December 2005 Archives

LBJs

*I hope everyone had/is having a happy holiday--preferably more than one. We're back home after an entirely enjoyable trip to Chapel Hill for my family's Xmas celebration. (Kelly's family has its gathering on the Saturday before Xmas.) This was one of those Heavily Concentrated gift seasons; other than my stocking stuffers, I really got only one gift, but it was a doozy: a digital camera. It's something I've wanted for some time, but we haven't been able to justify the cost; that's one of the very best things about gifts, actually--they needn't be justified. So far I've learned the basics of snapshots and display, but I haven't yet worked out the interface with the computer, so y'all are at least temporarily safe from having my efforts forced on you here. Enjoy that while it lasts.

*A couple of book recommendations: Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science should be required reading for anyone who considers science and science education important. I'll be posting a more detailed assessment of the book in a few days, but the short version is this: it's a remarkably well-researched piece of journalism, and the picture it paints of the Bush administration's outright disregard for science (and indeed, for hard data of all sorts) is truly frightening. It's likely to make you angry, at the very least, and it may make you feel rather depressed to boot.

By contrast, Mary Roach's Spook: Science Takes on the Afterlife is entirely engaging, despite the fact that it deals with one of the more frightening and depressing elements of life: death. Focusing on scientific attempts to learn about the afterlife, Roach takes on topics such as ectoplasm, reincarnation, near-death experiences, and the remarkable Chaffin case, in which a family in Davie County, North Carolina, went to court to settle the question of whether one son had been shown an unknown will by his father's ghost or not. Roach is a dedicated researcher, as those who read her delightful Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers will recall, but her breezy wit and love of footnotes and historical digressions will keep any reader laughing and turning the pages.

*Right as school let out, one of my old WFS students, Leighton Reid '02, dropped me a line about doing some birding during the break. He's been an outdoorsman and nature lover all his life--his father is a Woodberry science teacher and a colleague of mine in our outdoor program--but I remember Leighton best from the fall of his senior year, when he took up the challenge of appearing in the first play I directed for our Black Box Theater, a production of Bland Simpson & Jim Wann's King Mackerel & the Blues Are Running. Leighton was the piano player, a job that he took on without having played the piano in several years, as he'd been concentrating on the trombone. The other major challenge of the production was the fact that we didn't have the sheet music for the first two weeks of rehearsals, and we had a total of only five and a half weeks before the performance. The reason was a good one, mind you--Samuel French & Company, which supplied the music, is located in New York City, and our students arrived for that fall semester on September 11, 2001. We didn't feel especially resentful that they weren't quite prompt with their deliveries.

Despite these troubles, the show went off well, and Leighton's dedication and creativity were a big reason why. That spring he went off to Sewanee to become a biology major, and while he was there, he took an ornithology class and got bitten by the birding bug. Having returned for the holidays, he figured this might be a good chance to see some local birds and decided to recruit me. Thanks to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, I was able to suggest a few sites on the state's new Wildlife and Birding Trails system, and we headed out into the frigid darkness on December 22nd for Lake Anna, where we discovered a remarkable fog; the lake's waters are used to cool the Lake Anna Nuclear Plant, and though no three-eyed fish have turned up yet, the waters near the dam are warmed by their trip through the plant and don't ice up in winter, attracting a healthy population of seabirds and waterfowl. Unfortunately, it's hard on the visibility, so all we were able to see were a few pied-billed grebes, a song sparrow or three, a dauntless great blue heron, and a host of ring-billed gulls. We decided to light out for some other spots on the far side of Fredericksburg instead.

The first of these, Land's End, offered us a variety of terrains, including a boggy forest full of thorns where I scared up my only lifer of the day: a furiously whistling ball of tawny feathers that turned out to be an American woodcock. Other than size and color, it provided few field marks in its haste to escape--just the long bill and the whistle of its wings as it whirred off into the trees. The habitat and color denied the possibility that it was a snipe, so I felt pretty sure of my ID, and Leighton had seen one before, so into the life list it went. We also nailed down a brown creeper (Leighton's first) and a variety of woodpeckers before we made our way across a cornfield to the edge of the Rappahannock River, upon which we discovered a Canada goose gathering of Biblical proportions. Leighton's estimate was 2000 geese, and if anything, I expect he was being conservative. There were also some ducks within the crowd--mallards, black ducks, ruddy ducks, hooded mergansers--but without a spotting scope, we had little hope of nailing down many details. The trio of bald eagles soaring overhead more than made up for the lack of a scope, though.

