I’m Antsy

One weird side-effect of the whole house-hunting thing has been witnessing people’s weirdness about the Butcher.  And, honestly, I can’t decide if it’s weirdness about the Butcher or weirdness about money.  Maybe a little of both.

See, I’m waiting to make an offer on the house until after the Butcher sees it.  And, apparently, this is shocking.  But he lives with me.  He helps pay bills.  And I trust his judgment.  And yet, even this morning folks were like “Who’s paying for this house?  Who’s name is going to be on the mortgage?”

But I trust the Butcher.  Even if he didn’t live with me, I’d want him to see the house before I made a commitment to it.  And not because he has a magical penis (because, of course, that’s why I had Mack take a look at it), but because he knows me better than most people and I trust his opinion about whether I’m doing the right thing.  And it’s not that I’d let him override me; I just want to have his opinion to take into account.

But the whole “who controls the money in the house” issue has been one that’s been ongoing–not for us, I don’t think–but for the people around us.  I remember some of the Butcher’s crazy Christian friends who I took to Noshville where they proceeded to pray loudly and then steal things.  They were so obnoxious to the waitress that I gave her a 50% tip.  When we got home, they told on me to the Butcher, said I was being a bad steward of his money.  You know, since he was the man.  And men are supposed to control the household money.

This is kind of off-track, but in my mind, linked, because it feels like that same kind of ridiculous surety, someone might let Pastor Pete know that “sincere” DOES NOT mean “without wax” and any quick trip to the OED or even Wikipedia would have told him that he’s spreading an untruth.  I can’t say that it’s a “Breaking the Big Ten” level of untruth, but it does go to show that sincerity of belief and the Truth are not the same thing, which is probably a good lesson.

I don’t mean that as a snark against Pastor Pete.  He seems like a fine guy from his blog.  Maybe it’s not fair to call him out, not being a member of his community.  I think I won’t link to him.  No need to butt in and be rude.

But, since we’ve decided not to butt in and be rude, can I tell you how much I love that he’s taken a word that is probably pagan at root–“Oxford English Dictionary and most scholars state that sincerity from sincere is derived from the Latin sincerus meaning clean, pure, sound (1525–35). Sincerus may have once meant “one growth” (not mixed), from sin- (one) and crescere (to grow). Crescere derives from “Ceres,” the goddess of grain, as in “cereal.”–and, through his pseudo-etymology, untroubled it for himself theologically?

Songs that Sound Better in Summer

There are certain songs, I believe, that sound better when the weather is hot.  Two spring immediately to mind for me.  One is Madonna’s “Ray of Light” and the other is Sublime’s “Doin’ Time.”  Neither song is of any interest to me once the weather starts to turn cold.  But on days like today, when you want to roll down the windows but you also want to run the air conditioning and you want to drive around and you want to drink beers until you don’t remember where you left your shoes, these are some great, great songs.

The best part of “Ray of Light,” I think is how she says “Got herself a universe” over and over again until it sounds like she’s saying “Goddess of a Universe.”

There’s probably nothing good about “Doin’ Time” but I don’t care.  I like it anyway.

Resegregating Nashville Schools

Anyone who lives in Nashville can tell you that it’s still a pretty segregated city.  I wouldn’t say that it’s segregated with the same kind of brutality as northern cities.  For all our talk of bad neighborhoods that white people don’t go into, I’ve never met a black person in Nashville for whom I’m the first white person they’ve ever talked to in real life, whereas I have had the weird occassion to be that for a couple of black folks from Chicago.

On the other hand, driving around looking at houses really brings it home for you how we all here in Nashville live in quite a few cities nestled in among each other.

I firmly believe that kids should go to school in or near their own neighborhoods, unless their parents choose otherwise.  It matters that kids can walk to school or take a short bus ride.  It matters that a parent can work near where their kids go to school, so that, when there’s trouble or things to be celebrated, parents can get there.

But it also matters that neighborhoods are not very economically or racially diverse in this city and that, if you put kids in their neighborhood schools, we will be, in fact, resegregating the school system and relegating the poorest students in the most troubled neighborhoods to the Pearl-Cohn cluster (meaning Pearl-Cohn High School and all the schools that feed into it, I believe).

I don’t know what the answer to that is.

But it worries me.

In That Case, I Will Oppress the Mexicans, Chinese, and the Eastern Europeans!

Whew, I’ve got a big day ahead of me, if I’m going to prove myself to be a true-blue American with a righteous sense of history and the refusal to learn from the mistakes of my ancestors.  I’ll start by reading this book.  And then I’ll get on to repeating the exact same shit folks have been saying for 150 years, but I’ll keep swapping out groups to whom it applies.

Signs and Portents

I had two dreams last night.  In one, I was putting a compost pile in my back yard and wondering if I could put dwarf lavender along the side fence.

In the other, I realized that Bridgett wasn’t just showing up to chat about the Civil War but that I was taking a class from her and that I had a paper due in two days.  Her TA, an old, old man, would not accept it late.  I had decided to write about Civil War Tent-Makers.

This morning, when I got up to walk the dog, we were greeted by a large crow, who flew, just ahead of us from tree to tree and then called to us until we caught up.  Finally, when we hit the house of the dog who looks like Dr. Phil, it flew off over the interstate.