onandon

Spent most of the weekend flying around Second Life. I like being able to fly, but after you do that for a while, what are you supposed to do? I could buy some land and build a house, I suppose, but then what would I do? Sit in my house and watch television I guess. Do they have cable? Ideally I guess I would find a nice, wholesome lassie, get married and start raising kids. Where are the good schools in Second Life? And where are the kids anyway? As much time as I have spent there I have seen nary a one...

Get a li(f)e

You won't be hearing from me for a while, since I now have an account on second life. Being of the non-gamer generation, I am just learning how to fly, dance, and play paper scissors rock. If you feel like chatting with me over there, my name is Winter Thursday. Mom, if I say anything offensive to you, I apologize in advance. Oh, and about the Den Meeting, I apologize. The joke about teaching kids to mix drinks is at least as old as The Little Rascals, and I will be coming up with some new material soon, presumably from my second life experiences. Got to go flying now, -BIG T

Den Meeting

Monday night’s den meeting went pretty well, but it kind of broke down at the end. We got off to a great start: everyone did well on the drink of the week, which was as expected since it was a very easy drink: gin and tonic. Since they are only in second grade, I had given them a drink where the proportions did not matter all that much. When you start your own clubs in junior high, I explained, or when you pledge a frat, or get into law school or medical school, you’ll probably want to go with my personal preference, a one-to-one blend. Use a lot of ice, and it melts quickly, so one-to-one makes a nice gin and tonic. If you get a job bartending, however, the house will tell you how to mix them. A few kids forgot the lime, or went for the lemon instead, but overall I was very pleased. Then we went over the basics of five card stud. We have not discussed strategy yet at all, just trying to establish the hierarchy of hands. There was some confusion over whether a flush beat a straight, but we cleared it up quickly and moved on.

I was so pleased with what the guys had retained from the last meeting, I decided to go ahead and plug in the guitars. But before we warmed up, we went over my special punk rock catechism, which, to my astonishment, they had down cold.

Who are the godfathers of punk? Iggy and the Stooges, Patti Smith, The New York Dolls.

Who were the first punk bands? The Ramones, The Clash, The Sex Pistols.

When did punk die? 1987.

What killed punk rock? Appetite For Destruction.

Our den has a policy of not playing any punk rock recorded before 1981. We call the 70s punk rock albums “untouchables.” I tell them that if they get really really good at 1980s punk, we might try a few of them. Last week we worked on “I Saw Your Mommy And Your Mommy’s Dead,” by Suicidal Tendancies. Those of you (one, maybe two) who remember this song know that it appeals to the eight-year-old that lives inside every sixteen-year-old punk rocker’s heart. I did not have much confidence that we would be able to pull it off without getting totally silly. Little Dewey started that loopy bass line, Dakwon came in on the drums and Tommy Junior started the lyrics:

Yesterday, as I went out of the house,
I saw a body lying quiet as a mouse.
Lying face down in the sewer,
I got up closer and realized that I knew her.

Well, they made it through the whole song without cutting up and getting all silly about it, and I complemented them on their serious approach to the material. I was so confident that we had something that would be a big big smash hit at the pack meeting in Camp Seminole in October, that I introduced them to what I believe is perhaps the greatest post-1980 punk rock song of them all, Black Flag’s “Rise Above.”

At first the kids were a little rattled by the heavy feedback as the song opens, but I just kept pushing them to turn it up higher. As the guitars come in, it’s their job to tame that feedback. Before I knew it, they were full bore into the song. They ate it up. They were so good, I could do little more than sit back in amazement, trying to imagine what the other parents would think when they saw this going down a month from now. Dear god, I thought, oh dear God…