From there we proceeded to the familiar environs of Pope's Creek, where George Washington's Birthplace National Monument stands, and where scores of birds spend the winter. I've been birding there on several occasions, and though the creek's ospreys were apparently taking the day off, we were nonetheless able to spot a number of good birds: gadwalls, mute swans, common mergansers, golden-crowned kinglets, and a massive flock of cedar waxwings. We also got a great look at an immature (but white-headed) bald eagle flying over us, plus a chorus of whoops from the tundra swans that gathered in the distance near the creek's mouth. All in all, a lovely day of birding. When Leighton gets back from his Appalachian Trail hike this summer, we'll have to do it again.

*To my astonishment, my Scrub Jays are the champions of the Number Crushers fantasy football league, having defeated the Slobberin' Fools in the title game 367.50 to 331.40. (We score a lot in the N.C. system.) I went into the playoffs as the number four seed at 8-5, a big step up from earlier in the season, when a four-game losing streak left me 2-4 and gnashing my teeth. My warhorses were my number-one draft pick, Peyton Manning, wideouts Marvin Harrison, Steve Smith (whom I got in round 6), and T.J. Houshmandzadeh, and running backs Rudi Johnson, Willie Parker (round 25!), and Fred Taylor. I also got big boosts from defensive studs Zach Thomas, Troy Polamalu, and Bears linebacker Lance Briggs, who put the title game out of reach on Christmas Day by intercepting Brett Favre and running in for a TD. (I should note that Favre was a helpful QB for most of the season, though I'd benched him for the last few weeks as his supporting cast got weaker and weaker.) My playoff games were made a wee bit more interesting than they had to be thanks to several major injuries--Harrison's broken hand, Byron Leftwich's broken leg--and a deliberate attempt to limit some players' playing time in meaningless late-season games. As a result, I found myself starting the championship game--the first such game I've ever reached--with quarterbacks David Garrard and Jamie Martin, both of whom, I'm happy to say, played great games. I also snagged two substitute wide receivers in Baltimore's Mark Clayton and Kansas City's Samie Parker, and was rewarded when both scored TDs in last weekend's contests.

Until this season, I had never even won a playoff game, let alone a championship, so I'm in a state somewhere between giddy and pole-axed. I'm happy to keep the Number Crushers title in Virginia, though, since my next-door neighbor Greg won it last year, and now I can rub it in during the off-season.

I'm also facing my greatest Fantasy League of Gentlemen/Gentlewomen challenge yet: the Super Duper Bowl. FLOGG was my first fantasy league, and I'm eager to make my mark there. Unfortunately, despite having upset the heavily-favored Screamin' Boiled Lobsters in the first round, and having outlasted the determined Fighting Novaks in the Glory Division championship, my Fighting Coelacanths must to get past an unpredictable Hip-Hip-Hezbollah squad and their cunning coach, the Ghost of Grantland Rice, to earn the Antower Trophy. I'll report back on the game (and the Winter Meetings) in 2006.

3:06 PM

As an early Xmas present to myself, I'm using a meme going around the blogosphere. (Thanks to Kevin Drum at www.washingtonmonthly.com for passing it along to me.)

Four jobs you've had in your life: Dishwasher/cone line server, Swensen's; freelance comic-book critic; musical accompanist, Transactors Improv Company; teacher (English/speech), Woodberry Forest School

Four movies you could watch over and over (What does this "could" mean? I do watch 'em over and over): Monty Python and the Holy Grail, This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

Four places you've lived: Chapel Hill, NC; Manchester, UK; Fayetteville, NC; Woodberry Forest, VA (a complete list, if you ignore my first year of life, which I spent in Raleigh, NC)

Four TV shows you love to watch: I don't watch much live, but on DVD, at least: Veronica Mars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Northern Exposure, Black Adder

Four places you've been on vacation: the Road to the Isles, Western Scotland; Everglades National Park; Orvieto, Italy; Atlantic Beach, NC

Four websites you visit daily: Readerville.com, Political Animal, Half-life and Times, The Panda's Thumb

Four of your favorite foods: pad thai, gelato, meatloaf, matzoh ball soup (Thank god I live in America.)

Four places you'd rather be: New Zealand; Orvieto, Italy; Big Bend National Park, Texas; Blackwell's Booksellers in Oxford

10:13 PM

Official Happy Holidays* Edition

Only in America could people be offended because someone wished them well.

