Category Archives: Personal

Fifty years of summertime pop, rated

The sleeve of my "Honky Tonk Women" single.

Last week, I called into question the value of recent pop music. I was moved to do so by this feature on NPR, regarding “The Songs Of The Summer, 1962-2012,” which ran the gamut “from surf rock in the early 1960s through British then American rock ‘n’ roll, disco, power ballads, R&B, boy bands and hip-hop.”

I thought it particularly meaningful that it counted from what Gene Sculatti’s The Catalog of Cool described as “The Last Good Year.”

I listened to the Spotify mix that the story linked to (there’s also a version provided by NPR itself, but you don’t get to pick where you jump in — it’ more like conventional radio that way).

The list confirms me in my belief, that there hasn’t been a summer like that of 1966 since. As I said before:

Puts me in mind of the summer of ’66. I came back from the beach determined to go out and buy three singles: “Green Grass” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, “I Am a Rock” by Simon and Garfunkel, and “Little Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs.

OK, so sue me. I was 12. At least “I Am a Rock” was cool.

But look at what else came out that summer:
PAPERBACK WRITER – The Beatles
WILD THING – The Troggs
PAINT IT, BLACK – The Rolling Stones (still my favorite Stones song)
SUMMER IN THE CITY – The Lovin’ Spoonful
HANKY PANKY – Tommy James & The Shondells
STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT – Frank Sinatra
MOTHER’S LITTLE HELPER – The Rolling Stones
AIN’T TOO PROUD TO BEG – The Temptations
DIRTY WATER – The Standells
WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN – Percy Sledge
SUNSHINE SUPERMAN – Donovan
MONDAY, MONDAY – The Mamas & The Papas

Not to mention these forgettable items that I loved at the time:
RED RUBBER BALL – The Cyrkle
SWEET PEA – Tommy Roe
THEY’RE COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY, HA-HAAA! – Napoleon XIV

That was all just one summer.

Come on — what will today’s 12-year-olds have to look back to in the future?

The answer to that question doesn’t appear to be very encouraging.

Gradually, over the past week, I listened to that mix while doing a lot of other things. Here’s how I rated what I heard, on a scale from zero stars to five:

2012: Carly Rae Jepsen, “Call Me Maybe”

2011: Adele, “Rolling In The Deep”

2011: LMFAO, “Party Rock Anthem”

2011: Nicki Minaj, “Super Bass”

2010: Eminem featuring Rihanna, “Love the Way You Lie”

2010: Katy Perry, “California Gurls”

2010: Taio Cruz, “Dynamite”

2009: Black Eyed Peas, “I Gotta Feeling”

2009: Taylor Swift, “You Belong With Me”

2008: Coldplay, “Viva La Vida”

2008: Katy Perry, “I Kissed A Girl”

2008: Lil Wayne featuring Static Major, “Lollipop” – Only gets a 1 because, if you only hear a second of it, it’s catchy. After 2 seconds, you hate it

0 2007: Rihanna featuring Jay-Z, “Umbrella”

0 2007: T-Pain featuring Yung Joc, “Buy U A Drank”

2006: Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”

0 2006: Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland, “Promiscuous”

2006: Shakira, “Hips Don’t Lie”

0 2005: Gwen Stefani, “Hollaback Girl”

0 2005: The Pussycat Dolls featuring Busta Rhymes, “Don’t Cha”

0 2004: Juvenile featuring Soulja Slim, “Slow Motion”

2004: Usher, “Confessions Part II”

2003: Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z, “Crazy In Love”

2003: Chingy, “Right Thurr”

2003: Sean Paul, “Get Busy” – This would get a 2, but for the monotony.

2002: Avril Lavigne, “Complicated” – Almost it to a three in the middle part, but not quite.

2002: Jimmy Eat World, “The Middle”

0 2002: Eminem, “Without Me”

0 2002: Nelly, “Hot In Herre”

0 2001: Destiny’s Child, “Bootylicious” – What did this in from the start was the ripped-off sample from Stevie Nicks’ highly irritating “Just Like the White-Winged Dove.” It only got worse from there.

2001: Eve featuring Gwen Stefani, “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”

1999: Christina Aguilera, “Genie In A Bottle”

1999: Jennifer Lopez, “If You Had My Love”

0 1999: Len, “Steal My Sunshine”

1999: Smash Mouth, “All Star”

0 1998: Next, “Too Close”

0 1998: Vengaboys, “We Like To Party”

1998: The Backstreet Boys, “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)”

1997: Hanson, “MMMBop” – Bubblegum, but not bad bubblegum. The chorus almost raises it to 3.

1997: Notorious B.I.G. featuring Puff Daddy & Ma$e, “Mo Money Mo Problems”

1997: Puff Daddy featuring Faith Evans & 112, “I’ll Be Missing You” – How much credit should a sample get? Because without that, this is nothing.

1996: Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, “Tha Crossroads”

1996: Los Del Rio, “Macarena” – Yes, the craze became a joke, but at least it has some musicality.

1996: Mariah Carey, “Always Be My Baby”

1995: Seal, “Kiss From A Rose”

1995: TLC, “Waterfalls”

1994: Ace of Base, “Don’t Turn Around”

1994: All-4-One, “I Swear”

1994: Lisa Loeb, “Stay” – Keeps threatening to sound good, but doesn’t get there.

1994: Warren G & Nate Dogg, “Regulate”

1993: Tag Team, “Whoomp! (There It Is)”

1993: UB40, “Can’t Help Falling In Love” – Too bad Elvis never heard this version.

1992: Boys II Men, “End of the Road”

1992: Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Under the Bridge”

1992: Sir Mix-A-Lot, “Baby Got Back” – I agree with the sentiment, at least.

1991: Bryan Adams, “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” – Not his best effort.

1991: DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince, “Summertime”

1991: EMF, “Unbelievable”

1990: Mariah Carey, “Vision Of Love”

1990: New Kids on the Block, “Step By Step”

1989: Martika, “Toy Soldiers”

1989: Richard Marx, “Right Here Waiting” – Syrupy.

1988: Cheap Trick, “The Flame”

1988: Steve Winwood, “Roll With It” – Not as good as his work with Blind Faith, not by a long shot. But it’s catchy.

1987: Heart, “Alone”

1987: U2, “With Or Without You” – Perhaps their best song.

1987: Whitney Houston, “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” – Excellent example of the genre, but I’m not a big fan of the genre.

1986: Madonna, “Papa Don’t Preach”

1986: Peter Cetera, “Glory Of Love”

1985: Huey Lewis & The News, “The Power of Love”

1985: Tears For Fears, “Shout” – One of the best of the 80s.

