tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62755729219120545182024-03-05T02:10:36.342-08:00The Left Bank...of the CoosaLa_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.comBlogger329125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-55521169100155286792021-07-19T03:22:00.002-07:002021-07-19T03:22:50.065-07:00Marking Your Spot<p> </p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><b>Marking Your Spot</b><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">He
hands me his latest find, a bookmark, photo of a cat,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">calicoed
and turned towards the camera as if posed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The
tree-edged yard framed by the window<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">that
back-lights the translucent vein-webbed ears.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It is
a fancy cat, with a beribboned neck.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Loved
enough to be photographed. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Like
Fancy the cat, who lived in the house Eric and I bought on 10<sup>th</sup> Street,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and who
rests in our backyard.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I had
been told by the previous owner at the closing on the house<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">where the
unmarked grave was located.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Among
a thicket of sweet shrub.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or was it
forsythia?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Don’t
dig too deep.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">That
next summer, warning forgotten, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
found where Miss Mildred and her daughter had placed Fancy.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">A dark
stain in the soil of the forsythias I was splitting out<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">stopped
me from laboring further.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Now, tucked
between the edge of the patio<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">and
the row of Japanese privit <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">that
years ago replaced the forsythia,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">a
remnant of marble, half hidden in the underbrush, to remember.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Garamond","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">For Jim McGuire<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-91282197690939959622021-07-03T11:43:00.001-07:002021-07-19T03:04:57.733-07:00Chattanooga for the Win<p><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">After over a year and a half of pandemic life without travel, Eric and I went, with a Ziploc bag full of cleaning products for the hotel room, on an overnight excursion to Chattanooga. The ‘Noog holds a special place in our hearts, as it is the first place that we traveled together as friends back in 2008. Since then, we’ve made many getaways to Chattanooga...for beer festivals, for Chattanooga Choo Choo Christmas lights, for concerts (Jason Isbell and Band of Horses), for minor-league baseball, and for major league food (Urban Stack, St. John’s, Public House, Tupelo Honey). This occasion was for Eric‘s birthday.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-9998dc4b-7fff-8625-f3e6-36d0637fe9f6"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We had a late start, what with me dropping Booker off at sleep-away camp (his vet), and Eric waiting in line for the first-Saturday-after-the-third-Monday ABC Store bourbon allocations (I’m not making that up). Then, there was traffic. So much traffic. We were staying downtown at the Courtyard by Marriott, overlooking the river, and close to everything: food, baseball, attractions. As I was checking into the hotel and Eric was parking the car, I discovered that the Chattanooga Waterfront Triathlon (a triathlon Eric has in the past competed in) was scheduled the following day. It just so happened that the START / FINISH line was located one block away. Our hotel was full of athletes and bicycles. It took me almost a half hour to get our luggage and Riverside Wine and Spirits’ purchases up to our seventh floor room because there was only one working elevator. Eric had to circle away and around to find a public parking lot that wasn’t already filled to capacity...eventually we accidentally ran into each other in the lobby.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Agreeing upon a shamefully early and incredibly safe dinner, we ducked into the <a href="https://mellowmushroom.com/location/tn-chattanooga-205-broad-st-37402/" target="_blank">Mellow Mushroom</a> for one of our greatest hits from the past, a Greek salad and gluten-free Philosophers Pie (which is no longer on the menu, but they happily offered to make for us). Post dinner was spent walking across the Walnut Street Pedestrian Bridge, venturing down on the north side of the shore, and then trekking back across the bridge to our hotel room for a quick rest before the ball game.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpqqBou_9AS3tu9VvuBo3Nt6gZSsz4gHfNc2LkDbjFWBam0beGBqCKWug_02WN_Z24Xperym5C9Pkf3nKKuwaPZ50tHy4lJgyY2CDyfwMtGIUcTdcPQuT8r8Oxavvg89OkAznHst6oxjUn/s640/061C07E2-FBF5-44EC-AFBF-1B3EC8AF7702.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpqqBou_9AS3tu9VvuBo3Nt6gZSsz4gHfNc2LkDbjFWBam0beGBqCKWug_02WN_Z24Xperym5C9Pkf3nKKuwaPZ50tHy4lJgyY2CDyfwMtGIUcTdcPQuT8r8Oxavvg89OkAznHst6oxjUn/s320/061C07E2-FBF5-44EC-AFBF-1B3EC8AF7702.JPG" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Philosopher's Pie, Mellow Mushroom</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.visitchattanooga.com/listing/chattanooga-lookouts-at%26t-field/846/" target="_blank">AT&T Field</a>, which is home of the Chattanooga Lookouts, was one block away from the Marriott. The visiting team was Alabama’s own Huntsville Trash Pandas. Our carefully researched seats behind home plate (good view and netting to protect against wayward baseballs) gave us one of the best vantage points that we’ve ever had at that field. With a blue sky rapidly filling with storm clouds, both teams took turns scoring until, during an impressive stadium wave started by persistent Trash Panda fans, the Lookouts hit a home run, resulting in three runs being scored. The Trash Pandas attempted to make a comeback, but their momentum seemed to have vanished. Rain scattered fans into the tunnels below the bleachers, sending some running, never to return. But the game continued until the top of the ninth, which is where it ended with the Lookouts victorious. We triumphantly poured with the crowd out of AT&T Field and made our way along the streets back to our hotel room, where we were able to catch (without wait) the one operating elevator.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The next morning, as some brave-hearted individuals triathed their way throughout the downtown area, we researched popular gluten-free breakfast options. We landed on the well-reviewed <a href="https://www.bantamandbiddy.com" target="_blank">Bantam + Biddy</a>, known for their gluten-free chicken and waffles. As we approached the restaurant, a gentleman with a mohawk and a bouncer / manager-vibe opened the door for us. At the counter, I launched into, “I have a severe gluten allergy, and I read on the Internet that you guys have the best gluten-free chicken and waffles. I don’t see that listed on the menu as being gluten-free, but I was curious to know if that’s something I could…” I trailed off hopefully. The server’s immediate response was, “That’s what we do here!'' Which was seconded by the mohawked-bouncer-manager-doorman’s confident, “You came to the right place.”</span></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHFEJRQBqixObHCGRld90YfQ6kiR_oEPCE179uVih4CrN9DZJYT_1KOSGxu5wAgnbe3NJn9LuxB3xn7ADiMSckITM0_uarVALufTmGoTeUOB7Xv-jm-cInkemmRdFXJ7JyFfYYjN-KU9yz/s640/IMG_4103.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHFEJRQBqixObHCGRld90YfQ6kiR_oEPCE179uVih4CrN9DZJYT_1KOSGxu5wAgnbe3NJn9LuxB3xn7ADiMSckITM0_uarVALufTmGoTeUOB7Xv-jm-cInkemmRdFXJ7JyFfYYjN-KU9yz/s320/IMG_4103.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gluten-free Chicken & Waffles, <br />Bantam + Biddy</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><br /></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 12pt; margin-top: 12pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-variant-position: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, gluten-free chicken and waffles for each of us! With a bourbon pecan maple syrup chaser! The chicken was perfectly fried...lightly crispy on the outside, juicy on the inside. The waffle tasted like it was full of all the gluten in the world, which it was not. And the bourbon pecan maple syrup was like liquid bourbon pecan pie. If I could’ve bottled that meal up, I would've worn it as perfume. Instead, I boxed it up and took the leftovers home, getting two more meals from it. And just like that, Bantam & Biddy made it to our major-league food list!</span></p></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline" />La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-71983178883299088072021-03-26T03:26:00.002-07:002021-03-26T03:26:56.507-07:00Snow flurries expected in New Orleans this weekend.<p><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="color: #222222;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34);">The hot chills. Sounds like something Holly Golightly would say to Paul Varjak in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. You know, while at a loud party, Holly leans in close to Paul and declares in her almost-transatlantic-accented voice, "I've got the mean reds and the </span></span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">hot chills</span><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;">..." Except I didn't have the mean reds, just the hot chills, and they were caused by Moderna.</span></span></p><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">I received my second COVID vaccination last Thursday morning. Initially, I had absolutely no side effects. I may have even been bragging about the lack of side effects (Bragging cometh before a fall, right?). But around 1AM the following morning, I woke to a headache and the worst cold shivering chills that I have experienced in a long time. Not willing to leave the warmth of the bed, I burrowed deeper into the covers and went back to sleep. Within two hours, the cold chills had been replaced with hot chills, which should not be a thing. It’s hard to describe them. You’re hot and shivering, but you’re also chilled. The hot chills.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">By 4:30AM, I had confirmed a low-grade fever of a little over 100 degrees, and had moved to the office sofa. I was laying there shivering with the hot chills, obsessing about what kind of weather report Sally Tomato would give me if I went to visit him at Sing Sing while also obsessing about how sad it was that the directors had cast Mickey Rooney as Mr. Yunioshi instead of an Asian American actor. As a child, I found the Yunioshi character to be so funny. It wasn’t until I watched the film as an adult that I realized how racist the humor was...</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">In a week, Eric and I will be considered fully vaccinated. We look forward to finally getting to safely socialize with some of our other fully vaccinated friends, while continuing to practice the CDC's recommendations of social distancing and masking...you can still get, and be a carrier of, COVID even while being fully vaccinated, and we have too many friends and family members who have health conditions and are at risk. </span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">I am happy to be a part of the Biden-Harris administration's 100 Million Shots in 100 Days. Which is now the 200 Million Shots in 100 Days because we crushed the first goal in 58 days. Such is competent leadership.</span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;"><br /></span></div><div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet;">As an aside, about 30 minutes after my first Moderna dose, I detected a strong chemically floral smell coming from the injection site. Eric could not smell it, even though it was incredibly strong to me. The smell followed me to bed, but it was gone by morning. Additionally, seven days after my first dose, I experienced what some people are referring to as "COVID Arm" or "Moderna Arm," which is described as a delayed reaction to the shot. At the injection site, my arm developed a hard, raised circular spot that was itchy, red, and hot to the touch. The symptoms persisted for about 48 hours and then disappeared.