I haven't yet figured out why a certain segment of America's Christian community--a segment which makes up a teeny-weeny percentage of the 200-million plus Americans who identify themselves as Christians--feel they're at "war" over Christmas. Actually, I know exactly why (and it's not simply that the folks over at Fox News are trying to sell a book written by one of their talking heads on this very subject--well, it's not entirely that, at least...) This is the same segment that feel somehow marginalized by the fact that everyone is not like them, and respond to that marginalization with a xenophobia that would make an 18th-century Japanese shogun proud. These are the ones who want the government to indoctrinate public-school students, or who decorate their vehicles with bumper stickers like the one I saw this morning: "Don't Speak English? Get Out"

The phrase "happy holidays" is apparently offensive to this crowd because it suggests that not everyone celebrates Christmas--a demographic fact that has been beyond dispute since the creation of the U.S. Census. As a result, it's not enough that these people get to celebrate Christmas freely; no, Christmas must receive special recognition as a holiday that's better than other holidays. It's not enough that your deity look down from on high and recognizes your worship as correct--everyone down here has to recognize you as right, too.

This is the same thinking that puts posturing over achievement, the end-zone celebration over the actual touchdown. Apparently Christ must not only arrive on Earth amid signs and wonders, he must whip a cell phone out of the manger and call Dad to demonstrate to all that Buddha simply can't cover him man-to-man.

Putting aside the philosophical problems with the above interpretation--one which seems to place the wishes of God beneath those of the clerks at Wal-Mart--let's consider instead the scriptural problems. I'm reasonably sure that the guy whose birth is being celebrated urged his followers to turn the other cheek. Many of those purported followers right now are not only failing to heed JC, but seem to be thrusting their cheeks out at passersby in hopes that they'll make accidental contact and then have to pony up big bucks when the cheek-thrusters hit them with personal injury suits.

Finally, let's note the calendar: regardless of whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Saturnalia, Solstice, or none of the above, our national calendar places two holidays within a week or so--and one of them happens to be a national, but purely secular, holiday: New Year's Day. When I say "Happy Holidays," I am including the whole late-December-early-January shmear: all the religious holidays, plus Boxing Day, plus New Year's Day, plus the days of our major bowl games--this is America, after all. It's a greeting that includes each and every person of good will. If that's not enough, well, my good wishes for you are likely to be somewhat limited anyway.

Now, can we all gather with our families, dine on our favorite foods, sing our favorite songs, and celebrate (or not) in peace? The angels over Bethlehem seemed to think that was a good way to recognize Christ's birth, and I'm prepared to take them at their word.

Besides, I've got other things to be outraged about. My childhood belief that Santa was watching me all year, listening to my conversations, taking note of my actions, making a list, checking it twice? I'm sorry to say that belief been shattered. According to the news, it's been George W. Bush all along!

*Yes, this means you. Unless you're one of those weirdos who celebrate Christmas but refuse to recognize New Year's Day because you feel it's become too secular and commercialized.

12:06 AM

My dad is the hardest man in the world to buy for. He's a man who knows what he wants, and once he knows he wants it, he doesn't waste a lot of time before getting it. This means that when December rolls around, I'm facing not one but two gift-giving challenges: Christmas on the one hand and his birthday on the other.

Dad was born on December 4th, which happened to be his father's birthday. Sometimes I wonder how much that fact affected their relationship. I think it connected them, because Daddy Joe was surely delighted to have his firstborn's arrival as a birthday present, but I wonder if it also carried a certain sense of mutual obligation. Dad is very much his father's son in a lot of ways--his belief in the power of education, his commitment to the idea of the citizen-soldier, the sometimes contrasting streaks of downhome-Carolina-style conservatism and uptown-college-boy-style liberalism. Without that shared birthday, would he have followed so closely in Daddy Joe's footsteps? Would Daddy Joe have raised him to follow so closely? That's one of many questions I wish I could ask my grandfather, and one I'll never have answered, alas.

December 4th remains a difficult day for me, but not because it was Daddy Joe's birthday. No, it's all because of Dad, and the annual frustration I feel at trying to find him a present. There have been times when he's begun collecting something where I could find him a piece of the collection; when he began going after fitted Major League Baseball caps, for example, I was able to find a couple, and I was even able to track down a couple of minor-league caps (for the Durham Bulls, say) that I figured he'd enjoy. I've tried books with mixed results. Our family is extremely particular about reading--you may have sensed this is one or two of my previous comments somewhere--so that even when a Cashwell receives a book that's perfect for him, it may be the case that it's not perfect quite yet, or it might have been perfect a couple of months back, but it'll be a while before that particular mood rolls around again.