1984: Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time” – Not as good as “Girls Just Want to Have Fun”

1984: Prince & The Revolution, “When Doves Cry” – Not as good as “1999”

1983: The Police, “Every Breath You Take”

1983: Irene Cara, “Flashdance…What a Feeling”

1982: Paul McCartney & Stevie Wonder, “Ebony & Ivory” – Just chock full of good intentions, though.

1982: Human League, “Don’t You Want Me”

1982: Survivor, “Eye of the Tiger”

1981: Rick Springfield, “Jessie’s Girl”

1981: Kim Carnes, “Bette Davis Eyes”

1980: Lipps, Inc., “Funkytown”

1980: Billy Joel, “It’s Still Rock & Roll to Me”

1979: Donna Summer, “Bad Girls” – It would be a 1, but I don’t want Bud to hate me.

1979: Anita Ward, “Ring My Bell”

1978: Andy Gibb, “Shadow Dancing”

1978: Frankie Valli, “Grease” – Sorry, Frankie, but there were better songs in that show.

1977: Fleetwood Mac, “Dreams”

1976: Starland Vocal Band, “Afternoon Delight” – An oddball little hit.

1976: Elton John & Kiki Dee, “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”

1976: Wings, “Silly Love Songs”

1975: The Captain & Tennille, “Love Will Keep Us Together” – Perhaps a better song, done by someone else.

1974: Bo Donaldson & The Heywoods, “Billy, Don’t Be A Hero”

1974: George McCrae, “Rock Your Baby”

1973: Diana Ross, “Touch Me In The Morning”

1973: Jim Croce, “Bad Bad Leroy Brown”

1972: Bill Withers, “Lean On Me” – This just gets better and better.

1972: Sammy Davis, Jr., “The Candy Man” – How did this get in there?

1971: Bee Gees, “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart?” – I’m throwing the Bee Gees a bone here.

1971: Carole King, “It’s Too Late”

1970: The Carpenters, “(They Long To Be) Close To You”

1970: The Jackson 5, “The Love You Save”

1970: Edwin Starr, “War” – Good song, though it overstates its case (“absolutely nothing”).

1969: The Beatles, “Get Back”

1969: The Rolling Stones, “Honky Tonk Woman” – Not only a superlative summer song, it’s a great driving song, too.

1968: Simon & Garfunkel, “Mrs. Robinson”

1968: The Rascals, “People Got To Be Free”

1967: Aretha Franklin, “Respect” – Give her some.

1967: The Doors, “Light My Fire” – I probably would have rated this higher at the time.

1966: Tommy James & The Shondells, “Hanky Panky”

1966: The Troggs, “Wild Thing” — Elemental, proto-punk, garage band purity.

1966: The Lovin’ Spoonful, “Summer In The City”

1965: The Byrds, “Mr. Tambourine Man” — I’d have given the Dylan original another star.

1965: The Beatles, “Help!” — I feel bad that I didn’t give the Beatles five stars on anything, but none of their best songs were listed.

1965: The Rolling Stones, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

1965: Sonny & Cher, “I Got You Babe”

1964: Dean Martin, “Everybody Loves Somebody”

1964: The Animals, “House of the Rising Sun”

1964: The Beach Boys, “I Get Around”

1963: Lesley Gore, “It’s My Party”

1963: Jan & Dean, “Surf City”

1962: Ray Charles, “I Can’t Stop Loving You”

1962: Neil Sedaka, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”

1962: Little Eva, “The Loco-Motion” – Had trouble deciding on this one; may only be a 3.

Remembering (or not) the creative act

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This morning on NPR, Nora Ephron was remembered. Here are the opening lines of that report:

Nora Ephron brought us two of the most indelible scenes in contemporary cinema — and they’re startlingly different.

There’s the infamous “Silkwood shower,” from the 1983 movie, with Meryl Streep as a terrified worker at a nuclear power plant, being frantically scrubbed after exposure to radiation.

Then there’s the scene in which Meg Ryan drives home a point to Billy Crystal at Katz’s Deli, in 1989’s When Harry Met Sally. You know — the one that ends with “I’ll have what she’s having.”…

But here’s the thing. On the same radio station over the weekend, I heard Rob Reiner being interviewed on “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” He directed “When Harry Met Sally,” and he said this about it:

GROSZ: You know, so many of your movies specifically have very quotable lines. From “I’ll have what she’s having,” or, you know, “turn it up to 11,” or, you know, how many times do you ask a waiter for something and he turns to you and he says “as you wish?”

(LAUGHTER)

GROSZ: I mean there’s so many lines from your movies that are quotable. Do you go for that? Do you grab the script and scream at the writer?

REINER: No, no, you know, you just make a movie and you put these things in. And you never know what’s going to – you know, “I’ll have what she’s having” was a line that Billy Crystal came up with in that scene. We didn’t – my mother, you know, is the one who delivered that line…

So which was it? If she were alive, would Ms. Ephron agree with Mr. Reiner’s memory? I guess when a lot of creative people get together and collaborate on something that works and is remembered, it’s sometimes tough to remember who did what.

I know I sometimes have trouble remembering, from my career, whether I came up with a particular idea — or even whether I wrote a particular editorial — because all I know for sure was that I was heavily involved in the discussion.

It’s funny the things you can’t remember, years later. For instance, when I mentioned the other day meeting Barack Obama, it got me to thinking about others I had met. And I remembered the first presidential candidate I covered. It was Jimmy Carter. I remember being excited to be there, not only because it was an exciting thing to be covering an aspect of a presidential election (it was a routine reception in Memphis), but because I really liked Jimmy, and was excited about his 1976 candidacy. I remember a number of details about the event — such as the Secret Service requiring me to take a telephoto lens I’d brought with me out of its cylindrical case, to make sure it wasn’t a weapon — but I realized I couldn’t remember whether I shook hands with Gov. Carter or interacted with him in any way.

Odd that I have no idea about that. Memory is a funny thing.

I was struck by this when I interviewed the late Ted Sorensen, JFK’s legendary speechwriter. In the video below, you’ll see him be unsure about who came up with a certain line, but generously and loyally giving the credit to President Kennedy…

A tick whose bite can make you allergic to meat? That’s it! I may never venture outdoors again…

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I already had plenty of reasons to avoid going outdoors, including:

The heat, exacerbated by the humidity.
Sunburn.
Mosquitoes.
The fact that statistics show that more than 99 percent of yard work occurs there.

