Five years gone by

I've been watching all the coverage of the recent terror plot in London. Thankfully, it didn't succeed. I've also been watching all the preview trailers for "World Trade Center." Surprisingly, it placed third at the box office this weekend. People in wartime tend to like funny movies, and supposedly, "Talladega Nights" fills the bill. It was number one.
I doubt I'll see either "World Trade Center" or the other 9/11 movie so far, "United 93." I was sitting in the newsroom on 9-11-01, a beautiful September morning. Fall arrived a little early that year, and we were grateful for a break from the heat. We heard about the first hit about 10 minutes until 8 (we're on Central Time), and I wondered aloud if New York was socked in with fog. Our webmaster pulled up CNN on the Internet, and finally, they posted a picture of the smoking tower. Beautiful weather there, as well. Must have been a computer or other mechanical failure. Had to have been. We were an afternoon paper then, and were on deadline, so we turned to the other deadline tasks. I finished readying the weather page, having said a silent prayer for the victims in the tower and on the plane.
About 8:15, one of our reporters said he had been on the phone with his mother-in-law and she said another plane hit the towers. We were sure it was just a repeat of the news of the first hit, but the reporter said no, it was live. The first whispers of "hijacked" started to make their way around the room, as we looked at each other in shock. When the plane hit the Pentagon, we knew.
When the news came of the fourth plane, still flying when everything else was grounded, and that hijackers probably were in control, and it was heading on a general path to the White House, my blood froze. I told my editor, "You know what they'll do--they're going to send fighters to shoot down that plane." He looked at me, dumbfounded, and told me that surely, I was mistaken. I knew I wasn't. About 15 minutes later, we got the news that United 93 had crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, and that the fighters scrambled from Andrews were about 7-10 minutes from intercept. I was thankful those pilots had not had to follow through on an order to destroy a commercial aircraft with their own countrymen on board.
I have the newspapers from that day. We made our first edition deadline and were one of the first papers in the state to have it on the front page.
I was in something of a daze the rest of the day. Mike and I went to church that night for a prayer service. We live about 20 miles from an airport, and routinely hear jets flying over. I looked at the skies that had not been so empty in my memory.
I suffered from news overload early on, watching the endless commentary, the families of the victims, the victims themselves who barely escaped with their lives, walking, covered in ash and dust. I played a lot of computer solitaire that week. I prayed tearfully for the victims, their families, for those who were working the Ground Zero site, the police and Port Authority officers, firemen, and the hundreds of volunteers. I watched the memorial service on television and cried yet again when NYPD officer Danny Rodriguez sang in his beautiful tenor.
Please God, nothing like that will happen again in my lifetime. It was my generation's Pearl Harbor. Alan Jackson had the right idea in his song. My world did stop turning that week. I knew no one involved but still, I grieved.
Five years away isn't long enough. The images in my mind from the real story are still too fresh to want to see Hollywood's version of them.

Adulthood: who needs it?

When I was five years old, I wanted nothing more than to be grown up. A five-year-old doesn't realize that growing up means growing older and losing people you love.
Eleven years ago, my world fell apart when my Dad died. Now, I'm facing the same situation as many others: keeping an eye on an aging parent. Mama is 77. Last October, she broke her hip. Amazing how something like that can turn your world on its ear. Mike and I kept the house up and the finances managed while she did 21 days of rehab for it. Fourteen more days followed in December after she had a bout with delirium, cause unknown.
Several falls later, she ended up having a hip replacement. She had a terrifying episode of delirium while in the hospital, and it took her a couple of weeks to get "right" again. Twenty-one more days of rehab.
With my sister's move out of town, Mama is on her own again, and seems to be doing well. But that spectre I've managed to ignore for 11 years is getting harder to block out. I see its gray shadow every time Mama goes to the doctor or talks about a new ache or pain, as I rejoice with her that she is regaining her mobility.
I haven't wanted to write much these past few months. It's been too hard to talk about. But it's one of those parts of being grown up that I must deal with. I'm tired of bitter water for a while. Let me drink of the sweet.
Lord, I wish I were five again.

