That is what I was saying

I have always hated the way those students park large black pickup trucks across the sidewalk on Buchanan. I have never understood why it was ok to leave trash out beginning on Sunday morning, when pickup day is Thursday. And how is it appropriate to leave a couch you no longer want in the street, or hung up in some creeky tree branches?

Kvetch…Kvetch…Kvetch.

But no! I feel sooooooo validated. Yes! This week has been great. My personal peeve, the Duke students who leave trash all over our neighborhood, are now the subject of national disdain.

Just check out the story in the Voice of Authority.

You will also see links to the four other stories online this week about our neighborhood.

That is our neighborhood — Trinity Park. I wish the Times would get it straight. This not a seedy run down neighborhood. At least, except for the part full of BMW’s and SUV’s with New York and Florida plates.

We have had this problem for a long time. Last year, it was the affair de baby oil. So while we do not know if the charges are true, now at least the whole world will shine its light on the habits of these undergrads.

Of course it is tragic that the light comes only because someone has been hurt. It stirs up a lot of other anger.

The additional point that I want to make with this blog, though, is the degree to which it is absolutely undue and thrilling to have your long term seething pet peeve turn into national news.

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Titular implications

Language matters. Not to sound like Allan Bloom, because what bothers me has nothing with the cultural implications.

The catalog from a Christian bookseller in Tennessee does not sell Bibles. It sells “biblical solutions.”

Time for playing in the dirt

This is the time of the year for resurrecting some great past times.

Baseball will soon return. I admit that I care. I am not alone. Kathy likes baseball. John is going to like baseball. I believe that baseball fans should be loyal. If your team won the World Series in 1985, no amount of misery should be reason to make you change your mind.

Gardening is here, too. Ever seen an aqualegia? How about a really great astible? Maybe you settle for a hosta.

I think hosta lovers are probably like Yankees fans. Everyone doesn’t have to like hostas. You know, Cardinals fans are a bit like pussy willows. I built a four foot by eight foot planter in my front yard. Right now, it looks like an unfinished tomb. I suppose the neighbors are chuckling. But they are just cutting their liropi, right?

While we are at it, no one has to plant another azalea, either.

Peter Sellers starred in a movie about gardening and politics. The two are a lot alike, on a very simple level. That was his device for humor.

Dan Nicholas Park

John sits perched upon my shoulders. He pulls my hair. He puts a finger in my left ear. He leans hard into my neck. He wants to grab a wooden automobile on the table below us, in line at Hurley Station in Dan Nicholas Park. We, as well as about 2000 other people, are waiting in line in Rowan County, North Carolina.

“You inhale, you pay,” says the sign next to the kazoos for sale. I will have to resist.

I pay for two tickets. But that is the line for buying tickets. There is another line for getting on to the train.

I like democracy. Everyone does, right?

Waiting in line represents the implementation of the democratic ideal. First come, first served. That’s the only rule. No matter how much the richest banker might derive more utility (as an economist would say) from free time, that banker has to wait in line behind the guy with three tattoos.

I see plenty of free speech in line, emblazoned on the t-shirts of my fellow line waiters.
“I love Rock 92.”
“Don’t drive your truck when U are Jacked Up!”
“It’s Bubba Time”
The antidote to all of this democracy: a strong cup of British tea.
But I realize, as I walk through a knoll littered with screaming children and smoking parents, there is a difference between these people and myself.
They are Republicans. Or, more than 70 percent of the people in this county voted Republican. The only ward that votes for Democrats is the one downtown — where Elizabeth Dole grew up. Out here, in the country, its full of anti-tax voters. My county, with the geneticists on the left and the pharmaceutical salesman across the street – that is where you get people who cannot say no to a bond referendum.

Enough demos.