I buried probably, like, a million birds as a child.

June 18, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
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I don't know of a southern household that doesn't own a pair of binoculars or have a jar of Blue Plate mayonnaise in the refrigerator. So, this is going to be a disappointing blog, in part, because my house has neither. Ok, well maybe a thimbleful is left of the mayonnaise. Ms. Frankie, the sweetest neighbor I had while growing up, God love her, thought it was because people really liked to look at the birds, that's why they all had binoculars...and that anything other than Blue Plate was sacrilege. She had a pair, herself, but they sat on the mantle after her husband died and...

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Ah, Wilderness! Ah, Bottle Rockets!

May 23, 2009 by · 1 Comment
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I was never the best with fireworks. Which I find odd, in retrospect, because I had nearly flawless hand-eye coordination. Reflexes that would make a hummingbird jealous. I played tennis, and well. But, somehow this quick-speed ability failed me at fireworks. I learned the hard way, too. For some reason, as children, when the Hot Holidays arrived, so called because we were allowed fireworks as part of the celebration - and these included Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas which drained into New Year's, Valentine's Day, the Fourth; basically, we begged for fireworks on every holiday - and when we got them, oh how we eagerly hoarded...

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January 2004: The Five-Day Cider War

May 13, 2009 by · Leave a Comment
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I've just about decided that there's nothing that karaoke can't fix.  If it can train a Sicilian and a Southerner to live together, in harmony, then at the next G8, or G12, G+number, Summit...we need to hire Disco Dan, or Happy Butch to grab their mic stands and their CDs. I resisted this, what to me, was merely a bar-room, nocturnal, alcohol-fueled passtime, for many years. I felt that I couldn't possibly degrade myself, a real singer, I thought to myself, to such a ridiculously low-level thirst for spotlight attention. Ah, but what a little spotlight can do. With my brief second tenure in Indiana, I...

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