Unabashed

How many stories are there in a day? Every day, every one of us is a story. Some are boring, but some are fantastic. Every soul on Earth has its own story, set to the cadence of every heartbeat drumming up the words. The most frustrating thing is not knowing the stories of the lives that we intersect with. Points of interest along the route of life compile without definition: we don’t meet, we don’t know, we only move on, just as the story does. Today I met four stories, but I have no idea how they began or end, I only have the snapshot in my mind, a single page or paragraph, and the frustration and wonder at what it is that made that story fantastic.

In order of occurrence:

There was a dark-haired woman and a toddler sitting at a table in McDonald’s eating breakfast. Her arms and legs were crossed and she stared down at her food, but the little boy, with a pacifier in his mouth, watched me as I walked by. When I left, walking back by them to get to the door, I noticed a car right outside the door with New York plates, and I wondered if it belonged to her and the little boy.

A big, tall man with copper-colored long hair was walking along the side of the road with a petite blonde woman wearing short-shorts. The woman was holding the hand of a little girl who might have been five years old, and the little girl had a dolly wrapped in her free arm. All four of them stared straight ahead, without expression or conversation (at least in those ten seconds that I saw them). The man was walking with a deliberate gait, and the other two were just keeping pace as well as they could. Or so it appeared.

A woman wearing a white dress and a black backpack was standing by a patrol car with the police lights spinning, and the officer, a burly macho type with mirrored sunglasses, was standing beside her holding a book or a pamphlet of some type, staring down at it. The woman wasn’t looking at him, but past him, at nothing I could see. There was a church nearby, but the road they were on was a connector route between Centreville and Tuscaloosa. There are a lot of houses along that stretch, but not much else, so it was kind of odd to see a woman walking alone through there.

Another woman, barefoot, wearing a tee shirt that was just long enough to make it look like that was all she was wearing and with a big blonde hairdo of loopy curls, was walking smoothly across the pavement around her car, which was stopped at an intersecting road between Centreville and Montevallo. She wasn’t walking with the “I think I have a flat tire” hop, but as if she was thinking something through, something very distracting. I didn’t stop to help because she got back into her car, and I saw in my rearview that she was pulling onto the main highway, heading back toward Centreville.

All of these people were beautiful, from the burly cop right down to the little dolly. They were all people in my own story’s margin, people whose lives I’ve glimpsed but whose stories I’ll never know, no matter how boring or adventurous or scandalous or petty or eager or psychopathic or horrific or desirable or melodic or distressful or macabre or mischievous. All I know is each one of those stories was interesting, for those few words I was able to read of them. All the planets this morning were spinning out of line–or into a line–and gave me a glimpse into the eyes of ordinary grandeur, everyday wonder. And I liked it.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: stories, story

I took my 3-year old son Lucas to the river Saturday (the Coosa River, specifically around Lay Lake in south Shelby County, AL) and we took to the water on my mom’s Yamaha waverunner. At one point out on the lake an island came into view, and I had to slow down and make a slow pass by the island, because it looked very odd. It was only about a hundred feet across and was covered with tall pine trees, some of which didn’t look very alive. But all the trees on the island were topped with something very white, and as I came closer I realized that the island was a nesting spot for egrets. Of course I didn’t have my camera with me, either, so I can’t show you how amazing it was. There were probably ten to twenty nesting pairs crowding the tops of the trees, in a mass of nests (which is why some of the trees looked dead). They were huge birds, with wingspans that must have reached six feet.

It occurred to me later that, before Lay Dam was built, this spot would have been a hill, not an island, possibly overlooking the river, which would have been narrow and fast in those days, and of course it would have been densely wooded. I wonder what it would be like to step foot on that island. Sure, there’d be a mass of guano probably, but what else? Might there be any mammals living on so small a piece of land? I dread to think it might also be a nesting spot for cottonmouths, which is entirely possible. But what else? Might it have once been a burial ground for the indigenous Creek Indians who lived around this area? I’ve found several spots around that area (which is where I grew up) where arrowheads could be found by the handful. Has anyone else ever decided to try to walk out on that island? I have no idea, I just know it was wonderful, and beautiful, and I want to go back again (and take my camera this time!).

