Category: Arkansas

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Tree Splooge

Spring is a miserable time of year.

First, there’s the weather. The damnable, changeable, hot-then-cold-again weather. The tornado, thunderstorm, wildly fluctuating barometric pressure, what the hell do I wear today, blustery, windy, knock me on my ass, fifty degree temperature spread in a day weather.

Then there’s the plants. You think it’s warm. There has been a recent series of beautiful warm spring days so you go to the local nursery and buy plants. You know, those tender annuals or baby herbs or vegetables just sprouted that make your mouth water with the promise of zucchini to come and tomatoes heavy on the vine. You put them in your car. You ferry them home. You place them where you want them and tamp the cool soil around their delicate stems, and after spending a day soaking up natural Vitamin D you go to bed, tired but fulfilled from a day playing the farmer, only to wake up shivering because you turned off the heat and the indoor temperature now matches the outdoor temperature of about 27 degrees and all the work you did yesterday is for naught. You vow next year to give it a week even after the frost-free date before you buy so much as a single packet of parsley seeds, knowing full well that spring’s siren song of false seduction will lure you to the nursery for that fateful waste of valuable money on plants doomed to die by the next sunrise.

The very worst part of spring, though, has to be the trees. Tall, bare-limbed, they stretch themselves and shake off the winter by emitting tentative tendrils of leaves, and before even the first leaf is full formed, the oaks go into full rut.

Oaks are horny bastards.

Because of the oaks, heinous fuckery most foul is visited upon me. Each fall the acorns hit my deck sounding like scatter shot, someone’s Daisy BB gun with an automatic clip, a terrorist squirrel at the helm of a acorn-grenade launching Gatling gun, firing hell bent for leather at my precious darling deck which never hurt anyone. Acorns are the demon-spawn of oaks. To create those diabolical children, the oaks engage in a springtime orgy that makes Bacchus himself blush at the pure wanton sex those oaks put out there for all the world to see.

The mighty oaks are masculinity personified. Baring their knotted chests, in Spring they take a deep breath and grimace, and from every pore pop squiggly spermatozoa, wiggling and waggling at other oaks, daring the other oaks to take a breath themselves and shoot back tentacles of spermatozoa in a war of silly string battle-inspired posturing and thrusting. It is indeed heinous fuckery most foul, as the foul squigglies waft their pollen and fill my unsuspecting gutters with their decaying carcasses.

Victims of these oaken battles of male dominance are cars, covered in a greenish yellow dust that hides the metallic grays and greens and reds. Victims also are the furniture, helplessly stationary in their designated positions, the flat planes of which act as a breeding ground not for acorns but for that same greenish yellow film that coats unprotected patio furniture and wafts into the cracks of car windows someone forgot to roll up.

Victim also are my sinuses, and Jack’s, and the sinuses of my receptionist (who I think has had a sinus condition since November). The virile oaks seek to splash their splooge on every available surface, in hopes that all the world will turn into acorns proving their masculine Darwinian fitness. In Spring, we walk through breezes of tree splooge morning, noon and night. Those damnable trees believe, like so many Arab IMers, that the world is a woman, open and panting for their splooge to fall fertile on something and make an acorn of it.

There is a scene in Christopher Moore’s classic Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings in which a pair of female oceanographers are studying sperm whales, and upon seeing a mating pair are delighted at their rare good fortune – until, that is, the female whale moves one way and the male moves the other just at the moment of his ecstasy. The two women are drowned in a sea of sperm whale splooge and instantly turn lesbian, seeking never again to encounter such a substance again.

That is also the novel in which I first encountered the term “heinous fuckery most foul,” uttered by a caucasian Rastafarian surfer called Kona.

My nose is stuffed so much I can’t sniffle. My cough barks deep within my chest. Today, I identify totally with those two female oceanographers. If I never experience tree splooge again, it will be too soon.

The oaks are virile indeed.

The fuckers.

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A Midget Comes to Chigger Hollow

Midget truck drivers didn’t show up in Chigger Hollow every day. In fact, there weren’t any midgets at all in Chigger Hollow, so when one did show up it was momentous.

The semi pulled into the parking lot of the Chat ‘n’ Chew convenience store about 4:30 in the afternoon. Norma Rae started a fresh pot of coffee. Usually truck drivers could be counted on to buy a couple of cups, even if it was late in the afternoon. Hearing the water begin to drip through the grounds of the Biff Brand coffee, she perched herself back on the duct-taped vinyl stool behind the counter and went back to her True Confessions magazine.

