Minor Wisdom

Blues with twang

For no particular reason (except that I like this song), here’s Jeannie C. Riley doing the Back Side of Dallas, accompanied by a nice photo montage. Notice, at the end of each line, how she slides up to the note, playing her voice like a slide guitar.

p.s. (June 3, 2009): The exchange of comments with Bill makes me realize that I was remiss in not saying how I discovered this song. It’s on one of the CDs accompanying the most recent music issue of Oxford American. The magazine and the CDs are both worth your while.

Another root of the family tree

A year or two ago, my sister Kendra gave me copies of pages from a book on the Ward family’s genealogy. Recently, I finally got around to digging into it.

The story starts with William Ward of Sudbury, Massachusetts. He was born in England around 1603. In the spring of 1638, he emigrated to the Colony of Massachusetts with his second wife, Elizabeth, and five children. He and Elizabeth had eight more children born in Sudbury, including Samuel Ward.

Samuel Ward was born on September 24, 1641 in Sudbury, Massachusetts and died on November 15, 1729 in Marlborough, Massachusetts. His first wife was Sarah Howe. They had seven children, including Joseph Ward.

Joseph Ward was born in 1670 in Marlborough, Massachusetts, where he died on June 30, 1717. He married Abigail Wheelock, and they had seven children, all born in Marlborough, including Phineas.

Phineas Was was born August 5, 1705 and died on October 19, 1756. He married Mary Wright, and they had six children born in Marlborough, Massachusetts, including Reuben.

Reuben Ward was born on December 28, 1746 and died January 8, 1800. He married Sarah Kendall, and they had eleven children, among them a son named Levi.

Levi Ward was born on April 12, 1785 in Marlborough, New Hampshire. He married Nancy Whitney, and they had six children, including a son named Daniel.

Daniel Ward was born on February 1, 1818 in Keene, New Hampshire, and died on August 30, 1894 at Indian Falls, New York. He married three times. His first wife was Catherine Phelps, with whom he had two children, including a son named Albert Wesley.

Albert Wesley Ward was born on November 8, 1842, in Pavilion Center, New York, and died on February 13, 1923, in East Pembroke, New York. His first wife was Lydia Jane Austin, with whom he had five children, including Roy Albert.

Roy Albert Ward was born on March 14 in either 1873 or 1874 (the book says 1874, but a handwritten correction says 1873) near Indian Falls, New York. He married Ida Mae Keller and became a pharmacist. His oldest son was Kenneth Roswell.

Kenneth Roswell Ward, M.D., was born on May 26, 1897 in Batavia, New York, and died in January 1976. He and his wife, Gladys Smith, had two sons, Robert Barnett Ward and Roderick Sartwell Ward.

Roderick Sartwell Ward was born on May 3, 1928, and died on August 2, 1977. He was an Episcopalian priest. His first wife was Molly Jean Landis, with whom he had four children. Among those four was yours truly, born October 7, 1957 in Corning, New York.

For some family-tree roots on my mother’s side, see this post.

Socrates’ cave

As we immerse ourselves in virtual communities, what may be happening to our capacity for face-to-face interaction? Rice University’s Dr. Tony Gorry explores this question in a thought-provoking paper, Empathy in a Virtual World. Here’s the abstract:

Has our growing intimacy with digital technology thrust us into a modern version of Plato’s Cave where, Socrates tells us, prisoners mistook shadows on a wall for for reality? We, of course, are not in chains, and the technology of Socrates’ cave with its statues and firelight is primitive compared to our multimedia computers. Still, if he were here today, Socrates might make us uncomfortable with questions about modern life. While we can connect electronically with countless people in novel ways, we reach most of them only at computer’s length. Is this growing dependence on virtual interaction actually weakening social bonds? By attending so intently to the flickering images on our computer screens, are we turning our backs on true social life?

Come on in my kitchen—updated

About 71 or 72 years ago, Robert Johnson recorded Come On In My Kitchen. Last week, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals performed their version at the Doheny Blues Fest. With her voice and bangs, Grace reminds me of Chrissie Hynde. (Fedora tip to A Scale Canadian.)

Come Into My Kitchen Grace Potter & The Nocturnals from Tedheadone on Vimeo.

I got your 2009 Barathon photos right here

Today, with better cooperation from my high-speed ISP, I managed to upload the 2009 Barathon photos taken last Friday. To view the album, click here. And in case you missed it, here is my account of my own performance.

Poke. (bum-bum-bum-bum) Salad.

If you’re looking for a recipe for poke salad, check out Dee’s comment below the Tony Joe White video that I posted several weeks ago.

