global changes

I remember when I was first reading about this week's tsunami on Sunday morning. The projected death toll of 11,000 was shocking, and I remember my dad saying, "Oh, they always overestimate these things. That number is bound to go down."

Not only has the number not gone down, it has doubled daily. Today it is over 117,000 and counting. It is a number that staggers the imagination. All those people! All gone, in the space of about 20 minutes. Yes, I realize that considerable numbers of those people did not die instantly, but after struggle and suffering the likes of which I cannot imagine. But still, it seems that the population of an entire city was just vaporized. Here one moment, gone the next. With absolutely no warning.

Try as I might, I just can't seem to wrap my mind around this. It seems unreal. Even more unreal to me is the fact that the same wars continue and the same people keep on with their fighting just like before. With a disaster of this scale, shouldn't all of that be put on hold? For crying out loud, isn't this a lesson to us? We are not in control, as much as we might like to think that we are. Everything that we have can be taken from us in an instant.

I was on CNN's web site just now reading through some of the pleas that people have sent in, searching for any news of friends and family known to be in the areas hit. That's the closest I've come to actually understanding what has happened, to feeling connected to it somehow. My heart aches for every last one of those people...if the full magnitude of this thing ever hits home, I think that it just might break.

cool book of the moment

on the nightstand

a funny old picture I just found

me, st. patrick's day...some time in the mid-to-late-90's

what happened to the thirsty turtle?

So here I am back at home in my freezing cold townhome. Maybe it feels a little cold because it is occupied by only me and my girl (below). A stark contrast to the full house I left behind. But that's not an entirely bad thing.


Alex, my sweet and slightly neurotic companion.

What a Christmas it has been. I had enjoyed the season, with all of its festivity and flavor and sentiment, more than usual this year. I'm not going to say that the actual holiday was a letdown. But honestly, I do feel that it was a bit anti-climactic.

First of all, there was more drama in our household this year than last. My parents, who have been married for more than 40 years, are less tolerant of each other all the time. They are constantly at each other's throats. Neither one has to do anything besides open his or her mouth and the other one is irritated. And the rest of us squirm as they trade punches that we are powerless to stop.

The other sore point for me was finding the Thirsty Turtle closed on Christmas Eve! The Turtle is a place known around my hometown (at least within my old high school circles) as THE place to go on Christmas Eve. Really, that is mainly because it was the ONLY place open late that night. So naturally it drew a crowd of 20- and 30- somethings looking to reunite for merry-making and a traditional toast to the Pope at midnight on the big-screen TV. I had not been for a few years, but remember our Turtle fondly as a place where I might run into the most unexpected faces from my high school hallways. And ever since Thanksgiving, when I realized with some sadness that most of my friends from the old days have moved away from our old town by now, I had been longing for that type of reunion.

To counter the disappointment of finding our place closed, I was not alone when I found the Turtle (all dark and empty). I had been going there to meet my friend Amy (who now lives in Atlanta and who I had not seen in quite some time), and she was in the parking lot waiting. Seeing as how it was close to midnight and freezing outside, and since we had both been brave enough to come out at all, accepting the defeat of a locked door was simply not an option. We had to find another place to go.

And find another place we did. It was a sublimely weird bar called Blackwater Hattie's. When we were in high school this building had been the home of a Burger King, and now as a bar the interior had changed hardly a bit. The fast-food tables and benches were still there, but a pool table filled the space where the condiments had been. And a bar (operated by a bleached-blonde, pear-shaped bartender with a black bra hanging out of her hot pink shirt) now stood where the cash registers were. The walls were covered with neon graffiti that reminded me of the scene in The Game where Michael Douglas comes home to find his mansion aglow in blacklights.

Despite the weird surroundings (and the guy who spilled wine on my jeans and then turned out to be Amy's third-grade boyfriend), Christmas Eve turned out to be a fine night. I also got to see my friend Thinh, who rode with me from Nashville after flying into the airport here (many thanks, Thinh, for inviting me in for dinner. It was really good to meet your family!)

