A Ghost Story

The above picture is from WAY above Tuskegee....really the best picture to show you ...

So.....

Last Sunday I had to travel to Tuskegee for a funeral. It seems the only reasons I ever really get back to my hometown are for funerals.

We got there a little early for the graveside service and we decided to take a few and ride around town ...What I found was distrubing.

Tuskegee is full of ghosts ....not the traditional ghosts of old Hollywood. The ones in old white sheets floating around ...Tuskegee is full of old memories of days and things long past.

We rode down north main street and headed around the town square...Still being protected by the young faced statue of the civil war solider. Facing north and ready to defend.

Turning onto south main street we rode slowly by the building that once held our old family business....Windows now boarded up and the building stripped of anything to denote that a family ran a good, decent business for nearly 60 years in this place ...

Grass growing high in the adjacent parking lot ....a parking lot where I fought many a battle against invading "bad guys". We never again have the imagination in our lives that we had when we were kids ....

Continuing south we saw what was left of the old high school gym ....it burned a few years back and has never been rebuilt. My parents attended dances here, they had ball games there , they enjoyed life there .....and its gone...dark and runied.

Empty lots here and there along south main street that once held beautiful old homes..Gone mainly from fire over the years or abandonment ..... families like the MacGregors,Allys,Segrest, Ensleys,Ramons and Filinggim ....family names that continue in other cities....but how many of those family members know where their roots used to run deep.

Turning onto Wallace drive and coming up the slight hill that seemed SOOO steep as a kid I see my Nana'd old house ....yard run down,vines growning up the side of the house,broken windows. It was 10 years ago that we were last in that house...So sad.

Going down Lake street headed towards the old city pool my mother started telling me stories about summers at the pool.

She said during the summer everyone would go there and take swim lessons or just hang out and over the Labor Day weekend there would be a Pool Dance. Teams of folks would showcase the stuff they had learned during the summer...folks would take to the high dive and attempt to look gracefull as they fell into the deep end of the pool. As they got older my mother said the teens would stay in the balcony on those warm nights and flirt with boys...letting the boys buy them Cokes and frozen Zero candy bars.

I have always hated the idea of seeing a ghost....being scared...Last Sunday I saw real ghosts and I was not scared ....I was sad.

Is It Live Or Is It Memorex??

So....

Its Friday and I decided to take a few moments and give my thoughts on the weeks events ....

On Tuesday of course history was made with Barack Obama becoming our 44th president....No news there right ??

I mean, I was sitting there watching the tv and I mentioned to Nick that I was kinda emotional....Silly ? Perhaps but all I could think about in that moment was how I had the chance to see this happen..and so many others did not ...why me and not Dr King ? Why me and not Viola Liuzzo? Why me and not Swerner,Cheney and Goodman? They were not there because they died for something they believed in ....they gave it all to help their fellow man or woman. They drove cars, they registered voters ,they marched, they boycotted buses so that one day a person of ANY color could vote without being harrassed. So that a person of ANY color could one day serve on the city council. So that one day a person of ANY color or background could just possibly be elected to the office of president of the United States of America.

I was emotional because I missed my Dad terribly on Tuesday. My dad loved politics and the whole process. He loved following the news cycles. I listen to NPR because my dad listened and said it was good stuff. He would have been so excited about last Tuesday....he loved the pomp and ceremony of events like inaugurations. He would have been thrilled last Tuesday.

I was emotional because my Nana was not here to witness history last Tuesday. A women who first taught me was it was to be a democrat. A women who said that discrimination in ANY FORM was and is wrong. A women who stood beside her husband at their house as a cross was burned in their yard in Tuskegee... all because they said that not allowing blacks into school with whites was wrong.

The last time I saw her last May she told me then she really liked "that Obama ".... She would have loved last Tuesday.

On a lighter note I heard on NPR Friday afternoon that the beautiful music played by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, violinist Izhak Perlman, pianist Gabriella Montero and clarinetist Anthony McGill, right before the presidential oath was actually not live.

YEAH ...THATS RIGHT ...NOT LIVE......