</span></div>La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-59537091339726321262020-12-17T12:10:00.000-08:002020-12-17T12:10:23.775-08:00Christmas Letter 2020<p><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">7 Dec 2020</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-indent: 36pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-1a2882df-7fff-ccdc-542e-6a6d5c6b56b3"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Greetings from Gadsden!</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Let me say this first: I will not miss 2020 when it is over. I will remember it forever, having been shaped by it in odd and startling ways, but I will not miss it.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Eric and I have small circles of chosen pandemic people we see regularly: my mom, whom I, masked & socially distanced from, happily take breakfast to every Sunday morning and together with Eric, handle yard work and various other tasks for; and our closest friends, a family of six, who live near us, and with whom we maintain a 10+ year tradition of Saturday night dinner. We have perfected Saturday Supper Club to maintain our sanity during the pandemic: extreme social distancing with masks while outdoors, regardless of the temperature. We’ve had some incredible meals together, despite the complications. Most recently we enjoyed salmon, mushroom-stuffed rice balls, glazed green beans, and miso soup in the bay of their two-car garage. Both doors were rolled wide open, camp chairs were placed 20+ feet apart near the opening, and we were warmed by the flame of a portable Craftsman propane f</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; text-decoration-line: line-through; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">lame thrower</span><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> heater. There may also have been wine and bourbon…</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Because of the lack of certain items in the grocery stores at the onset of the pandemic, and an initial fear of shopping, I started a small garden. Not a huge one, but enough of a garden to supplement our food supply with fresh tomatoes, various peppers, garlic, green onions, oregano, thyme, and lots and lots of basil. Eric would often have to help me tie up the tomatoes, as they outgrew my height very quickly. Every morning before work, I would go out to prune and weed and water. After work, I’d take a basket out and gather. We had more than we needed, so we shared with family, friends, neighbors. That little garden produced up until two weeks ago, which is when I winterized the space. Eric has recently shared with me his idea to build a type of portable raised-bed that employs bales of hay in the bottoms ...a type of Hugelkulture. I’m totally game. If only there was some way I could grow toilet paper and Clorox wipes...</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Our families are doing well. Mom, at 83, continues to work full time at the library in Rainbow City. My sister and I do her shopping for her, so her whereabouts are simple...home or work. Vicki and I are the only ones allowed in her home, and we religiously practice the holy trinity of the pandemic: mask, social distance, hand wash. Eric‘s family is doing well out in Kansas and Missouri. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, we have not traveled to see them this year. We miss them, but see them virtually.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We still live with our Catahoula, Booker, in our little downtown bungalow overlooking the wildlife park. The leaves have finally fallen from the trees and the kudzu has died back for the season, giving us a winter view that we dream about during the summer months...from our kitchen window we watch the egrets dance above Lake Gadsden, the late afternoon sun turning the water a shimmering amber and gold.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hope this finds you safe, happy & healthy.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.7999999999999998; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 6pt;"><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Big love,</span></p><div><span style="color: #222222; font-size: 10pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-72122677498845292452020-12-16T06:20:00.000-08:002020-12-16T06:20:20.387-08:00The Gluten Free Black & White Cookie<p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_bZSxzJXh2xiEectM85DZNj147EOTQL_qivjBy4AvfHdVr5GsBRfPj566cJUcbBnH265nswjPpyARByK7UmrfRa3sELRzFFtnd72u16bszCVXwn8k62XANMB5rIP7h7eA-oFY21N5CVfO/s2016/IMG_3377.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_bZSxzJXh2xiEectM85DZNj147EOTQL_qivjBy4AvfHdVr5GsBRfPj566cJUcbBnH265nswjPpyARByK7UmrfRa3sELRzFFtnd72u16bszCVXwn8k62XANMB5rIP7h7eA-oFY21N5CVfO/s320/IMG_3377.jpg" /></a></span></span></div><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><br /><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span><p></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Recently, mom mentioned wanting a black & white cookie. Like, the NYC Black & White Cookie. We live in Gadsden, AL, so that poses a bit of a problem. It's not that black & white cookies don't exist here, they are just harder to come by in these parts. I used to make them myself, but that was over nine years ago, when I wasn't gluten free. Life was easier then, in more ways than one. But, I recently came into two bags of gluten free baking flour (gifted from a friend whose daughter had obtained it mistakenly, and NOT being a gluten free girl, was at a loss as to what to do with it), and had all of the other ingredients.</span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of my favorite things to do when I lived in upstate New York was to walk up to the corner store on a Sunday morning, pick up a black & white cookie, a cup of black coffee, and a copy of the Sunday NY Times...</span></span></span></p><p><span style="background-color: white;"><span face="system-ui, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, .SFNSText-Regular, sans-serif" style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">It has taken me two nights and two recipes to perfect a suitable gluten free version of this sacred cookie. For the most amazing gluten free cake-like consistency, I used the cookie batter ingredients and instructions at <a href="https://www.momlovesbaking.com/classic-nyc-black-white-cookies/" target="_blank">Mom Loves Baking.</a> For the glossy icing, I used the icing ingredients (I added a half teaspoon of almond extract to the white batch when making) and directions at <a href="https://smittenkitchen.com/2008/09/black-and-white-cookies/" target="_blank">Smitten Kitchen.</a> The gluten free cookie from Mom Loves Baking does not taste gluten free AT ALL. If I had not made these myself to know they were safe, I would be very </span></span></span><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">skeptical of their GF status. Eric has willingly served as in-home quality control taste tester. He has approved twice. Mom will be the final judge tonight.</span></span></p><p><span style="color: #050505;"><span style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lise's post from Mom Loves Baking referenced the unforgettable Seinfeld episode that featured the black & white cookie where Jerry famously says, "You see, Elaine, the key to eating a black and white cookie is that you wanna get some </span><span style="caret-color: rgb(5, 5, 5); font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate. And yet still somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie, all our problems would be solved."</span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDI_pfUTkKnNqtYYa4NpvtsAwPmX6jeMn1PLeezCbGd45HjpA_aavlOoEu57ycG3O9jaRTsCGvq2QTWmZ7ww7GBRs2XwzWxUj05AZ6lJwi5UwXV7myqsRMoBpUwMLU5DqzMTA8rt4ANaRw/s2016/IMG_3373.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDI_pfUTkKnNqtYYa4NpvtsAwPmX6jeMn1PLeezCbGd45HjpA_aavlOoEu57ycG3O9jaRTsCGvq2QTWmZ7ww7GBRs2XwzWxUj05AZ6lJwi5UwXV7myqsRMoBpUwMLU5DqzMTA8rt4ANaRw/s320/IMG_3373.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-90569330692894813092020-01-22T04:18:00.000-08:002020-01-22T04:18:06.191-08:00To a Contact Lens, Lost on Argyle Circle<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">It is 22 degrees this morning, so I politely decline my usual morning walk. I am reminded of a poem I wrote in February or March of 2018:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21;"><b>To a Contact Lens, Lost on Argyle Circle</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21;">Frigid fingers finding in the lid…nothing.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Accidentally wiped from the eye</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">to the thankless sidewalk below.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I stumble on for another mile and a half,</span><br />
<span style="caret-color: rgb(28, 30, 33); color: #1c1e21; font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">and wave politely at empty cars.</span><br />
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-26559346584993463972019-12-24T04:47:00.000-08:002019-12-24T04:50:34.096-08:00Irvin S. Cobb Bridge<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Irvin S. Cobb Bridge</td></tr>
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Irvin S. Cobb Bridge. Some people call it Danger Bridge. Okay, so maybe we're the only ones who call it Danger Bridge. Beautiful bridge, but it reminds me of the Scream Machine at the Atlanta Six Flags. Not a comparison you want to make to a bridge you're crossing in the early morning fog while trying to get to the interstate from Paducah, KY backroads. This bridge reopened back in September of this year after being closed for approximately four months for repairs and modifications. The modifications were to restrict width and weight of vehicles using the bridge...mainly to stop illegal truck traffic. Eric and I shudder to think of what encountering an 18-wheeler or a farm tractor on that bridge would be like...<br />
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<div style="caret-color: rgb(34, 34, 34); margin-bottom: 0.5em; margin-top: 0.5em;">
<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">"The Brookport Bridge (officially the Irvin S. Cobb Bridge) is a ten-span, steel deck (grate), narrow two-lane truss bridge that carries U.S. Route 45 (US 45) across the Ohio River in the U.S. states of Illinois and Kentucky. It connects Paducah, Kentucky, north to Brookport, Illinois.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">The bridge is named after Irvin S. Cobb, an author and journalist who was born in Paducah." (Wikipedia)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">It's short closure had an economic impact:</span></div>
<span style="box-sizing: border-box;"><a href="https://www.wpsdlocal6.com/news/brookport-bridge-closure-turns-the-lights-out-on-a-local/article_b1913568-bafb-11e9-ba28-177288da10a5.html" target="_blank">Brookport Bridge closure turns the lights out on a local business</a></span>La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-16077944755128212812018-12-09T09:54:00.000-08:002018-12-09T09:54:57.946-08:00Sam J. Kourkos<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Eric Wright, December 8, 2017.</td></tr>
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One year ago yesterday, Eric and I were honored to be on the same flight from Atlanta, GA to Kansas City, MO as the remains of a WWII soldier who was killed in the Gilbert Islands in1943. With a cold Southern rain on the verge of turning into the snow that would later shut the airport down, we watched silently and prayerfully from the window of the plane as Marine Corps Reserve Pfc. Sam J. Kourkos boarded in his flag-draped casket, flanked by salutes. My thoughts on that flight were of our grandmother who had passed away the month before and whose memorial service we were traveling to attend, and of this soldier who died so long ago and was on his way to be reunited with family, seventy-four years late. This was a homecoming for Pfc. Kourkos. A homecoming that would end for him at the airport in MO, where family and media waited. When our plane landed, he disembarked ahead of us into the brilliant Kansas City sunshine, while we, spellbound, watched from the windows until the flight attendants had to ask us to please disembark the plane ourselves so they could allow the connecting passengers to board. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/74-years-later-slain-wwii-marines-remains-returned-to-family" target="_blank">74 years later, slain WWII Marine's remains returned to family</a><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><a href="http://www.dpaa.mil/News-Stories/News-Releases/PressReleaseArticleView/Article/1385982/funeral-announcement-for-marine-killed-during-world-war-ii-kourkos-s/" target="_blank">Funeral Announcement For Marine Killed During World War II (Kourkos, S.)</a><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<b><a href="https://www.kansas.com/news/state/article188397039.html" target="_blank">He died in battle nearly 75 years ago — now he’s coming home to Kansas</a><o:p></o:p></b></div>
