The New Year

I'm sitting here in the cubicle, admiring the clean desk and trying to figure out how to fill the day. No real work to do, and none likely to appear until Monday or later. I do have an interesting assignment wending its way to me, but the Word files are still bogged down in clearance somewhere. Today is the second day of the New Year -- do I want to do a retrospective? Are there are any high (or low) lights of 2008 that stand out enough to bother revisiting, albeit briefly?

I don't think so. I have vague memories of ranting (a lot) about politics a few months back, and no doubt I'll work up to ranting again soon, but I have no desire to revisit any of the rants at the moment. I can feel a new one coming on the economy, labor unions, blaming the victim, and false consciousness, but not today. Bush is on his way out, the Republicans are the minority party, and for now that's good enough.

I did add a few more NPS sites to my life list -- Kennesaw Mountain, for example, which is such a totally typical cannonball park that it doesn't even merit a link (although it does appear to be real popular with dog walkers, so it's not totally without merit) -- but if I didn't mention them at the time, they're not worth mentioning now. Cannonball parks that enshrine our glorious CSA dead, those gallant boys in gray, have about as much appeal for me as Rotary Club luncheons. (In fairness, I'm not real keen on any of the military parks regardless of the war or the armies involved. I've been to a bunch, both as an ordinary tourist and as NPS staff, and the only one I truly enjoyed visiting while working for NPS was Pea Ridge, primarily due to an amazing park historian who was so enthusiastic about the resource that his attitude was contagious.)

I went on vacation. I survived visiting relatives -- and even found myself agreeing a few times with my (lower case l) libertarian brother-in-law, although I could sense my sister growing nervous when we started talking current events and politics. I spent time at my older daughter's house and managed to resist organizing her closets or cleaning her garage. Actually managed to spend time with both daughters without any conversations turning into arguments or involving a lot of shouting -- maybe we're all finally growing up?

I did start organizing my own crap. Sort of -- does transferring craft and quilting supplies from solid-color rubbermaid tubs into see-through ones count as organizing? Did not get organized to the point of actually listing anything on my Etsy store, though. One of these days -- vintage dresses, old patterns, and some truly hideous 1960s and 70s yard goods. I'm told there's a market, which strikes me as a believe it or not -- but anything is possible.

I finished a quilt that started life in 2002 in the white dorm at Apostle Islands. My sister had better appreciate it -- she's getting it for her birthday, and it represents a solid six years of procrastination.

Read some good books by great authors -- Anatomy of a Murder, Tin Roof Blowdown, Capitol Men, and many many more -- and some real turkeys (A Mortal Glamour, His Family). Saw some good movies, both in a theater and on DVD. Forced the S.O. to sit through (sleep through?) a lot more Jane Austen than he wanted to -- had it been up to him, the only one he'd have watched was Mansfield Park, the version with Billie Piper as Fanny Price, and then only her scenes.Managed to finish and submit one journal article where I'm the sole author. It's still moving slowly through the review process; one of these days it should come ambling back with either a definite rejection or a request for revisions. Odds are the latter -- the journal I submitted to has been looking rather thin lately, a sure clue not much is coming in. Plus, they've published me before, although it's been quite a few years since the last time I submitted anything. Found out a second article, one where I'm the last listed of a whole herd of co-authors, was accepted for publication and should be in print soon. I'm still moderately stunned over that one -- the content is highly statistical, and I've never thought of myself as a quantoid, even peripherally.

Got to find out just how good my health insurance is (better than I thought), learned a few new medical terms, and acquired a few new prescriptions, none of which have any fun side effects. Finally got to Zoo Atlanta to gawk at pandas, eyeballed the price tag on a Maserati (which is no doubt the closest I'm ever going to come to one), and began preparing for retirement by buying a thoroughly used travel trailer. Not a particularly exciting year on a personal level, but I am still breathing and I've managed to resist making any resolutions for 2009. Life is good.

A restaurant review, sort of

Or, if the book is fiction how can the Whistle Stop Cafe be real? Especially when Fannie Flagg is from Alabama and set her novel not far from Birmingham? Those were the questions I found myself thinking, if not actually asking out loud, when the Younger Daughter asked if we were close enough to the Whistle Stop Cafe to go have lunch there. Turned out she knew it was a real place because co-workers back in Texas told her they ate there almost every day while detailed to the Oconee National Forest a year or two ago.

