My grandmother tells a story of a woman who lamented her daughter was going with a boy of another religion. The daughter was Baptist and the boy Missionary Baptist.
Driving through southeast Arkansas on a Sunday taking note of the churches to pass time.
Melbourne Baptist
Transylvania Baptist
Delta Mennonite Church
Mount Zion Missionary Baptist
China Grove Missionary Baptist
Mount Olive Baptist
Grace Episcopal
Evergreen Missionary Baptist
Rose Hill Missionary Baptist
King Solomon Missionary Baptist
Bloomy Shade Missionary Baptist
New Zion Missionary Baptist
North Star Missionary Baptist
Zion Chapel Missionary Baptist
Holly Ridge Missionary Baptist
Jennie Baptist
Woodson Temple Missionary Baptist
etc.
Look a little homogeneous? Look again. Baptist and Missionary Baptist.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Weather Watching
Hurricane Gustav
Going to be a lot of Louisiana and Mississippi license plates in town over the next couple of days.
Medical evacuees flying in and churches beginning charity efforts.
Going to be a lot of Louisiana and Mississippi license plates in town over the next couple of days.
Medical evacuees flying in and churches beginning charity efforts.
Monday, August 25, 2008
And We're Off...
Watching the Democratic National Convention. Not much going on for a surprisingly long time. Finally Caroline Kennedy and a great little introductory video on Edward M Kennedy. Now Kennedy is coming out to riotous applause. And you know what I can't stop thinking about? What Bill Clinton must be feeling. He idolized the Kennedys. Once he got into office he eagerly courted Ted Kennedy. How must it feel to have the Kennedys, kicking off the Dem Convention, throwing the weight of their legacy behind Obama? I keep filtering all this through the eyes of the couple who lost the nominating process, but especially Bill.
Update: David Gergen on CNN - "the moral leadership of the Democratic Party never belonged to Clinton." Meaning Kennedy. As if during the Clinton ascendancy to the presidency and then primacy in the party during the Bush years was still second fiddle to the Kennedy tradition? I think he's overdoing it. But again, this stuff must burn. And Clinton himself might have contributed to this sense in his personal enthusiasm for that legacy.
Update: David Gergen on CNN - "the moral leadership of the Democratic Party never belonged to Clinton." Meaning Kennedy. As if during the Clinton ascendancy to the presidency and then primacy in the party during the Bush years was still second fiddle to the Kennedy tradition? I think he's overdoing it. But again, this stuff must burn. And Clinton himself might have contributed to this sense in his personal enthusiasm for that legacy.
Friday, August 22, 2008
Confederate Widow Dies
Baxter Bulletin of Baxter county, AR
Military Times
How are there still Confederate widows? End of life marriage of convenience it sounds like. Alternative end of life care plan. I guess in 1934 (year of marriage) social programs for care of elderly hadn't all that high a profile in Baxter county. Did he have children? I don't remember if the article said. It seems like that is where care would fall. Barring that, this reminds me of a older view of marriage as a cure all for social ills. In all varieties. Convenience to all parties being the primary factor. It sounds like Mrs Maudie Hopkins was poor enough to marry for very old reasons but young enough to not be of the mindset that saw it as entirely normal. She was ashamed of the marriage apparently and didn't even come out about it till recently. Deaths often give you a feeling of watching something pass from history, and marriage as this sort of social arrangement feels like it has more connection to living memory than Confederates. There is something poignant in talking to people who grew up in social conditions widely different from your own. Seeing that pass feels immediate and real. The Civil War is deep history, meaning it's gone off the deep end and no matter how fired up people still get over it (especially down here), no one has any connection to actual memory of it. No one's alive who experienced it, and no one's alive who knew anyone who experienced it. Unless you are a teenager who married an ancient guy in 1934. And the last of those might have just passed away.
Military Times
How are there still Confederate widows? End of life marriage of convenience it sounds like. Alternative end of life care plan. I guess in 1934 (year of marriage) social programs for care of elderly hadn't all that high a profile in Baxter county. Did he have children? I don't remember if the article said. It seems like that is where care would fall. Barring that, this reminds me of a older view of marriage as a cure all for social ills. In all varieties. Convenience to all parties being the primary factor. It sounds like Mrs Maudie Hopkins was poor enough to marry for very old reasons but young enough to not be of the mindset that saw it as entirely normal. She was ashamed of the marriage apparently and didn't even come out about it till recently. Deaths often give you a feeling of watching something pass from history, and marriage as this sort of social arrangement feels like it has more connection to living memory than Confederates. There is something poignant in talking to people who grew up in social conditions widely different from your own. Seeing that pass feels immediate and real. The Civil War is deep history, meaning it's gone off the deep end and no matter how fired up people still get over it (especially down here), no one has any connection to actual memory of it. No one's alive who experienced it, and no one's alive who knew anyone who experienced it. Unless you are a teenager who married an ancient guy in 1934. And the last of those might have just passed away.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Weather Mischief
Terrible joint outings for men's and women's US track and field team?
