Tidbits

From The New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Catch Me, I’m Falling
By SAMUEL I. SCHWARTZ
Published: August 13, 2007
THE horrific collapse of the Interstate 35W bridge in Minneapolis was but one more in the history of infrastructure failures, and I’m afraid it will be old news soon. In 1967, during the busy Christmas shopping season, the Silver Bridge over the Ohio River between Point Pleasant, W.Va., and Gallipolis, Ohio, collapsed, plunging scores of people into the river and killing 46. During my nearly 20 years as an engineer with the New York City Department of Transportation, I witnessed ~read more~

"Money is like manure, it should be spread around." - Brooke ( Russell Kuser Marshall ) Astor, 30Mar1902-13Aug2002. How do you properly list all the previous surnames w/o a narrative?

Jonis Agee, author of TheRiver Wife, related to James?


From Early Warning
Posted at 08:43 AM ET, 08/14/2007
Partisan Warfare
In the coming weeks, as Congress and the American public prepare for the testimony of Gen. David Petraeus on the progress of the surge in Iraq, we'll hear a lot about the value of "professional" military advice. As President Bush has said, Washington ought not substitute "the opinions of politicians for the judgments of our military commanders."
But are military officers, specifically flag officers (generals and admirals), also political partisans? Increasingly -- and sadly -- they are. More important, the brass is profoundly "political," which is to say that its recommendations and decisions are hardly ever made for purely tactical or operational reasons....continue >>

From The Biscuit Report
Think about that for a minute. There are people in this country who believe, when hired to screen out naughty language and naked people, that non-profane criticism of George Bush somehow qualifies. We live in a country where it's possible to have such a "misunderstanding".Bravo, Republicans! Bravo! Why make it an actual crime to criticize the Dear Leader when you can just convince people to censor the criticism as a matter of course?

All I need now is a scene to plant this dialog within

Someone asked me recently at party, "Do you believe in Bush?" Not wanting to start a political conversation, I coyly replied, "Busch? No, God, no! Don't you have Miller Lite? Or, Killian's Red, that would be great," while I tensed with angst not knowing if they would take the bait and go to the bar or press me further. They took me for drunk and wandered away. Then I felt a warm surge of relief wash over me like the surf, "Believe in Dubbya? Believe? George W Bush? Really! Certainly not! Believing in or believing Dubbya is so ludicrous it makes believing in God seem rational," and I felt much better.

That dialog is largely stolen and reworded from Ann Lamott in one of the last chapters of Plan B: FurtherThoughts on Faith. Ms Lamott reminds me of Laurie Beth Jones who brought me Jesus in Blue Jeans: A Practical Guide to Everyday Spirituality but Ann is far more accessible to me. Laurie and Ann and I could talk in the church lobby but only Ann and I could go out and have a beer - I would be the only one drinking, Ann quit - and talk about faith and fucking. Admirably for a committed Christian Ms Lamott despises GWB and weaves this desperation and her wrestling with the resulting depression throughout Plan B where she deals, in language appropriate to the the topic and her mood at the time, with her daily battles in life and how her particular faith has sustained and strengthened her. Lamott is never preachy and though you might not agree with her you will, like I have, want her on your Lunch Dates I'd Love to Have list. I suppose that I should disclose that I listen to most books and have listened to unabridged versions of the two linked here. Both Laurie and Ann have soothing voices for the road but Ann just draws me in when she recounts how the apostles must have felt in the upper room on Holy Saturday, "... in a room filled with clouds of cigarette smoke I see some really wigged out guys drinking a bit of wine and thinking to themselves, 'boy are we really fucked!'"

Joni and the Cheshire Cat

Warm as ice, cold as fire.
Bright as night, dark as day.
I've looked at
the Cheshire Cat that way.
But, still somehow
it's cat's illusions I have known,
I really don't know cat's at all.

Is it what it seems
the Cheshire Cat
the smile
the smile in my dreams?



Watch for Bubba meets the Zen Shrimper in Bubba's Bait & Sushi, coming soon.

I'm back

Nearly a year since I've done any regular work here. Sometimes I feel like Amy, who commented on DB

Wow, how earnest and clever I was. And how utterly moribund Biscuit is. Every day I think to post on it, and then someone cries or yells "MOM, I need a box cutter and some glue!" and the moment is lost...

about not being able to tend to her blog because of her other responsibilities.

