Growing Up

 Growing up in Winfield, Alabama in the 50's & 60's I always went to Sunday School. I remember teachers Mrs. Brindley and Parker Spann. We would always elect class officers. It seems like I was always the Sunday School class Vice-President, but never President of my SS class. This is the only chink in my spiritual resume. Why was I never President?

Last Night

 

Last night I dreamed I was holed up with Anne Frank and her family in this upstairs apartment.   Me and Anne hit it off in her room, giggling and pinching each other and eating peppermint patties.   We were playing on her iPad (you didn't know they had iPads in Nazi Germany?) a game called "Kill Hitler."  Anne would shriek with delight (in perfect cockney English) when she zapped Duh Fuhrer.  Every once in a while she would grab this book and write something in it.  What's that? I said.  It's my Kitty, she said.  Can I read it?  No, my Kittly is mine and no one will ever read it but me.  Hmmmmmm, I thought.  Then there was a commotion downstairs and some heavy, heavy boots started stomping up the stairs.  It was then that I woke up.

just Try

 Just try and take my day book away from me. . . . .

Either

 

"Either this wallpaper goes or I go."

Oscar Wilde's last apocryphal words. If you hear one day that my last words are

"I can't take it anymore and I don't know what it is."

Do know that what you hear will likely be apocryphal also, but it will express my sentiment nonetheless.

(I rarely get the vapors over wallpaper).

Along the Way

  "Say what you want to, but I know it was," Terri says.  "It may sound crazy to you, but it's true just the same.  People are different, Mel.  Sure, sometimes he may have acted crazy.  Okay.  But but he loved me.  In his own way maybe, but he loved me.  There was love there, Mel.  Don't say there wasn't."

Raymond Carver, "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love"

At the begging of the war in 1861, Grant, who had just been promoted to Brigadier General, was not an impressive looking soldier.  When he showed up in Cairo, Illinois, on September 2, 1961, no one was there to greet him.  No one knew anything about his except that he had a fondness for whiskey.  He was shoer, alight, and stoop-shouldered.  His beard needed trimming; he was 5'8" and weighed a mere 130 lbs.

Donald L. Miller - Vicksburg, p. 12

A 24-year-old young man who was generous with his time and his treasure, especially for children, is fighting for his life. How do we make sense such a thing? How do we understand it? There isn’t any way.

-Sportswriter Phillip Marshall in Auburn Undercover

In sum, America's Constitution was far more democratic and geostrategic than we have been taught by twentieth-century neo-Beardian and Madisonian myth makers. The document's deep power structure, sadly, was also skewed toward slavery than many mainstream scholars have been willing to admit. America's Constitution was not truly Madisonian; it was Washingtonian and proto-Jacksonian.

-Akhil Reed Amar

Hemingway's Robert Cohn married the first girl who was nice to him. A familiar enough story.

Ernest Hemingway- The Sun Also Rises

Just try and take away my paper day book.

The United States has always been an empire. (From Myth America)

At the Pelham Starbucks

 At the Pelham Starbucks they don’t have to ask my name anymore. All of the Baristas know Fred. I DO place my order—-today caramel ribbon crunch Frappuccino and bagel with cream cheese—-at the counter but then I take a seat and they deliver my order to my table. Fame at my local Starbucks has its privileges.

I Should Be Reading

I should be reading about Vicksburg to start this new year.