Overheard while crossing the appellation omountains

Did you watch the Miss America pageant last Saturday night?

I did not, but maybe I should have, for two reasons:

I've been missing America since 2008;

And,

Miss South Carolina almost went the distance!

Only, as TG occasionally points out, almost doesn't count except in horseshoes, hand grenades, and the atom bomb.

Still, for an entire year, she's a heartbeat or an indiscretion away.

First runner up. That's something.

(The consensus on Twitter was that Ali Rogers a/k/a Miss South Carolina got robbed of the title which should have been hers, but I have no opinion because like I said, I didn't watch.)

I read an online news article that claimed when Ali introduced herself at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas on Saturday, she said:

From the state where we use sushi as bait, and no, y'all are the ones with the accent, I am Miss South Carolina Ali Rogers.

When I read on the Twitter that Miss America 2013 had been chosen and that Miss South Carolina got beat by a mascaraed eyelash, I looked up the winner, Miss New York, on YouTube.

I found a home-video of Mallory Hagan's tap-dance routine, the same one she performed on Saturday night, but from the Miss New York pageant which she won to get a shot at being crowned Miss America.

To be honest it didn't hold my attention all that well and my gaze wandered over to the "related videos" section of my screen.

And speaking of bombs, I noticed anew this ignominious moment which I hadn't watched in awhile:

That was Caitlin Upton, Miss South Carolina Teen USA 2007, contending for the title of Miss Teen USA.

She didn't win.

And in case you felt in listening that you were trying to untangle a wad of rubber bands the size of a cantaloupe using nothing but a straight pin and your powers of extra sensory perception, here is exactly what she said:

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over HERE in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children.

Please don't misunderstand; I am not making fun of the perfectly darling Caitlin Upton.

Although if I were, I certainly wouldn't be the first.

(She's two days older than my son. I think they'd make a cute couple. They could celebrate their birthdays on the day in between their actual birthdays.)

And most likely if I had been in her position at that moment I would have embarrassed myself and my state much worse, and made YouTube history as well.

I understand that Caitlin had the grace to laugh at herself and even got some mileage out of the incident with television appearances and whatnot.

Good for her. Lemons to lemonade and like such as. I wish her every success.

In 1986 when TG and I were expecting our third child to arrive any day, I was studying a baby names book.

Stephanie and Audrey had been easy to label; Stephanie was one of TG's favorite names and I loved it too.

And since a kid watching General Hospital after school, I had been captivated by the name Audrey.

If we had a boy, there was no choice but Andrew. He would be the namesake of TG's paternal grandfather.

But if baby number three turned out to be a girl, she was hitherto nameless. I was determined to nail it down before the big day.

So the baby names book was open and I was looking down through the lists of girl appellations and my eye landed on Caitlin.

Finding the name irresistibly charming, I was immediately enamored.

Actually I had seen the Paul Newman instant classic The Verdict on TV not long before, and there was a character called Caitlin, so methinks the name was already lodged in my subconscious.

This was before Caitlin became a more popular name, which in fact it did in the '90s, and continues to be today.

Spelled (incorrectly) with a "K" -- as in K-A-I-T-L-I-N -- it was the 100th most popular girl baby name of 2012.

When I mentioned the name Caitlin to TG on that May day in 1986 as a suggestion of what to call our third child should it be a girl, this is what he said:

"How would you spell it?"

To me there was (and is) only one correct way to spell Caitlin; that is, the one-hundred-percent Irish way. I'm Irish; the name is Irish. So I said:

"C-A-I-T-L-I-N." 

I don't remember exactly what he said in response, so I'll paraphrase:

"No."

He didn't object so much to the name as to the spelling I insisted upon.

He preferred K-A-T-E-L-Y-N.

?????

I don't remember exactly what I said in response, so I'll paraphrase:

"Absolutely not."

To make a short story even shorter, we agreed to call our new baby Erica should it turn out to be a girl, and it did, and the name suits her very well.

Much better than Caitlin, lovely a name as it is, would have done. And it has three of the same letters.

There is lore in every family and in ours, one of the favorite anecdotes centers around the time when Erica, as a seventh grader, participated in a regional spelling bee.

First let me say, Erica was a straight-A student. Upon graduation from high school she finished second in her class. Today she teaches high school math.

