As a child, my dad took us to Falcons games. We had season tickets and my mother made us dress up to go to the games. Like I had to wear pantyhose dressed up. We sat in the end-zone behind the aptly chapeau’d guy we called “backwards hat” who drank beer poured into a two-liter Sprite bottle.

The Falcons were never very good, but there was the occasional glimmer of hope. The “grits blitz” was fun, in a “Po’ Folks” kind of way and Steve Bartkowski could throw the ball a really long way. There were rarely guys where he threw the ball, but every once in a while, he’d get it right.

More often, they’d hand off to the fullback for two yards in three consecutive downs and punt. It reminded me of that handheld electronic football game I had.

When I left for college, I mostly left football behind me. I went to a university without a team and lived in a city with a team I couldn’t bring myself to like very much.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying football more. Between the excitement that Mr. Vick brought to the Falcons and the naked hilarity of Blogleague football, it’s back in my life. Not enough to prompt me to wear my hat backwards or drink beer out of large plastic containers, but around in a pleasant way.

The other issue in Vick situation, of course, is animals. Let me go on record. I like them. Not all of them, mind you. I’ve encountered unpleasant ones here and there, but as a rule, I like animals. Dogs especially. In my adult life I’ve owned a dog for all but about a year and a little.

Aside: Scout’s mother claims that she heard that Vick used kittens as bait in training fighting dogs. I’m opposed to people making up things that aren’t true. Also to kittens as bait.

Anyway, this morning I was listening to Vick’s apology. I was waiting for the obligatory part. Not the apology to the kids, or the league, or the owner. Nope, I was waiting for the shout-out to Jesus. About halfway through he said,

“I’m upset with myself, and, you know, through this situation I found Jesus and asked him for forgiveness and turned my life over to God. And I think that’s the right thing to do as of right now.”

Whew, I thought, Took him a while to get there. But get there he did. Here’s the thing. If he didn’t do the shout-out, I would have been disappointed. It’s not that I don’t buy it (though I kinda don’t), it’s that I don’t want the apology speech without it. It’s like having a full breakfast without grits. Sure, it still “counts” as breakfast, but I KNOW there’s something missing.

Here’s the primer:

I like:

Football=ok

Blogleague fantasy football=a lot

Getting the Jesus shout-out in when facing prison=obligatory

Dogs=a lot

Kittens=a lot

I don’t like:

Dogfighting=at all

Kitten baiting=at all

Vaguely racist stories about kittens=at all

Oh, and what do I think about Vick? I hope he meant what he said today.

Because Lady Bird Johnson died I have been thinking about “lady” deaths.

Some years ago, my immediate family created the presidential death bet. We each picked the order the living presidents would die and then put $20 down on our order. Three of us were out almost immediately, as we had gone Reagan before Nixon. The two Nixon folks are still in the running, having gotten the first three right. The outcome rides on George H.W. Bush going before Jimmy Carter or vice versa. I have to say that I am glad the bet was conceived before the current idiot stole the 2000 election.

Anywho, some years after its inception (I believe on the occasion of Jacqueline Kennedy’s death, though Pat Nixon had gone before), I said that we should have included the first ladies.

My mother, a great fan of the Kennedy legacy, allowed as that was “NOT funny.” I didn’t think it was, actually. I just thought it would have made things more interesting. So, for that matter, would Nixon have, had he had the decency to live longer than that actor people thought played president so well.

Lady Bird (who hated her nickname, as I read in her L.A. Times obit) would have lost me the bet. I would have guessed she’d go before Pat Nixon certainly. She got me to thinking about ladies and ladies who have died and I realized that I had meant to note the passing of a lady who I wish were still in the world. She died back in April and I miss her.

Not every day, mind you. I didn’t know her but I liked knowing she was in the world.

Who am I talking about? Why, you know, of course, Miss Kitty Carlisle! Or Mrs. Kitty Carlisle Hart if you prefer. She would have known I was talking about her. Kitty KNEW things.