Out of the corner of her eye Norma Rae noticed a woman coming into the store. The woman was followed by a child. Norma Rae didn’t take much notice because the State Trooper from up at Possum Grape had told her in casual conversation that women and children don’t tend to be convenience store robbers. Men were the ones to watch out for, and if a man came in alone, followed by another man, and neither one parked where she could get a description of the car or the license in case of their quick getaway after a robbery, she should take special notice and ease the handle of the shotgun close to the edge of the shelf underneath the counter.

Popping the top on another Coke Zero Norma Rae turned the page in her True Confessions. “I Was a Teenage Pasta Wrestler” looked to be an interesting article. The picture of a pretty girl with a pouty mouth, who looked for all the world like Rhonda Sue Ellis, the valedictorian of Chigger Hollow’s Class of 1995, just with blonde hair, was inset on top of a black and white photo of two women completely covered in ragu and grappling with each other to the cheers of abnormally handsome young men who hung on the perimeter of the wrestling ring.

The woman came to the counter with a large cup of coffee and a package of chewing tobacco. Without looking up, Norma Rae scanned the two items. “Four eighty-seven,” she said, holding her hand out and sneaking another look at the black and white photo. Was the woman on the left wearing a top? Was that a mushroom in the spaghetti sauce or were her nipples hard from the excitement of the contest? She took the five dollar bill from the customer and handed her a dime and three pennies. Norma Rae was well into the first paragraph of the article when someone cleared his throat.

She looked up. She didn’t remember seeing anyone come in after the woman, and she had been alone in the store. She peered over the display of breath mints and beef jerky but didn’t see anyone. She went back to True Confessions.

This time a cough made her look up. No one was standing at the pay counter, which stood as high as her ample chest when she wasn’t sitting on her stool. Norma Rae remembered everything Danny Kitchens, the State Trooper from Possum Grape, had told her and she eased the butt of the shotgun toward the edge of the shelf below the counter.

“Hello?” she asked uncertainly.

“How much for two drumsticks and half a dozen biscuits?” a man’s voice asked. Norma Rae jumped.

“Drumsticks are eighty-five cents each and biscuits are five for two dollars,” she said. It must be a short guy, because he was apparently hidden behind the tall display of Slim Jims. She moved off her stool and peered around the display. She didn’t see anyone.

“I want six biscuits, not five,” the voice said.

“Six biscuits are, um…” Norma Rae cursed herself for forgetting where the calculator was kept. She was terrible at math.

“Are they the same price whether I buy five or if I buy, say, three?” The voice seemed to be getting impatient, but Norma Rae still couldn’t figure out where its owner was standing.

“Well, no,” she replied, her tone conveying her obvious opinion of such a dumb question. “Five biscuits are two dollars. Three biscuits are less than that.”

“So are three biscuits a dollar twenty?”

“How should I know?” she snapped. She stood on the foot rest rung of her stool and leaned out over the counter, hitting her head on the cigarette display above the cash register. “Damn!”

A cup of coffee appeared at the check out counter. Norma Rae leaned out again. This time she ducked. The voice belonged to the kid. No, to the midget. The kid was a midget.

“I’ll have to ring it up to get you a total,” she said, staring at the man. Despite his stature he was the most perfect specimen of virility Norma Rae had ever seen. Muscular arms reached up to slide a package of Mentos onto the counter next to the coffee. The arms were attached to a wide chest bulging with well-chiseled pectorals, which were clad in a tight navy blue t-shirt.

Norma Rae could not help but let out a breath of amazement. “Oh, wow,” she said eloquently, her eyes wide with awe.

“What, you’ve never seen a dwarf before?” the man asked. His eyes had narrowed and his lips curled into the manliest sneer Norma Rae had seen since Billy Idol’s “White Wedding” video on MTV.

“No! Oh! I mean, I’m just surprised is all,” she managed to babble.

“Are you going to let me buy chicken and biscuits?” the Perfect Specimen demanded.

“Oh! Yeah! Um, do you want spicy or traditional southern?”

“Southern. And I want six biscuits.”

“Do you want any mashed potatoes or turnip greens with it? Bessie Maydar makes the greens and they are to die for. She mixes in just a little mustard greens and some hot sauce while they’re cooking and they come out good enough to make you feel born again without ever going to church.” Norma Rae knew she was babbling but she couldn’t stop. Now why did she tell this Perfect Specimen of Virility Bessie’s secret ingredients? Bessie had sworn her to secrecy on the back porch while they were each into their fifth margarita one night. And “born again?” Where the hell did that come from? Norma Rae was Seventh Day Adventist, and except for the occasional cuss word she was true to her faith.