Now there’s this:

Meat lovers, beware. One bite from the tiny lone star tick may be enough to cause meat allergies and turn you into a vegetarian. Dr. Scott Commins of the University of Virginia has been seeing meat allergies popping up along the East Coast and thinks the tiny tick may be to blame. Of the nearly 400 cases he’s seen, nearly 90 percent report a history of tick bites. Commins says saliva from the tick that makes its way into the wound can cause some people to break out into hives or even anaphylactic shock three to six hours after chowing down on some animal carcass. So make sure either your sleeves are rolled up or you’re adequately covered in bug repellent before hitting that summer barbecue.

The lone star tick.

My diet is already limited enough with the allergies I have. An allergy to meat would be catastrophic, if you’ll excuse the understatement. As the colleague who brought this to my attention wrote, “Good grief! You need to avoid this fella at all costs or you’ll be down to nothing but rice!”

Add to that the fact that I’m one of these people who thinks that the only real food is meat; other foods are meant to complement meat. I heard an overweight standup comic say it well a number of years ago. It went something like: Salad isn’t food. Salad is something you eat with food.

So it’s settled. From now on, I just need to figure a way to protect myself between the house and the car …

Drat those computers! They’re so… stupid…

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I hope Marvin the Martian will forgive me for paraphrasing him with such liberty.

But that’s what came to mind when I saw my latest job tip.

As I’ve told y’all, back when I was unemployed, I signed up for all kinds of services that would give me a heads-up on jobs that would be a good fit for me. Or rather, on jobs that some software decided would be a good fit for me. Which is where the entertainment value lies, which is why I don’t take the trouble to get off these email lists.

Today, the very first tip that CareerBuilder.com gave me was “Head of Investor Relations.” Which cracked me up by itself. Applied to me, that is. But then, giving it a chance, I clicked on it to find the nugget, the correlation, that caused this tip to come to me. Perhaps, I thought, it was investor relations in a field that otherwise was just me all over. Here’s what I found:

[The company in question] is the world leader in the design, development and manufacture of arc welding products, robotic arc welding systems, plasma and oxyfuel cutting equipment and has a leading global position in the brazing and soldering alloys market.

You read that, and immediately my mug pops into your head, right?

Somewhere, there’s someone that job description was written for. And I hope they find each other, and are very happy. But it ain’t me, babe.

Being too ‘smart’ to see your own errors

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Bart brings my attention to this thought-provoking piece:

Jonah Lehrer’s new post at The New Yorker details some worrying research on cognition and thinking through biases, indicating that “intelligence seems to make [such] things worse.” This is because, as Richard West and colleagues concluded in their study, “people who were aware of their own biases were not better able to overcome them.” Being smarter does not make you better at transcending unjustified views and bad beliefs, all of which naturally then play into your life. Smarter people are better able to narrate themselves, internally, out of inconsistencies, blunders and obvious failures at rationality, whereas they would probably be highly critical of others who demonstrated similar blunders.

I am reminded of Michael Shermer’s view, when he’s asked why smart people believe weird things, like creationism, ghosts and (as with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) fairies: “Smart people are very good at rationalizing things they came to believe for non-smart reasons.” If you’ve ever argued with a smart person about an obviously flawed belief, like ghosts or astrology, you’ll recognise this: their justifications often involve obfuscation, deep conjecture into areas you probably haven’t considered (and that probably aren’t) relevant, and are all tied together neatly and eloquently because she’s a smart person…

Interesting proposition.

Here’s how I responded to it…

Well, I think there is little doubt that smart people are better at rationalizing a bad position.

I’ll also agree with the proposition that it is harder to argue a smart person out of a position if he is wrong. But only because it is harder to argue a smart person out of a position whether he is wrong OR right.

I’m going to strain your credulity by using myself as an example, even though that requires you, solely for the sake of argument, to consider me to be a smart person (but hey, I consider this to be a community of smart people — dumb people would be watching TV rather than debating ideas in writing, right?).

People — smart people — on my blog get frustrated sometimes with their inability to talk me out of a position. It’s not that I’m incapable of changing my mind on something. I sometimes do so quite abruptly. But usually not on the kinds of things we talk about on the blog. That’s because I have spent SO much time over the years honing my positions on those issues. And much of that time has been spent thinking about, and one by one knocking down, the arguments that might be offered in an effort to change my mind.

It’s not that I’m smarter than any of y’all. It’s that it was my job, every day for many years, to write my opinions for publication. When you do that, you take much greater care than most people do with their opinions. (I was very surprised to realize, over time, how much more carefully considered my positions on issues were after a couple of years on the editorial board. Before that, my opinions were private, and therefore largely untested. After I joined the board, every opinion I had went through the wringer before and after being expressed, and I took greater care accordingly.) You obsess about everything that could be wrong in your position, and raise every possible objection that you can think of that the hundreds of thousands of folks out there likely to read your opinion — including people more knowledgeable than you about the particular subject under discussion — might raise to knock it down. You work through each and every one of them before you finish writing and editing your opinion piece. Add to that the fact that it won’t get into the paper until it’s been read, and potentially challenged, by other people who do the same thing for a living, and go through the same daily exercises.

It makes for positions that, once fully formed, are hard to shake — whether they are wrong or right. I also believe that the process helps one be right, but whether wrong or right, shaking it takes some doing.

So basically, I admit that I could be wrong. It’s just that the process I went through in arriving at my wrong answer was sufficiently rigorous that even if you’re smarter than I am, you probably aren’t willing to invest the time it would take to dismantle the constructs upon which my position rests.

But I do hope you’ll keep trying. I like to think there’s hope for me…

Even superheroes slip up now and then

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I met a superhero over the weekend.

Not the kind in “The Avengers,” as enjoyable as that entertainment was (I actually saw it that first huge weekend, which is unusual for me). More like… did you see “Unbreakable,” about a very ordinary guy who gradually comes to realize he is invulnerable (except to water) and far stronger than a normal man?

More like that.

We had an eventful weekend. My little grandson had to go into the hospital on Friday night. He had a virus that his sister and cousins had been passing around, with fever, and because he was only three weeks old, they put him in Children’s Hospital and did a spinal tap on him. I would have thought that excessive, except his father, my elder son, actually had meningitis when he was only two weeks old, and it was caught just in time.

The good news, the wonderful news, is that he’s OK (except for a temp slightly over normal) and is home now.

Anyway, Saturday, we were visiting him, and when we got out to the car, it had a flat. I got out all the gear to change it, including one of those ridiculous little dogleg tire irons that never work. And true to form, this one did not. Oh, I got three of the lug nuts off, by standing on it to loosen them. But by then the too-soft metal at the fitting had bent, and it wouldn’t grip the remaining nuts.

