School board meeting, part 3

If you haven't already read parts 1 and 2, please scroll down and begin there. Thank you.

“I don’t get this,” said Bill. “Nobody has ever complained about this before, and there aren’t any Turkish people in the whole county except for a handful of students and professors at the university. I expect they’d be honored by the nickname.”

"Wasn't the guy who owned the oriental carpet store on Second Street from Turkey? Nice family," Cam Bobo interjected.

"I think he came from Iran, and they closed shop and moved to Huntsville years ago anyway," Bill said.

“That’s not the point. How would you like it if the team was called the Constantinople Crackers?” the sociologist said.

“I wouldn’t like it at all,” said Durell Johnson, the only black member of the board. “The whites can’t have everything around here.”

“I remember when I was growing up, the minor league baseball team in Atlanta was called the Crackers,” Twinkle said. “They folded when Atlanta got themselves a major league team.”

“And that team is called the Braves,” Cam pointed out. “I guess you wouldn’t be in favor of changing our mascot to the Braves, would you?”

“Of course not! That would be even worse.”

“Who remembers their mascot, Chief Nocahoma?” asked Humpy McFadden, who hadn’t said a word in a meeting all year, and startling everyone with his newfound ability to speak. “He’d run out to the mound and do his war dance before every game. When he ran back to the bullpen, the guys on the other team would try to trip him or throw things at him. I loved that.”

“Oooh and remember his cute girlfriend, Princess Pocahoma? She was precious,” added Shannon Cole. I even made my mama make me a Halloween costume just like hers.”

“What is wrong with you people? This is exactly the kind of institutional racism we’re trying to wipe out?” the professor asked.

“Okay lady, what nickname would you suggest for our team?” Bill asked.

“I don’t care what you call them. Anything that doesn’t promote racial or ethnic stereotypes or exploit or demean any group of people.”

“How about the Fighting Peaceniks?” Bill suggested.

“Or the Grappling Granola Crunchers,” Twinkle chimed in.

“I kind of like the Vegans. If you’ve already got to put the word Constantinople on your banner, you need a short word to go with it so you don’t run out of room. The Animal Activists would be nice too, but it's just too long,” said the always thoughtful Chuck Nivens.

“I cast my vote for the Battling Birkenstocks,” Durell said.

“You people are just a bunch of hayseed, redneck, inbred, trailer-park trash, fascist, racist hicks,” the woman shouted. “Except for you,” she said pointing to Durell. “You are just a willing accomplice of the white man and you should be ashamed of yourself for becoming his tool.”

“Who are you calling a tool?” Durell shouted back.

“Okay Dr. Janovsky-Hayward, you’ve given us a lot to think about,” Bill said after he was able to control his laughter. “We’ll take this under advisement. Y’all can run back to your drum circle now. Meeting adjourned.”

School board meeting, part 2

If you haven't already read part 1 (below), please begin there.

“It’s recently come to the attention of the SCACEIB that the nickname of Constantinople High School is The Turks.”

“And has been for the last eighty years. It’s not exactly a secret. Are you from around here?” Bill asked.

“Yes, I’m a resident of Constantinople and a professor at the university.”

“Let me guess, anthropology.”

“Sociology.”

“Same thing. So what’s the problem?”

“The problem is the Constantinople High School nickname is a demeaning insult to Turkish people everywhere. How could you come up with a name that offensive?”

The young reporter from the News-Leader was now wide awake, along with everyone else in the room. Her portable tape recorder was rolling and she was scribbling notes furiously even as she mentally wrote and re-wrote the lead for the best story of her brief career.

“Um, because Constantinople is the biggest city in Turkey? It’s not intended to be an insult.”

“You’re wrong. Istanbul is the largest city in Turkey. I take it you've never studied history or geography, Mister Chairman. Constantinople was part of an empire a thousand years ago and no longer exists. It was in modern day Iraq, I believe.”

“Explain it to the professor, would you, Jeff?”

Jeff McKee sang choir solos at First Presbyterian. Whenever a karaoke machine was operating in Cahaba County, Jeff was sure to be there, reaching for the microphone. There wasn’t a shy bone in Jeff’s body, so he was thrilled to bust out an abbreviated version of the theme song of his swing band, The Turkish Delights, when his cue came.

