Random Notes from a Crank

At a meeting yesterday, I learned that the profile I had when I entered college -- a first-generation college student and an Undeclared major -- would make the higher ups, the muckity mucks, consider me an "at-risk student." I found being undeclared making one "at-risk" a little odd, but local and national statistics provide evidence that those folks don't stick around for their sophomore years as often as the others. I find that metric kind of sad because the whole point of college, for me at least, was exploring different subjects and trying to figure out what I liked and wanted to do.  Because I was interested in psychology, history, sociology/anthropology, philosophy, English, classics, and education, it would have been silly for me to declare a major. Now that I think about it some more, some people -- like Admissions counselors and high school teachers -- sometimes would act a little funny when I would tell them I was an undecided major. While I understand many people see higher education as an avenue toward a job and, sure, they deserve a return on their investment, it's also important to explore other subjects other than just what's in one's major, especially since people are likely to change jobs more than ever nowadays. Or maybe that's just my liberal arts mindset talking...

As I've probably written before, I love small college towns in the summer. When a substantial portion of the nine-month population heads back to their original territories, the town I live in becomes quiet. Sure, we have summer classes, but the character of the town is different. The weather is helping too. It's been gorgeous here in east central Illinois.

Mrs. Nasty was surprised yesterday when I told I'd watch The Hunger Games movie with her. I haven't read the novel, but she loved it. I'm no avid moviegoer, but it sounds like interesting dystopian fiction, which I don't mind. But as for dystopian reality, I don't like that. Now we just need to figure out a date night and arrange a kid sitter.

Speaking of Mrs. Nasty, she has an idea for our back patio area that once had cheap lattice adorning it. I had to tear it down because of wind damage. Since we took off the old shutters and replaced them with new black ones (see Stay Positive below), she wants to try using the old shutters where the lattice used to be. She's going to paint four of the old shutters, and then she wants to rig them up to hang in that area using a eye and hook system and cabling. I don't know if it will work (I think it will), so we'll see what happens. We already have a bottle tree in the front flower bed that I'm sure some people find weird, so a decorative shutter system will be a nice compliment in the back yard. Because of this nascent project, on Monday I got to do some demolition work on the framing that held up the lattice. Tearing up stuff is fun.

As much as I dislike it when people put down Southern states based on Yankee attitudes, I think the article in Mother Jones -- "'It's Just Not Right': The Failure of Alabama's Self-Deportation Experiment" -- is a case study of, as some Southerners say, "the dog catching the car." Be careful about what laws and policies your legislators pass. Hear that, nitwits in Springfield?

With my dog not freely running around and patrolling the backyard because she's rehabbing from surgery to repair a cranial cruciate ligament, the squirrels and birds are no longer vigilant because she would chase after anything that was in the yard. When she's back on her game, she's going to be beating some squirrel ass back there. Or more likely, the neighbors will return to hearing her bark a lot.

A Bottle Tree: There Goes the Neighborhood

Mrs. Nasty and I installed an art project last weekend, and it got the neighbors talking.

Since we live in the Midwest, our neighbors aren't familiar with bottle trees. We never knew about them either until Mrs. Nasty went to school at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi where John Grisham has a home, the guy who has a bottle tree in one of his (many) novels that got turned into a movie, A Time to Kill. In fact, a fine eating establishment in Oxford is called the Bottletree Bakery, and it's one of the best places I've ever eaten for breakfast. Really good strong coffee too.

I've always associated bottle trees with being a Mississippi thing although I've read that they're used as garden ornaments throughout the South. The folklore goes that bottle trees capture and/or ward off evil spirits. And I've always liked them because they're colorful and strange looking. They aren't subtle.

As we also found out, they invite questions. After we installed the metal tree with its empty bottles on Sunday, our next door neighbor stopped by that evening because, as she said, "The neighbors are all wondering what that thing is in your front garden." So the other neighbors sent her to ask about it.

I explained the whole deal to her--that we got used to seeing them in the South, we've always kind of liked them, they're supposed to have protective qualities, and so on.

I can certainly understand the initial shock of seeing a bottle tree since I had a similar reaction myself when I saw one. My initial thought was, "What the hell is that?" 

And probably to some, the bottle tree says, "Hey clowns, I really LIKE wine!"

To get the colorful array of bottles you see above, it took some time since our tree handles 16 bottles. And good God, I'm tired of drinking that crappy German white wine that comes in a blue bottle, whatever the hell it's called. Mrs. Nasty is crazy about the blue bottles, so I drank that stuff like a man as much as that cliche can be applied to drinking white wine. Unfortunately, I can't get one of the azure-ensconced bottles of wine I actually like in this little burg I live in, St. James Winery's School House White, a German style wine out of St. James, Missouri. Nevertheless, I prefer red wine, which comes mainly in green bottles.

One of the funnier comments I've heard about our bottle tree is what our neighbor told us her husband said over the phone. Her husband is long-distance trucker who travels mainly in the South. She told him about the bottle tree and how it's supposed to ward off evil spirits. His comment to her was that it obviously doesn't work since it didn't keep her from visiting our porch.

That's some funny ball bustin,' Doug. Cheers to you.