So we called the roadside assist number on our insurance card, and waited.

After awhile a man parked next to us in a plain dark-blue pickup. No markings, and certainly not the wrecker we had expected. Very unassuming vehicle — a secret identity pickup truck, if you will.

Out of it got an ordinary, unassuming man in regular streetclothes. He looked sort of like Reginald VelJohnson, the actor known from “Family Matters” (the guy whose life Steve Urkel made miserable) and the first “Die Hard.” No uniform or coveralls or anything. It was when we saw him open his tailgate and start putting on kneepads — serious kneepads, like the ones that the Delta team wore in “Black Hack Down” — that we asked, “Are you here for us?”

Yes, as it happens, he was.

We showed him the tire. I showed him the useless, bent tire iron.

He reached into his unassuming pickup, and revealed his super power. It was … having exactly the right tool for the given situation!

He pulled out a heavy, 25-inch socket wrench with a 3/4-inch drive mounted on its rotating 1/2-inch drive. It gripped the nut tightly enough, and provided sufficient leverage, that it was easy to remove the nuts even one-handed. Like butter. Or like Superman, depending on your preferred metaphor. (I went out the next day and purchased one exactly like it. I works beautifully. Why, oh why, don’t cars come with these, instead of those useless little junior crowbars?)

Oh, but you say, any ordinary mortal could have the right tool once, in a given situation. But he went on to show that this was no fluke. We were wondering how we were going to get that tire repaired over the weekend, when the man said he could do it right there.

He opened his hood, and used jumper cables to power a small air compressor he had in the truck bed. He had the hole from a broken-off screw plugged in a couple of minutes, and slapped the tire back on. Then, he drove off into the streets of Columbia as quickly as he’d come.

The perfect wrench was one thing. The MacGyver-like rig to repair the tire was something else. I resolved that I wanted to be this guy when I grew up.

This is the kind of superhero the world needs, and I was glad to have met him.

Unfortunately, there is a postscript.

With the baby getting out of the hospital this morning, we headed to the beach. At a stop to walk the dog, my wife noticed a bubble popping out of the side of that same tire.

I checked it with a gauge, and it had 40 pounds of pressure in it, instead of the usual 30 or so. I let some air out, and we drove to a tire place (fortunately, in my iPhone I have a computer of comparable power to the one Superman had in the Fortress of Solitude, and found the biggest tire place in Aynor was 1.4 miles away). We had a new tire in about 40 minutes.

Superheroes aren’t perfect. Sometimes, in the midst of struggling against supervillains, or merely life’s pedestrian vicissitudes, they forget a key step. In this case, checking the pressure before putting the tire back on.

As Uncle Ben put it so well: With great power comes great responsibility.

Take a $19 pill and call me in the morning — assuming that you can still afford a phone

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I’d had something like a cold for close on to a month, when it started causing my asthma to kick in. So I went to see my allergist. He suggested that I increase my routine meds that I take for allergies and asthma.

And then, on the off chance that the cause of all this was bacterial and not viral or merely allergies (and probably because I kept insisting that it was more than allergies, and that I was afraid to get near my new grandson), he prescribed an antibiotic. One I hadn’t heard of — Avelox.

“Is it expensive?” I asked.

“Tell you what,” he said, “let me see if I have some samples.”

So he went and rooted around the office, and came back with five individually wrapped pills. And when I say wrapped, I mean each pill was contained in one of those things with plastic on one side and foil on the other (you punch them out through the foil), and then in its own box.

Since it’s a one-a-day thing, that would get me through five days. But he wanted me to take it for 10 days.

So a couple of days later, I went to get it filled, and those five pills cost me $94.62. Which means each pill cost almost 19 dollars ($18.924, to be exact).

This is by no means the most expensive medication either I or a member of my family has taken. It just struck me that here’s something I’m just taking on the off chance that I have something it will help with. We’re not talking cancer or something like that.

In fact, there’s nothing particularly remarkable about a $19 pill today, really. Which is why I thought I’d take note of it. So that somebody 20 years from now can read this and laugh that I thought it was a lot of money. Just as I think how innocent we were in the early 80s, when we marveled that Tagamet cost a dollar a pill.

Oh, here’s the kicker — almost from the hour I took the first one, I’ve been feeling better. A lot better. I’m kind of tired feeling, but the sore throat and coughing and wheezing are gone. So… if you ask me, would I spend $19 a day for five or even 10 days to get over feeling the way I did?… I’d say yes.

But I thought I’d still make note of it.

I don’t go for these same-sex work partnerships

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Having decided it was time, after 10 years, for me to leave The Jackson (TN) Sun, I started putting out feelers in the spring of 1985.

Just before I flew out to Wichita to interview for a job I would eventually take, I got a call from an editor at The Charlotte News, who wanted me to come there before making up my mind. By the end of the conversation, we had made travel arrangements for right after the Kansas trip. (But then days later, the editor called me back to cancel. The hiring freeze word had just gone out; the afternoon paper would close later that year.)

It was a fairly lengthy call. When I got off the phone, my wife asked who I’d been talking to.

“An editor in Charlotte who wants me to go there instead of Wichita.”

“Was it a woman?” she asked.

“Yeah… how could you tell?”

“You were enjoying yourself,” she said.

She knows me very well. Most of my career, my closest working relationships — certainly most of the really enjoyable ones — have been with women. (One of my best friends at the Jackson paper once referred to herself as one of “Brad’s women.” Some might have misunderstood that, but all within hearing knew what she meant.) I don’t know why. Nothing against guys. I’ve had a great working partnership with plenty of guys, such as Robert Ariail, as I described back here. But who’s to say? — maybe if we’d also had a cartoonist who was a woman, I might have an even closer partnership with her. Or not. I never set out to work more closely with women. It just keeps happening.

Earlier today I mentioned the Power Failure project. While I worked with people from across the newsroom off and on during that year, there was a core group of three women, from start to finish, without whom I couldn’t have gotten it done. One of them was assigned to the project mainly to keep me on track, to make sure that all my theories and plans and ideas were actually translated into articles and graphics and photos, on time. She was essential to the project becoming something that you could hold in your hand.

And anyone who had occasion to observe the portion of my career spent at The State knows how important was the partnership I had with Cindi Scoppe, from when I first supervised her as a 23-year-old reporter in the late ’80s through those last 12 years on the editorial board.