On tenth anniversaries

A tenth wedding anniversary is something to celebrate, especially nowadays, with the divorce rate about 50 percent. Depending on which Web site you believe, the tenth anniversary may be celebrated with tin or aluminum for traditionalists, or with diamonds for the modern gift-giver. Guess which one most people want?
My tenth anniversary will come along in October, just 2 days after my husband's 42nd birthday. I didn't deliberately set my wedding date then so my hubby could remember it. I set it for that day because I wanted to get married in the fall and that was one day when both my state's Division I football teams were playing out of state. Yes, it matters in my family.
Actually, my wedding was one of six I attended that summer and fall, and five of them were within about seven weeks of each other. The stats were kind to those getting married that year: only one divorce. The rest of those couples are still happily married. I missed a Dirt Band show to attend my cousin's wedding. Had we both known how things turned out, we probably would have skipped the ceremony and gone to the concert.
Call it a belated Valentine or an early anniversary present, but I have been incredibly happy with my husband. Somehow, through the most unlikely series of events, we found each other. I was convinced that I would probably never find anyone. Who wanted me: weird, overweight, over-intelligent, etc? Well, Mike wanted me. I still wonder why, sometimes, but I do strive to be the best wife I can be to him. We were friends first, and found a comfortable companionship that nurtures and sustains both of us. Mike is over-intelligent, a little strange, tender, romantic... I could go on. When I am with him, I am at my best. He sees me for the woman I truly am. He is, without doubt, the most precious human in my life. I cannot imagine my life without his warmth, his humor, his "him-ness."
Mike is a blessing from the Lord that I never hoped to have. God has been so incredibly good to me in my choice of husbands. I am resolved to make my marriage as happy as it can be, in gratitude for the gift I have received.
If this is sappy, so what? I don't care. My dear husband has been everything to me that anyone could possibly want in a spouse. He's not perfect, but who is? I'm certainly not!
So Mike, I love you and cherish all that you are to me. The best part of my day is walking in the door and seeing you. Here's to many, many more decades together.

Will the real Dante Marquez please stand up?

I know I won't get an answer to this question because the fact is, Dante Marquez does not exist. He writes letters to the editor praising the vegetarian lifestlye now and again, but in reality, he is a nobody.
I know this because the newspaper I work for published one of his letters last year and we got a letter from a woman who had seen that very letter under about 20 different names in other newspapers. I edit letters every week, and I know how most people write. Even the ones who write decent, understandable letters usually aren't so eloquent as this guy was, and I was suspicious. Anyway, I got wise, and now, when I receive a letter from the elusive Mr. Marquez, I usually give it a pitch. I did go to some trouble to confirm my theory that Dante Marquez, as the 60s comedian Dave Gardner put it, "is a fig-a-ment."
We've also received similar letters from another individual whose existence I doubt as well. Can't remember his name, though. Both people have somewhat unusual names that stand out among the predominately Anglo-Celtic names in Alabama. The second red flag was that both addresses lead directly to apartment complexes (no apartment number specified, naturally), and their phone numbers are toll-free. How very odd. I called one of the toll-free numbers and asked for, not Mr. Marquez, but someone who happens to share the same name as my cousin's husband. I was told he was on the phone and asked if I wanted to leave a message.
A little more digging using the phrases in the letters led me to a vegan Web site that promoted letter-writing campaigns. I looked up their address and was led, oddly enough, to an apartment number. I suspect they run this enterprise from their little domicile. Busted. I now know who's running this and why.
My problem with all this is that it disgusts me that these people feel the need to make up names and use false addresses and phone numbers, just to get their message out to the masses. If they want to encourage people to eat tofurkey on Thanksgiving, well and good. But they need to do it under their own names. The First Amendment is still in full force, and they are free to encourage people to eat shoelaces and bubblegum on Thanksgiving, if that's what turns their gears. But they need to do it under their own steam. Anything else, in my opinion, certainly diminishes their cause, and absolutely casts a bad light on their character. Besides--it's just a cheap and cheesy thing to do to get a point across. Particularly as preachy as these letters tend to be.
Some people might think that how someone eats cannot be a religion, but brothers and sisters, I beg to differ! Reading through a PETA magazine is enough to convince anyone that some of these vegan people have made an absolute CULT out of how they eat. They proselytize, hand out pamphlets and free materials about the wonders of the veggie lifestyle. They offer all these free resources, tout this lifestyle as the best thing to happen to humanity since the wheel, make subtle-- and not-so-subtle-- remarks about the barbaric, ignorant, unenlightened lifestyle of the "carnivore"-- their erroneous term for non-veggies. Look up carnivore and omnivore in the dictionary. However, those in the carrot cult are tickled plumb to death to welcome in a new convert, because, after all, it is a completely NEW lifestyle. The new has come and the old has passed away. They are new creatures in Veggieism. All hail the power of the great Veg!! I'm surprised they don't have hymns. "Amazing veg, how sweet it is/to do away with meat./I once drank milk, but its all soy now./Loved beef, but now tofu's my treat." Or, "Blessed tofurkey, tempeh is mine. Now that I'm meat-free, I'm feeling divine. I'm now so enlightened, so fully evolved, not like those cretins who still eat the hog. This is my story, veggies my chow. I'm so much better than those who eat cow. This is my story, and veggies my chow, you're just sub-human if you still eat cow." (With the very deepest of apologies to Fanny Crosby.)
They warn the neophyte vegan that they will undergo persecution for their decision, that it will be unpopular because other people just don't understand. They realize that the newbie may slip, but praises to parsnips, they can repent and be received yet again into the loving and sweet congregation of the New Vegan Life Community Enlightened Fellowship of Those Who are too Superior to Kill Poor Defenseless Animals and Consume their Contaminated Flesh.
Lest anyone misunderstand, I'm not against a vegetarian or vegan eating plan. Go for it. What I do strenuously object to, however, is being made to feel quite unevolved and positively Neanderthalish for wanting a steak once in a while! Vegans (rightly) don't want people preaching at them because they don't eat meat. Well by the Lord Harry, don't preach at me because I do!!
I also don't subscribe to organizations who claim to have animal welfare at heart, yet secretly funnel money to terrorist organizations that bomb research labs and usually end up killing some poor janitor who is trying to provide for his family. These groups do absolutely nothing for anyone else. Looking down some of these "legitimate" organizations' back trails is an interesting project, and plenty of information is readily available online.
Bottom line: eat what you want. Write letters to the editor about your views, under your own name. Don't, however, harangue me because I don't choose the same lifestyle you did. I promise to give you the same consideration.