Istanbul was Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul not Constantinople
Been a long time gone
Old Constantinople's still has Turkish delight
On a moonlight night

Evr'y gal in Constantinople
Is a Miss-stanbul, not Constantinople
So if you've date in Constantinople
She'll be waiting in Istanbul

Take me back to Constantinople
No, you can't go back to Constantinople
Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople
Why did Constantinople get the works?
That's nobody's business but the Turks'

“Okay, so I may have been wrong about Constantinople not being in Turkey," she conceded after the applause for Jeff's performance subsided. "But it's still offensive to call the team the Turks. I would never go to anything as violent, sexist and senseless as a football game, but I’ve seen pictures of that horrible mascot of yours.”

“Sultan? What’s wrong with him?” Bill asked. Sultan was the school mascot. Sultan was always the most muscular boy in school not coordinated enough to make the team, and he led the Turks onto the field each game waving his wooden scimitar and shouting his “Turkish” war cry. His costume was somebody’s vision of what a Turkish sultan must look like complete with satin vest, baggy-legged satin pants, gold slippers that curled to a point and a massive turban with a huge costume ruby in front.

“It’s a racial stereotype, that’s what’s wrong with him. Can’t you see that? And those so-called harem girls are even more offensive.”

Sultan was accompanied on the field by several “harem girls” waving pastel streamers and wearing outfits straight out of “I Dream of Jeannie.” Over the years the outfits had grown more provocative, exposing a millimeter or two more of the girls’ flesh with each passing season. Last season, two of the harem girls sported navel rings

“I was a harem girl when I was at CHS, and they’re not going anywhere,” said Twinkle with unshakable resolve.

School board meeting, part 1

A lot of things happen in Cahaba County, and most of them won't ever appear in a book. This is one of those stories. It came to me, fully formed, last night. I think it's a bit long for one post, so I'll stretch it out over three. I hope you like it.



The July meeting of the Cahaba County School Board was always the hardest to endure.

Even though there was little real business to conduct in July, this meeting lasted as long as any of the others. No one knew why this was, but it made the meeting interminable for everyone forced to sit through it.

School board chairman Bill Boatright scanned the room as the meeting dragged on. Everyone in there looked like they were in a drugged stupor except for the girl from The Constantinole News-Leader who may actually have been asleep. The room hadn't even been a quarter full when the meeting started, but people had drifted away over the course of the evening until only a couple of dozen remained, including the nine board members. Except for a small cluster of five scruffy looking middle aged people seated together in the back of the room, everyone left was either required to be there or was a chronic meeting regular.

Bill was more than ready for a little comic relief when he called the last agenda item. He had no idea what was coming, but he had been looking forward to this moment all night.

“We have a request from a group of concerned citizens to address the board. Is there a representative from that organization present?”

The clump in the back of the room stirred and a woman rose. She was diminutive and rail-thin with tan sinewy arms. Bill guessed she was in her forties. Her hair was long and straight--dirty blonde with streaks of gray mixed in. Tiny round wire framed glasses perched on her pointed nose. No makeup, but a large gold hoop dangled from each ear. She wore a colorful print peasant blouse and faded designer blue jeans with a frayed red cord for a belt. On her feet were leather Jesus sandals. A beaded necklace strung with a hemp cord completed the look.

“I’ll speak for the group,” she said. She had a strong voice for such a tiny thing.

Twinkle Sanders, sitting to Bill’s left, put her hand over the microphone on the table in front of her and leaned over. “Don’t let the hippie clothes fool you,” she whispered in his ear. “She comes from money. That’s all designer stuff. It takes a lot of cash to look that trashy.”

“Please approach the microphone in the front and state your name and business before this board.”

“My name is Dr. Diane Janovsky-Hayward and I represent The South Central Alabama Citizens for the End to Institutional Bigotry.”

“That’s quite a mouthful. What can we do for you, sugar?”

The woman gasped and her eyes flashed in anger behind her John Lennon glasses, just as Bill intended. He had an idea feminist hippies didn’t like being called sugar and he had intentionally goaded the lady to stir the pot. Whatever it was she wanted, he gave it about five minutes before all five of these weirdos were on their feet denouncing the board as a bunch of fascist sexists. He couldn’t think of a better way to end the dullest meeting of the year.

The woman didn’t rise to Bill’s bait. She took a deep breath, swallowed her biting response and continued . . .

They's neutrals

Several of you enjoyed meeting a character named Dump in today's earlier post.

I can't think of a single other Dump in all of literature, but it's not a name I made up. I actually had a distant relative (on my hillbilly side) known to the world as "Uncle Dump." I've always wanted to use that name in a story, and I got my chance when I started writing my tale of Constantinople, Alabama.

I have a yarn from that branch of my extended family that may or may not make it into my Constantinople story. It's too good not to share, so I'll tell it here. The names are changed because I can't remember them, but the rest is true.

