Here is Sleepy John Estes’s song, in his own voice. And here’s the map between Durhamville, where Estes is buried (and likely grew up), and Brownsville.

Please note how, when you head out of town toward Nutly (home of Tiny Turner), to get to Brownsville, you do, indeed, take the right-hand road. I know that’s simple enough, but it makes me so happy. It’s a real place you can go and see. It’s a road you can take.

It just gives me a feeling that I want people to have when they read my work. I want people who poke around looking at the places my stories take place to find those streets and buildings and ways.

Edited to add: And we saw a camel!

Today I learned that this is not Brownsville, Texas, but Brownsville, Tennessee, where Sleepy John Estes lived, way on back when. We’re going there tomorrow. While we’re there, we’ll see Tennessee’s oldest synagogue. Among other things.

Josh Marshall says:

If you’re going to come tar President Obama I think you need to work with cerebral, out of touch, big government liberalism overreach. Not that I agree with these things but they’re rooted in things that are true, they’re the worst takes on real aspects of who Obama is. But the ‘Chicago-style’ break your legs stuff? Please. This plays with the not-racist right and Republicans who, as I said, live in a cult of victimization and paranoia. But President Obama’s most telling trait is the effort to conciliate and convince opponents, not to threaten them. Believe me, a lot of his top supporters wish he was more bullying.

My co-worker actually asked me yesterday why Obama doesn’t go ahead and go all Bullworth on their asses. So, I think Marshall is right, that even people who feel anxious about Obama–unless they’re a subset of Republicans–don’t feel anxious about him because he’s a thug. Accusations of him being a thug just don’t ring true to people who aren’t afraid to almost paranoid levels of him.

And yet, obviously, if you’re just trying to play on non-black people’s subconscious racist fears about black men, like I said, there is a stereotype to plug into and one that actually has some resonance with who Obama is. I really find it befuddling that they don’t use it.

It’s as if the Republican party isn’t just trading in racist tropes, it’s that, in their singular commitment to a specific version of the past, they’ve missed all the ways the rest of us white folks have been othering black people.

Or let me put it another way–all they have is “Birth of a Nation.” They missed all the white people playing Scott Joplin tunes on their pianos who would never let him in the front door of their homes.

A Lovecraft reference and lots of vegetable-heavy recipes? Tell me what’s not to love?

Oh. my. god. Do you think there’s someone out there, somewhere, who might make the Butcher trim the yard?!

If you have ever considered smooching the Butcher and have not, I hope you sleep well knowing you could be the reason my yard hasn’t been trimmed in two years.

And yet, out of morbid curiosity, I can’t quit touching it. And thinking, “Wow, this is what all of me will feel like when I’m dead. This is literally what my skin feels like absent pumping blood.” It’s both really distressing and really fascinating.

And weird to think that, in some eras, if I were accused of witchcraft, there’s the proof–the place where I suckle the Devil.

How’s that for heebie jeebies?

I have no words.

Well, I have words. They go like this. I get that, for a lot of people, “the unknown” all live down the same hall in their head. If not Zeus, why not aliens? But I actually find aliens kind of boring. I assume they exist. I assume they’re probably not interacting with us. If they are, it’s weird and cool, but it wouldn’t fuck me up.

But, for me, there’s a continuum with things I know don’t exist–like vampires–on one end–and things I’m not sure exist–like gods–at the other that I know, with my whole being, are ways we have of trying to make sense of the inexplicable. (Imagine it like this. You know you live in a house with windows. You don’t know for sure what’s outside your house, only that you both can see there’s stuff out there and you have a strong sense that what you see through your windows is not the full totality of what’s outside your house. Now, imagine that you start to see things out there and you want to somehow capture an image of them to show your friends, so you can all talk about what you see out there, beyond the house. Now, say that you, for some reason, decide to draw on the window in butter what you’re seeing. So, there’s the trick of remembering that you’re rendering in two dimensions what you’re seeing in three. And remembering that your finger in butter isn’t a great medium. And, when the sun warms the glass, things are going to slip and slid. And you might not be that great an artist in the first place. etc. And then it’s not you who’s going to look at your window paintings–it’s your kids and grand kids and great grandkids. So, clearly, you saw something out the window. I’m chalking vampires up to mostly butter-smear. I think your blond-haired blue-eyed Jesus is not quite right, but I’m sure you saw something human-like that moved you. We’re all grasping to try to find a language to explain what we’re seeing out there.) And I find the hallway down which that continuum lives to be extraordinarily interesting.

In my own psychic landscape, though, aliens don’t live down that hall. And I really hate when that’s the explanation behind things. I mean, I find the Bermuda Triangle a lot more compelling than Area 51, because Area 51 involves a certain truth that’s being kept from us by a conspiracy and the Bermuda Triangle… well, who can even say if that’s a real thing? I prefer mysterious and unclear to grand conspiracies. I guess in part because I don’t believe that people are good at keeping secrets.

Anyway, so I strongly dislike the Alien Jesus theory, no matter how much Ridley Scott thinks it’s too on the nose. To me, it’s too halls that go different places being forced into one.

–I hear that Project X is chugging along.