Photo by mikebaird.

written by Matt Mitchell

I’m a very good sleeper. My wife has observed that I can lie down in bed, squirm a bit while I wriggle into the Optimum Comfort Position, and then I can say, “Watch this,” and fall directly to sleep. And she’s right, for the most part. When I get tired I can go to sleep. It’s a blessing I count, because I’ve known people who can’t sleep or who sleep fitfully, and I value the experience every day. But as a mechanism, a lot of things have to line up for it to work just right. I’ve spent a lot of time developing the process’s fundamentals. All the basics apply: I have to have the right temperature, the right pillow (or combination thereof, because I use two pillows. One my wife jokingly calls “Nurse Nancy,” because I hug up close and tight to it. But it’s really just a way to keep my shoulders from slouching, because I sleep on my side), and I need of course a good blanket over me. After that, things get really serious, but if I succeed at two key functions, then sleep is just a moment or two away.

The first requirement is some level of white noise. A small fan works well enough in this department. The reason I need the noise is pretty simple: I have an active imagination, and when I hear a noise I try to identify it. I try to figure out why that pipe might have rattled, I imagine the water flowing through it, down and down, the clogs along the way: is there a faucet running somewhere? Is it the dishwasher? And the level of noise at nighttime never ceases to amaze me. Minutiae of every sort, encroaching upon my imagination’s wildest forthcomings. What kind of bird was that? What is that growling noise in the closet? Did I just hear that noise the night-vision goggles made in Silence of the Lambs? And it gets worse, of course. But a certain level of white noise efficiently eradicates those mental wanderings, to the point where I am able to concentrate on only those things that increase my chances of drifting off to sleep.

The concentration is paramount in the process. I can’t think about things that are happening, and things that have happened in the past are a death knell for the sandman’s visit. Oddly enough, what I find most settling for my mind is something that I find very exciting, too, and it’s a result of that same imagination that would otherwise keep me from sleep if I didn’t have the white-noise generator. I think about my projects. The stories I’m writing, the ideas I’m nurturing, any and everything that keeps my mind active during the day somehow allows me to unplug when I turn out the light. Maybe it’s just a result of positive thinking, because with my projects I am always positive. Anything negative–bad memories or past failures–spells doom for sleep. I’ve turned over many an idea in my head in those final moments of consciousness and come up with a gripping new twist or a sensational, settling ending. Some of my best thinking happens in those few moments right before I fall asleep, and when I awaken, I find that I can expound and even improve the idea.

Saturday night I decided to sleep outside. I made a pallet on the back porch and let my dog know she was on guard duty, and then I settled in for a night of reconnecting with Mother Earth. She did not disappoint. There’s something satisfying in sleeping under the stars, waking up with a trace of dew across your forehead and pillow, and it’s always a bit startling to experience the world waking up, something I can’t do in my cocoon of comfort and white noise in the bedroom. Sunday morning I awakened with the rest of the world around me, those parts of it that are mostly only seen flitting in the periphery when you live in an industrialized society. The cool gray dawn met me with songbirds by the seeming multitudes, including one particularly throaty mocking bird who I think was about two feet from my head. I lay there soaking it all in for about thirty minutes, and then I staggered into the cocoon and got another hour’s restful sleep.

The experience was worth it. It reminded me of camping trips when I was a kid, when I used to throw down a sleeping bag anywhere and sleep with perfect comfort. I didn’t worry then about ticks or ants or mosquitoes, I just plopped down and didn’t care. But most importantly it reminded me of the life that lives on the periphery, of Earth herself, struggling to be a good home to us all, despite our virulent ways.

And now I’ve got another project in mind: a permanent dwelling, that I want to build somewhere on my six acres, fashioned after the example of the native Americans once of this area, the Creek Indians. A wigwam, if you will. A retreat, yes, but also a hub, a place to recharge and reconnect with primitive, fundamental elements.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: dwelling, Earth, indigenous, Nature, reconnect, rest, sandman, sleep, wigwam

In the continuing saga of my life, I had an interesting experience I’d like to share, and one that again has awakened something inside me, something creeping and profound. Last summer I was with my mother and two nieces (aged 14 and 15) in my mother’s garden. She plucked a ripe tomato from the vine and smelled it, and then took a big bite out of it. My mouth watered. I’m used to the stock of vegetables we get at the market nowadays and I know how much difference there is between that and vine-fresh. It’s staggering. But my nieces had an entirely different take. One of them said, “Ew, gross!” And at that point there was exclaiming and proclamations on the wrongness of it all. What became clear to me in that moment was this: If something truly awful happened, and society collapsed, the human animal as it has evolved would be in a lot of trouble. Because a vegetable plucked off the vine is considered dirty, gross. That tomato was probably the cleanest, most pristinely perfect tomato those girls had ever seen, but since it wasn’t displayed in a bin at the grocer, because it was so close to soil and sky and life and segregated from any form of disinfectant by a good hundred yards, it was gross. Kids, it’s time to refresh your relationship with the Earth. Stop primping for a moment and watch the sunrise, let the rain fall on your face, stop fretting and just be.