Anyway, I share all this to explain why I thought this piece in The Wall Street Journal today was such a crock:

Picking Someone for a Project? Chances Are, He’ll Look Like You

Here’s at least one instance of parity among the sexes: Men and women are equally biased when it comes to choosing work partners, a new study suggests.

When selecting colleagues to collaborate with on a daily basis, males and females are both significantly more likely to choose someone of their own gender, according to an analysis by Innovisor, a Copenhagen-based management consulting firm…

“We prefer to collaborate with people who look just like us,” says Jeppe Hansgaard, a managing partner at Innovisor. “That’s a management issue, because you want your employees to collaborate with the right people, not just people who look like them.”…

Maybe the piece set me off particularly because I’d just read (part of) this distressing report telling me that the Obama campaign plans to stress Identity Politics more in this election. But every time I read anything about how people choose to associate with “people like them,” it ticks me off. I like to think people are broader than that.

Adam uncovers a blast from the past

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Adam Beam of The State Tweeted this over the weekend:

Adam Beam‏
@adambeam

@BradWarthen Look what I foundpic.twitter.com/7V5M1vlr

Adam must have been spending Saturday at the office going through old drawers in the newsroom. There are a number of these scattered about here and there.

This is the special reprint we did early in 1992 of the Power Failure series that I had spent most of the previous year directing.

Power Failure was something I dreamed up in 1990. As governmental affairs editor that summer, I had been going nuts keeping up with an unbelievable string of scandals in and around state government, the most memorable of which was the Lost Trust investigation, which led to indictments against a tenth of the Legislature.

In the midst of it all, then-executive editor Gil Thelen stopped by my desk one day to wonder, What could we do to give our readers a positive way to respond? What could be done to make state government better, rather than just wallowing in the bad news day after day?

The answer I came up with was a project highlighting all of the deep, structural flaws in South Carolina’s system of government — flaws that set South Carolina apart from every other state. Flaws that made our system particularly resistant to change.

These flaws are difficult to summarize briefly, but all of the problems — the weak executive, weak local governments, centralization of authority, fragmentation of that central authority, almost complete lack of accountability (in terms of anyone being able to hire and fire key officials), and on and on — were vestiges of a constitutional system originally designed to put all authority in the hands of the landed, slaveholding antebellum gentry, and to fragment that power across that whole class of people, so that no one person could make important decisions. For instance, not only did departments that in other states reported to the governor (an official elected by all of the state’s people) report to a separately elected official, or to a board or commission appointed by the Legislature, but even decades after the passage of Home Rule, lawmakers still retained a surprising degree of control over local government services.

As I said, it’s difficult to summarize briefly, although we tried with the tagline, “The Government that Answers to No One.” To explain it, I conceived of a 17-installment series, each installment filling several full pages of newsprint (back in the day when pages were much bigger than they are now), totaling well over 100 articles. Gil and Paula Ellis, then the managing editor, essentially laid the resources of the newsroom at my disposal for most of 1991. Reporters came and went from the project, depending on which subject area we were dealing with at the time.

Were there results? Yes, but nowhere near what we were seeking. A partial restructuring of state government in 1993 put about a third of the executive branch under the governor. That third of a loaf, though, was great success when you consider that huge areas that were just as important — Home Rule, education governance, reducing the number of statewide elected officials — were pretty much ignored.

As for me — I was ruined as a governmental affairs editor, since the project was an unprecedented sort of news/editorial hybrid — for instance, I had written opinion columns advocating all of these changes throughout the series. I spent a couple of years supervising this or that non-political team (although I retained control of the Washington Bureau) until I made the move to editorial at the start of 1994 — where I spent the next 15 years continuing to advocate these reforms. Most of the items I listed in my last column for The State, “South Carolina’s unfinished business,” was to a great extent a recap of Power Failure.

Recently, we saw one tiny piece of the reform picture fall into place, with the legislation putting the governor and lieutenant governor on the same ticket advancing. Hoorah for small victories.

It’s been frustrating, but hey, this system had been in place in one form or another for 300 years — and the one great characteristic that it possessed all that time was a profound resistance to change. That is still the hallmark of government in South Carolina.

Bad news, good news about newspapers

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I learned yesterday that one of America’s great cities will no longer have a daily newspaper in the unkindest way, courtesy of my favorite celebrity Twitter follower, Adam Baldwin:

Adam Baldwin‏
@adamsbaldwin

Buggy-Whipped?! | RT @carr2n “Times-Picayune facing deep layoffs, may cut back from daily publication.” – http://nyti.ms/Jsib87

He jests at scars that never felt a wound. How would ol’ Jayne Cobb feel if the financial underpinnings of movies and TV suddenly collapsed? (Hey, don’t say it could never happen. Have you heard about Autohop? Remember, newspapers didn’t start dying because people didn’t want news; it was the ads drying up.)

That newspapers are having to cut back isn’t new (especially not to me), although nothing quite like this has happened before in a major city, so it’s a milestone (and the same company is doing the same with its papers in several other cities, including Birmingham). But my sadness is for the city as well. I lived in New Orleans almost as long as anywhere else growing up — I went to school there for two years (7th and 8th grades) instead of the usual one — and news like this makes it feel like the city itself is dying, with a vital spark fading:

The latest to go to three days a week: The storied New Orleans Times-Picayune, one of America’s oldest papers, which announced Thursday that it plans to limit its print schedule — beginning this fall — to Wednesday, Friday and Sunday editions. It will maintain 24/7 online reporting via its site, Nola.com.

This is a tactical trend for New York-based Advance Publications, which owns the Times-Picayune, as it pushes toward a limited print-digital model. Advance said Thursday that in addition to the Times-Picayune, it will also cut back the print frequency of its three papers in Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville, Ala., to three days….

First Katrina, now this.

But enough bad news. We have some startlingly good news from closer to home: Warren Buffett is investing in newspapers. Including in South Carolina.

You may have seen that news last week. I was sufficiently surprised that I didn’t know what to make of it, and haven’t commented yet. But I have a new news peg: Buffett has written a letter to his editors and publishers, communicating his thinking in making this move. It’s a bracingly confident message:

Until recently, Berkshire has owned only one daily newspaper, The Buffalo News, purchased in 1977. In a month or so, we will own 26 dailies.

I’ve loved newspapers all of my life — and always will. My dad, when attending the University of Nebraska, was editor of The Daily Nebraskan. (I have copies of the papers he edited in 1924.) He met my mother when she applied for a job as a reporter at the paper. Her father owned a small paper in West Point, Nebraska and my mother worked at various jobs at the paper in her teens, even mastering the operation of a linotype machine. From as early as I can remember, my two sisters and I devoured the contents of the World-Herald that my father brought home every night.

