Satin piping on the pants-leg.

Please tell me that you’ve been outside already this morning (it is 6:32 at this very minute). I just went out to the car to get my handy-dandy notebook (the one I write all of the strange quotes and conversations I hear throughout the day, the one that has the line from the guy who, when his car alarm was going off in the parking lot two nights ago said in an exasperated voice, “It thinks it’s being stolen…”) and was just amazed at how perfect the morning was. Finally I have song other than Robbie Dupree’s Steal Away floating around in my head (thanks a lot Jaimie), although it is an equally retro song: Cat Stevens’ Morning Has Broken. I think I may love everyone this morning…

So, the library is planning a collaborative fund-raiser with DGI for the Pitman Theatre in September. We’ve been tossing around the idea to have a library prom, one that would be very tongue-in-cheek, but didn’t think we’d have the room at the GPL for the throngs of people who will want to attend. A couple of weeks ago we contacted Kay Moore at DGI about a Prom at the Pitman, and then held our breath...Well, we’ve gotten a big ten-four on this project and we’re moving ahead. The plan goes a little somethin’ like this:

PP Day (Prom at the Pitman) is early September; cost will be $15 stag/$25 couple.

There will be a band and a DJ. Music will be limited to tunes from the discographies of Air Supply, Foreigner, Chicago, REO Speedwagon…

T-shirts will be available for purchase (a lovely “castle in the clouds” silhouette with 2008 Prom at the Pitman on the back-a standard high-school-fare prom t-shirt that you won’t want to miss owning…).

There will be a prom photographer available to take your pit-cher under a balloon arch that has been placed in front of a lattice-work backdrop…yes, you will be able to purchase a package of 8X10, 4X6, and wallet sized photos…

The prom decorating committee is committed to decorating with a maximum of crepe paper and an extra dose of schmaltz (think streamers, balloons, Christmas lights, bowls of water with floating rose candles...)

Dress may be nouveau or retro (we highly encourage retro for the men, especially ruffles and bow-ties…oh, and velvet or satin piping on the lapels and pants-legs)

Our first PSA is going to be: Did Carrie had more fun at her prom than you? Now’s your chance for a do-over! It’s the GPL/DGI Prom at the Pitman: The Second Time Around!

My suggestion for a follow-up to the Prom at the Pitman was a Library All-Skate at the Merry-Go-Round (does anyone else out there think that’s a porno name for a skate rink?). It would just be an excuse to do some rink-side interviews for my comparative film study of Mike Meyer’s use of Xanadu roller choreography in his blockbuster Goldmember.

Lyin' Horse Thief

The conversation took place last night during class. One of the book talks had prompted a discussion about how things were different now than they were when we were kids. And because of the terrible things you hear about happening to kids today, you just couldn’t be careful enough about who your kids hang out with and where they go without adult supervision. One of my classmates told a story about how her and a friend’s son were walking home early one evening, and were approached by a man in a car. The man rolled down his window and asked the boys, “You guys live around here?” The boys froze in their tracks at the question. The man went on, “Do ya’ll like sports?” When the boys still didn’t respond, the man drove on. The boys ran home and told Leslie what had happened. She immediately emailed all of her friends to warn them that this guy was driving through the neighborhood, looking for little boys. Not long after the email went out, she got a response from one of her friends saying that her husband had read the email and thought he might be the person the boys were talking about. See, he’s a coach, and was looking for kids to play on his team and when he saw the boys, he approached them without thinking about how it would look to the boys (man in car, doesn’t introduce himself, asks weird questions, etc.). It was all a mistake, and everybody laughed about it afterwards (albeit nervously), and everything was fine. But the whole point of the story was that you never know what is going to happen to your kids in this day and age.