Mostly.

Virgil was a ne'er-do-well distant Kentucky cousin who always had a get-rich-quick scheme going. Back when mink coats were still the height of fashion, Virgil went into business raising nutrias and chinchillas for their fur. His base of operations was his parents abandoned hen house. Virgil was convinced these less expensive substitutes for mink were going to be his ticket to riches.

Maybe it was just his country accent, but Virgil always referred to the orange-toothed rodents he was raising out back as his "neutrals."

Mama Effie, the ancient and imposing grande dame of the entire clan, didn't suffer fools gladly and had a fearsome way of cutting down good-for-nothings, even ones who happened to be kin to her.

One day, when Effie was visiting Virgil's parents, Virgil proudly gave her a tour of the hen house turned fur factory. Mama Effie nodded as Virgil spoke of all the money he was going to make from the pelts but walked back to the house with pursed lips and without saying a word.

That Thanksgiving, Virgil showed up late for the big family supper. And drunk. With dozens of members of the extended family gathered in the room, Mama Effie, greeted him loud enough for everyone to hear.

"Hey Virgil. How's your possums?"

"They's neutrals, Mama Effie," Virgil wailed. "They's neutrals."

Fishing with Dump

Eli felt a twinge of jealousy in the passenger seat as Dump’s Nitro Z-7 skittered across the reddish-green water of Lake Cataheechee in the direction of one of his companion’s many favorite fishing spots. Fishing was okay, but Eli never caught the bug in the same way as some of his addicted friends. Sure, he enjoyed the companionship with other men in the open air and the momentary thrill when a big bass hammered his lure, but he wasn’t crazy enough about the sport to drop twenty grand on a shiny bass rig. Eli wasn’t the type to spend that kind of money on extravagant toys. Still, Dump’s year-old boat was a honey and something any native son of Alabama son would covet.

The roar of the Mercury 150 outboard engine made conversation impossible until they reached Dump’s fishing hole, so Eli looked ahead and made frequent adjustments to the brim of his tatty green Mules’ ball cap to avoid the embarrassment of seeing it fly off his head and into the water, an event Dump was doing his best to make happen.

Barry Lewis was the sheriff and one of the most respected men in Cahaba County, but everyone, even his wife and children, knew him only as Dump. The only time his given first name ever appeared was on paper ballots when he stood for re-election every four years. In four of the last eight election cycles he had run without even token opposition. The election officials in Montgomery refused to allow him to run as Dump Lewis, but conceded that having his name appear on the ballot as Barry “Dump” Lewis was acceptable.

The origin of his nickname was lost to history, even to Dump himself. By the time he was the starting center for the Constantinople High School Lions, the name had already been affixed to him like a burr to a sock, and that was nearly five decades ago.

Like any enduring nickname, Dump’s fit him like the sheriff’s uniform he wore like a second skin. For this fishing trip Eli wore blue jeans and an old sweatshirt, but Dump showed up dressed for duty, as always. Dump’s abounding belly overlapped his shining black utility belt, his uniform was always spotless but permanently rumpled, and he walked with an oft-imitated shambling hunched gait that seemed both purposeful and aimless. Most of the time Dump spoke softly, in a kind of mumbling monotone, and listeners had to strain to pluck the words and meaning. He could be a compelling speaker when the situation called for it, but he stayed away from microphones as much as he could.

Whatever image his name and outward appearance projected, Eli knew Dump Lewis was both a canny politician and the best sheriff Cahaba County had ever seen. And when the man had something to tell you, you’d best listen to what he had to say.

Dump shut down and raised the engine in the back of the boat while Eli locked the trolling motor in place at the front. Eli wondered again about the real purpose for their early-morning fishing date. The gray October sky threatened to give way to a cold drizzle at any moment, making this a less than perfect day for fishing. Many men in Cahaba County had already stored their boats for the coming winter and were more concerned with preparing their hunting gear and scouting locations for the coming deer season than they were with chasing after bass. A few rugged souls were already in the woods stalking bucks since the early bow season had opened the day before.

When Dump surprised Eli by inviting him on the early morning fishing trip, Eli was flattered, even though neither of them had any business taking the morning off on a Tuesday this time of year. Eli tried to put off the invitation, claiming work obligations, but Dump argued that they both had a long weekend of work ahead and deserved a few hours off one weekday morning. When Dump insisted and promised to have Eli back home by eleven so he could be showered, dressed and in his office by noon, Eli gave in, but with reluctance and a twinge of guilt. He hated to take any down time when classes were in session, but saying no to Dump Lewis wasn’t smart.