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La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-87310552870669152982018-07-07T06:40:00.001-07:002018-07-07T06:48:20.129-07:00Birmingham, Alabama: Five Points<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">We are terrible at relaxing.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">So terrible at relaxing, Eric had to change out hoses on the Jeep and I had to put a second coat of stain on the front door before we could “earn” our planned-for-over-two-months-ago, out-of-town-for-one-night getaway.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";"> </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">This is NOT normal behavior.</span><br />
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With promises to each other to do better at relaxing and getting away in the future, Slim and I hopped on I-59 and headed south to Birmingham. Our destination was the art deco Hotel Indigo (formerly the Hotel Highland…more formerly than that, the Pickwick Hotel…and even more formerly, the Medical Arts Building), overlooking The Storyteller Fountain in historic Five Points. The inspiration for the trip was a gift certificate from the clever and thoughtful Steven and McKenna to Frank Stitt’s <a href="https://highlandsbarandgrill.com/" target="_blank">Highlands Bar & Grill</a>. A gift certificate that was just over a year old, having been intended as a gift for our birthdays LAST YEAR. Have I mentioned how bad we are at relaxing? The upside of waiting a year to spend a gift certificate to a restaurant like Highlands is that IT MIGHT WIN ANOTHER James Beard Award during that year. Which is exactly what happened back in May when Highlands won “<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;"><a href="https://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/05/highlands_bar_and_grill.html" target="_blank">the prestigious James Beard Foundation Award as the most outstanding restaurant in America.” </a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">The downside to a James Beard Foundation Award for the most outstanding restaurant in America (if there is a downside), is that even if you call several weeks in advance to make dinner reservations for a Thursday evening, you may find that there are no reservations to be had. And in a case like that, thank goodness for the bar, which requires no reservations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">We arrived in the ‘ham in time for a late lunch at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken. Our server Kordell helped me navigate around the gluten, which resulted in a very tasty basket of grilled chicken tenders with slaw and potato salad. Eric managed a basket of spicy fried leg quarters with fries. After watching Anthony Bourdain sweat through a hot chicken basket from Bolton’s on his Nashville Parts Unknown, we had both ordered cautiously in our heat choice, but agreed that we’d go hotter next time. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Maybe it was because the corporate inspection threw off our check-in at <a href="https://www.ihg.com/hotelindigo/hotels/us/en/birmingham/bhmid/hoteldetail" target="_blank">Hotel Indigo</a> and someone took pity on us, or perhaps it was our Gadsden (and Nanda Patel) connection with the young woman handling guest services that afternoon, but we ended up with the most extraordinary corner suite of rooms with a view of Red Mountain’s Vulcan instead of a standard room with a nothing special view. Upon entering # 307 and first seeing a sofa, coffee table and TV, with a kitchen and small dining set just beyond, I thought, “Oh, no! Where’s the bed?” We realized very quickly and quite to our disbelief that we were standing in a parlor and that down the hall, past the sliding-industrial-doored-bathroom was the bed, a closet with safe, a desk, a chaise lounge and another television. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Swanky room left behind in favor of a walkabout in the neighborhood, we stumbled upon Charlemagne Records. The concert-poster-plastered stairwell was just like it was twenty-four years ago when I hesitantly ventured there while killing time before my Physical Anthropology grad class. Red carpet still stained. Bins like a feed-n-seed store, full of old and new vinyl as well as CDs. Two original Howard Finsters swung from the ceiling. And although I’ve been paring down my CD collection, I purchased <i>Cannonball & Coltrane</i>, <i>Son House’s Original Delta Blues</i>, and <i>Atlantic Jazz’s Best of the ‘50s. </i>Another promise made, this time with just myself, to get my old CD player from mom’s house and take time to listen to CDs again. Slow life down some and enjoy it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">Highlands Bar & Grill was already hopping by the time we stepped over their threshold at 5:30PM. Seated at the bar, we enjoyed an adult beverage while we daydreamed of home projects. A Pecan Old-Fashioned for Eric (Knob Creek, pecan orgeat, orange peel, Angostura Bitters), a Bourbon Crusta for me (Four Roses Small Batch Bourbon, Cointreau, Luxardo Maraschino, lemon juice).</span> <o:p></o:p></div>
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As we sat with our drinks and dreams, Eric’s face took on a look of someone who has seen something that they are excited about, but also want to be cool about. “Are you okay,” I asked. Eyes growing wider, through clenched teeth, “Yesh. I think I just saw the guy.” “What guy…Oh, Chef Stitt?” I totally couldn’t turn around to look because it would’ve been completely rude, and would’ve betrayed my fangirl feelings towards chefs, including all of those feelings left raw and exposed from Anthony Bourdain’s death. So, I kept my back turned and my mouth shut as we ordered another round of drinks, a Buffalo Creek for monsieur (Knob Creek, ginger syrup, lemon juice) and a Paradise Cay for madam (Appleton Signature Blend, Ferrand Dry Curacao, Lustau East India Sherry, orange, lime). <o:p></o:p></div>
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Still full from our late Hattie B’s Hot Chicken lunch, but not wanting to miss out on the amazing food from Highlands, I ordered a Belle Meadows Little Gem Lettuces salad of cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, and Green Goddess dressing, while Eric ordered the Prime Beef Tartine on sourdough with Arugula, pickled onions and Roquefort aioli.<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">After several hours on a bar stool and a final nightcap, we made our way back along the tree-lined streets, past The Storyteller and to the Indigo. A pack of bicyclists pelotoned past us at one point, a festive, motley group of neighborhood riders, reminding us of the two whose gift certificate prompted the getaway in the first place, and a silent thank you went out to Steven and McKenna. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; letter-spacing: 0.15pt;">We tucked into our decadent digs early, wanting to take advantage of the luxurious suite…and the cable TV in two rooms. I woke the next morning disappointed that we had not experienced any of the supernatural goings on that other guests have reported at the hotel, but Eric was quick to point out that maybe all of the little odd things we experienced were our version of a supernatural force (room mix up, elevator refusing to come when called, staff accidentally opening our room up for inspection…with us in it). A final meal at the spectacularly understaffed Waffle House allowed us time to people watch and dig deep into our wells of patience before hopping back on I-59 to head north to Gadsden.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Charlemagne Records</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Storyteller</td></tr>
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La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-32823162523867609232018-01-26T10:32:00.001-08:002018-01-26T10:32:24.354-08:00This time, last year.Last week, Eric and I were reminiscing about how this time last year we were in Atlanta for the American Library Association's Mid-Winter convention. And how one night we (and Amanda & Jeremy) had dinner and drinks with Joshilyn Jackson ('cause she and Amanda are BFFs), how one day Eric met and chatted with Senator John Lewis during his book signing, and how on the final day of the convention we were witnesses to the magic show of NEIL PATRICK HARRIS, a magic show during which Mr. Harris stunned us all with one of the biggest slights of hand I've ever seen (or not seen, because hey, slight of hand).<br />
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But once we came back from convention, we got down to the business of having our retaining wall and second patio built. We went from this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuHzFKsoXthz-Us1z-FwsNG2TZp_OwLiBd5OJ1mHBRytgML73mLmaEId3EdgpctFYQ2VNIG-TXz2omktlIuE5xJ76k8zTVg3Dbr2G77bGnkFoNIEL5ihm58Iowq-V3JU1hn8yxLMAIgqz4/s1600/32044593370_8fc0f99d8f_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuHzFKsoXthz-Us1z-FwsNG2TZp_OwLiBd5OJ1mHBRytgML73mLmaEId3EdgpctFYQ2VNIG-TXz2omktlIuE5xJ76k8zTVg3Dbr2G77bGnkFoNIEL5ihm58Iowq-V3JU1hn8yxLMAIgqz4/s320/32044593370_8fc0f99d8f_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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To this, with the work of our friends from Finlayson Landscape Design:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9M8wkPshd4uVku5_GedNAoXcwAWQN2LHX1uXS9dvaJLTFIG4fMZpolLR2DghIs9xK9-PtVq-iqhlfN2YekXUmC4SjLuOdq5Sdme6e_MP1KXdO1PL0tS9xPs2wrId4YH5KjbbjV_Cg1S0a/s1600/32570492391_a94b1f3413_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9M8wkPshd4uVku5_GedNAoXcwAWQN2LHX1uXS9dvaJLTFIG4fMZpolLR2DghIs9xK9-PtVq-iqhlfN2YekXUmC4SjLuOdq5Sdme6e_MP1KXdO1PL0tS9xPs2wrId4YH5KjbbjV_Cg1S0a/s320/32570492391_a94b1f3413_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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And then, after moving some plants I'd been saving for the spot, plus the dawn of a new season, this:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQDdO5BWcjH6LdQmq9ZKEtKMZCkqv6suFs_mz2roHF9Jsl1gqIS5D6WhyphenhyphendB7yrOTbqO7ZIxKOwthhZiKnx9fJ02mti8BjJbDKVfQ7SRsxyTwFrjL1Njy1O2zhWE2IhE2fGb-Njck6xs6q/s1600/33357426894_d792d900da_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFQDdO5BWcjH6LdQmq9ZKEtKMZCkqv6suFs_mz2roHF9Jsl1gqIS5D6WhyphenhyphendB7yrOTbqO7ZIxKOwthhZiKnx9fJ02mti8BjJbDKVfQ7SRsxyTwFrjL1Njy1O2zhWE2IhE2fGb-Njck6xs6q/s320/33357426894_d792d900da_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Yes, that's Booker in the middle of the planting bed. With his stick. The three of us have enjoyed sharing that space with our people.</div>
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La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-47207442522359670862018-01-24T11:04:00.001-08:002018-01-24T11:04:13.314-08:00The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I was completely
hooked by the first chapter of <i>The Shadow
of the Wind</i> by Carlos Ruiz Zafón.
The chapter was enticingly entitled “The Cemetery of Forgotten Books.” It is to this Cemetery of Forgotten Books
that protagonist Daniel Sempere’s father has brought him so that he may choose
a book of his own to protect for the rest of his life and make sure that it is never
forgotten. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">“This is a place of
mystery, Daniel, a sanctuary. Every book, every volume you see here, has a
soul. The soul of the person who wrote it and of those who read it and lived
and dreamed with it. Every time a book changes hands, every time someone runs
his eyes down its pages, its spirit grows and strengthens. This place was
already ancient when my father brought me here for the first time, many years
ago. Perhaps as old as the city itself. Nobody knows for certain how long it
has existed, or who created it. I will tell you what my father told me, though.
