SHOPPING FOR MY TWO BABYDOLLS

sol lewitt

This morning talking on the phone with Carole, I said I have two days to find presents for Vada and Cheyanne. I wanted to give them each something special, didn't know what, and it had to be accessible in Sparta. She mentioned earrings for Vada, 3, who recently had her ears pierced and loves her little dot earrings. And for Cheyanne, 7, she suggested a chain necklace with a charm on it. Of course. From that moment, I was ready to park in front of the jewelry store and go in. But the car battery was dead. I think it's the GPS. I make it a point to turn it off, but it turns itself back on. The car sits idle a couple days and it drains the battery through the lighter hole. I unplugged it. The only time I need it is driving on the Parkway in pea soup fog and going some place I don't know how to get to. Allan came by with car to use the battery. I had cables connected and ready to go when he drove up. Car started right away. Thank you, Allan. We talked for awhile, I came back to the house, changed clothes, picked up the checkbook and headed for town. I will need the GPS going to Dudley and Muffet's New Year's party. I need the GPS every time I go there. It's a subdivision on the side of a mountain with roads going every which way, and their house is at the far end of the maze. Before GPS I used directions I'd written from Dudley's directions. I'll plug the GPS in as I need it. Like my friend Jr Maxwell said, If it aint one knot in a log, it's ten. 

sol lewitt

I drove to town in a happy spirit, stopped at the bank drive-thru, and turned down Main Street to the shopping center with the jewelry store, between the auto parts store and the Chinese diner, pulling me on an electrical beam. I was on a mission. Parked in front of Adams Jewelers. I'd never been in the place. Stepped inside the door and it was like I'd stepped into wall of lights. Diamonds in glass cases sparkling, shiny glass everywhere, white and silver, diamond sparkles all around. I think I felt the allure of diamonds. A young woman came to assist my quest. A charming girl I suspected was still in high school or not long out. At a certain age, it becomes difficult to differentiate ages in youth. She was good at her work. I asked about baby earrings in colors. She brought from behind the counter a small display of a dozen colors in two sizes. I picked a soft green gem, very faint green, just a dot of a breath of green. I wanted a color that would complement her face rather than distract, just a hint of sparkle, like a French perfume. Next, a necklace for Cheyanne. My assistant showed me a silver chain that was just right. I was glad she was young, closer to Cheyanne's age. I allowed her feminine to guide me with full confidence. They had a display of varieties of charms. The man there, who was the jeweler, asked what hobbies Cheyanne had. I could only say television. Back to the beginning. I scanned the display case waiting for something to stop my eye, waiting for It. A silver dragonfly jumped in my face. On sight, I said, The dragonfly. I could see in its structure that it was sound, the wings would not fall off one day. It was delicate with lace patterns in the wings. 

sol lewitt

Cheyanne has a delicacy about her that she protects 24/7. It concerns me that she might bury her delicacy so deep she'll lose access to it. I mourn for Cheyanne's life at its beginning. I pray for Cheyanne, especially when we sit on the couch in front of the tv, shoulder to shoulder, our heads touching. I ask only that she be taken care of, looked over, be with her all along her way. She needs a lot of extra-terrestrial help. I don't imagine knowing her beyond her childhood, so in this time in Cheyanne's life, I want to be the one she can count on not to judge her, not to scold her or talk down to her, not to tell her what to do, but be the one whose love is not coercion. Very moody child, lives in two worlds, now three worlds with school. Justin and Crystal took care of her for a year, and there came a time to face it that this is not working out. Crystal and Cheyanne's mother were two very different women playing tennis with Cheyanne the ball. I felt sorrow for Cheyanne. A year ago she told a judge she was tired of going back and forth and he increased the back and forth instead of lessening it. She visits daddy every other weekend now, and stays with her mother, which is where she really belongs. We saw in that year her soul is here to be with her mother. No matter what mama is like, Cheyanne is linked to her. Who's to say that's not a good thing? 

