Fairhope, Day 3 & 4

Notice of Buddy Richmond's death. Gambino's is where I met Buddy.








..

















Azaleas at Prospect & Coleman

















Fairhope maintains a strong police presence.













The Parker House used to be here.

















The DuBrock's (George & Ida) used to have an antique store here, across from Punta Clara Kitchen.

Reminds me of a Sly Stone lyric...

A Family Affair...

"You can't cry
'Cause you're letting folks down
But you're crying anyway
Because you're all broke down"

Fairhope, day 2

I'll

Left to right, top to bottom.

The azaleas are beautiful.

St Patrick's day is done, but I honored "The Big Fellow"


bet Mary Lois hung out here


Lucasson's grocery used t0 be here .

"W, The President" stickers are prevalent on the SUVs here

Got in to Fairhope today...

I asked my friend about the big crane I saw. It is for the new Hampton Inn going in. I'm not sure if it is on the NW corner of Magnolia & Section, the former site of the M&S service station where my father once worked and where he was alleged to have asked my mother out for the first time, but make no mistake, the M&S is gone.

I enjoyed three scotches at a restaurant/bar next to Ken & Vernon's barber shop. For a few months in 1985, I lived on the second floor of that establishment. My rent was $150 a month.

I went to Gambino's. (I didn't have a drink No one was there, too depressing for me), but the marquee was referencing the death of Buddy Richmond. Buddy was a local architect. I didn't know him well, but he was a guy I knew from back in the day. I think he may have been a partner of some type with John Bethea, who was my$150 landlord. I liked Buddy's wife Kitty.

I drove down to Point Clear and parked at the lot that once held the house I grew up in.

I loved it. The sound of the waves. I looked up at the sky and saw stars like I haven't seen in years. All this, I used to take for granted.

Some dogs barked, some lights came on a few lots over. I saw some flashlights, I called out to my former neighbor, "Susan?" she said "yeah?", I identified myself, and I think she understood.

Gene Owens' Commentary

The legacy of an ex-slave named Lizzie Harris

By Gene Owens

Basset Day never achieved the status of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, or even of the watered-down President's Day.

Perhaps that's because James Lutzweiler, my friend from Jamestown, N. C., was unable to find another sponsor to pick up the tab for the annual lunch, though you'd think Duke University, Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition or Al Sharpton's National Action Network might pitch in a pittance to keep alive a legacy spawned by an ex-slave's advice to a laboring white man.

In the wake of the Caucasian-bashing fulminations of Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's former pastor, Lutz and I thought it would be a good idea to bring Lizzie Harris to the forefront in the hope that it would create some interracial good will. The story comes courtesy of Richard Bassett, 90, son of Duke historian John Spencer Bassett, the central figure in what has been called Duke's finest hour.

John Spencer Bassett was not always a scholar. There was a time when he made his living by splitting cedar shakes and posts.

One day, as Bassett was following his sweaty pursuit, Lizzie Harris, who had been reared as a slave, approached him with words to this effect: "You've got a good mind. You ought to be working with it instead of with those splintered hands."

As Richard Bassett told Lutz: "My father looked down at his blood-red hands as the blood-red sun was sinking in the sky, and he decided that Lizzie was right."

But Lizzie wasn't finished. She gave Bassett a book, "Great Thoughts from Greek Authors." Inside the cover she wrote, in beautiful handwriting, "J. S. Bassett, from his friend, Lizzie Harris." She added a quotation: "Know how to wait and the kingdom will come to thee, not by violence, not by rapine, but by the hand of God."

Bassett subsequently enrolled at Johns Hopkins University,where he and some guy named Woodrow Wilson were among the first to receive the newly established American degree of doctor of philosophy.

Lizzie Harris' advice and generosity apparently left a liberalizing mark on Bassett. He joined the staff of Trinity College, as Duke University was then called.

