For the Birds

Each morning at breakfast, I keep a pair of binoculars handy to check out which feathered visitor is eating with, competing with, attacking or nuzzling which other one as I sit in the breakfast nook, sipping my coffee, munching my raisin toast and marveling at the ways of Nature.

"Nuzzling?" you ask. Yup, nuzzling. There's a pair of wrens that roost side-by-side, body-to-body, beneath the eave of the backporch at dusk when the weather is bad. Never see them otherwise. But...back to breakfast spying.

Today's gold medal sighting: two red-shouldered hawks flying high above the pines and circling, circling--as if an unwary mouse or two might be found and swooped down on, thanks to today's brisk air currents wrapped in sunny skies. Silver goes to two little nuthatches who took a ton of bark off the craggy river birch near the back door. Bronze? To the many bugs that tried but couldn't hide from the determined nuthatches. Check out Chris Smithers' "Origin of Species" at the bottom of the page to get his clever grip on why. Also, click the play button on the video clip below of Eva Cassidy's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow" and see and feel your spirit soar with the birds.

The Silent Traveller

Some years ago in a cottage-style bookstore in Havre de Grace, Maryland, I found a charmingly worn hardbound entitled "The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh." It was during my China vs. Scotland phase, when I was struggling to determine which country to visit first should I ever have the chance. Imagine my joy at finding a book that soothed both strains: a book about Scotland's ancient capital as seen through the eyes of a 1940's visitor from China. Although I have yet to see either country, by now I have read several more works of (may he rest in peace) Chiang Yee, better known as "The Silent Traveller." Thanks to Pientimento Book Store in Clinton, MS over the weekend just past, I am now an owner and happy reader of "The Silent Traveller in Paris." Having twice visited the City of Lights myself, I am delighted to recall why one Silent and one Not-So-Silent Traveller both fell in love with the place. "The Silent Traveller in New York" and "The Silent Traveller in San Francisco" are two more of his titles represented on my shelves and fondly recalled after visits to those cities over several decades. Of the 19 total Yee travel books I aspire to own someday, Boston, London and Oxford may be next. I gather they're the most readily available, as I often see references on Amazon and Ebay. But...buy online? Naaah. Infinitely more fun to "discover" such books in places like Clinton, Mississippi and Havre de Grace, Maryland.

Democracy, Thou Art a Mess At Times

John Grisham's new novel, "The Appeal," appears just in time to show the world yet another example of how Greed works to undermine Good in the pursuit of legal justice for ordinary citizens with extraordinary complaints in a democratic society.


In Mississippi, just such a real-life, dazzling court case is getting under way . As usual, it depends on whose politics one prefers as to whether Greed seems worse in the High-Profile Defendants (friendly to Democrats) or the High-Profile Investigators/Plaintiffs (friendly to the Republican Governor and Bush Administration). And what of Good? Good left town, apparently.


I refer, of course, to recent legal indictments against prominent lawyer Richard "Dickie" Scruggs of Oxford, MS. Democrats know him as former U.S. Republican Senator Trent Lott's brother-in-law and one among several successful originators of precedent-setting, public-and- private-wealth-generating, victorious lawsuits against Big Tobacco, Big Asbestos and potentially against Big Insurance--the latter for its failures to pay claims to thousands of victims of the Katrina hurricane. A Robin Hood of sorts in the minds of some Mississippians and an Enemy of Big Business in the minds of others.


Republicans know Scruggs as a wealthy Democrat lawyer who--with his young lawyer son and some other well known Mississippi attorneys--is said to have tried bribing a Mississippi judge by offering him $40,000 for his reelection campaign in exchange for a favorable ruling in a certain case. Several indicted Scruggs friends have already plead guilty, apparently to gain lighter sentences. Scruggs and his son have plead not guilty. They face trial in a few weeks.

Republicans likewise know Scruggs as the brother-in-law of former U.S. Republican Senator Trent Lott. To some in the GOP, particularly at the state and national party levels, as well as outside the formal party--say, in the Wall Street Journal and the Bush Administration--the Lott connection is something of an indictment within itself. Why? Because they see Lott as too big a conciliator. He was Senate Majority Leader when across-aisle deliberations in Congress during the Clinton impeachment helped to spare removal of Clinton himself.

Thus, questions, suspicions and accusations on all sides are rampant. The Mississippi Bar is aghast and scrambling to defend itself against appearances that some of its "best and brightest" are crooks and criminals like so many others in the Big Politics and Big Money Game.

So what are We the People doing? Wondering at it all and especially wondering where our best chances lie when we head to the voting booths in November to pick the next U.S. president. This much we know: John Grisham is a Hillary guy, Sen. Ted Kennedy favors Obama, and Yours Truly is thinking John Edwards looks best of 'em all right now. Tomorrow, of course, I could change my mind. Can't see past Right Now right now.