Gullible: True or False?

My husband came across a link for a quiz called "How gullible are you?" Being a quiz-taker from way back, he had to take the test and when it was scored, the answer came back, "Congratulations! You are a free thinker!" The page went on to describe how he must be highly intelligent and creative, how he had obviously thrown off the lies his parents told him as a child, to form his own thoughts and opinions. Pretty interesting stuff. So, I took the test, too.
Being a pretty smart cookie myself, I got the gist of the test right off the bat. One answers "true" or false" to every question. When the questions said things like, "The U.S. government would never allow farmers to feed chicken poop to their cattle" and "The government never lies to its citizens about anything," I knew their political leanings. To be scored a free thinker on their test, the test-taker simply had to suss out their political leanings and answer accordingly. I was named a free thinker, as well. Yay! And honestly, who wouldn't want to take a test and be informed at the end that he is highly intelligent, creative, an independent individual, capable of thinking for himself? All good, solid American ideals of a first-rate person. Sure, we all want to be independent thinkers, and most of us flatter ourselves that this is the case.
Just for giggles and grins, my husband then re-took the test, answering the questions in contrary fashion. The other end of the "free-thinking" scale is, incidentally, "mind slave." He scored on that end and the page that popped up said he must be a neo-Nazi, that he was obviously a fascist, stupid, and lacked even the remotest capacity for intelligent thought. Harsh, eh? I'll pause just a minute here to see if the piercing irony of this situation dawns on anyone. Anyone? Anyone?
Well, after the little description of the kind of thinker the test-taker is, follows the "correct" answers to the questions posed. At least half of the questions were stating opinions as facts to start with, so saying there was a "right" or "wrong" answer was a little disingenuous, to say the least.
Then, I started checking the links to the information claiming to support the "correct" answers. As a member of the media, I'm trained to be skeptical of answers that all come from the same place. Almost all of the quiz answers came from the same Web page or were in books published by the same company. Excuse me? Where is the diversity of sources? Tell me something about medicine and refer me to the "Journal of the American Medical Association" or "The Lancet" from the UK. Don't expect me to read an opinion from someone who is not a medical doctor and expect me to swallow it whole, just because you say it's true. WHO'S GULLIBLE? That's gullibility of the worst sort! Complimenting a person for agreeing with all your opinions and castigating them when they don't, which is bound to make them want to agree so they can be intelligent and creative too--that's mind control if anything is. Who's a mind slave?
Did the quiz offer any good talking points? Yes. And I agree with them that a little skepticism about what we see and are told is a good thing. We should investigate and dig into controversial issues for ourselves. That's healthy.
Lean to the left or the right. I don't care. What sticks in my craw is when people are so bleeping desperate to sway me to their way of thinking that they will insult my intelligence, infer that I am either a Nazi or a pinko Commie and should have no right to exist in their idea of a decent society. I'm sick of it. If their paradise is so wonderful, I'll figure it out on my own.
Until then, there's a whole bunch of folks in Mississippi and Louisiana who could use that kind of energy in constructing a house or feeding people. Shut up and go help them.

