NewscomaGot A Two-Pack Habit And A Motel Tan

Hey Cracker, let’s do it.

If I could own a red suit of that caliber, I would die a happy woman. A flat top would not suit me at all though.

The whole Willie Herenton saga continues to be interesting as I sit on the outside looking in. Steve Ross has a post on the soap opera that Herenton is currently starring in and I think he’s spot on with his analysis.

I haven’t written about Herenton’s primary challenge, or any of the on goings here in Memphis pertaining to the Mayor, because I don’t believe any of it until Council Chairman Lowery assumes the Mayor’s office on an interim basis. Once that happens, I’ll start believin’. Still, the Mayor’s antics today, including the possibility of running in the Special Election if he doesn’t like the field cast some serious doubts on how serious he really is about anything.

What this is starting to look like now, is a man who more than anything else, just wants to be in the public eye, stirring up shit, for his personal enjoyment.

Herenton, as you probably read earlier this week, called Steve Cohen an asshole. Cohen isn’t getting involved with Herenton, which is smart.

Ross goes on to write about how in politics, you have to make deals. Herenton basically says that he’s not a deal maker which may be the most naive, or asinine statement I’ve ever heard an elected individual say. I agree with Cracker, he’s not a stupid man and he is a seasoned politician or he wouldn’t have been mayor of Memphis for a billion years.

My point is that he’s saying what he thinks people want to hear.

I realize politicians do that. I’m not naive either.

And it all just rings very disingenuous. And his interview seemed, to me at least, to make him look a bit petty.

Herenton’s game is actually quite yawn-inducing to a large degree now that I think about it. And you’re looking at a special election that’s going to cost a lot of dough-re-mi at the end of the day.

So Willie, I ask, what’s the point?

Editor Bates has a story up this morning about Goodyear buyouts set for this week after months of negotiations.

Goodyear-Union City is saying good-bye Wednesday to about 550 associates whose service to the company represents 14,300 collective years of experience.
Those words were issued in a recent UC Today, a company newsletter published by the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company at its Union City plant. The 550 associates are part of a plant-wide buyout agreement between Goodyear-Union City and its USW Local 878 associates.
Union workers approved the buyout agreement with a 94 percent vote in favor of the proposal offered to the Goodyear associates. The agreement highlights three phases of workforce reductions at the local plant.

I wonder when it’s all said and done though how this will impact the local economy. Just wondering what will happen in the long term with sales revenues. As I know many of these 30+ employees, I’m pleased that this worked out for them. On another thought, if those men and women are replaced, it will be most likely at lower wages which means less money spent in several counties.

Just pondering it all.

Brad Watkins writes:

Let me be frank, Candidates are NOT your friends. They are not your family,your saviors or your messiahs, they are not perfect beings nor are the perfect extensions of your political beliefs. They are however, people of ambition, talent and skill who are all applying for job.

He’s right. I’ve often talked about how candidates tend to placate the people that support them.  I’ve often felt like I was being patted on the head at times from those seeking office.

Watkins goes on to discuss supporting issues instead of personalities.  It’s good advice.

The key for me in upcoming elections will be to watch what politicians are fighting for and endorsing the policies that I feel best represent me and my community. I was a bit disheartened earlier this year when I found that myself and other key bloggers were fighting hard against some policy changes being discussed in Nashville (some which passed) while elected politicians were not after we talked to them repeatedly. We were, in essence, placated.

This experience turned into being a great learning curve.  Mainly because I realize it comes down to my vote and my voice which I will use a bit differently now.

Change is never easy not only for those of us who vote but for those in office. And change is what we need after seeing the 106th at work.

So I did the unemployment filing thing on the ‘tubes this morning. Any time I have any dealings with the government or institutions like banks, I sort of wig out.

Homer said this morning that I’m the weirdest person she’s ever met when it comes to things giving me the wiggums. I guess that’s true. She thought it was because I don’t like the unfamiliar. I guess that’s partly true but it’s more that anytime I deal with any traditional institution or government entity, I always feel a bit like a criminal for some odd reason.

I’m not but I kind of feel that way. I have no idea why.