After the two had settled in and lures were in the water, Dump began the ritualized good-natured derision of everything from Eli’s choice of gear to his casting technique. Eli played the game, firing back some barbs of his own but being careful to leave the boat out of the verbal firing line. You didn’t bad-mouth another man’s boat, not even in jest.

An hour later, after Dump had reeled in and released two beautiful bass to Eli’s none, he began to unveil his real agenda.

If right-brains ruled the world

This and that:

The big debate in publishing circles now is on the future of paper books in an e-book era.

At a writers' conference I attended recently, author and former bookstore owner Sonny Brewer addressed this subject in a Q&A session. The short version of his answer was that e-books are a fact of life whether we like it or not, and that's bad news for bookstore owners.

People feel strongly about e-books--you either love them or hate them. Smug Kindle and iPad owners brag about being able to hold an entire library in their palms. E-book eschewers are horrified by these demons of the digital world and counter that nothing substitutes for the tactile experience of curling up with a real book.

I come down on the side of "real" books in this debate, but not for the usual reasons. My reason for favoring traditional books is purely economic.

I'm not a romantic by nature, and I have nothing against the march of progress. I'm okay with reading from a printed page, an electronic screen or even stone tablets, if that's what's available. I want the words--I don't care so much about the delivery system.

But I'm on a tight budget, and don't have a bunch of extra money to drop on a Kindle or even actual books printed on paper. These days I get my books for free or close to it. I get my books for free from the public library, and as long as libraries continue to make books available, I'm a happy boy. I can get just about anything I want from my tiny Suburbingham library. If they don't have it, they can get it for me through inter library loan. I may have to wait a while to get a book, but usually only a couple of days before the robotic voice calls my house to tell me my book is waiting for me. If its something on the bestseller list, I'll have to wait a few weeks. Currently I'm 30th in line for the most recent installment in Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum saga but only 8th in line for Carl Hiassen's latest masterpiece (publishing this week). No problem: I've got plenty of other things to read. I can wait.

Most of the books I buy these days come from the thrift store. On a recent trip, I came home with Glitz by Elmore Leonard and Hotel by Arthur Hailey. I remember reading Hotel a long time ago and liking it. Published in 1965 the novels is about the operation of a big New Orleans hotel. I don't know what Glitz is about, but I like everything Mr. Leonard writes. Each book was under a buck. My copy of Glitz is a large trade paperback, while Hotel is a hardback in great condition, and appears to be a first edition.

Summer is almost over, but, for thriller fans, I've got two summer "must reads" and one to avoid at all costs.

If you haven't started reading, Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy ("The Girl Who . . ." books), what are you waiting for? Fantastic plotting and amazing characters come together in a wonderful Swedish stew. The three books about an urbane magazine publisher and plucky but mentally disturbed young computer hacker are the best thing to come out of Sweden since ABBA. Perhaps it's the translation into English, but the prose is merely workmanlike and doesn't sparkle as it could and probably should. But, who cares, when you've got a story this good?

I recently saw Strip by Thomas Perry listed in one of those must-read lists, and decided to take a chance on it. What a delightful surprise. In this fast-paced tale, a guy moves to LA and is wrongly accused of robbing a shady strip club owner. Hijinks ensue. Strip is going to make one fantastic movie. The low-life mobster, Manco Kapec, is one of the best drawn and most sympathetic bad guys I've come across in years. Perry's plotting reminds me a lot of the aforementioned Elmore Leonard, and that's high praise.

For my money, the most offensive summer read this year is Ordinary Thunderstorms by William Boyd. In this unfortunate pile of drivel, a guy goes to London for a job interview and finds himself at a murder scene. Instead of just calling the cops, as any sane person would, the moron poses as a homeless man to avoid getting caught. Why? I have no idea. The first few chapters were so illogically plotted and pretentiously written, I abandoned the book in favor of something that made some sense.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that a story can only work if the reader is able to "willingly suspend his disbelief" and Ordinary Thunderstorms violated that principle for me from about page three. I didn't believe a word of it. To make matters worse, Boyd is clearly so in love with his own writing that his inability to not show off his mad writing skills ruins what little voice his story has. He frequently gets in his own way by using fancy words and constructions when simple ones will do nicely. That's not a demonstration of craft, it's pretension. How this abortion on paper got on anyone's "best of" list is beyond me.

Teri has smart phone fever. Her old dumb phone is in desperate need of a changeout, I'll give her that much. She has convinced herself a smart phone and media package will improve her life by allowing her to check her e-mail from anywhere.

Like that's a good thing.