In 1903, Bassett uttered an opinion that, in the eyes of many, amounted to blasphemy. He opined that the two greatest men born in the South during the preceding 100 years were Robert E. Lee and Booker T. Washington.

Never mind that he put the great general ahead of the great educator. To utter both names in the same breath was deemed cause for demanding Bassett's head on a platter.

Josephus Daniels, renowned editor of the Raleigh News & Observer, labeled Bassett an ass. Demands went forth for his discharge from the Duke faculty. The board of trustees met to consider the matter. The trustees voted to go against the tide of public opinion and to retain Bassett.

Lutz has watched many a Duke team bounce its way to glory across the basketball court and the television screen. But he considers this the university's finest hour.

In 1983, on the 80th anniversary of the Bassett Affair, former Gov. and U.S. senator Terry Sanford, then president of Duke University, delivered a speech to his faculty on the topic, "Doing the Right Thing." He recounted the Bassett story. Lutzweiler was intrigued, and soon made Sanford's acquaintance.

"He bought my lunch at least three times," Lutz said. And Duke commissioned him to go to Massachusetts to do a videotaped oral history with Richard Bassett. It was during this interview that Richard told Lutz the story of Lizzie Harris.

"I think it is easily one of the best stories in the history of Duke University -- and in American history, for that matter," said Lutz, who is archivist and rare-book collector at Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C. "I once offered to tell it to a black historian I met at a conference celebrating the Bassett Affair, if only he would buy me a steak. I am still waiting for his call. So I am passing it on to you in hopes that you will buy me a steak."

IOU one steak, Lutz.

Lutzweiler cites the Lizzie Harris story as illustrative of "the critical role some otherwise obscure black women have played in American history. They ought to be remembered not just in February, but forever."

It's March now, Lutz; I'm a procrastinator. But if you believe in academic freedom, pause a moment to thank Lizzie Harris.

(Readers may write Gene Owens at 317 Braeburn Drive, Anderson SC 29621 or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com

Noonan's take on Obama's speech

My feeling is Peggy liked it, she thought it was a great speech.
About the only zinger is suggestion toward the end of the column which seems to label Senator and Mrs. Obama as silver spoon yuppies/buppies.

Still, I generally find Ms. Noonan's commentary interesting and fairly objective.