Inability of fans from Central Arkansas to East Tennessee to cheer?
Clearly, a connection.
Weather across central Arkansas into east Tennessee is rainy, maybe fringe effects as Hurricane Fay comes ashore and moves north. The NBC feed has been terrible all night and keeps cutting out completely or dissolving into frozen pixels. I realize Little Rock is a rural capitol, but does it have to feel like the hinterlands of TV reception? Just trying to be a patriot here.
Inability of fans from Central Arkansas to East Tennessee to cheer?
Clearly, a connection.
Weather across central Arkansas into east Tennessee is rainy, maybe fringe effects as Hurricane Fay comes ashore and moves north. The NBC feed has been terrible all night and keeps cutting out completely or dissolving into frozen pixels. I realize Little Rock is a rural capitol, but does it have to feel like the hinterlands of TV reception? Just trying to be a patriot here.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Clunker Car Night
Clunker Car Night is a long standing tradition with the Arkansas Travelers baseball team. Tonight they gave away 11 old cars. Sadly, I came up empty.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Beijing Opening Ceremony: Yesteryear Rides Again
Watched the opening ceremony of the Beijing Summer Olympics tonight. What a display. Poor London 2012. How are you going to top that? Can you imagine England being that triumphalist about its history? No, you can't. Massive state displays make modern societies queasy. Democracy might mean more transparent and accountable government, greater personal freedom and access to information, and refined checks and balances, but one thing it does not do better than pre-democratic society is state displays. If you want to build a pyramid or host a rival on a field of gold or open the Olympics with more flash than any predecessor it helps to be totalitarian. That's why I was excited about the opening ceremony. There aren't many nations around capable of that sort of old fashioned mustering of the full power of the state to Make Stuff Happen. It's like watching the best part of what modern society misses in ditching kings and emperors. I'd like to call it a throwback. The display is fun to see but you wouldn't want to live with the structure that makes it possible. That pageantry ought to be more 1608 than 2008. Yet between the economic spring and recent international clout of Russia and China, maybe authoritarianism is making a comeback...
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Roasted to a turn...
After days of economical beach exposure I overdid it yesterday and burned myself to a crisp. All week I've tried to gradually introduce my pale skin to this thing called sun, and then wasted everything with one gluttonous afternoon. But it was beautiful Wednesday! The water was blue and clear and cold and the sun was shining (obviously) and my sister and cousin had just arrived the night previous and I discovered those blue umbrellas and reclining beach chairs were complementary and given all that stayed out all day and now cannot even shrug.
So here, to help pass the hours until the sun goes down enough for me to venture out, are some notes on topics of conversation and other beach happenings.
1. Ah Mobile. Ah Coastal Strip between Mobile and the Next Place
First of all, driving along in the dusk of the day and into the evening is convincing that the South could be the garden of the world if anyone cared to make it so. What if landscape architecture was the world's most celebrated profession? The South is made for them. So green and lush, with vegetation so eager to bloom that even the ugliest plants try to flower and at the drop of a hat will reclaim what is left untended. We clear cut, throw some asphalt down, throw some pre-fab up and call it a day. And I still love the drive. We'd have to nuke the landscape to kill its appeal. So why not integrate garden and structure. The hanging gardens of Babylon brought landscape into the heart of a (opinion) brutal culture. We're pretty nice. Why not highlight our virtues with a little urban planning? Is there an urban planning office around that still has independent power? Of course, Babylon had absolute centralized power for its plans. More recently, Communist centralization hardly produced the happiest urban design. How does a democracy urban plan better short of putting in minimal standards and waiting for a change in taste? Depressing realization that attempts to beautify ones surroundings might be short road to manic quest for Supreme Power. The world's next super villain might be a landscape architect or urban planner whose spirit was crushed by one too many strip malls. E says that she has seen some semi-unscrupulous acts in the name of better design, fooling a client to get around their taste etc. The seeds of evil?
2. Beach Reading Crisis Resolved
If your job has you in TEXTS on occasion, so that your personal reading is mainly light, then why vacation with light stuff? Light is all I have time for most all the year. Now I'm on the beach. I can read slow if I want to, read one word at a time if I want to. So I went with Suite Francaise, which I started over a year ago but never finished. So I'm reading French slowly, with a dictionary just because I have the time. There's a luxury in reading slowly, even dwelling on a word like a piece of poetry, a word for which there is no translation and whose precise thing or feeling would be unknown to you otherwise. Obviously there is an indulgence in enjoying something on those terms. Tack that on to the indulgence of having time to read it at all and it's a positive two for one. It's even better than I remember.