What happened at the spelling bee was an aberration.

She was staying alive, having survived several rounds. Her words hadn't been all that hard. Kid after kid had bitten the dust and Erica was well on her way to being a finalist.

She stepped up to the microphone and waited to hear her next word.

The official said: "Mountain."

YESSSSS!

And Erica said:

"Oh. M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N."

Ding!

Our stunned third child was instructed to sit down, as she had disqualified herself from further participation in the spelling bee.

Because although the vowel "o" appears in the word "mountain," there is only one. And it's not the first letter; it's the second.

The takeaway? Wait before you speak! Especially if you are named Caitlin or Erica, or if the cameras are running.

Consult some inner compass. Think of it as vocal GPS.

Because some people out there in our nation don't have maps, y'all.

SkyWatch Friday: Sailing To Byzantium

I

 That is no country for old men. The young

In one another's arms, birds in the trees

-- Those dying generations -- at their song,

The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,

Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long

Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.

Caught in that sensual music all neglect

Monuments of unageing intellect.

II

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress,

Nor is there singing school but studying

Monuments of its own magnificence;

And therefore I have sailed the seas and Come

To the holy city of Byzantium.

III

 O sages standing in God's holy fire

As in the gold mosaic of a wall,

Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,

And be the singing-masters of my soul.

Consume my heart away; sick with desire

And fastened to a dying animal

It knows not what it is; and gather me

Into the artifice of eternity.

IV

 Once out of nature I shall never take

My bodily form from any natural thing,

But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make

Of hammered gold and gold enamelling

To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;

Or set upon a golden bough to sing

To lords and ladies of Byzantium

Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

~William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)~

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Sunset on Lake Murray, South Carolina

Photographed by Jennifer Weber on September 26, 2011

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Flag on the gunplay

As I mentioned on Monday, Javier hasn't been feeling well.

I am not a veterinarian, nor do I play one on television, but I think he's suffering from an attack of bursitis in his right shoulder.

Or right front leg. Whatever.

Absent a real (or even TV) veterinarian's opinion -- which I do not believe the $ituation warrant$ a$ of yet -- I have come to that conclusion because apart from obvious occasional pain, the little guy acts normal.

As in, he still relishes his food and wags his tail and trots around outside several times a day, checking his messages.

He just does it all a trifle more slowly -- as you will too, when you reach the age of nearly ninety-eight (which Javier will be in July) -- and deliberately.

But there is the unexpected whine or yelp from time to time when he experiences a pang and it's quite pitiful, so naturally I've been babying him. Even more than usual.

(I am hoping that temperatures in the high seventies forecast for the weekend will alleviate any discomfort he may be feeling from the cold, even though he DOES have his OWN space heater).

At any rate Javier's the consummate lap dog on his best day -- sleeping twenty out of twenty-four, twenty-four seven, three sixty-five -- so you can imagine how he gloms on when he doesn't feel well.

All of the above has conspired to make me spend more time on the Internet than I usually do, and specifically, checking out the comments, observations, and links provided by hard-right conservatives on Twitter.

Hold The Phone Y'all.

That's how I happened to see a tweet from a young man on said social media site, in which he was engaging a liberal black female who had accused him publicly of being a rrrrrrrracist.

Why? What did he do?

It was really veddy teddible. Ghaastly, if you must know.

The header on his Twitter page was a picture of an American flag flying beside the British Union Jack.

And the liberal black female thought he was displaying a Confederate flag.

NTTAWWT. (Displaying a Confederate flag, that is.)

The young man in question happens to be British by birth but he lives in New York, where he writes for a conservative publication.

I know all that because I took fifteen seconds to read his Twitter bio.

He had been tweeting conservative views involving gun control -- as in, read the Second Amendment, jolly good, keep calm and keddy on -- when his header picture caught the eye of the aforementioned liberal black female.

Stick It To The Chap.

Knickers instantly in a perfectly frightful twist, she lit into him faster than you can say fish and chips:

but you're tweeting and commenting about the Constitutional rights of ppl in THIS country?— 

?????

Then:

How does that even make sense? This guy is "defending American's constitutional right to bear arms" with the confederate flag shining.— 

?????