sol lewitt

She'll have a hard life of her own making, but that's ok. Her mama does. Her grandma does. People who don't know how to get along in this world, doing the best they can to stay afloat. Souls that have not yet learned education makes your life better. Not because you make more money with a college degree than high school. I've only worked at one job above minimum wage, and it only slightly. I never wanted to do the kind of work that requires a degree. I wanted my education for my life, not for a job. I didn't want to work in a city, didn't want to be middle class. Though I have to confess I like both worlds. I like the world of high school educated people I live in among the mountain people. I like the world of the college educated people too. The two worlds really don't mix. The masters and the slaves, the bosses and the workers. I'm not in the hierarchy, so I am able to see all of them as individuals, not as a class. Two different cultures. Very different cultures. In the American Congress, the people putting themselves in the news, like Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, are pathetic examples of the college educated. I'd much rather know people who work for a living, including people who don't know how to get along in this world. I'm one who doesn't know how to get along in this world. It's a condition I recognize in a lot of different people. It's pretty common. We disguise it the best we can to keep a job. I know in my heart Cheyanne will be ok, whatever path she makes for herself. Maybe she will have the dragonfly necklace all along her way, or her mother might sell it. There's no knowing it's future. The only part that matters to me is the moment of giving it to her. From that moment on, it belongs to Cheyanne.
   

sol lewitt, himself

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LUCAS PASLEY TALKS ABOUT OLD-TIME MUSIC AT THE LIBRARY

lucas pasley

Thursday evenings, Alleghany Library features a music show or a talk on a given topic, a presentation. This week, old-time musician, local music historian and high school English teacher, Lucas Pasley, played the fiddle and talked. He talked about songs with stories in them. He used examples of songs that were favorites of the musicians in the county past and present, all of them common songs people who listen to the music know well. He talked of one told by a man without remorse, the story of the time he shot little Sadie down, never tells why, never mentions regret. Story songs are abundant in old-time music. One of my favorites stuck in the front of my mind the whole evening, the Stanley Brothers' Come All Ye Tender Hearted. Carter Stanley loved those old mournful story songs of extreme sorrow. This song was tattooed in the front of my mind the first time I heard it. Sometimes I like to listen to it for hearing Carter sing it as only he can in his hyper-emotional dispassionate voice. Sara Carter of the Carter Family had that quality in her voice. In the time before electricity, before the modern world, the people in the old way appreciated other songs besides love songs. Love song was one of the genres Lucas covered last night in his talk, the first of a series. The people before pop culture and advertising liked love songs, too. They also liked songs that made you cry. The people of that time honored all the emotions in their songs. Before marketing. Marketing changes things. Contemporary Chinese writers are not afraid of sorrow. A Chinese writer can wade you through some deep, wrenching, painful sorrow. They write about the other emotions too. Artists tend to like to appeal to all the emotions. There is still a niche in pop culture for sad songs, every once in awhile when it's a feel-good story. I still remember the popularity of the Country Gentlemen's, Taking Mary Home.  

 