When a library disappears, or a bookshop closes down, when a book is consigned
to oblivion, those of us who know this place, its guardians, make sure that it
gets here. In this place, books no longer remembered by anyone, books that are
lost in time, live forever, waiting for the day when they will reach a new
reader's hands. In the shop we buy and sell them, but in truth books have no
owner. Every book you here has been somebody's best friend. Now they only have
us, Daniel. Do you think you'll be able to keep such a secret?” (page 6,
Penguin Books, softcover edition)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">In that sacred place,
Daniel chooses a title by an author unknown to him, <i>The Shadow of the Wind</i> by Julián Carax. And in that same sacred
place begins Daniel’s quest to find more works by Carax, works that are
impossible to find because a mysterious stranger has been destroying them as if
in an attempt to wipe clean the world of any evidence of the author’s
existence...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Eric recommended
Zafón’s <i>The Shadow of the Wind</i> to me
with the promise of passages reminiscent of Garcia Márquez and Faulkner. Yes. <i>Shadow</i>
is a lush and juicy story within a story; a literary mystery full of suspense, romance,
and murder. It is the type of book to
read and re-read, to protect and make sure that it is never forgotten. When I came to the end of this book, I thought
back to a passage from the beginning, “</span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 10.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Those
first images, the echo of words we think we have left behind, accompany us
throughout our lives and sculpt a palace in our memory to which, sooner or
later—no matter how many books we read, how many worlds we discover, or how
much we learn or forget—we will return.” (page 8, Penguin Books, softcover
edition)</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-32548495663458026042017-06-27T09:37:00.001-07:002017-06-27T09:37:35.685-07:00The 1965 Simmons Hide-A-Bed<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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I've been a lover of all things mid-century for many years, probably because
I grew up in a home filled with sturdy, modest mid-century furnishings, and was
raised by parents with solid mid-century lives. It all just sort of
rubbed off on me. I also have several friends who have purchased
mid-century homes, which I drool over when I visit, dreaming of the decorating,
landscaping and entertaining possibilities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Martinis and jazz, anyone?<br />
<br />
So, when I discover mid-century pieces at local thrift stores, I have an
instinct to purchase whatever it is for myself, or to photograph and text my
friends to come purchase for themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Which brings me to the mid-century Hide-A-Bed that I found at the local
Goodwill three years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a dusty, tired mess, but solid and
heavy as a rock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A quick search on
Google revealed that it was a <a href="http://www.magazine-advertisements.com/uploads/2/1/8/4/21844100/simmons-modern-hide-a-bed-sofa-1.jpg" target="_blank">1965 Simmons Hide-A-Bed Tuxedo</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Everything was original, right down to the
upholstery, the small arm pillows AND mattress (frightening, I know).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it was $65.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I convinced Eric that it was the perfect
piece for The Bungalow office/guest room, that I would pay to have it
re-upholstered myself, and that we would all three live happily ever after.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And one day I expect that he will stop taking my phone
calls.<br />
<br />
Three hours later, after the Simmons Hide-A-Bed gouged our wooden floor, scraped
two of our door frames and drawn blood from the movers (my forgiving husband
and my truck-owning friend), I made the decision that I would teach myself how
to re-upholster the sofa myself because it was NEVER leaving the house
again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And really, how hard would it be to
re-upholster a sofa...<br />
<br />
With new mattress purchased, I began to research DIY re-upholstery and
discovered a<a href="https://do-it-yourselfdesign.blogspot.ca/2013/08/how-to-re-upholster-sofa.html" target="_blank"> blog post by Abby Metz at DIY Design</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> Abby’s determination,
resourcefulness (reusing tackstrips and such) and attention to detail resonated with me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only thing missing from her post was how
to recover the cushions, but that was something I was able to figure out on my
own by taking apart the cushion covers myself (labeling and numbering and
reusing the original zippers).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Abby’s blog
post was perfect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I read and reread it
for probably a full year before I finally pulled the trigger on my own project.
And it only took me two years to complete!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Seriously, it didn’t take that long...I just worked on it in two phases
because, you know, life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I tackled the
cushions last summer, then upholstered the body this past January.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is Booker’s favorite sofa to sleep on,
which freaks me out because it’s like he knows all the work I put into it and
he tries to psych me out by kicking off all the pillows and burrowing
frantically under the pet cover we keep on it to protect it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many a night Eric and I will search for the
dog only to discover him hidden under that cover, laughing at us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdp5Dp2Etxre4vJFFX3VHKYxd4rcceZBtUwx0zd0nMXnacGqp-1EFcKwyQDuePC1Rsu3H7iJkHB5Q3JkO4ThM3xDsvx6xix8OPAcqSZPVaxKN-oUV2zjm8-iHm4pMMVpna4l2eugO53o-g/s1600/17668375709_a6a7350bac_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdp5Dp2Etxre4vJFFX3VHKYxd4rcceZBtUwx0zd0nMXnacGqp-1EFcKwyQDuePC1Rsu3H7iJkHB5Q3JkO4ThM3xDsvx6xix8OPAcqSZPVaxKN-oUV2zjm8-iHm4pMMVpna4l2eugO53o-g/s320/17668375709_a6a7350bac_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fresh from the Goodwill!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Taking apart the cushion cover.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cushions complete.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pre-upholstered body.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Removing the back panel.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Removing the arm upholstery.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Removing old batting.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fitting the new arm piece.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cutting the front kick panel.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pulling the front back off.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Going off script for the back.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After two days and sixty adjustments.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Done.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Where's Booker?</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waking up.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Still waking up. Or he's laughing at us. I don't know which.</td></tr>
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<![endif]-->La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-43480536566421474912017-06-09T04:11:00.004-07:002017-06-09T04:11:48.877-07:00The Fawn & the Beer Can<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Yesterday morning mom sent me the following text, “There’s a
fawn in my front yard.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We were all
thinking of the fact that it was the one-year anniversary of dad’s death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My response was, “If that’s not a sign, then
I don’t know what is.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Mom replied, “I
think it was a sign that he is ok.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My
granny always believed in signs.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And
that made me think back to late winter of this year when we were prepping the
backyard for the retaining wall and I found an old Miller High Life can full of
target practice holes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I looked down at
the can in disbelief and said out loud, “Oh, wow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s totally dad’s brand…and look, it’s a
pull-top from the 70s!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I took it as a
sign that dad approved of our building plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
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So, I’m going to believe that dad sent us signs, both in
forms that spoke of his personality and humor, and both in forms that the
receivers would understand.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To mom he
sent a fawn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To me he sent an old Miller
High Life can.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-40591487182105840472017-06-08T15:12:00.001-07:002017-06-09T03:43:19.881-07:00The Myth of Ken Roark<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">“And that’s when I discovered that
my father hadn’t been dying after all. He was just changing, transforming
himself into something new and different to carry his life forward
in. </span> </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">All this time, my father was
becoming a fish.</span> </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>
</i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>I saw him dart this way and that, a
silvery, brilliant, shining life, and disappear into the darkness of the deep
water where the big fish go, and I haven’t seen him since-though others
have. Already I’ve heard stories, of lives saved and wishes granted, of
children carried for miles on his back, of anglers mischievously dumped from
their vessels and emptied into various oceans and streams from Beaufort to
Hyannis by the biggest fish they’ve ever seen, and they tell their stories to
anybody who will listen.</i></span></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But no one believes them. No one believes a word." </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Daniel Wallace, <i>Big Fish</i></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This time last year, dad passed
away. With characteristic hyperbole, I like to say that his soul took its
leave through the bedroom window that mom had left open (like any good wife of
a dying Irishman). And with additional hyperbole, on that day, to quote
Daniel Wallace, “my father became a myth.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Writing an obituary for dad was not
easy. It was impossible to sum up in a handful of paragraphs
seventy-eight years of a life well-lived. So, with help from mom, Vicki
and even dad (don’t ask), I pieced together a modest, presentable obituary. But anyone who actually knew Ken Roark probably took one look
at that obit in the Gadsden Times and knew there were about 647 additional
pages of his story missing. So, on the first anniversary of his death,
for the sake of sharing a bit more about Dad, I’d like to add to his obituary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not an additional 646 pages, but probably
another four pages.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>“Kenneth Victor Roark, passed away
at his home on June 8, 2016. He was seventy-eight years old. A
long-time resident of Rainbow City, Mr. Roark was honored when he was named the
first king of the Alabama Chocolate Festival in 2006. No other king has
been named since.”</i> This is all true. Ours is the royal house of
Roark. He is the one and only Alabama Chocolate Festival King.
Which makes mom a queen, Vicki and me princesses, and Eric and Tony
princes. With no sons, I believe the crown and scepter will one day go to
his grandson Alex. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>“Born in 1938 in Cincinnati, Ohio,
Mr. Roark served in the United States Navy on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lake
Champlain from 1955 to 1959.”</i> Indeed, he was born in Cincinnati, which is
where both of his daughters were born. And yes, he served on the U.S.S.
