A visit from Drunky McDrunkerson

Looking at the local police blotter today, I saw that Drunky McDrunkerson was recently arrested on some sort of domestic assault/harrassment charge. You may remember that Drunky was the guy I suspected of running over one my hens in the driveway and taking a shit in my yard when I wasn't home.

I hadn't seen Drunky in a month or so. Figured he was due for a visit. Sure enough, he came knocking at my door this evening.

He was surprisingly sober. Usually Drunky has only two speeds - drunk and fucking blotto. I let him in and he told me his tale of woe. Between the thick southern accent and my not really giving a damn, I don't even remember enough about it to tell you what happened. Him and his old lady got in a fight. Not a physical fight, just a yelling match apparently. She called the cops and they took him to the Graybar Hotel where he ended up spending two weeks.

He was released today and discovered that his old lady got a restraining order. So he can't go home. He wanted to know if I knew someplace he could sleep tonight.

No way was I gonna let Drunky stay here. I just don't need the drama. Sadly, it's a testament to how few friends Drunky must have if he came to me for help. I don't care that it's gonna get down to 24 degrees tonight and he'll end up having to sleep in his car. I once slept in my car in the Canadian Rockies when it was 10 degrees below zero. Drunky will be fine.

Randolph County, you've disappointed me once again

As I've mentioned numerous times before, I spent a good portion of this year having to use an old PC running Windows 98. Actually, I have more than one of these dinosaurs.

I got them in trade about two years ago from B.J. Boomhauer. He'd bought an entire lot of them at some auction. I took them all home and - one by one - hooked 'em up, plugged 'em in, turned 'em on and separated the wheat from the chaff. In return for my time and effort, I got to keep a few for myself. I knew that someday my laptop would fail me and I'd be stuck between a rock and a hard place without a paddle. At least these out-of-date machines would give me something to fall back on.

I'd previously glanced at some of the documents left behind by previous users. It was obvious the computers came from the Randolph County school system. None of the stuff looked interesting so I focused my attention on more important things like Facebook status updates and other time-killing sites.

Now that I have my groovy PowerBook G4 (thanks Dean & Ana!), I wanted to get these old computers out of the way. But, before I did that, I wanted to check for any documents I may have saved to them.

While munching away on Thanksgiving leftovers, I set up the first computer and started poking around. While looking at a folder full of text documents, I opened a few from the previous user. This time, I was very interested in what I saw.

This particular computer was used by the school nurse for Randolph County schools. A lot of the documents were form letters to be printed out as needed. But there were plenty of documents that had students' names and their various medical conditions. Who got sent home with ringworm or pink-eye. Which kids had head lice. Who had what kind of medication in the nurse's office. It covers elementary, middle school and high school kids. Some of the documents were dated 2004 so many of these kids are still in the school system.

This computer has all kinds of info that I'm sure both kids and parents alike don't want to share with random people. I wish the school system felt as strongly about keeping students' medical information confidential.

So far, I've only spent about 20 minutes looking at these documents. Who knows what else I might find on this - or the other five - computers?

Yeah, yeah...I'm still here

I've been slackin' again. Sorry 'bout that. That's just my nature.

So, like some sort of cosmic joke or hackneyed O'Henry story, my digital camera died shortly after my new-to-me laptop arrived. At least I had the good sense to transfer the hundreds of photos that had accumulated on the camera's memory card during the time I was without a computer manufactured in this century.

A while back, I promised you that the new-to-me laptop meant more photos on the blog. Since, I don't want to be a big fat liar, I will post some of those photos taken over the last six months. It surely is no surprise that a number of these are of chickens.

Watermelon Party!

Ah...the halycon days of summer when watermelons were plentiful and the roosters were peacefully coexisting. Standing tall and proud in the back is Sanchez, the alpha male of Frankencoop. In front of him is Pasha, the young rooster who decided to move in under my porch when he discovered there were hens living there without the benefit of male company. The black and white rooster in front of him is Tweak - he has since gone off to that big chicken coop in the sky.