“How much?” Evidently this Perfect Specimen of Virility was on a budget.

“Ninety nine cents.”

“Not a dollar?”

Norma Rae shook her head. The power of speech was rapidly exiting her brain the longer she gazed on his biceps.

“My name’s Norma Rae,” she said. Then she realized that not only had the Perfect Specimen of Virility not asked, but that he seemed surprised that she would even share the information.

“I’m Willy,” he said.

“So do you want the greens?”

“Okay, fine. Two drumsticks, six biscuits, and a side order of greens,” said Willy the Perfect Specimen of Virility.

“That’s five forty five,” said Norma Rae after punching the order into the cash register.

Willy gave her a ten dollar bill. She gave him change.

“Are you going to get my food?” Willy finally asked, and Norma Rae realized that she was still leaning across the counter staring at him.

“Oh, god!” she exclaimed, hopping down from the stool. Now she was really embarrassed. She had taken the Lord’s name in vain in front of the Perfect Specimen of Virility and she was acting like a dummy. Shit! She hurried to put the chicken and greens in a Styrofoam container, and put six biscuits in a small paper bag. She climbed back up on her stool and leaned out to hand the container and the bag across the counter and down to those wonderful waiting arms, which she could imagine wrapped around her in a bear hug so tight it would make her groan.

“Can I get anything else for you?” She asked hopefully.

“Nope.” Willy reached for the coffee and Mentos, arranged his load, and headed for the door.

“Wait!” cried Norma Rae.

The Perfect Specimen turned around.

“Come back soon,” she murmured weakly.

Willy the Perfect Specimen nodded solemnly and went out the door. Norma Rae didn’t even realize she had failed to charge him for the coffee and Mentos.

to be continued….

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Tornadoes in Arkansas

Arkansas isn’t technically considered part of the region referred to as “tornado alley,” but we certainly get more than our fair share of these powerful, capricious storms. Two days ago one twister stayed on the ground in Arkansas for an astounding 120 miles through 6 counties and carved a mindblowing path of death and destruction.  The town of Atkins, Arkansas, about 45 miles northwest of me, practically doesn’t exist any longer.

I have a friend in Iraq.  He hadn’t caught me online since the storms and actually managed to call me today – yes, he called me from Baghdad – to make sure I was okay, even though he knows I’m in Little Rock, an hour’s drive south of the storm’s path.

Friends from all over the globe have emailed, IMed, and called to make sure my family and I are safe. We’re fine. I lost a few shingles in the storms that rocked our world Tuesday. They match the few I lost several days earlier when strong straight-line winds came through.

I take tornadoes seriously. I’ve seen firsthand what they can do. Little Rock was hit hard twice in the late 1990s by tornadoes, one of which leveled communities in the southwest suburbs of Little Rock, and another of which smashed a horrific swath through the Quapaw Quarter, little Rock’s oldest historic neighborhood. There were a lot of poor people living in these areas, people without luxuries like renter’s insurance. They lost everything, and there was no money for recovery. Years later they were still trying to put their lives back together.  There are still homes that have not been completely repaired even a decade later.

I’ve seen twisters dip from the sky and my stomach has dipped and twisted along with them. Once, when I was a teenager, I was riding a horse in the country and saw a storm front to the north of me.  The clouds looked ominous, so I headed for home. It wasn’t raining where I was, but I could see that the rain was pretty powerful not far away.

To my horror, a sideways rotation dipped down from that cloud, called a beaver tail.  I didn’t just gallop home.  My horse ran.

Tornadoes are the most capricious storms that have winds to blow. Miracles of survival and stories of bizarre damage seem to come from every storm.  Truthfully, when they have the power to blow an entire house off its foundation leaving no trace behind, toss fully laden transport trucks around like plastic toys, and drive 2×4 planks through the trunks of 40-inch oaks, nothing short of caprice allows a jar of pickles to sit, apparently unmolested, on a concrete slab, or blows 40-year-old letters hundreds of miles without damaging them.

This picture was the Astronomy Picture of the Day on June 13, 2005.

The storms that hit Tuesday in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama were killers.  More than 30 people died in Tennessee. The last news report I heard said we lost 13 here in Arkansas. Kentucky lost 7 and Alabama four. These deaths are the most in one day from a thunderstorm system spawning tornadoes in a decade.