with daughter Lenke

with daughter hazel

Lucas brought up the story in the Wreck of Old 97, pointing out the line, Scalded to death by the steam, a notable line. I can't think of any song I've ever heard with so graphic a climactic scene. The song is told visually. Lucas unveiled the story behind the event itself, the engineer an hour behind schedule when it was imperative he arrive at the next stop on time. It seems unrealistic now, but this was the time before safety regulations. A few years ago we had a news story of a commuter train engineer in a northeastern city who took it into a curve way too fast, absent minded out of control. In the old days they sometimes wrote current events into a song. Pop Stoneman sang a classic song about the Titanic. Bob Dylan sang a classic song about the Titanic. There were several songs in the old days of a guy killing his girlfriend because of a roving eye or she was pregnant. We still have plenty of stories of guys killing girlfriends. Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols killed his girlfriend and later himself. In this time we have so many songs of every variety that most of them we never know about. There is not enough time to know about all of them. We hear pop radio and figure that's it. I see mention now of bands from the Sixties that were supposed to be the Best, and I never heard of them. And I see mention of bands from the 70s, the punk era, that were supposed to be the Best. Never heard of them either. These were bands you'd have to be a New York dj in that time to have heard them. I've caught myself again making out like we people were different in the old time way. We were different then from what we are now, but culturally, the nature of our education about the only difference mentally. In the old days education was learning how to figure things out. Education now is largely memorizing details for the test. I see education making that big a change again. Emotionally, we're not much different, except now we inhibit emotions as a rule. We still live by our emotions and interpretations. The same things still happen, though in a greater variety of ways. Looking at movies in our time as songs, the variety is endless, and we have more songs recorded now than movies. The major difference between the music before electricity and after is the changes were slower then and songs people heard were far fewer than now. It cannot be said the songs were better then or now.

 

 

lucas pasley

lucas and hazel

  

Lucas invited his two girls, Lenke and Hazel, one at a time to accompany him on the fiddle with their guitars. Both girls have been holding guitars since before they could pick the strings or make chords. They liked to hold the instruments and feel a part of the music as tiny kids. They live in a world of old-time music, daddy practicing, musicians coming by to jam, both parents participating in jams, going to fiddlers conventions in the summer, daddy collecting field recordings of music in the county. It's fairly predictable that both girls will be good musicians of whatever music they want to play. Lucas will have a family band in his near future. He has been collecting old tapes made of local musicians at jams since the late Forties, early Fifties. He has uncovered some treasures. Clifton Evans went around visiting musicians in the county he knew, banjo and fiddle players. He took his guitar and reel-to-reel recording machine. Lucas came into his tapes. A man named Dick Finney was known to have made tapes at jams. Somebody has his tapes. From what I've heard they are loaded with treasures. Lucas is putting the songs from these tapes into his computer and from there he can put them on a website he has created. He's told me he has been putting together a collection of Alleghany fiddlers and another collection of Alleghany banjo pickers. He's looking at the label, Field Recorder's Collective, a non-profit label that is making old-time mountain music available by people who have never recorded commercially. Lucas's collections will be a major contribution to archiving the music of our county. Lucas keeps his archiving activities ongoing through his life as husband, father, musician, teacher, home repair handyman who restores his house while living in it. And he's teaching his kids to make music. He's taking care of the county's music, present, past and future.

lucas and hazel

 

lucas

Lucas is so busy keeping everything going he's engaged in, he doesn't have time to seek publicity for himself. Few people know of his involvement with making the music of this county accessible on cd, both commercial and homemade. People in the county not connected with the school system have never heard of him. He strikes me a case of somebody doing something important for the county, its history and its future, and not many know what he's doing. Then we have the clique of people patting themselves on the back taking credit in the name of "gonna" and nothing happens of any value beyond cosmetic. Lucas is a teacher his students never forget. Going by the way he gives a talk at the library, I get a feel for how he functions in the classroom. Lucas takes passionate interest in whatever is holding his attention at a given moment. His interior excitement shines through when he talks. It doesn't make him an obnoxious missionary, it makes his talking fun for him and interesting to the listeners. He gives pertinent information when he's talking about a song's history and interpreting its story, conversationally, information that amounts to stepping stones he puts down one at a time to help us follow his interest. Lucas doesn't need praise for his contributions to the community. He believes the county's music needs archiving. He's somebody who does what he sees needs doing instead of talking about it. There was a time I believed the county needed a weekly radio show of its own music on the local AM station. There hadn't been one in probably fifteen years. Rather than try to talk other people into doing it, I went to Dudley Carpenter to teach me how to dj, learned as I went and put on a radio show for seven years until the station closed. Lucas and I are like-minded in the way that we would rather do what we see needs doing and go on than tell somebody about it, You-know-what-you-oughta-do? Lucas has a deep interior life. I don't know his spiritual beliefs, but it appears to me he is guided by real values. He doesn't fold and quit, like me, he keeps on a-keepin on and gets er done.     

