Daily Archives: October 3, 2013

Oct 3

Sometimes One-Fold is Enough

The third witch had a leg up in law school, because she’d spent so much time reading trial transcripts from the Inquisition in undergrad. There was a bit of fencing that insulted her, an iron barrier between the little mystic coffee shop she enjoyed and the world-renown restaurant next door. Because heaven forbid good folks accidentally wander over.

She always went out front to smoke right by that little length of fence. And she would whisper to the fence, every day, “May you be received in the spirit in which you were given.”

Eventually, the fence came down.

“It was so ugly,” the chef said. “Did you see how ugly it was?”

Oct 3

I Have Lost My History Cred

Here’s what you need to know about Bill Carey, if you don’t already. He knows a lot about Nashville history. A lot. In general, if I were going to get into a history fight with Bill Carey, you can rest assured that he would wipe the floor with me without even breaking a sweat. I strive to know a millionth of what he knows.

So, you can imagine my alarm when I read this: “WITHOUT IT THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, AND WITHOUT IT, NASHVILLE WOULD NOT HAVE BECOME ‘THE ATHENS OF THE SOUTH.'” It being the United Methodist Publishing house. I mean, yes, it’s alarming to realize I’ve pissed off Bill Carey, who is someone I deeply admire. But it’s really alarming to realize I’ve pissed him off so much he’s muddled up just when Nashville became the Athens of the South, which was, of course, as Bill Carey knows, decades before Vanderbilt was founded.

It’s like when my dad would just holler “BetsyBenBartFritz” because he was so angry he couldn’t get the right kid’s name out, so he just ran through them all. I’ve made Bill Carey do the historian’s equivalent of my dad’s sputtering rage.

So, that’s awkward. If there’s some cool secret cabal of Nashville history nerds, I’m never getting in now.