She was smart, elegant, and, really, a bit of a know-it-all. She most always knew the answer on To Tell the Truth. (That is, when she didn’t have to recuse herself because she had met the unusual person before). She seemed to know everyone from Hollywood and Broadway and also seemed to have done some learning of other things along the way. My favorite bit of her To Tell the Truth appearances, though, were her entrances. She entered with what can only be described panache. Try to catch it sometime on late night teevee. No one could make an entrance like Kitty could. From what I gather, her exit at 96 had as much grace as her life. We should all be so lucky.

When she died in April, that were lots of lovely tributes to her, so I won’t try my hand at a tribute to someone who I only saw on television. I will say this, though: on the occasion of an unfunny death of an interesting woman and first lady, let’s also pause to remember the other ladies in our lives who stood out for being a little different, a little smart, and a little (or maybe a lot) independent.

Happy journeys to them all.

Some years ago my mother and I drove through parts of the South to see things I had never seen and to let her reflect on her childhood and family. We drove in a large circle across two and a half states and back.

She has wanted to do another swing for a while and I agreed to summer 2007.

Blogging has not been much on my mind of late, but I am feeling rather reflective tonight. I leave Saturday for this trip and the circle this time is three and a half states. That’s one extra state and even on the other side of the great divide, states aren’t that small. Well, Rhode Island is, but we’re not going to be near it.

A lot has changed since we last did this, but some things certainly haven’t. Her aunt (my great aunt) will still be buried under the two grand trees in the cemetery. I will still be uncertain that this trip is something I can make it through with some semblance of my sanity intact.

I do know that my honey will be waiting for me at home with all four of our small mammals. I also know that I’ll need my bug spray and my good humor. I’m promised a swamp tour and Ms. Welty’s home is expecting us on Thursday. If only Ms. Welty was going to be there. But she’s gone off to live at the P.O. in the hereafter.

Wish me luck, y’all.

eb over at Emerald Pillows posted her version of the seven wonders of the world. Go look at it, but come back. I’ll wait…

So who doesn’t like a little meta-blogging? eb got me to thinking and thinking got me to writing. See how this happens? It explains memes for sure. Anyway, when I was a child, I thought I should learn the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. And I did. My grandmother and I even talked once about going to see where they were (for one) or had been (for six). It would be a grand adventure. We should have gone and never did.

Just to be clear, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World are:

The Pyramids at Giza
The Colossus at Rhodes
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
The Statue of Zeus at Olympus
The Lighthouse at Alexandria
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus

And, no I didn’t have to look them up, but I did spell all the words that aren’t “at” or “the” in the last one wrong and had to look up the spelling. Blogger didn’t have Halicarnassus loaded into its database. Go figure.

I don’t know why I committed these to memory as a child. I just did. It’s probably the same reason I am often asked about random stuff I should know nothing about and sometimes know anyway.

When I met Honey, the seven wonders came up and she referred to them (jokingly) as the seven natural, material, wonders of the ancient and modern world (or something like that). I’ve always thought she was more bemused then anything that I knew them. It certainly wasn’t high on my “let’s be Honies” point total. Like, “ok, she gets +500 points for knowing all seven wonders, but -800 for having a nightmare destructive dog.”

The list is very old and appears partially in a book published by Antipar of Sidon which dates to 130 B.C.E. He didn’t come up with the list, as there are references to it appearing in older texts. Only the oldest sturcture on the list still stands. The pyramids are older by 2000+ years than the others. GO pyramids!

The Artemis Temple, Hanging Gardens, and Colossus were destroyed before the Common Era began. The Mausoleum survived into the 15th century as did the lighthouse. The Zeus probably made it to the 5th century in the common era.

None of this really matters. It won’t get you the girl. The good news is; it won’t keep you from getting her either.

My grandmother has been gone (that’s a Southern expression meaning dead) for a while now. But I still remember, as if it were yesterday, her helping me find each of the ancient places in her atlas. We planned our trip and talked about all the marvelous things we’d see. So, I think I’ll keep remembering them. Someday I may see some of the places they stood. If I do, I will be glad I learned them all and still remember.