Photo by bucklava.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: gardening, tomato

The number 8 is my special number. It always has been. I started calling it “Vertical Infinity” a long time ago, just because I thought that sounded cool.

I wrote this little list in 1996 (and yes, I know now, as I did then, that some of these are contrived):

• My social security number has 5 eights in it, including both the middle numbers.
• The eighth letter of my name is the eighth letter of the alphabet, and the same letter appears eight letters later.
• In boot camp, my company designation was 088.
• My football jersey number was 88
• I was born in April, which passes and leaves 8 months till New Year.
• I was born in 1969, which doesn’t give much to the 8 theory, until you add 19+69… which equals 88.

There are countless other examples, many of a mundane, everyday nature, but the point is that the number 8 just keeps showing up in my life. Which was one reason that I’ve been really excited about 2008 for a few years now. It just felt like it was going to be my year. Not that it has been, yet. So far it’s just been more of the same. I sent out a batch of stories early in the year and have collected for almost all of them rejections. But… but. There are things brewing. Exciting things that could put me on the proverbial map. I wish I could spill the beans now, but I can’t, and I promise this is the last post I’ll do for a while in which I tell you that I can’t tell you something. A lot has happened in the last week. If any of it pans out, Matt Mitchell may be remade into Matt ver2.0.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: 8, infinity, vertical

I’ve got two things in the pipe that I can’t talk about yet, but are very exciting and sapping a lot of my focus right now. I was thinking about them last night when I went to sleep, and I had this dream…(And you should be thinking at this point “Oh noes, a dreary dream post!” But this dream might just be foretelling the future (I hope not)).

I was at my grandmother’s house, in the back yard, and there were two diamondback rattlers between me and the house. There was a woman I didn’t know on the porch, and she was telling me to go away, but I kept walking closer. Then she picked up the snakes and handed them to me. I took them, like a big ol’ DA, and they bit me on both of my index fingers. Then I ran back into the garage to get in the car and drive to the hospital, only when I went into the garage it was my office, and all my coworkers were standing there smiling, telling me that they’d take care of me. I woke up to a soothed sensation, as if everything was really going to be okay.

So now: Were the two snakes representative of my Two Big Projects that I’ve been focusing so hard on, and are they both going to end up biting me on the hand? Or was I just recognizing the fact that even if they don’t work out, I’ve still got the security of a good day job that’ll see me through? I don’t do dream analysis, and I don’t know if I believe in precognition or not, but that was a weird dream.

I have had some creepy precog moments in my life from time to time. Just the other day I asked for rain and got it, within moments of my requesting it. One time I woke up with a bad feeling about ten years ago, and right before lunch break that day there was an explosion on the jobsite where I was working that burned a guy pretty badly. Maybe the planets are lined up just right for those moments, or maybe the Earth’s magnetic field is firing in my mental cortex. Or maybe it’s just the full moon or the tide or cosmic pixie dust. Or maybe it’s really just all a big coincidence.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: precognition

Anyone remember those commercials in the ’80s for 7-Up, the “Feels so good, comin down” commercials? I do. I used to sing that song when I was about 14, driving a tractor for $3.50 an hour across the green pastures that are now just about two miles down the road from my home. I used to sing it like I was calling the rain, as if I was the rain man, doing a rain dance, praying for the heavens to unleash their gift. I still do, sometimes, when it’s really hot like it has been lately, I’ll sing it to myself, staring up at the sky as I do, rousing the Great Spirit to let loose the Thunderbird. I evoke rain. It rarely ever works, but then, rarely is still pretty good odds when you’re dealing with rain in a drought-stricken landscape. Tonight, it worked; yes, I know you doubt, but I walked outside, taking out the trash, felt the grass crunch under my shoes, pulled my head back and sang, softly, the rain song:
“Rain rain rain rain, beautiful rain,
Feels so good, coming down.”

And then I felt the cool breeze and, moments later, a plop splattered down on the porch. By the time I came back inside to tell my wife what was happening, she said, “What did you do?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. I actually thought I’d done something wrong.

“Is that thunder?” she asked, letting me in on the joke. Little did she know, though, that I did do it.

I smiled and nodded, and another rumble boomed, rattling the door in its frame. ”It’s raining right now,” I said.

