First the site goes down with a message saying I’m taking it offline until I relaunch. Then, cryptic “relaunch” messages show up on the main page. Now all of the old content is back but some of the sidebars, etc., do not work right. What gives?

I’ve decided that this site, which I never intended to become a blog but somehow became one anyway, has become too unfocused and too haphazard as of late. So, starting in August I’m going to try a different format.

On or around the first of each month there will be one long update posted to the site. That update will have multiple sections and will read more like the “notebook” I always intended this site to be (but never quite made it be).

So, no new updates during the month of July but the new format will begin shortly after the first of August. I’ll send notification through the social networks (see sidebar) and through my RSS feed.

Thanks for hanging in there. I’m looking forward to trying this new format and I hope it will feel right when it goes live.

As always, thank you for continuing to stop by.

JHW
06.29.09

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“To understand the world beyond the narrow self…it is necessary to expose the self to the unmapped and uncontrolled, to be touched by it and transformed. It is by jeopardy, not invulnerability that the hero matures. Habit, laziness, and fear conspire to keep us comfortable within the familiar.”

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Dora Belle O’Neal Kelly, or “Ma’ Belle” as my father would sometimes call her both to her face and behind her back for her tendency to gab on the phone for hours, died last Saturday at the age of 78.

She was mother to seven children, and I am one of ten grandchildren.

She shaped who I am today with her kindness and her support, with her empathy and also with her discipline (many times I was made to cut my own switch when I misbehaved—though more often than not she preferred intimidation to action when it came to the grandkids).

She called my “Scott-tee” often with a slap on the knee or a pinch on the cheek. She had a monster grip and a deathly hug, either of which could crack a bone.

So many memories rush back to me today. In my earliest years my family lived across the road from my grandparents, and some of the most visceral images I have of those years are of my grandmother’s tigerlillies and strawberry vines.

I never had to go to my grandparent’s house because I was always there, just across the road from them.

So many memories.

She knew everyone—or if she didn’t know you she would soon, sussing out your family history, who you married, where your people are from. A trip to the grocery store to pick up a few things could drag on for hours—Ma Belle making so many stops to talk to people it seemed we’d freeze by the coolers of lunch meat.

When my parents fell on hard times, she would show up uninvited and unannounced with school clothes or supplies, trip money and club fees. None of us had much, but as long as she could provide we would not go without.

When my paternal grandfather died, it was Ma Belle who rescued my sister and I from the wake, whisking us away to Hardee’s for hamburgers and milkshakes.

It was never a challenge to get her to stop for a little something at her beloved fast food chains. In her later years those were the only places she wanted to eat, as though after cooking for a husband and seven children for so many years the thought of eating her own food just wasn’t so appealing anymore.

She was also the one who picked me up from school the day my brother was born.

She’s the one who checked on me every day for weeks after having my tonsils removed.

She had a wry, mischievous grin and she never hesitated to give you her full and uncensored opinion of what she thought about someone—a cantankerous habit that was both her most endearing trait and her Achilles heel.

But she was always loving and was always proud. For every award my cousins and I won in school she would demand to know why our pictures weren’t in the local paper. When we were in the paper, she would clip our pictures and carry them around in her wallet to show anyone who would give her an audience. It was humiliating, but it was also part of being loved by her.

Even after I went away to college, the University would send Dean’s List notices to my grandparents and she would hold on to the letters—showing them to whomever came around that would read them. She was always proud of us.

My grandmother was carefully styled hair and warm coffee. She was a worn silky jumpsuit and a clean house. She was hummed gospel music and onion rings. She loved funerals and gossip, and driving to town and back. She could cook a mean pie and once made pea salad without the peas.

She was there at every band concert and award ceremony, every graduation, play, and sporting event. She was reliable and constant—a true rock of ages.

This isn’t a fitting memorial to a woman who lived 78 years in the small town of West Liberty, Kentucky and knew most everyone who ever passed through there. This isn’t a fitting tribute, but it isn’t meant to be either. These are just a few words from a grateful grandson who is 2,000 miles away on the day they lay her body into the ground.

I love you Mamaw, and I thank you for all you gave me. I would never have made it through without you.

Sleep well.

—Scott

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If you’re looking for a talented and unique singer-songwriter type with a rock edge who paves her own way and writes lyrics that leave you scratching your head for days afterwards, I recommend skipping the new Tori Amos CD and heading instead to “Actor” by St. Vincent

Actor is St. Vincent’s second record, and for such a young artist (though her previous credits do include time in the New Age Cult/Hippie Jam Band Polyphonic Spree ) her sonic and lyric maturity on this record is quite impressive.

Check out the somewhat sadistic video of “Actor Out of Work” above.

As a shout-out to all of my Kentucky peeps, she’s playing in Lexington, Louisville, and the Southgate House in Newport next week.

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John Heckman Wright
1 of 6,783,421,727 humans
on the planet Earth

Earth
1 of 8 planets
circling our local star, the Sun

The Sun
1 of 200,000,000,000 to 400,000,000,000 stars
in our Galaxy, the Milky Way.

The Milky Way
1 one of 80,000,000,000 projected galaxies
in the known Universe.

The Universe is still expanding.

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More signs of the times emerge today from the Economic Policy Institute :

When it comes to unemployment, total numbers tell only part of the story. Projections that the current unemployment rate of 8.9% will reach 9.8% next year may seem like a gradual leveling off, but any further rises above today’s already high levels will be devastating for certain sectors of the population, particularly minority children.

In his new presentation, Sounding the Alarm , EPI President Lawrence Mishel, projects that the poverty among African American children, which was at a staggering 34.5% even in the comparatively good times of 2007, will reach 52.3% as a result of continued job loss. The African American community has been hit especially hard by the loss of jobs, with unemployment currently at 15% and is set to rise above 18% next year, Mishel projects. Overall, his report estimates that the overall childhood poverty rate in the U.S. will rise from 18% today to more than 27%….

~

Further:

Unemployment among African Americans in Michigan is likely to hit 27.8% by mid-2010…black unemployment in Michigan will be the nation’s highest, far above the predicted black jobless rate nationally of 18.1% at mid-next year.

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It’s the middle of winter but you wouldn’t know it in here. The wood furnace outside is chocked full and the thermostat’s set at 80. My mother’s going through menopause but we aren’t allowed to say it, so we all sleep like we’re in the tropics, while outside the overhangs are covered with ice. The fields and trees have that sharp crystalline look tonight, and up here in my old room, I’m stripped down to my boxers to stay cool. I crack the front window and a burst of night air touches my skin.

Ladybugs sputter around the ceiling in droves. They migrate inside in winter. They cover the ceiling and walls, swarm to the light when you turn it on, craw in your hair and on your clothes, and try as you might there’s nothing to be done with them. You sweep them up, they come back again.

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From the Planet Money Blog :

“The Wall Street Journal greeted us with a roundup of the world’s shrinking economies. In the first quarter, the U.S. was falling at 6.3 percent, Germany at 14.4, Japan at 15.2, and Mexico at 21.5. With America’s biggest trading partners in that kind of swoon, it’s no wonder the recession just keeps dragging on.”

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