Then I noticed something was not quite right. With “I Saw Your Mommy,” I had been worried that the boys would not be able to bring off a serious delivery. Here, with Rise Above, it became obvious very quickly that the lads were taking it TOO seriously. I looked into Tommy Junior’s eyes as he screamed: WE…ARE TIRED…OF YOUR…ABUSE…TRY AND STOP US…IT’S…NO USE! Clearly, he was in another world. The stifling, suffocating miasma that is Starkville Mississippi in 2007 had suddenly become manifest, and he was stirring the caldron of his lambic rage to break it apart and, Moses-like, lead his people out. I had been there, once, long ago, and what came forth from his gone, solid gone brown eyes took me back to the heady kingdoms of my own mis-spent youth, of too much coffee, my ridiculous adolescent scribbling, the tobacco roads, the glass-eyed skeletal apparition, cocky and indolent, slouched in the driver’s seat of my soul…

STOP STOP STOP, I cried. I unplugged the amps and put the guitars away. I tried to bring the lads down to earth, especially Tommy Junior, by telling them that it was just a song, just noise, basically, just an arrangement of cacophonic squawking, but they weren’t buying it. The whole time I pled my case, TJ looked off at something just over my right shoulder, something he wanted more than anything to destroy.

OK, Chill out time, I thought. We tried a little I spy, then resorted to dodge ball in the parking lot till the parents came to pick them up. At home, I got out the banjo, and started working on “She’ll Be Comin’ ‘Round The Mountain.”

Geology lesson

Last Saturday I went to Vicksburg with my design class. We met Robert Poore, in the center of the picture above, a landscape architect, who showed us three sites, two of which were his designs. The other one was this waterfall, which has some geological and historic significance. The solid band that is resisting erosion is Glendon limestone, created during the Pleistocene by millions of sea creatures, much like the Osborne pictures I showed you last week. Until very recently, by geological standards, Mississippi was underwater. Not much water, 30 or 40 feet or so, a shallow sea. When the land emerged, glaciers came and retreated many times, the organic layers created during the intervals were ground to powder, the Missouri and the Missippi Rivers ambled back and forth, and all that resulting silt and dust were blown by the winds across Arkansas and Louisiana to create the Loess bluffs, which run more or less continuously in a band just east of the delta all the way to Tennessee.

The loess bluffs are a very fine, slightly acidic clay, while the Glendon lime layer is coarser and more alkaline. In some places the loess soil is 60 feet deep, in other places the limestone layer is very near the surface. Obviously this has a big impact on what you can do with the land. Loess soil is not stable for building, and most ornamental and crop plants would just as soon not grow in limey soil (but prairie plants have adapted).
The historical significance comes from the fact that the pool at the bottom of the cascade was a source of water long ago. Especially during the battle and siege of Vicksburg, many soldiers on both sides lost their lives at that very spot. As we climbed about on the rocks, Robert Poore said, "if you fall and die, your ghost will join hundreds of Confederate and Union soldiers." This waterfall is within the bounds of the national battlefield park and is not marked, because the park service discourages visitors. We were told that you could reach under just about any rock and find belt buckles and bullets but of course it is forbidden to take anything out, even flowers. Everywhere Robert Poore took us, it was obvious that he had done a lot of research. I came home wondering why anybody would NOT want to be a landscape architect.

Dig if you will the picture

My freshman year in college I lived in a dorm which had a dormer window with no screen. On cloudy winter days (and some nights as well) my room mate and I would hang out barefoot on the slate rooftop. The university put AC units in all the windows long ago, so this is no longer possible. I could tell you what this guy does for a living now but you wouldn't believe me.

Ghost Dance

Kids today don’t understand irony. In my studio, many of the students have inspirational messages situated near their work areas. Many of these are biblical scriptures. I made a little poster to hang over my desk which says: You’re not fooling anybody you lying sack of shit. The kids just don’t get it. They ask me about it all the time. I have a super-huge ego, I tell them, my friends, my family, my therapist and my pastor all agreed that this is a message I need to read every day.
Our professors in Landscape Architecture are always asking us, what emotion do you want people to feel when they come into this space? The kids always say the same things. Tranquility. Joy. Blah blah blah. The other day I told my professor: unspecified dread. The Ghost Dance. The sense that some Native American spirit has returned to bury us all under a mile of topsoil, for as we drag our carts over the bones of the dead, the reckoning draws nearer, and the balance due will not be reconciled by our worthless notes but only by the blood and flesh of our babies.
The professor just said, OK, develop your design element matrix in such a way as to express that concept with forms and materials in physical space. Finally, someone who understands.