“Let’s go outside!” she said, and we did. We let the sprinkling drops rain down on our upturned faces, feeling the cool drops for the first time in at least a blue moon. I did that. There’s no possible way it was a coincidence, is there? Still, it was pretty nifty.

And now, in its full glory, the original commercial that made me like 7-Up (It’s since fallen out of favor. Once they claimed to have only 7 ingredients and “all natural!” I checked the can and, yep, high fructose corn syrup. If they’d have put arsenic in it, I guess they still could call it “all natural” though, right? Still, don’t peddle poison and expect me to gleefully put up with it. But they did have some, um, delightful commercials back in the day).

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: dance, drought, great spirit, rain, song, thunderbird

Save vs. Death has this to say about Henry Miller, and writers in general:

Writing used to be a scholarly manly art, but is now reserved for disposable milquetoast bores and effete vacuous chumps whose bathrooms hold no ephemera from a long vanished world. Men like Miller have forceful opinions and fifth and final wives.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Henry Miller

Yes, summer is here. I grilled shrimp and brats Saturday night, staying close the fire because it was cooler than the air around me. The Alabama weather has tricked me, skipped past the mild spring and gone straight to inferno. And it seems the drought isn’t through with us just yet, although to be honest it’s not nearly as bad as it was last year. Yet.

I’m utterly out of the know, as well, and likely will remain that way for a few days because my RSS feed reader reports 408 new articles. I’m used to the 100-article range on a Monday, but 400+ is just too daunting, especially when faced with the heat, and nary a wheeze of a breeze to foretell of any break in the pattern. And I’m planning to go to Florida in July. My God.

I have been working on a new idea this weekend, however, that has me a little bit excited. Hopefully I can break some interesting news in the near future, but for now I must remain mum. I can say I may be starting an internet company, however, and that if Yahoo! or Google wants to go ahead and buy it, the starting figure is $400 million (because, you know, I always wanted to be a 400 millionaire).

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: drought, heat, news, weather

Just so you know, Lucas seems to have recovered from his little accident last night. He’s got a little crusty scab just above his hairline, but otherwise seems okay.

And, when read in context of the post it was commented in (by Sarah Etc.) the following comment makes perfect sense. But when considered out of context, it seems a little bit deflating:

I think you’re conspicuously missing “fantastic.”

Context is good, yes it is.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: context

I almost didn’t post this because it’s too gloomy, but then I thought I’d add this note to the top of the post and say that for the most part it’s been a great, productive day. Our vacation plans are made for late July on the beach in Destin, Florida, and I got a new gadget today: a folding keyboard for my Palm T|X, which I did get to tinker with a bit. Plus, I got a lot of work done on my day job, including putting the finishing touches on procedural document that’s sure to bring me the acclaim of all my many bosses. But there was gloom today, and the description of that gloom begins now:

This morning I walked into the bathroom after my wife had left for work and saw a perfect imprint of her bare foot on the rug by the sink. Just a little footprint impression, no big deal, right? Except that image has stuck with me all day long, and I don’t even want to share the dark and depressing reasoning behind this. Suffice it to say that the thought passed through my mind that if anything was to happen to my wife today, love of my life that she is, and if for some reason I never saw her again, that I would never step on that rug again. And that I would dwell on that imprint, that I would wreck myself with grief staring at it, wishing that little foot would fit it again.

Deep, huh? Sorry if I’m bringing you down, but there’s another notch to descend on this ladder of fate…

Tonight my three-year-old son Lucas began screaming, all of a sudden. I ran and picked him up and hugged him close, trying to be soothing. Then I realized I was wet. Then I realized his head was pouring blood like a sieve. It stopped bleeding almost as soon as Suzy touched it with a cold compress, but by then both of us had blood all over us.

When he stopped crying, Suzy called the pediatrician’s after-hours number and they told us to just watch him tonight and tomorrow. Make sure he doesn’t lose any function or start forgetting how to talk or identify familiar things. I think he’s fine, but I’m pretty sure he cracked his head on the hearth (which Suzy keeps covered with a nice cushy blanket, but still), the thought of which literally sends chills down my spine and makes me feel a little sick to the stomach. So we have to wake him up in four hours to make sure he can still walk.

So: was the footprint impression an omen of an impending accident? Even though it was my son and not my wife who had the accident, and everything seems to be okay now, there were still those moments of barely-controlled panic, when I thought something terrible might have just happened. Those feelings aren’t benefitted by the doom residue that had stuck around since this morning.