lucas pasley

 

 

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NEW YEARS @ DUDLEY AND MUFFET'S ESPOUSAL

 newlyweds about to be

My friends Dudley and Muffet got hitched up last night. Neither one appeared to have any regrets. They spoke their vows just a few minutes before 12. Somebody turned on the big flat-screen tv. It's like New Years doesn't take unless you see it on tv. Of course, this is not what it's about. The tv is the official countdown clock that puts everybody in the country in sync with the atomic clock so everybody blows their whistles at the same time. It wouldn't do for all the parties in the Eastern time zone to go by clocks a minute or two off in either direction. Precision timing. Somebody told Dudley in jest to put on Guy Lombardo. Suddenly, the wedding party became a New Year's party with just a few minutes to go, champagne poured all around, hugging, kissing, people saying Happy New Year to each other. A good feeling atmosphere in the house. It's not in me to take an interest in weddings. I tend to see them as Divorce Part One. It's a jaundiced view. I'm well aware of it. But I still don't like weddings and only go to funerals of friends. Dudley and Muffet are my friends, so it's only right by my own standard that I go to their wedding, especially since invited. It was a small group of thirty-something. Dudley explained to me in conversation before the festivities that given the size of the house they wanted a guest-list of twenty or so, family and closest friends, but they couldn't stop at twenty. There were plenty of others they felt needed to be included. Dudley said, "This is what I love about this place. If you don't invite one of your friends to your wedding, they continue to be your friend." I thought: We'll see.

prenuptial horseplay

 

Muffet I have known mainly through the coffee shop in the Selma era as Dudley's woman when she arrived on the scene. Their bond was already set. I felt like she brought out the stallion in Dudley, a part of himself he'd had to shut down for several years. He and Muffet were high school boyfriend and girlfriend. After school everything changed for them. Each eventually married and went different ways. Dudley's first wife, Caroline, had a long, slow death from MS. Dudley cared for her, like nothing you've ever seen, for several years. He took such care of her it was past commendable. It was Dudley being Dudley. He feels deeply and he thinks deeply. The spontaneity of a child is present with him, ready to pop to the surface like a laugh at any time. Dudley is somebody I can talk with freely and laugh with frequently. And Dudley is, by my own personal reckoning, a true human being. He has a cultivated sense of humor. I don't mean cultivated like sophisticated, though it is that too, but with a lifetime of practice behind it. When we get together, laugh is much of what we do. We talk, though our talking amounts to commercials between rounds of laughter. In our childhoods, we were both characterized by a nerd's bewilderment over the ridiculous world around us, the nutty belief systems, the rarity of the rational, sports, like that. I was able a little bit better than Dudley at camouflaging myself a non-nerd. It never took, but I affected the show anyway, wanting to believe it worked. I didn't get picked on for being a nerd -- the point of the cammo. Then I saw Revenge Of The Nerds, and now I say: Nerd Power! I feel like Muffet's affection for Dudley has much to do with his spontaneity and humor. Dudley is not afraid to care. She knows that too.

 

the vow

 