Tchoupitoulas Barathon 2009

Yesterday evening I competed in the 27th annual Tchoupitoulas Barathon. For those unfamiliar with this unique athletic event: it’s a footrace from bar to bar; at each bar, the contestant must down a beer. Not for the faint of heart, or of stomach. It started in 1983 as a club race for the Tchoupitoulas Social Aid & Athletic Club. I’m proud to say that I’ve made it to every Barathon since then except for one: 1990, which conflicted with my law-school baccalaureate mass.

This one was my slowest ever (1 hr. 11 min. 57 sec.*), probably due to my being older yesterday than ever before. My lack of training may have had something to do with that slow time too—my prior longest run in 2009 was been 3.2 miles. Surprisingly, I’m not nearly as sore today as I thought I’d be. During the race, I took a one-minute walk break every five miles, a marathoning technique I learned from Jeff Galloway, most useful for shortening the recovery time after a long run. Also on the plus side, the beer stayed down easier than in years past, probably due to the slower running and acquired alcohol tolerance (i.e. lots of Dewars).

Usually after each Barathon, I upload some photos and post the link on this blog. I intend to do that as soon as I resolve a little technical problem. My high-speed ISP has been disappointingly unreliable; I won’t name it’s name; let’s just say that their motto should be “Sometimes on.” Just now it’s in it’s all-too-frequent “sometimes off” mode. So I’m writing this post via a back-up dial-up account that I have. If all goes well, I should have a new DSL service up and running by Wednesday. Meanwhile, if my current on-again, off-again high-speed access decides to work, I’ll try to upload the photos before then. (With my reliable but slow dial-up, it took a few minutes to upload the one photo at upper left.)

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* My PR, as far as I know, is 35:19, posted in the Year of Our Lord Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Six.

Nice and warm

The weather in New Orleans lately has been mostly nice and warm. That makes today as good a time as any to post this performance of “Nice and Warm” by Tab Benoit and Jimmy Thackery. If you like what you hear, then get yourself a copy of Whiskey Store.

15 books

(Cross-posted on The (New) Legal Writer)

John McIntyre inspired this post. John was recently let go as a copy editor by the Baltimore Sun due to the newspaper’s financial death spiral. Anyway, the idea is to list 15 books important to you. Says John, “In my case, I’ve construed it to be books that I’ve looked into repeatedly, or the 15 books I would want to pack up when the severance runs out and the sheriff shows up to turn me out of the house.” With that thought in mind, here are my 15, in the order that they pop into my mind:

1. The Bible. Specifically, the New American translation. I can’t imagine going through life without a Bible handy.
2. Bryan A. Garner, A Dictionary of Modern Legal Usage. I need this book for my job, and there’s no other book I know of that covers the same ground.
3. John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces. The best New Orleans-based novel ever written.
4. Anthony De Mello, Awareness. This book helped me turn the corner on depression. My current happiness is a result of things I learned from it.
5. Walker Percy, The Second Coming. I need at least one Walker Percy book on this list. Of all his novels, this is my favorite. The Last Gentleman is a close second.
6. Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man Is Hard to Find. This collection of short stories will punch your mind in its solar plexus.
7. Roy Blount Jr., Feet on the Street. A guy not from New Orleans gets New Orleans. And his outsider’s perspective enables him to get New Orleans in a way that most natives miss.
8. Richard Daniels, The Heavy Guitar Bible. This book was written for would-be rock-and-rollers. In my case, it introduced me to the structure of the blues—particularly the pentatonic scale.
9. Bryan A. Garner, The Winning Brief. Several years ago, the first edition of this book (and Bryan’s accompanying seminar) raised my brief-writing consciousness.
10. William Strunk and E.B. White, The Elements of Style. This book does not tell you everything you need to know about writing. But I don’t know of any other book that packs so much sound advice into so few pages.
11. Ruggero Aldisert, Winning on Appeal. Every appellate lawyer needs this book. I am an appellate lawyer. Therefore, ....
12. Edward Good, A Grammar Book for You and I — Oops, Me! This book and one of its predecessors, Mightier Than the Sword, reveal the grammatical structure of the English language and how a writer can use that structure to maximum effect.
13. George Gopen, The Sense of Structure. This book too aims to reveal the power of structure to a writer. While Ed Good talks about grammatical structure, George Gopen talks about syntactic and linguistic structure.
14. Roy Peter Clark, Writing Tools. This may be the best book on writing in general that most legal writers are unaware of. Like Ed Good and George Gopen, Roy will add some tools to your writing toolbox. Or, if you’re a lawyer, he will add weapons to your writing arsenal.
15. Flannery O’Connor, The Habit of Being. This is a collection of Flannery’s letters. Many of them offer simple and profound spirituality. All of them are served up by one of the south’s best all-time writers.

Trouble weighs a ton

Recently Dan Auerbach, one half of the Black Keys, released a solo album, Keep It Hid. Here’s a live performance of the opening track, Trouble Weighs a Ton. Enjoy.