Yesterday I was talking to a few other people who are having to do this as well and later today I’m going to help a couple of folks who aren’t computer literate and need to file too. I talked to one guy and he doesn’t type and tried to fill out the paperwork online (no paper actually thus far) at the local library. It kind of freaked him out and asked if I could give him a hand. I told him that I would.

It’s weird, this world of not working but it’s best to be useful and if I can help someone out, I will. I’m a big believer in karma and the Golden Rule so I try to pitch in when I can because I might need some help some day myself.

Jobs around here right now aren’t that plentiful so all of us are looking at our options.

I’d love to elaborate more on this but it is what it is. There really isn’t any way to flower it up.

“I found that old dog in a ditch,” Mr. Joe said. “He was a good old dog. Best dog I ever had.”

I’d heard the story before. Mr. Joe is an older man in Hoots who fought proudly as a fireman for years. Cancer tried to give him a run but he’s beat it thus far and sometimes he repeats himself, telling the same story. I realize that it’s a story he likes a great deal and when I see him, I listen. I’ve never learned the dog’s name, but the story sticks with me.

I took a picture of him a few years ago at a Barbecue Cook Off when he was given an award for his service at the department. It was a fire ax and he smiled a wonderful smile when they placed it in his hands. I saw him wipe tears away from his eyes that day nearly three years ago.

When I see him, he will drink a Coke and talk about his dog or the time he had to jump off a train in Fulton. There are times I want the Engineer to hear this story because I think he would love it. It’s about him being young and taking the train to get home to Hoots, how he only had a dime in his pocket and the kindness of a stranger (who bought him quite a few beers according to Mr. Joe and how he got in trouble with his mother when he got home. I love that story.)

Mr. Joe is usually smiling. And, as it goes, he makes me smile.

However, I usually think about that “old dog he found in a ditch” the most. There are times as I grow older that I can relate with that dog. And how a kind man, who has thus far beaten cancer and many aspects of age , saved the dog.

And as he speaks of it, I realize that old dog in the ditch saved him too.

If you listen, you can hear the story within the story.

It’s easy to find joy in the grasp of what appears to be dying. You have to look, but it’s there. I return to the ghosts of my childhood which Squirrel Queen and I shared with Aunt B. on Saturday, as we not only went to cemeteries but to towns with empty building where once busy streets filled with inhabitants have lost some of the vibrancy that I remember as a child.

There were lessons, not for B. necessarily, but for myself of the death of culture and how subcultures scrap and fight to survive. It’s odd to me that the underlying universe that isn’t normally seen thrives by sheer determination as other bits erode under the pressure of time.

The courthouse in Hickman, KY is one of the most beautiful buildings you will ever see. It sets on a bluff over the Mississippi River in a town that has lost so much hope over recent years. A retaining wall protects what’s left of the town. We hear of ghost towns, and although Hickman isn’t one yet, you can’t help but wonder what is next as you look across the murky water into Missouri. The heat was blistering Saturday and the large acreage of trees over the slow-moving river was a summer haze, blurred our vision.

The heat and the silence reminded me of our own mortality.

Three more friends and acquaintance are unemployed as of Friday when my sister called me with the news. I can’t shake the feeling that we are mourning something bigger than ourselves and I don’t have any answers. When I saw Hickman the next day, I found a lump in my stomach that remains with me two days later.

Quite fittingly, we visited cemeteries and I believe it’s all connected. At Camp Beauregard, we saw a mass grave with one marker. 1,200 soldiers who died from disease and neglect are recognized with one large monument, but it’s the smaller graves that gather your psyche. We believe those spirits protect the dead. We visited the cemetery where my mother is buried where bones have been covered with the dirt of the land for two centuries. I didn’t share her grave with those with me. It’s still private for me.

I saw the names of the ancestors of the  townspeople I still know.

As B. wrote:

We had spent all day touring dead towns and cemeteries.

What’cha gonna do when the State runs dry? Drive back roads watchin’ small towns die.  Honey, pretty baby mine.

And there was the river, that muddy god who lays in between the middle of the country so easy you can almost imagine him sliding his tributaries up Illinois’ shirt and singing softly, “… them men don’t know but the little girls understand.”

I wonder what will become of us and I’m pleased that a few bloggers have decided to visit our little patch in the world and are seeing for themselves that the words I continually write here have weight. If you see it for yourself, then you will know what we do.

