Buttermilk & Molasses

HOW RICHMOND, INDEED

Link: Richmond.com

Richmond.com decided to glue together a way to evaluate exactly how "Old School Richmond" people are. Pshaw. I'm a shoe-in.

You bought your first computer at Best Products. Nope, but my first watch and my mother's first Christmas gift from me came from Best.

You ever purchased anything at the 6th Street Marketplace. Purchased? I was arrested and photographed for stealing empty gift boxes from the Christmas tree at 6th Street!

You sat on the lap of the Miller & Rhoads Santa while actually in Miller & Rhoads. I have a framed photo of my mother dragging me, kicking and screaming, toward Santa's lap. My sisters looked on with prim smiles.

You watched a 78 year-old Frank Sinatra collapse face first while performing at the Mosque on March 21, 1994. I was called in to help deal with the media relations crisis it created for MCV Hospitals; fortunately, I missed the call.

You took a train from Broad Street Station, home of the Science Museum of Virginia since 1975. Check.

You were in town for the 1992 Presidential Debate held at the University of Richmond. The event is memorable for two reasons: giving rise to the town hall, audience-participatory format, and George H.W. Bush’s infamous glance at his wristwatch. If memory serves, I watched the debate in the basement bar of The Jefferson Hotel.

You went to the Flood Zone to see the Dave Matthews Band before they were The Dave Matthews Band. No, but I deliberately did not go to see them after being invited.

You yodeled along to Natalie Merchant’s live lyrics in the mid-'80s, when she and her 10,000 Maniacs band members played, lived and hung out in the Fan. I yodeled on the front porch of a friend who lived across the street from Natalie Merchant on Floyd Avenue.

You remember when, after nearly forty years of decline and dormancy, the 17th Street Market Place was reborn when the current open-air structure was built in the mid-‘80s. Yes, but I only noticed it because I was going to punk shows at P.B. Kelly's (before it became Havana '59).

You love GWAR. Not really, but I love my friends in GWAR, I love the GWAR concept, and I love the GWAR replica of Princess Diana with a French license plate imbedded in her forehead.

You remember when Cloverleaf and Regency Square were Richmond’s new malls. Dude, I bought my first and only rainbow glitter marijuana leaf t-shirt at Cloverleaf when I was in 5th grade.

You have a relative buried in Hollywood Cemetery. Two plots. Multiple relatives.

You remember, or have forgotten, the Grateful Dead’s two Richmond appearances -- May 25, 1977 at The Mosque (now Landmark Theater), and Nov. 2, 1985 at the Coliseum. My sister was probably busted at the second one.

MEET WALTER MOSLEY

Link: Powells.com Interviews

Powells Books sits down with writer Walter Mosley for a chat about the Watts riots, politics and his latest novel. Mosley's mystery novels -- typcially set in South Central Los Angeles -- are among some of the more socially telling in the genre.

SPINNING HOUSE

Link: MoCo Loco: Modern Contempory Design

Designed for the young, jet-set professional, Luigi Colani's space-saving house is amazingly cool. I'd put on in my back yard just so I could change room views, rather than TV stations. Follow the link to see a selection of interior room views and tell me the idea isn't simply stellar.

Designer Luigi Colani has created a space-saving house with a six square meter cylinder inside that contains a bedroom, kitchen and bathroom. The cylinder rotates left or right bringing the room you want into view of the main living room. There's a separate toilet and a small hallway, and everything is controlled with a remote. The house was designed for young professionals who need minimal space while they focus on career...

THE JOKER GOT AWAY

Link: McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Leave it to McSweeney's to give me a little, mid-morning chuckle that resonates simultaneously with my need to read paragraphs and my lingering childhood affection for Batman's rival, The Riddler. Here's a snippet of his retirement announcement, as imagined by John Moe:

So why am I hanging up the big question mark? Oh, I could dance around my reasons, dropping a few hints in the process and let you piece it together yourselves. But that would be both unfair and in direct violation of our company regulations against self-riddling.