Lake Champlain, which sailed many places, most notably, the Mediterranean
Sea. While in the Navy, dad was in two police actions: one in
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the other in Beirut, Lebanon. And while he didn’t
often talk about his time in the Navy, certain stories about dad were
common knowledge in our household. I certainly grew up knowing the name
Buford Greer, the man who kept a young and underweight Ken Roark from being
blown off the deck of the ship during flight take offs and landings. I
also knew about dad’s jail time in Lisbon, Portugal for throwing a man
through a plate-glass window while defending a woman’s honor. <a href="http://theleftbankofthecoosa.blogspot.com/2013/06/fathers-day-2013.html" target="_blank">And I knewabout that one time his ship caught on fire. </a> It’s hard to think about dad being
that young and tender, experiencing so much before he was even twenty.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>“It was after his military service
that he began working for Proctor & Gamble in downtown Cincinnati, where he
met coworker Joan Smith, who would become his wife in 1962. In 1971, he
moved his wife and young daughters, Vicki and Carol, to Gadsden, Alabama to
work as terminal manager/owner operator with D.O.X. Trucking Company. He
served in various management and driving positions related to transportation and
distribution, including working for the Goodyear Wingfoot division for ten
years.” </i> Yes, my sister and I have P&G to thank for our lives...it is
a long-running joke in our family.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And yes,
we did move to a rental house on Noccalula Mountain in Gadsden (our backyard
was on the banks of Black Creek), and then further out to up-and-coming Rainbow
City when he purchased the old Hamilton Place. And much of the last part
of that paragraph was a fancy way of saying that dad was, simply put,
a trucker who also acted as a manager and owner/operator at times during his
career.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Now, it was during his tenure at
Goodyear that the myth of Ken Roark was further developed, like the time he was
driving his eighteen wheeler through downtown Demopolis, AL during the
Christmas season and, with holiday ornaments and trappings hanging too low from
the traffic lights, tore down ornaments, lights and all with his semi,
resulting in some jail time (probably more for what he might have said to the officer of the law who reported the accident). And the
time his truck was hijacked…dad, luckily, not being in it. The short
version of that particular story is that dad’s truck was stolen
while he slept in a hotel room. When the truck was found a few
days later, it had been stripped of its load and of all dad’s possessions.
When dad testified at the trial and was asked if he could pick out the
defendant in the courtroom, dad pointed at the man who stole his
truck and said, “That’s him.” “How do you know this is the man who took
your truck?” asked the defense attorney. “Because he’s wearing my boots,”
responded dad. Dad never got those boots back, saying, “He
must need ‘em more than I do.”</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The stories continued to be told
about dad’s adventures when he began long haul, coast-to-coast trucking
for Tyson. He’d haul not just chicken, but Otis Spunkmeyer cookies, steak
and other things that sounded like delicacies to me. One especially
blizzardy haul through Colorado found him stranded just outside of Aspen/Snow
Mass with a number of other travelers in a rest area on I-70. The roads
were closed and the storm showed no signs of letting up. Folks were
hungry and there were no stores or restaurants near. So dad broke
the seal on his trailer, and pulled boxes of frozen chicken out from the back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Starting up his truck’s engine, he cooked that
chicken on his manifold that night and everyone ate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As a trucker, breaking the shipping seal on
your trailer is illegal, punishable by termination. Dad didn’t lose
his job.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And then there was that one
time dad was on the lam, having had a disagreement with the
California delivery warehouse that made him sit with his truck and wait until
they would accept his delivery of celery…a wait that lasted so long, the celery
went bad and they refused to accept his subpar produce. Dad had
some words with them that probably included something about their efficiency
and where they could stick it. When told to relinquish his truck and take
the Greyhound home, he responded with, “I came out in this truck, by God, I’m
returning in it.” At the time, he was supposed to meet up with me
somewhere in the Four Corners region of the Southwest on his return trip, as I
was on a two-week geography/archaeology camping excursion with JSU, but he
couldn’t risk the stop. Instead of telling me that dad was a wanted man, mom just told me he had a change of plans and was coming back to Alabama.
It was days after I returned from my trip that I found out what really
happened. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>“He was a generous soul, exhibiting
his civic-mindedness by being active in numerous organizations: Rainbow City
Lions Club, Cedar Bend Masonic Lodge, local VFW Post 2760, Shriners
International, and Scottish Rite. For many years, he assisted with the
Rainbow City Public Library’s Summer Reading Program. And until illness
prevented further service, Mr. Roark volunteered as a van driver and
coordinator for the Veterans Administration.”</i> Yes, dad was a member of
all of those civic organizations, and gave back to his community any chance he
could. Whether he delivered dozens of pizzas to children for their summer
reading program party, drove eighteen wheelers of supplies to communities in
need of disaster relief, or raised money by flipping pancakes and selling
brooms and mops, he could be counted on to help. And to say he was
generous doesn’t even come close to describing his soul. I don’t know how
many times he gave away or traded one of our family cars to someone who needed
it, or came up with odd jobs around the house (ones that were not necessarily
necessary) that “needed” to be done so he could hire friends who may have been
cash strapped. And I still on occasion have people who rode in dad’s van
to the VA hospital in Birmingham tell me how he not only drove them to their
different appointments, but that he personally pushed their wheel chair through
the hospital wings to get them where they needed to go, and often bought them
lunch and sat with them when the wait for treatment stretched too long.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This is where I leave his obituary
behind completely, because there was no room to talk about the times dad saved
people’s lives. The young woman who attempted suicide, only saved by my
dad and a priest who witnessed her jump into icy waters from a bridge and
dove in after her. The child at the YMCA who was choking on a piece of
candy, heimliched by dad into coughing the offending treat out of a blocked
airway…there were others. So many others. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And there was no room in his
obituary to tell the end of his story, an end that began the day before
Thanksgiving of 2015, when he became terribly ill. While Eric
and I were in Kansas visiting family, my mom tried to nurse him back to health
at home, because that’s what they had always done. When that failed, Vicki
took him to the doctor, and then on to Gadsden Regional. And having an
understanding that when dad was hospitalized, it was never for a short
period of time, Eric started the thirteen-hour drive home so that we could be
there to help circle the wagons. The next day, dad was
transported to UAB for a blocked bile duct and a mass on his pancreas.
There, dad and I were roommates for five days. We talked about
life. We talked about death. We waited for tests. We waited
for results. All of the nurses, interns, residents, orderlies and
surgeons liked dad. Of course they did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He was a funny and caring person who liked to
connect with everyone he met, even in the most difficult of circumstances. I’ll
never forget the day an orderly came with a gurney the day before surgery to
take dad to have an ultrasound on his kidneys. Once on
the gurney, Dad asked the orderly if he wouldn’t mind pulling the sheet up over
Dad’s eyes because of the brightness of the light. Dad then joked that maybe he
shouldn't pull the sheet up because it would look like the tech was pushing
around a dead body. The orderly laughed, pulled the sheet over dad's eyes
and told him that it would even more cool if, while wheeling dad down
the hallway, all of a sudden dad sat up like he was miraculously
alive. They rode off together, conspiring, leaving me to wonder where we would
go if dad was kicked out of UAB for bad behavior…</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The day after dad’s surgery to
repair his blocked bile duct and the revelation that the mass on his pancreas
was most likely cancer, we were told he could leave. I was in total “handle
it” mode, completing the tasks I needed to do in order to make sure we had everything
before we left the hospital:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>both sets
of our possessions, medications from the pharmacy located in a totally separate
building (three buildings away, accessible via hobbit hallways that may or may
not have contained giant man-eating spiders), and instructions from the nurse as
to how to give said medications (one of which was an injection to be administered
twice a day by shooting it into the stomach meat). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was four o’clock, Birmingham rush-hour time
when I buckled dad into the passenger seat, and prayed silently that my Waze would
work us around the never ending downtown construction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad, looking remarkably energized despite the
day’s exertions and super interested in my iPhone doubling as our GPS, chuckled
and said, “We got this...you can do it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We exited the parking deck into a pouring rain and followed the back
alleys and rail yards upon which Waze sent us to avoid traffic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We arrived home safe and sound approximately one
hour later, just in time for me to beg his forgiveness as I gave him his first
injection (unfortunately for him, it was my first injection, too...to give one,
at least). Luckily, mom took over from that point forward...and she nursed him
at home for the next seven months, with some help from Vicki, Tony, Eric, me
and our hospice nurses. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">So, I only want to tell one more
story about dad, and it’s not because there aren’t any more to share.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are quite a few.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s just that most of dad’s stories beyond
this point are too personal, too private.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We cried with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And we laughed
with him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dad was courageous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And he was home with mom by his side when he
departed.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Even though dad passed on Wednesday,
June 8<sup>th</sup>, our final adventure together took place on Thursday, June
16, 2016. I received a call from Emily at Morgan Funeral Chapel while I
was at work, letting me know that dad was ready to go home. As I was signing
paperwork at the funeral home, the gentleman asked if I needed help
getting Dad to the car. My response was, “No, thank you.
I’ve got him.” I seat-belted his platinum-trimmed, navy urn into the
passenger seat and headed home. But along the way, I stopped for French
fries at the Arby’s on 77 because I was hungry. And because Dad would’ve totally loved
the story of me stopping to get French fries with his urn riding shotgun.
</span></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-2888355633939249322016-12-13T03:37:00.000-08:002016-12-13T12:48:25.809-08:002016 Christmas Letter<div class="MsoNormal">
At Christmas, I like to send a yearly recap to all of my friends and relatives who are now scattered in the different places that life has landed them. And with life being what it is (life), some years are filled with more milestones than others. 2016 has been one of those years.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Holiday Greetings!<br />
Since I have no idea where to begin this 2016 recap, I’ll
start with the passing of my daddy. He was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer last November after becoming ill with a multitude of symptoms
(almost all of which he kept to himself). Because of his age and overall
health, surgery was not an option. And knowing that the devastating side
effects of chemo and radiation would only hasten the inevitable, dad chose to
be cared for at home. The man who throughout the years taught me important
things like how to connect with people through conversation (he never met a
stranger), how to rake and burn a big pile of leaves without catching the
neighborhood on fire, and how to back up a 24 foot U-Haul truck with a car
hitch attached to the back without running someone over, also taught me about
how to listen to and take care of someone I love who I know is dying.