Well, I’m sitting there thinking of the times Sister and I stayed gone all day in the woods, all the times we would just knock on some neighbor’s door to be let in so that we could get a snack cause it was too far to walk home for food, all the times I spent the night at my strange neighbor’s house (a house that I recall as being creepy for a lot of reasons, reasons that I really don’t want to talk about right now because I may creep my parents out for ever having allowed me to spend the night with those folks). Why, I’m surprised that I survived to be this age, and I looked at my classmate Greg and said such. I mentioned to him that when my family would spend our summer vacation visiting my grandmother in Kentucky, I would disappear on my own most afternoons because I was about a mile away in the neighbor’s field riding the pony that I had been forbidden to ride (oh, I wasn’t going to be stopped by a simple, “No, you might break your neck.”), or looking for stills in the blackberry brambles. I would return at nightfall, legs bleeding from either working my way through the blackberry stickers, or from the pony having tried to rub me off his back by running me into the barbed-wire fence, or both. Yes, I could’ve easily broken my neck while riding that pony, and I could’ve easily been shot for sneaking around a still (especially considering that one of the stills I was sneaking around belonged to my Uncle Roder who was a mean drunk. Such a mean drunk in fact, he would later beat my Aunt Sarah to death in a drunkin rage and then come get me and my grandmother to show us how he had “done her up right.” They weren’t my real Aunt and Uncle, but that didn’t matter, and that’s a whole other story.).

My parents were (and still are) good parents, kept us fed and clothed, taught us about manners, a good work ethic and that we were no better than anyone else (we’d just better behave better than other people). They encouraged us to be realistic dreamers, allowed us to be independent and think for ourselves, but to always be on the lookout for stupid behavior. And they trusted us that we wouldn’t be the ones behaving stupidly. But I did behave stupidly, and quite often, because I was a kid and I didn’t think anything would happen to me. And luckily it didn’t. Just dumb luck.

So I’m thinking again how it’s a good thing that I don’t have children. I’d probably not allow them out of the house until they were twenty-one if I did. Because I’d be worried that they’d pull some kind of crap like I pulled when I was young. And I wouldn’t know about it until it was posted on their blog many years later.

Oh, to be young and wear flowers in your hair…

Yooooo-hooooo…Yooooo-hoooooo.... My nephew was calling up to the second-story window where I was seated at my laptop while writing a paper. This was the first time he had ever done this, and even though I was busy and knew that my responding would get something time-consuming started, I called back down to him. He froze at the sound of my voice resonating from somewhere unknown. Romeo called again. I responded a second time and began to wave from the window. “Hurry, hurry quick Auntie Carol…you must come down right now!” Paper be damned, I sprinted down the steps three at a time and flew out the front door with a flourish! Nephew beamed at me when I appeared on the porch. There’s nothing sweeter than a boy who looks at you with such complete adoration! And he presented me with my favorite flower of all, one that was picked on the spot from the yard, a mere weed, but perhaps the most beautiful wild-onion-flower I’ve ever seen. So beautiful in fact, I poked it behind my ear so that I looked like an island girl. Nephew wanted a flower behind his ear too, so I helped place one there for him (he only has a few good flower-in-the-hair years left in him before some numbskull makes fun of him for such an innocent inclination, so I’m going to encourage it all I can). He then showed me his swing-set skills by climbing up on the slide to jump, and hanging upside down to swing and flip. He did all of this without dislodging the flower from behind his ear. That’s my boy.

I'm a man of means by no means...

After seeing that I was listening to Boxcar Willie, a dear friend of mine (and not surprisingly in this town, a relative of sorts) completely knocked the wind out of me the other day by revealing that there was an individual out there named David Icke who claimed that Boxcar Willie was a satanist and a pedophile. Said friend and relative-of-sorts sent me the link to Mr. Icke's website entitled LIST OF FAMOUS SATANISTS, PEDOPHILES, AND MIND CONTROLLERS so that I could see for myself the libel being spoken about my beloved Boxcar.