I can't argue with Teri's perception of her own wants, needs and desires, but I'm not looking for that kind of enhancement to my own life right now. At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I want my phone to make phone calls; I don't need to do anything else with it. Heck, I don't even use my cell phone for its primary purpose often enough to burn up the 150 minutes a month I have to buy to keep my pre-paid plan active.

Who am I kidding? I love iThings, and if money were no object I'd be in Tahiti and writing this blog from an iPhone.

The writers' conference I mentioned earlier got me thinking of the similarities and differences between a gathering of creative types and the many sales meetings I've attended. The basic formula is the same: meet a bunch of other people in a big hotel, attend sessions in conference rooms, listen to inspirational speeches, eat banquet food, go home energized.

Those were the similarities, but the differences were huge. Salespeople are an outgoing and talkative bunch. Open up the bar and watch the good times roll. Writers, it turns out, are either very social or very withdrawn. There doesn't seem to be much middle ground. Open the bar at a writers' conference and the room is as likely to turn into a melancholy therapy session as it is wild party.

Living in New Orleans as long as I did, I came to know a lot of creative types--writers, chefs, painters, sculptors and musicians. It was always nice to have one or two around to liven up a party. Artists always add spice to the mix. But every cook knows that too much spice can ruin a dish.

So, there I was at a conference composed entirely of right-brained writers. Putting together a group of flamboyantly social and painfully shy artists makes for a weird dynamic.

The nicest part of the writer's conference was the "business meeting" that closed it. If any of these folks had ever heard of Robert's Rules of Order, they were incapable of adhering to them. No motions were presented, no officers were elected, no votes were taken, no issues were discussed. Nobody asked questions or even called for the meeting to adjourn. When a couple of brief announcements were made and some door prizes raffled off, it just kind of ended by consensus and people began to drift away.

It was the most pleasant "business meeting" I've ever attended and led me to conclude that artists should be in charge of all meetings. Nothing would get done, but everyone would go away happy.

Cacophony of ignorance

When did we all become such drama queens?

Right now a tropical storm is in South Florida and heading for the Gulf. Bonnie is not a hurricane and isn't forecast to become one at any point before she eventually peters out somewhere over Arkansas. She is a tropical storm and nothing more.

If you've ever been through a tropical storm you already know that they bring a lot of rain and some wind. A tropical storm is not that big a deal. Unless one is interrupting your beach vacation or fishing trip, experiencing a tropical storm can be kind of nice. The air becomes impossibly full of tepid globules of rain which freshen the world wherever they land. Sometimes the rain is so heavy the individual drops seem to be suspended, hanging pendulously in mid-air.

So why have the news reports I've seen on Bonnie make it seem the world is coming to an end and she is going to wreak a terrible path of destruction?

We feed on the drama, that's why.

Yesterday it was hot here in Suburbingham. It will be hot here again today too. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone since it's always hot in Alabama in late July.

Yesterday I went for a long bike ride at Oak Mountain. When I got home I pushed my lawn mower around for a couple of hours in the heat of the day. After all of that exertion on a day with the mercury approaching 100, I was a hot, sweaty mess and very, very tired.

Duh!

In the middle of my mowing chores, I went inside to down about a gallon of iced tea. I flipped on the radio and the announcer said there was a "special heat advisory" from whoever it is that issues such things. I was told not to go outside or exert myself or I might get heat stroke and die. Oh, the drama!

I switched off the radio and finished mowing my yard. I didn't die.

I'm a recovering cable news addict. CNN, Fox News, MSNBC--I was hooked on all of them. These days I only indulge my addiction when I'm on my treadmill in the basement, and that's more than sufficient. There was a bit of fake news the other day that took over all three of the major cable networks and has leaked over to the radio and newspapers.

A video showing a low-level federal agriculture employee giving a "racist" speech to the NAACP was handed to Fox News, and they ran with it like a starving dog with a New York strip. In the short clip, the Department of Agriculture employee, a black woman, talked about her reluctance to help a white Georgia farmer in danger of losing his family farm.

Before you can say "instant news cycle" the woman gets fired by the Secretary of Agriculture, the NAACP condemns her, and the cable news outlets go into emergency wall-to-wall coverage.

Then someone bothered to watch her speech in its entirety and discovered the point of it was the exact opposite of the short clip shown on TV.

Before you can say "hysterical talking heads," the NAACP and the White House apologize, and the cable news guys start pointing fingers of blame in all directions. Except for breathless breaking news updates about Mel Gibson and Lindsay Lohan, this is the only thing they've talked about in the last few days.

