scribbling

Here Comes the Bridal Shower

No Telling

I‘m supposed to be at a wedding shower in a few hours and forgot to buy a gift. Down South that’s a real faux pas. I’m sure they have the same rules of etiquette up North, but down here something like this can severely damage your reputation. Permanently. Social mistakes are somehow written indelibly on your DNA thereafter like a fow-pah tattoo.

“You know Monda over there? She teaches over at the college…writing or literature or…”
“Oh yes. She’s the one who showed up empty handed at that Bannister girl’s shower.”
“1988. That’s her. Here she comes…”

I can’t let that happen. Luckily, today’s brides register everywhere, even Wal-Mart although I find that practice too tacky to even acknowledge. Target is perfectly fine, Wal-Mart is NOT. You might as well put on the announcements that you’re registered for linen and china at The Dollar Store.

Or change your last name to Duggar. They registered for Gatorade and beef jerky at Wal-Mart.

In my mother’s generation, young brides registered for china and silver – real silver – and that was it. Girls in the ’50s expected to get four toasters and odd clocks. That changed a little for those of us Generation Jonesers. We made it more casual by registering for “everyday” dishes and flatware. While we sere more casual, we still had to sit through “tomato aspic” bridal showers thrown by our mothers’ women-friends. The rules were strict and the etiquette, unbendable. Legs crossed at the ankle and embossed thank you notes, that sort of thing.

These women are still around. In their golden years, all they do is go to church and rattle their pearlsls at showers. And they still scare me to death. Besides, these old gals remained married to their high school sweethearts while most of us Gen Jones brides made more than one trip to the altar.

Gen Y brides aren’t afraid of anybody. I love that about them. They register everywhere and run around with little electronic guns shooting a very specific gift list onto the internet. No worries about four toasters for these young women. They show up to their bridal showers in flip-flops and bring their men. Whoa. Maybe they learned something from our mistakes. I hope so.

Since I’ve procrastinated, I’m scouring this bride-to-be’s online gift registries and wondering what opens at 9:00 so I’m not socially banish-ed forever. It seems she’s signed up for everything but a perfect life. Bed Bath and Beyond probably doesn’t carry that, though.

Someone should.

No Pressure

No Telling

This Blog of Note business is mindboggling. Last night I watched my stats go astronomical, cheered, answered email, and celebrated with sushi from Kroger. Yeah, I’m a wild one.

This morning, still hung over with delight, I sat in front of the computer, opened a new empty post, and stared at it. For a long time. Damn. See, my blogging philosophy has always been to slam it out, sling it up, and clean up the typos later. I’m a one-draft blogger. In fact, the whole point of this blog was simply to get my butt in the chair and writing every day.

But now there are people actually reading it. I’m suddenly hyper audience-aware. If I’m casual, who will I offend? What do all these new friends want to read? Should I do a little research and see what they like best, tailoring topics to previous posts? I stared some more. Another cup of coffee. Checked my Ebay watchlist.

I teach writing for a living, and much of what I teach centers around this mantra I repeat about No Such Thing as Writer’s Block and Just Go Write Something. I can honestly say that this is the first time in recent memory that I’ve found myself stumped. Physician, heal thyself and all that.

So that’s what I’ll do. Just dive on in and slam it out and devil-may-care. If you find typos, be kind. I’ll fix them in a bit. If my politics/tomato snark/social networking cluelessness offends you, let me apologize right now and be forever done with it.

I’ll just keep scribbling like nobody’s watching. Kind of.

A Blight on Your House

No Telling
(Dante’s Tomatoes by Dore’, with a little help from me)

Or on your tomatoes, thanks to “Southern growers” and according to The New York Times. I was alerted to the tomato pandemic via a bit in the Arkansas Times, and while there are no fingers specifically pointing Arkansasward, we know who they mean.

We’ve unwittingly contributed to the disaster by shipping plants to unsuspecting northern farmers who, if you can believe such rumors, actually grow tomatoes for sale. Why anyone would want a tomato grown in outdoor temperatures of less than 105 degrees is beyond me. That’s like importing watermelons from Canada. Ridiculous.

I guess we know how to get even, though. The NY Times says,

“According to plant pathologists, this killer round of blight began with a widespread infiltration of the disease in tomato starter plants. Large retailers like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowe’s and Wal-Mart bought starter plants from industrial breeding operations in the South and distributed them throughout the Northeast. (Fungal spores, which can travel up to 40 miles, may also have been dispersed in transit.) Once those infected starter plants arrived at the stores, they were purchased and planted, transferring their pathogens like tiny Trojan horses into backyard and community gardens.”

