So, my parents and my nephews are in town. At one point yesterday, the dog was barking non-stop to be let out of the house (which she could not be until the trailer was put up) and my parents were yelling at each other and the nephews were squabbling and hitting each other with sticks and I sat down in the open end of the van and stared at the lilies after a few seconds, it dawned on me that I could not hear them any more.

So, I looked over and sure enough, when I looked over, I could see them all storming around and I could hear them.

But apparently, when your brain is overwhelmed by negative stimulus, it can just shut that shit right down–almost hysterical deafness, if there is such a thing.

That’s a nifty trick to know that your brain can do, but maybe there might be stressful situations in which I might actually need to hear what’s going on so I hope my brain doesn’t make a habit of it.

At dinner, I got to hear about various family members and all that entails and after a while, my oldest nephew asked me if I was depressed. Dear lord, kid, where you not listening to these tales of woe and stupidity? How can a girl not be depressed?

And my sister-in-law called hysterical for some reason and later I heard my dad tell my mom, “Don’t tell Betsy, it’ll just upset her.”  Listen, the fact that she has custody of my nephew most of the time puts my upset-o-meter so far in the red that her calling and causing further nonsense doesn’t even shake the needle. But it’s stupid anyway–this whole keeping secrets bullshit. I mean, I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know all this terrible crap nobody’s actually going to do anything about.  But I resent deeply this idea that it MUST be kept from me, for my own good.

Who the hell gets to decide that for another adult?

Anyway, I don’t believe it’s about my well-being anyway. It’s about a bunch of people who act weirdly like children keeping something from the person they have thrust into the role of adult in order to feel powerful.

And I also resent that–that my acting like an adult means that I become the authority figure who must be rebelled against.

Though, you know, the good thing about hearing all the family gossip is that it gives a girl a chance to see that all branches of the family tree behave this way, not just mine.

I don’t know, folks. I used to think that I wanted kids. But I watch my nephews and I’m not sure it’s fair to do this shit to another group of people, who didn’t do anything but be born into this family.

On a side note, my mom and I were talking about how competative my nephews are and she said she didn’t remember my brothers being like that and I said they were competative, but not as much as my nephews, but probably because we had these family friends whose sons warred with each other when they were little, literally tried to kill each other.

Neither my mom or dad remembers that. And they looked at me like I was making it up.

But I do remember it. I know it’s true–that those two boys fought so much and so terribly that it was hard to be around them.

But when both of your parents sit there and tell you they don’t remember it…

I don’t know.

It starts to make me feel a little crazy.

Which, you know, fine. Maybe it would be nice to find out that all the bad things you remember didn’t really happen that way.

But I have a lot of really good memories with a lot of the folks who read here.

And I would be devistated to learn that I was just making them up.

I finally finished Barry Mazor’s book, Meeting Jimmie Rodgers: How America’s Original Roots Music Hero Changed the Pop Sounds of a Century. This book is pretty amazing, because you finish it and you think, “Well, yeah, duh, of course this is a great way to talk about music and an artist.”  In other words, once you’ve seen it done, it seems like a complete no-brainer.  But I honestly cannot think of another book that takes this approach.

So, ha, yeah, I guess that kind of sucks for a writer–to do something original, and to do it with such dexterity, that you make it look easy and obvious. Mark my words, people are going to be ripping off Mazor’s approach, so read this now before it becomes ubiquitous and you forget a time when we didn’t talk about music in quite this way.

Anyway, so you ask, what is it that he’s doing?

He’s created what we might call a history of Jimmie Rodgers’s influence.  (A lot of reviewers make it sound like a biography and there is a lot of information about Rodgers’s life in it, but that misses the point.) Mazor is trying to understand Rodgers’s place in the landscape of American music–kind of the how and why Rodgers has mattered as much as he has.  And, in this case, in order to figure it out, he talks extensively to artists who were influenced by Rodgers, especially artists who were such big fans that they went on to record Rodgers’s songs.

