Where Davy Was Born, Where Meriwether Died

Because Bank of America apparently doesn't consider Alabama a part of the Union, last week I drove to Tennessee to the nearest BofA ATM to deposit my first check. Lawrenceburg, Tenn., is proud of its most famous citizen, Davy Crockett, and erected a statue in his honor in the middle of its historic downtown. Did you know he was almost 50 when he died at the Battle of the Alamo? That's impressive.

What's not impressive is how the monument put the name Alamo in quote marks. Like it's a hypothetical? Really, Tennessee? Just because he left your lame-ass state to go and fight for mine doesn't mean you should hold a grudge.

For some reason, I was the only person taking pictures of Davy's likeness in the middle of the town square at 5 p.m. that Thursday. Cars passed by me and Davy, like we didn't even matter. Kids these days. No respect for history.

Now that I was in a different state and had succeeded in depositing my check so I could pay bills, I decided to keep exploring the Volunteer State. About 30 miles west you can reach part of the Natchez Trace Parkway, a 444-mile road that "commemorates an ancient trail that connected southern portions of the Mississippi River, through Alabama, to salt licks in today's central Tennessee." More importantly, the closest landmark on the Trace to me is the resting place of Meriwether Lewis, oh he of Lewis and Clark fame. He killed himself on the Trace in 1809, and I'm pretty sure he's hung out in central Tennessee since.

I want someone to erect a half-built smokestack to commemorate my life when I die, whether my demise is tragic or not. His memorial actually looks like something I've seen outside of Don Morris on ACU's campus. Perhaps the building's namesake is buried there?

One other car was at the memorial site when I arrived, but left shortly after. Again -- I was the only one stopping to pay my respects to a man influential in this nation's Manifest Destiny or whatever. Kids!

Lewis shot himself in a place called Grinder House, the remains of which can be seen on the site -- a small outline of stones shaped like a square. What a cramped place to die. Near that is a cabin -- likely not historic, just built to look that way. Even at 6 p.m. in broad daylight, the whole "deserted cabin in the middle of the woods" thing didn't instill comfort in this tourist. Neither did the creaking woods surrounding the memorial site. Or the "Pioneer Cemetery" a few feet away that is home to various members of the Higgin and Spears families.

The cabin has two doors -- one locked, one open, its screen door inviting visitors in. Or scaring them away, take your pick. As I opened the screen door, I stopped for at least 10 seconds, debating whether to go in. I said "Hello?" to the empty room filled with eight-grade history project-worthy bulletin boards detailing Lewis's life. Terrified adventurers can sign the guest book or take a seat on the single folding chair against the wall. But buckos, I watch "Lost." What do you bet that chair was already occupied? Eh? I walked around the room for another 10 seconds, signed the guest book ("Rest in peace, Lewis") and then quickly ran out. Ran.

Standing outside, I noticed a panel in one of the cabin's windows was broken -- a window on the room behind the door that was locked. I started walking up to it, but quickly backed away at the thought of an eye appearing from the dark. Again, thanks, "Lost."

I took more photos of the area, all the while narrating the experience, sometimes aloud, because that's what I do. The ghosts probably appreciated the commentary.

I grabbed a few Natchez Trace maps and hit the road, back to Alabama to tell of my excursion.

My friend, who loves to watch documentaries and tell me all about them, told me Lewis's life story a few months ago, calling him one of the nation's most misunderstood manic depressives. Sorry you were born before the days of Prozac, Lewis. Rest in peace.

I'm a marshmallow, too

When you move to a new place and don't really know anyone, you've got options. Do you go outside and meet people like an adult with dignity and self-respect? Heck no! You stay inside and watch endless hours of TV on DVD.

Here are the Top 10 ways you can tell I've been watching a lot of "Veronica Mars" lately -- and by a lot I mean that I've watched 2 and 1/2 seasons in 12 days.

1. I've started responding out loud to the show when I guess a plot twist or react in general to something that's happening.
2. I think about the show while not watching it, and respond out loud when I'm suddenly struck with an idea about said plot twists.
3. I've spent more than a few minutes contemplating the similarities between "VM" and the "Harry Potter" series. Veronica would totally be in Gryffindor.
4. I Photoshopped the masterpiece at right while at work.
5. I actually wasn't embarrassed when a co-worker looked over my shoulder and asked me, while laughing, "What are you doing?" as I Photoshopped.
6. I approach any kind of online search with a heightened sense of emergency and importance, like I'm on the hunt for something only I can find.
7. I popped in M. Ward's "Post War" and felt bad for Logan all over again.
8. I send e-mail updates to my brother, the "VM" afficionado, about where I am in the series, running through the details as if he didn't already know them.
9. I've been late to work because I was watching the show.
10. I only have nine more episodes to watch, meaning I'll have watched the entire series in less than two weeks, and I will then likely go into a state or mourning.