If you've watched cable news for more than ten minutes, you're familiar with the panel discussion segment. This is where a group of people representing a broad range of political thought debate the issues of the day with a host/moderator keeping the discussion moving.

Frequently these discussions degenerate into shouting matches and end up with the panelists and the moderator all screaming into their microphones at once, making it impossible to understand a word any of them are saying.

The end result is an annoying cacophony of ignorance.

Shakespeare talked about the cable news networks in Macbeth. He only thought he was giving us a metaphor about life. "It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

There's real drama out there, Discerning Reader. Believe me, there is. But you won't hear about it from Keith Olbermann or Bill O'Reilly.

From 'A Short History of Constantinople'

What follows is a brief excerpt taken from W.P. Mann's "A Short History of Cahaba County, Alabama," reprinted with permission of the author.

Constantinople exists today because of a small artificial waterfall spanning Buck Creek, which runs through the center of town. Once, that concrete shelf powered the machines of another age. Today red, green and blue spotlights illuminate the falling water at night, lending it a nocturnal beauty Constantinople's nineteenth century industrialists could have neither imagined nor appreciated.

First to be built beside the waterfall was the Kirkwood Metal Works, a rolling mill that fed the Confederate war machine through most of the Civil War. By 1859 a grist mill and a cotton gin stood on the opposite bank, also powered by the Buck Creek waterfall; and through the mid-eighteenth century the small city prospered and grew beside it.

The Union Army found the top secret Kirkwood Mill in September 1864 and burned it to the ground, the first in a series of blows threatening the very existence of the city. After surviving the difficult Reconstruction years, Constantinople began to flourish again. But in 1910 the coal seams just outside of town gave out. In 1913 the boll weevil arrived in Cahaba County, wiping out the county's main cash crop. The Great Tornado of 1914 was the final blow, killing sixty-three people and leveling what remained of the the already-dwindled downtown. In 1915, with Constantinople's population reduced by two thirds, a referendum to move the county seat to nearby Jordan was narrowly defeated but the decision to rebuild the county courthouse in Constantinople was postponed for a second year, leaving the issue in doubt.

If it were not for the energy and money its wealthiest citizen expended to found a technical college in the city, Constantinople may have disappeared altogether. After years of determined effort, the Presbyterian Men's Mechanical and Technical College of Alabama (Presbyterian Tech) was founded in 1866 on land donated by Kirkwood on the site where his family's rolling mill once stood.

The tiny college focused exclusively on mechanical engineering and business. For decades Presbyterian Tech engineers kept Birmingham's massive steel mills running while Tech's accounting graduates kept the steel mill ledgers in balance.

In 1926, the small college was turned over to the State of Alabama and renamed Alabama Mechanical and Technical College over the strenuous objections of Alabama Polytechnic University (later Auburn University). Together, the college and city prospered and grew, the college on the west bank of Buck Creek and the city to the east. Today almost none of the twenty-six thousand permanent residents living in Constantinople or the over nineteen thousand students attending the university realize they are there because a modest artificial waterfall was once built across Buck Creek.

But, there it stands today, hiding in plain sight in the center of town. Every spring thousands descend on the site for Cahaba Fest, which culminates in the Great Duck Race. Residents, students and tourists spend a few dollars each to buy a numbered yellow rubber duck and cheer lustily as they are dropped simultaneously from a huge bin suspended over the waterfall by a crane. The spectators cheer again when the first rubber duck crosses the finish line downstream and the number written underneath reveals the winner of the new pickup truck.

Every fall colored water flows over the waterfall after each Alabama Tech football home victory. Following each win, harmless dye packs representing the opposing school's colors are tossed into Buck Creek just above the waterfall. Constantinoplians are never more self-satisfied than those precious hours when Buck Creek bleeds Auburn orange or Alabama crimson.

Break out the Kleenex

My friend Chuck is a singer-songwriter. As with most artists, it's his passion, not his day job.

Chuck decided to take on the Gulf oil spill in a song. Here it is.

What to call a roomful of poets

Knowing I was going to write about poets today, I asked my Facebook pals to suggest some good collective nouns for poets.

You know what a collective noun is: a gaggle of geese, a flock of doves, a pack of wolves, a herd of cattle, etc.

My all time favorite collective noun is a murder of crows. How evocative is that?

I had already come up with a drivel of poets, a scribe of poets and a blather of poets. Alice, who was my date for the senior prom thirty odd years ago, added the classy "stanza of poets" to the list. My crazy Cajun friend Chriss ended the debate with the definitive and perfect collective noun for poets...

