Guarding the Family Jewels

Occasionally I wonder about my neighbors.

Oh, things like, "Did anybody see my butt when I bent over to pick up the newspaper?" or "Doesn't their kid's stereo bass rattle their windows, too?" And, of course, the proverbial, "Who didn't pick up their dog's turds?"

Never once have I asked myself, "Who owns a machine gun around here?"

It turns out that it wouldn't matter even if I did want to know. Privacy laws protect gun owners. That's all fine and dandy unless that bunker-like berm in the neighbor's yard behind you turns out to be a firing range.

Recently I read about one of the suburban neighborhoods in the next county having this problem. A property owner behind them practices firing his machine guns regularly in his backyard. It isn't a public range. He built it in his yard so that his six sons could "learn how to shoot and be boys."

Oh, the things they don't teach in school these days! What good is an education if it doesn't teach a kid how to shoot a machine gun?!

The man bought six acres of land in 1991 for those six sons to ride dirt bikes while in their boy-training and built the firing range so that they could all practice shooting. This guy likes to shoot. When the town took him to court to have his permit revoked, spending 80,000 taxpayer dollars in the process, he says he spent $40,000 of his own money to hang on to it. He has over 300 guns, so there's the matter of convenience. He won the case.

Since he moved there, developers have built 250 or so houses close by. A few schools and shopping centers have sprung up in the area to accommodate the growth. Heck, even Target has built a store out there.

Oh, the irony!

So the situation is such that kids can be outside playing soccer or swinging in their backyards when suddenly it sounds like a shootout between Eliot Ness and Al Capone. Hundreds of rounds a minute. Floorboards shake, schoolchildren run inside, dogs go nuts, windows rattle, and people start screaming for their kids.

Lest you think this is one just one odd coot, know that about 10,000 machine guns were registered in the Carolinas in 2000. Permits are issued for various reasons, like people needing them for scientific or experimental purposes (go figure!) or for defending their business.

The "defending his business" reason was the one the homeowner used for this permit. What business, exactly, is he in?

He's a gynecologist.

No, honey, it isn't about guarding your virginity. He says he has some inventory for a mail-order jewelry business. Doesn't sell anything, of course-- never has.

When I read the article, I was incredulous. I try to see both sides of an issue, but this one seemed pretty clear cut. The danger issue, the sound issue, the common sense issue... the list goes on.

What do I know?

The NRA has checked the site and said, "Nooooooo problem." The sheriff signed off on it, saying it was grandfathered in. And what does general citizenry think?

Surprisingly, there have been only a few letters to the editor in the newspaper, the majority favoring Doctor Gun. Because one of the homeowners quoted in the newspaper moved here from New Jersey several years ago, the usual suspects wrote in and offered to help them pack and move back up north.

Lordamercy, doesn't that streak of meanness ever get OLD??!! We lived in the Midwest for close to 20 years with our Southern drawls and our strange food. Not once did anyone ever suggest that we were anything but welcome there. The only time it has been intimated that I didn't belong, we were living here.

I was surprised to say the least. Heck, I'm a native.

Not that I'd want to live out there with or without the machine gun fire. If I'm not mistaken, that's the same neighborhood that made news some time ago, in court to make their area as restricted as possible.

Interesting world we live in. John Dillinger may live behind you, but perhaps you can take comfort that most subdivisions won't let him have a clothesline. So, at least in the Carolinas, if you hear the rat tat tat of Tommy gun, maybe all you can do is call the kids inside and give the dog a tranquilizer.

Better take one yourself.

Loulou's Christmas Favorite

"Edith, Christmas Morning, Danville, Virginia, 1971" by Emmet Gowin

Emmet Gowin

"He wasn't like the other Danville boys, Edith recalls. He looked sharp that night in 1961, clad entirely in black for the dance at the Y; later, she learned that he listened to jazz and classical music. Emmet Gowin wanted to be an artist but was having trouble finding a subject. In Edith Morris, he did. They married three years later, and Gowin went on to make his first photographs of Edith and her extended family.

It was a welcoming family, and a large one, clustered in five houses on a Danville, Virginia, cul-de-sac. By 1971, when this picture was taken, Edith and Emmet had the first of their two sons, Elijah (playing with a train set), and five nephews and nieces (one of whom appears in a blur near the train tracks). Each year, gifts for nearly 20 people would be piled at the foot of a Christmas tree, a young cedar that Emmet would cut from the nearby woods. By mid-morning, the living room floor would be a wasteland of torn wrapping paper. 'It would pretty much look like that every Christmas,' Edith remembers.