–I hear that I’m somehow both not working ICMC this year and my parents aren’t coming down. So, I may have an actual Memorial Day weekend filled with… I don’t know. Whatever it is that people do on Memorial Day weekend other than go to Belmont.

–My roses are starting to bloom, as are the peonies.

–I’m feeling a little stagnant. I know it’s just the pending birthday blues. But lord almighty, I hope Mary Oliver doesn’t ask me what I’ve done with my one wild life this week or I will just have to cry and admit I spent most of it oddly and in ways I feel uncertain lead to anything.

–And yet, cool shit has happened. And I feel happy.

–So, I really do think it’s just the blues. Nothing is wrong. I’m just getting older and I feel a longing for something I can’t quite put my finger on.

She’s a stand-up comedian. I asked him if he was going to get to be in her act and he said “no.”

I said, “I know that’s hard for you.” And he wrinkled his nose and looked at me in a questioning manner, and I said, “Because no Phillips likes to hear they’re not entertaining enough to be talked about.”

Meanwhile, the Redheaded Kid was rambling on about his trip to Morocco. And I have to tell you that I’m still not sure if this was a real trip to Morocco he took at some point in his life or if he was just making it up to pull my leg, but he insists that you’ve not lived until you’ve eaten lunch in Morocco. Why lunch? Like, oh, breakfast in Morocco is nice, but nothing to write home about. Supper, fine, but again, nothing that is going to complete you. But lunch! My god, lunch in Morocco! That’s all there is to life. Lunch in Morocco.

Ha ha ha. I just looked up Moroccan cuisine on Wikipedia to see if it could shed light on this whole “lunch in Morocco” weirdness and I’ll be damned. Lunch in Morocco does sound fucking awesome. “The midday meal is the main meal, except during the holy month of Ramadan. A typical meal begins with a series of hot and cold salads, followed by a tagine. Bread is eaten with every meal. Often, for a formal meal, a lamb or chicken dish is next, followed by couscous topped with meat and vegetables. A cup of sweet mint tea usually ends the meal.”

I really should stop doubting the Redheaded Kid. It’s just hard because he always seems like he could be pulling your leg. Last night he ate a whole can of Pringles, some of the worst chocolate chip cookies known to man, and some pizza. And then complained about feeling sick, while also raving about lunch in Morocco and then quietly making fun of Kenneth Branaugh and how dude could never be on CSI.

“Three more years?”

“You know, because that’s when J. graduates.”

I had to get back in my chair to fall off it again. My oldest nephew has his learner’s permit! What next? Chest hair? Just cart me off to the old folks home right now.

The baby who I remember like it was yesterday being born is a fucking man. Well, not a man man, but a young man. On his way to be an adult. I hope he gets a good life, can figure out how to make a life for himself where he has a home and open horizons and bills paid.

And I hope we don’t weigh him down in it.

Just as we all benefit from these resources, we all benefit from healthy babies that have the best chance to become future contributors to society. Why should being rich or having a certain type of job be a prerequisite for health care security? Why should everyone else have to live in fear of what could happen and whether we can afford it?

I find this whole situation preposterous. It goes beyond the middle-class squeeze: it’s disrespectful to women. A woman’s reproductive options are dangled over her head: access to contraception is threatened; abortion rights are constantly under attack. When a woman gets pregnant, unless she is wealthy or covered by private insurance, there is little help for her to raise children without going into debt. And the medical bills start piling up before she even start pushing.–Mira Ptacin

I asked, “When?”

And he said, “tomorrow.” And so he did.

I haven’t heard anything about his adventure yet, since he got back after I went to bed and left for work before I got up.

But it has made me decide that I need to have an adventure. I don’t know of what sort. I haven’t even really thought about doing anything exciting in a long time, but the Butcher always comes back from them so happy.

I’m sorry. I’m now completely distracted. Oh, right, so anyway, I’m watching the episode where they encounter Baba Yaga. And they keep saying her name “Baba Yeeh-gah,” with the most emphasis put on the “gah.” Now, I do feel slightly cheated that we didn’t do much folklore in my Russian classes, so I haven’t ever heard the name pronounced by a native Russian speaker AND the tiny girl on the show, Ksenia Solo, is, according to Wikipedia, a Latvian-born Russian. But I swear, it never occurred to me that this is how you would say it. I have always been saying it to myself “Baba Yaga” like “Lady Gaga.” And I went back and looked at in in Russian–Баба Яга–and I still would pronounce that “Baba Yaga.”

On the other hand, I was regularly told I spoke Russian like a peasant. On the third hand, come on! Clearly the peasants would have the best Baba Yaga stories, so who the fuck doesn’t want to speak in a way they would understand? So, I kind of wonder if I’ve just been fucking this up all these years or if it’s a difference in accents. After all, someone who learned English from a Californian is going to be confused when she hears a word she’s only ever read in English pronounced by a Scottish dude, if it doesn’t sound like it did in her head. And it doesn’t mean either pronunciation is wrong.

But anyway, that got me poking around and, apparently, there’s some wondering if Baba Yaga isn’t the same or similar to Perchta who might be the same or similar to Holda. And I would like to read about that. So, holler if you know of any good resources.