It’s heresy to say this given the time of year, but the holiday spirit has eluded me in 2006.

Oh sure, I’ve bought gifts, and even wrapped some of them. But I just seem to be going through the motions.

Things may change when we arrive at my parents’ house, I don’t know.

When I dropped Biscuit off at the dog boarding place this morning, I wished the folks there a Merry Christmas. My favorite woman at the kennel said that they had to work all weekend. “It’s just us and the dogs, though. No people for three days after this,” she said brightly. Yep, lots of dogs for Christmas. Sounds fun to me.

My office was decorated nicely by my staff. We opted for the no-tradition route. Snowpeople and snowflakes. Because we work for the state, we can go that route or the inclusive one, wishing equally that people have nice Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, Christmas, and whatever else. Solstice? We are in California after all. Still, however festive the snowpeople are, they haven’t fostered (in me, at least) a spirit of the season. Honey and I haven’t decorated because we’re not going to be here. So, no fostering at home either.

Anyway, we’re off to eastern realms tomorrow where I may borrow my Dad’s santa hat (it’s a nice one) and try to shake off the heretical blahs.

What I can say (and mean) is that I hope all my blog friends have a wonderful end of 2006. I may blog from the lands of peaches. I’m glad to have spent this year blogging and am deeply grateful to have connected to people this way.

To finish like the government employee I am, I end with the secular/no-tradition wish…

Happy Holidays and may your snowpeople stay frozen.

We did fun things in my family when I was a kid, I’m sure we did. My brother claims we didn’t, but that’s him and I’m me. I remember vacations and holidays and the occasional visit to Stone Mountain. We also went out to eat dinner a lot. The “family dinner” at the Chinese place was a big thing–it involved sweet and sour pork, of that I am sure. But when I reflect back on my childhood, I don’t remember my family going to the movies as a group much when I was younger. By the time I was a teenager we did–my mother and I would go to the occasional movie together. My dad took me to see movies, too. He and I still really like to go see movies. On his visit here last January, we saw three in three days. I don’t however, remember all four of us going to the movie very often until we were older. One exception to this (perhaps skewed) view of the past, was one Saturday afternoon in 1979. My dad suggested that we all go to see Moonraker. It was my first James Bond experience. He told us about James Bond, the Cold War, and what the movies were like on the way to the theater.

No one in their right mind would claim that Moonraker was anything but second-rate Bond. In fact, it may be the worst Bond movie ever. Hard to say. There are so many bad Bond movies. After the movie we went to have chili cheesburgers and Dad told us more about the books, the movies, and the legend. I loved it. The whole thing. Truth be told, I never stopped loving Bond. In part, I think, because that day my family seemed happy and content. It must have been James Bond’s doing.

I’ve seen every Bond movie since except for Die Another Day. I liked Brosnan when I was a teenager and he was on Remington Steele, and have liked him in other things like The Thomas Crowne Affair, but that business of him straightening his bow tie while driving around in a tank in Tomorrow Never Dies was just stupid. Oh, I know, there so much stupid to Bond. Bad actors (Timothy Dalton, George Lazenby), sexism (pick the movie), cheesy effects (ditto), bad pop themes (Duran Duran), etc. Still, that afternoon in 1979 made a place for Bond in my heart that I have never let go. He’s there, despite so much. I don’t like martinis. I’ve never been able to bring myself to play Baccarat in Las Vegas. He’s so male. So many problems. One happy Saturday afternoon in a family with very few happy Saturday afternoons was all it took…

Oh, sure Connery was good, in his very Connery way, of course. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service had Diana Rigg (love her). There were little pieces to hold on to. One Saturday.

A few years ago, I came back to Bond by reading a few of the books. They’re not the greatest novels and spy stories are not my preferred genre, but I started at the beginning with Ian Fleming’s first Bond book, Casino Royale, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I’ve read a couple since, but that one was the best of the handful I’ve read.