Neither Edith nor Emmet can recall the precise circumstances that led to this photograph, but they know the process well. 'She'll look at me and see the way I'm looking at her, and she'll know," he says. "I don't even say anything, I just get up and go get the camera.'" (Smithsonian, "Married, With Camera," 2007)

Gee Whiz, It's Almost Christmas!

I've always had mixed feelings about Christmas. Even as a child my anticipation and enjoyment of the holidays always had a touch of melancholy hovering just below the surface.The one thing that could dissipate my holiday blues was music, specifically Christmas music. I love Christmas songs, the cheery ones and the sad ones, the serious ones and the silly ones. So I'm taking a break from any talk of the woes of government and focusing my thoughts on the music of the season. 

I love traditional Christmas Carols such as Adeste Fideles (O Come All Ye Faithful) or Silent Night. However if I had to choose one favorite traditional carol it would be O Holy Night; the lyrics are from a French poem, Minuit, Chrétiens (Midnight, Christians) that was set to music composed by Adolphe Adam in 1847. I love the way it starts quietly and crescendos into this powerful exultation of pure love and joy. It's been recorded many times but one of my favorite renditions is by Celine Dion. 

I grew up listening to an eclectic mix of music from country to rhythm and blues to gospel. Mahalia Jackson had one of the most recognizable voices in gospel music. Her interpretation of Silent Night rocks you gently like a lullaby.

I also like more contemporary holiday music like Elvis belting out Blue Christmas or Karen Carpenter sweetly singing Merry Christmas, Darling. A couple of years ago I heard a song on the radio that made me want to stop my car, get out and sway to the beat.  When the song ended, the DJ didn't name the artist, so I pulled over in the parking lot of the CVS and called the station. The title of the song was All I Want For Christmas Is You and it was performed by Vince Vance and the Valiants. Recorded in 1993, it charted on the country chart and the pop chart. The lead vocals are by Lisa Layne. Another great holiday song with the same title was recorded a couple of years ago by Mariah Carey but they are not the same song, they just have the same title. The video below is the tune by Vince Vance and the Valiants. By the way, the video has a lousy visual but it had the best sound quality.

This next song reminds me of my childhood and my paternal grandmother. She had a wonderful collection of 45s and during the Christmas season she always seemed to have music playing. This classic by Charles Brown was released in 1960. I was five and I loved to listen to the song and watch the grownups slow dance to it in my grandmother's parlor. We don't really have parlors any more, too bad. Every child should have the opportunity to peak around the corner and spy on the grownups. The song is Please Come Home for Christmas.

The next song isn't really a Christmas song; however, it's become associated with Christmas; it's the late Dan Fogelberg's Same Old Lang Syne. This song always makes me cry, sort of like the film, The Way We Were. It's filled with all the regrets of the road not taken and the love that was but somehow didn't work out. A bit of trivia--Fogelberg began each verse with the melody phrase from Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. I like to sing along with this one until my nose is runny from all the crying and I can't make any sound that doesn't sound like a snort. The solo sax wailing Auld Lang Syne as a coda does me in completely. This video has the lyrics!

All of my tastes in Christmas music isn't limited to sad songs or spiritual songs, I looked for a video of that classic tune, Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer but I didn't like any of the versions that I found on YouTube. Yes it's funny, how can you not laugh at a song with lyrics like these, "They should never give a license, to a man who drives a sleigh and plays with elves." However, I found a version sans video that I liked, just click the link.

Every time I think that I'm done, I come across another song that I love. I've been having a sing-a-long while writing this. I can't omit Carla Thomas singing Gee Whiz It's Christmas. Thomas began her career with Stax records and is the daughter of another great soul singer, Rufus Thomas.


I have to include one final tune that is politically incorrect on so many levels but I like it nonetheless, Eartha Kitt crooning Santa Baby. I know that Madonna, and Taylor Swift and a ton of other have done covers of the song, but the tune belongs to Ms. Eartha Kitt and personally, I think all those other versions should be destroyed.

There are so many wonderful songs and I could go on and on but I have to draw the line somewhere. Merry Christmas to all!