I enjoyed Muffet from the start. That she was with Dudley opened me toward her, and I enjoyed talking with her. We have been facebook friends for some time, the occasional conversation by way of comment boxes. They went off on a couple of cross country driving adventures, following their flow, weeks and weeks away, keeping in touch by facebook along the journeys. It seemed to Dudley's friends like she was taking Dudley from them, but I could only think: Dudley knows what he's doing. Dudley isn't fickle. They were gone so much on long drives and shorter trips we seldom saw Dudley anymore. I thought of them like Jack and Jenny in the meadow together the first month, each focused so totally on the other that distractions didn't register; the best place for me, the other side of the fence. I saw by way of knowing Dudley that he and Muffet were in that focus and I thought nothing of it. They will be back. I felt like this New Years party with the wedding was an announcement to Dudley's world of neighbors and friends in this part of his life that they're back. They will hit the road again, but they haven't forgotten their friends. Muffet has extended herself generously to Dudley's friends. I don't even question Dudley's good sense marrying her. It's Dudley's life. It's his decision. With advanced gray hair he has a right to live by his own decisions. I take it from Dudley's affection for Muffet there is plenty about her that's worth having around. As I gradually become acquainted with Muffet, I'm automatically drawn to her because Dudley is. We get along very well, talk straight-forward and frankly with each other. She has extended herself to Dudley's friends as openly as though they were her own, and without being put-on and false about it. Like Dudley, Muffet is who she is and if you're looking for something different, well you can keep on looking someplace else.

 

 

todd smith and his wife jo ellen watch the vow

 

Dudley and I have known each other right at ten years. It was summer of 1993 I contacted him about teaching me to be a dj at the Sparta AM station WCOK for a radio show I was starting with regional music. He was new to the county from DC where his career was in radio. At the time, he was making commercials for the Sparta station and helping out the station in supportive ways. We started with his computerized sound equipment making a cd for each week's show, commercials, songs in place. He had a computerized setup that was impressive in what it could do, esp to somebody who only wants a computer for a glorified typewriter. Dudley could make an audio play of the Three Bears, speaking the role for every character and they all be different. I mentioned that one only because it was first to come to mind. I'd guess he could do Winnie The Pooh as well with different voices. All I'm getting at is Dudley has a trained and practiced vocal talent for radio talking. He taught me how to plan a show down to the seconds. I wanted to learn the rules of the studio, wanted to do the show live, spontaneously as possible, though without it being so loose it falls apart. The main thing was that Dudley put me at ease with the studio. I understood it before I started and from there on learned by doing. Dudley sings choral music with the local Camerata, likes choral music, opera, Broadway, and I like mountain music and rock. We've often laughed over how our musical tastes cancel each other. Guy Lombardo and Rage Against The Machine. In my small world of people I call my friends, Dudley matters. Now Muffet matters too.

 

12 o'clock: whistle and selfie time

 

 

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PICTURES FROM THE APRIL WINE TASTING

the crowd

muffet and todd

jeremy

ann, dudley, frank, barbara

selma and ann

dudley

muffet and dudley

Another wine tasting at Selma's Backwoods Bean Coffee Shop in Sparta. She has a wine tasting the last Friday of the month 6-9. Four different wines to taste, all of them red tonight. I'm not one to fuss over wine and go oo-ah about the bouquet and all the fruity flavor talk. It was good wine. It's all good. I go for the company, to see people I like to see in the coffee shop to visit with. I've not been to town much over the last month or so and don't get to see people like JoEllen and Todd, Dudley and Muffet, others and several not there tonight. The coffee shop has been for me a place where I have made new friends and where I go to see different ones I know who frequent the place. Joe Allen Delp is often there in the mornings. I enjoy conversation with Joe Allen, a mountain boy whose stories of past adventures make the people from Away look at him in wonderment that anyone could be so wild, and Joe Allen wasn't necessarily wild compared to what wild can be. The people that are really wild don't go into coffee shops.

I spent most of my time this evening with Todd Smith, the holistic chiropractor in town, and his wife, JoEllen, people I enjoy a great deal, both equally. And talked with Dudley a good bit and Muffet. Dudley has been a friend for about 10 years. When I started the radio show, I went to Dudley to teach me how to work the mechanics of putting on a radio show. He was a radio producer in Washington DC for his adult life. Retired to Alleghany. His wife, Caroline, had advanced MS and he took care of her like a mother with her baby up to the very last day. I can't say he's to be commended. He was doing what comes natural. Caroline went on last year after some time in the nursing home, and it wasn't much later Muffet turned up from Indiana. She and Dudley had been close years ago before either of them was married. Both are unmarried now and have come back together. They're setting out on a long driving tour of USA and Canada, keeping a blog during the trip to be viewed by invitation only.