I’m speaking of two things now. Our younger people, who decided to stay here when so many left, are now faced with the dilemma that we might not be able to stay. That we will trek to places that have a more solid economy that can support us and our families. What once sustained us with a deep well filled with possibility has now run dry for so many. We look to the past to see the future.

As I said, there are no answers because dead men and women tell no tales.

I wonder if we will be all right. In some ways, it’s beginning to look bleak.

So we visit young dead soldiers who fought in the war who have been gone a 150 years and realize that bleak is generational. We visited cemeteries that hold lynching victims from a time long ago. We saw the lines drawn over what was and what is.

And death is a natural part of life but loss is more than the calling of the bones. Death can wear many coats.

I wait to see what will happen next.

So, I’m going cemetery hopping today, which is a bit like going on a pub crawl but then again, not at all.  There might also be a pub crawl.

One never knows.

We are having guests in Hoots as Aunt B. is coming up to go to Camp Beauregard in Water Valley, Ky which is about 30 minutes from here right over the state line. There are some reports that the camp is haunted because there is a mass grave apparently sitting on top of a hill where Civil War soldiers were buried in a mass grave in the early days of the war.

The soldiers mainly died from disease which is tragic.

As B, Squirrely and I dig this sort of stuff, I may swing around to what is called the Yellow Fever cemetery too. (That one is pretty self-explanatory.) And I may show her the Goose Pond which is near Squirrel Farm, which is owned by by Squirrely’s mother. You may remember my excitement over the Goose Pond Swamp Monster.

I feel that we may need to give Camp Beauregard a gift to visit because if you check the link up above, apparently there have been incidents.

Heck, we aren’t going at night though.

That’s crazy talk.

As you know, politics has gone to the dogs. So, let a dog run the state of Tennessee.

I heard Mark Brown is available. (Mabel says “Call me.)

She doesn’t have a platform. She don’t need no stinking platform.  And her campaign is sponsored by a bar.

And she listens. This is of the good, my friends. And she’s run for president.

Winner, I’m telling you.

I don’t care that Steve Jobs got a new liver possibly because he’s rich. I really don’t.

I know that I should. I know that I should be yelling and screaming about how unfair it is that money can buy things.

But I’m not. I’m also not writing a blog post on how wet water is, how sweet sugar is or how hot the afternoons are in June in Tennessee.

I love reading Coble. That last line is blogging/writing gold.

Well, Mayor Willie has resigned in Memphis to run against Steve Cohen. I’ve always thought that Willie Herenton was a bit of a poser and I think this will be an interesting race to watch.

One thing that folks might want to keep in mind is that Cohen is scrappy, and I mean that with the utmost respect. It’s one reason I dig him. Not only is he energetically aggressive when he runs for office (or in his politics) but he has always, to me at least, gone into everything he does with wild abandon.

I think he’ll be fine. Cohen has a long legislative history in Nashville that spreads to his current post in Washington. He won’t rest in this campaign that looks like it’s going to last awhile.

I’m two hours from Memphis, but I can feel the ground shaking in the land of Elvis. For all of us political geeks, I’ll pop the corn if you bring the sodas.

This is going to be something to watch as Cohen goes into action.

Jackson Baker of the Memphis Flyer writes about blogging and how he thought he got it, but that he initially didn’t.

I admit, I didn’t get it at first either. And blogtopia keeps changing but his article talks a lot about the value of blogging and how journalism and blogging can walk hand-in-hand.

As both the print and broadcast versions of conventional journalism increasingly find themselves stranded somewhere between hospice and Death Valley, the blog as a genre has become something infinitely more substantial. And not just because staff-written blogs of one kind or another are by now staples of all journalistic enterprises (including the Flyer). The best action is still outside the house.

Outrageous opinion remains a staple of the independent blog. But more and more it is bloggers of that sort who are breaking news — looking into corners or under rocks while big-city dailies are cutting staff, contriving circulation-builders that don’t work, and trying to cover politics and government by passing along press releases.

When I started blogging in 2005, I had no idea about the world of blogging and what it entailed. It’s given me great joy, and a small, very tiny dose I might add, of heartache. Blogging is rather cool when you get right down to it as long as your having fun with it.

And it does open the door into a whole new world.