The Vanderbilt University campus is a national arboretum. When my mother was a student at what was then Peabody College—it’s since been incorporated into Vanderbilt—she took a botany class and had to collect the leaves of one hundred different trees. The professor directed the class to Vanderbilt and said, “Trust me. You won’t have any trouble.” And just a few years ago a friend of mine was visiting Nashville and I gave him a tour of the campus, which I really enjoy doing. He kept looking at all the trees and green spaces and saying, “This is what a college campus should look like!” He works for another university that shall remain nameless, but that’s another story.
Among Vanderbilt’s many trees are several gingko trees, including at least one that’s over a hundred years old, so here’s my final entry in the Black & White Photo Challenge, which I call, Gingko? Why Don’t You Go?
Thanks to Tom Being Tom for nominating me and now it’s time to go out on a song.
My Scout troop once went spelunking in a wild cave. I’d been to Mammoth Cave and Cumberland Caverns and thought caves were really cool–although after seeing the movie The Descent I may not ever go in a cave ever again, but that’s another story—but those hadn’t prepared me for the darkness and strangeness of a cave that could only be entered through a narrow crevice that swallowed the beams of our flashlights. We had a guide leading us, by the way—the cave was wild but had been thoroughly explored by professionals. Amateur spelunking is a bad idea which we were reminded of when we came into a large room. At its center was a stalagmite that had been built to about four feet high by the slow drip of mineral-rich water from the ceiling. Then, at some point, the water’s composition changed and began to wear away the stone so the top of the stalagmite was now a shallow basin.
“We call this Injun Joe’s Altar,” the guide told us. I had just read The Adventures Of Tom Sawyer so this was very eerie.
Anyway here’s today’s entry in the Black & White Photo Challenge, a little number I call Overarching Concerns.
April 2017-The Freethinkers Anonymous fiscal year runs from April 1st-March 30th for reasons no one can remember and no one really wants to bother to research because the archive is located in the attic and there are wasps up there. This year the team responsible for writing the 2017/2018 annual report looked at the calendar and was faced with a crisis: delay because April 1st was Easter, or go ahead and risk getting egged? After much discussion the decision was made to go ahead when an assistant manager said, “If you’re going to postpone it you better hurry up and do it.” There was also discussion about whether April 2018 would be mentioned in the report, but this was put aside with a company-wide vote affirming that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb with really bad diarrhea.
May 2017-An internal audit revealed that sometimes the company finances are in the red and sometimes in the black and sometimes in green and once in a color that, after much research, was revealed to be Noodler’s Dragon’s Napalm. A team was put together to figure out whether there’s actually any money coming in and also to figure out what the word “amortize” means.
June 2017-A series of focus groups drawn from the general population was brought in and asked whether they preferred the 1977 Rankin-Bass animated version of J.R.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit or the three-part live-action version directed by Peter Jackson released beginning in 2012. Respondents fell into three broad categories: those who were unfamiliar with or had never seen either adaptation, those who preferred the 1977 Rankin-Bass animated version, and those who preferred the live-action version. The first two groups were dismissed. The final group was kept and asked a series of additional questions starting with, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
July 2017-Kevin was sent out for milkshakes. At the time of this report he has not yet returned.
August 2017-Blah blah blah productivity blah efficiency blah staff morale blah blah blah accounting something something pensions lost blah blah criminal charges blah prison time yadda yadda something something anyone else remember the show Hill Street Blues and the guy who called people “dogbreath”? What was that supposed to mean?
September 2017- Chuck: Let’s take a call. It looks like we have Gloria from Poughkeepsie on line 2. Hi Gloria, welcome to the show. What’s your question? Gloria: Hi Chuck. My husband and I have invested in a small property which we plan to use for short-term rentals. What zoning regulations do we need to look at most carefully, and what kind of insurance should we get in the case of property damage?
Chuck: That’s a great question, Gloria. That’s a really good question. Boy, is that a good question. You know, when my producer suggested we do a show on real estate I didn’t anticipate a question that good. In some cultures people eat leeches. To get back to your question, Gloria, it’s a really good question. That’s the sort of question you really put a lot of thought into. The Beach Boys used a theremin in their song “Good Vibrations”. Anyway, regarding your question, that’s a really good question. One of the most famous stage directions in theater is “Exeunt pursued by a bear,” from Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale, and on that note it looks like we’re out of time. Thanks for your call, Gloria! And the producer is telling me we still have a minute and a half, so I’m going to curl up into a ball on the floor until everyone goes away.
October 2017-The company corn maze was deemed an enormous success. The only dissenting voice came from Tom in advertising who suggested that it would have been better if the corn had actually been planted several months earlier instead of just scattered on the ground. Katherine in security took him aside and explained that if he didn’t think it was a success he’d be “sent out for milkshakes”. After this brief meeting staff approval of the maze was unanimous.
November 2017-A staff memo recommending that Kevin be put in charge of the office thermostat contained a typo with the result that the office thermostat was adjusted to Kelvin. Staff remarked that it did seem a lot warmer now that all temperatures were adjusted upward by 273 degrees Celsius or 460 degrees Fahrenheit.
December 2017-The annual office holiday party was held, as usual, at the Sheepshead Pub on 27th Avenue. As usual no one showed up.
January 2018-Management announced that this was the perfect time to wash the car. A focus group made up solely of managers was put together and subjected to a series of questions starting with, “What the hell is wrong with you?”
February 2018-Valentines were exchanged by all staff on February on Tuesday, February 13th, because that’s how we roll. Accounting reminded everyone that the question of black versus red ink had been brought up several months earlier but never fully resolved. A decision was made to use multiple colors and let everything sort itself out later. This was followed by a toast made with glasses of chartreuse.
On March 13th, 1781 the astronomer William Herschel spotted what he thought was an unusual comet but which he and other astronomers would quickly discover was a planet. It’s the first planet discovered in modern times which makes Uranus very special. Take a little time to explore Uranus, probe its mysteries, and consider what we’ve learned about Uranus since William Herschel first looked up and saw it two hundred and thirty-seven years ago. Like its neighbors, Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, it’s a gas giant. Uranus is full of hydrogen and helium but also in its depths contains ice and rock. Uranus also has a complex cloud system with the lowest clouds believed to be made up of water while the upper layers are methane. There’s a lot of methane in Uranus.
On January 24th, 1986 the Voyager 2 spacecraft probed Uranus. Astronomers at the time called it “the most boring planet” but subsequent studies have shown just how interesting Uranus is. Less than a decade earlier, in 1977, astronomers first discovered rings around Uranus, and then in December 2005 the Hubble telescope detected two additional rings much farther out.
There are also twenty-seven known moons orbiting Uranus. The largest, Titania, orbits Uranus every 8.7 days and because of its closeness to the planet the same side always faces Uranus. Uranus itself orbits the Sun every eighty-four years, which means that since its discovery Uranus hasn’t even been around the Sun three times. However Uranus has a very fast rotation: one day on Uranus is just seventeen hours and fourteen minutes.
Of course Uranus is not alone. There’s also the city of Uranus, right in the middle of Missouri. Uranus is a well-known tourist stop along the historic Route 66, although I think the stretch surrounding it should be renamed the Herschel Highway. The city is known for its fudge factory and also a tattoo place for people who want to be able to say they got a tattoo in Uranus.
Today and every March 13th I hope you’ll join me in spending a little time contemplating Uranus.
Nowawadays travel is easy, or at least easier than it used to be. You can use the web to look up schedules, maps, points of interest, and even estimate times–you can plan out a whole itinerary without leaving your chair. This doesn’t prevent accidents from happening or things going badly–the best laid plans of mice and travelers, you know–which is something I thought about while listening to “The Holiday Coping Mechanism Spectacular” episode of The Hilarious World Of Depressionpodcast. Host John Moe shares a story about the year he and his wife decided to skip seeing their families for the holidays and take their young children to Sequim, Washington, which, as soon as he mentioned it, I added to my list of places I want to go, which, admittedly, covers pretty much the entire planet, but that’s another story. The trip wasn’t exactly disastrous, but it wasn’t as happy as they hoped either. No spoilers–go listen. You won’t regret it.
And it took me back to a place I’ve visited several times–metaphorically, since I haven’t been able to go really go back since I last passed through in 1991. While I’ve mentioned the little Welsh town of Carmarthen in previous yarns about my pilgrimage to the home of Dylan Thomas I’ve never given it the space it deserves. It was purely an accident that I found myself there, and even though I was just passing through I kind of fell in love with the place.
