Tawdry quirk curators
// October 18th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // life, local, people, TN
Gallaher View – “Stay in your lane or stay off this road.”
West Town mall stairwells – “Do NOT urinate in stairwells. Moron.”
Nubbin Ridge – “No joggers. Ever.”
unisex bathrooms – “No quickies when other people are waiting for restroom.” & “Bathroom NOT soundproof.”
Everywhere else – “No spitting on sidewalk. Yuck.”
// September 9th, 2008 // No Comments » // blogging, blogher, child welfare, local, me, people
On a completely serious note, please follow @mysweetlife on Twitter and send her every ounce of love and support that you can. She needs it.
Then, visit Kelby Carr and read how she is trying to help a fellow blogger whose spouse is looking for work. Don’t be cynical and say I only want a free pass to BlogHer. Because of the generosity of others, Sarah and I have tickets to BlogHer in Nashville. That is a topic for a separate post. We have used our share of good luck for the year. If I did get that ticket, I would just have to give it away to an East TN blogger.
// August 31st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // people, travel
Another Friday, another drive up to LMU to rescue my college freshman from a weekend on campus. It’s a beautiful campus, but the town is smaller than our high school. It would have been cruel to leave Tommy up there for a three day weekend. Besides, he is actually starting to make friends during the week, so the weekend of forced interaction with peers is slightly less urgent now. I don’t love driving. In my fantasy world I have a driver and I get to spend my time in the car reading books, working on lists and writing. My real life is far less glamorous.
I got away later than I intended because I had to make a last minute supply drop at the high school for the 10th grader. “I need a bun sized hair net by 3 pm.” Eventually, Evan and I headed out of town. Well, we went the wrong way and ended up at East Town Mall, THEN we headed out of Knoxville. Have I mentioned that I am completely directionally impaired? Oh. Sorry. We traveled along happily until we came to an abrupt standstill on the Interstate that lasted about 20 minutes after which traffic resumed normal behaviors. I guess it was just some sort of pretend you live in Atlanta social experiment or something. As everyone resumed normal speeds and spaces between cars, it was clear than the 20 minute interruption had disturbed some of the other drivers. Right before my eyes, the cars around me became animated Wacky Races contestants. Cars drove in the grassy median and the paved emergency lane. Motorcycles weaved so closely between cars you could have touched them with your hand. Someone pulled the Speed Buggy lift the body of your car up and over another car move. The aggressive driving was so absurd I thought we were being filmed for a B-movie.
I thought things would get easier when I got on the long, straight drive that is Hwy 63. I was wrong. The cartoon cars just added trailers with boats and Jet Skis. Instead of the usual smell of the tobacco fields to add atmosphere, the road was absolutely covered with the remains of skunks. I don’t know if there was an escape at some local skunk breeder’s farm or if that rural road is the direct path for skunk migration, but I have never seen such Pepe Le Carnage. Each furry spot on the road radiated a smell that covered a quarter of a mile. My passenger began a campaign of complaint. “Poo smell. Smell poo. Where poo? Yucky poo.” It didn’t help that the mermaid cartoon ended as we were traveling down skunk road. “Tv all done. No more car. I done. No car!”
On one of the rare stretches of road when the speed limit is actually above 45, I peeked over a hill to see a trooper’s car blocking the road in front of me. Everyone morphed from cartoon into real human beings as we pulled over and watched a helicopter land in the road. An ambulance rushed to the chopper. Everyone silently watched. Well, everyone except the one animated weasel from Roger Rabbit. Maybe it was a hyena from The Lion King. That one moron tried to drive in the grassy median to get past the helicopter. Several of us got out of our cars and gave that driver the evil eye, but it took a trucker’s horn beep alerting the nearby troopers to get the reckless driver to stop and wait for the emergency scene to get out of the road. As quickly as it landed, the Lifestar helicopter was in the air and on its’ urgent journey and the road was clear for drivers. The rest of the trip was calmer as all the drivers on the road thought about the family of the person in the helicopter. I briefly imagined myself on the gurney in the chopper with a medic holding a giggling Evan. Evan would throw goldfish crackers at my head while yelling, “Go faster.”