There’s a lot to mull over in the book and I’m still turning stuff over in my head.  And then, since Mazor said he’d be happy to submit to another interview when I finished the book, I asked him some of the questions I’ve been mulling over (Yes I am going to segue from review to interview, just like that. I know, I think it’s a gutsy move, too).

Me: I hope it goes without saying that I love this book. I mean, I don’t want to sit here and blow smoke up your ass, but it’s beautifully written and fun to read. But more than that, I felt like this approach, of focusing on how Rodgers’s musical legacy played out really is an amazing way not just to learn about Rodgers’ music but to understand how a lot of very disparate parts of American music fit together. So, the first question I had when I finished the book was “Wow, has anyone else ever done anything like this before?” I mean, upon completing it, it seems like such an important and interesting way to write about music, but I’ve also been wracking my brain and I think you may be the first person who’s done this, and so I wonder about your inspiration. How did you decide to write a book like this? And do you feel now like you might have invented an approach?

Mazor: First, thanks for the kind words on your reaction. My mission was to find a way to make Jimmie Rodgers’ music, image and the extent of his impact more immediate and palpable for people up here in the 21st century, and I actually arrived at going about it this way, as a “life story of the music” rather than another life story of the man, which wasn’t that needed anyway, pretty early on.

I’d seen books on the history of the way some lasting cultural figure had been taken over time, how the notion of them evolved and was used–but the subjects were Leonardo or Shakespeare over hundreds of years or Jesus over several thousand. And of course, popular music in the mass media age sense had not been around long enough that anybody had much tried something like that, about any performer, but it simply occurred to me that with Jimmie Rodgers, whose music had gone a lot of places over some 80 years, it would be possible to try. One reason it looked possible was that, while nobody asked popular music fans in the 1920s, down home or elsewhere, what they thought about performers–and they’re rarely asked now; they just get to volunteer it online!–in Mr. Rodgers neighborhood, so many of the eventual interpreters of his music had been fans first. So the unrecorded responses could be gotten to through the celebrities and semi-celebrities. I did see that, along the way, as you just did, that Meeting Jimmie Rodgers opens a whole new way to get at pop music. I guess it will be up to other writers to see if it works out that way!

Me: Another thing I keep thinking about in the context of your book is Johnny Cash. Did you see Robert Gordon’s Shakespeare was a Big George Jones Fan? And you know there’s that moment when Johnny Cash goes to lie on A.P.’s grave to have a smoke with him? It felt to me like this moment of Cash trying to interact with the legend as a person, to understand him as a person. And you talk about Cash literally putting on Rodgers’s clothes to perform his music. I don’t guess I exactly have a question here, but it’s something I’d like to understand more about, about how Cash understood his relationship to these men, because it seems different to me than how you describe what other folks, like Merle Haggard, get up to. It seems less about preserving the legacy and more about trying to figure out how he fits into that pantheon (or if he does). But I wonder what you make of it or if you think I’m reading too much into things?

Mazor: Oh sure; I’ve seen that film;the scene at the grave is hilarious. Johnny’s buddy and producer Cowboy Jack Clement, the film’s main subject, is a hero and, I’m still astonished to be able to say, a friend, and as you know he figures in my book himself. For one thing, he’s the one who in effect introduced Johnny Cash and Louis Armstrong, who went on to do recreate the Armstrong-Jimmie Rodgers duet on TV, which is where my whole story begins. Well, Merle donned some brakeman clothes for the cover shot on his Rodgers salute album after all, and for a video-like film, I do think you’re on to something. With A.P. Carter, there was the special; element of a relation by marriage never known.

But Johnny Cash was clearly obsessed with Jimmie Rodgers in the early sixties and wanted to portray him in a movie; I uncovered quite a bit about that. I think that the way Cash would get close to that obsession, the adoption of the look and feel, the persona, was a bit like seeing an actor prepare for a role, in a more public arena. I think he just was inclined to really get a feel for his subject that way–although Johnny also did some hard research out of documents and such as well. Maybe he threw himself into Jimmie’s world so deeply because he understood that they shared what I term the “roots music hero” identity. They both stretched out across lines, evolving their images and musical reach–and the subjects of Rodgers songs also became subjects of Cash theme albums. And Cash was a man, I think, who, like Jimmie, understood a lot about the way he was perceived and how to work that.