The first time I even heard of Carmarthen it was just a dot on the map, the end of the train line but close to my intended destination. And also I’m very much a freewheeling traveler. The best thing on any trip, for me, is to be surprised, which is why I set off on so many journeys without a clear idea where I’m going. The best part of any journey is the journey itself when you don’t have a destination. So I left Swansea on a rickety train that I’m pretty sure dated back to, and may have even been built by, George Stephenson. It was dark and cloudy most of the trip and then pouring rain by the time we pulled into the Carmarthen station. It was late on Saturday night and without realizing it I’d taken the last train. It was in the train station that I found the information I’d need for my second, and more successful, trip to the home of Dylan Thomas. Still I was stuck spending that night in Carmarthen and, because everything in Wales shuts down on Sundays, I wouldn’t be able to take the train back until late the next afternoon.
On that second trip I was, of course, better prepared: I made it to Dylan Thomas’s home and then took the last bus back to Carmarthen. I struck up a conversation with a guy on the bus who informed me he’d never met an American before. We made plans to meet up later at the pub, although we didn’t specify which pub and Carmarthen, small town that it is, has about fifty pubs. And anyway when I got off the bus I stepped right into an enormous crowd. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire town was there because it was the lighting of the town Christmas tree. The mayor of Carmarthen was there with the city council and he made a nice speech wishing everyone a happy holiday season then turned on the lights. Everyone cheered and started milling around and going to pubs. I went in to one too and spent the rest of the evening talking to several nice people who informed me I was the first American they’d ever met. Before that I shook hands with the mayor, although I didn’t get to talk to him, unfortunately, because I might have been the first American he ever met.
It was a month before Christmas but being there for the lighting of the Carmarthen tree, to be able to spend an evening with the people who lived there, to share in their holiday spirit and their pride in the little Welsh town at the end of the train line, was a fantastic gift. And the best part is I hadn’t even planned it.
Last year I went to Nashville Nightmare, a haunted house attraction north of Nashville, and had a blast. This year I went back and, well, there was the good, the bad, and the ugly. First, general admission is $33.01 ($29.99 plus tax), which, for an event like this, is pretty good. The bad thing is there’s a “Slash Pass” that’s $50.40 ($44.99 plus tax). Slash Pass holders get to go in ahead of those with general admission, which is where things get ugly. I was at the box office when it opened at 7pm and left at nearly midnight, and missed two of the houses because I’d spent almost four hours just standing in line. Part of this is because the crowd this year was much bigger than last year, but most of it is just poor planning by the owners.
There are four houses—this year they were Industrial Undead, The Reformatory, Phantasms, and Fairy Tale Hell, all set up in a block of buildings on a strip mall. The houses are linked together in pairs: once you’re through Industrial Undead you’re immediately shuttled through The Reformatory with no way out. It was great fun once I got in, but getting in took more than two hours. For every one general admission ticket holder who went in at least ten Slash Pass holders went in, and because most people were in groups and wanted to stay together this meant a lot of waiting no matter what you’d paid.
There’s a constant stream of heavy metal music and costumed performers wandering among the crowds and I realize now they were there to keep people entertained while we were standing in line, but even I can only listen to Alice Cooper’s Feed My Frankenstein so many times.
The way the houses are paired also means you can’t pick and choose. Industrial Undead and The Reformatory were both pretty gory and terrifying and had warnings that they were not recommended for children. Phantasms and Fairy Tale Hell, if they were anything like last year’s attractions, are lighter and more fun—like a walk-through version of Disney’s Haunted Mansion. It would have been nice if I could have taken a breather after zombies and entrails and enjoyed some twisted fairy tales before going back for the horrors of The Reformatory.
Splitting up the houses could also cut down on wait times for both general admission and Slash Pass holders by putting people in four lines instead of two.
Now for the good: last year there was no clear entrance so I was able to wander among the various carnival-type attractions outside of the haunted houses until someone asked to see my wristband. This year not only was there a fantastic entrance with box offices but right out front were a couple of fire eaters performing for the crowds.
“Now that’s a spicy meatball,” one said.
“Does it give you heartburn?” I asked him. That got a solid laugh and he replied, “Not as much as you’d think.”
When I went to buy my wristband the young woman looked at my Rocky Horror shirt, a gift from my parents, and said, “You can get in for free if I can have that shirt.”
Just outside the entrance to The Industrial Undead I asked a guy with deep red eyes, “Are you having fun?” He grinned and nodded.
