Becky's Quirks & Quazy Qualities

There are quirks that are endearing and quirks that are forced and not at all endearing.  Becky's are sincerely endearing.  There is a uniqueness to her person that is not created by an effort of will but a soft, gentle honesty.  This posting will be in list-form and will be about a person who exists in my personal life where, outside of that life, she exists as a professor, friend, and family member.  She's always first in my life.

• she craves asparagus.
• she loves Def Leppard and Journey in the way that a preteen loves Justin Bieber.  It is not nostalgia but pure ecstatic joy.
• she adores fairies - figurines, paintings, and murmurs of the little creatures exist all over our home.
• she has seen a fairy.
• she has filled over 100 personal journals since she was 16.
• as a child she spent her nights swooning to a cassette tape of Michael Crawford as the Phantom of the Opera.  At other times, she spent her nights swooning to "Mr. Roboto".
• she wrote and directed plays as a child, most of which starred her friends and were videotaped by her father.
• she was an award-winning Irish step dancer.
• when a preteen she spent a summer day reading "The Phantom of the Opera" and, without noticing the passing of time, earned a massively miserable sunburn.
• her veins flow with the steady bubbling of Dr. Pepper.
• she has the constitution of a character in a Jane Austen novel.
• her belief does not fail - and in this life that is a quirk.
• she remembers meeting Dennis DeYoung and also remembers the fact that he was eating a candy bar when they met.
• she was born in Tennessee but has the accent (or lack thereof) of a newscaster.
• her celebrity crushes are usually men who are far too old for her (i.e. Kevin Kline, Kevin Spacey, etc.)
• she cannot pronounce the word giraffe.
• she loves me.

Ten Years Gone

Becky has begun reading the novel What Alice Forgot, the story of a woman who suffers a concussion while exercising at her gym and, upon waking, has forgotten the past 10 years of her life.  She awakens in the mindset of who she was 10 years prior - newlywed, pregnant for the first time, and hopeful about the future.  As she begins to explore the world around her she finds herself in the middle of a divorce and bearing a C-Section scar.

This has led both of us to wonder what we would think if, upon waking here in the apartment, we'd forgotten the past 10 years of life.  

Southern Ruin: A Photo Post

In the weeks preceding the birth of my son I began traveling with my wife each day to the college at which she teaches so that, in case she went into labor, I would be with her to take her to the hospital.  I was no longer employed as a high school teacher and was able to be as flexible and as available as she needed me to be.

Though I spent some of my time on the campus milking the open wireless network and researching genealogy I felt a need to go explore some of the surrounding countryside of Bladen County, where the college is located.

I am a North Carolina native.  Six of my direct ancestors fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War along with at least six great-grand uncles.  My mother's family hails from Aiken County, South Carolina and my father's from Stokes and Surry Counties in North Carolina.  Add to my heritage the fact that I am also a far left-leaning liberal, an agnostic-atheist, etc, and you have with me, like with much of the South, a quiet mess of contradictions.

Still, I make no secret of the fact that I have a particular and irrational love for the South, similar perhaps to the way someone might love a stray mutt - a mutt who may howl, scratch itself obscenely, and be rather a nuisance but a mutt who is also comfort and a symbol of home, even a symbol of one's own true self, if thoughts are allowed to wander so far.

In any case, and before I wander too far into the absurd intricacies and fallacies of at once hesitant and strong regional devotion, here are photographs I took as I traveled around Bladen County, North Carolina.  These are the scenes which struck me most: