We put in a bid on this building.
Much more on that later. Now we're just waiting.
Much more on that later. Now we're just waiting.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Mississippian
Well, after 10 years with my Vermont license, I've given it up and officially become a resident of a different state. And a Southern state at that.
I haven't lived in VT for something like 8 years. The longest visit home since leaving for college was last fall, 34 days. And yet I have managed to keep my pretty green license, renewed, and with new pictures, for all that time.
It wasn't until last year that I gave up my Vermont license plates on my vehicles. I can say that every vehicle I ever privately owned proudly wandered around this country with a green badge on the front and back. (Well, the '67 international pickup only had 1 green plate.) That truck was registered in VT, and had never been to the state in its whole life.
Good insurance rates for VT vehicles.
The vehicles that Alexe and I have together were registered in VA for a year or so. Now we're going to have to get MS plates, with "Yalobousha" (the county we live in) proudly stamped on there.
A slight odd feeling about this change.
I haven't lived in VT for something like 8 years. The longest visit home since leaving for college was last fall, 34 days. And yet I have managed to keep my pretty green license, renewed, and with new pictures, for all that time.
It wasn't until last year that I gave up my Vermont license plates on my vehicles. I can say that every vehicle I ever privately owned proudly wandered around this country with a green badge on the front and back. (Well, the '67 international pickup only had 1 green plate.) That truck was registered in VT, and had never been to the state in its whole life.
Good insurance rates for VT vehicles.
The vehicles that Alexe and I have together were registered in VA for a year or so. Now we're going to have to get MS plates, with "Yalobousha" (the county we live in) proudly stamped on there.
A slight odd feeling about this change.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
One last mention
If you're getting tired of the "the South is so different and cool" theme I've had going, I apologize.
I promise to branch out, after this.
Last weekend, while wandering the country roads in our constant search for a secluded farm house on some land, Alexe thought she spotted some flames in the woods to our right. The road side was scorched, with black burn marks going a ways into the woods, and several memorial crosses on the side of the road.
The flames were farther back into the woods, and we didn't know if someone was doing a controlled burn (a popular alternative to mowing down here), whose land it was, and where the nearest house was.
We were pondering the situation, rolling slowly forward in the truck, when a car came up behind us, pulled alongside, and rolled down the window.
The fellow assumed we were looking at the scorching next to the road, and told us about a person that had been racing around the back roads, hit the power poll, and exploded.
We expressed our horror, and then asked how recently it had happened, since there were still flames in the forest. The chap didn't believe us, so we backed up the road, and he and I hopped out and walked into the woods.
We made our way through the scorched trees that had been burned weeks earlier by the accident, and came into healthy trees, with a single exception. A pine about 5 inches in diameter was missing bits of bark all the way up it's side, and in a concentric circle around it's base, flames had slowly cooked through about 6 feet of the pine needle cover.
I felt the trunk, and it was cool, but the lightning had obviously snaked down the tree, ignited the base somehow, and created a circle of short flames that stretched out in a pretty circle around the tree.
We stomped the flames down, but they kept popping up. The chap I was with turned out to live a couple doors down, so we left with the persistent little flames still popping up, and he assured me he'd check back to see if the current drizzle and impending downpour took care of it.
I promise to branch out, after this.
Last weekend, while wandering the country roads in our constant search for a secluded farm house on some land, Alexe thought she spotted some flames in the woods to our right. The road side was scorched, with black burn marks going a ways into the woods, and several memorial crosses on the side of the road.
The flames were farther back into the woods, and we didn't know if someone was doing a controlled burn (a popular alternative to mowing down here), whose land it was, and where the nearest house was.
We were pondering the situation, rolling slowly forward in the truck, when a car came up behind us, pulled alongside, and rolled down the window.
The fellow assumed we were looking at the scorching next to the road, and told us about a person that had been racing around the back roads, hit the power poll, and exploded.
We expressed our horror, and then asked how recently it had happened, since there were still flames in the forest. The chap didn't believe us, so we backed up the road, and he and I hopped out and walked into the woods.
We made our way through the scorched trees that had been burned weeks earlier by the accident, and came into healthy trees, with a single exception. A pine about 5 inches in diameter was missing bits of bark all the way up it's side, and in a concentric circle around it's base, flames had slowly cooked through about 6 feet of the pine needle cover.
I felt the trunk, and it was cool, but the lightning had obviously snaked down the tree, ignited the base somehow, and created a circle of short flames that stretched out in a pretty circle around the tree.
