover of “Devil Went Down To Georgia.”

The three highlights of the day were these:

Hearing Doc Watson sing “Shady Grove” with David Holt and T. Michael Coleman accompanying him. Before he started in, Doc dedicated the song to his wife of 62 years, a reminder of how he is getting up there in years. At one point early in the set, some woman up front yelled out, “Turn down the bass and turn up the vocals!” To which Doc responded, “Can somebody turn down the audience?”

Hearing Dr. Ralph Stanley sing “Uncle Pen” from the main stage in the afternoon. He’s a legend, I think, and the song is one of my favorites. He, too, is getting up there in years to the point that he sang, joked, introduced, and let the Clinch Mountain Boys handle the instrumental chores.

The third highlight was the Avett Brothers set to close out the day. I really enjoy their music, and Ms. Alpha and I marveled at the energy they invested in performing–at one point we both cackled as Scott and Seth, the two brothers actually named Avett, were rocking out in true Animal fashion. Their studio work is much cleaner and precise, but the show was enjoyable.

I am mulling over taking the whole AlphaLima clan down there in a couple of years–the festival is well-organized, offers many great talents, and is kid-friendly. Sonny Boy and Baby Girl stayed with their grandfolks, so we were able to enjoy the show Big People Style and not have to worry about parenting.

We had a nice time.

Today on the way home from school a fire truck with lights a-flashing, siren blowing, turned onto our stretch of road right ahead of me and headed down a nearby street. I drove home, listened as more sirens came closer, and fired up the lawnmower to cut the Old Guy Across the Street’s grass. I mowed it, mowed ours, and when I shut the mower down, I realized that the firetrucks had stopped on the little road that runs just down the hill from our house. The houses there are within screeching distance, and I could hear the diesels grumbling in unison.

Since I had been mowing for the better part of an hour, I grew somewhat concerned about what all was happening down there–maybe a neighbor had collapsed, or some grave danger was threatening us all–I couldn’t tell what was going on from my vantage point.

I headed up onto our deck so I could look down from a higher angle, and I saw one of the trucks sitting down there, lights going still, and then, with some little trick of vision, my eyes focused more closely until I was looking just within our boundary line, and I saw that our flame azalea has its first blooms–

For a blink or a heartbeat I felt joy, and then, just as I caught myself feeling it, I stopped again, maybe out of some sense of decency or neighborliness or because I am one of humanity and therefore what affects humanity affects me, but I lapsed quickly back into the mindset of consternation for the mysterious dangers down the hill.

Tonight, the fire trucks are gone, been gone for hours, the fire or whatever happened to the vacant house down through the ivy and pines now addressed. And out there in the darkness of the side yard the azalea is still abloom.

Spring has rolled into the mountains, and our yard is a scene of little miracles.  The sweet shrub smells like melon (and exactly like melon, too, no ballparky here), and our redbud has bloomed for pretty much the first time ever.

Ms. Alpha took Baby Girl to Israel’s Garden Center and came back with a nice mountain laurel to replace the azalea that froze next to our stoop, a nice Japanese maple to replace one that froze out there by the yew, and a potted columbine that looks like a native species but may not really be one.  Apparently on the visit out there Baby Girl was all about looking at the fishes in the display water feature they have–seventeen fish, captive for life, I guess, but just perfect for the little people to gawk at.

The flame azalea is set to go, and today, for much of the day, things just seemed right.

I finished the book last night; the full title is Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho.  A couple of self-proclaimed geeks in small-town Idaho mustered up the chutzpah to hit the road to the Windy City to find a new place to live, new jobs, new lives.

It’s not a perfect book, but the story is compelling, and the social criticism is measured and valid.  A few times Katz goes off on tangents, most notably when he writes of the reaction to the Columbine shootings, but for the most part the people featured and the events that occur are noteworthy.

In an interesting coincidence, we hosted a Wiilympics in the library this week as part of National Library Week.  Originally we were going to host a Wii tennis tournament, but a number of factors led us to just let the patrons play.  And, that decision turned out to be a great one, for it afforded me the opportunity to witness the hilarious sight of two of our patrons (yeah, okay, they’re geeks) battling away in Wii boxing.  Feel my wrath, little Wii dude!  They were swinging away, putting their hearts into wielding the game controllers, getting the old heart rates up.  For the most part I felt that the inaugural Wiilympics was largely noise and hullabaloo, but that single contest, with all of its flailing glory, redeemed it for me.

One of North Carolina’s greatest statesmen ever, Representative Paul Stam (R Wake), was recently quoted in the Asheville Citizen-Times voicing his displeasure about efforts to provide something other than abstinence-only sex education to North Carolina’s young people.