Me: Are you trying to drive people into bankruptcy with all the musical suggestions at the end of each chapter?!

Mazor: Yes. I had to get at all that music somehow, no matter the cost, and now it’s your turn!

But seriously folks–I do know what you mean. I read Tony Russell’s extraordinary little book Blacks, Whites and Blues when it came out in 1970 (I was an infant) and spent a lot of time and money tracking down as many records he brought up as I could. I’ve been wandering around in those musical borderlands ever since, and when I eventually met him, much later, I said “Thank you for ruining my life!’” I’d advise you to take your time; there is a lot of music in the discographies in my book. And remember, at least some of the music I point people to is available free, legitimately, online, or could be borrowed from libraries.

Me: Speaking of driving people into bankruptcy, I bought the three “Chemirocha” songs from the Smithsonian and the third one, with the Kipsigi girls, blew my mind. I almost didn’t know how to make sense of what I was hearing. So, here you have a girl singing along to a stringed instrument that seems to be making very blues-like noises, singing about Jimmie Rodgers and… well, just holy shit. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to figure out in which directions the influences are flowing there. But my question is more basic. How did Jimmie Rodgers songs end up in Kenya in the 1940s to begin with? Would these folks have heard him on the radio? Or were his records being important into Kenya?

Mazor: The records had begun to reach English speaking parts of Africa–South Africa and Kenya for instance–even in his own day. He had worldwide reach. It had just taken some years for the records–and it was by way of records–to filter through to where the Kipsigi live and English is not the first language. Incidentally, I’m getting e-mails and such about the book from people reading it as far away as Japan right now–and that’s actually not a surprise, given the subject.

Me: I also have been thinking a lot about the story you tell about Rodgers’s influence from and on black blues musicians. Usually, the standard myth of the white country singer, like Hank Williams, is that he learns to play the guitar from an almost anonymous black guy and then he goes on to white mainstream success and that’s supposed to, I think, prove that the roots of his music are somewhat firmly established in black culture. But what you’re describing with Rodgers is much different than that, a man who was keenly aware of what all sorts of his contemporaries were doing and often eager to play with them and have them play with him. And it seems to me that we don’t really see this kind of whole-hog enthusiasm for all different kinds of music from a country music artist again until Elvis. Do you think that’s a fair assessment? If so, do you think that’s part of what made Rodgers such a popular entertainer?

Mazor: That’s the “”stretching out” I was talking about a minute ago, from its musical side. I think that’s basic to becoming not just a star entertainer, which Jimmie and Elvis both were, of course, but something more, a roots music hero. If you’re going to function as a sort of unelected representative of the people you come from, on a grand scale, the more places you represent your people, the more they’ll like it! You’re affirming that identity, and theirs, on a wider stage, which is why people like them can move out of boxes. With Jimmie and Elvis too, I doubt they ever thought they were in one, musically at least, that they could go where they please. Dolly Parton is a good latter day example of the same thing; no matter how pop and Hollywood she went, her folks always accepted her and were tickled that she was doing it, and when she headed back towards straighter country music, even bluegrass, she was immediately accepted right back, not many questions asked. It was OK; she’s a roots music hero.

Me: You talk a lot about how few women (in comparison with men) cover Jimmie Rodgers and I guess I’m still pondering that. I think you tease out a lot of the reasons, and I think you’re right that there’s something about Rodgers’s gender presentation that makes his songs seem particularly masculine and maybe harder for women to feel some ownership of. And I also think that female artists have a tendency to look back to other female artists. So, I wonder, too, if part of the problem isn’t that Elsie McWilliams’s involvement in the creation of so many of these songs isn’t more widely known?