Labile

Did you catch Leslie Stahl's interview with John Boehner last Sunday night on 60 Minutes? Most news shows picked it up, The Sniffle Heard Round The World. Stahl seemed utterly charmed, as if she'd just been whining to her girlfriends at lunch that she'd give her all for a man who could show his feelings.



His Teariness is not only not charming; he's not okay. If he were a woman--say, Pelosi or Clinton or Kagan-- there'd be some misogynistic mumbling in the Congressional gym locker room about "time of the month."

I've seen those alligator tears before in so-called self-made men. They don't indicate empathy; they point to shallow, mawkish sentimentality and maudlin self-pity. Pick that performance up and move it to a doctor's office and the prescription pad would come out. Put it on the stage and the stage hook would shoot out.

Definitions are in order.

sen·ti·men·tal·i·ty 

n. pl. sen·ti·men·tal·i·ties

1. The quality or condition of being excessively or affectedly sentimental. (The Free Dictionary)

"Rhetoric is fooling others. Sentimentality is fooling yourself." - Yeats

"In modern times  'sentimental' is a term that has been casually applied to works of art and literature that exceed the viewer or reader's sense of decorum—the extent of permissible emotion—and standards of taste: 'excessiveness' is the criterion; 'Meretricious' and 'contrived' sham pathos are the hallmark of sentimentality, where the morality that underlies the work is both intrusive and pat." - Wikipedia 

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Labile: Unstable, unsteady, not fixed.

In psychology or psychiatry, labile denotes free and uncontrolled moods or behaviors expressing emotions. (MedicineNet dictionary of Medical terms)

emotional lability,

a condition of excessive emotional reactions and frequent mood changes. (The Free Dictionary)

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Gail Collins in her NYTimes piece, The Crying Game:

O.K. About Boehner. Many of us first noticed his tendency toward tears when he appeared on election night to celebrate his party’s taking control of the House. He had hardly gotten in front of the microphone before things got watery.

“I spent my whole life chasing (sob) the American dream,” he told the cameras. “Put myself through school, working every rotten job there was ...”

The American Dream has had such a bad year. During the campaign, it was tossed around by billionaire candidates who insisted on telling groups of underprivileged children that they, too, could someday own a mega-yacht or run a slimy but extremely profitable health care corporation.

Now, John Boehner is blaming the Dream for making him howl like an abandoned puppy. It’s what my friend Rebecca Traister calls “Boehner doing Masterpiece Theater on the hard life of John Boehner.”

Why I'm Wearing Bandages On My Fingers

This year I had the urge to extend my decorating to higher levels than in the past, so I decided to put up outside lights.

My initial plan was to place them around the front door, but I was too short to reach above the door.  I briefly considered standing on a stepstool that I own.  Only briefly, and then I thought about spending the holidays on crutches and scratched that idea.  I settled on placing the lights on the small bushes that line my flower bed.

I had purchased 200 lights for the door, but 200 seemed insufficient for nine bushes.  I decided to take a rest break and contemplate my dilemma.  I was fairly certain that I could get more lights at the store but I wasn't certain that I wanted to venture out into the frenzied hordes. Then I had an "Aha!" moment.  I would simply decorate the three center bushes with lights. 

Before placing the lights, I decided to open the package containing the combined photocell sensor and digital timer that I had purchased to use in connecting the lights to my electrical outlet.  I carefully examined the package for a tab, or an identation, some indicator as to where I was to open the package.  There was none.

The package contained a ground stake, a thingamajig for connecting the lights with a ten foot cord, and was about six inches wide by 20 inches long, and covered in hard plastic.  Evidently, there is a lot of theft associated with this item.  That's the only reason that I could figure out why the package was sealed up like a CD. 

I grasped the package between my knees, placed my fingers on the edge and attempted to pull it open.  The plastic didn't budge but I broke two fingernails.  It was time for the scissors. 
I tried to poke the tips of the scissors into the top of the packaging but the scissors just sort of slid sideways, bounced against the plastic, and flew out of my hands.  Undaunted, I took a firmer grasp of the package and managed to make a small slit at the top end.  Working the scisslors further into the package, I began to cut and was feeling quite pleased with myself until I knicked the outside of the electric cord. The package clearly stated, "Do not splice, repair or modify cord set." 

I decided to change my angle of attack. Meanwhile, the five year old that lives across the street had decided to visit me.

"Whatyadoing?"

