That is what I was saying

I have always hated the way those students park large black pickup trucks across the sidewalk on Buchanan. I have never understood why it was ok to leave trash out beginning on Sunday morning, when pickup day is Thursday. And how is it appropriate to leave a couch you no longer want in the street, or hung up in some creeky tree branches?

Kvetch...Kvetch...Kvetch.

But no! I feel sooooooo validated. Yes! This week has been great. My personal peeve, the Duke students who leave trash all over our neighborhood, are now the subject of national disdain.

Just check out the story in the Voice of Authority.

You will also see links to the four other stories online this week about our neighborhood.

That is our neighborhood -- Trinity Park. I wish the Times would get it straight. This not a seedy run down neighborhood. At least, except for the part full of BMW's and SUV's with New York and Florida plates.

We have had this problem for a long time. Last year, it was the affair de baby oil. So while we do not know if the charges are true, now at least the whole world will shine its light on the habits of these undergrads.

Of course it is tragic that the light comes only because someone has been hurt. It stirs up a lot of other anger.

The additional point that I want to make with this blog, though, is the degree to which it is absolutely undue and thrilling to have your long term seething pet peeve turn into national news.

Titular implications

Language matters. Not to sound like Allan Bloom, because what bothers me has nothing with the cultural implications.

The catalog from a Christian bookseller in Tennessee does not sell Bibles. It sells "biblical solutions."

Time for playing in the dirt

This is the time of the year for resurrecting some great past times.

Baseball will soon return. I admit that I care. I am not alone. Kathy likes baseball. John is going to like baseball. I believe that baseball fans should be loyal. If your team won the World Series in 1985, no amount of misery should be reason to make you change your mind.

Gardening is here, too. Ever seen an aqualegia? How about a really great astible? Maybe you settle for a hosta.

I think hosta lovers are probably like Yankees fans. Everyone doesn't have to like hostas. You know, Cardinals fans are a bit like pussy willows. I built a four foot by eight foot planter in my front yard. Right now, it looks like an unfinished tomb. I suppose the neighbors are chuckling. But they are just cutting their liropi, right?

While we are at it, no one has to plant another azalea, either.

Peter Sellers starred in a movie about gardening and politics. The two are a lot alike, on a very simple level. That was his device for humor.

Dan Nicholas Park

John sits perched upon my shoulders. He pulls my hair. He puts a finger in my left ear. He leans hard into my neck. He wants to grab a wooden automobile on the table below us, in line at Hurley Station in Dan Nicholas Park. We, as well as about 2000 other people, are waiting in line in Rowan County, North Carolina.

"You inhale, you pay," says the sign next to the kazoos for sale. I will have to resist.

I pay for two tickets. But that is the line for buying tickets. There is another line for getting on to the train.

I like democracy. Everyone does, right?

Waiting in line represents the implementation of the democratic ideal. First come, first served. That's the only rule. No matter how much the richest banker might derive more utility (as an economist would say) from free time, that banker has to wait in line behind the guy with three tattoos.

I see plenty of free speech in line, emblazoned on the t-shirts of my fellow line waiters.
"I love Rock 92."
"Don't drive your truck when U are Jacked Up!"
"It's Bubba Time"
The antidote to all of this democracy: a strong cup of British tea.
But I realize, as I walk through a knoll littered with screaming children and smoking parents, there is a difference between these people and myself.
They are Republicans. Or, more than 70 percent of the people in this county voted Republican. The only ward that votes for Democrats is the one downtown -- where Elizabeth Dole grew up. Out here, in the country, its full of anti-tax voters. My county, with the geneticists on the left and the pharmaceutical salesman across the street - that is where you get people who cannot say no to a bond referendum.

Enough demos.

hungry bachelors say no to yogurt

I can see spring on my walk home from work. People are outside. Kids push bicycles on sidewalks. Daffodils push through the soil. The sun heats the earth. The earth smells damp. Not withstanding all of this life, I feel so tired from staring at rows of cells. But the walk helps.

The process of mourning continues. Susie has been staying in Salisbury for the past week. Having all of the 911 urban gang in Salisbury changes things. Our home is silent. I get the mail, but I can't think of why to stick around in an empty house.