Until his last breath in the very early hours of the morning on June 8<sup>th</sup>,
I learned from him how to be a better person. Lordy, but I loved having
him in my life…</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p> </o:p><b><i>On the Work Front</i></b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
We finally developed our GPL Park! We’ve only been
dreaming about it since 2008. But after a series of successful grants and
increased public interest this past year, we were able to get a sidewalk, security
lighting, sod, raised planting beds, benches and a gazebo. I had trees
and shrubs delivered this morning… </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p> </o:p>Our library hosted the annual state library convention in
April. This was a noteworthy achievement for the GPL considering Gadsden
doesn’t have a convention center. We were only able to pull the whole
thing off with the help of every single GPL staff member working their fingers
to the bone, and almost every local downtown partner loaning us space for
events and breakout sessions. 400+ librarians, vendors and authors
converged on Gadsden for three days. We survived. It was marvelous. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p></o:p>We are about to join forces with friend and educator Chip
Rowan to bring his Beautiful Rainbow Catering Company & Garden into the
library as a permanent partner in our cafe. Chip works with young adults
with cognitive disabilities, teaching culinary and business skills for future
employment. He is currently working through the Gadsden City School
system, but hopes to one day become an independent employer of some of his
graduates. We are renovating our existing café to hold an educational
kitchen, a dining area for guests, a classroom/boardroom for additional
learning, and an office for the day-to-day transactions of running a
café/catering company. Because Chip and his guys currently grow much of
the food they use in their catering jobs, we have agreed to turn over all eight
of our raised planting beds that are located in our GPL Park to the
Company. These young chefs-in-training have catered several events for us
this year. They are excited about the amazing food that they create, and
are just as excited about sharing it with our community. I am looking
forward to spending my lunch time in their café come January of 2017! </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p> </o:p>The final event in our Gadsden Reads is this
Tuesday. With the help of attorney Bryan Stevenson and his Equal
Justice Initiative of Montgomery, we are dedicating a memorial to Bunk
Richardson, a man wrongly lynched here in 1906. This all came about
through our choosing of Stevenson’s book <i>Just Mercy</i> for our 2016 reading
initiative which set into motion a community-wide discussion of the justice
system as it pertains to ethnicity, mental health, socioeconomics, gender, and
age. We are now openly talking about our local history of marginalizing
certain groups within our community. It has not been an easy series of
programs. Some folks are happy to finally be heard. Others question
why we’re “stirring things up.” It’s just shameful and wrong to keep
sweeping these things under the rug. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p> </o:p><b><i>On the Home Front</i></b> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
2016 was another DIY year for us. I spent a great deal
of time staining and painting the rafters and ceiling of the patio Eric built
back in 2015. We ripped out the dropped ceiling of laundry room to expose
the old beadboard that was hidden underneath. Eric built a sliding barn
door to close off the laundry from the kitchen should we ever need to. We
added buried electrical out to the garage for a security system. And
after a lifetime of using ice cube trays, I have an icemaker in my fridge.
Eric installed it I’m sure because of some deep desire to provide ice cubes for
his wife and dog. As much as I am enjoying the ice, it still seems
unnatural to have so much at my disposal. </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<o:p></o:p>Wishing you a wonderful holiday and much love,<br />
c</blockquote>
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La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-23332709164304409622016-10-14T05:39:00.003-07:002016-10-14T05:39:57.179-07:00Boy On the Bus<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve mentioned a boy from my childhood, Jeff Partee, briefly before in my blog
entitled <i><a href="http://theleftbankofthecoosa.blogspot.com/search?q=the+monkees" target="_blank">We’re Too Busy Singing to Put Anybody Down</a></i>, describing him as a “usually-good-natured-but-potentially-volatile-bus-ruffian”
who rode vehicle number 77-46 with my sister and me during the late 70s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> He was a super sharp guy who was wickedly funny, but quick to bow up on someone should someone need to be bowed up upon. </span></div>
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There was only one of Jeff Partee, but Ty,
our bus driver, always pluralized him by calling him Partees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She’d yell out, “Partees!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sit down!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“Partees!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I done told you once,
don’t make me tell you again!”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“ Partees!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Don’t make me stop this bus!”<o:p></o:p></div>
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She was right by calling him Partees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He caused more shenanigans than one boy alone
could.<o:p></o:p></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-34189331753086926922016-09-22T05:09:00.000-07:002016-09-22T05:09:09.956-07:00The One Where Dad Dies Twice<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 12.5pt;">Since Dad passed in June, I’ve not
dreamt of him...until night before last. Eric and I have recently made a
habit of watching an episode of <i>Friends </i>each night before bed. Night
before last, we watched the episode entitled <i>The One Where Nana Dies
Twice</i>. Without giving a full summary of what happens in the episode,
suffice it to say that Monica and Ross’ grandmother dies twice (in a forced,
sitcom-y way) in the show. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 12.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: JA;">Later that night, I dreamt that I went
over to Mom and Dad’s house to do yardwork and Dad was sleeping in their back
bedroom with mom standing nearby. In my dream, Dad had already died once,
but was alive again with the understanding that he would be passing away a
second time soon. I felt a joy at getting this second chance to spend
time with him. But, I was trying to be super quite so as to not wake him
because we had plans to take him and Mom to Red Lobster later that
afternoon. But wake him, I did. And when he opened his eyes, he
smiled up at mom, happy to see her. I asked if I needed to stop doing
yard work so we could go to Red Lobster and Mom said no, that I should finish
doing my work, and that she would feed Dad “two big pieces of chocolate cake”
to keep him till we went to eat. And Dad’s smile got bigger...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 12.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: JA;">This dream made me think of a dream
Vicki had about Dad not long after he died. In her dream, we were all
sitting at the dining room table at Mom and Dad’s house, with Dad at his
customary head of the table spot. Dad was talking about something to all
of us and Vicki looked over at him and said, “I wish you hadn’t died.”
Dad stopped saying what he was saying, looked at her and responded quietly, “I
thought we were pretending?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #1a1a1a; font-size: 12.5pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-fareast-language: JA;">I started working on an expanded
obituary blog post for Dad right after we posted the concise version in the
Gadsden Times. It has been harder lately for me to revisit it to finish,
but eventually I will. He has such a story, one that cannot be easily
summed up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Post Script:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
keeping with dreams of Dad, Mom recently shared a dream she had of Dad right
before he died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her dream was real-time
and happened when she was dozing in her chair after having gotten Dad settled
in for sleep with his meds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
dream, she looked out the front windows from her chair and saw Dad, with his
white hair flowing, running down the driveway with the neighbor’s dog Ike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ike was a regular visitor at Mom and Dad’s
house until he was killed one morning a couple of years ago. Mom and Dad had
often commented on missing Ike because it felt like Ike had adopted them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’d like to think that dream meant that Ike
was waiting on Dad…<o:p></o:p></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-37643630260739431972016-01-13T06:23:00.002-08:002016-01-13T06:23:50.544-08:00Like Trees, Walking by Ravi Howard<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“He remembered things we had never known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How to dress rope-burned skin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How to wire a neck, broken and distended, to
make the bones straight again.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Arrange
the high, starched collar and necktie so they hid the marks that makeup could
not conceal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I watched him as he worked,
cradling Michael’s head in his hands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
held it like he held mine in the waters along the bay, on the summer afternoon
he tried to teach me to float.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I floated
for a while, but when I opened my eyes and realized his hands were gone, and
what I felt along my neck and back was just a memory of his fingers, I sank like
a rock.” (Pg. 101 & 102, <i>Like Trees, Walking</i>, Ravi Howard, Harper Collins)</div>
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Ravi Howard’s
<i>Like Trees, Walking</i> is a work of fiction carefully constructed around the all too real
1981 lynching of teen Michael Donald.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Two
brothers, reluctant potential heirs to the family funeral home business and friends
to the victim, search for answers and for a way to deal with their loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The results of this search are heartbreaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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Although it
appears that the incident which Howard poetically presents to his readers is of
a specific act carried out in 1981 Mobile, Alabama, sadly, it is a story that represents many acts that
have been repeated over and over again throughout history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Repeated over and over again about different
towns in the south, north, the east and the west.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A story told about our very own Gadsden,
Alabama at one shameful time in our history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is a story that is contemplative, powerful and familiar. A story to which we can no longer turn a blind eye.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">Mr. Howard is scheduled to visit Gadsden, Alabama in April of this year as a part of our state library convention. I look forward to meeting him. </span></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-31989383769588804372015-11-25T05:52:00.001-08:002015-11-25T05:52:33.260-08:00A Patio for The BungalowRemember when we <a href="http://theleftbankofthecoosa.blogspot.com/2015/05/retaining-bungalows-backyard.html" target="_blank">retained the Bungalow backyard back in May?</a> That project was the first of many projects that were recommended to us by Liz Wood Finlayson of Finlayson Landscape Designs (FLD) in the master plan to make our backyard more usable. The original plan was to build a deck as the first layer off of the house, with a hard-scaped level below it. For many reasons (drainage, longevity, etc.), we chose to put in a concrete patio for our first layer instead. So, once we built the retaining wall and installed a drainage system we designed ourselves, we were ready for concrete.<br />
<br />
Concrete work that requires something more than opening up a sack of Quikrete and mixing with water is more work than I want to commit to, so our concrete was poured, stamped, scored and sealed on two of the hottest days of the summer by someone who does concrete work for a living. The pouring went quickly, but still, a bit too slowly for the setting time of the concrete in the heat we had. Despite the prep work Eric had done to ensure the correct position of the brackets for the uprights, the guys had trouble remembering where and how to set them. They were set incorrectly, then corrected as best as they could be set before the point of no turning back. Thank goodness Eric was home to help.<br />
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Several weeks later, friends came to help raise the uprights and the beams. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Washington Crossing the Delaware moment.</td></tr>
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On nights after work and on weekends, Eric attached rafters, placed decking and added the metal roof. And we christened her many times with wine and beer during the process.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDN2vdmtEiyx1KXqQHkLpmHxluKVAO-HNrCrCIjLW0AZMHZCycwV939q1FqkyvvCqTDNykrTW-xZ06q4-HYnywk6NkEkwnz0P14_jfJQPie8A6wUiAlEDLxc77nPuZ_3PcnjRDLBAfyb5r/s1600/22332157248_4cdf3cdd22_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmDr4UBx8WpZ-RSsOW3QyIyHcsw2vqaKgXq_HPPnV_1sjFH01ZQWUMkydBxdhn6YHfgu9RLtRVHTHj-Lv0siP4fW8GJ5eoNP9kdT3UUXXpDpuQPLzwcXKutSxIByonKGZBqlXX4rYadW-_/s1600/4443889811_b14acb0bb4_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmDr4UBx8WpZ-RSsOW3QyIyHcsw2vqaKgXq_HPPnV_1sjFH01ZQWUMkydBxdhn6YHfgu9RLtRVHTHj-Lv0siP4fW8GJ5eoNP9kdT3UUXXpDpuQPLzwcXKutSxIByonKGZBqlXX4rYadW-_/s320/4443889811_b14acb0bb4_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What we began with in 2010.</td></tr>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2V-63jJLJyFaKPSUui9tx932DRRCg3Z-93WdAxEVhUILERR0hLXGu3reRyNRkBU0kO_951TxvvndXtEO1Mu_973wFyhvRBHH5QQAgekDrbhxbHUfjbSrnDwNJNgMrKfZn0NxVit1jJuBC/s1600/22432602196_caf2478ee8_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2V-63jJLJyFaKPSUui9tx932DRRCg3Z-93WdAxEVhUILERR0hLXGu3reRyNRkBU0kO_951TxvvndXtEO1Mu_973wFyhvRBHH5QQAgekDrbhxbHUfjbSrnDwNJNgMrKfZn0NxVit1jJuBC/s1600/22432602196_caf2478ee8_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br />La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-86751526152066248012015-11-20T15:55:00.000-08:002015-11-20T15:55:52.012-08:00Thanksgiving<div class="MsoNormal">
Had to visit the doctor yesterday.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It seems my old childhood nemesis tonsillitis
hunted me down for a long-overdue visit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After four days of a raging sore throat and a case of laryngitis that
left me sounding like a delicious cross between Kathleen Turner and Harvey
Fierstein, I couldn’t take it anymore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Two shots and a script for an antibiotic.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I’ll gladly take it so I can get back into
the office (worked from home twice this week) and take care of the mounds of
work waiting for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also want to be in
traveling form for next week’s Thanksgiving trip.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>New Thanksgiving adventures await in Topeka.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
A young man whom I had struck up a conversation with while
waiting outside the doctor’s office was heading to London later in the day.