Fortunately, his mother noticed that he had escaped the nest and called him home.  I was spared from admitting to a five year old that I had spent 30 minutes trying to open a package.

I began to get worried; it would be dark soon and I really wanted to get the lights up and glowing.  What would Xena, Warrior Princess, do?  Letting out a battle cry, I decided to use the scissors like a spear to pierce one of the outer edges.  Success!  I cut a long slit down the side of the package and reached in to claim my prize.

I pulled out the thingamajig, plugged in the lights, plugged in the thingamajig, and voila--Christmas lights.  As I stood in the dark  admiring my handiwork, I noticed that my fingers were wet.  While reaching in to grab the prize, the plastic edge had left me with a few cuts on my fingers.  Bloodied, but triumphant, I marched into the house to find some bandages. 

Tomorrow, I have a couple of new CDs that I plan to open.

Juney Says 'Bye

[The entire liberal and progressive blogosphere is riled to a rolling boil this morning by the President's compromise with the Republican party on continuation of the Bush era tax cuts to all income levels. Instead of adding to the furor, I've chosen today to provide the comic relief.]

Nobody savors the eccentricities of the South more than a Southerner. I offer a story from the Florence, South Carolina, "Morning News" about Mr. Albert Simons, Jr. (Juney, to his family and friends).  I got an exclusive interview with Albert's first cousin today, who noted drily that this article, "sounds just like him." My source gave me two more highly colorful tales to add to the Morning News feature. To my fiction-writing friends: you know you couldn't make up anything this good.

December 6th, 2010:

Independent Welder Plans To Close Shop To Public

Albert Simon has been doing “creative” welding at Simon’s Welding Shop for 49 years.

Simon’s philosophy is, “I can make just about anything and fix just about anything else.”

Take for instance the cab of an old school bus. It sits at the front of the shop.

Take a peek inside.

There’s a huge cushion on the first step to make it easier to get to the second step. Once inside, one can luxuriate in a well-worn easy chair that resides where the driver’s seat used to be.

And just across the way is another easy chair covered with a blanket.

Country music wafted from a portable stereo placed in front of the side window, which was covered with an American flag. A scanner was next to the stereo so that Simon can keep up with all that’s going on in Darlington.

“The front of that bus is my front office,” Simon said. “I can sit out there, get my business done and at the same time keep my eye out for customers.”

But come the end of this month, Simon isn’t going to be looking for customers because he’s planning to close his shop to the public.

He said this will be the end of an era because he’s the last independent welding shop in Darlington.

“I’m not retiring,” he emphasized. “I’m just not going to be here most of the time. I’m going to be here when I want to be here.”

Saying Simon and his shop are unique would be a vast understatement.

Take for example exotic birds. Simon has been into them for more than five years.

He makes them out of recycled material. The one he’s featuring now is a stork with a body made out of a fire extinguisher.

“It will look real good once I get it painted a color I like,” Simon said. “This is about the last one I’m making out of fire extinguishers because they are getting too hard to get. I’m going to use small propane cylinders like you use on a grill from here on.”

And Simon has a genuine Bud Lite lamp in his building. He made it out of a Bud Lite beer bottle.

But there’s another project that Simon has been working on for 10 years. He hasn’t finished it because most of the people who started out helping him with it have died.

The project is the remains of an old Trailways bus that came from Canada.

“We just cut the cab off of it to put on a pontoon boat,” he said. “It’s been right time consuming, but we are down to the part of putting the cab on the boat. It takes about six hands and I ain’t got but two. I don’t have no help anymore.”

There’s an unusual chair near the bus. It is anchored by a truck rim. A pole rises up to greet a boat seat that is welded on it.

“I put a table on it to read the Morning News so that when the phone rings I can just push the table away and get up and answer the phone,” Simon said. “I put drink holders in it that I made out of the bottoms of propane cylinders and then made me a place to eat.”

The last thing Simon worries about in the winter is staying warm in the airy building. He built a heater that can burn used motor oil out of an air conditioning compressor tank . He stood it up on its end, put legs on it, added a door and put a stack on it. He pumps oil into it from 55-gallon drums in the rear of the shop.

People from all walks of life have left their autographs and written things on one of the doors in the shop.

One of the more interesting ones reads, “Free at last after 562 days in jail.”

Meanwhile, closing his shop to the public will give Simon more time to enjoy his motor home. He converted a 1965 school bus into a camper replete with a dead-bolt lock on the front door.