Tweak was the first chicken I ever killed in front of another person. David & Priscilla came for a weekend visit earlier this month and wanted to see the complete transformation from fluffy bird running around in the yard to plate of sweet-n-sour on the table.

On the right is Buddie, a hen who used to think she was a rooster (complete with crowing) but now she thinks she's a hen again. The black bird with her ass to the camera is Betty. Her and Buddie, along with Biddie and Cheepacabra, are the only remaining birds from the eggs I hatched in the kitchen almost three years ago. These four original chickens comprise the core of the alpha male's harem, regardless of which cock is filling that role. They comfortably sit at the top of Frankencoop's pecking order.

The number two rooster, currently being played by Babyman (left), has a bevy of factory farm refugee beauties to keep him company. But that doesn't stop Babyman from occasionally jumping out of the bushes to ravish Sanchez's women.

The Watermelon Party is over

On another note: Does anyone know what kind of bug this is? It's the only one of its kind that I've seen. My Google-fu has failed me. Click the photos to enlarge (unless, of course, you think bugs are icky).

*UPDATE: I should've had more faith in my Google-fu. The above bug is an anisomorpha buprestoide a.k.a. a two-striped walking stick. And it's a girl. It certainly doesn't look like the walking sticks I'm used to seeing around here but it must be true because the internets don't lie.

Guess who's from Randolph County, Alabama?

Today, during an internet search for something completely different, I learned that Lewis Thornton Powell (1844-1865) is from Randolph County, Alabama. His family moved to Georgia when he was three but that doesn't change the fact that he's originally from my little particular corner of nowhere.

I can already hear a collective "Who?" coming from the readers of this blog.

Lewis Thornton Powell was the man who unsuccessfully tried to assassinate William Seward.

Again, I can hear a number of you saying "Who?" I'm pretty sure though the Alaskans in the audience have some idea who Seward was.

Seward was Abraham Lincoln's Secretary of State. At the same time John Wilkes Booth was gunning Lincoln down in the theater, Powell was repeatedly stabbing Seward, injuring a number of others in the fracas, including two of Seward's children. Powell was one of the four conspirators hanged for the Lincoln assassination.

Powell is second from the left.

Considering how many locals here still haven't stopped fighting the Civil War, I'm surprised this has never come up in conversation before.

Even more surprising is the fact that Powell was kinda cute.

RIP Professor Ray B. Browne

You probably never heard of Ray Browne. Chances are though that you've heard or read him quoted before.

I learned yesterday that Ray Browne died last week. I read it in the Anniston Star - a paper from the not-too-far-away town of Anniston, AL. I was saddened to read of his death but even more saddened by the shitty AP article the Anniston Star published instead of a proper obituary. The article didn't even mention that Ray was from Alabama or that his first work in the field of popular culture was done here. Not just "here" in Alabama, but "here" in rural east Alabama - where hardly anything of note ever happens. I'm guessing no one at the Anniston Star even knew who he was. Probably just had some empty space left on the obituary page and pulled something off the wire.

Here's another - much better - obituary that was published in the Toledo Blade. And, unlike the Anniston Star, the Toledo Blade doesn't require a subscription to read it. But I'll put the text here anyway for those of you too lazy to click. Go ahead. Read it. Then I'll tell you what this has to do with Spenardo del Sur.



RAY B. BROWNE, 1922-2009
BGSU professor began popular culture center

BOWLING GREEN - Ray B. Browne, 87, who created an academic discipline and a national movement by studying the stuff of everyday life - whether comic books, fast food, pop tunes, or situation comedies - died Thursday in his home of congestive heart failure.

"He's the father of popular culture studies," said Gary Hoppenstand, a professor of American studies at Michigan State University, and a popular culture graduate student at Bowling Green State University and protege of Mr. Browne's. "He's done more to affect studies in the humanities than any other individual the last 30 or 40 years."

Mr. Browne began the Center for the Study of Popular Culture in 1968 at BGSU. The Popular Culture Library followed.

