Author Archive: Christopher Waldrop

The Naming Of Names.

Author: July 15, 2016 12 Comments

garden

And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

–Genesis 2:19 (King James Version)

God: Hey Adam, come over here. I’ve got a job for you.

Adam: What is it?

God: I thought it would be fun if you named the animals.

Adam: Sure. There aren’t a lot of them, are there?

God: No, this’ll be easy. Shouldn’t take more than…well, anyway, let’s get started with this little guy.

Adam: Let me think. I guess I’ll call it a ‘mouse’.

God: I like that. Here’s another one.

Adam: Well that looks just like a bigger mouse.

God: No, totally different animals, trust me.

Adam: Fine. I’ll call that a ‘rat’.

God: And here’s the next one.

Adam: Wait, are you messing with me here? That’s just a rat with a bushy tail.

God: No, really, no joke, this is a whole other animal.

Adam: Fine. Let’s just call it a ‘squirrel’.

God: Great. Let’s keep going. Here’s something  a little different.

Adam: Interesting. I guess ‘lizard’.

God: Cool. And how about this one?

Adam: That’s just a lizard without legs.

God: No it’s not!

Adam: Yes it is! Fine, you want a name for it? I’ll call it a ‘snake’ since I guess ‘we need a lizard without legs for some reason’ is too long.

God: Yeah, not one of my better ideas.

Snake: (muttering) I’ll get you for that.

Adam: I’ll call that next thing a ‘bird’.

God: Are you sure you want to be so general?

Adam: What do you mean?

God: Well, what are you going to call this thing?

Adam: Well, I guess that’s also a bird.

God: Yeah, but don’t you think you should give them different names, to sort of tell them apart?

Adam: I don’t know. How many are there?

God: (thoughtfully) Yeah, Darwin kinda has that same question. Leads to all kinds of stuff.

Adam: What?

God: Sorry, getting ahead of myself here. Let’s keep going.

[Several hours later]

Adam: I thought you said there weren’t going to be that many.

God: Well from my perspective it doesn’t seem like all that many. I mean, consider yourself lucky you’re just dealing with one planet.

Adam: One what?

God: Never mind. Let’s switch gears a little bit and I’ll bring up some aquatic life. Here, here’s something you’ll like.

Adam: Okay, well, I guess I’ll call that a ‘fish’.

God: That’s a good general term…

Adam: Are you kidding me? Is this birds all over again?

God: Well…we can come back to that. Here’s something really different.

Adam: GOD! WHAT IS THAT?

God: Hey, hey, hey, watch how you’re using my name. Don’t make me lay down some ground rules.

Adam: It’s just that’s…that’s not like anything I’ve seen so far. It’s…how am I even going to get along with that?

God: Good point. You know what? You’re probably not gonna run into any of these. So just give it a nice quick name and we’ll move on.

Adam: Sure, okay. Wow. A nice quick name. I guess I’ll call it a ‘squid’.

God: Great. Okay, let’s get back to land animals. Let’s look at some that might be useful to you.

Adam: Great, I could use some help around here.

God: What about that thing you called ‘dog’?

Adam: Well, it’s nice and all, but what I could really use is an extra pair of hands.

God: Oh, we’ll get to that. Here’s a nifty little number I think you’ll like.

Adam: Well I wouldn’t call it ‘little’. It makes an interesting noise. I guess I’ll call it a ‘cow’. Hey, what are the dangly things around its hind legs?

God: Oh, those dispense a high-protein beverage called ‘milk’.

Adam: Doesn’t sound particularly appetizing.

God: Your kids are gonna love it.

Adam: My what?

God: Anyhoo, here’s another.

Adam: That looks like a fat hairless dog someone punched in the face.

God: Come on, lighten up. You’re gonna love this creature.

Adam: Yeah? What does it do?

God: Um, well, it eats a lot and spends a lot of time rolling around in its own filth.

Adam: Yeah, great job there. A dirty, disgusting animal. It deserves a blunt, brutal name, something like ‘pig’.

God: That’s it. You don’t like it? Fine. I forbid you to eat bacon.

Adam: What’s that?

God: Your kids are gonna love it. Or grandkids. Somewhere down the line. Speaking of that I think it’s about time we got you some help around here. And I have a sudden craving for ribs.

The Weekly Essay

How About A Nice Game Of Chess?