/////////////////////////////

	March 21, 2008

DECLARATIONS By PEGGY NOONAN

D A Thinking Man's Speech March 21, 2008 I thought Barack Obama's speech was strong, thoughtful and important. Rather beautifully, it was a speech to think to, not clap to. It was clear that's what he wanted, and this is rare. It seemed to me as honest a speech as one in his position could give within the limits imposed by politics. As such it was a contribution. We'll see if it was a success. The blowhard guild, proud member since 2000, praised it, and, in the biggest compliment, cable news shows came out of the speech not with jokes or jaded insiderism, but with thought. They started talking, pundits left and right, black and white, about what they'd experienced of race in America. It was kind of wonderful. I thought, Go, America, go, go. You know what Mr. Obama said. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright was wrong. His sermons were "incendiary," and they "denigrate both the greatness and the goodness of our nation." Mr. Obama admitted that if all he knew of Mr. Wright were what he saw on the "endless loop . . . of YouTube," he wouldn't like him either. But he's known him 20 years as a man who taught him Christian faith, helped the poor, served as a Marine, and leads a community helping the homeless, needy and sick. "As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me." He would not renounce their friendship. Most significantly, Mr. Obama asserted that race in America has become a generational story. The original sin of slavery is a fact, but the progress we have lived through the past 50 years means each generation experiences race differently. Older blacks, like Mr. Wright, remember Jim Crow and were left misshapen by it. Some rose anyway, some did not; of the latter, a "legacy of defeat" went on to misshape another generation. The result: destructive anger that is at times "exploited by politicians" and that can keep African-Americans "from squarely facing our own complicity in our condition." But "a similar anger exists within segments of the white community." He speaks of working- and middle-class whites whose "experience is the immigrant experience," who started with nothing. "As far as they're concerned, no one handed them anything, they've built it from scratch." "So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town," when they hear of someone receiving preferences they never received, and "when they're told their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced," they feel anger too. This is all, simply, true. And we are not used to political figures being frank, in this way, in public. For this Mr. Obama deserves deep credit. It is also true the particular whites Obama chose to paint -- ethnic, middle class -- are precisely the voters he needs to draw in Pennsylvania. It was strategically clever. But as one who witnessed busing in Boston first hand, and whose memories of those days can still bring tears, I was glad for his admission that busing was experienced as an injustice by the white working class. Next step: admitting it was an injustice, period. * * * The primary rhetorical virtue of the speech can be found in two words, endemic and Faulkner. Endemic is the kind of word political consultants don't let politicians use because 72% of Americans don't understand it. This lowest-common-denominator thinking, based on dizzy polling, has long degraded American discourse. When Obama said Mr. Wright wrongly encouraged "a view that sees white racism as endemic," everyone understood. Because they're not, actually, stupid. As for Faulkner -- well, this was an American politician quoting William Faulkner: "The past isn't dead and buried. In fact, it isn't even past." This is a thought, an interesting one, which means most current politicians would never share it. The speech assumed the audience was intelligent. This was a compliment, and I suspect was received as a gift. It also assumed many in the audience were educated. I was grateful for this, as the educated are not much addressed in American politics. Here I point out an aspect of the speech that may have a beneficial impact on current rhetoric. It is assumed now that a candidate must say a silly, boring line -- "And families in Michigan matter!" or "What I stand for is affordable quality health care!" -- and the audience will clap. The line and the applause make, together, the eight-second soundbite that will be used tonight on the news, and seen by the people. This has been standard politico-journalistic procedure for 20 years. Mr. Obama subverted this in his speech. He didn't have applause lines. He didn't give you eight seconds of a line followed by clapping. He spoke in full and longish paragraphs that didn't summon applause. This left TV producers having to use longer-than-usual soundbites in order to capture his meaning. And so the cuts of the speech you heard on the news were more substantial and interesting than usual, which made the coverage of the speech better. People who didn't hear it but only saw parts on the news got a real sense of what he'd said. If Hillary or John McCain said something interesting, they'd get more than an eight-second cut too. But it works only if you don't write an applause-line speech. It works only if you write a thinking speech. They should try it. * * * Here's what didn't work. Near the end of the speech, Mr. Obama painted an America that didn't summon thoughts of Faulkner but of William Blake. The bankruptcies, the dark satanic mills, the job loss and corporate corruptions. There is of course some truth in his portrait, but why do appeals to the Democratic base have to be so unrelievedly, so unrealistically, bleak? This connected in my mind to the persistent feeling one has -- the fear one has, actually -- that the Obamas, he and she, may not actually know all that much about America. They are bright, accomplished, decent, they know all about the yuppie experience, the buppie experience, Ivy League ways, networking. But they bring along with all this -- perhaps defensively, to keep their ideological views from being refuted by the evidence of their own lives, or so as not to be embarrassed about how nice fame, success, and power are -- habitual reversions to how tough it is to be in America, and to be black in America, and how everyone since the Reagan days has been dying of nothing to eat, and of exploding untreated diseases. America is always coming to them on crutches. But most people didn't experience the past 25 years that way. Because it wasn't that way. Do the Obamas know it? This is a lot of baggage to bring into the Executive Mansion. Still, it was a good speech, and a serious one. I don't know if it will help him. We're in uncharted territory. We've never had a major-party presidential front-runner who is black, or rather black and white, who has given such an address. We don't know if more voters will be alienated by Mr. Wright than will be impressed by the speech about Mr. Wright. We don't know if voters will welcome a meditation on race. My sense: The speech will be labeled by history as the speech that saved a candidacy or the speech that helped do it in. I hope the former.