...wait for it...

...a barista of poets.

Poets are such nice people. Why is the world so cruel to them?

Roses are red . . .

You learn something new every day.

I don't think the old platitude is true--in fact I'm convinced it's just crap. There have been plenty of days in my half century on this earth where where I'm certain I was just taking up space and didn't accomplish or learn a single damned thing. And I personally know a bunch a people who haven't learned or done one useful thing in decades.

Learn something new every day? Give me a break.

Last weekend I made up for a bunch of the wasted days and wasted nights of my life when I attended the Alabama Writers' Conclave. Over three days I filled up a fresh composition book with all the new things I was learning. A lot of the things I learned were kind of writery, so you probably wouldn't be interested in hearing about them, Discerning Reader.

But four of the lessons learned over the weekend were so powerful I had to add them to my personal Rulebook of Life. These four discovered precepts belong in the "general societal hazards" chapter of the rulebook, and I've decided to share them with you today as a public service to all mankind. Now pay attention and commit these four rules to memory.

Are you ready?

1. Never hand a poet a microphone.

2. If you are in a room containing a poet and a microphone, the two will inevitably find each other over the course of the evening.

3. If you are trapped in a room containing both an aggregation (or barista, see post above) of poets and a microphone, you will soon experience both disorientation and discomfort. This is also inevitable.

4. The only thing worse than a poet with a microphone is a drunk poet with a microphone.

A significant minority of the people attending the writers' conference over the weekend were poets.

I've always been fascinated by poets. I'm challenged by their intellect and mastery of the English language. I'm in awe of their talent--at their ability to weave words in a way that stirs and illuminates the soul. I admire the civility and sincerity I've observed in every poet I've ever met.

Mostly I'm amazed these people are so dedicated to creating things so beautiful yet so undesired.

Most people today don't seem to care about poetry, and, other than in Hallmark greeting cards, you don't find a lot of it out there in everyday life. A reality show about trampy housewives can get boffo ratings, but of the hundreds of cable channels on my television, I can't think of a single place where poets and poetry are celebrated, featured and discussed.

Poets know the world ignores them, but they pursue their craft anyway, laboring in determined obscurity to create masterful works of art that have no hope of ever being seen by more than a handful of people.

To be a poet you've got to have a day job. Even if your self-identity is "poet," you need to find some other way to pay the bills. Poet is not a viable career path. A lot of poets are (or were) English teachers, which is about the closest one can come to being a poet full time.

Can you name the Poet Laureate of the United States? Me either. But I can now name the Poet Laureate of Alabama--a charming, energetic, whip-smart and frighteningly talented woman named Sue Brannan Walker. I met her over the weekend. In a room. With a microphone. They found each other. It was inevitable.

Even Dr. Walker has a day job to support her compulsion to write and disseminate poetry; she's a professor at the University of South Alabama.

I think you must be born with some sort of practicality gene missing in order to become a poet, and Dr. Walker embodies that spirit. When the microphone found her on Friday, of course she shared a few of her own poems. Poets are powerless to stop themselves from reading their own work. Between poems she spoke about an initiative she's leading to teach the homeless people of Mobile to write poetry. Everyone in the room, including me, heartily applauded the sentiment, positive energy and pure motivations behind this cause, but was I the only one to wonder if it is wise to expend resources and energy teaching unemployed people the single least financially useful skill on earth?

They may be accustomed to a world that ignores them, but poets crave affirmation and recognition too; so when the "open mic" times came after the day's formal activities were completed, the poets were irresistibly drawn, like flies to honey, to fill the available slots and share their work with an actual willing audience.

The open mic times were a sort of karaoke for writers. Anyone who wished to read from their works had five minutes and the microphone. A handful of prose authors and essayists read, but the vast majority of the presenters on both nights were poets.

Most of the poetry I heard was very good and crafted from words strung together like bright beads around a pretty woman's neck. Hearing those poems reminded me how much I like poetry when I accidentally bump into it. Some of the poetry I heard over the weekend was incomprehensible and quickly forgotten but I clapped for every single reader anyway.

Two of the poets were tipsy. Liquored up poets don't become aggressive or mean like drunks at a biker bar, but their condition does compel them to deliver rambling introductions to each poem they read and leads to the unfortunate decision to read poetry composed moments before on the back of cocktail napkins. When a poet introduces her work with the words "this is going to be a little rough," you can be sure a few incoherent moments are just ahead.

In case any poets stumble across these words, I'm not mocking you. Okay, I am mocking you--a little--but only because I love you and admire you for possessing a talent and a way of seeing and sharing your world that is absent in me.