Author: July 13, 2016 12 Comments

When I was a kid and got interested in learning how to play chess I checked out a book from the library. It was a kids’ chess book and had pretty clever pictures of the various pieces as people dressed up in medieval garb, only in black and white. The pictures were a lot more interesting to me than the actual mechanics of playing chess: the bishops wielded wicked-looking morning stars, the knights were on horseback, of course, the pawns were squat little soldiers with clubs, and the queens had long swords. The kings just looked kind of pensive since they were the primary target. I don’t remember what the rooks looked like, which is strange, because I think they would have been the most interesting characters of all, being mobile castles. In fact the British call that piece a “castle” which makes more sense than “rook” since a rook is a bird, but that’s another story.

And while I could usually hold my own fairly well in a game of chess against my friends any time I went up against adults I got trounced. My parents were probably relieved I wouldn’t be searching for Bobby Fischer, for a number of reasons.

Anyway my pottery instructor also teaches ceramics classes and one evening she had some chess pieces one of her students had made. My aunt who made ceramics used the same mold which brought up a wave of nostalgia for me. And I thought it would be fun to make my own chess set out of pottery.

Because of my lack of skill and because pottery isn’t as malleable as ceramic I went for a more stylized look.

Here’s the white side since in chess white traditionally goes first:

chess-white

And here’s the green side. They were supposed to be red but pottery glaze is a funny thing. Like a good chess player it’s unpredictable.

chess-green

And now a little chess-related music.

Submitted For Your Approval.

Facing It.

Author: July 12, 2016 6 Comments

Sometimes words fail me. When that happens I turn to the words of others. They can provide peace, thoughtful reflection, or a window into the experiences of people who are unlike me. That’s why, following recent events, I’ve been rereading some of the poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa.

We are from very different backgrounds. I’m a white guy who was brought up in and have spent my entire life living in some level of middle class suburbs. Other than college in Indiana and a brief study overseas I’ve spent my time in Tennessee.

He’s an African American man born to a poor family in the deep South—Bogalusa, Louisiana. He’s from an earlier generation and served in the Army in Vietnam. His birth name is James William Brown. He changed his name to that of his Trinidadian grandfather. He writes about a wide range of subjects, including race.

I didn’t start reading his poetry because we come from different backgrounds. I started reading his poetry because a friend who’d read some poems of mine said, “You write like him.” And when I read his poem Blackberries I felt that way too. With a dog of my own I’d been in those places he describes. But then our experiences diverge. He describes feelings I’ve felt but in a situation I’ve never experienced—a situation he might have experienced several times.

No single person represents an entire group. No matter how we join together, or join others together, we’re still individuals. But a single person can articulate the feelings and experiences of a group.

With that in mind I re-read Facing It. History can alter context, and recent events have left me feeling that this is more than a poem about a veteran’s feelings as he stands before the Vietnam Memorial. An African American man standing before a black wall, seeing his own reflection as he reads names of those who lost their lives—this speaks to me of something I haven’t yet experienced but something I too have to face.

Facing It

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears.
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way–the stone lets me go.
I turn that way–I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

Audio of Yusef Komunyakaa reading Facing It:

Quick Takes.

Listening In.

Author: July 11, 2016 6 Comments

busstopYou never know whom you’re going to sit next to at a bus stop.
He was skinny but had full, round cheeks that were burned red. Scraggly straw-colored hair curled out from under the tan cap he wore, as though the wisps were growing up around it, or escaping. There were holes in his shirt and his thin arms were tanned with red spots.
“I just spent thirty days in jail!” he yelled at me after I’d sat down. I wondered if maybe I should have walked to the next bus stop but according to the schedule the next one would be along any minute now. I didn’t want to risk being between stops. This bus stop was also in front of a bank. A security guard stood in front of the door. I looked out at the traffic.
“Drunk and disorderly!” he yelled. “That’s why they arrested me!”
Thirty days for a D&D seemed a bit extreme. I thought the usual sentence was a night in the drunk tank.
“I fought off eight of ’em when they tried to take me in!”
This information shed some light on why he’d been held so long, although it still seemed extreme.
“I told them they was a bunch of communist shit-troopers when they was takin’ me in!”
I turned my head away so he wouldn’t see me smiling and filed away “communist shit-trooper” for future use. Where was the bus?
“Hey man, you like music?!?”
This was said at the same full volume as the other information he’d imparted and in spite of myself I turned.
“Sure.”
He had a CD player in his hand.
“I’m listening to the fine music of Styx! You know Styx?”
“Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.”
He grinned. His teeth were almost as tan as his arms. “Yeah, man! Fine music! This is one thing I can keep when they put me in jail again! You wanna buy some drugs?”
The abrupt shift threw me. I quickly shook my head and leaned forward to look past him, willing the bus to appear.
“You wanna buy drugs,” he continued at full volume, “you just go two blocks over down that way!” He motioned to the street behind the bank. “You turn right and they’re there. They’ll ask for four hundred. You say you’ll only pay twenty-five. You agree to four hundred they’ll know you’re an undercover cop.”
This isn’t information I think I’ll ever use but I filed it away as the bus pulled up. As I took my seat I looked at the man still sitting at the bus stop, and I wondered what the security guard standing behind him thought of all this, if he’d even been listening. Even though the man shouted every sentence maybe the guard tuned him out.
I remembered this encounter when I read about the FBI placing hidden microphones in and around the Oakland, California courthouse, including at bus shelters. It’s a potential violation of the Fourth Amendment–essentially treating anyone in the vicinity as a suspect, if not a criminal. Not all of us speak at full volume even when we aren’t passing secrets. Such blanket surveillance also raises practical questions. Who goes through the information collected, who decides what’s relevant? And where is it all being filed away?