Search and rescue operations lasted throughout yesterday. Rescue workers went door to door checking houses that were barely standing after the storms.  They also walked around debris-filled lots where houses used to be and the fields near where houses used to stand. Many of these lots and fields were filled with toys. In Tennessee, searchers came upon what they thought to be a doll at first. The doll moved, though, and searchers realized they had found a living miracle. The eleven-month-old baby’s mother was found in the same field.  She did not survive.

This story is achingly familiar to me.

On the night of Friday, November 10, 1995, the National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for Arkansas. The worst of the storms were supposed to hit Des Arc, my hometown, around 11:30 p.m. The storms moved faster than expected. Some families took cover. Others slept through the warning, only to be awakened by their windows breaking as the angry winds pummeled their homes.

At about 11:30, Jeff Calhoun called his father, Butch, because something large had blown up against his house. Despite the storm, Jeff’s sister Heather and her husband Lance Stallings decided to drive over to Jeff’s to check on things. When they turned up the country road leading to Jeff’s house, Heather said, “Lance, stop. I can’t see Donna’s house.” Rather than going on to Jeff’s, the pair turned around to check on the home of Donna and Keith Walls. It was gone. Donna was Heather’s aunt.

Lance and Heather stopped at a fish farm where several men were working to call Heather’s dad to let him know that his sister’s house was gone. Then Heather and Lance returned to look for Keith and Donna.

Emergency and law enforcement personnel came to the scene despite the storm still thrashing around them.  Most of the debris from the house was scattered in a wheat field northeast of the home site, so that is where the searchers began looking for the young family. A firefighter called to the others that he thought he heard an animal whining in a field of rice stubble to the west. Rice had been cut weeks before, but the field had not yet been readied for the next spring’s planting.

The source of the cries was not a puppy. It was six-month-old Joshua, face down in a tractor rut full of mud, water, and rice stubble, pushing himself up on his sturdy little arms and wailing. He had been there for 45 minutes or more.

The men and women who found the baby knew that he had to be suffering from hypothermia. A deputy sheriff wrapped the baby in his jacket and gave him to another searcher, who happened to be a cousin of little Joshua’s on his mother’s side. (We’re all related in these small farming communities, especially when our families arrived together in covered wagons in the decades just before the Civil War.) Then, because the rain and wind still lashed them with the fury of the storm, the deputy led the baby’s cousin through the field to a paramedic.

The paramedic, Linda McIntosh, stripped Joshua’s wet, muddy clothes and wrapped him in the warm towels. Holding the baby in her arms, Linda got into the car of Des Arc’s police chief, Leon Moon (a schoolmate of mine) and they rushed the baby toward the nearest hospital. They were met by an ambulance at the county line. The ambulance crew took the baby the rest of the way to the hospital.

When he reached the hospital, Joshua’s body temperature was 90 degrees. His arms and legs were literally blue from the exposure. The trip to the hospital had probably taken the better part of 45 minutes, so Joshua’s body had regained some of its warmth by then. He was probably only minutes away from death when he was found.

Meanwhile, back in the rice field searchers found Keith about 10 feet from where the baby had been lying. He was dead. Donna’s body lay a little further away. Along with the debris from their house, the family had been blown about 270 yards – yes, the distance of almost three football fields. All that remained of the frame house were a few scattered cinderblocks from its foundation.  Many of the family’s possessions landed miles away from their home.

Keith Walls was my cousin. When we were kids we skated at the roller rink his parents owned. It was the hot spot in our little community for kids who weren’t yet old enough to drive but who were too old and too social to want to stay home on Friday or Saturday nights.

I saw my brother and sister the next day. We hugged a lot. We talked a lot about Keith. We all had good memories of him. He was a sweet kid, and he grew up to be a kind, compassionate, good man. We didn’t know Donna as well. Donna was older. We knew Donna’s family, though. There are a lot of Calhouns in the Des Arc area.

Josh is a sweet kid, just like his dad. Keith’s parents have Josh, and he is a source of light to them.  Both grandparents smile joyously when they talk about this miracle baby, who is now a teenager. Both the Calhoun family and the Walls family have a wonderful legacy from that tragic night: Josh survived.

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See-Mint Ponds

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I have a little landscaping project that is intended to make my cliff of a backyard seem less cliff-like, and less dominated by azaleas. The first thing I had to do was make more sunshine. As much as I hated doing it, this meant I needed to remove two of the three really huge oaks that were in the backyard.