Yo Yo Ma said during an interview Friday afternoon that on Sunday they recorded a version of the piece just in case something happened and then went on Monday morning to rehearse at the Capitol. They soon realized that it would be MUCH MUCH too cold on Tuesday for them to perform anything that sounded worth a dang. He said that while playing the piano Gabriella Montero noticed that the keys were sticking down and the violin and cello were already sounding bad within a few minutes of being outside.

So what do you do???

They put soap on the bows ,the clarinetist pretended to play and the piano was rigged so that the keys could be played but no sound came out.

Who knew ??

On a much much lighter note ....LOST returned this week and as usual it was a VERY interesting show. I will not even begin to wade into the deep end of the WHAT IF pool but if I had to make one prediction I will say this ......Whatever is going on on the Island might be VERY VERY SIMPLE and easily explained. How bout that for a kick in the teeth. .....When its all said and done at the end of Season 6 we will all realize that the whole thing was made up in some austistic kids head as he looks into a snow globe or Jack Shepard will wake up in a bed with Suzanne Pleshette and Bob Newhart.

Go figure huh ??

180.....What Are You Doing This weekend?

So.....

I complain about my job .....I get frustrated with it from time to time ....I get down when I spend most of a day sitting with a man who has fairly advanced dementia trying to remember how long he has been married or in the house he lives in or what day it is.....I get upset when parents cause me headaches and kids cause even bigger headaches.

Then I sit back and remember that I have wonderful job that allows me to be home with my nephews when they are sick, to be off on a Tuesday to see Barack Obama sworn in, to take off early some days, to go in late some days, to have every Friday off, to travel all over ...

And speaking of travelling ....I will be headed here this weekend....

Lake Junaluska at sunrise .....

The youth group is headed to Western North Carolina for our first ski trip in 4 years and everyone is super excited about the trip. Should be a fun COLD weekend.....

Have a great weekend !!

Cold Feet......

So .....

My feet get cold at work sometimes....No big news there really...Nothing to really report but they do get cold but I cannot stand to run the heat in part of the building where I am located just to warm my sad little toes....

So I found a space heater just like the one pictured above in another office and "borrowed " it for a few days.....

I just wanted to share .....and speaking of sharing

I would also like Mr Lucas to share his English Breakfast menu with me ....I have heard mention of it being cooked twice and was just wondering ....

and speaking of all things english.....we are on quite the hot tea kick around DUMC....alot of mornings instead of coffee we have been having hot tea made right in my office with a tabletop kettle.....The tea makes for a nice change

Anyway... thats about it ....was a little bored here at work and decided to share .....

BARRACUDA.......

So....

Mr Lucas gave us a run down of things in his life and I thought I would do the same....

2009 has started pretty good as far as alot of the things I mentioned a few weeks back are concerned.

No smoking for me since Jan 1 around 4am.....I woke up and smoked two cigarettes and crushed the rest of the pack.

I started this week cooking each night. So far this has been really good and has also helped me with my goal to not be on the run so much. By the time the meal is done and ready for consumption, I am pretty much home for the night.

I have eaten out ONCE this week with a friend.....Usually by Friday I would have had upwards of three meals out with folks during the daytime and maybe one or two at night. That's crazy I know and I am trying to do my part of cutting back. Just gotta stick with it...

I am currently reading a great bio of Franklin D. Roosevelt. There is alot of new insights into the man and his family. Next up is a bio about Andrew Jackson and then one about Ben Franklin. Ahhhhhh...fun stuff.

I read a great article the other day about a guy who has written a book about how the size of things in the US has changed over the last 40-45 years.

He bought a house built in 1939 and went to place his dishes in the cabinets and found that the doors would not shut....his plates were a little too big for the shelves. He started researching and found that plates in the US started to get bigger in the 1970s....so cabinets got bigger! While not all cabinets were smaller he found that many were ...so he did some more digging and found that

• Fast food drink cups-Small is now Kids cup,what used to be medium is now small, what used to be large is now medium and two other catagories are usually used for the larger drinks. When McDonalds was just starting in California in the 1950s they had ONE size drink and it was about 12ozs.