After thirty-odd years of not having contact with his mother, he had reached
out to her for the first time last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Taking the time between then and now to get to know her (communicating
much via cell phone and social media, traveling alone to visit her last year),
he was ready to take his wife and children to meet her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their plans included Disneyland Paris.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And a Thanksgiving meal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A traditional Thanksgiving in a city that doesn’t
celebrate Thanksgiving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But one doesn’t
have to have tradition to have a Thanksgiving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And starting new traditions are sweet (and sometimes come with a hint of
bittersweet).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
When I woke this morning a 2:30AM with a coughing fit that
lasted at least a half hour and couldn’t EVER go back to sleep, I prayed for
him and his family on their Thanksgiving adventure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And I thought of all the versions of Thanksgiving
I had experienced.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, my mind turned first to my earliest Thanksgivings
as a child spent in Kentucky with my Gran and Grandpa.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’d travel the six hours or so in Dad’s big
red pickup truck.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Vicki and I would be
safely tucked into makeshift sleeping quarters in the camper-shelled truck bed,
food and water to keep us from dying, window cracked a hair (also to keep us
from dying), an intercom system rigged from the main cabin to the back bed for
communication between the pilots and their passengers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Sometimes Mom and Dad would let me ride up
front when I got ansty and I’d listen to Dad use the CB radio to talk to other
truckers on the road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Among other
things, he’d find out where police (Smokey, 5-0, fuzz) were hidden, if there
was a traffic jam ahead, or where the nearest rest stop was located (sis and I
were all the time needing bathroom breaks as much for a chance to see what
candy and tacky souvenirs we could buy with our allowance as for relieving
ourselves).</div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
As we got closer to
Waynesburg, dad would begin sending out CB calls to my gran, who ran a base
station for long-range CB communication that we called Home Base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can remember the suspense of his first call
out into the darkness of the CB world, “Breaker, Breaker 1-9, this here’s Super
Duck…”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Usually, it took several tries
over several accumulated minutes (which seemed like hours to me) to finally
hear my gran’s voice, faint and then stronger as the miles between us diminished,
guiding us in to Home Base.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is when
I acquired my CB handle “The Red Barron” (I was a huge Snoopy fan AND a
blossoming WWI history scholar) and was allowed to make calls myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By the time we pulled into the long dirt
drive in front of gran’s trailer with what looked like every light in the place
blazing like a lighthouse, I was bouncing between the seat and the dash from my uncontained
excitement.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t matter that it was
often 2 or 3 in the morning when we arrived (M&D thought leaving at night
would keep us asleep for most of the trip…it sometimes worked), we’d be wide awake
as we piled out of the truck and down the sidewalk-receiving-line that awaited
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gran, and whoever else was spending
the night (cousins, aunts, uncles, the friends who were like family),
would come out to hug us, grab our things from the car and usher us into the
toasty confines of the mudroom and spacious living room that Grandpa had built
onto the trailer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There, we’d catch up
while we warmed up, the adults drinking coffee or a beer, Vicki and I tucking
into the corner of some sofa or recliner with an adult who would show us
attention.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, when we were almost asleep
on our feet, we’d be ushered into a back bedroom that could hold all four of
us, or split off into two separate rooms that would become our homes for the
holidays.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
Because my Gran entertained anyone who walked up to her door
on Thanksgiving Day (and really, any day), the house was FULL of food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A turkey or two, a ham, a couple of pans of
cornbread dressing, giblet gravy, green beans with ham bone, creamed corn, baked beans with
bacon, pinto bean with ham, black eyed peas, boiled cabbage, cole slaw, potato
salad, sliced tomatoes, sliced onions, canned cranberry sauce, pans of
cornbread, dinner rolls, cakes, pies, puddings, cookies, more. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If her meal didn’t put you into a comatose
state, then she hadn’t done you right. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We’d spend days just eating and communing, listening into
the party-line conversations on the telephone, layering up to walk the fields,
and hoping for a snow storm to prevent us from returning home and to
school.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many an evening before our
morning departure we could be seen dancing the Native American snow dance that
dad taught us, hoping, praying for snow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And because that ridiculous dance brought snow on a few of our Kentucky
Thanksgivings and stranded us for an extra day or two, it became a traditional
“last dance.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I can’t remember the
steps, but I sure can remember the way Vicki, Dad, Mom, Gran and anyone else we
could snare in our gravitational pull looked as we chanted and twirled and
fell like snow flakes around each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I’d pay an eyetooth to go back for just one minute…<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Years later, Gran and Grandpa divorced, and Gran eventually sold the farm to one of the friends who was like family, and she cast her net wider as a nomadic caregiver, a senior who took care of seniors. She lived with and cared for an author who homesteaded on Spruce Island, Alaska, in addition to numerous individuals in California and other people who lived in what seemed like exciting locations. And because of this, my mom and dad started a new tradition for themselves, and began hosting Thanksgivings in their home. It was always much smaller, but more intimate at Mom and Dad's. Mom would start cooking everything in the wee hours of the morning. Later in the day, Dad would carve the turkey, Vicki would set the table, and I would fry the eggplant. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But then Vicki married, so things changed with an addition. And then I moved away to New York and had my very first Thanksgiving on my own (which is another story in itself), so there was a subtraction. And throughout the years, my Mom and Dad have flexed gracefully to the ebbs and flows of the additions and subtractions. Holidays are beautiful that way, flexible and changing. When something is taken away, there always seems to be something added. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Mom still starts cooking Thanksgiving lunch in the wee hours of the morning. Later in the day, Dad will carve the turkey, but now he sometimes lets me. Vicki is in charge of frying the eggplant because of the dangers it poses to my gluten free status. And Eric and I do whatever else that needs doing. Sometimes it is just playing with my nephew and/or tasting foods as they are being plated. We all take quality control very seriously. Especially Dad, who has to be watched constantly in the kitchen. He is a master <strike>thief</strike> taste tester.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, I was back to the office this morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My throat felt a hundred times better today, sounding more in the lines of a mezzo-soprano. Very becoming. I could've potentially pulled off an
Ethel Merman impersonation.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
“Clear the decks! Clear the tracks!<br />You've got nothing to do but relax.<br />Blow a kiss. Take a bow.<br />Honey, everything's coming up roses!”</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
To hear the lady herself:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGyiuFZ7cs8" target="_blank">Ethel Merman, "Everything's Coming Up Roses"</a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And to brush up on your CB lingo, please visit these fine
sites:<o:p></o:p></div>
<a href="http://www.cbslang.com/" target="_blank">CB Slang</a><br /><div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="https://rubiesinmymirror.wordpress.com/2012/06/22/cb-radio-trucker-slang-definitions/" target="_blank">Radio Trucker Slang Definitions </a><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-35378365388320222092015-08-27T07:06:00.001-07:002015-08-27T07:06:39.393-07:00Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It
is time to address the elephant in the room, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Go Set a Watchman</i> by Harper Lee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I avoided reading reviews of this book until I was very near the end of
reading the book for myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My delay in
reading reviews was because I felt certain that<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Watchman</i> was not a newly discovered (or long-lost) sequel to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To Kill A Mockingbird</i>, but was the
rejected first novel manuscript mentioned in several biographies (all of them
unauthorized) on Ms. Harper Lee.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also
delayed my reading of reviews because I wanted to come to the novel objectively
and openly…and because I was already hearing rumors that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchman</i> was flat out ruining <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mockingbird</i>
forever in the eyes and hearts of southerners, northerners and foreigners
alike.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>God help us when we discover that
our beloved fictional characters are more human (what?!?) than we thought (or desired)
them to be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gracious. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">So,
having read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchman</i> with an
objective and open mind, here is what I personally think about the book: 1) I
am glad that it was not published before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mockingbird</i>
and I would certainly not recommend it over <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mockingbird</i>
to anyone wanting an opinion of which novel to read first.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And although I’m not even sure that it should
have been published in the first place because it reads sometimes in a disjointed,
unpolished manner as if it were an unedited manuscript, I’m glad that it was
published because it is an excellent historical companion piece (in so many
ways) to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mockingbird</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>2)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is dated. And not in a way that a modern author who researched the 1950s in
order to write a novel that sounded like it was written in the 1950s sort of
way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchman</i> is the manuscript I truly think it is, it was ACTUALLY
written IN the 1950s, so some of the slang and references do not translate terribly
well into modern vernacular. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>3)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchman</i>
contains some passages of such exquisite Southern Gothic beauty and humor, I
thought I was going to die from them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>For
example:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“On clear days Cousin Joshua
read Greek, and he left a thin volume of verse printed privately by a firm in
Tuscaloosa. The poetry was so ahead of its time no one has deciphered it yet,
but Jean Louise’s aunt keeps it displayed casually and prominently on a table
in the living-room.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
</blockquote>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">And, “The county
and the town were named for a Colonel Mason Maycomb, a man whose misplaced
self-confidence and overweening willfulness brought confusion and confoundment
to all who rode with him in the Creek Indian Wars. The territory in which he
operated was vaguely hilly in the north and flat in the south, on the fringes
of the coastal plain. Colonel Maycomb, convinced that Indians hated to fight on
flat land, scoured the northern reaches of the territory looking for them. When
his general discovered that Maycomb was meandering in the hills while the
Creeks were lurking in every pine thicket in the south, he dispatched a
friendly Indian runner to Maycomb with the message, Move south, damn you.