Then:

B. and got these ignant shook closet racists (shook b/c they can't even admit they're racist and shook) agreeing w/ him. Nobody told him..—

?????

Then:

In THIS country w/ black ppl, raise your confederate flag and we know who you stand with. Front like you're spouting freedom. The KKK did 2.—

?????

THEN:

Be careful when you're supporting your Second Amendment right that you're not playing into the hands of those who would TRULY disarm you.— 

.....

Walk On. Nothing Here To See.

The British expat white guy under attack saw her tweets and responded:

It's not a confederate flag, it's the British union flag. I'm British. Go and do some reading.

To which she quickly responded:

here we go..name calling? Smh..it was the Union Jack. Big deal. Still supporting disproportionate murder.— 

?????

Notice it was she who called him a racist, a murderer, and perhaps even a member of the Ku Klux Klan.

Somewhat to the liberal black female's credit, she eventually realized her nether regions were on show and sort of apologized to the man she'd wrongfully accused of racism.

But instead of labeling herself "ignant," "racist," and "shook," she euphemized herself as merely emotional:

This convo is a perfect example of what happens when we are emotional about issues.—

But he wasn't about to let her off that easily and I don't blame him.  He replied:

Not emotional, ignorant.

So then she said:

far from ignorant so much as emotional. But I'll agree to disagree if you will sir.

And he answered:

Of course it was ignorance. You thought the British flag was the Confederate flag, and compared me to the KKK.

Then he added:

This isn't about "tolerating viewpoints." You made up a viewpoint for me—the worst there is—and screeched about it in public.

And finished with:

Anyway, I accept your apology. Think before accusing strangers of hideous things—and look at history of guns and race, too.

Death To Reason.

There was more but you can look it up on Twitchy if you wish.

To be fair, I think the liberal black female had enough grace and humility to be truly embarrassed by what she'd done.

As it should be. And we've all made mistakes. But people.

I wish everyone who is of the misinformed notion that, one, The War Between The States was fought over slavery (it wasn't) or that, two, the Confederate flag is a symbol of racist oppression (it isn't), would take about fifteen minutes and read this.

It is the truth.

If you read it, it will help you live the rest of your life with a greater understanding of American history. And a greater knowledge of what's happening today, too.

Of course, if you're a liberal black American, you're not interested in the truth about the history of black folks in America.

You don't want to hear that not all slave owners in the antebellum American South were racist, while many northerners were racist -- and slave owners, too.

You don't want to hear that there have been white slaves and black slaves throughout human history, and that blacks sold blacks to whites, and blacks sold whites to blacks, and whites bought and sold blacks from/to whites and from/to blacks.

You don't want to hear that slavery still exists in the world today, and that it is still colorblind.

It's inconvenient, but the truth often is. That's why so few people are interested in it.

I'll Remember If You Will.

I'm going out on a limb here to say that there does not exist in American society any people more self-interested, pathologically misinformed, petulantly angry, perennially whiny, emotionally immature, and entitlement-minded than the black liberal.

They're also the most powerful tools of the Radical Left, led so deftly, so victoriously, so arrogantly, by the president.

They value symbolism over substance to such an extent, they freely accept the kind of slavery only liberal ideology can impose on a race.

They don't say a word when liberal Democrat policies fossilize them in the wasteland of the welfare mentality, assure their children substandard education, sanction their gross immorality, obliquely encourage their violent lifestyle, and subsidize mass genocide of their race through the unspeakable horrors of abortion.

All to their eternal detriment.

All for the sake of votes.

All for the sake of exerting even more diabolical power over them.

Molon Labe, Babe.

The original subject was gun control, much on everyone's mind and lips these days.

Am I armed? That's for me to know and you to find out.

All you need to know is, I have the right to carry concealed.

If I do carry a concealed firearm, I can assure you it's nothing like the high-powered weapons wielded by the guards who stand watch on the roof of Sidwell Friends, where the president's daughters -- and hundreds of other offspring of the socially, politically, and economically powerful -- attend school.

And it's nothing like the equalizers carried by the hired muscle that protect politicians -- of every stripe -- and celebrities as they move from mansion to limo to private jet to exclusive reception to star-studded premiere and back again.

It's thoroughly documented that where gun laws are strictest, violent crime is most rampant.