Adventures In Busing.

Black Widow Birthday.

Author: July 9, 2016 6 Comments

Source: Wikipedia.

I love billiards. In college when I played almost daily the game was usually 8-ball, but I really don’t care if it’s 9-ball, straight pool, or snooker. And once in a while a sports channel will run a marathon of billiards matches. My wife jokes the only reason I like it is because of the women players. I point out that I’m watching the guys too, although the nice thing about billiards is it’s one of the few sports where the women get at least as much respect as the men.

One of those players in Jeanette Lee, whose birthday is today.

Lee started playing pool at the age of eighteen, which is a little unusual in the world of billiards. Most players have parents who played or owned tables and picked up a cue almost as soon as they could walk. But being a late bloomer didn’t stop Lee from turning professional just three years later and racking up an impressive list of titles. She’s also a regular commentator on those all-too-rare occasions when one of the sports networks broadcasts a billiards match–usually one of the US nine-ball championships. And every issue of Billiards Digest has her “Dear Jeanette” column where she answers pool-related questions.

She was also diagnosed with scoliosis at the age of thirteen and underwent multiple painful surgeries but would continue to suffer severe pain throughout her career. And she still supports and promotes the Scoliosis Research Society, has been the National Spokesperson for The Scoliosis Association, and also works for the Women’s Sports Foundation.

Oh yeah, she’s also got the coolest pool player nickname ever: “The Black Widow”.

Well, they are very attractive spiders.

Happy Birthday.

The Right Side Of The Tracks.

Author: July 9, 2016 4 Comments

skull1Gentrification is rapidly changing Nashville. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on where you stand, and it may be something you have no strong feelings about one way or the other. Or you may be like me–I can’t decide whether I’m ambivalent or not. Really it all depends on where I stand, and if I stand on a stretch of Charlotte Avenue I see some changes that are fine, like some new restaurants and a rock climbing gym, but I worry about some of the older, hipper businesses potentially being driven out. There are the thrift shops and Bobbie’s Dairy Dip, an old-fashioned ice cream and burger place that I’m afraid may be driven out by development even though on summer afternoons and evenings you can drive by and there are people lined up down the block for one of their milkshakes. In the winter if you drive by they may be closed up with the sign, “Closed for the season. Reason? Freezin’!” but that’s another story.

I also worry about the future of Headquarters Coffee Shop, which is the greatest coffee shop ever in spite of–or because–it’s the size of a large walk-in closet.

And the area has also been a hot spot for graffiti. There’s a currently abandoned building that’s got some amazing graffiti, including this particular piece. I can’t make out what exactly the name is but that doesn’t matter. It’s the aesthetics that really get me. The different shades of blue really give depth to the highly stylized skull. It appears to have been painted over another work which is a little disappointing–the touches of mauve in the background make me wonder what the earlier work looked like. And is there no honor among taggers? Maybe the previous work was by the same artist who decided a revision was needed.

What’s striking too is the placement. As you can see the building stands next to railroad tracks. On the other side a new apartment complex is going up. It isn’t just a single neighborhood or even one area of Nashville that’s changing. It’s the whole city. A friend of mine said an estimated 80 to 100 people are moving to the city every day. They need places to live which is why the biggest development seems to be in new apartments. But the old giving way to the new is just a reminder of how much is ephemeral. The people who move into the apartments facing the tracks, for now at least, will also face this work of art–a memento mori.