Happy Birthday, Lewis Carroll

Today marks the 176th anniversary of the birth of mathematics professor and children's writer Lewis Carroll (real name: Charles Lutwidge Dodson). Were he alive, perhaps he'd show up at the Mad Hatter Tea Party in his honor hosted at the Lewis and Clark Public Library in Helena, Montana 1:30-2:30 p.m. (MST) today. In a familiar biography, Carroll's nephew said of his uncle that he was a "...prim...rather starched man and extremely eccentric...but underlying it all was the truest love for children." See immediately prior posting for some illustrative quotes from Carroll. Enjoy them as you're humming Happy Birthday to the Good Professor.

Frabjous Classics by Lewis Carroll, Professor Of Logic

Lewis Carroll
1832-1898. Pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. English logician, mathematician, photographer, and novelist, especially remembered for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865) and its sequel, "Through the Looking-Glass" (1871).

Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here? ''That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.'' Said the Cat. I don't much care where -- Said Alice. Then it doesn't matter which way you go, said the Cat.

I think I could, if I only knew how to begin. For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible.

"The Bear"

Some 40 years ago, I taught "The Bear," by William Faulkner, to high school juniors in Great Falls, Montana. Hadn't read it since then--until this week for a book discussion at a private home in Jackson.

Man! what were we thinking, we high school teachers back then?
"The Bear" is for people who've lived long enough to appreciate the primordial, the ancient, the savage, the civilized--and how they all make for fostering good and evil across the planet--even when the planet is late 19th and early 20th century backwoods Mississippi.

The few youngsters who actually read the story back then were led to focus on the parts about courage vs. foolhardiness and the power of male bonding--especially during hunting trips. Not bad themes to capture in any case--but surely not the full story beneath Faulkner's fabled tale and the fabulous language he used. Those, my Friend, would take at least a college course or two at one's peak, I figure. But...

Like the bear and the hunters in the story, Faulkner is gone and the rest of us are still telling our versions and keeping our memories of what it all meant. For my part, the foray into Faulknerian Meaning with women friends at AAUW in Jackson last night was meaningful in its own right. Color me grateful, please.

Welcome To My New Home!

So nice to see you!

Come right on in!

My Courtyard and Garage and Parking Area

Just Park By The Garage and......

Come Right Up The Steps!

Looking Around My Living Room

Here Are Some Other Rooms In My House

Dining Room Table and Fireplace

China Cabinet

Kitchen Counter

Breakfast Room

My Rice Bed

The TV Room

The Birchmere in Alexandria, Virginia

Bravo! Birchmere! Bluegrass!

Looking for the best bluegrass bands in America? Head to the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA. Short of the nationally known festivals, this is arguably the finest venue in the country for bluegrass.

Name them: Del McCoury, Mac Wiseman, Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Ricky Scaggs, JD Crowe & The New South, Ralph Stanley and Clinch Mountain, Seldom Scene, Nashville Bluegrass Band and a long list of other genre greats have played there.

The next time you're in Washington, D.C. area, head to the Birchmere. You'll join knowledgeable "strangers" at your table, where all of you are fans who're ordering food, sipping favorites and chatting away until showtime. Several hundred others are scattered among long, cloth-covered tables like yours and--like you and your pals--are getting to know the folks seated beside them. When the show starts, everyone gets to see and hear the act; there ain't no bad seats at the Birchmere, y'all.
Hope to see you there sometime!

The Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria, Va.; 1-703-549-7500; http://www.birchmere.com/.

Cultural Gifts

Two of the best: public libraries and public radio stations. Where I live, the local library in Byram, the nearby Eudora Welty in Jackson and statewide Mississippi Public Broadcasting are among my favorite haunts and providers of things I hold dear. Thank you to each--and to all who support these invaluable services. If you haven't lately, please donate or volunteer at the outlets in your area. They need you--and we need them!

"O Frabjous Day!"

"Callooh! Callay! so what could be as good?" Answer: a drive with Ya-Ya pals up Natchez Trace to Mississippi Arts and Craft Center. Frabjous day, frabjous exhibits: Choctaw baskets, iron sculptures, handmade furniture, wooden toys, spun shawls, decorated pottery, glass and silver jewelry--frabjous creations aplenty. Instructive, colorful books as well. Drive around Barnett Reservoir, coffee and browsing at Yellow Dog Bookstore, dinner at Nagoya (hibachi show, fab food), followed by chick flick extraordinaire: "P.S., I Love You." Toss-up as to which man we wanted for Hilary Swank: Gerard Butler (hunky dude), Harry Connick, Jr. (huggable cutie), or "William" Irish character (dimples to dive in, eyes to mesmerize). Cathy Bates gets Mother of the Year Award in this one. O frabjous day, semi-frabjous flick. Callooh, Callay, indeed.

Charlie Wilson's War

"Charlie Wilson's War." Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in Afghanistan. Can't miss, right? Wrong. Misses bigtime. But good for laughs if a person likes 'F,' 'MF' and beautiful sluts in hot tubs. Advice: see the film for Philip Seymour Hoffman as "Gust." Worth $5 ticket and then some. (Seniors pay less here in South than elsewhere.)

Tornado Country

Whew! We just dodged a weather bullet. My pal Jon and I caught news of a nearby tornado and tracked it on TV for a while. We are told imminent threat is past.