Seriously.  Mr. Icke's LIST OF FAMOUS SATANISTS, PEDOPHILES, AND MIND CONTROLLERS

Well I'll be...what an enlightening site. I'm not sure what tipped me off to the fact that Mr. Icke is a bed-wetting nut-case...perhaps it was his liberal labeling of individuals with the term "reptilian shape-shifter." I don't know about you, but I think long and hard before using that kind of character-defaming language (and I’m not taking back “bed-wetting nut-case”). To accuse someone like Boxcar Willie (paragon bard of truckers world-wide and beloved eco-father for his recycling of old stogies that he has found, short, but not too big around), of being a satanist and a pedophile is just flat-out wrong to me. Nowhere can I find evidence pointing to this statement being true (and yes, I’ve done some research). I suggest to Mr. Icke that he adjust his medications and get some bed-rest (he may want to change his urine-soaked sheets first). Otherwise, I may have to hunt him down and make an introduction of my foot to his ass (as Red Foreman would say).
I’m quite put off now…

Follow-up from the same day, entitled:  And another thing about Boxcar...

I suppose that if Mr. Icke wanted to find some sort of pedophilic meaning in Boxcar’s work, the following stanza from King of the Road could provide just the fodder he might need in order to alert child services:

I know every engineer on every train
All of their children, and all of their names
And every handout in every town
And every lock that ain't locked
When no one's around.

Did Mr. Icke believe that Boxcar was suggesting that he knew “every engineer on every train, all of their children and all of their names” in an inappropriate way (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)? And after discovering that Boxcar knew (possibly inappropriately) “every engineer on every train, all of their children and all of their names,” was the line “and every lock that ain’t locked when no one’s around”...could those lines be the the straw that broke the camel’s back and drove him to sling such terms as “Satanist” and “Pedophile” at Boxcar (I’ve yet to find a stanza from any of Boxcar’s songs that would indicate Satanic worship)? For heaven's sake, the man was just looking for a free room!  I suppose that in Mr. Icke’s eyes, being on friendly terms with the offspring of the engineers who worked in the train stations where he swept up to make the four-bit necessary to rent the eight by twelve room he needed in order to have a place to rest his head after a long day of smokin’ and broom pushin’ was not acceptable behavior for a man of the janitorial arts. Maybe so. But judge not Mr. Icke, lest ye be judged.

Personally, I think Mr. Icke works for the union and he was more upset over the line, “I don't pay no union dues” than anything else. Well, I’ve got your union dues right here, Mr. Icke!

Listening to: You guessed it...Boxcar Willie
Reading: YA Literature (still)

Captain Picard, what have you done with my mother?

Mom had eye surgery today, of the cataract kind. She may win the shortest surgery contest for my family (every single one of them, yours truly exclude, have had some very major, very long surgeries in the last fifteen years). The prize for making it through so beautifully was a trip to Cothran’s Bakery. Several dozen doughnut holes, a number of regular glazed, one tiger tail and one custard-filled, chocolate covered éclair later (can you guess which one was mine?), mom was banished to the rocker on the back porch (she didn’t eat all of the doughnuts herself, dad helped). The effects of the “relaxing drug” were like marijuana: she kept tipping over, was a bit loopy and she had the munchies real bad. She needed to stay seated in one place, and stay there quietly. After a half hour, she came and found me and asked me to take the eye patch off, which I did only because Dr. Judge said she could have it off when the feeling started to come back. After many loud “ouches” on her part (scared the dickens out of me), she was in awe at how greatly improved her vision was so quickly after the surgery. I watched her as she faced the window and exclaimed at all she could see…

“Is she just getting a third one put in? Back of the head kinda thing?” a friend of mine queried a couple of days ago, after I had mentioned the eye surgery. Oh no, she already has a third eye in the back of her head that works just fine, as I found when a child…

Sorry about the picture mom! And about the pot reference!

My class is killing me. Thank goodness it's only for the month of May.

Reading: YA literature
Listening to: Ethan and the Ewox (They rocked in Anniston Saturday night).