The highlight of the evening, though, was when I was going through The Reformatory, where possessed students beat desks and demon-faced nuns chased after us. I said to the guy in front of me, “My sister was a nun until she found out what ‘none’ meant.”
If you don’t get it say it out loud, and if you still don’t get it you’re like the guy in front of me who said, “What does it mean?”
Some other highlights of the evening:
We’ve all wondered, what if The Joker and Curly Howard had a baby?
I asked this guy, “Are you having fun?” He smiled and nodded vigorously.
So the good, the bad, and the ugly is that it was a lot of fun, but too much waiting to be worth the price.
With a common impulse the multitude rose slowly up and stared into the sky. I followed their eyes, as sure as guns, there was my eclipse beginning! The life went boiling through my veins; I was a new man! The rim of black spread slowly into the sun’s disk, my heart beat higher and higher, and still the assemblage and the priest stared into the sky, motionless. I knew that this gaze would be turned upon me, next. When it was, I was ready. I was in one of the most grand attitudes I ever struck, with my arm stretched up pointing to the sun. It was a noble effect. You could see the shudder sweep the mass like a wave.
It’s a great moment in Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court when the hero Hank Morgan convinces the medieval rubes that he rules the skies and is causing the eclipse. I went back and reread it recently because, as you may have heard, there’s an eclipse crossing the continental United States today, albeit well away from Connecticut, and it will be the first total eclipse over Nashville, Tennessee in ninety-nine years. That would be ninety-nine complete passes of the Earth around the Sun.
In human terms that’s a small number, but in solar terms it’s piddling, paltry, a trifle—which makes me think trifle would be a good food for an eclipse party, but that’s another story.
There are two things that fascinate me about astronomy. The first is the, in human terms, enormous spans of time. At the end of its life our sun will have probably shone for almost ten billion years. It’s also so far from us that the light we get has taken eight minutes to get here—and since we’re talking about the speed of light which is a universal constant your mileage never varies.
The other thing is that in spite of those enormous spans of time astronomy is so dynamic. At its maximum the eclipse will last about two minutes and forty seconds. And the night sky, if you know when to look, can be full of surprises. I remember when I was a kid and my father woke me up at about 2am to see a total lunar eclipse. Another night we went out in the bitter December cold and watched the Geminid meteor shower. One year when I was in junior high school there was a partial solar eclipse in late spring. My friends and I left school during it and for several minutes everything had a strange bluish pallor. By the time we got home it was over.
Here’s something else to consider: without the Moon the Earth would probably look a lot like our neighbor Mars. The Moon, formed in a matter of days more than four billion years ago when another planet slammed into Earth, has stabilized the Earth and limited the number of punches it’s gotten from wayward meteors, allowing life to not only develop but survive here. There’s something to think about if you’re under the eclipse.
Every summer the Nashville Shakespeare Festival puts on at least one play in Centennial Park. This summer they’re being especially ambitious with two plays: Antony & Cleopatra and The Winter’s Tale. Really they’re being extremely ambitious by putting on The Winter’s Tale in Nashville in the summer, although part of the play does take place in the summer, but that’s another—no, wait, it is the story. Never mind.
The funny thing to me is I read both of these plays in a college Shakespeare class under the tutelage of a professor who pointed out that they’re two of The Bard’s least-produced plays. Productions of Romeo & Juliet or Twelfth Night are like episodes of M*A*S*H—always on somewhere, and obviously the NSF, which put on its first play in the park in 1988, has decided there are only so many times they can do The Comedy of Errors (3), Much Ado About Nothing (3), AMidsummer Night’s Dream (3), The Taming Of The Shrew (2), or The Merry Wives of Windsor (2).
And they’ve done The Winter’s Tale before, in 2005, which makes me think the the rerun is a little early since the play itself covers a span of sixteen years.
While the plays themselves are always great I also like to go and look behind the scenes. I didn’t interrupt but I did catch some of the cast at work.
Here’s the stage still under construction. Notice that they’re using one stage for both plays, which is one of the interesting things about Shakespeare. The original productions were in a grassy area behind the Centennial Sportsplex with no sets, only a very few props, and almost no costuming. Well, the actors did wear clothes, and for that we should be grateful—Falstaff couldn’t get the wrinkles out of his birthday suit—but originally the dress code for cast and audience alike was come as you are.