Dancing lines

Big project due tomorrow. Pulling all-nighters in the studio with undergraduates. Kids today are fond of using "gay" as a pejorative. I don't think they really mean gay as in homosexual, just as we didn't mean "sucks" as in actually sucking. They way they use it, it means slack or lame, which doesn't really seem to jibe with what I have observed in actual gay people over the years. I guess it is a way of saying "that's so weak." It makes me a little uncomfortable. I mean, it would be totally unacceptable to say "that looks like a nigger did it," but these people don't think twice about saying "that's so gay." I'll probably be saying it before long. Jeesh, what am I saying? I'm so gay...

If we only had a chicken...

The nice thing about living in Mississippi is that you can always go out and find an alligator to look at. This guy was enjoying the backwater below the spillway of Loakfoma Lake at the Noxubee wildlife refuge.

Back at Osborne

Why spend all that money to go to the moon when you have Osborne Prairie practically in your backyard? I took six kids with me, we got lost, and as a result I was late for my cub scout den leader training.

art

One of these little kids that I live with produces two or three of these things a day. Near as I can tell, they are skeletal renditions of monsters he creates himself. Sometimes he writes notes to go with them, like "grabs things with his tongue." I think he has a pretty good line, and, as they say, "good composition."

What's the frequency...

"out and proud" concept did not go over well with my group. I am going with "Line Dancing." Spent most of the night drawing the floral design studio in skethup. Boy does my head hurt.

Well I hope you see me as I come streakin by...

First cub scout meeting on Monday, in a small Methodist Church. Cooked a nice chicken and shrimp gumbo that lasted two days. We are out of butter. Had some trouble with AutoCAD tonight. Worked on a list of "out and proud" plants for the floral design studio.

Meet me in the bottom, bring me my running shoes...

Colin Linden playing guitar while Blind Mississippi Morris plays harmonica at the Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival in West Point, August 30th. We had a blast.

Weekends

Here is the closet I built for my clothes in our bedroom over the past few weekends. It is now painted, and I just hung the door today. The door was saved from the demolition of a closet we eliminated over the summer. It is not perfect, but I am happy with it.

Dad?

Here is a picture of a hawk looking for some breakfast at Myrtle Beach about a month ago. I have only been to Myrtle Beach a couple of times, but I have been to nearby Oak Island every year for the past seventeen years, and I have never seen a hawk in the dunes before. Was it a sign? Was someone trying to contact me?

The Wolf

Still not gay. Went to the Howlin' Wolf blues festival in West Point last Friday night, had a blast. I think I heard enough blues to last the month. I was most impressed by a group called Homemade Jamz. Fifteen-year-old Ryan Perry is the oldest member of the band. He plays guitar and sings and in general commands the stage like an old pro. I almost said "old soul" there, and something about his playing of the blues reminded me of Dexter back in C-Hill. Last Friday, Ryan played a guitar that seemed to be manufactured from an old car muffler. It had little blue lights that twinkled towards the end of the set. His fourteen-year-old brother Kyle played bass and his sister Taya (only eight years old!) played the drums with RED STICKS and they rocked like old pros. We saw four different bands and they all used the same drum kit, which I thought was great. It was the same kit my buddy Crow used to use. Crow should move down here and join a blues band. It would do him a lot of good. I was so impressed with Homemade Jamz that I bought their CD. They have a Myspace page: look it up. If you have kids, slap that disc in your machine and tell 'em: that drummer is EIGHT YEARS OLD...

Let's get one thing straight.

Just a quick not to let everyone know that I am not gay. Also, in addition, I never have been gay. That is all.