I am in Knoxville, TN since about eight my time, Central Daylight, last night when I fueled up and parked the truck to wait for my Monday morning delivery. It's a bit tight here at one of the older and smaller Pilot truck stops on the west side of Knoxville along IH-40. After I fueled up I had to circle back out in the street, come back in the parking lot, and then I waited for another driver to squeeze his fifty three foot dry van into one of the only open parking spaces directly behind the fuel islands, and then he very kindly got out of his truck and "spotted me" to back into the space next to his truck. There is just barely enough room to do it, pulling up through the fuel island and backing up to "hit the hole" puts you within inches of several obstructions, various curbs which bruise the side walls of your tires, the fuel island pump, trucks in the adjoining parking spaces and all the while other trucks are backed up in the parking lot coming in to fuel and waiting for you to park. Once I had gotten my truck settled into the space I got out to thank the driver, Anthony, who helped me. Anthony and I talked about trucking and all manner of things standing in the parking lot from around nine Knoxville time until nearly midnight with one break to buy soft drinks. It's a solitary business this over the road trucking and personal face to face conversation of any merit does not come often nor last long. Last night was a very unusual occurrence, generally such conversations last only minutes and are pure ritual courtesy but in this case we hit it off for some reason. I know Anthony lives in Chicago on the lakefront downtown with his wife and children, some of his past work history back to Seattle, WA and that he is originally from a small town in Mississippi and he has a similar grasp of my life. It turns out that we are both veterans of the US Navy though our service dates a very far apart, he enlisted in 1989 and I enlisted in 1967. I never asked for Anthony's last name nor he mine and likely we will never see each other again, but if we do meet again, there will certainly be the basis for another friendly conversation of some depth. Anthony and I are both from the South. Perhaps it's a Southern thing not asking for nor giving a last name when you spend some time with another person in a chance meeting, it felt very familiar and comfortable to me. We both agree that cornbread has no white flour nor sugar, only coarse ground yellow corn meal, bacon fat, salt, soda and buttermilk. And, we both recalled having regular family meals, as children, of ham hocks, navy beans, sliced purple onions, chow-chow and, of course, cornbread. All this is generally served with chilled buttermilk, ice water or sweet tea, your choice and sometimes you have all three yourself in the course of the meal. I can't recall in detail all that we talked about standing in the parking lot for nearly three hours but it ranged from the best routes around the traffic in the major areas of congestion to parenting practices.

Now after a mile and half round trip by foot along the Turkey Creek Greenway to the Wal-Mart Super Center I'm blessedly back in my air conditioned truck where the air is down in the high seventies and relatively dry, outside at five this evening it is still in the high nineties and even though the NWS shows the relative humidity at under fifty percent it's still seems "wet" outside to me. Perhaps lumping my week's supply of groceries back to the truck just made me work a little harder than usual or it is just damp along Turkey Creek. You don't realize what a half gallon of milk, eight packs of yogurt, a half gallon of orange juice, a half pound of pepper cheese, a pound of crackers, two rolls of paper towels, a half dozen bananas, four apples and a few other odds and ends really weighs until you pack it three quarters of a mile over the blazing asphalt back to your house. Now it's time to attend to some tedious financial issues just like last year at this time. And then, naptime until about six local time tomorrow morning when I'll set out to cover the last six miles to my destination. Living in forty eight square feet is interesting especially when you realize that you have to get a bed, first and foremost, into that six by eight foot area. But the adjoining office is only a single pace away and it's a spacious thirty two square feet, four by eight feet, with a very nice picture window view on three sides, high up where you can see what's going on. Three years off the road and now a full year back on the road. Yes, I'm back.

What Really Matters

Did you ever want somebody back?
Not necessarily
in the way
that you might have had them before?
And, this is really sorry language , this had
this verbal talisman of possession.
But anyway, let's just suppose
that you want to revive a relationship
with somebody.

And,
so you start to chat 'em up
and maybe even direct them to
right here.
Well, if you're here,
this is where you're supposed to be.

Did I wound you?
Uh huh.
Deeply?
Yaep.
Am I sorry?
Uh huh.
Does that change anything?
Nope.

But, what's important,
I think,
is that somehow
my behavior
can demonstrate to you,
hopefully over an extended period of time,
that the faith and trust that you once placed in me was not misguided.
And,
that within whatever limits you would like to set for any further interaction,
I am prepared, as well as committed,
to perform.
Perform to your satisfaction.

And, that's
what really matters.