In Washington, DC, I delivered about 500,000 papers over a four-year period for the Post, Times-Herald and Evening Star. While in college at Lincoln, I worked fifteen hours a week in country circulation for the Lincoln Journal (earning all of 75? an hour). Today, I read five newspapers daily. Call me an addict.

Berkshire buys for keeps. Our only exception to permanent ownership is when a business faces unending losses, a remote prospect for virtually all of our dailies. So let me express a few thoughts about what lies ahead as we join forces.

Though the economics of the business have drastically changed since our purchase of The Buffalo News, I believe newspapers that intensively cover their communities will have a good future. It’s your job to make your paper indispensable to anyone who cares about what is going on in your city or town.

That will mean both maintaining your news hole — a newspaper that reduces its coverage of the news important to its community is certain to reduce its readership as well and thoroughly covering all aspects of area life, particularly local sports. No one has ever stopped reading when half-way through a story that was about them or their neighbors…

So… if we are to take Mr. Buffett at his word, this isn’t some bid to rack up losses for tax reasons, or any other convoluted strategy. He actually believes this is a good investment. And he’s not known for being wrong about such things.

Back when I was first laid off, the executive editor position at the Florence paper was open. But I didn’t apply for the job — a combination of wanting to stay where my grandchildren are, and a reluctance to jump back into a dying industry, having done more than my share of laying-off and cutting back in the last few years.

But had the opening occurred under these circumstances — with new ownership, and that owner being Warren Buffett, and he bullish on newspapers — I might have looked at it differently.

The Birth of The One Who Will Bear the Name

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Why have I been writing off and on about “guy stuff” all week? Well, it’s been on my mind, and here’s why. I’ve been getting ready.

Today, my first grandson was born. Here’s what a milestone he is:

The first boy born into the family since my younger son, who is now 31.
We’ve had eight wonderful, beautiful girls in a row in the meantime — my two youngest daughters, my brother’s two daughters, and my four granddaughters.
My father had only one brother, who had no sons. Then there was my brother and me, and my two sons. And now my older son has a son, and he’s the only one in his generation.
He’s the first boy in an even longer time on the other side of his family (the Herring side).

So you can see how I would be contemplating the nature of the male of the species, and trying to get my head around the concept.

We are excited. Excited the way we have been with every one of our grandchildren, only this time with a novel factor (for us).

Look at him. He’s a big boy, isn’t he? Look at those hands — I think he could palm a baseball. Unfortunately, I forgot to take one into the nursery with me (see how you can forget stuff when you haven’t had a boy in a while?). He’s 9 pounds, 7.5 ounces. A mannish boy. And dig that Kirk Douglas cleft. All the women who see him exclaim over that.

He will have all new stuff, unlike all the girls who had loads of hand-me-downs. We are not set up for a boy, but we will adjust.

His big sister, the super-articulate 2-year-old, isn’t entirely sure what she thinks. But I know she’ll love him, as we love her. He’s going to have her, and 6 girl cousins, hovering over him. But I think he’ll handle it OK.

We’re going to spend a lot of time with this guy in the days to come. And with our granddaughters, too, reminding them of how awesome and special each of them is.

This is going to be fun.

Rattler in my yard=dead snake, if I can help it

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Two or three weeks ago, my wife saw, from our deck, a fat snake with a triangular head gliding over a pile of brush in our backyard. I resolved, with a shudder, to do something about the pile of brush — which would require actually working in the yard, which for me is a big price to pay, but some things ya gotta do. (Where’s George W. Bush when you need him? He loves to clear brush.)

Based on her description, I Googled “copperhead” and showed her the picture. Yep, that was it, she said.

So last weekend, after she mentioned her intention of letting the grandchildren play behind our house at some point in the near future, I backed up my truck to the pile, and attacked it with a pitchfork. Yeah, it’s easier to pick up with your hands, but I’m not crazy. No snakes were encountered, which will explain why I got through the weekend without experiencing myocardial infarction. The brush is gone. Which, I remind myself, means the snake is likely somewhere in the vast, poison ivy-choked, “natural” parts of my yard (where we won’t let children go), which is located one block from the Saluda River.

(Dang. I just remembered I forgot to get any pictures of me manfully wrestling that potentially snake-infested debris into my pickup. I could have used that in future political campaigns. Oh, well…)

Anyway, with that memory fresh, I was less than thrilled to read this news today:

The Eastern diamondback rattlesnake, a venomous reptile with a nasty bite, is under consideration to become a federally protected endangered species in South Carolina and neighboring states.

Look, I love the bald eagle. I’m for protecting the snail darter. I can even see some value in protecting wolves, sort of. And seeing as how I live nowhere near the Arctic, I’m for sticking up for the polar bear, even though it’s the only kind of bear that hunts people for food.

But a rattlesnake? Sorry, but the usual catchall of “biological diversity,” great as it is, isn’t quite enough to override the negatives in this instance.

The obligatory explanation is to be found in this story:

Eastern diamondbacks are important because they kill rodents and small mammals that could otherwise overpopulate the countryside.

“If this goes missing, it could have effects we’re not even thinking about today,” Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Harold Mitchell said. “It has a role to play. The less pieces there are in the ecosystem, the less functional that ecosystem becomes until it breaks.”

Sorry, but that’s not enough. It’s too vague and general. I could have given that justification without your help. You’re going to have to go farther than that. The idea that diversity in the ecosystem is in and of itself a justification doesn’t go far enough here. I need to know which rodents are controlled by this species and this species only. Are you saying rat snakes and king snakes and the like are picky, and won’t kill the ones that this kind of rattler goes after? If so, say so. Make the case.

(If your faith in biodiversity is of the religious sort, then it’s all about faith that why you may not know exactly why this species is essential to the balance of life, it is in some way you can’t know, and therefor you must preserve it. In other words, it’s a mystery; have faith. Sorry. Most of the time, I’m from South Carolina. But when it comes to rattlers, I’m from Missouri.)

I’m listening. But in the meantime, if I see one of these monsters in my yard, I’m going to do what I can to hasten its extinction.

Naked without a jacket

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Some of y’all were advising me on a “look” for my band, once I start a band. That, of course, is a worthwhile consideration — yet another thing to settle before actually forming the band itself, along with the band name and playlist.

But y’all were a bit off with the platform shoes with goldfish in them and other suggestions. As I responded, my own concept of a “look” is somewhat different.