After the brutal Christmas that followed (saved in large part by the sweet innocence of my niece and nephew), I was relieved to be heading home today. But still I felt that same bittersweet feeling I always get when driving away from my family. As crazy as they can make me sometimes, I don't want to forget for a single second that I am lucky to have them.



It's good to be home. Seems to be warming up a bit now.

holiday ice storm

My internet connection has been so limited lately that there just isn't enough time to do all I want to do when I have it. I am now at my family's house in Alabama and it's Christmas. I'm using my sister's notebook and trying to blog and it's just so damn distracting around here! No privacy. But I've been wanting to post some pictures from our Nashville ice storm this past week, so I guess that's all I get to do for now.


This is the street where I live. Our mailboxes were frozen shut.


Walking along trying to get some pics, I almost fell in front of this gate.


My neighbor's car was a casualty in the storm. This same tree also took out his power, which did not return until sometime Christmas Eve. Yikes.

Merry Christmas to all! I hope to be back before another week passes...

baby it's cold outside

Well, my computer was gracious enough this morning to let me online. I thought I'd take advantage of the connection (which could disappear any time) and post some pictures. I was just goofing around at my next-door neighbor's house last night.



Ahhhh...nothing like a nice fire in the fireplace when it's cold outside! This is Mark and Lucky the dog (I took these pictures without flash, and Lucky is the worst for it. But I promise, he's a cute dog...even if here he has no head).



A very cool record we listened to by some Brazillian band. Highly enjoyable. It's the sort of music that I cannot sit still to. And that's a very good thing!



A festive fish tank.



My self-portrait. I was trying on the different afghans to see which would make the best coat. This one made me look every bit of my American Indian heritage.

PC Hell

I had a very unhappy surprise this morning. No internet connection! It's only the latest chapter in month-long saga I call "PC Hell."

It all started when my gateway got a parasite. Since then, I've installed so many different programs built to combat viruses and parasites and spyware and such that I cannot possibly name them all. Each program found something and removed it, and each one failed to fix the problem. And for every new program, I have been gifted with a fresh set of pop-ups to deal with whenever I open any application on my PC. Last week, the system started booting me off the internet at will. And today, it will not let me online at all! Oh joy.

Any day now my Mac will be here. Until then, it looks like I'll be spending a lot more time in the library...

Blech.

going backwards

This past month, I began the arduous task of trying to find a new health insurance plan. I had found out the hard way that the $200-per-month plan that I used in this, my first year of self-employment, was really not very good at all. Or at least, it was not good compared to what I had when I was someone else's employee. So high are my medical expenses from this past year (which, I might add, are not much out of the ordinary), that I think I might actually get a tax break this time around.

Dealing with individual health insurance must be the absolute worst thing about working independently, and I really hate searching for a new policy. But even more than that, my search has revealed to me a trend of our times that has me deeply disturbed.

The representative of the first company I was shopping informed me right away that as a single person I was not eligible for maternity benefits. "Will that be a problem?" she asked. Quite off guard, I didn't know how to respond. I had never really thought before of maternity benefits as something I needed, even though they had always been part of my coverage in the past. But upon further thought, this disturbed me a great deal. What kind of message is that supposed to send out? That only married women can get pregnant? No. It just makes the statement that single women who find themselves in "the family way" are to be punished for their sins by being refused health care (or at least AFFORDABLE health care). I decided that I cannot do business with a company that operates under such a principle, and threw the pamphlets they had given me into the recycling bin.

But since then, I have found that this company is hardly the exception. Roughly half of the companies I have since shopped use the same rule. Maternity benefits are available only as an additional rider, and only after marriage. Those that do offer such benefits to singles more than double the monthly premium in order to do so.