Maycomb was convinced this was a Creek plot to trap him (was there not a
blue-eyed, red-headed devil leading them?), he made the friendly Indian runner
his prisoner, and he moved farther north until his forces became hopelessly
lost in the forest primeval, where they sat out the wars in considerable
bewilderment.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(As Eric pointed out to
me, that second passage sounds down right Faulknerian!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hey, let’s start a rumor that Faulkner
actually wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchman</i>!).</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
do sincerely hope that no one took advantage of Ms. Harper Lee in her advancing
years in order to make money off of her “newly discovered manuscript,” as so
many folks are saying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it is as Biographer
Charles Shields hypothesizes, that because Alice Lee felt that their father was
represented in such poor light in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchman</i>,
it was she who kept the original manuscript under lock and key all these
years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And that two and a half months
after Alice Lee’s passing this book was “found” and immediately put under
contract.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Plausible? Yes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Truthful?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Who will ever know…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I
think Jaimie Pickle Jones of the Rainbow City Pickle-Jones says it best in her
Goodreads review, “I loved the way Jean Louise looked at her small town. She
loves it because it's her home, but she makes sure not to keep it too precious,
she tells its characters, its faults.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Couldn’t
have said it better myself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I give that
a hearty AMEN.</span></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-59741952768282068342015-07-06T12:07:00.001-07:002015-07-06T12:07:59.369-07:00The ones that got away.<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
My favorite jeans were a pair of J. Crews that I purchased
out of duress one spring visit to Ithaca, NY.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The occasion for the visit was to send off an old friend as he prepared
to leave Ithaca, his schooling at Cornell complete.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I flew up from Alabama with a southern
wardrobe and was greeted with the type of Upstate NY weather that I knew I
should have expected, having lived in the area for a time a few years
earlier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had nothing but the
sleeveless and cropped shirts and pants that I was accustomed to wearing in the
late spring south, nothing warmer than the one hoodie I had packed as an
afterthought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was doomed to freeze in
that town I loved, a town that was reported to have had snow on Mother’s Day
in May of 1996.</div>
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So, with my Ithaca chum <a href="http://theleftbankofthecoosa.blogspot.com/2008/10/taken-for-granted.html" target="_blank">Donna</a>, she of infinite
wisdom of best places to shop ANYWHERE, we headed to The Commons to try our
luck at <a href="http://www.traderks.net/our-story/" target="_blank">Trader K’s</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is there
that I found THE JEANS.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They were soft,
gently weathered boot-cut and long, too long for my petite legs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But I tried them on and, despite the length, found
they were made for me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So I bought them
and, with hems rolled up, wore them out of the store and into the cold drizzling
rain of our long walk to our friend’s apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Upon walking in the door, I asked for scissors and promptly cut the excess
fabric of the hems and from that day forth wore THE JEANS frayed for the rest
of our years together, which were many, until I accidentally sent them in a
stack of unwanted garments to a thrift store in Denver.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Oh, the heartbreak of realizing my mistake. Oh, my futile attempts to track them down…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
No other jeans have fit the same as those jeans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-1958175656387727812015-05-28T08:07:00.000-07:002015-05-28T08:07:08.607-07:00Retaining The Bungalow's Backyard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBi7cjbPDK0ck0rKtnNKS2T8jM2085JdDybUXIG3-eQ1NmNR-dkRfnnVCWwk5rLbYGYUj9cLD4oTmp3ogMmQTTiH4H2uVrBEOyc0jvSGSd1zrCZUNGp4E1Oi6sIyYu8jiXFLHW4P7ikkNI/s1600/17901228778_b37d38f18c_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBi7cjbPDK0ck0rKtnNKS2T8jM2085JdDybUXIG3-eQ1NmNR-dkRfnnVCWwk5rLbYGYUj9cLD4oTmp3ogMmQTTiH4H2uVrBEOyc0jvSGSd1zrCZUNGp4E1Oi6sIyYu8jiXFLHW4P7ikkNI/s320/17901228778_b37d38f18c_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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We are one step closer to having our patio off the back of the Bungalow. This, after three hard weeks of moving a bunch of dirt, setting temporary block steps, building a retaining wall with 6'x6' posts, moving more dirt to allow us to put in two drainage systems (one along the front of the wall, one to take down-spout runoff under the patio, both spilling into the dry creek bed), moving even more dirt back to approximately its original spot, and then praying for everything to work during our first rain storm, which happened last night.<br />
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We used about thirty eight-foot 6'x6's, a gazillion two-foot pieces of rebar, three long pieces of perforated/corrugated pipe, three sections of PVC, elbows and connectors and endcaps (oh, my), a fortune's worth of deck screws, and sacks and sacks of drainage rock (which pained us both greatly...store bought rock *sigh*).<br />
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Thankfully, on the first day of groundbreaking we had some friends stop by to dig some and help set/level the first course of the wall (which was very helpful since I discovered during our first purchase trip that I couldn't comfortably lift a 6x6.). We were thankful for the help. From that point on, we tried to work some on the wall each night after work and each weekend. For three weeks. Now, we will have a concrete patio poured on top. But only after we get a few more estimates. And then we'll build the tin roof (...rusted! Guess the name of the song!). And maybe in the fall we'll start on the second, lower level of patio, which is part of the Liz Wood/Finlayson Landscaping Design master plan for our backyard. Liz knows us well and designed our yard with DIY over a couple of years in mind. We love her for that.<br />
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv3q9d_52CzrcK6W_813CLnDdvST5YzG5dZ2maXt8XRZOTC2PFxXi60fIz-2yMV8vAQ6q4wt1DB_POq2qkZjFzHdt8bxBdFrmnCNtYNc7H4wLPeoTYLc0cSVGV2k7OHp-KBdWX1OTTq34-/s1600/17228035899_328430b665_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv3q9d_52CzrcK6W_813CLnDdvST5YzG5dZ2maXt8XRZOTC2PFxXi60fIz-2yMV8vAQ6q4wt1DB_POq2qkZjFzHdt8bxBdFrmnCNtYNc7H4wLPeoTYLc0cSVGV2k7OHp-KBdWX1OTTq34-/s320/17228035899_328430b665_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jeremy Jackson and Eric, digging.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVx15dZJqb3w4Db-2gPzbY06vB_oCUZzfrpuxrAa4Y3OQlsoJvifXN0D3-yS8SiT4KqK3Wl8Eq5RQQQnIhFom-qNZlNLnLSjbJMjbX56KMEjYoVCPY_2b29PQi1_dWMl-AtszRys_zC_Q4/s1600/17220856589_383ab7d9c1_z.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVx15dZJqb3w4Db-2gPzbY06vB_oCUZzfrpuxrAa4Y3OQlsoJvifXN0D3-yS8SiT4KqK3Wl8Eq5RQQQnIhFom-qNZlNLnLSjbJMjbX56KMEjYoVCPY_2b29PQi1_dWMl-AtszRys_zC_Q4/s320/17220856589_383ab7d9c1_z.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dave Hyatt, Jeremy & Eric, leveling.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Booker and the dead men.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Booker, Eric & the steps.</td></tr>
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I may have strained my biscuit a few times during the project. Eric had never heard that saying, which prompted me to look it up. As it appears to not exist anywhere in normal English language, it must be a phrase my mother or sister coined during the late 70s, early 80s, a phrase that has stuck with me all my life and represents the vague act of pulling generally everything in one's body. Usually, straining one's biscuit and then sitting for a spell result in a person finding themselves stove up...It's a Southern thing, I'm sure. Or maybe it is a Roark thing. <br />
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This retaining wall was paid for almost in full with gifts/gift cards saved from our engagement party back in October of last year. So, it is a wedding gift to us from some wonderful friends and family. We look forward to sharing it with them soon.<br />
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In case you forgot what the backyard looked like, here is a before and after:<br />
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<br />La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-11936540601921455322015-04-22T09:02:00.002-07:002015-04-22T09:02:42.543-07:00Folding Money That Has Come Unstove<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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This is a dollar bill that I found recently while on my
morning walk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is either boob money or
boy-pocket money as it bears the unmistakable hallmarks of legal paper tender that
has been kept in the confines of a brassiere or the confines of the pocket of a boy child.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Both confines are historically and equally sweaty, and could render money into such a wrinkled state. </span>I haven’t
been able to spend it yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It sits on my
dresser, forcing me to ponder its provenance…</div>
La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6275572921912054518.post-89518956225282380082015-04-03T09:13:00.000-07:002015-04-03T09:13:41.303-07:00Dew Claw AskewBooker is growing in a new dew claw. BECAUSE HE ALMOST RIPPED THE OLD ONE COMPLETELY OUT LAST MONTH. He was either chasing a cat or saying "Hi" to Mr. Smith, our backyard neighbor. Whatever he did to do it, he was all running up to the door, acting like nothing was wrong, and then he stopped to lick the BLOOD THAT WAS POURING DOWN HIS DOG ANKLE (dankle?). Nothing like coming home for lunch to grab a bit to eat, letting the dog out to potty and then ending up at the vet for minor surgery to remove a jankity dew claw. Booker's favorite vet, Dr. Drummond-Rieger at Rainbow City Pet Clinic, fixed him right up and had him back to us by the end of the work day. He was a little loopy from the anesthesia, and was wearing the cone of shame...<br />
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I can laugh about it now, but Lordy, we had quite a time with that pupperschnitzle while he was convalescing. Couldn't allow him to get his bandages wet, so we had to tape a ziplock baggy on his foot each time we went out because we were in a stretch of rainy weather. And because he couldn't really maneuver through the house well with the cone on his head, we would take it off while we were home and only put it on him when we left. It was a good thing that Eric had begun his training of "Leave It" in the weeks prior to the accident. We were able to get him to "Leave It" when we'd catch him biting the bandages.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">D'oh!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drunk</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dew breaking through.</td></tr>
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La_Petit_Rougehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13526731708661193521noreply@blogger.com0