We stomped the flames down, but they kept popping up. The chap I was with turned out to live a couple doors down, so we left with the persistent little flames still popping up, and he assured me he'd check back to see if the current drizzle and impending downpour took care of it.
Monday, February 26, 2007
Wonderful News
Natasha is getting married!!!
Many of you have met this delightful person, either while we were roommates in Annapolis and DC, or at Alexe and my wedding.
She is currently pursuing her PhD in physics in California, and I found out tonight Nathan (her fiance) has also started his PhD in African Studies. (I hope I'm getting this right. I just remember he will be spending a year in Senegal.)
So, they're planning a 2008 wedding in Vermont somewhere. Nathan is from VT, Natasha is from Minnesota. Two hardy northern folks.
If you can think of an inexpensive, beautiful setting in VT for a wedding and reception, let me know and I'll pass it along.
Many of you have met this delightful person, either while we were roommates in Annapolis and DC, or at Alexe and my wedding.
She is currently pursuing her PhD in physics in California, and I found out tonight Nathan (her fiance) has also started his PhD in African Studies. (I hope I'm getting this right. I just remember he will be spending a year in Senegal.)
So, they're planning a 2008 wedding in Vermont somewhere. Nathan is from VT, Natasha is from Minnesota. Two hardy northern folks.
If you can think of an inexpensive, beautiful setting in VT for a wedding and reception, let me know and I'll pass it along.
Weather
I've wanted to post about the weather and resulting infrastructure of the south, but in hopes that I would make the trek into town with the camera (all two blocks of the trip) and take some pictures to show what I'm talking about, I've been putting it off.
I don't have any pictures.
However, let me tell you about it. Water falls from the sky in floods. Frequency of presipitation doesn't impress me. I've spent time in DC, where it rains daily, and time in Alaska where it rains up to three times a day, and you can out-run the storm clouds that wander through the mountainous countryside, visible and finite to the naked eye. More recently, I've built a cabin in the woods of Vermont in what seemed like a 30 day constant drizzle.
Down here the water cascades, different from my previous rain experience as a garden hose to a water fall.
But more fascinating (for me) than the falling water are the systems set up to deal with these sudden deluges. I have never seen such a dedication to gutterage. Every little road has immense ravines on either side to deal with the flash flooding that is rainfall. Gutters in town are easily waste deep next to the sidewalk, and those running next to the main roads could pass small cars.
Parking lots have huge concrete gutters at 10 ft intervals, running down what looks to me like a very short embankment. Every house with a driveway coming off any sized road has a land bridge over the immense gutters that flank all the roads. I've never seen so many culverts.
What's more, these things fill up. They overflow. They can't contain the masses of water that demand passage every few days. It's incredible.
And, if that sounds not as interesting as I find it, this past Saturday was a whole different kind of hoot. Saturday night, after a long rainy day, Alexe and I made dinner (a scrumptious chicken with olives dish) and had a prairie home companion playing.
The show was disrupted by the screaming weather advisory, listing off thunderstorm, tornado, and hurricane warnings. This episode was cut short by the state weather advisory board, with slightly conflicting reports of locations of several tornados. For the next half hour, we heard two minute clips of Garrison Keillor, followed by more warnings tripping over each other. The message was there are several tornados, everyone is under advisory, they're all SouthWest of you, moving North East at 85 mph.
Alexe got a bit nervous, I told myself we were in a 100 year old house, luck should probably hold out for the night. The wind and rain was definitely howling, and the lightning strikes were impressive, followed by house shaking (and dog scaring) thunder.
As we sat down to eat in the central room of the house (no windows), with the radio still playing it's mixed fare, the town's siren wound up to a high pitched whine, and stayed on for the next 20 minutes.
It was our first experience with weather of that sort.
Dinner was delicious.
I don't have any pictures.
However, let me tell you about it. Water falls from the sky in floods. Frequency of presipitation doesn't impress me. I've spent time in DC, where it rains daily, and time in Alaska where it rains up to three times a day, and you can out-run the storm clouds that wander through the mountainous countryside, visible and finite to the naked eye. More recently, I've built a cabin in the woods of Vermont in what seemed like a 30 day constant drizzle.
Down here the water cascades, different from my previous rain experience as a garden hose to a water fall.
But more fascinating (for me) than the falling water are the systems set up to deal with these sudden deluges. I have never seen such a dedication to gutterage. Every little road has immense ravines on either side to deal with the flash flooding that is rainfall. Gutters in town are easily waste deep next to the sidewalk, and those running next to the main roads could pass small cars.