And since all the world’s a stage who could resist a look behind the scenes?
There were a bunch of pennies on the sidewalk. Why someone left them there is beyond me, and I could have just left them, but instead I picked them all up. Hey, if you see a penny and pick it up all the day you’ll have good luck, right? And even though the day was mostly over and I was headed home I figured maybe it’s a twenty-four hour good luck and maybe it’s cumulative so picking up all those pennies I’d get nine or twelve days of good luck. I couldn’t use the pennies to pay my bus fare, unlike that time several years ago when I poured exact change–all in pennies–into a bus fare collector, but still pennies add up. That’s at least one reason I think the US Treasury keeps producing pennies, unlike our neighbor to the north Canada that abandoned the penny a few years ago. And that’s one of the few things Canada has done that bugs me a little. When I was a kid I was bitten by the numismatic bug, although the doctor gave me a shot and I got better. It was finding Canadian pennies in change that got me interested in coin collecting; it made me feel in touch with the rest of the world. Years later I’d get a job in a mailroom and the foreign stamps that came in turned me into a bit of a Johnny-come-philately, but that’s another story.
Coins even helped teach me some history, like when I first found a 1967 Canadian penny which, unlike the regular maple leaf penny, has a dove. So it doesn’t bother me that my collection of Canadian pennies, large as it is, is still barely worth a loonie–even less than that, now that the pennies are no longer legal tender. It’s a shame the 2017 Canadian coins, which celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the Canadian Confederation, won’t include a penny.
Still I wish Canada good luck on the sesquicentennial. Hey, here’s a penny.
The future of every sport depends on the kids who play it. The reason soccer has finally gotten major recognition in the U.S., after long obscurity in spite of being the most popular sport in the world, is because the kids who were driven to afternoon and Saturday games by their soccer moms have now grown up. I remember playing soccer as a kid and being asked by my friends, “What’s soccer?” And then when I met people from other countries and told them I played soccer as a kid they’d ask, “What’s soccer?” and I’d have to explain that in the U.S. we have a completely different game that has usurped the moniker “football”. Unlike what Europeans call “the beautiful game” American football players hold the ball. With their hands. But that’s another story.
As a big fan of pool and billiards I’m really excited about the 2017 Atlantic Challenge Cup that’s going on in Klagenfurt, Austria, from July 5th through 8th, that’s sort of a junior version of the Mosconi Cup, with young players representing the United States and Europe facing off against each other. Pool and billiards have been in decline since, well, they’ve had their ups and downs, more downs than ups. The days when someone like someone like self-described “Billiard Bum” Dan McGorty could travel cross-country with no money in his pocket, hustling pool in every small town for just enough money for meals, are long gone. It’s hard to find a pool hall even in a large town now, and even when you do find one it’s likely to only have standard American pocket tables. Forget balkline or other kinds of tables. A woman I used to work with told me her husband, a professional drummer, regularly played snooker.
“Where does he go that’s got a snooker table?” I asked, intrigued because I love the game.
“Oh, he goes to John Prine’s house,” she replied breezily. Only in Nashville.
And I get it. Even a single pool table requires a lot of real estate. Soccer is popular because all it requires is a field and a ball. Or a slightly round object. Or at least something that can be kicked. It’s no accident that most professional pool players are the children of pool players. It’s an expensive hobby, and the shrinking number of pool halls makes it even more expensive, with players having to go as far as, well, Klagenfurt, Austria, for matches.
Sure, I’m rooting for Team U.S. and its members like April Larson, who’s such an exceptionally talented and dedicated player she’s already made the cover of Billiards Digest–and she’s still in high school, where she maintains a 4.0 GPA. But I’m also just glad there’s a new generation keeping what I call the other beautiful game alive.
April 2017-The Freethinkers Anonymous fiscal year runs from April 1st-March 30th for reasons no one can remember and no one really wants to bother to research because the archive is located in the attic and there are wasps up there. This year the team responsible for writing the 2017/2018 annual report looked at the calendar and was faced with a crisis: delay because April 1st was Easter, or go ahead and risk getting egged? After much discussion the decision was made to go ahead when an assistant manager said, “If you’re going to postpone it you better hurry up and do it.” There was also discussion about whether April 2018 would be mentioned in the report, but this was put aside with a company-wide vote affirming that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb with really bad diarrhea.
Last year 