Political commentary...from back in the day

The Wearin' Of The Green

"O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that's goin' round?
The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!
No more Saint Patrick's Day we'll keep, his color can't be seen
For there's a cruel law ag'in the Wearin' o' the Green."

I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand
And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?"
"She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen
For they're hanging men and women there for the Wearin' o' the Green."

"So if the color we must wear be England's cruel red
Let it remind us of the blood that Irishmen have shed
And pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod
But never fear, 'twill take root there, though underfoot 'tis trod.

When laws can stop the blades of grass from growin' as they grow
And when the leaves in summer-time their color dare not show
Then I will change the color too I wear in my caubeen
But till that day, please God, I'll stick to the Wearin' o' the Green."

What a pathetic mess

I've gotta say that I find this Economist column to be spot on.

First paragraph
ELIOT SPITZER is a hard man to defend. He was the most self-righteous politician in America—which is saying something—and an arrogant bully with it. If anybody deserves the opprobrium that is being poured on his head this week, following the New York Times's revelation that he has a taste for expensive prostitutes, then it is Mr Spitzer.


Last paragraph
"He certainly had no choice but to resign (as he did on March 12th) if, as it seems, he broke the law. But that still leaves the bigger question of whether the law is an ass. George Bernard Shaw once defined “Comstockery” as “the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States”; but it is hardly a joke for the people who are caught in its tentacles. There are enough real problems for America's law-enforcement officials to worry about."



////////////////////////////
Lexington

The hypocrites' club

Mar 13th 2008
From The Economist print edition

Now with a new diamond-level member

Illustration by Kevin Kallaugher

ELIOT SPITZER is a hard man to defend. He was the most self-righteous politician in America—which is saying something—and an arrogant bully with it. If anybody deserves the opprobrium that is being poured on his head this week, following the New York Times's revelation that he has a taste for expensive prostitutes, then it is Mr Spitzer.

As New York's attorney-general, he perfected the art of threatening Wall Street types with criminal prosecution unless they paid huge settlements; as New York's governor, he tried to drive a steamroller over anybody who got in his way, and consequently proved a big disappointment after taking office last year following a landslide victory. Even before his spectacular fall this week, his governorship seemed badly damaged. His promises to clean up Albany politics had borne no fruit and his proposal to give illegal immigrants driving licences had exploded in his face. He leaves plans for congestion charging in New York City up in the air, along with the state budget. A man who liked nothing more than braying about “betrayals of the public trust” and “shocking” and “criminal” behaviour has admitted to the former and may be charged with the latter.

Mr Spitzer had no interest in the distinction between “public” and “private”. He prosecuted “prostitution rings” as vehemently as he fought other forms of crime. His aides circulated unfounded allegations that Richard Grasso, who was the head of the New York Stock Exchange and one of Mr Spitzer's many bugbears, was sleeping with his secretary.

It is hardly surprising, then, that the country is enjoying a fit of Spitzenfreude—and that Wall Street's trading floors are decorated with photoshopped pictures of him cavorting with bodacious babes in various states of undress. Some people have even attributed the markets' mid-week bounce to glee over Mr Spitzer, rather than to the $200 billion shovelled their way by the Fed.

But distaste for Mr Spitzer—or keen pleasure in seeing a hypocrite hoist with his own petard—should blind no one to the fact that the whole affair is a crock of nonsense. What business is it of the federal government what Mr Spitzer got up to in Room 871 of the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC?

Defenders of America's tough laws on prostitution argue that it goes hand-in-glove with many other forms of crime (sex-trafficking, drug-trafficking, gangsterism). But surely this is an argument for focusing on those heinous crimes rather than trying to prevent an activity that is as old as human society. Besides, if prostitution were not criminalised, the victims of such abuses would feel much less wary of going to the police about them.