So I Googled it -- and sure enough, there it was: Whistle Stop Cafe, Juliette, Georgia, complete with fried green tomatoes on the menu. Younger Daughter had never had fried green tomatoes, Fried Green Tomatoes is one of her favorite movies, and Juliette is a reasonable driving distance from Atlanta.

Answer to why the Whistle Stop is in Georgia and not in Alabama: it's where the producers chose to film part of the movie. They found a milltown (Juliette) in the middle of rural Georgia to serve as the set, leased a building that was being used as an antiques store to function as the Whistle Stop Cafe, and inspired the owners of the building used as the Whistle Stop to actually run it as a restaurant once the movie wrapped and left town. The surprising thing is that the movie came out 17 years ago, and the Whistle Stop is still going strong.

So how was the food, you ask? Edible, more or less. We did the fried green tomato appetizer, of course, the tomatoes being one of the reasons for going there to begin with. Six Feet Under in Atlanta does them better. The S.O. had the blue plate special, which wasn't. The chalkboard described the cooked-to-the-point-of-qualifying-as-jerky pork chop as "stuffed," but the last time I checked a cookbook dumping a small ice cream scoop's worth of StoveTop and gravy on top of a paperthin porkchop didn't count as stuffing it. (The stuffing may have actually been made on site rather than pre-fab, but there was nothing noteworthy about it. The S.O. described it as "basic.")

Younger Daughter and I both tried the pulled pork barbecue, she got a side of onion rings with hers, I opted to go for the cheaper version with chips. Again, nothing special, although there was a generous amount of dead animal flesh heaped on the bun -- and the sauce served with it was quite good.

According to Tammi's co-workers, the Whistle Stop serves great pies and other desserts. We did see some amazing looking desserts carried past our table. Unfortunately, after the barbecue we weren't up to attempting any ourselves (too full -- the barbecue wasn't the best I've ever had, but it was definitely edible).

Bottom line: nifty atmosphere, great service, so-so food, reasonable prices. If we're down that way again, we'll stop to try the pie but will pass on the blue plate.

Juliette's other attractions include the usual antiques shop, a couple gift shops, another cafe or two, and motorcycle museum housed in the old Juliette grist mill. The motorcycle museum is open only on weekends. Juliette's on the way to the Jarrell Plantation State Historic Site, which we didn't know existed until we decided to go to the Whistle Stop but enjoyed touring once we knew it was there.

Where I've been

Among other places, Zoo Atlanta: Yesterday was a gorgeous day, warm and sunny, so we spent it wandering around the zoo.

And of course we spent a fair amount of time gawking at the pandas:

In the past week we've been to the King Tut exhibit, driven to Alabama to visit relatives, gone to movies, done a little shopping, and today, if all goes as planned, we'll be eating fried green tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe.

Update: Tomatoes consumed; details later. Turned out to be another great day for playing tourist in Georgia.

Misogyny, self-loathing, and great writing

I've been reading Bill McKeen's biography of Hunter S. Thompson, Outlaw Journalist, and being quietly appalled by what an absolute shit the man was -- and from day one. He apparently emerged from the womb a fairly full-blown misogynistic racist homophobic sociopath with an over-inflated ego and a general feeling that none of the rules other people followed applied to him.

I knew the man could be an ass on multiple levels -- that came through loud and clear in everything he wrote -- but I'd never realized just how hard he worked at being that ass. I loved his writing so I guess I was hoping the total fucktard complete jerk persona was an act. No such luck.

Thompson apparently had more than his fair share of charisma -- from early childhood on he succeeded in charming various people into doing amazing favors for him, including keeping him from starving back before his writing career took off -- but that charisma definitely does not shine through in this book. No matter what the favor was, he consistently managed to pay it back by either destroying something his friends valued or by betraying a trust. His personality and ability to manipulate people has to qualify as one of those "you had to be there" things to understand because my reaction over and over to descriptions of his escapades was "why did people put up with that crap?"