Mazor: Well, it should be more widely known, as well as how easily Jimmie worked with her, and I do my best in that regard. But I don’t know whether knowing more about that collaboration and Elsie’s outright composition of many of the songs can change the Jimmie and women situation; the songs were created with him and his persona in mind, after all. (And that persona combined macho and vulnerability.) As you’ve read, though, it seems to me that Rodgers songs have always been empowering to those who were attracted to them and took them on–and women– some pretty interesting women performers, at that–from Texas Ruby and Rose Maddox to Odetta and Wanda Jackson, Dolly Parton and Tanya Tucker–have taken the leap.

Me: I noticed you didn’t address the legend of Jimmie Rodgers being some kind of Johnny… er Jimmie Marijuana-seed across the land. As you were doing your research, did you find anything to substantiate or finally put to rest this rumor?

Mazor: Well, that’s a pretty obvious case of a legend getting attached to another legendary story–the Johnny Appleseed story, as you almost said. There are a lot of what I call “Jimmie stories” like that. Legends breed them. I know of no creditable evidence that Jimmie Rodgers used recreational drugs or that, as is sometimes claimed, Maybelle Carter ever said he did–although he was a buddy of lifelong reefer lover Louis Armstrong, so who knows? Not the people spreading the story, I can assure you! They spread that one because they’d like a guy like that; thy want to see him that way. Which says something once again about the continuing power and pull of a man, his image, and his music after 80 years. That stuff keeps happening. Did you know that he was an iPod hacker?

I know people have the “Sweet Jesus what a bunch of racist fucks” angle of this story covered.

But I would just like to point out one small thing. Malia Obama is eleven. When you describe an eleven year old child as a “whore…” Well, let’s just remind you of how it works in the real world. In the real world, the rest of us don’t look at an eleven year old child and see a see a sexual person. We see a child.

When you look at an eleven year old and the insult that springs to mind is “whore,” you, at the very least, reveal yourself as a person who should never be left around children unsupervised.

Seriously.

The fact that that could come out of your mouth or spring from your keyboard says something very terrible about you, not that little girl.

It’s rainy and muggy out and the pictures I tried to take of my lavendar didn’t turn out because the camera fogged up.  But I’m convinced that, even though all four plants had the same label, I think they’re actually two different varieties.  The one kind is kind of starting to bloom and the blooms appear to be white.  I will try to get pictures later.

The thing about living out here that never fails to amaze me is how isolated you can feel out here when it rains.  The hills seem to close in and the fog rises off it and it’s so quiet.  And we’re not even tucked away in a real hollow.

It’s just funny to me to know that we’re surrounded by people and we’re right by a major American city and when it rains, we might as well be nowhere.

Coble talks about the stunning ASCAP proposal to go after bloggers who embed YouTube videos containing ASCAP songs in their blogs.

I honestly don’t understand how setting yourself up as the enemy of people who love your art form helps you preserve and promote that art form.  I just don’t.  Youtube videos can be set so that they can’t be embedded.  And if people are using your music without understanding copyright law, you can have Youtube strip the sound.

Suing on top of that?

Because of free publicity?

Frankly, if I were an artist and I saw that, I’d be angry because most people don’t understand about ASCAP.  That stuff is going to blow back on the artist and make him look like a giant douche.

I’m picking fights over at Pith that I really have no business picking. But, god damn it, they half-assedly brought me in and now I feel half-assedly loyal to them.

And I’m broken-hearted for the people who have lost their jobs at The Tennessean.

Basically, anything business that puts out a product that is words is in dire shape. It’d be bad enough if it were just a shitty economy. But the whole business model is shifting completely from something that is first print-based but maybe archived digitally to something that is first digital and maybe archived in paper.  No one yet knows how to make money doing that.  And there are a lot of people who need to make money if they’re going to do the kind of work that needs to get done if you want a functioning democracy.

But none of these problems just erupted out of the ether two years ago, either.

And I still believe that there is an important and prominent place for local news and reporting in a community and I don’t believe that it can be done well by hobby-bloggers (and I don’t mean that term derisively, and I would include myself in those numbers) alone.