Honey was actually interested in seeing Casino Royale since she had heard good things about it. So today she and I headed out to see it. I’m no critic and there are many folks who have said lots of smarter things about Bond than me, but let me just say that I was glad to reacquaint myself with 007. The movie was everything I wanted it to be. Honey and I have had lots of nice Sunday afternoons, but it was nice to remember that Saturday 27 years ago while watching a good movie. Daniel Craig reminds me a lot of the Bond that Fleming wrote about in the book. And, take this for what it is, both Honey and I noted that he is a VERY sexy man. The movie is human, well written, and complicated. The action sequences are good, the lead woman is a real character, and there’s no overt sexism. I think it’s the best Bond movie ever.

Not that anyone in Hollywood cares what I think, and I guess “Bond 22″ is already underway, but I think they should just remake the actual Fleming books again. And this time do it in order. Live and Let Die (way down there in the bad pantheon of Bond films) was the second book. Craig as Bond in the Caribbean and in a post-Katrina New Orleans? Sounds perfect to me.

We’re not having chili cheeseburgers tonight, which is just as well. I don’t need a movie or a meal to remind me that my life now is much closer to the ideal than my life was then. Still, I was glad to meet Mr. Bond again. He looks better than he used to and I’m still grateful to him for a happy day.

As I was sitting in traffic today on the notorious 405, I was thinking about liquid and flying.

I was listening to NPR and they were talking about the terrorist threat foiled today by authorities in Great Britain. For those of you who get the news from my blog, I’m sorry. But, just to fill you in, it appears some folks were planning to blow up Transatlantic planes bound for the U.S. with liquid explosives carried-on in (as my late Gran would say), hand luggage.

Gran luggage aside: Gran had this great 70s era set of hard-sided blue Samsonite luggage on which she had placed huge “M”s in yellow electrical tape. Gran did not believe in the “many bags look alike” principle. I loved those bags. They’d come banging down the carousel, their yellow M’s shouting their affiliation. Her make-up case had a much smaller M on its top. Same tape. More delicately applied. I loved the way it smelled, that case. Like roses and powder.

I was thinking about all the liquid in the world that was being thrown away in the name of safety. And let’s all admit it’s about appearances, shall we?

Anyway, I love my ablutions. It’s one way I am my mother’s daughter. There are other ways. I don’t talk about those. The idea of throwing away products of a liquid nature from L’Occitane or Philosophy or (horror!) Origins made me shudder right there on the freeway. Good thing we weren’t moving. Why weren’t we moving? Oh, because they were searching people’s cars at LAX. For liquid.

I glamorize travel of a certain type like many people do. I like trains. I rode the last regional passenger train (pre-Amtrak) when I was a child. It wasn’t like in the old movies, but it did have its appeal. The Southern Crescent. Doesn’t it make you want to put on a Myrna Loy hat and take Asta cross-country? The Southern Crescent. New Orleans to Washington, D.C. Every day.

Buses, on the other hand, did not appeal. Greasy. That’s enough.

Since I’m from Atlanta, I have a certain loyalty to the classic Atlanta companies, Coca-Cola and Delta Airlines. I know both have problematic things about them (tell me Fortune 500 companies that don’t). In case you’re wondering, Coke is #89 and Delta #134 on the 2006 list and both lag behind Atlanta johnny-come-latelies Home Depot (#14) and UPS (#44). BellSouth, that bouncing baby bell, beats Delta too at #120.

Coca-Cola aside: I just bought a Fresca ball cap. My life may be complete. I heart Fresca. And now my head can tell everyone without me saying a thing.

Anyway, Delta, who love to fly and it shows, will be ready when I am. I miss the days of real Delta, but current Delta, for all its problems, is still a fine airline. Until today, you could have your hand lotion with you while winging your way to Cincinnati, Salt Lake, or Atlanta. Most flight attendants still have that accent that makes mine come rushing back forward and they’ll serve you a six-pack of Lance crackers after you’ve consumed your ENJOY! pack. Lance crackers and Fresca. Sigh.

