Category: Arts & culture

Memphis

We arrived in Memphis in the middle of the afternoon. We are here to act like tourists. The Center for Southern Folklore was closed, so we walked along the bank of the Mississippi River, and saw the cobblestone landing where river boats have been landing for the past 150 years. Carol found W. C. Handy’s small little shotgun house — W. C. Handy! I couldn’t believe it! — and she took a picture of me sitting stiffly on the front porch. We ate dinner at B.B. King’s Restaurant, hoping to hear Blind Mississippi Morris, but he was feeling under the weather and when two young men started playing Eric Clapton, we left. We took photographs of the Purple Martin houses on Memphis rooftops, and I watched the the Common Nighthawks swooping overhead calling, “peent, peent.” We talked to a guitarist in Central Station, the old railroad station still used by Amtrak; he was waiting for the City of New Orleans, and playing his guitar in that huge cavernous space while he waited. And after the sun went down, we walked down Beale Street at night, listened to the blues pouring out of the windows of the clubs, and watched the people walking up and down the street.

It was a satisfyingly touristy day.

Egregious conduct by politicians

Sometimes you just can’t believe the egregious behavior of certain politicians. No, I’m not talking about Anthony Whiner, er, Weener — and I’m not talking about former California governor the Gropinator’s 13 year old love child. I’m talking about the egregious hypocrisy of Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

Perry, you may recall, presents himself as religious man. He’s the kind of guy who attends prayer breakfasts where he puts his religious faith on display; he has even opened a national prayer breakfast for governors of U.S. states. But while eating breakfast in our Texas motel this morning, I opened today’s edition of the Amarillo Globe-News and read that Perry gives financial support to his church at a rate lower than even than most Unitarian Universalists (who are the worst contributors to their congregations of any U.S. denomination aside from Catholics). Here’s an excerpt from the AP story:

“The San Antonio Express-News reports the Perry family’s income tax return shows Perry gave $90 to his church in 2007, a year in which he reported an income of more than $1 million….”

Hmmm. If I were his pastor, I think I’d be giving Rick Perry a friendly little phone call right now. However, to be fair, Perry’s giving record was not that bad every year he’s been governor:

“The records from 2000, when Perry became governor, through 2009 show he earned $2.68 million and gave $14,243 to churches and religious organizations, about a half percent.”

In other words, over a ten year period, Perry earned an average of $268,000 a year, and gave an average of $1,424 per year to his church. By comparison, last year I earned about $60,000 and gave about $3000 (or 5%) to my church.

This leads to Harper’s Rule: Politicians may not use Biblical references, nor refer to their “Christian faith,” unless they contribute at least 5% for their income to their church. If a politician breaks this rule, you should shout “Matthew 6:5!” at him or her.

Underpants

During the religious education committee meeting tonight, one of the committee members was telling us about a bunch of five year olds hanging out in their underpants. It was a pretty funny story. When the story was done, I couldn’t resist bringing up the Anthony Weiner silliness — I said that while the American news media are saying that Weiner sent “sexually explicit” pictures of himself (which makes it sound important and serious), the BBC tells it like it is: Weiner sent underpants photo. He sent pictures of himself in underpants; not even five year olds would be that silly! We had a good laugh at Underpants Weiner, and moved on with the rest of the business we had to cover.

The joy of cars

It is fashionable among religious and political liberals to bemoan the existence of automobiles, particularly because their environmental impact. I do it all the time. Of course, if you’re like me, you’re familiar with various counter arguments that tell us why cars are not so bad as all that:– we know that suburban sprawl began long before the automobile age, and so doesn’t require automobiles — and that having automobiles was better than using horses for transportation purposes, since the exhaust put out by horses in cities is arguably more noisome and a greater public health issue than automobile exhaust, and the maltreatment of horses when they were used primarily as transportation is arguably an ethical problem as serious as that of sprawl.

However, I don’t see many of us paying attention to what might be called the cultural argument in favor of cars. This argument is presented quite well by Agatha Christie in her autobiography:

Oh, the joy that car [the first car she owned] was to me! I don’t suppose anyone nowadys could believe the difference it made to one’s life [to own a car for the first time]. To be able to go anywhere you chose; to places beyond the reach of your legs — it widened your whole horizon. One of the greatest pleasures I had out of the car was going down to Ashfield and taking mother out for drives. She enjoyed it passionately, just as I did. We went to all sorts of places — Dartmoor, the house of friends she had never been able to see because of the difficulties of transport — and the sheer joy of driving was enough for both of us. I don’t think anything has given me more pleasure, more joy of achievement, than my dear bottle-nosed Morris Cowley.