In 1973, despite detractors, he began a distinct department of popular culture. His history of the popular culture movement's early struggle is called Against Academia.

"Ray opened the windows of the academy, just opened them up," said Michael Marsden, one of the department's first faculty members, now dean and academic vice president of St. Norbert College, De Pere, Wis. "We have the people's culture being studied, and we're learning how complex and wonderful and significant it is."

The BGSU department was the first of its kind.

"Today there is a course in popular culture studies in every major and minor university in the country," said Mr. Hoppenstand, also editor of the Journal of Popular Culture Studies, founded by Mr. Browne in 1967.

Mr. Browne's expertise landed him in the popular culture. Reporters from all media, worldwide, sought him out to decode the latest pop phenom or the enduring - detective novels, soap operas.

"My dad was very much a populist," his daughter, Alicia Browne, said. "While he loved Dickens and Melville and Shakespeare, he thought it was far too hoity-toity to think that only those few people created anything of value."

"He might not personally have liked it, but if someone is reading it, if someone is singing it, or saying it, he believed there was value to it, or at least we should understand it," she said. "[He was] endlessly curious about anything." He arrived in 1967 at the BGSU English department intending to bring the study of popular culture to the academy.

He retired in 1992 and was a distinguished university professor emeritus. He worked until recently and had agreed to write the foreword to an anthology being edited by BGSU popular culture faculty, said Jeremy Wallach, an associate professor in popular culture. The book will be dedicated to him. "He has a very robust legacy," Mr. Wallach said.

Mr. Browne was born Jan. 15, 1922, in Millport, Ala. The Depression ruined his father, a banker, and the family was poor. With the help of an older sister, he went to the University of Alabama and received a bachelor's degree. He served in Europe during World War II in an Army artillery unit.

Afterward, he studied at universities in Birmingham and Nottingham, England. He received a master's degree in Victorian literature from Columbia University in New York City. He taught at the University of Nebraska before he attended the University of California at Los Angeles, from which he received a doctorate in English and folklore.

He taught at the University of Maryland and Purdue University.

Surviving are his wife, Maxine "Pat" Browne, whom he married Aug. 25, 1965, sons, Glenn and Kevin, daughter, Alicia Browne, and three granddaughters. Visitation will be from 6 p.m. to 8 pm. Tuesday in the Holman Funeral Home, Ozark, Ala. Graveside services will be at 11 a.m. Wednesday at Woodlawn Memory Gardens in Ozark. Bowling Green arrangements are by the Dunn Funeral Home.

The family suggests tributes to the Browne Popular Culture Library at BGSU.




Back in the early 1950s, Ray Browne traipsed across Alabama, collecting and recording rural folklore from rural folks. One person he interviewed during his travels was my grandmother.

About five years ago, when I first started going through the things left in my grandmother's house, I found the following letter from Ray Browne sent in the summer of 1953:

Dear Mrs. Mitchum,

Thank you very much for your answer to my article in the paper about folklore.

I don't know at this time exactly when I shall be up to see you but surely intend to come in the next few weeks. I would appreciate your thinking about this old material at your leisure during the next few weeks, and I will surely see you before too long.

Very truly yours,
Ray Browne



He did come to visit her. Over a dozen stories she told him that day were eventually published in his book "A Night with the Hants and Other Alabama Folk Experiences." (By the way, Amazon still has one copy in stock if anyone is wondering what to get me for Christmas...)

I can just imagine the two of them in the kitchen, Ray with his tape recorder and grandma with her endless stories. That kitchen is now the East Wing of Frankencoop - home to twenty of my chickens. So you see, this was relevant after all. (Though sometimes I think I can make any subject come back around to my chickens.)



In other news, I am oh-so-pleased to announce that I have a new computer! Well, new to me anyway. My friend, Dean, and his wife in San Francisco donated their Mac Powerbook G4 to me when they bought a new laptop. It feels great to have one foot back in the 21st century again. I'm looking forward to finally being able to post photos again. That clunky old Windows 98 dinosaur is going back into storage, hopefully never to be used again (except maybe for target practice).