But those strict gun laws never apply to or hamper the wealthy, the powerful, the supremely entitled. Not to mention hardened, bloodthirsty, psychotic criminals, who will always have guns, no matter what.

They're just for hard-working, law-abiding schmucks like you and me.

I say: be you black, white, blue, yellow, liberal, conservative, Republican, or Democrat:

Come and take them! If you can. I'll be the one waving the American and the Confederate flags. Maybe the Jolly Roger too, for good measure.

Keep calm and keep carrying.

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Class Dismissed! Happy Wednesday!

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Give me what's mine and let me go

I'm home and having a wonderful time here -- despite the fact that Javier is unwell -- but I feel compelled to tell you about something that happened last week while I was still in Georgia.

I wanted to come home on Friday but as it happened I had traveled on the previous Saturday to Georgia with Erica, in her car, leaving my car for TG to use.

Why? Because "The clutch has finally gone out!" on his truck (the one that got bashed by the neighbor's tree and remains crumpled despite a more-than-generous insurance settlement).

I didn't want him to have to walk everywhere.

Imagine the time of day he'd need to leave for church if he were on foot. Twice on Sunday; once after dark! And what if the weather didn't cooperate?

People used to walk practically everywhere but that was before the Interstates.

At any rate if I'd had my car in Georgia I would have left there around noon last Friday all by me onesie.

That's because Erica was gone all day, until midnight.

Audrey had returned to Knoxville on Wednesday, One Two. Javier was chilling back in Columbia with TG, feeling the effects of being ninety-one in wintertime. I was alone at Erica's house in suburban Atlanta. 

We had the Southeast covered.

But, "Why was Erica gone all day until midnight on Friday?" you may be thinking.

Because in addition to being a high school math teacher, she coaches her school's girls' basketball teams.

And they had a game on Friday, an away game, far away. Like, a three-plus-hour drive away, requiring them to leave school well before noon.

"Why on earth didn't you go with her?" you may be thinking, or even saying out loud to your computer screen, palms up like I'm hard to figure out or even there in the room with you.

Two words: School Bus. Emphasis mine.

As in, that's how the teams and coaches traveled three-plus hours each way, to and from the games, starting out at noon, eating twice at fast-food joints, returning at midnight: on a school bus.

Do you know how many hours I have traveled to and from basketball games on school buses that top out at fifty miles per hour pedal to the metal, arriving home around the witching hour at the end of an exhausting week? In wintertime?

Neither do I. But trust me, it's lots more miles than TG would have had to walk last week if I'd taken my car to Georgia. Even if he went to church every day and twice on Sunday.

All four of our kids played multiple sports -- that covers approximately fifteen seasons of soccer, volleyball, and basketball -- and TG coached sports for over thirty years.

Not being any stripe whatsoever of an athlete, I have never played a sport. My role was ride, watch, cheer, wait, repeat. And if I say so, I did it all admirably.

But when they talk abut the glory days on court or field, do my exploits ever come up? I'll leave you to answer that all by your onesie.

At any rate I had a largely uneventful day at Erica's house, which happens to be sort of out in the country, situated across a fairly busy two-lane road from the school where she teaches, which is a ministry of the church she attends.

Which means I can peep out the window or front door and see the impressively pristine and large church/school campus presided over by a huge American flag.

On Friday I was busy doing laundry and making cookies and blogging and reading and generally not minding being home alone.

Erica texted me a few times during the day and then, at eleven twenty-three that night, while I was deeply into reading my book Curtains: Adventures of an Undertaker-In-Training, she texted thus:

We'll be home in about 30. Please come get me when we get in! :)

(I'll never understand why people don't give that little happy texty face a nose. All it takes is a hyphen! A single stroke! But I digress.)

My daughter had walked to work seventeen hours earlier, having found her car covered with morning frost and having realized, as she often does in winter, that it would take less time to walk across the road than to defrost the vehicle.

At eleven thirty-six (I don't remember why it took me so long) I texted back:

Ok where are your keys?

Then, not waiting for a reply, I put on shoes and a warm shawl and my gloves and pitched my sorry phone into my purse.

I looked out the window and saw that cars were already populating the school/church parking lot, some with their lights on.

Parents waiting. I know that drill.