But I would put the emphasis on local.

Which brings me to “Ask a Mexican.”

Why is “Ask a Mexican” in any local paper in this city?

Because it’s cheaper to pay for a syndicated column than it is to find someone local.

But what does “Ask a Mexican” tell me about what it means to be Mexican in Nashville?

Nothing.

Again, I’m not trying to pick on anyone. The media industry in this town is filled with people I dearly love.

I’m just saying that, when I want to hear stories about real Nashvillians, to know what’s going on in the lives of the people in my city, my first thought is not to pick up any of the local papers. It’s to turn on my computer.

I don’t think I’m alone.

And that’s the new reality.

So, I was going to write about Claire Suddath’s article in Time about why Southerners are so fat over at Pith, but Hargrove beat me to it, so I’m posting it here, where we can talk frankly, if we have to, about cooters.

I have a few objections to the whole “The South is fat because it’s hot and there’s no public transportation” line of thinking.  The first being that it’s not even clear how the folks who declare us fat are determining fat. Notice how, at both Time and Pith, the picture used to illustrate the story is of someone who is quite fat. But the definition of “obese” when determined by BMI is so problematic that people who are muscular fall into the “obese” range.

Think of it like this.  Say, for the sake of ease, that everyone in the state is the same height, and say that a person at that height is considered “obese” if they weigh 151 or greater. We could have a whole state full of people who weight 155 and our state would be among the “fattest,” because we had 100% obesity, but Kentucky (also the same height as us), could have 15% of the population who weighs 600 and be less fat than us, because they only have 15% obesity.

But using the bodies they do to illustrate the story makes it seem like we’re talking about states full of very fat people.

And we all know that’s a problem because…

Um…

Why again?

Oh, yes, because being fat is associated with all kinds of health risks.

Which brings me to my next point (which, okay, frankly, I probably would not have talked about at Pith). I’m fat, as you all know. And my whole life I have been told that I would lose weight if only I ate less and were more active and still I gained and gained and gained and what do you know? Finally, I find a doctor who’s like “Wow, that’s really weird. Let’s run some tests. Holy shit. There’s something wrong with you. Here’s some medication. Take it and let’s at least see if we can’t make your body work right.”

So, my fat was a symptom of something being wrong with me, which was instead read as a personal failing on my part.  And, until I found the right doctor, neither me nor my doctors saw it as anything other than a personal failing.

We live in a very poor state where a lot of people don’t have access to proper healthcare.  How many of them have something medically wrong with them that is being dismissed by themselves and their doctors as just poor impulse control?  If they even have doctors, of course.

We are also, frankly, constantly being poisoned. Tomorrow people are being encouraged not to drive in Nashville because the air quality is so bad. We talked about Cato Road, and that is not an unusual occurance in this state, toxic dumps that leak into the ground water.  And look at the little present the TVA left us.

Even if we were to accept a model of fat being unusual, unhealthy, and abnormal (which I reject, but let’s just go with it a second), to act as if we live in a completely neutral environment that has no adverse effects on us and it’s all just a matter of eating right and exercising is stunningly stupid.

I don’t know.  I think the other reason I don’t like stories like this is that, in overlooking the health and environmental issues, it just feeds into this whole notion of the South as this ignorant place that the rest of the nation needs to alternately fear and feel great pity for.

And I’m kind of tired of that narrative, because much like “they’re fat because it’s hot,” it just seems too easy.

This is what I believe to be an accurate representation of how the tiny cat spent last night, head in the toilet, front paws on the seat.  I’m sure that, at some point, it ended up with her on the seat.

But when I went into the bathroom this morning, the floor was covered in water, there were muddy paw prints everywhere–on the sink, on the toilet seat, on the edge of the tub, in the tub.

When we were little, JR and I used to sneak into the bathroom and make all kinds of concoctions from perfume, water, baby powder, lotion, whatever we could get our hands on.  And the bathroom would look like holy hell when we were done.

I now suspect that the tiny cat is somehow conspiring with my mother to get even with me for that.