Right now I'm only one-third through the book but, after learning more than I ever wanted to know about his long history of spouse abuse (the highlights include him routinely slapping his girlfriends/spouses around as well as his first wife having multiple Mexican abortions so as to not interfere with Thompson's writing career in the early 1960s), child neglect/abuse, irrational violent behavior, acts of vandalism, and just general assholery, I'm already looking forward to the suicide.

Update: Finished the book. Definitely a depressing biography. Thompson had potential, but squandered his talent. It could have been the drug and alcohol abuse, an underlying mental illness like bipolar disorder, or a combination of the two, but once he got trapped in his own "gonzo" image he was doomed.

Critiquing Twilight

Fillyjonk has a great post up on Shapely Prose about what all is wrong with romantic comedies in general and Twilight in particular. My own reaction to the book was that it was teenage narcissism at its worst, well-written but essentially vacuous, but I'm not always good at seeing the big picture. Fillyjonk sets it in a more feminist context. Here's a piece:

Twilight horrifies me, but it mystifies me not at all; I know exactly what the appeal is, not just intellectually but viscerally. When I was the age of Twilight’s target audience, I hadn’t had any of those defining relationships, of course, but clearly I had the capacity to find disdain, paternalism, and misused power attractive.

Now go read the rest.

Having an out of focus day

I'm definitely having trouble focusing today. I started off the morning feeling annoyed with the world in general, definitely have a dash or two of "bah, humbug," salted in, and think I'm sliding rapidly into ennui. Or maybe malaise. Life in a cubicle with no actual work to do plays tricks on the mind.

We did get the Xmas tree up yesterday. (((Billy))) had an interesting post a day or so ago about being a cultural Christian, i.e., a nonbeliever who celebrates the holiday and/or season for reasons other than religion, and it probably describes us, too. Never did feel any religious fervor, having grown up in a household affiliated with no particular denomination, and recognize the historical foundations of the season without buying into any of the mythology or bizarre focus on supernatural events. If I were to overtly celebrate anything at this time of year, it would be the solstice, which means Christmas doesn't even fall on the right day. So I'm not really sure why we bother with a tree other than it's what I grew up with -- and I do kind of like gambling with the cats, e.g., how long will it take before one of them decides it would be fun to climb/destroy ornaments/eat tinsel and hack up hairballs?

It's already shedding needles like crazy, of course. There's tinsel all over the floor, too, and that's kind of a mystery. I don't think we've actually purchased tinsel in about 15 years. That stuff just kind of crawls out of an alternate dimension shortly after the homemade ornaments go on the tree. The Younger Daughter will be thrilled -- the heirloom hand-painted egg carton ornaments and hand-painted milkweed pods made back in elementary school are still around. (Note to self: watch Tammi carefully if she claims she wants to help take down tree. Intercept any attempted deposits into trash can.)

Tammi is driving here from Texas to spend a few days enjoying urban life -- no doubt rural Sabine County is going to be looking good in January after doing the dance of death through Atlanta traffic, but right now she's talking about how much she's looking forward to getting out of the sticks for a few days. I've been trying to figure out how we can cram hitting tourist highlights (Martin Luther King NHS, the Margaret Mitchell house, Zoo Atlanta with its baby panda), going to the Tut exhibit, dining at six or seven different ethnic restaurants, shopping at IKEA, and visiting my sister and her family up in northern Alabama into one week. Maybe that's why I'm experiencing malaise -- the kid isn't even here yet and I've already exhausted myself trying to plan the entertainment.

Cane River Creole National Historical Park: Magnolia Plantation

A few posts ago I mentioned visiting Cane River Creole National Historical Park, one of the newer units in the National Park system. Cane River Creole is located in northwest Lousiana south of Natchitoches. The park itself consists of two plantations, Oakland and Magnolia. The Oakland unit includes all the surviving buildings, including the main house, associated with the plantation; Magnolia includes numerous ancillary structures -- slave quarters, plantation store, blacksmith's barn, overseer's house (shown above), slave hospital -- but does not include the main house and the grounds immediately surrounding the main house. The main house is still owned by the family that operated the plantation beginning in the early 19th century. It's located to the left of this line of live oaks shown below that marks the boundary of the park and is so thoroughly surrounded by oaks and other vegetation that it was impossible to determine something as simple as architectural style, let alone photograph. The little house in the distance was the cook's quarters -- it's located about midway between the overseer's house and the main house.
The photo below is a view of the overseer's house as seen from the general area of the slave quarters.
One of the more interesting aspects of the history of the Cane River area is the role that free men and women of color played in the local economy. I'd read Barbara Hambly's historical novels set in early 19th century Louisiana, but had never really thought about the legal basis for the existence of hommes de couleur libre until visiting Cane River. The park has an excellent fact sheet on the "black codes," the French laws that dictated the responsibilities of owners and the rights of slaves -- and slaves did have rights under the French.