I knew half the people in there, or less, and was comfortable, among friendly people, everyone open for conversation, and conversation flowing around the room free of blockage. It felt like the right number of people. Not too many and not too few. A lightness was in the air tonight. It seemed like everyone was in an even temperament, happy to be among the people they were with. The finger food was good, the bread especially. I was happy to see a clarity in the air, telling me the coffee shop has taken on a clear, happy energy, Selma's goddess energy. She is the soul of the place and the air in there is as clear as the air around Selma. It's her radiance that draws everyone there and keeps them returning often. The coffee shop is about the only thing happening in Sparta besides the Jubilee on Tuesday and Saturday nights. It continues to mesmerize me that the coffee shop in Sparta has the spirit inside of someplace in Europe or South America. It is a universal feeling in there. Races and nationalities figure as nothing, merely identity. Like Quan Yin, Selma is a goddess of compassion. I don't even need to expand on that. It's just how it is.







   selma



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NERDS HAVE MORE FUN

chairs



At Selma's twice today for morning coffee and an afternoon mocha. I can't go through Sparta and not stop at Selma's. Saw Dudley this morning and Joe came in after he left. Later, in the afternoon, Joe came in after awhile and asked if I'd been there since the morning. I told him I had, and Selma affirmed it. He had a hard time believing it, but there it was with witness. We bantered some more about it and finally he said, "Really?" Selma and I laughed and told him we'd made it up. I'd been away and just came back. That's the kind of fun we have. It's like games cats play on each other. A cat gets a kick out of seeing another cat jump. It amuses them just like it amuses us to see a cat jump. We just made Joe jump, had a good laugh and went on like nothing happened.



Cats really do have a sense of humor and so do dogs. They laugh too. They laugh like they talk, silently. Dudley, who was there this morning, would go with animals having a sense of humor. He made reference to himself as the unrepentant nerd. He asked what a repentant nerd might be. I couldn't answer it. The word nerd always carries for me images from the movie Revenge of the Nerds, a movie that made me laugh like PeeWee's Big Adventure did and Ernest Goes to Camp. Nutty, goofball movies with slap stick comedy that is still funny to some. Nerds come in a wide variety. The nerds are the people who haven't figured out what it takes to be cool, which comes apparently natural to most, or so it seems when you're a nerd. I've an idea there are as many nerds per class as there are cool kids. The nerds are more fun, because they're not straight-jacketed by attending to their cool quotient. The nerds are nerds often because they're interested in something besides sports.



As an unrepentant nerd, like Dudley, I look at the jocks as the nerds. What's so interesting about them? They practice rigorously every day chasing a ball. It never made a lick of sense to me. Perhaps that right there is the definition of a nerd. Doesn't see the sense in running with a ball or hitting a ball or bouncing a ball or kicking it. Doesn't get it. I never saw the thrill in shooting guns at other people with intent to kill. Why? If somebody makes you mad enough, that's pretty good reason until seeing in the mind's eye a prison cell from the inside. Nerds don't kill. Nerds sometimes get drafted and are forced to, but they hate it.



This night at an event I was talking with Hillbilly Wes about his act, what a good time he's having with his comic persona. He was saying he won't accept money for his mc act. The money would spoil it. He's doing it for the spirit of the fun in it. He was noting that the way things are now, we need to laugh. He goes up on stage and makes people laugh. That's important in this time. His small gesture to make his world a better place. Levity for the spirit. And there's enough greed in the world and everything having a dollar value to choke down the spirit in anybody. Doing his show for no pay he's breaking the cycle of money being the almighty, allowing the spirit of laughter to come through. I can't help but think as we get deeper into hard times that more and more people will be wanting to do things that help people in some kind of poverty, of the spirit, of the bank account, both. When times are rough, people tend to gather and do for one another and feel better about everyday life.