Truth is, there are several reasons. To begin with, crime today is just different. Most of the young punks working the game attack it with a drug-addled desperation and a brutality that makes me dread even calling myself a bad guy. Perfect example: I was coming out of Bed Bath & Beyond last week, picking up some new dish towels, when I spied a hooligan breaking into cars. I approached him to talk a little shop, you know, and ask him if there was perhaps a valuable jewel in the car or the crown of a visiting head of state. I know that if an esteemed senior supervillain had taken an interest in me at that age—Dr. Kraut or Professor Atom, for instance—I would have been thrilled to acquire their tutelage. But this little bastard just stabbed me and ran away. No sense of history in him, no desire to advance in the business. If that's where the industry is going, it will have to go there without the Riddler.

DISTANT CONNECTIONS, DISTANT LOSSES

Link: Syracuse, New York, Obituaries

James H. Sarvay was a third, perhaps fourth, cousin. He entered my life long before I met him through a green ringbinder of photocopies, charts and news clippings -- what has passed since age 11 as my family's only organized volume of geneological information. As a child growing up in Richmond, Virginia -- where the spirit of the Confederacy, unfortunately, wanes but never seems to vanish -- I took great pleasure in Jim's carefully crafted volume, particularly because it linked me across the ages to John Rolfe and Pocahontas, rather than Stonewall Jackson, and to the old Sarvay shoe store in Cortland, New York. I managed in those years to take pride in my Richmond roots, which burrowed back several centuries, without feeling utterly trapped in some staid geographical identity.

Jim was my father's age, and he and his wife visited my dad and stepmother in North Carolina shortly before my dad died. It was about that time that Jim began dropping periodic cards into the mail to one of my sisters and to me -- just keeping in touch, asking random questions about geneology.

Last summer, Nikole and I were returning from Toronto by way of New York. West of Syracuse and headed toward Jim's home in Cortland, we called Jim and Dottie to see if they were up for a visit. As a result, we ended up spending several hours with Jim, Dottie and his brother Mert -- learning a little about each other, and about the Sarvay family. Cortland is a lovely town, and the Sarvays were gracious hosts. We had hoped to visit again this summer.

Today, I got an email from a friend of Jim's in Florida who had stumbled across an earlier entry on my site. Jim passed away Tuesday.

DISTANT CONNECTIONS, DISTANT LOSSES

Link: Syracuse, New York, Obituaries

James H. Sarvay was a third, perhaps fourth, cousin. He entered my life long before I met him through a green ringbinder of photocopies, charts and news clippings -- what has passed since age 11 as my family's only organized volume of geneological information. As a child growing up in Richmond, Virginia -- where the spirit of the Confederacy, unfortunately, wanes but never seems to vanish -- I took great pleasure in Jim's carefully crafted volume, particularly because it linked me across the ages to John Rolfe and Pocahontas, rather than Stonewall Jackson, and to the old Sarvay shoe store in Cortland, New York. I managed in those years to take pride in my Richmond roots, which burrowed back several centuries, without feeling utterly trapped in some staid geographical identity.

Jim was my father's age, and he and his wife visited my dad and stepmother in North Carolina shortly before my dad died. It was about that time that Jim began dropping periodic cards into the mail to one of my sisters and to me -- just keeping in touch, asking random questions about geneology.

Last summer, Nikole and I were returning from Toronto by way of New York. West of Syracuse and headed toward Jim's home in Cortland, we called Jim and Dottie to see if they were up for a visit. As a result, we ended up spending several hours with Jim, Dottie and his brother Mert -- learning a little about each other, and about the Sarvay family. Cortland is a lovely town, and the Sarvays were gracious hosts. We had hoped to visit again this summer.

Today, I got an email from a friend of Jim's in Florida who had stumbled across an earlier entry on my site. Jim passed away Tuesday.

THE PALESTINIAN MEMORY

Link: BBC NEWS | In pictures: Palestinians grieve

A series of photos and short interviews with 8 Palestinians provides the barest of glimpses into the symbolic and emotional power of Yasser Arafat. Much of the world sees the complexity of Arafat, and some see the tragedy of a successful warrior who was unable to lead his people to peace -- and who was unwilling to battle the corruption that surrounded him. But for so many Palestinians, Arafat is the only leader they have known, and the "one step forward, two back" strides the Palestinian people took with Arafat at the helm erases any negative effects of his leadership.