I can envision thousands those baby Arkansas plants flinging killer spores like confetti-tears all the way to New Jersey. Sounds more like a pitiful cry for help. Remember Hansel and Gretel and those breadcrumbs? Exactly.

(Titans Recoil by Dore’ and Monda)

So does this leave us tomatoless down here? Hmmm….

“So what’s going on here? Plant physiologists use the term “disease triangle” to describe the conditions necessary for a disease outbreak. You need the pathogen to be present (that’s the late blight), you need a host (in this case tomatoes and potatoes) and you need a favorable environment for the disease — for late blight that’s lots of rain, moderate temperatures and high humidity.”

The emphasis is mine. Clearly, if God meant for tomatoes to flourish in places like Vermont she would’ve turned up the heat considerably. In fact, I suspect this may be God’s way of telling those folks to grow Brussels sprouts instead.

There’s talk that we might have a shortage down here, but barring some apocalyptic meteor-disaster climate change or salmonella outbreak, anyone living in Arkansas could reasonably put in a few plants right now and harvest tomatoes clear through Halloween. How’s that for trick or treat?

Say it Ain’t So, Twitter

No Telling

Millions of people clicking feverishly on their Iphones. The panic, the frustration, the rock-bottom realization that they were all disconnected. That’s an exi-twitter-stential moment, folks. Lives hung in the balance as the masses frantically clicked and reclicked.

I learned about the TwitterCaust on CNN this morning. Breaking News! Twitter. Is. Down!

So I sat there with my coffee and tried very hard to hear the collective wailing and gnashing of teeth. I imagined all sorts of world-wide panic and and falling stock prices and declarations of war. Seriously, how long would Twitter be down before we began hearing the thundering hooves of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? Then I made another cup of coffee.

Look, I’m not a complete geezer. I’ve got a Twitter account and I post to it when I remember. Sometimes I forget, although it doesn’t really matter. My tweets are unremarkable and I don’t post via cell phone because it’s too much trouble. I do realize Twitter’s important to many people. Yadda, yadda.

The thing is, I signed on after the scare was over and found that all anyone wanted to tweet about was…well, that Twitter was down this morning. Twittering about Twitter seems a little pointless. I’m thinking maybe it’s time we all rediscovered our walking-around lives, our priorities, our inner monologues. Something.

(Note: I’m tweeting a link to this. Full circle, darlin’, full circle.)

Thar She Blows

No Telling

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/1213958654

Just found this video of last Tuesday’s waterspout. Tornadoes aren’t so unusual around here, but these water-twisters are. Lake Conway is about five feet deep most of the time, so I figure up close this was probably a Moses-parting-the-Red-Sea moment.

So did it sling crappie and catfish for the whole three or so minutes, or did the waterspout lift it all aloft then set the whole business politely back down? The news said no one was injured and no damage reported, but surely someone driving down I-40 took a game fish in the windshield.

There has to be at least one good story out there.

Art for Art’s Sake

No Telling


A regular stop on our yearly Little Rock Writing Marathon is The River Market’s ArtSpace on President Clinton Avenue. Aside from being an excellent place to write, it’s also one of those galleries where I could easily mortgage my house and fill it with every single piece I see.

These paintings, for example. The artist is Megan Chapman, a blog acquaintance of mine who lives and paints in Fayetteville. These sorry cellphone shots don’t do her work justice, so you’ll need to visit her site to get a better look. She also has an Etsy shop where she sells smaller works on paper.

Imagine my surprise when, four days later, the River Market ArtSpace announced a sudden and permanent close. Something about a failure to renegotiate a lease. After twelve years, it’s going to be a food joint or a – hell, I don’t know – a souvenir shop for cheap presidential trinkets. What it won’t be is a gallery featuring the finest local artists Arkansas offers.

Artists like Marc Hatfield. I went to kindergarten with Marc and scads of other professor’s kids. His father taught art and is still creating – the walls of the building where I teach every day are covered with his work. His mother, one of the loveliest women I ever met, attempted to teach me French in college. The story of their lives is the stuff of novels.

Why does any of this history matter? Because a couple of years ago I wandered into the River Market ArtSpace and came face-to-wall with the visible attainment of Marc’s kindergarten hopes. He wanted to be an artist when he grew up and there he was, canvas after canvas.

I spent the next hour in the basement of the Flying Saucer weeping into bar napkins and scribbling in my notebook. I was half tempted to barter my car for one of his paintings. If I hadn’t given all those teachers from Yell county a ride, I might have done it.

So there’s more to a gallery closing than hanging a sign and turning it into some burger joint. It’s a personal loss for me and for all the writers I take to the River Market. Next year, we may get our passports in order and set sail for Hot Springs instead.