My neighborhood is over 100 years old, and those trees weren’t young when the neighborhood was created. Although I love the shade of the trees in the summer, there was way too much shade. I have one patch of ground about 10×15 feet in which grass will grow. So, I took a deep breath and stocked up on firewood. It’s piled under the deck stairs now.

house firewood

To give you some idea of how steep the yard is, I took this picture. The deck stairs, under which the two ex-trees are stacked, are just barely visible in the far right of the photo. The fence, which is 8′ high, follows the contour of the yard, about to where the yard took a sudden 5′ dropoff. The main portion of the swimming pool is in that area below the 5′ dropoff. It meant, theoretically, that not much excavation needed to be done.

house pool steep excavation

Theoretically. Of course, that was before we discovered that the reason the drop-off wasn’t more than five feet was because fill had been added to the lot. Prior to the fill, the electrical lines for the house had been laid in that area. So we wouldn’t have to flip which end was deep and which was shallow, I called the electric company to see what it would cost to move the lines. I nearly choked when they told me that the price would start at about $17,000.00. Suddenly, the shallow end of the pool became the deep end. Now the pool is being built almost entirely above ground, even though it really doesn’t appear to be that way. However, the deep end needed to be made deeper.

Naturally, that meant that the excavation needed to be done through pretty much solid rock. With a jackhammer on the excavator, the pool crew began digging again. I’m getting lots of really nifty rocks that I hope can somehow be used in the stonework I’m going to be doing.

After the excavation was complete the day after Thanksgiving, it rained. I am so pleased to report that it appears that my new swimming pool will have no problem holding water successfully. This is what the newly excavated deep end looked like a week and a half ago.

house pool excavation

My contractor, aware that I wanted to save money wherever possible, suggested stocking it with catfish and foregoing a concrete lining. Mmmmm. Them’s good eatin’.Not wanting to disappoint my beloved son, who has his precious little heart set on clear water (yes, it’s all about Jack), I declined the contractor’s suggestion, despite the possibility of a business investment in the catfish business and possible tax deduction for business use of the property. Sadly, a zoning variance would probably be required and that’s just more trouble than I want to go to.

After making a basic form of the pool’s walls and lining it with rebar, the contractor started spraying cement through about 6 miles of hose that came from my front driveway, snaked along the side of the house, and finally made it to the back yard.

house pool construction

Let me tell you the crew had a fabulous time blowing the last of the drying concrete out of those hoses at the end of the day, too. They really looked like they were having fun. I have never seen so many grown men playing with rubbery tubes like that. It was inspiring. After the second day of fun with concrete hoses, the pool pretty much looked like a pool. The excavator was still back there, though, because there is a mound of mud and rock about 10 feet tall, and a Japanese Maple needed to be moved. The contractor wanted to wait as long as possible to move the maple so it would be dormant and hopefully not die. Finally, though, it just had to be moved.

Pool house construction

With the Japanese maple gone, it’s much easier to see the shape of the pool. All of these pictures have been taken from the third story deck. Isn’t my yard looking lovely?

My neighbors’ beagles are delighted with all the activity in my yard. They are very busy doing their allotted doggie-duties, and miss my dogs very much. If Frog-Dog and Missy Mia were home and not at their Dad’s for the duration of the construction, they, along with the beagles, would be loudly and frequently discussing the contractor’s shortcomings and directing the laborers as only truly great canine foremen can do.

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My House….

I love my house.

No, no. Not Aramink – although obviously, I loved Aramink or I wouldn’t still use the name. Places are important.

What I mean is that I love my house – the one I live in right now.

I used to have two garage doors. Now I have just the one, and it really does make getting in and out of the driveway a lot easier, especially with stone walls on either side.

That odd roundish projection between the garage and the front door houses the staircase between the top and middle floors. I call it the topless turret. Isn’t it scandalous?

To the left of the front steps is a little flagstone courtyard with a raised bed and fountain. The azaleas are gorgeous in the spring. A big old oak dominates the bed, and a stone wall just the right height for sitting marks the border. I have a smaller herb bed on the patio, too. (No, not that kind of herb – it’s right in front, for Pete’s sake!)

house

My house is perfect for Jack and me. It is three stories tall and clings to a cliff. The back of the house, which overlooks a wooded park, is all windows. It feels like we’re in a treehouse since we’re up in the canopy of the temperate rain forest. Jack’s bedroom and bathroom, and the main living areas (including my office) are on the top floor. My bedroom and bath are on the middle floor with the garage, laundry room, and another tiny little room I use as a sewing room. The bottom floor has Jack’s party room and a huge workshop. It also has an area that hasn’t yet been completely finished out. I’m planning to do something about that this spring.