Meanwhile, as I struggle with the decision of which plan to pay too-much-per-month for next year, another bit of news surfaces in my world. I have learned that in New York, Texas, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire (and maybe others), pharmacists have been denying women access to their birth control pills! The first two times I heard whispers of this, I dismissed the stories as hearsay. Impossible, I thought. How can they do that? But today, I found a story on USA Today's web site (http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-11-08-druggists-pill_x.htm) that seems to give it credence. According to this article, "[the] American Pharmacists Association, with 50,000 members, has a policy that says druggists can refuse to fill prescriptions if they object on moral grounds, but they must make arrangements so a patient can still get the pills. Yet some pharmacists have refused to hand the prescription to another druggist to fill."

What is going on here? From one end, someone is telling me that as a single person, I don't have the right to get pregnant. And then from the other, someone else is trying to take away my right to PREVENT getting pregnant. And I'm sure that both of these voices, if they have their way, will also take away my right to terminate any unplanned (and now, unaffordable) pregnancy. And so, my only choice is abstinence, abstinence, abstinence. If I choose to stray from that path, I might just find myself hopelessly trapped. In the name of God.

This is not morality, this is insanity. And something tells me it is only the beginning. What kind of country are we becoming? I am truly afraid.

what a headache

Headaches are mean, nasty things. They can make you sick to your stomach and take away your appetite, thereby forcing you to not eat and then deal with the consequences of low blood sugar. Headaches make themselves worse when you are a coffee drinker and you can't have your coffee because just the thought of it makes you queasy. Headaches are bad. Very bad. And mine had better be gone tomorrow.

early round at the Bluebird

The Bluebird Cafe is famous. And yet somehow I had never heard of it before I moved to Nashville, now going on five years ago. Likewise, I had no idea previously that such a thing as "music publishing" even existed, much less that I would be working in it. I wanted to publish books. But somehow I stumbled into music instead.

Tonight I saw some friends perform in the Bluebird's early round (in case you're not familiar, a "writer's round" is an informal show where three or four songwriters take turns performing their songs, sometimes accompanying each other with an instrument and/or with harmonies). The Bluebird (among others) has at least two rounds every night. Some are good, some are bad, and some are really, really ugly. This one I enjoyed very much.

My pictures, unfortunately, are not the best. I have been toying with my camera lately, and this was an experiment of sorts. Didn't quite achieve the effect I was going for...the pictures came out a bit fuzzy. But I'm postin' em anyway!



Above is Matt Thackston, who I used to share office space with in our semi-corporate past lives. Matt has been doing music full-time for the past year, and it is really beginning to show. He is growing into quite the engaging performer - a strong voice and good stories to tell. Many of the songs he performed tonight I had heard before. And yet, somehow it seemed like I was hearing them for the first time.



Here is Matt again with roommate Phillip Glidewell, who has just recently gone (mostly) full-time with his own music. We haven't seen much of Phillip these last few years, as he was always on the road for one promotional gig or another. But he's here to stay now...we think? I'll be interested to see what happens as he devotes more time to his music.



Sort of a dizzying shot of Kenya Walker, with son Jacob accompanying on guitar.



And finally, the full round: Kenya Walker, Steve Nelson, Phillip Glidewell, Matt Thackston.

Sorry for the fuzzy faces!

in a mood

There's nothing quite like the sense of smell to bring back memories. Tonight I cranked up the heat and opened my drawer of beach clothes. I swear, these pants I'm wearing smell just like the beach! But it's the dawn of Christmas Season in the bible belt. How's that for a juxtapose*...

Add to this scene some Squirrel Nut Zippers, then segue into a jazzy christmas mix I picked up at cool new/used music store (Grimey's) yesterday.



Right now it's all about John Pizzarelli on "Santa Claus Is Near" (track 4). Swingin' good fun!


*yes, thanks to the dictionary I am fully aware that I used "juxtapose" the wrong way. But I like it my way, so this is deliberate. Doesn't it seem like "juxtapose" should be a noun as well as a verb?