Finding Erica's spare keyfob on a shelf beside the back door, I drove her car across the street. I parked next to a lady who, when I glanced over, seemed to wake up from a doze. She smiled and I smiled.

I knew I had a teensy wait but not an unmanageable one. Erica's CD player was giving me Josh Groban so I was content.

At some point I fished in my purse for my phone and found I'd missed Erica's text answering my last question concerning the whereabouts of her car keys.

She'd texted at eleven fifty:

On the shelf by the back door. it will be another 20. i was deceived.

*crickets*

By my reckoning that would put Erica there at about twelve ten. At least a ten-minute wait for me, if they were on the money.

I let my eyes cross in boredom.

Not five minutes later, at exactly midnight -- I am talking on the nose and I do not mean a hyphen, y'all -- that twinkling school bus lumbered into view on the two-lane road and turned in at one of the church/school entrances.

Parents nodding off behind the wheels of their cars shook themselves, turned on lights, began looking around.

The bus came to a stop and the doors opened and sleepy kids carrying pillows and backpacks and iPhones and iPads and McDonald's bags began stumbling out.

My kid was one of the first ones to set shoe leather to asphalt. I switched on her car's headlights.

Funny: Even with cell phones and other high-tech devices of communication, parents still wait for at least half an hour in the cold night for their children to arrive from athletic trips.

Why? You may be thinking or asking, if you are still awake and remotely interested.

The answer is in the final words of Erica's final text to me that night: "i was deceived."

Who deceived her? Why, the bus driver, of course. Coach of the boys' basketball team. Good man.

Fifty miles out he yelled back to the kids: "Tell your parents we'll be at the school in thirty minutes."

What did Erica do? Texted her mother that she'd be at the school in thirty minutes.

Only, she wasn't. A cursory look out the window of the bus at a green sign beside the Interstate would have told her she wouldn't be.

The next day, while having supper with TG in Augusta where we met for him to collect me, we told him about the blatant lie.

He chuckled. "Old bus driver slash coach trick," he said.

Turns out TG, who has driven dozens -- maybe hundreds -- of school buses full of snoring student athletes untold miles through the cold darkness on black ribbons of highway in several states, was savvier than either Erica or me.

Tired coaches doubling as bus drivers fib about their ETA because that way, they don't have to cool their aching heels while waiting for parents to show up and cart their kids home.

The parents bite every time. Be there in thirty minutes? Great! And they leap into their automobiles and drive to the school, where they wait for at least a half hour.

One would think they'd be outside their cars once the bus rolled in, hands on hips, feet tapping, in high dudgeon, and that they'd queue up at the still-closed bus door to take issue with the lying bus driver who told their kids to tell them thirty more minutes.

But they're not and they don't. They just want to get what's theirs and go home.

Erica flopped into the passenger seat of her car and I put the engine in reverse. We only had to go a hundred yards but I was anxious.

Across the parking lot teenagers still staggered zombie-like, silhouetted in the headlights of those waiting cars.

"Hold on," Erica said. She scanned the area for her charges. "Okay. They're all gone."

That was easy.

And that is all! For now.

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Happy Monday! Happy Week!

SkyWatch Friday: Blue

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

e. e. cummings (1894-1962)

It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.

Neil Armstrong (1930-2012)

Roses are red, violets are blue. I'm schizophrenic, and so am I.

Oscar Levant (1906-1972)

By reading the Scriptures I am so renewed that all nature seems renewed around me and with me. The sky seems to be a pure, a cooler blue, the trees a deeper green. The whole world is charged with the glory of God and I feel fire and music under my feet. 

Thomas Merton (1915-1968)

The old cathedrals are good, but the great blue dome that hangs over everything is better.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

Arithmetic is where the answer is right and everything is nice and you can look out of the window and see the blue sky -- or the answer is wrong and you have to start over and try again and see how it comes out this time.

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

If the sight of the blue skies fills you with joy, if the simplest things of nature have a message that you understand, rejoice, for your soul is alive.

Eleanora Duse (1858-1924)

The little windflower, whose just opened eye is as blue as the spring heaven it gazes at.

William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

Politicians talk themselves red, white, and blue in the face.

Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987)

Whenever I feel blue, I start breathing again.

L. Frank Baum (1856-1919)

Happy Friday! Happy Weekend! Happy January!

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