But it's all worth it.

Didn't Michael Jackson write a song about this?

News pundits have had their fun the past few weeks relaying to viewers the totally set-in-stone fact that Hillary's base's backbone is made up of hard-working, lower-class white people thanks to some polling data from West Virginia, Kentucky and other states I'm scared to visit. While there's truth to this data, it's necessary to remind ourselves that Hillary's backbone of voters aren't necessarily representative of the majority of Americans. And while Obama can't really address the whole "there are still a lot of racist white people out there" dilemma (and he doesn't -- he says the campaign is moving on from issues like that) because then he'd be seen as the scary black candidate with the scary black preacher, Hillary could do her part to help ease tensions.

Instead of touting polling data that white voters support her, the braver step would be to ask those white voters -- if they admit that race is a factor in their voting decisions -- why they're so afraid of a black candidate. Timothy Egan said it best: "In Kentucky, over 25 percent of Clinton supporters said race was a factor in their vote – about five times the national average for such a question. Clinton, if she really wanted to do something lasting, could ask her supporters why the color of a fellow Democrat’s skin is so important to their vote." But I guess it's easier to take what you can get, hold on to as many votes as possible and battle it out to the bitter end.

Way to go, Hillary. You have the support of an America the rest of us would like to move on from.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I've been following the blog postings of documentary filmmaker Errol Morris for a few months now, as well as any news feature I can find about his upcoming film, "Standard Operating Procedure," and book of the same title he co-wrote with Philip Gourevitch.

Gourevitch wrote "We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda," the introductory chapter of which is probably one of the best things I've ever read. I read aloud an excerpt from it in college once in my Messages of the Old Testament class when we were debating the act of genocide and whether God still intervenes on behalf of his creations or whether he let's things happen because of free will, etc. Light subject. My reading brought the mood of that 10:30 a.m. Tuesday-Thursday class down considerably, but I never got a chance to go toe-to-toe with the self-righteous Youth and Family Ministry majors who were of the "God Rules, End of Story" persuasion.

Anyway, I pre-ordered the book and am excited about it. "Procedure" delves into the Abu Ghraib scandal and its haunting photographs, but Morris's attention to detail and determination to find the real story will have most anyone rethinking their definitions perception, intention and truth. His latest NY Times blog post revolves around Specialist Sabrina Harman (pictured), who has one of the more recognizable faces from the prison photographers and who was made a scapegoat by the military when they needed someone to blame for the PR nightmare.

She has her reasons for why she would have her photo taken with prisoners and corpses while smiling and giving a thumbs-up, and I like what the facial expressions expert has to say about how Sabrina may be smiling, but she's not happy. But I can't help but wonder what I would have done in her situation, or what anyone would have done. How much does our environment, upbringing, personality, psychological state, etc., influence our actions? A lot, I know, but what about when it comes to those moral issues we all claim we feel the same about? We say we'd never treat another human being like that -- and some of us would likely never get ourselves into the situation of having to decide whether or not to torture someone in the first place -- but how do we know?

One excerpt from a recent New Yorker piece on the book and film got under my skin.

The cat’s head was one of Harman’s gags. She had a kitten that was killed by a dog, and since it had no visible wounds she performed a rough autopsy, discovered organ damage, and then an M.P. buddy mummified its head. They gave it pebbles for eyes, and Sabrina photographed it in various inventive settings: on a bus seat with sunglasses, smoking a cigarette, wearing a tiny camouflage boonie hat, floating on a little pillow in the wading pool, with flowers behind its ears. She took more than ninety photographs and two videos of it. The series, in its weird obsessiveness and dark comedy, has the quality of conceptual art. At one time or another, at least fifteen of Harman’s fellow-M.P.s posed for photos with the cat head; several senior officers and a number of Iraqi men and boys also took the time to have their pictures taken with it. The cat head had become a fetish object, like Huckleberry Finn’s dead cat, which Tom Sawyer admires—a scene that Norman Rockwell illustrated in a folksy print captioned “Lemme see him, Huck. My, he’s pretty stiff!”

The macabre nature of carrying a mummified cat's head around as a joke struck me as an interesting look into her psyche. She might not be the "bad apple" that one of Morris's editors claimed her to be, but was she an Average Jane just doing her job -- doing what was standard operating procedure? Is the cat head trick a sign of the kind of person she was already, or the kind of person she'd become in Iraq? Did the situation of war so warp her and her fellow soldiers' minds/hearts/whatever that the cat's head is more of a warning sign?