Well if I’ve brought you down I’m sorry, but you were warned. G’night.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: blues, grief, omens, portend

This might also be known as the first glimpse at the Halloween ‘08 costume craze. 

The website that first hosted these photos, Survival-International, has succumbed to bandwidth problems and is now only hosting this one page. They simply wanted to show the world that there are still isolated, uncontacted tribes of Indians whose way of life may be threatened with extinction due to illegal logging nearby.

It’s hard to imagine a people who’ve never had the notion to just get away, to walk and see where the path leads, no matter how far it might lead you. It’s even harder to imagine a life still lived as if the height of technological advancement was fire. Here’s a good page on what it means to be uncontacted, and this is what it means to me:

• You’ve never had ice in your drink; you drink only water, or whatever you’ve figured out how to ferment
• The most important things in your life are the sun and rain
• You’ve never experienced clean socks on your feet
• You’ve never felt the cool side of the pillow
• Comfort is something elemental to you
• You’ve never escaped the heat by cranking up a fan or cranking down the air conditioner
• You’re unconcerned with the imminent extinction of all the animals on the endangered species list 
• You are an endangered species 
• Your history is passed on, generation to generation, by verbal rote
• If you want anything, you must build it or make it
• If you want to eat, you must kill to do it
• If you want warmth, you must create fire
• You’ve never heard a song that wasn’t sung by someone you know
• In many ways, you are more intelligent that any of us contacted folks (If my family lived in the same conditions as you, it is very probable that we would all be dead within six months)
• You’ve never seen a photograph, television, radio or automobile (you have, however, seen a helicopter, from a distance, and you tried to kill it)
• You’ve never seen a book, magazine or newspaper (But then you have no alphabet, so it wouldn’t do you any good anyway)
• You’ve never seen a photograph of your mother, uncle or grandfather
• You’ve never seen a photograph
• You have no idea how big the world is; the world to you exists only within the confines of your jungle home
• You’ve never seen an ocean
• You’ve never seen a polar bear, a whale or a penguin
• All of your belongings fit in a neat leather pouch that you wear on a sling
• You’ve never experienced greed
• You have no idea that people have visited some of the stars you see in the sky
• You’ve never worried about getting a raise, or retirement
• You’ve never owned something because you thought it was pretty or convenient
• You don’t know what electricity is
• When the sun goes down, you go to sleep
• You’ve never worried about making your mortgage payment
• You’ve never been late for work; or for anything else for that matter
• You don’t know what Wikipedia is, but that is where most of us will learn what we can about you (what’s with the body paint? Is that a regular thing or did the photographers interrupt a wedding or something?)
• I don’t really know if you want to be contacted or not; my feeling is that you don’t, else you might have wandered away from your home by now. But if you ever do get the itch to find out what the rest of the world is like, I hope you’ll stay where you are and forget about all the rest of the globe, because there are teeny, tiny little bugs, smaller than you can see, that can kill you if you get too near any of us. It sounds crazy, I know, but it’s true.

It could be summarized by saying: You don’t know what you’re missing, but you don’t know how good you’ve got it.

Meanwhile, those of us who are contacted are waiting patiently for a robot 100 million miles away to unfold its arm.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: aboriginal, amazon, amerindian, brazil, peru, rainforest, tribe, uncontacted

I don’t know her name, and she doesn’t know mine. But just the same, she will never forget me–I’m the guy who held her hand, who gave her a tissue, who brushed the glass shards off her shoulders, out of her hair. I asked her if she was okay, and then I waited with her, until the paramedics arrived. I’ll never forget her because I was there at the intersection when that big freight truck decided not to stop. I was there when it hit her broadside, when there was nothing she could do to avoid the horrible collision, and I was there when she plowed into the tree. I saw the fear in her eyes, and you don’t forget fear like that. We may not know one another’s names, but we are nonetheless connected, inexorably, for time immemorial. The truck had hit right behind the driver’s-side door, shattering every window in the car except the one right by her left ear. I leaned in behind her and asked if she was okay, and when she didn’t move for several long seconds I was terrified that she was already gone. But I heard her mumble. I tried to open her door but it was jammed shut by twisted metal. Still, I thought the damage was farther back, that the mechanism might not be too far gone, and I knew that if I couldn’t get the door open right then she’d have to sit there, covered in glass, terrified, until the fire department came to cut her out. But I got it open, with a shriek the metal let go, and I took her hand in mine.

“Are you hurt?” I asked her.

“I don’t think so,” she said, utterly in shock.