I can't tell you the number of books I've received as gifts that sat on my shelf for months, even years, before I finally found myself ready to commit to them. Great books, books I've loved: A.S. Byatt's Possession, which Kelly bought me a good five years before I finally cracked it open and fell in love; Ian McEwan's Atonement, which Uncalane gave me for Christmas in 2002, and which I read only a few months ago; and Yukio Mishima's Spring Snow, which my brother gave me in the late 90s, and which I... well, y'know, I haven't actually been in quite the right mood for that one yet, but I will get around to it, honest...

The best present I've found for Dad, though, remains musical: a boxed set of Ray Charles' country & western CDs. It was the perfect choice for overlapping the genres Dad loves best--old rock & roll, country, and R&B, though he's got a fondness for most of the music of his school days (the Kingston Trio, Dave Brubeck, and most of the soundtrack of American Graffiti, for example.) Unfortunately, I gave him that about eight years ago, and I feel as though I've come up short just about every year since then.

So this year I decided to get creative with my gift-giving. Yes, I'm getting him something tangible, but before that, I think I'll supply him with something else: maybe what Dad really needs is a mission. This mission, should he choose to accept it, will provide me and future generations of Cashwells, some of the things we can no longer get from past generations: answers.

I want Dad to write a memoir.

First, he can write. In addition to his father's genes, he has Mama Lou's, and her storytelling ability not only dazzled my brother and me when we were small, but was put on display in her column, "At Our House," in every issue of The State, the magazine for N.C. state employees. Dad is also a storyteller, and his sense of humor is just about as twisted as mine. Also, if you're wondering where I get my tendency not to sit on my opinions about things... um, well, actually, I get that from Mom, too. But Dad's been known to deliver a blunt point or two, yes.

Second, he's had a fascinating life, one that has parallelled the development of his home state beautifully. When he was a kid, he spent summers picking tobacco and knocking around the dirt roads of Sampson County. By high school he'd become caught up in playing basketball and dreaming of a career in research chemistry--never has a man been more suited to life in the Research Triangle. After earning both a Morehead Scholarship and an ROTC scholarship to UNC, he entered the Marine Corps, traveled to the far side of the Pacific, returned to Parris Island, married a nice Jewish girl, and entered, simultaneously, the two most dangerous arenas a man can enter: fatherhood and public school teaching. A year of teaching at Leroy Martin Junior High in Raleigh (and earning his M.A.T. at Duke) led to a position in the UNC admissions office in 1964. By 1965, he was a father of two. By 1968, he was suddenly the Director of Undergraduate Admissions at UNC, a position he held until 1990. Since then he's served as a college counselor, educational consultant, application reader, and trustee at a variety of schools and colleges, giving him what I think has to be among the broadest possible understandings of how education in the United States works. I think it's safe to say that he's got insights, experiences, and tales worth sharing with a wider audience than just the family.

But the other thing I want Dad to share is his knowledge of a field that, to my mind, is in greater danger than education, one where the general public desperately needs guidance, and one where readers can easily appreciate the value of his understanding: driving. Dad's not a car nut in the mechanical sense; he can handle basic maintenance and repair, but that's not what he wants from a car. No, he wants to drive the sucker. To him, the beauty of the vehicle is in its use; it's not that he doesn't appreciate the finely-tuned engine or the glossy finish on the chrome, but all that is secondary to the practice of smoothly commanding the road with it. And command doesn't come from speed. It's in the grace of movement from lane to lane, the efficiency of motion within the cockpit, the silkiness of shifting, the precision of navigation, the absorption of one's vehicle into the greater flow, one platelet delivering its precious cargo in an artery full of cells too sluggish and oblivious to do the job.

The day after I finished driver's ed and got my learner's permit, Dad told me to take the car out of Chapel Hill and into rural Orange County. After we got out past Calvander Crossing, he ordered me to pull over. I dutifully pulled off, took the car out of gear, and set the handbrake. He looked me dead in the eye and said what may have been the most imporant words he ever said to me:

"Forget everything you learned in driver's ed."

He taught me to drive that day. He's still teaching me to drive. And if he ever gets the chance to settle in and put all the things he's experienced on paper, maybe he can teach my sons, too, and their sons after them.

So happy birthday, Dad. I don't know if your present will fit, and I don't know if you'll like it, but I do know that there's only one way you can return it.

4:30 AM