Seen any graffiti that makes you think of death or change or that just looks really cool? Send your pics to freethinkers@nerosoft.com.

skull2

 

The Weekly Essay

Coolness On Tap.

Author: July 8, 2016 10 Comments

beer1I liked beer because I thought it was a grownup thing to drink. This was when I was four or five and before that causes any alarm let me assure you I was only allowed to try an occasional sip of beer, and the only time I might have even come close to drinking more than that was once when my father was changing the car’s oil and had a beer resting on the hood. Or at least he thought I did until he found me sitting under a tree in the backyard holding it. And I doubt I drank very much of it because, like I said, I liked it because I thought it was a grownup thing to drink, which is my way of saying I really didn’t like it. And truthfully I still don’t like the taste of the stuff my father drank. I can’t remember what it was specifically but it was one of the major brands of watered-down swill that’s passed off as pilsner, a misnomer so egregious the one thing both Czechs and Slovaks still agree on is that it’s like trying to pass off a sow’s ear as a Prada purse. Holding a beer was an image thing. Holding a can of beer, I thought, made me look cool and mature, like an adult, maybe even like Victor Mature, when the reality is I just looked like I had delinquent parents. I thought being an adult, being a grownup, life must be much easier. Grownups were free of all the responsibilities of being a kid. At the moment I’m having trouble figuring out what the responsibilities of being a kid were, other than homework, which I’ve since learned is a plague that affects young and old alike and when you’re an adult it doesn’t even stop when school’s out for summer, but that’s another story.

As I got older and tried beer again I thought it tasted terrible and I quit even thinking about drinking it. Yeah, I was that guy at high school parties. Lance, who had a different Mötley Crüe t-shirt for every day of the week, would crack open a can of Pittsburgh’s Pride—at 57 cents a case I think the mini-marts only sold it to underage buyers because there was no way any human being could hold down enough of it to actually get drunk.  He’d hold it out to me and say, “Dude, come on.” And I’d say no. I wasn’t trying to harsh anyone’s mellow. I just didn’t like the taste of the stuff and couldn’t see the fun of drinking something that didn’t taste good because of a misguided belief that it made us look older.

Of course I’m also a child of the ‘80’s so I remember when wine coolers were all the rage. Wine coolers, if you don’t remember, were a combination of wine and fruit juice and had tropically-themed names like Beach Splash and Island Sweat, or slightly more obscure names like Davis & Thermidor or Mötley Crüet. They were an easy way for the beverage industry to make a lot of cheap, terrible wine palatable, although the innovation fizzled out once the industry realized that a lot of people will drink cheap, terrible wine no matter what it tastes like. At least that’s what I think. I’m not the most reliable source on this since I don’t like wine, although I was allowed an occasional sip of wine cooler–or to sneak off with one when the adults got together, and nobody seemed to mind, probably because the alcohol content was so low and the fruit juice guaranteed it would go through the system so quickly there was no way any human could consume enough to get drunk.

I could be conflating the origins of wine coolers with the origins of cocktails which were originally invented during Prohibition in the US to mask the terrible taste of bathtub gin. And then after Prohibition ended cocktails were kept around and even raised to a high art form, often visually pleasing because nobody was going blind from bathtub gin anymore and nobody wanted to throw the bathtub gin out with the baby, and also because it makes you look cool and mature to hold a colorful drink in a tall glass with pineapple and cherries on a plastic sword skewer and one of those little paper umbrellas.

At least that’s what I thought when I would go to a fancy restaurant with my parents and order a “virgin” version of a cocktail–a pina colada or a mai tai without the added alcohol, since those drinks were only invented to make cheap, terrible rum. Once I made the mistake of ordering a virgin martini which was just a couple of olives on a toothpick served in a long-stemmed glass.

Anyway I’ve come to like beer. Actually I’ve come to love beer, although anymore that’s not saying much because there are so many microbreweries and so much diversity there’s a beer out there for almost anyone. There’s even non-alcoholic beer for people who don’t really want the alcohol but would like an occasional beer. Or who just don’t want the side effects, which I understand. In fact I think the beverage industry hasn’t worked hard enough to perfect non-alcoholic beer. Think how many more people would drink beer if it had the same taste and none of the alcohol. Maybe not that many more, but think how much more beer people who currently drink beer could go through if they didn’t have to worry about getting drunk. Not to mention all the associated problems, but I don’t want to focus on those at the moment because this whole idea is making me feel really good and I don’t want to harsh my own mellow. Instead I’m thinking the industry should focus on making alcohol-free versions of other beverages. Imagine the market potential for alcohol free rum–good rum, that is, not the kind that needs a ton of fruit juice and coconut to hide the taste, or good scotch. And there wouldn’t be any concern about the kids drinking it because there’d be no alcohol in it. In fact I think kids would be the ideal market. And then we adults would pick it up because the way to look cool when you’re an adult is to look like a kid.

