Ron Rash Interview

I have linked my blog at the site for my 40th Reunion of the Class of 1971, Gaffney High School, Number Three in the Nation says Rivals.com

If any of my classmates stray over here; I do wish they would read my interview of Ron Rash.
Just look to the left column of my homepage here, and go to archives for 2010. Click on September 2010 and there it is.
Lot of my musings here are superflouous; but that is worth your read. And as I say at the GHS site where I try to explain myself a little since 71, I think Miss Chadwick and Miss Jones would be proud of me for that one.
Thanks

REM, Brad Pitt and the Devil All The Time

Lot of things happened today. I've had memorable dreams three days in a row; a wooden tennis racket with broke strings, and a fellow from Gaffney I was trying to have a conversation with and a fat woman sat down between us.
But this morning I woke up to hear NPR announcing the end of REM. First I heard of them, I think Debbie Medaris mentioned Howard Finster from north of Rome in Penland had done artwork for their first album cover. Then I saw them on MTV and heard they or Finster maybe it was, was on Johnny Carson. Never figured something about to be that famous would come out of Athens, Ga.
Then later I learned their manager Bertis Downs, a Presbyterian minister's son active with People for the American Way had some of the same opinions as I did about the fundamentalist takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention. Plus with his Davidson connection was big fan of Furman President Shi; which of course made it a small world indeed.
Man on the Moon, Losing my Religion and the soundtrack for MOMoon Movie were grand lyrics to think about.
And I read Mark Kemp's homage to them, Dixie Lullaby and they mused a script a friend and I wrote, coming of age in NE Georgia in the 70's. It still has merit.
All this on the day Brad Pitt was on NPR Fresh Air talking about how the SBC of his raisin in Springfield turned out to be inadequate.
I may see Governor Brewer tomorrow, Maybe he will find some of it interesting.
REM and I have a mutual friend in Katie Ford. I hope she tells them my shared grief of this end of the era.
Stipe had a great line about one of the savvier points of going to a party is when to take the exit.
Classy gifted people.
Pearl Jam documentary on PBS October 21
Collinsville, Quiltwalk this weekend.
Donald Ray Pollock, Chapter 32
Oh and Al Mohler on NPR Talk of the Nation. Sometime everything happens on the same day.

My Pawpaw and President James A. Garfield

Here is a comment I left at the site of NPR's Diane Rehm show today. Come back, may add to the legend of W.D. Shorty Fox, Shortly as it were

Delightful Show. I thought about calling in, but the ballad singer near the end of the callins was my talking point.
I remember my Grandfather of East Tenn, Born in 1895 singing the Ballad of Charlie Guitau to me when I was a boy. His tune was a little different than today's caller, but the words were about the same. East Tennessee inflected accent would lay down on the I sound of My Name is Charlie Guitau, My Name I'll never deny.
Imagine High Lonesome sound of the Appalachian Hollers.

Found out today my Grandfather stomped some of the same ground as President Garfield. One of his great stories was as young fellow recently married to my Grandmother wearing John B. Stetson Hat to Chicamauga Park; where I learned today Garfield was key player in that battle.
Great Program. Hope the author sees these comments as I hope to read her book soon.

What is The Soul of a Man/GHS Class of 1971

One of Scorcese's Blues Singers, Maybe Blind Willie, asks the question in the PBS series few years ago. Great Series. Here is Pulitzer Marilynne Robinson stab at it on page 197 of Gilead.
My 40th High School Reunion coming up in Gaffney, S.C. I'm from Gaffney
Couldn't be Prouder
And if you can't hear me
I'll say it a little louder.

Our Class President Tom Jones has set up a website and were at about 30 per cent participation now. Here is my thought for us and you as well

From Gilead:

..." For Who among men knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is within him."? In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe that there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable--which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblance among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that realy just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us.

The Tea Party and Titanic Struggle for the Soul of Alabama

One of my Mother's first cousins was the President of the Student Body at Huntingdon College in Montgomery in 1949. In late September Wayne Flynt will deliver the President's lectures there with the endorsement of the UMC Bishop of Alabama, Will Willimon, the former Chaplain of Duke.
I have Willimon's collection of sermons from the Duke Chapel, grand ones indeed including efforts by Will Campbell, Fleming Rutledge and Barbara Brown Taylor among others.
Flynt has a memoir coming out soon to be celebrated Homecoming Weekend at Samford, where Flynt graduated in early 60's. See Willimon's Peculiar Prophet blog endorsing Flynt.
Flynt has been speaking long time about The Titanic Struggle for the Soul of Alabama.
One of the nits, the distractions to Flynt's aspirations for the character of the state is the Tea Party Movement. The late Bircher Albert Lee Smith's widow Eunie is key leader in that mess. Sad to say a lifelong friend of the Fox Family, Mary Anne Cole, a niece of former JSU president Houston Cole is caught up in the gunk.
See the recent Boston Globe story about the Tea Party Express. Also google NYbooks.com story about how nihilistic the tea party footprints are in Ohio.
Mary Anne Cole is a gracious woman. She has always been kind to me and I enjoyed singing Stamps Baxter Songs with her brother Fowler at my Grandmother's family Reunion in East Tenn in 86. Mary Anne two years ago was present for the graveside service of my Dad's sister Katherine, in Rome Ga.
But for the future of Alabama I'll go with Flynt and Bishop Willimon, Cherilynne Crowe and her associate at the Baptist Joint Committee Brent Walker and Holly Hollman of Jackson, Mississippi, the latter.
Google the above references. Have conversations in your church. Talk to products of DekalbCounty who have gone on to Vanderbilt and Yale, UVA and Baylor; even heard of Stephen Black's ethics classes at UBama.
But Run from the Tea Party. It is a soul molester and God is Not in it; no more than he was with the Nativists against Lincoln in 1850's.