W.W.V.L.S? (What Would Vince Lombardi Say?)

No Telling

I’ve put this off for a few days, what with the holiday and Michael Jackson’s memorial service and all. If you think about it, this may have been Sarah Palin’s exit strategy – resign as governor of Alaska while everyone’s looking the other way with a sparkly white glove in one hand and a bottle rocket in the other.

While I’m perfectly comfortable seeing Sarah to the door, I’m afraid she’s going to keep coming back up like one of those pop-up arcade games you hit with a rubber hammer. You know, the kind they have at Playworld. She was back in front of the cameras today, as a matter of fact. Waders and full make-up. You can’t whine about the media and then invite them all to watch you fish.

My father has a lot of sayings, and while none of them has anything specifically to do with fishing, point guards, or the governorship of a large and sparsely populated state, they all center around Doing The Right Thing. That “thing” inevitably means finishing what you start.

“Winners never quit and quitters never win. ” ~Vince Lombardi

So go do your thing, Sarah, whatever it is. Just remember that no amount of spin makes abdicating sworn responsibility any prettier. Too many folks are onto the Politics of Shiny Objects, and they’re weary.

There. I’m done. Time to grab a burned leftover hot dog and watch Thriller one more time.

UPDATE: Here’s Palin’s resignation speech – Vanity Fair’s “Edited Version.” Priceless.

Reading the Minutes

Fresh Ribbon

I’ve been more than a little busy. So much so that only today have I given a closer look to some of my junk shop purchases from the recent Fordyce, Arkansas side trip.

I found this day book in the only downtown shop with a closed front door. Down here, that means air conditioning, although once inside we found that the AC had in fact just quit and the nice woman who owns the shop was frantically making calls. Since she only had the one fan by the cash register, a closed door, and 103 degrees of south Arkansas sunshine baking us like a pie in there, we speed-shopped.

I found the day book sitting on some old magazines, flipped through the empty pages, and figured a half-dozen delightful uses for it. Not bad for two dollars. Steph found something that wasn’t overpriced, so we quickly paid for everything and ran for the functioning AC of the car.

To be truthful, I was so excited about the two typewriters I’d bought earlier in the week that I didn’t check the rest of my bounty until today. The day book is actually not empty. There are a few pages here and there scribbled in and there’s the faintest hint of a name and purpose on the inside cover. What I’d bought were some hastily-written minutes from the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, circa 1940. Clearly, this secretary-recorder was temporarily filling in for someone else. There’s a hesitancy and lack of detail. It was also (gasp) written in pencil.

Now, I don’t know much about the DAR in other parts of the country, but down here in Arkansas it has a rich legacy of unofficial (and occasionally, quite official) racism. Only women from the best families belonged to the DAR, women who married well and whose important husbands sometimes jaunted out late at night in white sheets.

I know this because my great-grandmother Minnie Mae was a card-carrying member. She was The Doctor’s Wife in a small town called Stamps back when logging and oil were the rage. It was also in the same time and town where Maya Angelou knew how the caged bird sang. Although my grandfather did spend more than a few late nights out, I suspect he was mainly attending medical emergencies or the pool hall. I don’t know. Luther went to his Great Reward before I was born. I knew Minnie Mae. She was something else.

I doubt Minnie Mae ever met the doodling secretary-recorder from Fordyce, even though it’s only an hour away. She was a controlling woman with a fine house and six sets of china who preferred to do her own hostessing, thank you. They might have met at one of those DAR state get-togethers in Little Rock, though. It’s likely some of these women took out the good jewelry and made the train trip.

What all this means is that I have an open invitation to membership. So does my daughter, and if she only bears sons then we’ll be the end of it. The DAR has had seventy years to change since this day book, but I suspect the ladies aren’t ready for the likes of either one of us. The Daughters of the American Revolution will have to work their genealogies and give out those scholarships and whatnot without our help. Not that they’d let us in, legacy or not. Out of the 46 chapters still active in Arkansas, every member listed has “Mrs.” in front of her name.

(Eleanor Roosevelt’s letter of resignation to the DAR. Click on the picture for more.)

Again, maybe it’s a Southern Thing. Maybe I’m dead wrong and the DAR’s become all progressive and inclusive and politically correct. Maybe.