Probably key to the hommes de couleur libre was the fact that it was illegal for a French citizen to have sexual intercourse with a slave. If a white man wanted a colored woman as a mistress (or even a one night stand) she had to be free. He could keep a mistress; he could not keep a slave for purposes of concubinage. As a result, if a free man was attracted to a woman who was a slave he had to buy her freedom. Once the woman was free, any children she bore after receiving her freedom would also be free.

Not surprisingly, many of the women who attained their freedom proved to be quite entrepreneurial, as did their descendants. A number of historic plantations in the Mississippi delta region can trace their ownership back to hommes de couleur libre, including several in the Cane River area. Melrose Plantation, located close to the park but not part of it, began as 68 acres given to an African woman in the 18th century. By the time she died in 1817 the 68 acres had grown to thousands, her children were rich, and the ones who inherited from her owned quite a few slaves themselves.

Also not surprisingly, given Southern history in general and the tendency of local historical societies everywhere to engage in revisionism and hagiography, the spin the local bluehairs put on the history of Melrose Plantation is that the woman's owner freed her out of the generosity of his heart and not because it was the law. As usual, the popular mythology also includes the line "he would have married her if society had allowed him to."

And, speaking of slavery, the buildings below are the surviving slave quarters at Magnolia. They're brick, and were built by an owner who moved to Louisiana from Virginia in the early 1800s. They're one of the best examples I've ever seen of someone imposing an architectural style totally unsuited to a climate. No doubt the man took great pride in them, and they would have been totally appropriate in the Shenandoah Valley -- but in Louisiana? The windows are small, circulation is poor, and for half the year the folks stuck living in them must have felt like they were being baked alive.

Nonetheless, the historical record indicates the brick quarters were considered the high status quarters. The slaves who lived in them were the skilled craftsmen (blacksmith, for example) or worked in the main house. Magnolia was a large plantation, and at one time had over 70 buildings for slave quarters. About one tenth that number survive today. According to the park guide, quite a few of the quarters buildings were torn down and the brick used to reconstruct the main house following a fire in the 1890s.

The quarters built as duplex units were converted to single family following the Civil War and the introduction of share cropping and tenant farming.

The economy, and other weirdness

"Good Morning America" showed a clip of an interview with The Prince of Darkness, VP Cheney, first thing this morning. Not my favorite way to start the day -- above and beyond oozing evil, that man resembles Montgomery Burns more and more, right down to the hand gestures. It's always very strange to see a human cartoon when you're not even a third of the way through the first cup of coffee.

Anyway, I've been thinking about the economy and how anemic it is. The proof is everywhere that things are a lot worse than the talking heads, the various paid experts, want to admit. The "Help Wanted" section in the Sunday Atlanta Journal Constitution has shrunk to being a super skinny section with the equivalent of 1 and 3/4 pages with a scant handful of box ads for the specialties that are always in short supply (e.g., nurses). This is for a metropolitan area with a population of approximately 5 million. The Real Estate section is also pitifully thin, and the difference in pricing now and a year ago is striking. To describe housing prices as having plummeted is an understatement. Housing values are definitely still in free fall, no matter how much the real estate industry would like to believe otherwise.

And then there are the malls. Sunday afternoon we drove past Lenox Square and Phipps Plaza on our way home from Piedmont, plus a bunch of smaller strip malls and specialty stores. This is Buckhead. We're not talking low dollar retail. Phipps houses Nordstroms, Gucci, Tiffany, and various other "not cheap" retail establishments; Lenox has Macys, Nieman Marcus, Crate and Barrel. . . you get the picture. Both parking lots had tons of available parking space -- that is flatout not normal, especially for Lenox. Once the Pink Pig is up and running (and eating up a huge chunk of upper level of the parking deck by Macy's) finding a parking space after noon on the weekend at Lenox is usually an exercise in frustration.