People who know me will perhaps recognize a lack of domestic skills in my background. Or maybe, they might say I have an imperative for entropy.

I have tried the sa-cha chicken, the hunan chicken, and the kung pao chicken at the Hunan Gourmet. The Hunan Gourmet holds a spot between the Nationwide Insurance and the Boston Chicken in the adjunct wing of the Northgate Mall. These storefronts are engines for entrepreneurs.

What strikes me about the Hunan Gourmet is the clientele. It's a men's club. There is a fifty something guy eating in the aisle on the other side of me. There's a thirty something guy across from me. Instead of saying "open", the sign out front should say "hungry bachelor kitchen." It's a pathetic sight.

"Women would stay at home and eat yogurt," says my sister in law.

A box of puppies

RBC Centura has a new advertisement. The ad shows still lifes of things that cost something, even though they are free. A box of puppies. Chocolate on your pillow in a motel room.

Then it has some other still lifes that don't make any sense at all: blocks of cheese laid out for sample consumption at a grocery store. What does that cost? Chiclets. Hmmm.

The ad borrows from the cool blue hues, created by natural morning light, that characterized many pictures in DoubleTake. That was a hip magazine that had its day in the mid to late 90s.

I couldn't enjoy those kind of pictures when they were in DoubleTake. Somehow, it strikes me differently in video. I do not know why.

Rosie crawls

Rosie scaled the quarter length stairwell between Rose's downstairs living room and her upstairs sitting room on Saturday. You can see the focus in her eyes. Rosie takes the cautious path. She grasped the stair rail and stood up. She shifts her weight forward. Then removes her outside hand and finds a place on the next tier. There is no risk, no climbing with feet and hands all at once. How different than her brother.

About Edward Post, 1921-2006

I walked out of Memorial Hall with Erik and Mani after hearing Joan Didion give a reading on the first year of her life after the passing of her husband. Didion's experiences became the contents of The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir that the New York Times characterized as one of the ten most memorable books of 2005.

It gave me a lot to think about.

"I felt grief in waves,' she read. She described a kind of grief that comes and goes, that constrict ed her throat and sates hunger.

I thought about that as we walked in the early spring air. Upon departing, I opened up my cell phone to call Susie. Susie took off for Salisbury after lunch to spend the day with her father.

She answered without a greeting. "I think he is gone," were her only words.

Susie cried. I told her that she loved him and he knew it. She cried some more. Then I heard commotion in the background. Susie hung up. Eddie died before he arrived at Rowan Regional Hospital.
--

I am rocking on a porch swing out back of 125 E. Corriher. There is a foos ball table and a ping pong board on the deck. Eddie made the deck treated wood. He carved a spot in the wood to give a spot for a large tree. Now that tree holds grilling tools.

The early evening light casts a blue light on the dark shadows. Andrew Eton interviews Rose, Jonny, Phyllis, Susie and David. The room glows in yellow warmth. Pictures of two Pliskens stare directly out through the glass of the sliding doors.

It is not my place to suggest the interpretation of his life for his funeral. But if I had the opportunity, I would say that his legacy comes from his ability to teach, and to teach with love. Eddie had a lot of loves. He loved tennis, skiing, and bridge. The games near me are further testimony of his search for avocation.

I remember our last conversation. Eddie was lying in bed. Eddie spent most of every day of his last months in bed. We made a bet. Forty cents -- I pick any four teams, he gets the rest, for the winner of the NCAA tournament.

He played a lot. He always said "bend your knees."

He ran Zimmerman's Department Store. He had several storefronts in downtown Salisbury, as well as branches in a few other communities.

"If someone wants to see one pair of shoes," he said, "don't bring back fewer than three pairs."

You can see the results in his family. It is not just that they all play tennis well. Although they do all play it well. Today Jonny played racquetball. His comment about the game was that he let a player who was equal in skill to him win the match. That is not normal for Jonny. Normally, Jonny works hard enough to win that match.

People never really cease to exist if they remain alive in the minds of others. I'll take Duke, UConn, George Washington, and West Virginia. You can have the rest. Have a tic-tac, while you are at it.