To summarize on this day of Red terror alerts…

I am in favor of:

Fresca
Lance Crackers
Electrical tape M’s
Delta
Ablutions
The Southern Crescent
Myrna Loy

I am NOT in favor of:
George W. Bush
Greasy buses
Thrown away ablutions
Liquid explosives
The TSA
Terrorism
Modern travel
The 405

So there.

Honey and I took Best Niece Ever(tm) to Build-a-Bear this morning. This has been a tradition since BNE was 2.5 and we procured for her Katie the monkey. Katie now gets a birthday party and a new outfit every year.

We set off for the 30 minute drive to Myrtle Beach. Honey, who likes to call out to inanimate objects like phone chargers, got BNE laughing by calling out “Build-a-Bear” over and over again.

We arrived and went in (Honey still calling out as we approached). We went in the first door and ended up in Friends 2 Be Made. Friends 2 Be Made is the new evil from Build-a-Bear. Friends 2 Be Made was immediately rebadged (by us) Build-a-Girl. Build-a-Girl operates pretty much the same as Build-a-Bear. One buys a girl skin, has it stuffed (after some twirling and wishing on hearts). Then one picks out outfits. It’s a big production. BNE is now old enough (as opposed to the birth of Katie Monkey) to appreciate the breadth of the production, though we did deliberately avoid some parts of the store (for example, the vanity mirror area), so we could get back and go to the pool.

So, herewith the breakdown:

Time to and from Myrtle Beach: 1+ hours

Weight a child needs to be to sit in this fancy and easy to deal with booster dealio: 40 lbs

Weight of BNE: 40+ (by a little)

Weight of Honies: More than 40

Number of Starbucks in the Myrtle Beach Area: 1

Number near Build-a-complex: 1

Number of shots in my nonfat iced latte: 4

Number of shots better than any produced by God (as barista): 4

Cost of monkey bridal outfit: $15

Cost of girl (underpants and heart only): $12

Cost of monkey tiara and wand: $5

Cost of girl socks: $3

Cost of girl princess set: $8

Cost of frog in princess set: Included

Length of time between purchase of frog and purchase of prince for frog to turn into: 1 year (give or take)

Cost of girl Purple robe: $5

Cost of girl Denim overall dress: $6

Cost of girl Glitter ballet flats: $5

Cost of girl Purple slides: $4

Cost of girl Princess tee: $3

Time spent in “monkey area”: 2 minutes

Time spent in girl area: 45 minutes

Number of times, “everyone is going to be SOO surprised we built a girl” was said on ride home: 15+

Total cost of Aunt Sporks: $81.90

Time before BNE and Best Nephew Ever will both need prince and bear respectively: 1 year (give or take)

Need to talk to Grandpop about helping: High

There you have it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Be careful near these stores. You have no idea how high the need is for those monkey tiaras is until you get sucked into the vortex. Your latte will make you feel a little better. But only a little.

Honey and I have been invited to a 4th of July party tomorrow. I waffled on going at first because the Dean who just hired me will be there and I was invited before she offered me the job. It didn’t seem good to go if I didn’t get the job. I am also afraid on behalf of Biscuit about the fireworks. Reddo was very afraid of fireworks. In fact, one of my last clear memories of him is him running back up onto the porch to be let in almost immediately after asking for a “woof about” in the yard. With Reddo there were woof abouts, with Biscuit, now it’s “Bisc-abouts”). Reddo’s great regret about our house, I’m sure, was that our bed was too low for him to crawl under during fireworks. Before he lived with us, he had been my parents’ dog and my mother has this massive bed with a springer spaniel size crawl under space. Biscuit did not like the thunder storm that happened shortly after we got her. There was a lot of yelping and crying. She’s calmed down a lot since her feverish first six-seven months in our house. I’m going to give her a Benadryl and hope for the best. We may or may not take her with us to the party. She’s been pseudo-invited.

I’m supposed to bring cobbler to the party. How I got myself into bringing cobbler is a testament to my “sure, I know how to do that/know all about that” bravado. Since I’m from the South, the hosts made an assumption that I could cook, and what’s more I could cook cobbler. I didn’t do a thing to dissuade that notion. I made it two years ago for this same event. I didn’t think it was very good. Nevertheless, the cobbler has been requested again. Sigh.