From the upper deck of our house, off the kitchen and living room, we can see north across the Arkansas River to the cliffs of North Little Rock. We can also see west across the park to the other side of Hillcrest, which is the name of the historic neighborhood where we live.

houseWhen we moved in, the backyard really needed help. The house clings to a cliff, and the backyard was pretty steep. When the house was built a patio of native Ozark stone was built around one of three huge oaks in the backyard. A wall bisected the yard about halfway down the cliff. One side of the wall was even with the ground nearest the house. The ground on the other side of the wall was 5 feet below that. Did I mention that the house sits sort of on a cliff?

Not much grew in the backyard but those big oaks and a herd of overgrown azaleas. I bet you never knew that azaleas roamed the south in herds, now did you? Unfortunately, they do. The herd that was in my backyard had pretty much outgrown the grazing land, too. One of the sad truths about southern landscapes is that people tend to show very little imagination when it comes to shade planting. Azaleas and hostas are the staples. Ferns get thrown in as afterthoughts. Yawwwwwwn.

I’m engaged in a little landscape project now that should eliminate the boring sameness of the cliffside azaleas. It involves removing the three-level koi ponds (which leaked) and installing one somewhat larger pond that people can splash around in. No, despite the helpful suggestions of some, I won’t be stocking that particular pond with catfish.

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Confessions of a White Wench

 

Tragic factoid about this Wench of Aramink: her skin is so pale it’s translucent, and she’s never had a suntan in her life.

It doesn’t bother me until someone says something like, “Dang, girl! Didja just crawl out from under a log or somethin’?” Or, “You need a little color to look healthy.” Or, “Put on some pantyhose. Those legs are blinding me!”

Every year I let myself get bullied into going to the beach the week after school breaks for the summer. It’s not hard to bully me into it – I love the smell of salt water and I like to snorkel. In fact, I like swimming so much that I’m going to put a pool in my back yard. The plans are drawn and the bids are rolling in! I feel a little inadequate next to the already-tanned sun worshippers surrounding me. Slathered in sun block I play in the surf and then I hide in the shade under the beach umbrella to read my book. Since even the reflection from the sand can give me a burn, I can’t stay out long. I head to the condo and read some more, and sleep, and feed my 360 addiction.

Sometimes I just feel a little silly spending money for a week at the beach when I can’t be in the sun more than a couple of hours a day without getting second degree burns. Even with SPF 5000 I can only stay out an hour or so at most without painful results.

I have ended up in the hospital with second degree burns from the sun on not just one but two occasions. For that reason, I am really, really careful.

The first time it happened I came down to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, with a couple of friends from college over spring break. It was my sophomore year of college. From Hamilton, New York, we drove first to Arkansas. These two friends of mine were from Auburn, New York, and Springfield, Massachusetts, and had never been in the South at all. We stopped in Memphis and went to Graceland, which had just been opened to the public for the first time. We toured the Sun Records studio and went to Beale Street, home of the blues. Then we crossed the Mississippi River into Arkansas.

Several things of note happened to my friends in my hometown. They ate fried catfish and tasted okra for the first time. They were surrounded by southern accents and for a change it was their way of speaking that make people say “huh?” And they met Bill Clinton. It was primary season, and after losing the office two years before he was running again for his second term as governor. My dad was a rather influential politico even though he never ran for office himself, and Clinton stopped by my parents’ house while we were eating pizza. He joined us and we had a great visit talking about the difference between college life in the Northeast and real life in Arkansas, education, and what we all wanted to be when we grew up. Not surprisingly, Bill said he wanted to be president.

Ten years later when Clinton won the New Hampshire primary, one of the girls who had come home with me that year for spring break called me. “Isn’t that the same guy we ate pizza with?” she asked.

“That’s the one. Remember he said he was going to be president someday?”

“Yes! I didn’t think he really meant it, though!”

“Oh, he meant it. He’s always meant it.”

But I digress. On with the sunburn story:

From Arkansas we headed due south to New Orleans, another one of my favorite places in the world. I showed my friends what live oaks look like when their spreading limbs are hung with Spanish moss, and what Bourbon Street sounded like before the street musicians were banned. We rode the streetcar down St. Charles Avenue and strolled in Audubon Park. We saw cockroaches so big they sounded like 747s when they flew at your face. We went to Cooter Brown’s to sample some of the exotic beers. Then we headed back east along the coast for some quality beach time.