The Perfect Grandson Turns This Many

No Telling

And what a party it was. The fun began at Jump Zone, where most of us were blinded by bright, enormous, inflated dinosaurs and superheroes – seriously, these things were easily two stories high. The Perfect Grandson, however, was not intimidated and ran like a boy possessed from one giant thing to another, jumping, sliding, throwing beach balls, screaming. A good fall and a bloody lip didn’t slow him down at all. The minimum age for this kind of kid-stravaganza is two, and he was only just.

But keep that to yourself. If you so much as whisper “birthday party” in that joint the $8 entry blossoms into a cool $200. We were on the down-low for this one. It was a family play date.

Afterwards it was off to the great-grandparents for chicken and Spiderman cake and the real birthday shindig. After eating everything that wasn’t nailed down, The Perfect Grandson opened all his presents, shot some hoops on his new basketball goal, and splashed around in the wading pool until he practically fell asleep in it. It was a Very Happy Birthday.

The whole party was the work of one single mama. She tripped the light fantastic on this one, baking and hand-decorating the Spidey-web cake and slinging herself down all those impossible blow-up slides at Jump Zone. She even mustered the energy to invite her father to the festivities, and made him behave. He’s divorcing again, so that was no small feat.

The Perfect Grandson is two. He got Spiderman glow-in-the-dark Big Boy Underpants to mark the day and what comes next will be no small feat, either.

What comes next is three and four and ten and cars and girls and “don’t tell me what to do, I’m a man.” But keep that to yourself. She had bouts of mama-tears three or four times yesterday alone and it might be best to keep the rest of what’s coming on the down-low as well.

Baby steps.

Miming the Dead

No Telling

I saw a lot of things Friday during our Great Bear Writing Project scribbling marathon. This Michael Jackson mime was just one of them. He’s been a fixture on President Clinton Avenue for some time, actually, and I remember seeing him dancing there last year. The point is, he wasn’t making a fast dollar off of someone else’s tragedy. He was going to work in the Little Rock River Market just as he has for at least a year now, maybe longer.

I wish I’d taken a picture of him before, because he’s changed his appearance drastically. Not that my cheap-ass cell phone photo does him much justice anyway. A year ago this MJ mime was leaner, wore a black leather jacket, black pants, a white t-shirt, and one of those studded leather belts. The music on his boom box belted out “Billie Jean” and he danced silently in half white, half black face paint. He drew a crowd. He was good. I put a dollar in the bucket by his feet and he tipped his black fedora.

Like any good mime, he said nothing. His eyes were unsettling, though. He had a way of catching me looking at him, making me look at him, a playful, almost hyper-awareness something between mind-reading and telekinesis. There were moments as I stood there on the sidewalk watching him lock and lean that it seemed possible he was truly channeling Michael Jackson and Mr. Jackson was enjoying pulling off the hoax.

So he stuck with me. There are people like that who linger. I’m sure it happens to all of us.

Friday, there he was again. This time the mime had spray painted all his clothing silver. His face was also silver, except for the dark black circles around his eyes. It was almost 100 degrees on Friday at noon and the sun was a demon, but there he stood layered and painted without breaking a sweat.

This time there was no music coming from the boom box, and his movements were angular and brief. No dancing, really. When I came near, he offered penny candy and smiled when I refused. There were several of us on our way to find lunch so there was a moment of discussion while I dug in my purse for a dollar to leave in the bucket at his feet. There was a small clutch of onlookers watching the mime and he was mindful to keep moving, continue the show.


Each time I looked up, though, he was staring through me. His eyes were pained in that way quiet students agonize when they know the answers but can never summon the courage to make a voice. Not smiling against the pain, but beside it. He was so blindingly silver all over that it hurt to look back.

All through lunch I wondered what it felt like to hang your ambition on a suicide. Last year we didn’t know about the intravenous drips and astronomical pill-popping, although we weren’t surprised to find out. How did this kid find out when his mime-channel died? Was he on the street popping and locking to “The Way You Make Me Feel”? What did he do in that very afternoon, right there on the sidewalk in full persona? When someone told him, did he finally break character and speak?

Maybe he’s just a regular guy who walks off at the end of the day, buys a pack of smokes out of the bucket-money, and picks up Taco Bell for dinner. Maybe he’s a cad who beats his girlfriend or an identity-thieving con man. Maybe a frustrated actor trying to make it big in the wrong city. Who knows.

I just know there’s a story there and he’s not going to tell it, at least not to me, not in the street, not when he’s Michael.

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.