I tend to think back to when I saw Dylan with The Band in Memphis in 1974. Basically, they were casually dressed with dark sport coats over work shirts, and jeans or other casual pants. I seem to recall a scruffy old sofa on the stage. It was comfortable, homey, and vaguely old-fashioned. They were dressed sort of like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid, only without the guns and cowboy hats.

That’s the sort of look I’m comfortable with. It’s the way I dress. It’s more or less the way I’ve dressed since high school. There was once a sort of clearance/warehouse sale at the base exchange at Hickam Air Force Base back in 1970, and they were getting rid of all kinds of out-of-style items. I picked up a couple of sport coats for $5 each. One of them I really liked. It was wool, a sort of rough, tweedy wool. It was a dark, dark blue with other dark colors in it, vaguely seen, and a faint sort of reddish pinstripe running through the hard-to-see pattern. I wish I still had that jacket, even though it wouldn’t fit me now. It was very like what The Band would wear, or what a cowboy in a particularly cool western might wear, and have to pull out of the way to draw his sixgun.

Over the years, I got dressier than that, and took up such items as the bow tie. But nowadays, when I do wear a tie, I’m the only one at ADCO who does. And more and more often, I don’t wear one at all. So I’m drifting back more toward that look I had as a student. But part of that look is that I always, always wear a jacket.

How could I not? How would I get around? Where would I put my:

Car keys (right outside pocket)
Wallet (sorry, but I’m not going to deform my spine by sitting on a wallet in my hip pocket)
notebook (my Moleskine fits perfectly in my inside pocket on the right
flip-up shades (breast pocket)
pills, tissues, etc. (antihistamines and such that I always carry — left outside pocket)

Where would all that stuff go without a jacket? And then there’s my iPhone, which I wear clipped to my belt — you want me to go around with my phone exposed to the weather?

The other day, on NPR, I heard an interview with British actor Bill Nighy, who among other things said the following:

SIEGEL: You have a look and bearing that says, at least to my American eyes: British gentleman. Is it true that you feel naked if you’re not wearing a suit?

NIGHY: Yeah. In fact, a jacket, really. I’m a jacket man. And if I’m without one, I am kind of seriously disabled. I don’t know how to operate in shirt sleeves.

SIEGEL: You don’t?

NIGHY: It makes me anxious and uneasy.

SIEGEL: Even to a reading for a part or something very informal?

NIGHY: Yeah. It’s ludicrous. People sometimes inquire why there’s a lack of classical work on my CV with the emphasis on Shakespeare and I have joked in the past that it’s because I can’t operate in those kind of trousers. But, in fact, it’s true. I can really only operate in a decent lounge – what we used to call a lounge suit. It is kind of my muse and I am ludicrously attached to the idea.

I did a play on Broadway here in New York and the director desperately tried to get a jacket off me. He said, you’re in the garden. It’s summertime in England. What would you be doing wearing a jacket? I said, I always wear a jacket in the garden. Anyway, he did get the jacket off me and he actually made me appear without socks, which was deeply unsettling.

SIEGEL: This was very difficult for you.

NIGHY: Yeah…

Exactly! How indeed does one get along with a jacket? I can’t imagine. I gathered that this was supposed to be heard as an expression of the actor’s eccentricity, but I thought he made perfect sense. No wonder I like Nighy in pretty much anything I see him in (“Page Eight,” “I Capture the Castle,” “Love Actually“).

As for going about without socks? Totally beyond the pale. Let’s not even go into that.

Like Butch and Sundance, but without the guns and hats.

Great to see my old friend Michael Mercer!

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An old friend sent me the above video. When I got home last night, I asked my wife to watch it without telling her why. She looked at it only a second before saying “Michael!”

Yep. The guy playing the “English teacher” at the beginning is Michael Mercer. Michael and I started out as copy editors together at The Jackson (TN) Sun in 1975, soon after I graduated from Memphis State. Michael got out of the business long before I did, taking a teaching gig at Auburn. Now he’s at another college in San Antonio, as he explained when I asked about the video:

The young lady featured in the film is one of my student-advisees at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. She’s a communication arts major concentrating in journalism — although broadcast like most of them do today. She asked me at the last minute to be in the video that she and the filmmaker — her boyfriend from another school in San Antonio — were doing for a video contest promoting San Antonio park recreation.

They didn’t win the contest but I thought they, too, did an excellent job. I was only familiar with the classroom scene where they asked me to mouth a few words as an “English teacher.” Those other students in the video in the classroom are UIW students but not any of mine. We spent about an hour shooting various takes, angles, short bites. I was told it would only take about five minutes. Then a week later, my student asked me to wear the same shirt and pants for a scene they wanted to shoot minus the class in that same classroom showing me walking out the door after that “chill” comment.

No, most of my South Carolina readers won’t know Michael, but some of our former colleagues will see this, which is why I share it here. The fact that I can do so so easily — the fact that a student could even produce something like this — is testament to how the world has changed since Michael and I started out.

In those days, the copy desk was still a big horseshoe (or “elephant’s commode,” as one of my Tennessee colleagues referred to it), with the slot man (or woman) sitting in the center, distributing copy to those on the rim who would edit it and write headlines as assigned by the slot. The copy and headlines would then be passed back to the slot for checking before being sent to the composing room. Except that the editing wasn’t done on paper at this point. The text had been scanned and output onto a paper punchtape, which was clipped to the hard copy with a clothespin (without clothespins, we couldn’t have gotten the paper out). After an editor received the copy with attached tape from the slot, he or she would take it over to a Harris 1100 editing machine, and feed the punch tape into it. The copy would appear on a CRT screen, and the editor would use a keyboard to edit it. When done, the edited text would be output to another punch tape of a different color, which the editor would roll up the tape (using a little electrical device that was sort of like one of those handheld, flashlight-sized fans) and clip it back to the copy. That bundle is what the editor would pass back to the slot, along with a headline written in pencil on a hand-torn strip of paper.

A couple of months after I joined The Sun, I was pulling shifts in the slot, and I found I liked it so much that by the time I moved on from the desk, I was doing it most days. The job entailed what would have been three to five jobs at a paper the size of The State in those days. The slot not only supervised the editing process, but laid out the entire A section, monitored the wires and selected all wire copy, and oversaw the production process in the composing room. If a page was late, it was the slot’s fault. And in those days, things were so loose and informal at The Sun that an assertive slot (which, I confess, I was) could pretty much decide how all of the news in the paper was played, including local copy.

The day started at 5:30 a.m., and the whole first edition (which was more pages than you find today in The State) had to be out at 11. Then we’d grab a quick lunch before having the city edition out by 1:30.