• Most restaurant portion sizes are enough for three people. He did research from Chilis, Applebees, Macaroni Grill , Red Lobster etc.


• The largest beverage container at 7-11 will hold 64 ozs of soda. Many folks will have two of these in one day. WOW that's alot

He suggests that people at home use salad plates to eat off of ......ordering a to go container as soon as your food arrives at the table in a restaurant and placeing at least half in it to take home. Ordering water as soon as you sit down and start drinking it ....by the time your food comes you will be full and won't eat as much in one sitting.

Anyway these are some good ideas I think ......its all in our heads alot of the time and reminds me of the scene in JAWS where the mayor of Amity is talking to Chief Brody about trying not to cause a panic...

Mayor-" Martin its all psychological, you yell barracuda, folks go HUH?! WHAT?!, but you yell shark and you got a panic on your hands...it's psychological"

The same can be said for alot of our problems with eating ....it's all in our heads...we see a bigger plate so we want to PILE IT HIGH...we see a bigger cup and we say I WANT THAT ONE....Its about changing our habits and I am trying to do that ...

Anyway ...headed to Bham tomorrow for the day. Yall have a great weekend !!

My College Can Beat Up Your College......

So.....

The other night the topic of "cheaper" schools came up ....Cheaper, second rate, two year colleges, etc ....you get what I am saying.

The main discussion being had was that folks who go to these schools are not smart enough to go to another school. Perhaps they just took what they could. Maybe they did not have the money to go to a big school. Whatever the reason it was decided by some at the table that folks who attended "second rate" schools were failures.

My response to this is..... WTF??

First of all, for any of us to sit around and decide that someone is a failure because of where he or she went to school is CRAP. For us to decided that your school is not as good as my school is also CRAP. People should be applauded for going to school...for trying to better themselves. For looking past whatever has possibly held them back and to make the choice to move to a different place in their lives.

Someone at the table was really joking on Jones School of Law at Faulkner U in Montgomery. I have a couple of friends who went to Jones. My lawyer went to Jones and has done quite well for himself and his family. My mothers boss went to Jones and he is now a federal judge for the US Middle District of Alabama.

The main thing is this ....What does it really matter to you or me or that guy or this women where anyone goes to school?

Also, what if you dont go to school and decide that working with a city collecting trash is what you are going to do ....or maybe you become a fireman or a police officer. Maybe you join the military and go fight the wars and battles that MANY of us would just as soon forget about.

But perhaps, just maybe by my going to a two year school before I did anything else makes me less of a person....but something tells me it was ok. I am not the only one who did it and wont be the last.

What goes down....Must go back up.....

So.....
I got my passport today in the mail. It would appear that the log jam of applications has been taken care of at the State Department. It took them ONE WEEK to the day ....
So whats next? I think I am going to plan a big trip....It will be overseas.....It will be later in the spring, after Easter for sure. More details will be forthcoming but for now I am very excited about my prospects in the next few weeks.

I understand things...Or like to think I do. But for all that is holy I dont understand gas prices. I mean I get supply and demand. Thats the first thing you learn in economics.....but we have had a few months of gas prices going down....slowly but surely they have fallen. I paid $1.38 for a gallon of gas the other day in Auburn. $1.38!!!!!!!!!!! Then today at many stations around town I see gas literally jumped 10 cents over night. In some places around town this fall and winter it took a couple of days for the price to DROP 10 cents ...maybe a week and then over night the price goes up ...QUICK!?!?!? How does that work ? How do the gas companies and oil companies determine how to raise and lower prices?? Why do prices go up quicker and not down just as quick? I understand that supplies worldwide are down...I understand that the trouble in Israel and other places in the mid east affect the price....I get it. But I dont understand how prices JUMP up and then crawl back down .....I am stupid I guess but please someone explain it to me

I want to see ALOT of movies .....too many to mention really but I dont think I will have the time or the money to see them all. I will wait like I usually do and get them on Netflix.

Anyway ...thats all I got tonight