Parking lots have huge concrete gutters at 10 ft intervals, running down what looks to me like a very short embankment. Every house with a driveway coming off any sized road has a land bridge over the immense gutters that flank all the roads. I've never seen so many culverts.
What's more, these things fill up. They overflow. They can't contain the masses of water that demand passage every few days. It's incredible.
And, if that sounds not as interesting as I find it, this past Saturday was a whole different kind of hoot. Saturday night, after a long rainy day, Alexe and I made dinner (a scrumptious chicken with olives dish) and had a prairie home companion playing.
The show was disrupted by the screaming weather advisory, listing off thunderstorm, tornado, and hurricane warnings. This episode was cut short by the state weather advisory board, with slightly conflicting reports of locations of several tornados. For the next half hour, we heard two minute clips of Garrison Keillor, followed by more warnings tripping over each other. The message was there are several tornados, everyone is under advisory, they're all SouthWest of you, moving North East at 85 mph.
Alexe got a bit nervous, I told myself we were in a 100 year old house, luck should probably hold out for the night. The wind and rain was definitely howling, and the lightning strikes were impressive, followed by house shaking (and dog scaring) thunder.
As we sat down to eat in the central room of the house (no windows), with the radio still playing it's mixed fare, the town's siren wound up to a high pitched whine, and stayed on for the next 20 minutes.
It was our first experience with weather of that sort.
Dinner was delicious.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Dido's pop-influence
I can't wait for teenagers.
My darling pooch, in some strange move of solidarity, demanded a haircut to match Ms. Spears.
My darling pooch, in some strange move of solidarity, demanded a haircut to match Ms. Spears.
Before:
After:
Saturday, January 20, 2007
My new barber
Saturday morning, I went the 2 blocks into town to drop off some shirts for dry cleaning. Since Alexe was hard at work on her next column, I thought it would be a great opportunity to get a haircut. (My last Mississippi haircutting experience was terrible, so I've been putting it off, but with a conference in San Fran next week, my shaggy, uneven head really needed attention.)
I just got back.
There is a little barber shop in downtown Water Valley, on Main Street. It is a little 12 ft wide shop that leads far back into the row of buildings, and has a single barber's chair in it. The place was empty, except for an older man reading a paper on the wall. I walked in, not fully committed since my last haircut had been in a rustic barber's shop, and I had escaped with hair that varied by three inches, with no transition.
But this kindly gentleman with huge hearing aides got right up, and started preparing to cut my hair. (I'm a sucker for old barbers, and in DC kept returning for the same mediocre cut just for the stories and the hot lather and straight razor neck shave.)
So I sat down, and proceeded to hear some of the most wonderful stories.
This gentleman was born in 1924. He is a World War II veteran, though he doesn't look it. He's chatty, in good health, and has retained the baby face that made it not so easy for him in the service.
The middle of three children, the only boy, he grew up in a little cabin in the Delta, after his parents moved from the Ozarks where there wasn't any schooling for their children. They lived in a small cabin, and his father, who was a WWI veteran, had returned from the war with injuries, and was never able to earn much of a living.
My barber was drafted when he was a junior in high school, and was at all 5 of Patton's major battles. (I don't know if there were only 5 major Patton battles, but that was how he phrased it.)
He never killed a man. The closest he got: He was riding with some Belgium soldiers, and they saw a German soldier who had somehow survived the advance troops. He and the Belgians decided to clean up, so they left their jeep and climbed up a hill to get a shot at the German, who was a hundred yards away, trying to hide. My barber drew a bead on the back of his head, (it was all that was visible), and couldn't pull the trigger. He handed his gun to the Belgians, and turned away, but the Belgians, who spoke German pretty well, said, "We make prisoner?" They all agreed, so they yelled to the German, who quickly got up with his hands int he air.
My barber then explained how they had divied up the German's belongings. My barber took the watch, binoculars, and pistol, (a P-38) because he was only allowed to take military things, while the Belgians took all the money and whatever else was there. The German was an officer, his equipment was very nice, and he had lots of money.
My barber traded away the watch because he was worried it wasn't actually military property, and he might get in trouble.
He was the only soldier in his group that had such nice binoculars. He was very proud of them, and then his commanding officer put out an order that all German binoculars had to be turned in. It wasn't until after he had followed orders that my barber realized he had been duped.
The P-38 came back to the states, and he used it to shoot snakes up near where Lake Enid is now, before the created the reservoir.
He told me about selling rugers that he found in the houses they passed through.
About staying near a beautiful campus, where he said Hitler was breeding his master race.
He told me about how beautiful the girls on that campus were, and how he would sneak down by the river, where they would be on the benches, and try to take their pictures. (They never let him take a picture of their faces, so he has lots of pictures of their backs.)
