Visitors
We have all kinds of critters running around our property but this visitor in our driveway was an interesting surprise on Memorial Day.
Wrong-way Amy
We both had doctor’s appointments in Mt. Airy Friday. Amy first, then me. She wasn’t in the waiting room when I emerged from the doctor’s office.
She also wasn’t in the parking lot. Neither was our SUV.
So I called her cell phone. Voice mail. As usual, it was turned off.
I remembered she wanted to check out a Japanese restaurant near the doc’s office so I walked the two blocks there. Found the restaurant. No Amy. No SUV.
Then I remembered one of my cell phones was charging in the car. It was on so I called it.
“Where are you?” Actually, there was an expletive or two in the question.
Friday night music
When we wandered into Cafe del Sol Friday night I thought for a second we had been transported back to San Francisco in the 1960s and 70s.
Easy-listening jazz floated out the door, courtesy of John Winnike’s group (above) and the ambiance was about as laid back as you can get. Just up the street, the fenzy of the Friday Night Jamboree spilled out of Country Store.
A hard downpour right when the show started didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the crowd or the numbers that packed into the store. Friday night is music night in Floyd and the the town’s music row now runs from Winter Sun on the South End of town all the way to
Over the Moon at the extreme north end where guitarist Bernie Coveney (right) played before another full house.
In between you find music at Cafe del Sol, the Country Store, Whiskers, the Loft and Oddfellas Cantina. We toured music row with friends from Northern Virginia (who are currently restoring a house in Wythe County and will move here full time later this year) and noted during the evening that we go out more since moving to Floyd County than we ever did in Washington.
A thousand points of light? Not when my wife is driving
One of the first things we bought for our house when we closed on it on Dec. 3, 2004, was a solar-powered number light for the driveway.
It has guarded our driveway since that time, withstanding thunderstorms, hail, ice, snow, delivery trucks, lawn mowers, curious deer, urinating dogs and just about everything else.
But it fell victim Thursday to a serial light killer named Amy at the wheel of a dangerous weapon — a Jeep Liberty.
When you add the four perimeter lights my wife has managed to destroy while behind the wheel of her killer SUV, the wanton murder of our number light makes her an ace.
I’m going to affix five decals of outdoor lights on her door so the world will be warned: Beware petite brunettes on roadside killing rampages.
Amy, of course, went into immediate denial (as in "I didn’t do it"), but I’ve watched enough episodes of CSI to gather evidence.
I measured tire tracks (same width and tread as her Liberty). I observed the debris trail (led from the driveway).
Then I found the smoking gun: Two pieces of the light housing embedded in the treads of the right front tire and a third in the rear tire tread. When confronted, she feigned ignorance ("I didn’t feel anything when I drove out of the driveway").
But faced with overwhelming evidence gathered by CSI husband she confessed then added a new tact to the defense ("I didn’t hit it before you moved it closer to the driveway").
Yes, closer, but not in the driveway, and — as the accompanying photographic evidence shows, not even that close to the surface of the driveway.
Guilt established, case close. The prosecution rests.
Vacations? We don’t need no stinkin’ vacations
“So,” a friend asked the other day, “where are you going this year for vacation?”
Vacation? Did he say vacation?
It occurs to us that we haven’t had a vacation since moving fulltime to Floyd County in late 2004. In fact, we haven’t taken a vacation since a two-week trip to Hawaiian island of Lanai in 1991.
Back when I “worked for a living,” so much of that work was spent on planes and in hotels around the world. When vacation time came, the last thing I wanted to do was crawl back on a plane and head for another hotel.
Confessions of a Tivo junkie
All right. I admit it. I’m a Tivo junkie. We have the DirecTV package that offers everything – movie channels, sports, the works. We have three Tivos recording around the clock: News shows, documentaries, series and movies.
The wisdom of Edward R. Murrow
I have always been a fan of the late Edward R. Murrow, the crusading CBS newsman who took on the fanatical Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy when no one else in the broadcast news business had the guts to do so.
That battle cost Murrow dearly. CBS, weary of the many controversies caused by Murrow’s award-winning “See it Now” television news magazine, caved to pressure and exiled the show to a Sunday time slot. Murrow’s prime-time appearances were limited to his celebrity interviews, which he hated but admitted he did to “pay the bills.”
In 1958, Murrow appeared before the Radio-TV News Directors Association and delivered a stinging indictment of TV’s aversion to controversy. Parts of the speech were used to lead and end George Clooney’s excellent film, Good Night and Good Luck.
For example:
Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live. I invite your attention to the television schedules of all networks between the hours of 8 and 11 p.m., Eastern Time. Here you will find only fleeting and spasmodic reference to the fact that this nation is in mortal danger. There are, it is true, occasional informative programs presented in that intellectual ghetto on Sunday afternoons. But during the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW, PAY LATER.
For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then some courageous soul with a small budget might be able to do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done–and are still doing–to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizens from anything that is unpleasant.
I am entirely persuaded that the American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry’s program planners believe. Their fear of controversy is not warranted by the evidence. I have reason to know, as do many of you, that when the evidence on a controversial subject is fairly and calmly presented, the public recognizes it for what it is–an effort to illuminate rather than to agitate.
Like a Rolling Stone
Picked up a copy of Rolling Stone’s 1,000 issue over the weekend – the first time I’ve read the magazine in years.
Lunchless in Floyd
One of our favorite lunch places is no longer open on Tuesdays. Beginning this week, Oddfellas Cantina operates under a new schedule: Open for lunch and dinner Wednesday through Saturday and brunch on Sunday but dark on both Monday and Tuesday.
Don’t make book on it
After music, Floyd County’s cottage industry appears to be writing: writing poetry, writing blogs, writing books. Floyd is overrun with writers, many of them published (self and otherwise) and some doing quite well thank you.