Yes, I hate suburban sprawl, and I dislike having to commute to work by car,– but I too, like Agatha Christie, love to drive. And I have found that it is no use to me personally to address the first two points without acknowledging that last point. What about you?

Midnight in New York

The movie theatre was in the middle of the block, and the line to get in already stretched to the corner. It was forty minutes before the movie began. We had our tickets already — the early show was already sold out by the time we showed up, so we had bought tickets for the seven o’clock — but we figured that if we wanted to get seats together, we had better line up with all the others. Pretty soon, the line was twice as long.

Someone walking by to get to the end of the line said, “All these people must’ve started seeing Woody Allen films when they were in college and here they all are.” But several people had brought children and teenagers, so that wasn’t entirely true. Someone else said that there are three hundred seats in this theatre, but usually only a couple dozen are filled. Not tonight, though. A man standing behind us talked knowledgeably and at length about other Woody Allen films: “Remember the scene where they’re standing in line to see the movie in ‘Annie Hall’? … Then Marshall McLuhan walks up, and says … And Woody Allen looks out at the camera and says …” A woman said, “I can’t remember the last time I stood in line on the first night of a movie.” The knowledgeable man said, “It already opened in New York and L.A. This is just opening night for the Bay area. But at least it still hasn’t opened in Pittsburgh.”

At last the line started moving. We found two seats together, at the very back, with an aisle seat for my very long legs. A couple, maybe in their late twenties or early thirties, asked if the seats beside us were open, and we said yes. He went off to get something or other, and she said to us, “Do you think we’ll be able to see back here?” “It’s a small theater,” said Carol. “Those must be the last two seats left together,” I said. “Well, it’s much better to sit together,” said the woman. They came and went a couple of times, and on the last time in, he murmured an apology, and she said, “It’s our first movie together.”

I won’t tell you anything about the movie; anything I could tell you would spoil it. Except I can tell you that although the movie claims to be about Paris, it’s really about New York, like all of Woody Allen’s movies; everyone speaks with a New York rhythm, except the Parisians of course, but they might just be tourists. Come to think of it, many of the people in the movie theatre sounded like they came from New York — not the Bronx or Staten Island, mind you, but Manhattan.

Bike party

We came out of the theatre at about eleven o’clock and looked to see if it was safe to cross the street. A whole passel of bicycles was coming at us. “Bike party!” said one of the bicyclists as they came near. We watched for about five minutes as clumps of bicycles passed by. There was a break in the bikes, and I scurried across; Carol wiated for another couple of minutes for another break in the bikes before she got across. There were enough bikes that we weren’t going to be able to get the car out easily, so we stood on the sidewalk and watched. Hardly anyone seemed to be talking to one another, except that everyone once in a while someone say, “Bike party!” A few of the bikes were playing recorded music ranging from rap to norteno to classic rock. Two daredevils rode too fast and weaved in and out of the other bikes, but most people just rode along fairly sedately. It looked a little boring to me, but then I never was one for making long bike rides in a group. Finally, along came two motorcycle cops, a few stragglers on bikes, and that was it. We got in our car and drove home.

Sex in the news

Three of the biggest stories in the news today involve sex or sexual morality: Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, is in the news for allegedly committing sexual assault on a housekeeper at a New York hotel; Arnold Schwarzenegger has admitted that he fathered a child with a woman who was a domestic worker at his mansion; and the Roman Catholics say that the incidence of priests sexually abusing minors increased greatly during the 1960s due to the sexual revolution.

Each of these news stories centers around someone in power engaging in sexual acts with someone who was relatively powerless — a domestic worker, a low-wage hotel worker, legal minors. Or to put it another way, these stories aren’t about sex so much as they are about the misuse of personal power.

Hard-boiled

My guilty pleasure: I love hard-boiled pulp fiction. Every once in a while, I come across a passage that is just so — so hard-boiled, that I have to read it twice to make sure it really says what I thought it said. Like this one:

I kissed her.

“To hell with that stuff,” she said. “Really kiss me.”

Fifteen minutes later, the kid came up with the half case of Scotch.

I showed up at Ashbury’s place about two o’clock in the morning. I still couldn’t get the girl’s hair out of my mind. I thought of that strand of the hangman’s rope every time I thought of the way the light glinted along those blonde tresses.

Gold Comes in Bricks, 1940, Erle Stanley Gardner.

I will never look at blonde hair again in quite the same way. I’m not sure that is a good thing.