He told me about what he learned in the 15 years he spent in Chicago, working in a barber shop he and some friends opened. About how I should never use terms like kike, wop, limey, or the n-word, because jews, irish, english, and african americans don't like it.
All of this without any sense of self-consciousness. Just telling stories.
He has a son and a daughter. His older sister dies last year at 86. He is getting scared of driving near big cities like Memphis. He visited the WWII memorial in DC, and got to chatting with another veteran. The veteran was telling him stories from the war, and when my barber started telling his own, the other vet didn't believe he was old enough to have actually fought, and he walked away. He shaved a doctor 6 days a week in Chicago, staying open until 10:30 on Sat. nights so the second shave of the day would be fresh for church the next morning. He smiled and said that doctor probably had to start shaving himself when he left, in '52.
I really like him.
He charged me $8.
And shaved my neck with hot lather and a straight razor.
This town is great.
I just got back.
There is a little barber shop in downtown Water Valley, on Main Street. It is a little 12 ft wide shop that leads far back into the row of buildings, and has a single barber's chair in it. The place was empty, except for an older man reading a paper on the wall. I walked in, not fully committed since my last haircut had been in a rustic barber's shop, and I had escaped with hair that varied by three inches, with no transition.
But this kindly gentleman with huge hearing aides got right up, and started preparing to cut my hair. (I'm a sucker for old barbers, and in DC kept returning for the same mediocre cut just for the stories and the hot lather and straight razor neck shave.)
So I sat down, and proceeded to hear some of the most wonderful stories.
This gentleman was born in 1924. He is a World War II veteran, though he doesn't look it. He's chatty, in good health, and has retained the baby face that made it not so easy for him in the service.
The middle of three children, the only boy, he grew up in a little cabin in the Delta, after his parents moved from the Ozarks where there wasn't any schooling for their children. They lived in a small cabin, and his father, who was a WWI veteran, had returned from the war with injuries, and was never able to earn much of a living.
My barber was drafted when he was a junior in high school, and was at all 5 of Patton's major battles. (I don't know if there were only 5 major Patton battles, but that was how he phrased it.)
He never killed a man. The closest he got: He was riding with some Belgium soldiers, and they saw a German soldier who had somehow survived the advance troops. He and the Belgians decided to clean up, so they left their jeep and climbed up a hill to get a shot at the German, who was a hundred yards away, trying to hide. My barber drew a bead on the back of his head, (it was all that was visible), and couldn't pull the trigger. He handed his gun to the Belgians, and turned away, but the Belgians, who spoke German pretty well, said, "We make prisoner?" They all agreed, so they yelled to the German, who quickly got up with his hands int he air.
My barber then explained how they had divied up the German's belongings. My barber took the watch, binoculars, and pistol, (a P-38) because he was only allowed to take military things, while the Belgians took all the money and whatever else was there. The German was an officer, his equipment was very nice, and he had lots of money.
My barber traded away the watch because he was worried it wasn't actually military property, and he might get in trouble.
He was the only soldier in his group that had such nice binoculars. He was very proud of them, and then his commanding officer put out an order that all German binoculars had to be turned in. It wasn't until after he had followed orders that my barber realized he had been duped.
The P-38 came back to the states, and he used it to shoot snakes up near where Lake Enid is now, before the created the reservoir.
He told me about selling rugers that he found in the houses they passed through.
About staying near a beautiful campus, where he said Hitler was breeding his master race.
He told me about how beautiful the girls on that campus were, and how he would sneak down by the river, where they would be on the benches, and try to take their pictures. (They never let him take a picture of their faces, so he has lots of pictures of their backs.)
He told me about what he learned in the 15 years he spent in Chicago, working in a barber shop he and some friends opened. About how I should never use terms like kike, wop, limey, or the n-word, because jews, irish, english, and african americans don't like it.
All of this without any sense of self-consciousness. Just telling stories.
He has a son and a daughter. His older sister dies last year at 86. He is getting scared of driving near big cities like Memphis. He visited the WWII memorial in DC, and got to chatting with another veteran. The veteran was telling him stories from the war, and when my barber started telling his own, the other vet didn't believe he was old enough to have actually fought, and he walked away. He shaved a doctor 6 days a week in Chicago, staying open until 10:30 on Sat. nights so the second shave of the day would be fresh for church the next morning. He smiled and said that doctor probably had to start shaving himself when he left, in '52.
I really like him.
He charged me $8.
And shaved my neck with hot lather and a straight razor.
This town is great.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)