Doing that job at the age of 22 gave me a lot of confidence that stood me in good stead in the years to come. And it gave me a taste for calling the shots. Which is why after that gig, I only spent a couple of years as a reporter before becoming a supervising editor. You can learn a lot by starting out in a small pond.

Michael followed a similar path, without being quite as power-mad as I was (you can probably tell in his brief appearance that Michael is a nicer guy than I am — which I’m betting is why he was cast in this film; I’m sure he’s the sort of teacher who might be students’ favorite). He was one of my assistant editors over the news reporters at The Sun in later years.

And now there he is, playing the “English teacher.”

Forgive me for intrusinating on your day with a word about Twinspeak

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My three youngest granddaughters, in an intrusination-free moment.

Saturday night, we kept all three of our youngest granddaughters. Sunday morning, I was recuperating on the couch, just barely dozing, while the Twins played a few feet away from me.

I was awakened by a sudden loud dispute, as Twin B got frustrated with her sister for grabbing at some toys she was playing with.

“Stop intrusinating me!” she cried.

I lifted my head to look in that direction in wonder: “What did you say?”

Twin A, speaking as one would to a hard-of-hearing elder, explained, “She said to stop intrusinating her.” Like, what did you think she said?

OK, I said. Thank you.

I suppose the word — which I’m guessing is kin to both “intrude” and “insinuate,” and perhaps “excruciating” — if fine, as long as the one to whom it is spoken understands. Which she did.

The twins are 4 now.

I’m a lumberjack, and I’m OK (or not)…

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A friend points out to me that “newspaper reporter” is now listed as one of the five worst jobs to have. Right down there with lumberjack. Here’s the CNN Headline News report:

On the heels of a report indicating good job prospects for the college class of 2012, career guidance website CareerCast released its list of the best and worst jobs of the year, and after reviewing 200 professions across a wide range of industries.

The five “best” jobs are software engineer, actuary, human resources manager, dental hygienist and financial planner. The top five “worst” jobs are lumberjack, dairy farmer, enlisted military soldier, oil rig worker and newspaper reporter.

So what makes a job among the best or the worst? CareerCast based the rankings on a methodology that rated each profession’s work environment by assessing both the physical and emotional demands, including: necessary energy, physical demands (crawling, stooping), work conditions (toxic fumes, noise), degree of competitiveness, degree of hazards personally faced and degree of contact with the public. Each category was broken into elements and then each element was given points. In the end, a higher point total made a job less desirable, while a lower total indicated a job was more desirable….

I’m not sure whether that was supposed to make me feel good or bad. Actually, it’s sort of irrelevant, since I haven’t been a reporter since the early months of 1980. But I can tell you that being a newspaper editor is not what it once was, if you can even find such a job.

Which of course is the problem. The main thing wrong with being a newspaper anything is that if that’s what you do, it probably won’t be long before you join the ranks of those who used to do it.

Beyond that, I’m suspicious of the criteria used in compiling this list. Lumberjack? Obviously they’re not taking into account such factors as leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia… the giant redwood, the larch, the fir, the mighty Scotch pine… the smell of fresh-cut timber… the crash of mighty trees… with my best girly by my side…

A song from the deepest early memories

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I had an unexpected bit of pleasure this morning. In a desperate bid to get away from the ETV Radio pledge drive, I accidentally pressed button 3 on my radio, forgetting that the format had changed a while back to country.

And I heard “Singin’ the Blues,” which struck deep chords of early-childhood memory for me. I couldn’t have told you the words, and I mistakenly assumed it was a Hank Williams song — it seemed to have that sort of universal appeal. But the tune was as familiar, as wired into every cell in my brain, as if it had been sung to me as a lullaby.

All I knew about the song was that I really, really liked it. As though I was MADE to like it; it was part of my early formation.

Unfortunately, the radio didn’t tell me who was singing it (which should be a violation of FCC regulations). Fortunately, there’s Google and Wikipedia.

I quickly learned that the song was written by one Melvin Endsley, and first recorded successfully by Guy Mitchell. But I’m pretty sure that what I heard this morning was the Marty Robbins version.

Whichever, I loved hearing it. Next thing you know, I’ll hear “Volare” on the radio one morning (to cite another song that made a deep impression on me before I was old enough to worry about what was cool and what wasn’t, and able to just respond to music on its own terms)…

If we could just suspend the Constitution long enough to take care of this ONE thing…

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I spent Easter weekend at the beach with some of my family. We stayed at the beach house that my grandfather built in Surfside Beach. It’s on a small, narrow freshwater lake — the twins call it “the river” because it is so long and narrow that that’s what it looks like — with the ocean a couple of blocks beyond.

I don’t get there often, but we made it this time. The weather was beautiful. We had the whole day free Sunday (at least, until we had to drive back), having attended Easter Vigil Mass at my cousin’s church in Conway.

Between the Easter egg hunt with the twins and dinner, I managed to find a few quiet moments to lie in the hammock right next to the lake. Conditions were perfect. The breeze was perfect. I put some early Steve Miller Band on my iPhone and set it next to my head (I had no earbuds) as I prepared to snooze. I was right on the verge of doing something unusual for me — thoroughly enjoy the outdoors.

Just then, the roar of a riding lawnmower started up about 20 feet from my head, over on the lot next door. The guy on the mower was not the owner of that property, but a stranger. He was doing this for pay, on Easter Sunday.

I went inside fuming about it, but took solace from the fact that with that riding mower and he being a professional, it couldn’t take more than 10 minutes for him to mow that yard. I even found myself making excuses for him in my mind: Poor fellow must be desperate for the income to be mowing lawns today…

Then I headed back outside and resolved to escape the noise the way Huck Finn escaped the things that he didn’t like about “sivilization.” I got into the jon boat and pushed off with an oar to drift across the lake. It’s only about 40 yards across. As I drifted, I realized to my horror that some unseen fiend was using a leaf blower on the far side. Which sounded even worse.

I turned back as the first guy stopped mowing, only to see that the heathen mercenary had started using a weedeater.

I changed course again and started rowing perpendicular to the line between these two abominations.

As the first guy put down his weedeater and picked up a leaf-blower of his own — to blow the yard trash he had cut out onto the surface of the lake — I paused to write the following on Twitter:

Forget the Constitution: Anyone operating obnoxious power tools on such a beautiful Easter Sunday should be drawn and quartered, then fined.

I was reTweeted and received supportive replies from several folks (one who totally got into the Swiftian spirit of the thing wrote, “And then punished in a manner that could be considered cruel and unusual for such a crime.”). Good to know there are some sane people left in this world.

bradwarthen.com

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