America, of course, is not the only country that produces spectacles like the one enjoyed this week. The British tabloids like nothing more than catching a politician with his trousers down (though British headline-writers would be sacked for such feeble offerings as “New York's Naked Emperor”, from the New York Post). But America manages to be more unbalanced than other countries. This is partly because its legal system is out of control—an unstoppable clanking machine that has lost any ability to “draw the line” or respect “common sense” (to echo the titles of two books by Philip Howard, a New York lawyer).

The government, which began with a straightforward investigation of Mr Spitzer's finances (the authorities initially suspected him of corruption), ended up devoting considerable resources to his favoured “prostitution ring”, the Emperor's Club VIP—resources that might have been spent on something more urgent, such as looking for terrorists. It went to the trouble of obtaining a federal wire-tap and examining thousands of e-mails. All sorts of draconian punishments are now possible for Mr Spitzer. He could get a year in prison for violating a 1910 federal statute, the Mann act, which prohibits crossing state lines for “immoral purposes”. (Mr Spitzer bought “Kristen” a train ticket to travel from New York to Washington, DC.) He could get five years for arranging his finances to conceal his payments to the agency.

Revisiting Salem

American history is littered with examples of puritanism deranging the law, from the Salem witch trials onwards. Anthony Comstock, a 19th-century anti-porn campaigner, used his position as a postal inspector to seize 50 tons of books and 4m pictures. He boasted that he was responsible for 4,000 arrests during his career and 15 suicides. Under Prohibition people could be imprisoned for life for consuming alcohol.

Puritanism continues to stalk the country in new guises. The most dramatic example is America's new version of Prohibition—a “war on drugs” that helps explain why one in 100 American adults are in prison. But there are plenty of humbler examples. Schools impose zero-tolerance rules that result in expulsion for minor offences. The citizens of Texas may not buy dildos. Americans are banned from drinking until they are 21.

The combination of legalism and puritanism invariably produces the same dismal results. It creates expensive government bureaucracies that seize on any excuse—rules relating to inter-state commerce are a particular favourite—to extend their powers to boss people about or spy on them. It throws up swivel-eyed zealots who pursue their manias with little sense of proportion or decency (remember Kenneth Starr). And it ends by devouring its children. Mr Spitzer is only the latest in an endless line of self-righteous crusaders impaled on their own swords.

He certainly had no choice but to resign (as he did on March 12th) if, as it seems, he broke the law. But that still leaves the bigger question of whether the law is an ass. George Bernard Shaw once defined “Comstockery” as “the world's standing joke at the expense of the United States”; but it is hardly a joke for the people who are caught in its tentacles. There are enough real problems for America's law-enforcement officials to worry about.

Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.

In memory of Maggie...

Born September 18th, 1988
Died March 12th, 2008


A picture of Maggie today.



A picture of Maggie in better times.

A favorite photo simply entitled "Maggie & Fran."
I suppose that I would have taken this on September 5th, 1996.

"People may surprise you with unexpected kindness. Dogs have a depth of loyalty that often we seem unworthy of. But the love of a cat is a blessing, a privilege in this world."

Kinky Friedman's epilogue for Cuddles in Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola

interesting contrasts.....

Lexington

Obamaworld versus Hillaryland

Mar 6th 2008
From The Economist print edition

The contenders are battling over the soul of the Democratic Party

Illustration by Kevin Kallaugher

JOHN EDWARDS has been saying since 2004 that there are two Americas—the America of the rich and privileged and the America of the poor and put-upon. The results of March 4th proved that there are also two Democratic Parties.

A famous political distinction exists between “wine-track” and “beer-track” Democrats. Wine-track Democrats have traditionally supported reform-minded liberals such as Gary Hart and Paul Tsongas. Beer-track Democrats have preferred more practical-minded pols. Walter Mondale famously hammered the nail into Gary Hart's coffin when he stole a line from a hamburger advertisement and asked “Where's the beef?”

Part of Bill Clinton's genius was to bring the wine-drinkers and beer-drinkers together. This was, after all, a man who went to Yale and Oxford but who grew up the child of a widow in the backwoods of Arkansas. Yet this year's Democratic primaries have burst the party asunder once again.