By the time I got to LMU I felt drained. I looked forward to the ride home with Tommy beside me doing his running commentary routine. Instead, 18-y-o Tommy hopped in the backseat to watch cartoon rats with his 3-y-o brother. I turned on the radio’s comedy channel to try and stay awake. I snickered at Patton Oswalt the stand-up while the boys laughed at Patton as Remy. I think Patton Oswalt is the only reason I made it home safe and sane.
// August 9th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // local, people, TN
“Pick on Farragut”
Objective: Blame Farragut for anything you don’t like about Knoxville.
Examples: “Farragut caused urban sprawl.”
“Farragut made the downtown a service center for the homeless.”
“Farragut caused my child to be zoned out of the school in our neighborhood.”
How to play: Whenever possible, toss out verbal daggers that criticize Farragut. Counter the criticism with praise for downtown. Bonus points if you use the words “my historic neighborhood,” “walkability” or “destroyed wetlands.” In order to play this game well, you must know the home zip code of every local politician, celebrity and developer.
If you live in Farragut: You respond to this game with comments about paying more taxes than the rest of Knoxville or wide-eyed innocence.
How to win: There is no winner. The only way to win is not to play.
// July 17th, 2008 // No Comments » // life, local, people
Continuing on my summer tour of government buildings, I visited the Social Security building on Kingston Pike today. I mailed in my old card YEARS ago with paperwork to get my name changed and apparently it disappeared into space. I didn’t know there was a problem until Tommy’s college paperwork claimed that our e-filed taxes for the past 2 years were denied because my name was wrong on the tax forms. Wouldn’t you think the IRS would have sent us a late penalty notice or something? So, since I have moved from denial that Tommy is going to college to frantic activity, I am trying to fix all of the problems simultaneously.
I was very pleased that the Social Security building is in my neck of the woods. It must really chafe the everything and everyone should be downtown Grumplestiltskins that the Social Security building is halfway between one end of town and the other. Actually, they don’t want everyone downtown. They think that the homeless population should be bused down to the wealthy part of town daily. Anyway, I parked right in front of the building which has been everything from a grocery store to an indoor skate park. It has a new, professional facade to hide the building’s eclectic history. At that point, the experience became the opposite of the DHS building visit. There were no people smoking outside and there was no giant ashtray instead of a flower bed. This place is Disney-clean. When you enter the building, the chairs are lined up in an aesthetically pleasing angle with wide rows around the sides and through the middle to easily traverse the room. There are no employees anywhere to be seen. Everyone checks in with a computer and sits silently until a disembodied voice calls their name and/or number with directions to follow. “Number 67, go to room 15.” “Number 68, go to window D.” Did I mention the unnatural silence? The people looked like zombies, staring at a television that was playing a looped recording of a woman telling everyone they could avoid the wait if they handled their needs online. The recording played over and over, but nobody left to go find a computer. Social Security might want to rethink their plan to get less people in the building.
I quickly figured out the reason for the silence. If anyone tried to use their phone or spoke in a normal voice, a guard appeared out of thin air and barked at them to go outside. “Not allowed. Outside.” You know the experience of getting through the security gate to enter a military base? The guard who is incapable of saying anything outside of his script or thinking independently? That was this guard. A senior quietly asked the guard if he knew where you get birth certificates. “We don’t do that.” “But, could you tell me who to ask?” “We don’t do that.” Dude. It’s the Social Security building, not Buckingham Palace. The computerized voice gave me directions and the clerk corrected my name in the system. I was in the building for less than 20 minutes. On the way out of the building, I pushed a button on my phone and held it up to my ear while waiting for the person I dialed to answer. The guard appeared in a poof of blue smoke and stared at me, waiting for me to speak out loud into the forbidden device. I felt like we were passing each other on a dusty saloon lined street. I spoke as I opened the door to exit. The guard smirked and vanished.