I’m going to be as vague about this as possible, both because my point is not to gossip and because I have certainly heard people complain about this in other organizations.

But let’s say there’s this liberal bakery.  And their specialty is baking a large amount of chocolate cakes, which they then sell to raise money for their liberal causes. And they have been doing this since the 60s.  Now, in this case, the bakery looks around and sees that everyone who is actively baking is in his or her late 40s or older or college age students who are responsible not for the baking but for the distribution of the baked goods.  So, they start talking about how they need to include more young people.

This ends up being people in their 30s.  But, okay, fine.

Now, say that the traditional chocolate cake that this group makes requires that you hand fold in some chocolate chips at the last minute.  And, since this last step requires hand-folding chocolate chips in, these liberal cake bakers have been hand-stirring the cake through the whole process.

So say these people in their 30s are like, wow, that takes a long time, means only a very few people can make cakes (since there are only so many bowls and stirring spoons to go around), and we have very few cakes to sell.  What if we just used a mixer until the last step and then hand-stirred in the chocolate chips?  That would be easier and faster and require less time commitment.

What do you think happens next?

A. These quasi-young people are thanked for their good idea and everyone smiles and marvels at how awesome it is to have a fresh take on the good work they’ve been doing and cake making procedes in an easier manner and they all live happily ever after.

B. There is a long, serious discussion about how the “young people” don’t understand that we simply cannot allow the chocolate chips to be stirred in in any way but by hand while the “young people” try to explain that, yes, duh, they get it and, in fact, have not been advocating for changing how the chocolate chips are added.

C. There’s a long, serious discussion about how important it is for the bakery’s history to be appreciated and while the young people might have a good idea, we remember back in 1975, when Russell tried to use a mixer back at the old building and it blew a fuse and they all were stuck in the dark, stumbling around.  Never mind that we’re not in the old building, that it’s not 1975, and that both fuses and mixers have improved since then, the bakery has taken a lesson from this historical moment.

D. Well, sure, maybe the bakery could use mixers, but it would have to get the okay from the State and from various organizations who’ve come to depend on the cakes and there might be rules or it might make folks uncomfortable, so I’ll look into it, but…

E. The “young people” start to feel like the bakery isn’t actually preparing for what will happen when the current crop of chefs leave and are confused.  After all, a bakery that only existed for the span of interest and ability of its core bakers is not unheard of. The bakers could have decided that they would see this thing through until their end and then it would be over and someone else who wanted to start a bakery could do so on their own terms. But the bakery approached the “young people” about finding a way to keep the bakery current and passing it on to the next generation of people who would come to care about it and feel invested in its well-being.

I will give you a hint, only A. did not happen.

And I quite honestly don’t get it. I mean, yes, I see that it happens all the time. I’ve seen churches kill themselves in this very way.  But I’m still stunned by it.  If you want people to care about what you’re doing and feel invested in it, you’ve got to give them some stake in it.  Bringing them on-board in hopes that they will help you preserve things just as they are now with museum-like quality is really no way to keep your organization living and thriving.

When did that happen?

Ha.

This clip from Fox & Friends could not be any more funny and yet mind-bogglingly appalling.  You know when a dude starts talking about the wonderful purity of the Swedes that it’s going to be a trainwreck, but listen closely for the contemp in the “If I only had a brain” whistle in the background. (Jeff Fecke is pretty hilarious about it here.)

The really sad part is that we’re at 10% unemployment in this country and yet this joker still has a job. Like there’s not some pretty person who can get on Fox and who is at least aware that the Irish are not a separate species from the rest of America.

I sat in the back seat while my dad watched with delight as the Butcher tried to figure out the time signature to this song as we were driving along.  I wish I had a picture to show you how carefully they were listening and how the way their necks arched to give their ears the best position said something to me about love and music I don’t know quite how to explain to you.  I love how, at one point, the drum sticks sound like a clacking computer keyboard.