Not bad, buying a bit of Southern feminine history for a couple of bucks. Maybe I’ll use the empty pages to write in a few “minutes” of my own.

What This Country Needs is a Cheap Cigar Box

No Telling

I know you remember these. Maybe your cigar box of choice wasn’t Roi-Tan, but you had one. Maybe dozens. Was it a Swisher Sweets? Hav-A-Tampa?

I alternated between White Owl and Kind Edward cigar boxes for my more important collections at home. Rocks, mainly, but sometimes buttons or leaves, sometimes pecans and pokey sweet-gum balls. I remember finding a papery chrysalis once dangling from a forsythia bush. I opened the lid several dozen times a day fully expecting each time to unlock a grateful butterfly, but it never happened.

In late August I always had a fine collection of locust shells carefully picked from tree bark, screened doors, and other scratchy, irregular places. These were particularly prone to crushing in, say, the back pocket of your jeans, so a sturdy cigar box was essential. My neighborhood friends and I would travel in rangy packs like out-of-season Easter egg hunters, some of us with empty mayonnaise jars but most of us with cigar boxes. We could kill entire afternoons looking for locust shells and sticking their hooked little empty feet to our clothes and hair. After scaring my mother with them at dinner, they were always carefully placed back in the King Edwards box and spent the night under my bed.

I don’t know what those kids with the mayonnaise jars did. Those were for lightning-bugs anyway.

The fancier boxes were fine for treasures, but Roi-Tan was was the box of choice in my school desk. Elegance. An air of serious sophistication. Everything about this maroon box said you cared about the pencils inside and that education itself was a somber, sacred event. No bug shells or glass buttons in this box, thank you, the Roi-Tan held cerebral tools.

Every single year before the first day of school, my dad would take me down to Rexall Drug to pick out the perfect cigar box. Timing was everything, because everyone got their cigar boxes at the Rexall and if your daddy was the sort who put things off, you could end up carrying fat pencils and an Elmer’s paste bottle in something ridiculous like a paper sack. That was nothing short of social suicide and certainly no way to begin first grade. These were the days when “special” kids were carted off before the end of the opening day and never seen again.

Thinking back, I’m sure the missing children had little to do with paper sacks vs. cigar boxes, but times were different back then. Falling into school-supply lockstep for a month or so was calculated survival. It was dangerous to be quirky and we knew it.

So Roi-Tan it was.

My mother wrote my name on every single side of that cigar box, not that she needed to. By the end of the first week I’d written “Monda” a hundred times on it myself, trying out every single crayon I’d brought with me. Most of the boys used scissors to gouge their names into their cigar boxes, a practice I found equally violent and fascinating until a boy named Dale nearly cut off a finger doing it. He was whisked, bleeding, out of class and down the hall. When he returned the next day, he had stitches, round-edged scissors, and a swagger. I fell in love with him by recess.

I found this Roi-Tan cigar box at a Camden, Arkansas junk store for $2. It was worth every penny just to remember the locust shells and swaggering Dale.

…and THIS little piggy went…

No Telling


Not long ago I told the harrowing story of The 90 Escaped Pigs on the Interstate. Thankfully, there’s an update and a semi-happy ending.

The following is a KATV report which has gone fairly viral.

Little Rock – An 800-pound hog that survived on its own for a week after a truck flipped while on its way to a slaughterhouse has surfaced in a swimming pool at a home near the crash site.

LeAnn Baldy, whose house is only yards from Interstate 430, said Monday she noticed her pool was suddenly overflowing and then saw the immersed pig, which was having a drink in the pool.

About 90 hogs were in the trailer when it overturned where I-430 meets I-40, and about 60 survived. Officials said they thought the last of them had been caught.


Baldy says she found a farmer to take in the pig. A spokesman for Odom’s Tennessee Pride says it can’t use the hog in its sausage products because no one knows what the hog had been eating in its week on the lam.

Reading between the lines makes the math easy. Ninety hogs in the accident, minus thirty DOA, equals 60 hogs caught by local troopers “and others” that certainly made their way to the Odom’s Tennessee Pride processing plant. I’m sure they’re in the freezer by now. Or on your breakfast plate.