The world may not respect them, but the world needs poets more than it could ever know. I am comforted they are out there hiding in plain sight among us and carefully tending and protecting words like gibbously on behalf of the rest of us. You never know when we'll need those words back.

Here's to poets. I love you all. Now will someone please switch off the microphone?

Shhh, I'm back but don't tell anyone

I'm back. I couldn't stand it any longer.

I just snuck in through the back door and I'm not going to tell anyone I'm here just yet, so let's just keep my return between us for now.

So many things have happened since the Best Year Ever blog went on hiatus on May 31st and it has been a struggle not being able to share these life events with you.

This new version of the blog--The News From Constantinople--is going to be very different from the BYE blog you've come to know and presumably love. Not even I know precisely where we're going with this little experiment, so that's all the introduction I can give you.

I'm getting ready for a writer's conference that begins tomorrow. There's going to be an "open mic" night tomorrow evening. If I feel brave, I'm going to read the following sketch introducing the setting of my second book.

In case you're not able to attend the conference or I chicken out when the time comes--here's what I'm planning to read. This will be just like being at the conference except you won't hear my actual voice and you won't be subjected to any dreadful poetry along the way.

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Contantinople, Alabama is two cities occupying one geographic space. Constantinople proper is a city of thirty-two thousand souls and the seat of Cahaba County. Its residents mark their time there in generations, not in years, and their lives are intertwined in an unseen gordian knot made up of thousands of smaller interconnecting knots tied together over the passing decades. Each child of Constantinople is raised in growing awareness of some of the individual knots binding him to the others and an ever-growing understanding that there are thousands of others, even if no one person can see them all or know how each came to be tied.

The people of Constantinople see the newest knots with perfect clarity because those are the one they cinched themselves, bringing renewed strength to already unbreakable bonds. Some of these knots are sturdy and made of thick ancient ropes pulled taut by many strong hands, but many more are ephemeral wisps of silk, loosely tied to the others without care or caution. But even the most tenuous or evanescent of ties is sufficient to bind when enough are added to the whole over successive strings of lifetimes.

Some children of Constantinople grow up feeling constricted by the pervasive communal ligature. They are the ones who start fresh in other places to live free from the relational tangle that is their home town. The ones who stay find comfort in the knots and live in the knowledge they are held securely and perpetually in place. Still others, like Eli Townshend, chafe and break away for a time, only to return later. The ones who wander for a season before coming home never leave Constantinople a second time.

Time moves slowly in the red brick homes and buildings of Cahaba County. Change and progress occur—the city and county are not immune to larger political, economic and social shifts—but real change comes to Constantinople grudgingly and only after reflection. Storm clouds gather and the winds of change blow over Cahaba County just as they do everywhere, but the source of the storm is always found outside its borders.

Inside the borders of Constantinople there exists a second city--a city comprised almost entirely of immigrants and transients. This second city was built to serve the ideas of change and transition and clings to those values with the same strength of will that Constantinople holds to their opposites.

The second city within the city lives in a symbiotic and generally harmonious relationship with the first and is the county’s economic engine. The twenty-thousand students at Alabama Tech University come from all over the state and the world to study, graduate and then disperse--only a handful stay past their time at Tech.

The backgrounds of ATU’s faculty members are even more diverse than the student body, and though they may come to live in Constantinople for decades, their real citizenship is with the university and not the town.

A constant stream of outsiders flow through the city and are always among them, but the “real” citizens of Constantinople are inoculated from birth against the dangerous ideas, customs and beliefs these transients import. Time passes, but the ways of old Constantinople persist, and the invisible knot abides. Because Cahaba County is a place of deep generational memory and the university is, by design, its antithesis, to the extent one shapes the other at all, it is the town shaping the culture of the university, and fine threads of the larger knot have attached themselves almost imperceptibly to the school over time.

Though neither the city nor university could exist in their present form without the support and cooperation of the other, the residents of the two interdependent cities seem indifferent to the events and activities occurring in the other as they run their separate courses.

There is one common passion between the inhabitants of both cities. Alabama Tech Mules football is the subject of fervent interest, discussion, speculation and intrigue year round everywhere in the county.

A small minority in Cahaba County hold dual citizenship, and these people struggle for stability living with a foot in both worlds. Eli is one of those. He was born and raised in Constantinople but works and studies at the university. Eli’s wife Sandy is another, earning her dual citizenship from the other side of the invisible divide. A Connecticut Yankee and a biology professor at ATU, she found herself bound to the gordian knot of Constantinople on the day she married a man from town.