Hillbilly Wes gives a good show when he carries on as comedy mc. He's been in the Marines, did his time in Iraq rescuing people by helicopter in difficult zones. In his comic act he rescues people from the blues. The Wes Brinegar I know working in the Post Office has the same kind of heart as Hillbilly Wes. You'd think they were identical twins. They look just alike and talk just alike. They must have been twins separated at birth. I need to ask Wes about that. He's a valuable citizen in the Alleghany community.



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UNREPENTANT NERD

that's dudley in the middle


A few minutes ago I was explaining to a friend the nature of my present flow. It's not something I look at much, so it became something interesting to explore. With Social Security I'm able to do nothing when I feel like it, take naps when the need arises, and do what I want to do that doesn't pay anything. Everything I want to do doesn't pay at all. In a time of perpetual war, I have nothing to offer. All I have to offer goes with peace, which is why I am looking more forward to the thousand years of peace, a time when I'll be able to actively contribute in a world that values what I have to offer. So will an awful lot of other people. Now that I don't need a job, I can do things I believe are important instead of keeping at somebody else's business open.



Recalling back when I was new in the mountains, looking back at what I was leaving behind, what it added up to was a life of uncertainty about everything. The city was all about mind. I was wanting to develop heart, so I tried life in the country, the ultimate country, the mountains. It's been here that my heart has grown in influence on my behavior and attitude toward life. It's hard to look at how I've changed as a result of the development of heart. By heart I also mean emotion. I am more able now to give my emotions the right to express. I know I've become tender hearted, because an awful lot can bring tears that I allow to flow. I'm too old to worry about how it looks. I'm just a sappy old curmudgeon turd. I figure half the people I know are ok with it and half are not.



Had a funny moment at the coffee shop yesterday, which amounts to seeing Dudley Carpenter. I've known Dudley probably 8 years. He taught me how to be a dj for the radio show. He did it well. I did with the learning from him the way an artist of any sort must do after learning about one's art form in school and what is right and what is wrong, unlearn everything, start over on your own. Dudley taught me to do a professional hour with perfect timing for commercials, the half hour and the hour, when at WCOK that stuff was nothing but casual. I wanted to do it live, spontaneously with very little planned. I didn't do what he taught me, but used what I learned to inform a more spontaneous way.



Dudley has an attitude toward life that is refreshing. His varieties of art forms that he likes are very, very different from mine. He likes Broadway musical type music, though not exclusively by any means, and choral music. I like mountain music, some rock, reggae, classical, jazz, and so forth. Our circles might intersect at classical music and jazz, which would be about the only place. It's like that with a lot of our likes and tastes, they intersect at one point or two. I think it's sense of humor that bonds us. We are continually cutting up verbally. It's a fun way to talk. We kind of take each other all over the place conceptually. Beats the hell out of bitching and complaining that Sparta isn't what we want it to be. Dudley is an unrepentant nerd, as am I. It's like cousins who haven't been around each other since childhood.



The picture above looks like it could be at a neighborhood bar in some city called Tony's. It's coffee in place of beer at Selma's coffee shop. She took the picture. I asked her to get a picture because my friends are complaining to me about my pictures, Don't you ever smile? After living so long in the mountains among country people, where people who smile all the time look like they're selling something, I too have become suspicious of big smiles. I call it advertisements for self. I'm pleasant, I'm easy to get along with, I'm really nice. Like children in a Chinese children's market, kids eyeballing people with "buy me" eyes. It's like the smiles are announcing, I have a price. Inquire within. I'm not for sale and don't feel a need to advertise myself with blinking lights or sparkling teeth. That's for other people. Anyway, I do have to concede to the culture I live in, at least some of the time. So I asked Selma to get some pictures of me smiling so I could put a smiling picture on facebook. Selma's is where I smile best. This picture of me looks like Lon Chaney as Quasimodo.



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