We're all a product of our environments; luck of birth is a bitch, but it can't be helped. I'm where I am because of where my parents were when they had me. We're all on different intelligence levels, we all respond to things differently, etc. I believe we're all capable of great evil as well as great good, it just depends on our situations, our level of power and the choices we make -- which all depend on our environments, our personalities, our psychological makeup, etc. Ah, so circular.

Knowing this, I have to ask: Can Sabrina Harman be judged on the same level as I am? As you are? What does it mean to be held accountable for one's actions, and can you really blame someone for the action's they take in a situation you could never imagine?

Morris as the artist taking a closer look at Abu Ghraib has helped me see the situation so much more clearly, which of course means I'm now more confused than ever.

One thing I do know is that Harmon is no worse a person than me. She's just not as lucky as me.

Nice name, BENedict

The pope bears a striking resemblance to a certain "Lost" character named Ben, a man who isn't to be trifled with. And here I thought the Cheney-Penguin similarities couldn't be topped. Maybe "The Onion" was on to something after all ...

My Name is Bob Rumson!

Look how big my flag lapel pin is. It's huge! I COULD BE PRESIDENT. I'm so patriotic. And awesome at Photoshop.

Take that, Obama! Too little, too late.

My Mom is the Coolest

She can hang curtains and put bookshelves together and pack boxes tightly and drive for me when I'm sleepy. She takes care of me.

What a Beautiful Mornin'

Dewey is always dirty and sweaty, his butt crack is always showing, and I can always tell when he's been in a room based on its odor. But at least he's always polite.

Standing in my apartment in worn jeans and a hole-covered T-shirt, he tries to make conversation while waiting for his fellow maintenance man to stop by and have a look at my hall toilet -- The Toilet That Won't Stop Leaking.

"It's a beautiful day today," he says, left arm raised above his head and supporting his body's weight against the door frame while his right hand sits on his hip. His left arm isn't too high, thankfully, otherwise I'd get to see his crack again.

It's about 8:45 a.m. and raining. He apparently thinks it's OK to have my front door standing wide open, letting the Southern air and its threat of storms in.

"I think we're supposed to have bad weather today," I say, and Dewey just grins. "Oh, it's already here. They've already been hit in Tupelo."

"That's not good."

"Ah, you'll be a'right," he said as he pounded the door frame with his fists. "Brick building. Me, I'm in a trailer."

I'm standing in my pj's, having been ripped from sleep by Dewey's loud "Hello?" a few minutes earlier as he let himself in my apartment. He had first checked on my bathtub's sliding door and a drawer in my bathroom, both of which I swore were broken. About four seconds after he got to them, they weren't. Something about not being on their tracks.

I'm crossing my arms and wondering if I should start sleeping in a bra to be prepared for times like this one when Dewey's friend, Chris, pulls up. At least he looks like a Chris, just like Dewey looks like a Dewey.

"Is the toilet still running? That just don't make no sense," Chris exclaims to Dewey as he wipes his workboots off on my rug. "That just don't make no sense," he exclaims to me as he follows Dewey down the hall. I'm still standing, bleary-eyed, in my living room, debating whether to make coffee or wait and see if they leave early enough for me to go back to bed.

I decide to at least pull my hair back, put on a sweatshirt and hide in my office to read e-mail. Chris and Dewey get to work diagnosing the problem of The Toilet, which was already new but always had water leaking out from under its base. They pull it open, remark about the quality of the wax ring, do something else to it, blah blah I haven't had coffee and am hiding, they bring in a new one.

Chris leaves to take care of another job ("It should be OK now. That just don't make no sense!"), leaving me with Dewey and Dewey's crack in all its hair glory in my hall bathroom. He finishes installing the toilet quickly, though, and offers a few more "Yes Ma'ams" before he's gone as well.

I light a scented candle, watch TV, drink my coffee, then go back to sleep. I shouldn't have bothered to set my alarm, though.

A much louder one goes off to wake me up: a tornado siren.

I've eaten four doughnuts today ... so far

As a point of cultural reference for those of you unfamiliar with northwest Alabama, here's the first of a series of videos done by "The Colbert Report" in 2006 in the area. Colbert County is right next to Lauderdale, where I live, and when I interviewed for my job, my editor drove me past several of the sites scene in the videos.

This week we've had tornadoes hit the area, and a representative from the "Report" called the newsroom Thursday to see if everyone in Colbert County was OK. At least we're hoping it was a legitimate representative. I offered to be interviewed, and kept waving my WristStrong bracelet in the air, but no one humored me. Sad.



Here are the rest:

Alabama Miracle, Part 2
Alabama Miracle, Grand Opening Part 1
Alabama Miracle, Grand Opening Part 2
Alabama Miracle, The Morning After