Among others, he uses it to go on trips to Lake Wateree in Camden or Santee.

In that exclusive interview today, Juney's first cousin Susan was willing to speak on the record. When I expressed some reticence about publishing Mr. Simon's story, Susan gave me an ironic look and said, "It was on the front page of the local paper." Well, there is that. In this age of leaked secrets, I take my chances.

Susan reports that Juney's father, Albert Sr., owned an auto paint shop that painted stock cars raced at the Darlington Motor Speedway. In high school, Juney would take his shoes out to the paint shop before school and spray paint them to match his outfit. She said the girls were just wild about Juney; he was voted Most Popular senior year at Florence High School.

Somewhere back there, Juney lost his front teeth--had to wear a partial plate. He liked to drop that plate down over his bottom lip and stick his tongue out through the gap in order to gum people. One time he tried gumming out the window of his car while driving fast and his partial was whipped right out of his mouth. Gone with the wind.

Expiring Tax Cuts: Deal Or No Deal

Politics is and always has been about negotiations. Lines drawn in the sand are just to test the waters. Both sides know that ultimately you give some to get some. It appears that the trade off is going to be the tax cuts for the wealthy for the extension of the unemployment benefits. 

On Friday, House Democrats mustered sufficient votes to pass a bill that  extended the current tax cuts to the middle class and eliminated the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy. On Saturday, the Senate Republicans voted unanimously to defeat the Senate version of that bill. The vote was 53 (yes) to 36 (no), seven votes shy of the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation in the Senate.  While Republicans voted in a bloc, four Democrats voted with the Republicans, Senators Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska,  and Jim Webb of Virginia, as did independent Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut.

A second measure that would have extended the tax cuts to include those earning up to $1 million annually also failed to receive the necessary 60 votes to move forward. The vote on the second measure was 53 (yes) to 37(no) with a slightly different crew of Democrats voting with the Republicans--Senators Dick Durbin of Illinois, Tom Harkin of Iowa, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia and the ever consistent Feingold and Lieberman.

At stake is not only the continuation of the middle class tax cuts, but the Republicans are also holding the extension of unemployment benefits hostage unless they get tax cuts for all. The White House has its own demands--passage of legislation extending the unemployment benefits for millions of people, as well as renewal of expiring tax breaks for lower and middle class wage earners, college students, and businesses that hire the unemployed.

I keep hearing how Obama and the Democrats should stand firm and declare no tax cuts for the wealthy. What then? What happens to the lower class (even if you don't have to pay income tax, there are some cuts for which you may qualify), the middle class and the unemployed who will find themselves with a decrease in revenue? When you have bills to pay to keep a roof over your head and food on the table, politicians having an old west style standoff are not a source of inspiration or admiration.

The Republican Senators aren't going to cave on the extension of unemployment benefits unless they get something that they want, in this case, the extension of the tax cuts for all. They will deny culpability, spinning it to be Obama's fault for being unwilling to compromise on the tax cuts and the public will buy it. I feel like a broken record, but the office of the president has no authority to force Congress to do anything. He influences Congress but he doesn't command Congress. 

Congress is answerable only to us and we seldom get off our collective asses to do anything to let Congress know that we will not accept their behavior. 

Of course Obama can veto the bill that comes to his desk if it contains an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy. Congress has the authority to override that veto but it's unlikely that both chambers would get the votes required to do so. However, it would be an incomplete victory. Any bill that the Republicans sign on to will also include the tax cuts for the middle class as well; veto the bill and taxes for the middle class also increase allowing the Republicans to again blame Obama for failing to keep his campaign promise to not allow an increase in taxes for the middle class.

It all reminds me of that game show hosted by Howie Mandel, the one where the contestants are asked, "Deal or no deal?" To get tax cuts for the people who need them the most, the administration will have to cut a deal with the Republicans to extend the Bush cuts to all. Rumor has it that the president is holding to setting a time limit on the cuts for the wealthy so that they will expire prior to the the tax cuts for the lower and middle class.

I wouldn't want to be in Obama's shoes; no matter what he does he will be condemned by the right and the left. However, Washington will roll on as it always has, playing some shady version of "Deal or No Deal."

Old Man Yells at Cloud

Cartoon created by Ima June Pullet (aka TexasTrailerParkTrash)