The two questions raised by Arafat's death: What will be the immediate emotional impact on the Palestinian psyche? Who will emerge to make the near-term gambits for peace?

BUSH TO DEMS: F--- OFF.

Link: The Washington Note Archives

As Steve Clemmons infers with his excerpt from the Nelson Report, yesterday's nomination of Alberto Gonzales for the post of Attorney General of the United States is some sordid combination of Republicans utterly sticking it to the Democrats, and famous Bush loyalty hard at work. It's also an excellent stepping stone for the nation's first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice.

Loyalty first. Gonzales has an excellent bio -- the man grew up in an apartment without heat, for the love of Lincoln! But more valuable than a bio, Gonzales has an outstanding bond with his patron-in-chief, George W. Bush. He is, in fact, a man who seems to value loyalty before everything else, which makes him the perfect replacement for the too-ambitious-for-Bush's-good John Ashcroft. Bush's reward for Gonzales' continued loyalty is to place him one small step away from the Supreme Court of the United States.

On the flip side, it's an outstanding way to stick a shiv in the ribs of the Democrats in the Senate, who are still stumbling about in a post-election stupor. Gonzales, in a normal political environment, would be a risky appointment -- he's a former Enron lawyer, and the author of memorandi that led to the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. If the Dems let him slide through, they give the Bush administration a pass on one of the greatest scandals of the administration.

Worse, if the Dems let Gonzales pass, it will send a powerful signal in political circles that they're not prepared to take any battle to Bush this term. And that just makes the sharks swarm.

COUNT CHOCULA

Link: Frankenberry Redux

Toonlets reproduces an old 1970s commercial for two of my favorite childhood cereals.

ONE MAN'S TEARS IN FALLUJAH

Link: Seeking Salvation In City of Insurgents

It is fairly easy in a time of conflict to demonize an enemy. It is easy for many Americans to view the local insurgents, foreign fighters and terrorists in Fallujah as something less than human. And it is extremely easy to forget that each of the hundreds of Americans and Arabs being wounded and killed in the current battle for the city has a unique story, and people who love them.

The Washington Post''s story on Yemeni fighter Abu Thar by special correspondent Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is well worth the few seconds it takes to register on the Post's website (with a false birthdate and zip code). Abdul-Ahad was in Fallujah in the days leading up to the U.S. attack, and his stories humanize the fighters in that city without excusing their politics or actions.

Abu Thar turned 30, and might never have tried to reach Iraq again but for the photographs that emerged of U.S. military police abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Seeing the photos, his wife, also a religious student, urged him to leave everything and go to Iraq to fight jihad. She was pregnant with their sixth child.

"She told me, 'If they are doing this to the men, imagine what is happening to the women now,' " Abu Thar recalled. " 'Imagine your sisters and I being raped by the infidel American pigs.' "

He said he spent the night crying, tormented that he did not persevere earlier. In the morning he started making the rounds of friends, borrowing money to travel. From the Jordanian man, he got airline tickets to Syria. From his university, run by a senior Yemeni cleric, he got the name of a man in Aleppo, a city in northern Syria, who would arrange for him to be smuggled across the desert border into Iraq.

He said he told no one he was going. "I just told my wife. I borrowed a car from a friend, and we went out to do some shopping. She bought me two trousers and a shirt. We went then to my father's house. I told my mother, 'Forgive me if I had done anything wrong.' She said, 'Why?' I told her, 'Nothing, I just want forgiveness from you and Dad.'

"She asked me if I was going to Baghdad. I said no. She hugged me and cried."

At the memory, tears formed in Abu Thar's eyes. He wiped them with his checkered headdress and blamed the rain.

Back at his home, he had a final dinner with his wife and children, who went to bed without being told their father was leaving.

"My favorite daughter came and sat in my lap and slept there. She opened her eyes and said, 'Daddy, I love you.' "

He was weeping openly now, a thin man with a thin beard under a ragged tree in a courtyard in Fallujah. "You know these memories are the work of the devil trying to soften my heart and bring me back home," he said.

He rejected going home with a passion. When a visitor told him, "We will come and see you and your family in Yemen," the anger in his reply contorted his usually smooth features. "The only place I am going from here," he snapped, "is heaven."