Then we went to the mall that falls more into my budget range, Northlake, to shop at JC Penney, Sears, or Kohls -- all stores where I know for sure if I buy a gift of clothing the recipient will be able to exchange it for something they actually like with no hassle. Once again, mid-afternoon on a Sunday less than two weeks before Christmas -- and the parking lot was half empty. No crowds, no long lines at the registers, no pushing and shoving to get the last size whatever on the rack. It was spooky.

On the other hand, we went to Lowe's last night to pick up a tree and they were just about sold out. The inventory was down low enough that they'd marked all the remaining trees down to $10 just to get rid of them -- so I guess it's a good thing we didn't make it to the Farmer's Market on Saturday.

And how was your weekend?

Mine started off okay. Got out of work slightly early on Friday, spent a reasonably productive evening puttering around the house, curled up with my book for awhile (The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which I highly recommend), and fell peacefully asleep.

And then woke up just before midnight with a heart rate that, to put it mildly, didn't seem quite right. Really rapid. As in really, really rapid, and accompanied by nausea and vertigo and not showing any signs of slowing down on its own. It's one thing to feel your heart racing after you've had a good scare or you've just run a marathon -- but 160+ beats per minute when waking from a sound sleep? Not good, not unless it was the Sam Elliott dream again and I just wasn't remembering it. And even if it was, it should have started slowing down after I'd been awake for a minute or two and reality had sunk back in.

So I remembered all the speeches the Younger Daughter has given me and the S.O. about being in the prime heart attack years -- she's apparently been expecting either myself or the S.O. to drop any time since we turned 30 -- and decided to kick the S.O. awake. He looked, as he always does when woken unexpectedly, totally befuddled, but managed to find clothes and stumble out the door, play chaffeur, and get me to the Piedmont ER without running into anything. In triage the heart rate was 189 -- definitely not good. In nothing flat I was on a gurney in an ER cubicle with multiple leads and devices (EKG, oxygen level sensor, blood pressure, IV port) being attached to the body and blood being sucked out of one arm -- over and over. It's absolutely amazing how many quarts labs seem to need to check for cardiac enzymes.

The good news, after 9 hours in the ER, 24 hours in the hospital, and a long conversation with an electrophysiologist -- it wasn't a heart attack. The bad news, because the electrophysiologist got me to admit I've actually had quite a few episodes of a racing heartbeat and the episodes seem to be happening closer together, is I got to learn a new (at least in terms of it being applied to me individually) medical term, supraventricular tachycardia (SVT), and I'm also going to get to experience a new (to me) medical procedure, cardiac ablation, in the not too distant future.

Getting news like this is always a little tricky to process. Part of me was like, wow, cool, will I be awake so I can watch the monitor? I loved the echocardiograms I've had because it's not that often you get to watch your own heart beating, so watching it get zapped could be cool, too. And another part was like, sweetjesus, they're going to fry chunks of my heart. Little tiny chunks, true, but chunks nonetheless. And then, of course, there's the ultimate question: will I be able to live blog the procedure?

Bottom line for the weekend: Christmas shopping delayed, no trip to the Georgia Farmer's Market for a tree, minimal baking done, no gifts wrapped, no housecleaning accomplished. Nine days to go, and nothing mailed yet. Not good, but not a disaster.

Incidentally, I did learn one trick from the handouts they gave me at the hospital --if you ever have a racing heartbeat that doesn't seem to want to slow down on its own, plunging your face into a basin of ice water might shock it back into a normal rhythm. If it doesn't work, at least you'll be wide awake for the panic attack.

It's not over 'til it's over. . .

Today was my last day on the detail with the surveillance people. The Strategy document is done; it looks good. Theoretically I should never have to think about the content of that particular document again.

No such luck. Yesterday my team lead e-mailed me to say she'd just put my next editing job into my queue.

What's the topic? The same one I've been working on for the past four months. Who's the lead author? The division chief for the unit where I spent that time.

I guess the good news is that at least I'm not likely to be confused by any of the technical language in the paper.