We bypassed the Mississippi and Alabama gulf shores and headed across the border into Florida. We stopped about 40 miles into Florida and pitched our tent in a state park on the beach. I showed them what sea oats were so they’d be sure not to pick them. They were amazed at the whiteness of the sand and at the whiteness of my skin.

We hit the beach early our first morning there. We only had two days to spend in Florida before we had to head back to school. The ground back at Colgate would be white, too, but with snow, not with sand made of quartz crystals. We wanted to make the most of our time.

After about four hours on the beach, we decided to find food and a movie. I changed from my bathing suit into shorts and a t-shirt. I was a little pink, but not red. By the time we finished eating I was shivering. By the time the movie was over I was nearly crying with the pain. We went to sleep in the tent and the next morning I woke to see a blister the size and shape of a baseball had grown on my upper left arm.

The three of us spent that morning in the emergency room of the local hospital. Every inch of my exposed skin was bubbly with burn blisters. After declining the doctor’s invitation for me to stay as his guest in the hospital, we decided to head back toward Colgate a day early. We stopped in three more emergency rooms on the way back. Each time my skin was punctured, drained, smothered in salve, swathed in bandages, and treated as gently as possible. Each time I was granted stronger painkillers. Each time I was advised to check in for an extended stay. Each time I declined.

We got back to Colgate in the midst of a blizzard. Clad only in my bathing suit and unable to put on shoes, I limped from the car to my apartment through the wind and snow. I missed a week of classes and finally went to the campus medical clinic. Once again, I was punctured, drained, smothered in salve, swathed in bandages, and treated as gently as possible. This time I was given antibiotics as well as painkillers. My entire body was puffy and swollen from the burns.

After another week I was able to put on clothes and go to class. I swore I was done with the sun. Anything that could hurt me that much was to be avoided. I came out of the experience with lots of new freckles and a permanent hypersensitivity to the sun.

I didn’t remember for long, though. The summer between my junior and senior year in college, my friend from Auburn, NY and I loaded a couple of backpacks and headed to Europe with our Eurail passes and our passports. On the Amalfi coast of Italy, near the Island of Capri, I did it again. My friend and I had separated to travel with different people we had met along the way and were going to meet up again at Brindisi, Italy, where we’d cross into Greece. I sent her a telegram at the American Express office, the place we had agreed would be our contact point: “REMEMBER FLORIDA STOP I DID IT AGAIN STOP MEET YOU IN VENICE TWO WEEKS STOP”

No, I don’t mind all that much that I don’t have a suntan.

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Hate Mail, Anyone?

 

Recently I was asked to write about internet harassment and threats from my professional perspective. The friend who asked this of me is on the receiving end of some nasty communications from someone who evidently doesn’t realize that criminal conduct can very easily take place at a computer keyboard, and is punishable as a crime by imprisonment and a fine.

The federal government regulates interstate and international communication pursuant to the Commerce Clause. That clause is found Article I, Section 8(3) of the U.S. Constitution. Not surprisingly, Congress has enacted a specific statute addressing harassing communications. All states have their own laws regarding harassing communications which are enforced within the state. When the people involved in the communication are in different states or different countries, or when at least one of them is in the District of Columbia, the federal law applies.

The current federal law, 47 U.S.C. Sec. 223, addressing harassing communications was first passed June 19, 1934. Yes, even that soon into the advent of private interstate telecommunication there were harassment problems. Some things just appear to be human nature.

I hope that I can cut through the legalese and give you an ordinary person’s “translation” of what the law says. The law mostly addresses telephone calls, but because of the nature of the world wide web, which is accessed through telecommunication, the law applies to users of the internet as well.

I’m not addressing commercial communications, which is what “SPAM” mostly is. This blog is intended to address only personal communications.

These are the actions that can get a person fined and a prison sentence of up to two years, whether the accused person does it or if he simply allows someone else to use his telephone or telecommunications device to do it:

1) Knowingly make, create, or solicit and then transmit obscene communications or child pornography under the following circumstances:

a) with the intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person; or

b) to a person under the age of 18;


2) Anonymous telephone calls or the anonymous use of a telecommunications device, including a computer, whether or not conversation or communication actually happens, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who receives the communications;


3) Repeatedly making a telephone call or using a telecommunications device, whether or not conversation or communication actually happens, with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person at the called number or who receives the communications; or


4) Causing the telephone of another person to ring repeatedly or continuously, with intent to harass any person at the called number.