“Do you want to get out?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Can I use your phone?” she asked with a trembling, uneasy voice, rising on trembling, uneasy legs.

I dialed the number for her. And then she wept. Of course she would, I would have, too.

Her husband arrived before the paramedics or the police. She’d held it together very well, and that’s something else I will always remember. The other thing I will never forget is the way her husband held out his hand to me–he was wide-eyed and full of nerves too, by then. He gripped my hand and shook it with both of his, never saying a word, but not needing to, either. I couldn’t say anything myself at that point. I don’t think there’s anything I could have said at that point, anyway, that would make any difference. I had done all I could do, and he knew it. And for his part, he gave all the thanks he needed to when he took my hand. He told me, without speaking, that one day, if something happened to me or someone I love and he was there, that he would do the same for me as I’d just done for him. Sometimes the best we can do is try to be comforting, soothing, offer a tissue and a kind word and hope nothing is broken.

One day, maybe he’ll come upon a wreck or an accident. Maybe he’ll remember that day that someone held his wife’s hand and patted her shoulder and told her it would be okay. He will do the same for them. We are in this together forevermore, me and him (and her), tethered by a string of karma.

And I don’t know his name, and he doesn’t know mine. But we’ll neither one of us ever forget the other, and we won’t ever forget this day, when something could have gone so, so wrong, but thankfully, didn’t.

written by Matt Mitchell

It’s an Alabama kind of night. The Flower Moon is full as full can be, and I heard the season’s first whippoorwills right after sunset. The magnolia tree in my yard is in full bloom, and somewhere Jimmy Buffett is wondering where his salt shaker is.  Tonight I’m pondering whippoorwills and an old jazz standard.

Stars Fell on Alabama was written originally in 1934 and refers to the spectacular Leonid meteor shower of 1833. It’s been performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Billie Holliday and Alabama’s own Jimmy Buffett, among many, many others (the Buffett version is the local favorite, but sadly I can’t find a copy of it anywhere on the ‘net to share with you). The lyrics of that song have never felt more right than they feel tonight:

A feather from the Whippoorwill
That everlasting—sings!
Whose galleries—are Sunrise—
Whose Opera—the Springs—
Whose Emerald Nest the Ages spin
Of mellow—murmuring thread—
Whose Beryl Egg, what Schoolboys hunt
In “Recess”—Overhead!
           - Emily Dickinson

Many songs have been written about whippoorwills. They’re a melancholy set, a type of nightjar, rarely ever seen even when the season’s right. Some say they are the harbingers of death; the Iriquois believed they’d turned a frog into the moon. Here’s a YouTube video of the distinctive whippoorwill song:

There’s a reason people come here and stay, because in spite of its troubled past, it’s still a wonderful, beautiful place to live. Sometimes it’s downright magical.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Alabama, armstrong, buffett, ella, fitzgerald, hank, jimmy, louis, magnolia, moonlight, stars fell on alabama, whippoorwill, williams

Two things I find very interesting this morning. First, the Neptune Society, from Matt Staggs:

A Florida company is offering a unique memorial service for your earthly remains. For a fee, the people at the Neptune Society will mix your cremated remains with concrete, which is then molded into a sculpture and placed with others in a giant artificial reef a little over a mile off the coast of Key Biscayne, Florida. The reef then provides a new habitat for marine life and a destination for recreational divers and researchers. It’s apparently all ecologically sound, too. At first blush, I really like this idea. I’m certain that I want my remains cremated, and as much as I love the ocean this would be a perfect way to rest for eternity.

Also of interest today, from Curtis Palmer: Birmingham is gaining a new 1100 acre park in the Oxmoor/Ishkooda area. The park is bigger than New York’s Central Park and is going to have tons of amenities–hiking trails, 20 acre lake, softball and soccer fields, etc. I live in Montevallo, but I work in Birmingham, so this new park will be good for day trips. Oak Mountain State Park is closer and I’ve always loved it (it’s a refuge in an urban area, almost 10,000 acres). I go there often, but I love me a new park, yes I do. Especially interesting in this is that this park will make Birmingham the #1 U.S. city in terms of greenspace per capita. Birmingham catches a lot of grief around the country and is regularly noted as one of the worst places to live in America, so it’s nice to see the “Magic City” making inroads to be something better than it is. If only we could somehow craft a governing body that wasn’t corrupt and driving the city to bankruptcy.

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Alabama, birmingham, cemetery, florida, greenspace, ishkooda, key biscayne, memorial, neptune, oak mountain, oxmoor, park, red mountain, underwater