Single-tasking

"Where do you want to go today?" Microsoft asked us.

Now that I no longer confuse freedom with speed, convenience, and mobility, my answer would be: "Away. Just away. Someplace where I can think."

-Walter Kirn, "The Autumn of the Multitaskers"

"Phoenix"

"Phoenix"

1995-2009

Faithful friend and walking companion

We pounded thousands of miles together, old girl, in the years since you and "Grace" showed up at our door. You cheated death and earned your name many times. Now you've earned your rest. We'll never forget.

Mr. Jefferson

What a remarkable author- illustrated blog post from Maira Kalman reflecting on her visit to Monticello, the pursuit of happiness, and the meaning of America.

My last gift to Dad, a huge admirer of Mr. J., was the poignant book about his last years, Twilight at Monticello. Time does indeed waste too fast.

Happy Independence Week!

Good news!

Planners reject May Town Center

Council has final vote, but project's chances are slim

Thumbs Up!

"Makers of worlds" indeed! The new digital 3-D technology is stunning (and didn't give me a headache), the story is preposterous but still fetching, the situation defies all telling but doesn't stand in the way, the characters are humanly recognizable and appealing, the emotional depth is surprisingly real, Ed Asner's voice work is a delight, the historical references are authentic, the affection for canines is heart-tugging... I give "Up" as many stars as you got, and agree with David Denby: "instant classic." Go see it. (Older Daughter in the theater next door was taken with "Transformers" too, and I think she's welcome to it.)

Bells Bend

The Bell's Bend to Beaman Park area, a lovely pristine part of Nashville close to downtown (as the crow flies, but far in spirit and atmosphere) is under threat of major development. May Town Center is envisioned as yet another commercial and corporate agglomeration, hard by Bell's Bend Park and the Cumberland River.

The debate between those who want to preserve this area, and those whose idea of progress entails high-density, high traffic urban commercial expansion (they don't like to call it "sprawl") without end, has now been complicated by a new study that contemplates a more recreationally-oriented 3d Way future. It might include B&Bs, conference and retreat centers, outdoor performing arts venues, and an amphitheater.

Maybe that'd be ok, better at least than May Town. All I know for sure at this point is that I spent a terrific afternoon last fall discovering delightful river vistas at Bell's Bend, and have enjoyed outstanding day hikes at Beaman. I can be there in less than 30 unstressful minutes of pleasant rural driving through middle Tennessee's finest rolling wooded hills. Ready access to such experiences, so near urban amenities but not literally next door to them, make this a special place to live. It won't be easy to improve the quality of life we now enjoy in this "recreational corridor" as it presently exists, but it will be all too easy to ruin it. Please be careful, Mayor Dean and council.

Skeeter

John Updike's poem "Baseball" evokes a moment in my life that could come back to me tinged with mild humiliation, or at least blushing humility, but thankfully it just makes me smile. Recalling the skill and difficulty involved in the deceptively simple-seeming act of snagging a fly ball, Updike wrote:

...circle in the outfield
straining to get a bead
on a small black dot
a city block or more high,
a dark star that could fall
on your head like a leaden meteor.

It was an early summer Sunday, the Nashville Sounds were hosting an afternoon game at Hershel Greer Stadium, and I had just settled into my seat to watch batting and infield practice before the game's scheduled 2 pm start. (We don't do that very often anymore, to my regret. I was still a single guy on my own recognizance back then.) A Sounds staffer approached with an offer any sensible person of my general athletic competence would have declined. I accepted. So that's why, a few minutes before 2, I found myself in center field as another Sounds staffer pointed an up-ended pitching machine in my vicinity and proceeded to launch a succession of black-dotted baseballs into the high sky above me. A city block? Might as well have been a city away. I did manage to catch one of them, but all of my attempts were successful from the team's point of view: they elicited loud crowd reactions. Howls of derisive laughter. General merriment. And in spite of it all, I had a blast doing it. As Updike says later in the poem, it is our birthright as Americans to fail spectacularly.

I had not quite disgraced the player whose glove I borrowed for the contest: the one and only "Skeeter" Barnes, a very good career minor leaguer who had many cups of coffee in The Show with Cincinnati, St. Louis, Montreal, and Detroit. You could look it up.

But you'll have to take my word for what Skeeter said to me as I returned his glove to him and hustled back to my hiding place in the grandstand. "It's not as easy as it looks, is it?" No, sir. It's not.

Happy talk

Here's my radio interview on WMOT, as broadcast live yesterday morning. It was fun. (And it was weirdly self-displacing, hearing myself as others might have heard me while walking the dogs Sunday morning.)

MTSU "On The Record" 2009

June 21, 2009

Title: "The Pursuit of Happiness" Host: Gina Logue Guest: Dr. Phil Oliver Synopsis: Dr. Phil Oliver, assistant professor of philosophy, explains "The Philosophy of Happiness," a new class he will be teaching beginning this fall.

"In Love With Life"

Dad

A quick inventory of the partial contents of an envelope Dad left for me last year. I just opened it.

1. Many b-&-w family photos, including one from 1925 featuring four generations (brother Glenn, mother, grandpa, great-grandpa, b. 1845)...
2. Our first family photo, from 1957.
3. Class photo of me from 1966, another from1970 inscribed to Uncle Glenn and Aunt Lucy.
4. Winterton Curtis monograph from 1957, "A Damned-Yankee Professor in Little Dixie"
5. Commencement program from Dad's graduation from Vet School, 1960. (btw: I took a walk this morning and saw the new clinic just opened by the two young men who bought his practice last year.)
6. An aerial photo of (old) Busch Stadium, with exploding fireworks above, 9.8.98 (the night Mark McGwire hit his 62d home run).
7. The letter I wrote to our older daughter on the day of her birth, reporting a forgotten but (if I say so myself) prescient personal conversation with Bill McKibben about the environment and our obligations to future generations
8. A copy of Vanderbilt Magazine from 1999, in which I reviewed John Lachs's In Love With Life.
9. A newspaper clipping from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch dated 9.18.74, featuring a letter to the editor written by yours truly defending "President Ford's courageous, though untimely, attempt to put Richard Nixon behind us."
10. Another clipping, dated 12.25.89, called An expression of love: a father's letter. It begins: "To our sons: We are fathers, and we find it hard to say 'I love you.'" It concludes: "We reach out, and this time we say, 'I love you...' Love, Dad"

Thanks, Dad. I love you.

http://obits.baue.com/obitdisplay.html?id=582820&listing=Current