There are a couple of important things to note.

First, there doesn’t actually have to be communication. That is, the person receiving the communication doesn’t have to open the email and read it for it to constitute harassment under this law. If the sender is stuffing the recipient’s inbox with unwanted emails or sending lots of unwanted text messages to the person’s cell phone, harassment is obvious. If you go to your inbox and see 47 messages from one person in a the space of a couple of days, you know that harassment anticipated by this federal statute is taking place. People just don’t do that innocently.

Second, there has to be some evil intent on the part of the person sending the communication, except in the case of porn being transmitted to a person under the age of 18. In other words, if someone is just smitten with you, and emails you fawning poetry and love notes several times a day, they aren’t in violation of this law unless they really mean to bug the crap out of you. (Yes, in this situation “bug the crap out of you” can be a legal standard.)

So that’s the law in a nutshell, explained in ordinary language. I’m sure there are questions that you might have with specific scenarios. I’ll do my best to respond to them if you put them in your comments.

Disclaimer: I cannot give advice as to state law other than that of the State of Arkansas. This blog and the comments to it are not a substitute for a consultation with a legal professional in your jurisdiction about the specific facts affecting you. No attorney-client relationship is established by this blog and the comments to it.

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Tacky Architecture for $200, Please, Alex

As many of you already know, I spent part of my formative years as a  intern for Bill Clinton. No, I never got up close and personal with his cigar. I don’t have a blue dress from The Gap, either.

There are lots of tacky things about our buddy Bill. Now, I won’t for a minute pretend that I think he was a bad president. I didn’t think too much of his philandering, but honestly, his peccadilloes were well known at the time of the New Hampshire Primary in 1992, when my secretary (yes, dammit, MY SECRETARY) at the state agency where I worked as an administrative law judge, Gennifer Flowers, said she was “tired of all the lies” and told all to The Star, that fine newspaper that is the bulwark of political reporting in the US grocery store lines. This moonlighting nightclub singer had been engaged in an extramarital affair with then-Governor Bill.

Two terms and some fundraising dinners later, the inevitable William J. Clinton Presidential Library was built on land purchased with taxpayer dollars by the city where I live. When the design for the building was unveiled, a collective gasp of horror went up among those of us with a modicum of taste in things architectural.
Clinton Presidential Library trailer

It looks like a trailer.

A very big, oversized, can’t-deny-the-resemblance-to-a-rectangular-house-on-wheels trailer.

Dear god.

We are so proud that Arkansas can be represented by this larger-than-life replica of substandard architecture. The architects said that the building “symbolically realizes a central theme President Clinton defined during his administration– Building a Bridge to the 21st Century. It is also in harmony with its natural surroundings”.

Are they kidding?

Its natural surroundings are a riverbank in one of the poorest states in the nation. This state also happens to be part of Tornado Alley, where house trailers act as magnets for the world’s most destructive winds.

We can only hope.

Hope. Wasn’t that the town where Clinton was born?

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Pluto Reinstated! Bravo, New Mexico!

Memorial text for HJM054

Y’all aren’t gonna believe this.

New Mexico is in the process of passing a resolution that makes Pluto a planet again as long as it is viewable from an observatory in New Mexico. That’s right. If it can be seen with a really powerful telescope in New Mexico’s skies, and it does take a REALLY powerful telescope, Pluto can be a planet again, at least as long as it lingers over New Mexico.

Oh, and if that’s not enough, Tuesday will be “Pluto Planet Day” at the New Mexico State Legislature.

It seems that the person who discovered Pluto 75 years ago, Clyde Tombaugh, was a resident of New Mexico. Well, it took the high-powered telescopes and clear skies over the state to see something that small, so naturally, in order to discover the planet/planetoid/asteroid he would come to name Pluto, Tombaugh pretty much had to hang out in New Mexico. That obviously meant setting up housekeeping there. It’s important to maintain the integrity of the feats of our native sons.

So “as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night skies, it [shall] be declared a planet” for the duration of its pass.

I’m glad the New Mexico legislature has time to address this thorny issue of the demotion of Pluto’s planetary status and to rectify it.

Bravo, New Mexico!

Better to deal with Pluto than the immigration disaster overflowing your borders. In the great scheme of things, bucking the scientific community to declare Pluto a planet again is a terribly important thing to do.

I’m just glad Arkansas isn’t jumping on this bandwagon.

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