Wait. Let’s make that 59 because at least one bought himself more time by laying low, drinking a little chlorine, rummaging around eating God only knows what, and in general making himself un-processable. Way to go, pool pig. I hope someone named you.

I’m no pig-hugger, but I do enjoy small justices and reprieves. This big boy appears to have both for now.

As for Ms. Baldy, she’s probably got a few new snapshots for the family album. I’d love to see one of them. Especially the picture of how they removed the 800-pound escapee from her swimming pool.

The Breakable Man in the Mirror

No Telling

(This is the first picture in a Time photo essay called “Young Michael Jackson at Home.” Just click on the picture to view the rest of the series.)

I’m really not sure what to say. Most of us mourned the loss of Michael Jackson years ago. I’m sure the boy in the picture is, in fact, the Man in the Mirror, forever twelve, always a Lost Boy.

Whatever horrifying things he did or did not do to himself and others, he’s left behind a mind-boggling body of work. He’s also left behind three children, and whether my criticism is deserving or not, it’s possible those kids have been given a gift through the painful loss of their father. I hope they go to their grandmother and that she lives forever.

I flipped through the channels tonight and the tube is heavy with retrospectives and tributes. There’s a combination of fascination and profound sadness when I see these video clips. That’s not new, though. Something about Michael Jackson has always made me feel a little sad, even when he was a little boy. Even as a sometimes-ridiculous grown man he always seemed afraid, breakable.

In addition to the old video clips there are also legions of talking heads whipping up the frenzied fans like a never-ending opening act. Everyone has something to say whether or not they have anything to say, and they say it over and over again. See? I’m even blogging about it and I’m not anybody.

At the end of the day, toxicology reports will all come in, folks will point fingers, others will make a fortune from misfortune, and the rest of us will catch “A-B-C” on geezer radio stations as we drive to work and tap the steering wheel while we sing along. Just as we always have.

Note on the Fridge to Moleskine and the Very Good News

No Telling


Dear Moleskine,

I know I’ve been a tad insistent about this ruled, extra large notebook business. I know I’ve whined and shaken my fist in the air in frustration. In short, I know I’ve given you a hard time.

The last email I received about the rebirth of the XL ruled Soft Cover Moleskine was heartening. While my favorite XL ruled cahiers were still history, I could make do. It put a dent in my despair.

So you can imagine my absolute joy this morning when I found this little miracle in my email:

Here I sit, down to my last two or three cahiers, and you slide out of the email ether riding a white horse and slinging out Exactly What I Want. I was this close to breaking up with you, Moleskine, and now you’re offering my favorite notebook in two new colors. I feel like dancing.

You may now consider us reconciled.

Yours,

Monda

(Start your credit cards, Moleskine lovers, and click on the announcement above to stock up.)

This Little Piggy Went to…

No Telling

…Interstate 40. And 430. And just about everywhere else for hours while traffic was rerouted around the pig fiasco.

Update: Interstate Reopens After Pig Truck Accident – todaysthv.com | KTHV | Little Rock, AR

The Great Bear Writing Project began this morning with several of our faithful stuck in traffic for over an hour while “troopers and others” coaxed close to ninety 800-pound swine off the roadway. Thankfully, our writers all made it in. Sadly, there was no video. There are more pictures, however, if you click on the KTHV link.

Let me say that hogs on the interstate during rush hour traffic is just one of the things I love about living here in Arkansas. It reminds me that despite our technological acumen and wanna-be status, we’re still just good people who every once in a while have to sidestep loose pigs.

My heart is full.

Flea Marketing in South Arkansas and Hitting Paydirt

Fresh Ribbon

Just back from a week-long jaunt down where the pines grow tall and it’s already 100 degrees in the shade. A couple of us with the Great Bear Writing Project were down in Harmony Grove, AR giving writing workshops for local public school teachers. If you discount the scorching heat, the weather was gorgeous. If you discount the scorching heat, however, you’re not in Southern Arkansas. I swear you could feel the pine trees respirating.