Cattle in the Cane

"Cattle in the Cane" was only one of the many tunes I heard played at the Tennessee Valley Old Time Fiddlers Convention. The campus at Athens State University hosts the festival each year, and it is always a joy to attend.
Bluegrass music is a cherished Southern tradition, and there's always plenty of it at Fiddlers. Small groups sit all around the grounds and jam as the people stop to listen to their music. The competitions take place on the front porch at Founders Hall, with its four massive ionic columns flanking the performers. That porch has heard a lot of music in its 163 years. Hoopskirts have swished over it with genteel rustlings, military boots have tramped across it, sabres rattled in front of it, and now, Nikes and Reeboks trot across it, as their owners seek their college degrees. It's a beautiful old structure, crammed with history and tradition, and I love it dearly. In quieter days, I've sat in the rockers on that porch, the autumn sun streaming across the drive, studying, passing the time of day, or just enjoying the view.
Fiddlers is a magic time on campus. All activity stops on Wednesday, so the place can ready itself for Friday and Saturday. The RVs start showing up, and the arts and crafts vendors begin setting up their booths. The visitors begin streaming in on Friday night and don't stop until the end of the fiddle-off Saturday night, when the "Fiddle King" is crowned. The event is clearly family-oriented as well, and there is a feeling of utter security that one rarely finds anywhere else.
With the smell of funnel cakes, steak sandwiches and popcorn in the air, the visitor is hard-pressed to pick just a couple of vendors. The temptation to pig out is a strong one. Fiddlers is the big fundraiser for most of the campus clubs,and they go all out for the event.
But it's the music that keeps people coming back every year. Musicians from several states come to play that unique variety of Americana known as bluegrass. The vendors of musical instruments know this and they show up with their wares, as well. A visitor can see fiddles, guitars and banjos for sale, of course, but can also get a gander at more unusual instruments such as resonator guitars, dobros and hammered dulcimers.
The music can be heard a block away from campus, and it draws people in like the calliope at a circus. It is as rewarding to sit and listen to the small groups play as it is to hear the competitions.
If there is a better way to spend a fall day than to have wonderful music rain down on me and lighten my heart, I don't know about it.

Five days in Reno

Reno, NV is a town of contradictions. On one hand, it boasts large hotels and casinos, an upscale mall, nationally-recognized restaurant chains and a Mercedes dealership. You have to look a little closer to see the other side.
A drive through downtown shows the large casinos and neon signs, but a closer inspection reveals a city tormented by the very industry that supports it. Bars and dives line the downtown streets. Adult bookstores and the cheapest of cheap motels fight for space, as well.
Families congregate directly around the casinos, but get away from them, and the people change. You can see the lost, the homeless, the hopeless standing clearly out from the well-dressed tourists walking right behind them. "The least of these" are everywhere in downtown Reno. I saw numerous people walking with their backpacks on. Some were undoubtedly walking cross country or hiking to Lake Tahoe. Others were walking because that was their only means of transportation.
Huge casinos like Atlantis and the Peppermill dominate their blocks, while billboards tout the "loosest" slots and biggest buffets. The city tries desperately to lure you into the surface gilding, but it can't hold up under any kind of scrutiny.
My friends said, "Reno is a hole. Downtown Reno is seedy. The worst. Sparks is almost as bad, but at least you feel safer." Sparks sits cheek by jowl to Reno--the two towns run right into each other. Sparks looks more residential, with only the Nugget and the Hilton dominating the landscape. But the bars and dives are there, too.
Inside the casinos is a false cheerfulness. The slot machines make happy, encouraging dings and beeps, but money goes into them at horrifying rates--and it doesn't come out. I sat back and watched the amount of alcohol being served at the casino where we stayed. I'd like to have what they bring in for 24 hours in alcohol sales alone. I could retire to the French Riviera.
My friends and I were there to see the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. After the show, we were talking to the keyboard player, Bob Carpenter. Bob was grousing about the lack of anything constructive to do at a casino. "I could watch the three cable channels on TV (it was an exaggeration, but not much of one), but ehh; I could go eat some more. Ehh. I could go gamble. Ehhh." Afterwards, we wished we had asked him if he wanted to go to Truckee with us the next day. He would probably have jumped at the chance to get out for a while. We'd have been tickled to have him along. He's a nice guy. All the guys in that band are good eggs.
It was a relief to get out of the Reno area, even to that tourist trap, Virginia City. That place exists for the sole purpose of separating people from their money. It always has. Nothing much has changed. It still retains the look of an old Western town, and some of the people still retain that Western friendliness, so similar to the Southern culture.
Truckee, CA is a lovely little spot. The downtown is picturesque, and the scenery around is wonderful. About five miles away is Donner Pass. There's a memorial to those people who lived through that horrific winter of 1846-47. It's a silent, peaceful place. I stood at Donner Lake and looked at the lovely homes lining the shore, considered my large breakfast I'd eaten in Truckee and thought about those people, 160 years ago, who starved on those shores, in two-room cabins and hide-covered tipis. It was sobering in the extreme.
Lake Tahoe was cold and beautiful. But the casinos still loomed on the Nevada side. It's not seedy, like downtown Reno, though. I guess the residents just accept the casinos and walk by without going in.
It was a tiring flight home, and I was glad to touch back down in Sweet Home Alabama, where our problems are numerous, but at least don't include casinos.