The Weekly Essay

The Internet Is People!

Author: July 6, 2016 18 Comments

It’s now been a month since this gem landed in my inbox:

sincere

And I was tempted to reply.

Dear Sue Peters,

Thank you so much for your message. News of your misfortune couldn’t have come at a happier time for me. Cancer is a terrible thing but you’ve really put a silver lining on the cloud by deciding to leave all your money to me instead of any next of kin or granting it to a specific charity. But since you’d like it to go to a charitable cause I’ll pick one for you. All your money will go to Vespas For Aardvarks. It’s a very special charity that provides greater mobility to members of the genus Orycteropus and strikes fear into the hearts of ants everywhere.

Not that I have anything against ants, but, seriously, the aardvark…it’s a long-nosed pig with a floppy tail and bunny ears. How could you not love that? Now imagine one riding a motorized scooter across the African veldt. And with your money we can figure out a way for the little critters to wear helmets.

As tempting as it is I’m not going to send that reply to the obvious scammer. For one thing there are other people who have already purposely strung along scammers and written very funny things about it.

For another I’d just be confirming that I’m a real person.

And so is the person running the scam.

I may not like what that person’s doing. I even doubt I’d like them if I knew them even if we both liked to play pool, watch movies, have the occasional beer, and laugh at the same jokes just because I’d find something repugnant about a person who gains by exploiting others. Sure I can throw myself down a mental rabbit hole and land on the conclusion that technically even legal companies do that–it’s called advertising–but they’re not going to drain my bank account and for the money I do hand over at least I’ll get a movie ticket or a beer in return.

But there is a person on the other side of this email. That person may have an automated program that seeks out potential rubes and it just happened to land on me, but behind it all is still a person. Behind it all is still someone who, however ethically questionable their means may be, is just trying to make money, like the rest of us.

And here’s one of those other people I mentioned previously.

Submitted For Your Approval.

I’m Free To Do What I Want Any Old Time.

Author: July 4, 2016 4 Comments

busstopMost of last week I drove to and from work instead of taking the bus. This meant I had a lot more freedom–sort of, anyway. I was still putting in my eight hours but I was free to pick my own route home. The walk to and from the parking garage is roughly the same distance as it is to the bus, but I don’t mind the exercise. And I could decide when I wanted to come and go instead of standing on the sidewalk waiting for a driver who may or may not have decided to drive right by me.

And whereas on the bus I’m free to read or play with my phone’s various apps doing those things while I’m the one driving is a really bad idea.

Each option gives me a different set of freedoms and a different set of responsibilities. That’s obvious.

What’s not so obvious is something I thought about while driving when I passed a guy standing at a bus stop. I recognized him. He’s a regular rider on the bus I usually take. Most days he’s carrying groceries, and it looked like he was on this day too.

I thought about the advantages that driving gave me. If I wanted to stop and buy groceries my choice of places wouldn’t be limited by what’s closest to a bus stop. And because I could load everything into the car I could buy more than I could comfortably carry in a single trip.

And I wouldn’t have to worry about taking up seat space with all my stuff, or, even worse, the trip taking so long my ice cream would melt. Maybe I should examine my priorities there but that’s another story.

I thought about offering him a ride but the bus stop wasn’t in a place where a regular car could safely pull over. Buses are big hulking vehicles that naturally trundle along and make regular stops, but pulling over my small car in heavy traffic would just be asking for a fender bender.

I still wish I’d offered him a ride. I don’t know if he would have recognized me or if he’d be cool with taking a ride from a stranger. Maybe he preferred to ride the bus. I know I do sometimes.

Every freedom comes with its obvious privileges and its responsibilities but what seeing him got me thinking about was what was beyond the obvious, the privileges and responsibilities that are optional. Offering a ride to a relative stranger isn’t something I have to do but it has the possibility of making their life a little easier, a little better.

Neither freedom nor responsibility is absolute. Both are defined, and define, how we relate to others.

Maybe next time I will offer him a ride.

Adventures In Busing.