Obamaworld is a universe of liberal professionals and young people—plus blacks from all economic segments. Hillaryland, by contrast, is a place of working-class voters, particularly working-class women, and the old. These are people who occupy not just different economies but also different cultures. How many white Obama voters eat in Cracker Barrel or Bob Evans? And how many Clinton voters have a taste for sushi?

These groups could hardly have a more different view of politics. Mr Obama's supporters are, mostly, the liberal version of “values voters”. They are intensely worried about America's past sins and its current woeful image in the world. They regard Mr Obama as a “transformational” leader—a man who can, with one sweep of his hand, wipe away the sins of the Bush years and summon up the best in their country.

Mrs Clinton's supporters, by contrast, are kitchen-table voters. They wear jackets emblazoned with the logos of their unions. They work with their hands or stand on their feet all day. They have seen their living standards stagnate for years, and they are worried about paying their bills rather than saving their political souls.

This helps to explain one of the biggest puzzles in the campaign—the fact that momentum is so fleeting. During Mr Obama's 11-state winning streak it looked as though he was eating into Mrs Clinton's core support in the white working class. He did reasonably well with that group in the Potomac states (Maryland and Virginia) and extraordinarily well with them in Wisconsin. He also secured endorsements from important unions. But Ohio has reversed that. White working-class voters are simply not quite comfortable with what Mr Obama is selling.

The battle for the Democratic Party is so bitter because it is a battle over culture. Mrs Clinton's supporters look at Mr Obama's and see latte-drinking elitists. Mr Obama's supporters look at Mrs Clinton's and smell all sorts of ancestral sins, not least racism. The two groups neither like nor respect each other.

There are actually good reasons for irritation on both sides. The Obamaites are not just otherworldly. They are also weirdly cultish. All the vague talk of “hope” and “change” is grating enough. But many Obamamaniacs want something even vaguer than this—they want political redemption.

It is certainly impressive to see 20,000 people queuing for hours to see a politician. But should they worship their man with such wide-eyed intensity? And should they shout “Yes we can” with such unbridled enthusiasm? The slogan, after all, reminds any parent of “Bob the Builder”, a cartoon for toddlers, and Mr Obama himself rejected it as naff when it was first suggested to him. His supporters are rather like high-school nerds who surround the coolest kid in the class in the hope of looking cool themselves.

But there are also good reasons to be irritated with Mrs Clinton's beer-track Democrats. Blue-collar workers have certainly had a hard time of it. The Cleveland rustbelt is a decaying monument to good jobs that have been shipped abroad or mechanised out of existence. But one of the tragedies of this campaign is that both Mr Obama and Mrs Clinton have decided to ignore Bill Clinton's message—that the only way that America can remain competitive is to prepare people for new jobs rather than cling on to old ones—and instead engage in a silly competition to see who can bash NAFTA hardest.

Brains, not brawn

The final reason why the battle between the rival supporters will tear the Democratic Party apart is that the balance of power within the party is shifting. Mrs Clinton's Democrats have dominated the party since Franklin Roosevelt's time. They have hired a few eggheads to do the maths. But they have never let them get the upper hand. And they have repeatedly seen off challenges by “new class” Democrats. This year's election is arguably their last stand.

Economic change is relentlessly shrinking their base: manufacturing jobs are in decline at a time when brain-working jobs are expanding. And Mr Obama has shifted an important proportion of the old Democratic alliance—black Americans—to his column. He is also bringing large numbers of college-educated young people into the party who have little in common with old-style Democrats. One of the ironies of the current campaign is that Mrs Clinton's chief strategist, Mark Penn, has been one of the loudest voices on the left arguing that the party's future lies with brain rather than brawn. He must now be fervently hoping that he is wrong.

The great challenge for the Democratic Party in November will be to put this coalition back together. But the bitter fight in the months to come will widen the already gaping divide. John McCain could not be better positioned to pick up the pieces.