My mother is an excellent cook. She rejects many of the fussier aspects of Southern womanhood–lace, pink, sewing, flower arranging–but embraces others–shoe coordinating, cooking, ablutions, baby powder. She didn’t teach me any of them. Why she didn’t teach me to cook probably has a lot to do with her impatience in teaching anyone to do anything and my life-long weight issues. To this day, she is disappointed in my unwillingness to be girly. Whatever.

So I’m off in a bit to buy some ingredients for the cobbler. I don’t know what recipe I used last time. I’m using a different one this time. I wonder if anyone will notice.

On the bright side, I bought some tough looking new pedals for my new bike. Nothing girly about them.

Happy 4th everybody. May your cobbler be tasty, your dogs be calm, and your mothers be accepting.

I bought an interview outfit via the internet and it arrived yesterday. I tried it on for my honey. She asked, “what interview?”

“The one for my job.”

“You have to interview? Yeah, I guess you do, huh?”

She liked the outfit fine, pointing out that it would also work as a conference presentation outfit or for a funeral. Not that we have a funeral to go to but you never know, as Honey’s mother says. (Though usually she says that about stopping at skanky garage sales of the type that Sandra Tsing Loh describes as “Foxy Lady t-shirt flapping above a scabrous lawn” or something similar.)

Speaking of funerals, I just bought the new book about obituaries from Amazon. My dissertation director once lamented to me that he wouldn’t automatically get an obituary by virtue of his professorship at the IHE where I did my Ph.D. I had a hard time feeling sorry for him. He probably will get an obit. If not, it’s the price he pays for staying in the big city. If he lived in some little college town, his obit would get lots of column inches.

My mother taught me to be fond of obituaries. She lives in a smaller city than I do and therefore has more access to the little obituarites. She calls me a lot to ask if “such and such who died went to high school with you.” Makes me feel old. Still, I read the so-called “news obits” every day in the LA Times.

I’m reading this novel called A Brief History of the Dead which supposes that when you die you go this city which is a holding zone until everyone on earth who knew you dies too. I don’t really like the idea. I’ve taught too many big lecture classes.

Still, remembering the dead and the past has a sweetness to it that I like. My mother’s uncle Bert married but probably never “did it” as my grandmother said once. He taught piano in a little town in the southeast. Recently my mother was having her picture taken for some article she’s going to be in (I zoned out on the publication. Mother gets a lot of pub and I try to ignore it). The photographer was from the same little town that Uncle Bert lived in. Mother said something about the photographer being too young to know him. To which the man replied, “I’m 46 years old and Dr. F taught me piano for 5 years.”

Another mother and death story: she was in Canada giving a speech and she noticed that someone in the audience had collapsed. She stopped speaking and went over to see if she could help. The woman had no pulse and a doctor in the audience was giving CPR. When they got on the phone to 911, the doctor said “she appears to be in her mid-80s.” As soon as he said that the woman’s heart started again and she sat up and said, “I’m in my mid-60s.”

My family and I have a presidential death bet. I’ve lost. My mother and brother are neck and neck having gotten Nixon and Reagan in the right order. When I suggested we should have included the first ladies after Jackie Kennedy died, my mother allowed as how that wouldn’t have been funny. Whatever. I’ll be sad when Jimmy Carter dies. Still, I have a bet on his death order relative to the other guys.

Some friends and I were discussing the relative aliveness of the cast of What’s Happening. I knew that Shirley Hemphill had died and everyone agreed. No one but me thought Fred Berry (Rerun) was dead. For the record, he died in 2003.

My father’s mother would greet everyone she knew with “so who are your people?” She was also dedicated to the obituaries. She owned this book called Looking Backward Through My Knott Heritage. She was related to the Knotts of Knott’s Berry Farm thought she didn’t think much of them. Southerners who move to California are suspect. Fine with me, says Suspect Number 1.

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