Thankfully, my traveling workshop friend is just as crazy about junk shops and flea markets as I am, because we had to be crazy to scramble around old dusty shops in that heat. Air conditioning? Well, you need to visit a bank or a restaurant or – God forbid – Wal-Mart to amble around in someone else’s frosty air. The old downtown area in Camden had several junker storefronts. Like many little towns around here, though, most of the old downtown was empty. I suspect the frosty air and cheap prices at Wal-Mart for the death of our small town downtowns, but that’s a soapbox for another day. We braved the heat and learned to position ourselves in front of ancient floor fans. I couldn’t have cared less, really, because it was typewriter heaven.

That unused, baby blue Remington Quiet-Riter 11 pictured above set me back $10 and I didn’t haggle a bit. It came with a pristine roller and two unopened boxes of ribbon. It was like the typewriter had been in a time capsule until I walked in and opened the case. It’s a tad big and a bit heavy, but Lord that snappy key action. Yes indeed.

There was a superb shop going out of business and filled to the ceiling joists with more than I could investigate in a lifetime. I had a nice chat with the retired high school principal who runs the place in that way we do here in Arkansas. It’s all about family and connections and it didn’t take long for us to find people in common. He had, I believe, the best and most abundant floor and table fans of any place we visited.

His downtown shop was littered with typewriters, although a good number of them were early-model electrics – not my cup of tea. After digging under a few boxes, however, I found a few portables worth considering, and I considered this stunning aqua Remington Streamliner all the way to the cash register. The case lid’s a little wanky and won’t latch easily on one side, but this gal is in type-ready shape. Not a sticky key anywhere, and the same snap of the Quiet-Riter 11. I stole this one for $2.50.

On the way back home Steph and I made a side trip through Fordyce – a sad little town that used to be something else when lumber and oil were more plentiful. The entire downtown was one shop after the other full of old things. I found a big, hulking tan typewriter there called a Visograph that was in questionable condition. My camera batteries were dead by then, though, and I couldn’t take a picture. I wish I had, because I can’t find anything like it online. The gentlemen who ran that particular store were sweet enough to load themselves up in a pick-up to check their storage places for other typewriters. They even offered me a chair on the front porch while I waited. Right there where the man is standing on the street, on the right. It doesn’t look much different there, except the road is paved now.


You know, Bear Bryant was from Fordyce, AR. All the plaques said so.

Chivalry is not dead down near the Arkansas-Louisiana border, and typewriter hunting is still a lucrative sport. You can bet I’ll be back, although I might wait until October or so just to make sure the heat wave is over.

The Scribbling Women of Harmony Grove

No Telling

I’m just now cooling off from a whirl-wind workshop week at the South Central Service Cooperative where I’ve had the pleasure to work with some of the finest teaching women the South knows how to produce. We wrote, shared student stories and lesson plans, fanned the 100-degree heat, and ate like dainty field-hands.

And the writing…the picture above is the cover of the hastily put-together anthology of the week’s mad scribbling. I’ve always said that teachers writing together is a modern-day version of the old quilting bee. We circle the cloth, rock the needles, offer recipes and advice, and join the stories of our lives with perfect corners and skillful stitching. It’s true, and this anthology is the quilt we made together in the Harmony Grove Auditorium. Never mind that our nimble fingers were on laptop computers instead of muslin, at the end of the day we carried the words home. It’s the Sisterhood of the Traveling Stories.

And those pictures on the cover? Stephanie gave a fabulous workshop on writing our school-child pasts. The teachers brought pictures of themselves as children and wrote rich memories from childhoods spent in the South Arkansas pines. In the Fall, they’ll share these stories with their students. More importantly, they’ll share themselves as writers with the young writers in their classrooms.

Meet the ladies…

Special thanks to Sonya Russell, Debbie Fleming, and everyone at the South Central Service Cooperative in Camden, AR for their expertise, attention to the smallest detail, and gracious hospitality.

Scribbling up a Storm in Harmony Grove

No Telling

I’m here in Harmony Grove, AR this week with Stephanie giving a week-long series of writing workshops and having the time of my life.

Everyone set up their own blogs today, so we’re frantically blogging and commenting before the lunch break. Technology being what it is – sometimes unfriendly and occasionally misbehaving – we’ve still managed a room full of teachers freshly publishing online.

I’m taking pictures and soon there will be a whole host of scribbling and such to show you exactly what it is we’ve accomplished this week. Stay tuned, y’all.