Chris Sanders writes a very thoughtful post today about how David “You might remember me, I make shit up about abortions because I hate them” Fowler is now rallying against Nashville passing a non-discrimination ordinance.

I have lost all capacity to be thoughtful about the man.

Anyway, just what the fuck is going on in men’s bathrooms at work? Because, I have to tell you, in the women’s bathroom, we’re making some small talk by the sink and then we each go into our own locked stall and we do our business by ourselves.  If a transgender woman uses the women’s bathroom, it literally makes no difference to how I use the bathroom, since there is no womanly requirement that we stick our noses in each others’ genitals. I would have to adjust nothing about my day to accommodate her.

You could have feathers instead of pubic hair. You could have a tiny puppy grafted onto your cooter.  You could be walking around with a six inch wide butt plug and I would never know.

If men wanted to use the women’s bathroom, sure, yes, it would take a little getting used to (a girl raised by Protestant Midwesterners doesn’t get over that shit over night), but I would get used to it and then soon, we’d all be either peeing together as one or we’d establish a “one person in the bathroom at a time” rule.

So, I never know what to make of this fear of a confusing bathroom experience.

Is it customary for the David Fowlers of the world to push their eyes up to the space between the stall door and the frame?  Some requirement?  Because, otherwise, I just don’t see how this is a problem.

Shoot, if it’s a one-seater and there’s a line for the women’s and not for the men’s? I’ve been known to use the men’s.

Is Fowler going to rally against me next?

Ugh, sorry. I’m distracted. Something strange is going on with me. The past two days I’ve been feeling terrible after lunch, I mean, crazy depressed and down. Emotionally terrible, not physically.  And then right about 3:30 it starts to clear up and I feel like myself again.  I’m trying to decide if it’s the beef. I haven’t been eating a lot of it and then I had for lunch yesterday and today and I don’t know if it’s doing something funky or what, but god damn.  I think it’s got to be something I can do something about, though because it seems to be triggered by lunch (I feel fine before I eat) and then seems to clear up as lunch digests.

I’m going to try to go vegetarian for lunch tomorrow and see if there’s a difference.

And I’ve been giving a lot of thought to what I want to blog about over at Feministe. The guest bloggers they’ve had so far have been so damn good and I just don’t want to get on there and not rise to the occassion.

We have a tiny watermelon in our garden, though, so that’s happy. It’s like the size of a jawbreaker.  I know I’m thinking too far ahead, but how will I know when it’s ripe?

And the Butcher was all alarmed because he thought our pumpkins were growning a giant zucchini and so I went out there and realized he didn’t know pumpkins were green before they ripen.  Ha, poor Butcher. We’re going to have a shit-ton of pumpkins, though, I think. I hope the neighbors feel like celebrating Halloween this year, because we will have plenty to share.

I’m always taken aback by how quickly stuff appears. The Professor and I were just out there on Friday, weeding and examining things and moving them around and there were no watermelons and certainly not as many pumpkins.  And we are so close to having a shit-ton of tomatoes.

I don’t know.  The thing I was thinking about today when I was feeling all depressed is that most of the stuff I do every day doesn’t matter. It’s not important to anyone. I love blogging, but really, that’s a very small portion of my day.  But it makes me feel good, and connected.

But I also like growing things and being outside in the dirt. And I’m not sure you could get any more mundane or non-matter-y than that.  We don’t need the garden to live. It doesn’t have to feed us.  Anything that comes out of it is just a bonus.  And yet, it’s something I love.

I keep thinking my problem is that things I do don’t matter, but maybe the truth is that I enjoy frivilous pursuits. It’s actually the stuff that doesn’t matter that makes life worth living.

1. I think I’m making this cat the unoffical mascot of Tiny Cat Pants.

2.  Great post about Jimmie Rodgers by Nathan Rabin over at the Onion A.V. Club. which mentions Barry Mazor’s book and reminds me I need to ask Mazor if he’d submit to another interview now that I’ve finished the book.

3.  Sorry to subject you all to this, but I’m trying to see how it works on a website.  Let me know if you can see and use it and I will owe you one.