3. Wither Henry Miller
The Air Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller is E's beach reading. You might not think that a beach is the best context for a nightmare whose hallmark is air-conditioning. Apparently he travels the US and re-acquaints himself with its charms or, as the case may be, deceits. E describes a scene where he sees a parking lot full of workers cars outside a factory. What a dream this would represent for the workers of any other nation, he thinks, and what an illusion it would represent. Why illusion? I haven't read it so I'm not sure where he goes with it, but the story stands out for it seems to still reflect the concerns of modern utopianists in its chagrin over the car. Long pegged as a catalyst for urban sprawl, the obvious villain in every purposefully pedestrian development, not to the mention a major cause of current USA oil gluttony, the car in the abstract, on Miller's look-what-it-represents-under-the-surface level, is unloved. Just don't pretend that's the reality for any family beach vacation.
So here, to help pass the hours until the sun goes down enough for me to venture out, are some notes on topics of conversation and other beach happenings.
1. Ah Mobile. Ah Coastal Strip between Mobile and the Next Place
First of all, driving along in the dusk of the day and into the evening is convincing that the South could be the garden of the world if anyone cared to make it so. What if landscape architecture was the world's most celebrated profession? The South is made for them. So green and lush, with vegetation so eager to bloom that even the ugliest plants try to flower and at the drop of a hat will reclaim what is left untended. We clear cut, throw some asphalt down, throw some pre-fab up and call it a day. And I still love the drive. We'd have to nuke the landscape to kill its appeal. So why not integrate garden and structure. The hanging gardens of Babylon brought landscape into the heart of a (opinion) brutal culture. We're pretty nice. Why not highlight our virtues with a little urban planning? Is there an urban planning office around that still has independent power? Of course, Babylon had absolute centralized power for its plans. More recently, Communist centralization hardly produced the happiest urban design. How does a democracy urban plan better short of putting in minimal standards and waiting for a change in taste? Depressing realization that attempts to beautify ones surroundings might be short road to manic quest for Supreme Power. The world's next super villain might be a landscape architect or urban planner whose spirit was crushed by one too many strip malls. E says that she has seen some semi-unscrupulous acts in the name of better design, fooling a client to get around their taste etc. The seeds of evil?
2. Beach Reading Crisis Resolved
If your job has you in TEXTS on occasion, so that your personal reading is mainly light, then why vacation with light stuff? Light is all I have time for most all the year. Now I'm on the beach. I can read slow if I want to, read one word at a time if I want to. So I went with Suite Francaise, which I started over a year ago but never finished. So I'm reading French slowly, with a dictionary just because I have the time. There's a luxury in reading slowly, even dwelling on a word like a piece of poetry, a word for which there is no translation and whose precise thing or feeling would be unknown to you otherwise. Obviously there is an indulgence in enjoying something on those terms. Tack that on to the indulgence of having time to read it at all and it's a positive two for one. It's even better than I remember.
3. Wither Henry Miller
The Air Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller is E's beach reading. You might not think that a beach is the best context for a nightmare whose hallmark is air-conditioning. Apparently he travels the US and re-acquaints himself with its charms or, as the case may be, deceits. E describes a scene where he sees a parking lot full of workers cars outside a factory. What a dream this would represent for the workers of any other nation, he thinks, and what an illusion it would represent. Why illusion? I haven't read it so I'm not sure where he goes with it, but the story stands out for it seems to still reflect the concerns of modern utopianists in its chagrin over the car. Long pegged as a catalyst for urban sprawl, the obvious villain in every purposefully pedestrian development, not to the mention a major cause of current USA oil gluttony, the car in the abstract, on Miller's look-what-it-represents-under-the-surface level, is unloved. Just don't pretend that's the reality for any family beach vacation.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Beach Reading, Slow Things, and the American Landscape
After writing this title I momentarily drifted off, which I take to be an indication that it is bed time. So maybe I'll get to this tomorrow...
Sunday, August 3, 2008
And Now For A Quick Evening Blog...
...on Jackson vs. Little Rock riverfront development! Actually this is a topic about which I know nothing. However I have it on good authority that Jackson, MS, in search of bettering its own usage of the (lovely? is it lovely? I've been in Jackson several times and have never seen it) Pearl River which flows though Jackson, has looked with admiration at Little Rock's own downtown development. So good job Little Rock on being the subject of the admiring regional anecdote.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Loose ends before travel and random resolutions
Went by the Hop dairy bar today to say goodbye. The owner was sitting out front leaning up against the guardrail. "Things have changed," he said, "we're goin' on. New and improved." Apparently he owns the property and the name; I guess he found somebody to run it. The downtown box people are calling their place the Hop Diner. "That seems kind of sneaky," I observed. "That's what we think," said Mr. H. So now there are two Hops. But only one is the diary bar where my grandfather gave his grandchildren state capitol domes on their ice cream cones every summer.
The Cox Center had no Masie Dobbs, the recommeded mystery series I had in mind for the beach. I'm still not sure what to do, but I have some of my own un-read candidates. Black Narcissus? PD James mystery? Kate Chopin's At Fault? The blurb says "... against a backdrop of economic devastation and simmering racial tensions." It's the 2008 election season! And I've already got my election reading covered. Beach reading selection crisis looms.
Finally, resisted watermelon buying but had to take picture. I'm going to buy one out of a roadside stand tomorrow.
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