Towards the end of the article, he argues with overwhelming convincingness that efforts of the State Personnel Commission to ban “discrimination in state hiring based on actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity” should be thwarted. His airtight logic?

“Somebody walks in there and says, you know, ‘I think about gay things occasionally. Put that down in your record,’” Stam said, giving an example of a hiring situation.

“Then you have to have almost a super-reason not to hire them, lest you set yourself up for a lawsuit on why you’re prejudiced against them.”

I have two very, very slight misgivings about his argument. First, what hiring situation contains dialogue like that? It sounds exactly like something those insidious straight men in the fabulously moving docudrama I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry would have tried. Playing the system by feigning homosexuality is running rampant, somewhere, I am sure.

My second concern is the notion of thinking about “gay things.” Maybe the “things” Stam mentions is supposed to be synonymous with “sexual attraction towards a member of one’s own gender.” Or maybe it is supposed to be synonymous with “hair gel.” Or maybe a “living room chock full of doilies.” Aren’t those gay things?  Except, of course, in the gelled case of Brian Bosworth, or in the case of the amply-doilied living room of the late Mr. and Mrs. A. G. Bennett of Starkville, MS.  He does not make that too clear, and this troubles me. It’s almost as if he were talking about sex.  Which also troubles me.

We were sitting there eating tuna noodle casserole this evening after Sonny Boy and I returned from soccer practice, and something impressed Baby Girl to the point that she said, “Oh my gosh.”

We looked at her for a second.

She looked back at us and said, with utmost seriousness, “You can say ‘gosh’ because it doesn’t mean poop or pee.”

I snickered so hard I about goshed my pants.

Young Sonny Boy posited this question to us over lunch today–I am not sure where it came from, but he noted that he would rather tell a lie since the recuperation from a broken leg is much, much longer.

For grown-ups, though, the scenario is much more complex than that.  How grave is the lie?  Who gets hurt?  Will the effects of lying fester on, poisoning away, until you look back on the twisted, burning wreckage of the Ford Pinto that was your life?

While I’ve not broken any bones at this point in my life, I’d suspect that the main pain associated with breaking a leg would be severe but last only for a day or two.  And while one might look back on a broken leg and wince, the wincing probably would not be associated with the shame or regret that lying might produce.

You got me, Sonny boy.

For the balance of this interminable and increasingly irritating political season, Barack Obama needs to publicize himself as fully as he can as Barack O’Bama. Why, you may ask? Gentle reader, here’s why:

With the new name, he pretty much clinches the Irish Catholic vote. There’s literally hundreds of Catholics in America today, and at last inspection, few tended to vote for pro-choice candidates. Thus, any votes he might garner from this quarter are what one might call “gravy votes.” Irish folk tend to stick together, just like in the fabulously moving docudrama Gangs of New York.  Remember the Pugslies Ugslies?  Or how about the Ducky Luckies?  Or the Higgledy Piggledies?  All gangs of New York, and all Irish!

With this new nom de guerre, O’Bama effectively distances himself from any half-witted attempts to associate his real name with that of Osama Bin Laden. The unscrupulous out there are using the old “His name is pretty close” strategy to dissuade voters, but how much swift will they have left in their boats when O’bama responds, “I’m not Muslim. I’m Irish”?

Lots of people like the Irish. Notre Dame football, as bad as it is, has its own television contract; there’s the good-spirited Lucky of Lucky Charms fame; there’s also Kevin Garnett, the honorary Irishman who is being considered in some circles as the MVP of the NBA. Irish also resonates through American culture–Irish Springs soap, for example, can be used with some efficacy to wash an Irish Setter. And Irish songs comprise about one-eighth of every Lawrence Welk rebroadcast.  That ought to help him with the Senior Citizen vote.

O’Bama O’Eight. Political genius.

I just finished reading Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried for the second time; I first read it ten or fifteen years ago, I guess.  It is a powerful and good book, and I probably liked it better this time than the first.

A central reason for that is my awareness this time through of O’Brien’s fairly consistent commentary on the nature of stories and the art of telling them.  In the memorable Sweetheart of the Song Tra Ba, Mitchell Sanders critiques Rat Kiley’s telling of the story as the narrative progresses: what’s working, what’s not, the proper means of narrating an account.  The effect of this on me was to inspire in me some contemplation of writing and the recording of events real or fictional.  Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the commentary was that it was largely unobtrusive in the broader fabric of the stories.  O’Brien also comments on the value and function of stories in the last story in the collection, Lives of the Dead.

And it is in this story where he writes:

“The thing about a story is that you dream it as you tell it, hoping that others might then dream along with you, and in this way memory and imagination and language combine to make spirits in the head.”

He sums up the essence of the collection of these fictional accounts based on his own memories of Vietnam, conveyed artfully through his prose.

That idea of “spirits in the head” sticks with me now.