// July 2nd, 2008 // 4 Comments » // local, mental health
While another area in Knoxville rallies together to be heard by St. Mary’s, the neighborhoods around Lakeshore sit silently. They silently watched, year after year, while the buildings deteriorated as the state reduced Lakeshore’s budget. They said nothing when Lakeshore was forced to sell some of their valuable property to Parks & Rec. They are remaining quiet as all of the cottages and buildings on the soccer field side of Lakeshore’s Orchard Road are claimed for the soccer teams’ parking needs. The majority of the SPMI population at Lakeshore has been tossed aside by their families and the state is quietly taking away their front and back yard. This time, they have taken the consumers’ chapel away from them. The Lakeshore family needs that chapel far more than the Hummer driving soccer moms need additional parking. How many of those soccer parents have ever spent an hour in that chapel with the Lakeshore consumers? I’m seriously guessing that the answer is none. How many soccer games are the Lakeshore consumers welcome to attend? There may be a few kind hearts on that field, but I still doubt if the majority would allow it. Lakeshore’s chapel needs to be open. The consumers, doctors, nurses and volunteers need that chapel. The chapel would never turn away any of the soccer families. Unlock the chapel doors and let it serve the entire Lakeshore community, athletic families and health families alike.
// May 27th, 2008 // 5 Comments » // local, movies
I love going to see movies at the drive-in. It is a much more relaxed, social environment than a regular movie theater. Everyone arrives early to set-up camps. Chairs, blankets, coolers and toys are organized while adults mingle with their neighbors for the evening. Children control the area between the screen and the cars. Girls perform unison cartwheels and handstands while boys throw footballs and tackle each other. Small children giggle and run freely under the watchful eyes of every person there. The back rows are avoided by everyone except the teenagers. The equipment is not modern and the food is not for careful dieters, but nobody cares. For that frozen moment in time, it is a happy car town.
The doomsday clock is counting down toward the end of the Midtown Drive-In in Harriman, Tennessee. In less than 5 years, the theater will be put out of business by the hospital that is being built next door. Hospitals have bright lights that glow all night. The only lighting that drive-ins need are the sparkling stars in the sky over your head. Last weekend, we even had a shooting star to enhance the atmosphere. Sometimes in life, you only recognize in retrospect the moments that were sweet and priceless. Every time we spend an evening at the drive-in, we smile at each other and know that this IS one of the good times. This summer, spend one evening at the drive-in with your family. In the blink of an eye, the drive-ins will be gone and your children will be grown.
// April 6th, 2008 // No Comments » // people, TN
Of all yesterday’s speakers, the only thing more entertaining than the students, was a doctor at LMU‘s new medical school. He talked about the school’s mission to teach medicine to the people of Appalachia so that they could return to their communities with the skills to help. The doctor was eloquent and passionate and if I was 18, he could have talked me into making Appalachia my home. Unfortunately, I prefer social sciences to physical sciences and the last thing the people in Appalachia need is another social worker.
Several years ago, a school administrator called and asked me to attend an IEP to help a parent understand the process. Attending meetings at schools was a normal weekly occurance. That was the ONLY time a school ever invited me. Usually, the parents called for support and the schools were openly hostile at my presence. This was an unusual situation. The school was in a very rural, very poor area near the Kentucky border and the child was extremely physically and mentally disabled. The child’s very immediate future was a group home or institution. Everyone in the room understood that except the mother. The mother was MR and the state was already in the process of removing the child from her custody. The mother lacked the mental skills to manage her physical health problems and she needed an assisted living situation herself. I have been to a lot of meetings that were sad and frustrating, but this situation was tragic.
I have to believe that many people in East TN don’t know that we have our very own third world just a few hours up the road. Surely they don’t deliberately ignore the situation. Poverty, illness and illiteracy are so extreme in Appalachia that you really feel like the oxygen has been sucked out of the air. There are homes without running water or indoor plumbing. Buckets and pails are lined up around every ramshackle building and trailer to gather rainwater. It is a level of filth like few people have ever seen. Clean homes and clothes are a luxury the Appalachian people can’t afford. There is no door to door trash removal service. They have no phones or transportation. It is physically impossible for them to travel to where there is work. Poverty leads to poor eating options and hunger which lead to sickness which makes further debts, further inability to work and increasingly insurmountable obstacles to surviving. A naive and sheltered young woman visiting TN once proclaimed her surprise to Doug at the revelation that not everyone can read. It evolved into a discussion of poverty and no matter how valiantly he tried, Doug just couldn’t get her to see beyond her belief that you are only poor if you don’t work hard enough. LMU is making steps in the right direction to help. That makes them the good guys. It made me feel even more confident that they are the right people to entrust with my child.
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