It looks like Bob Corker wasn’t as reluctant to be seen with Bush as Bruce Plante predicted! Raking in 1.5 million dollars (no word yet on whether or not Corker will reimburse the Amercian taxpayer for the expenses we incurred), Corker seemed quite pleased by his date with Bush. In fact…
it looks like Joe Lieberman might have some competition for Georgie’s affections!
Via OneGoodMove and Fletch:
There’s more, after the jump…
Continue reading ‘A year ago…’
File this in the category under “cool stuff people get to do when they’re in college.”
The students in UTC’s University Honors Program read Homer’s The Odyssey today. The whole thing. Out loud.
This is something of a tradition. They don’t do it every year, but rather every once in a while, and they have ever so much fun with it. Students sign up for 15-minute segments and they read the entire epic — all 12,110 lines — over the course of about 12 hours or so.
People read with varying levels of enthusiasm — you might get anything from the shy, quiet freshman to the 5th-year senior who’s majoring in drama — so the spectators never know what they’ll hear when they pop over for a bit. Sometimes the audience can barely hear the recitation, and sometimes a reader can barely contain his performance. While most students simply read the text, some do dress up, bring props, or even occasionally bring along other costumed players to give life to a particular scene.
I stopped in for a little while before lunch today and was able to catch a number of readings that, despite the midday heat (and ugh, humidity!), managed to give energy to an ancient text. A few students even managed to emote while I was there.
Over 50 voices gave life to this epic today. There was no one voice (or even one language, since a student reportedly read her portion in its original ancient Greek this morning). There was no one audience. Everything was fluid. Nobody was there the whole time. The only constant was Homer.
How cool is that?
pssst! If you run over there right now, you might catch the grand conclusion — they should wind it up around 9pm (they’ve moved it all from the campus amphitheatre to the Guerry Center because of the weather).
So many people are thinking about food this week! Keera posted about eating in Norway a few days ago. Then Dianne over at Daffodil Lane posted about food blogs today. She offers a good set of links to “blogs you should be reading” and is looking for suggestions from others.
That prompted me to check in with the Traveler’s Lunchbox, a visually stunning, well written blog by a devoted food lover, and lo and behold, Melissa and her readers from around the world have been working on a list of Things To Eat Before You Die. It was a fun thing to read over my lunch, which fortunately was at least a little special today, as I still had a bit of homemade shrimp & corn soup left over from the weekend (it would have been sad to read such a list while eating something pedestrian).
Check them all out, and then surely you’ll have to stop at the grocery store for supplies on the way home this evening…
Last week, I did a little interview with Jon Ponder at the Pensito Review. We discussed Tennessee politics, and the results were published today.
It was a fun process and I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to further the discussion about our local political scene, especially on a national blog. Pinch me!
Update: Buzzflash is currently linking to the story!
I have no idea who most of the people/shows are.
Apparently, I need to watch more TV.
So says Mark Noonan at Blogs for Bush (be sure to read the comments for a fascinating debate!). Early responses on the blogosphere have started to trickle in, but I’m sure the discussion will continue for while, as scientists everywhere scramble to find other things to occupy their time.
From Jon Swift:
Now that two of my least favorite subjects in school, science and history, are dead, I’m hoping that the Bush Administration will redouble its efforts to kill off two other subjects I didn’t much care for, Math and Geography. While important strides have been made, I still think more can be done to send Math and Geography to the dustbin of History, which, course, has itself been sent to the dustbin of . . . something else, I guess. I’m not ready to declare victory until our schools are teaching only two subjects: Religion and Gym.
What we actually see here are myths that science-deniers cling to; biology has long moved on past Haeckel and Piltdown, and it’s only creationists who refuse to discard them.
So the author, Mark Noonan, is ignoring his own definition. It won’t surprise you then that the other part of his complaint is that science doesn’t have enough dogma.
Science is alive and well, but the GOP is not—it is currently led by hacks, frauds, religionists, self-concerned activists, and deluded fools. Bookmark this post so in the future, when asked, you can provide people with a short description of what it means to be a ‘Bush dead-ender.’
From the Digruntled Chemist:
So that’s that. Mark has convinced me of the error of my ways, and I will be dropping out of grad school at my earliest possible convenience. I wonder if Staples will give me my old job back? I sold a mean Palm Pilot, back in the day. I bet I could still qualify for my job digging holes to put in lampposts, too. Not much science involved in that – shovels and picks have been around even longer than the Bible! But not longer than 6000 years, mind you.
Maybe I’ll add more responses here as the wackiness ensues. Noonan seems to be enjoying the attention and has bumped his post back to the top of BFB, so if you’re hesitating, go ahead and mock him — he loves it! 
Or did it never really go out of style?
“I’m not saying all Republicans are racist, sexist homophobes. Just the people they elect into office to represent them.”
— David Cross
The quote is via Pensito Review and Garnet Donkey. Today Daily Kos, AmericaBlog, Pensito Review, among many others, all wonder about bigotry’s resurgence among conservatives, while Steve Benen gives us an updated list (which leaves off Katherine Harris’s most recent deranged rantings):
I think it’s safe to say the last two weeks have been less than kind when it comes to conservatives and race relations.
* Sen. George Allen’s (R-Va.) "macaca" scandal.
* Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) joked about how a "nice little Guatemalan man" fixing up his house might be an illegal immigrant.
* A leading congressional candidate in Florida said he knows, "from my own experience, that blacks are not the greatest swimmers, and may not even know how to swim."
* Two congressional candidates and a gubernatorial candidate believe people who "appear" to be Arab or Muslim should be subjected to racial profiling at airports.
* Pat Buchanan’s new book argues for "an immediate moratorium on all immigration," in order to preserve the dominance of the white race in America.
And in one you may not have heard about, a Baptist church in Mississippi voted out a 12-year-old boy who "asked Jesus to live in his heart" — because the child is biracial and church members didn’t want the black side of his family attending with him.
And these are just from the last two weeks.
–Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report
I’m sorry for all you Republicans out there — I know some of you are very nice, but you really need to start hanging with a better class of people.
Not the sort of thing you want to deal with weeks before a big election.
Former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker on Thursday received a subpoena to allow attorneys to take his deposition in an environmental lawsuit, according to Hamilton County Chancery Court records.
Mr. Corker, Republican U.S. Senate nominee, is scheduled to testify at 9 a.m. on Oct. 18 in Chattanooga. The case involves the construction of an access road to the Brainerd Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Corker campaign manager Ben Mitchell said the lawsuit is politically motivated. Mr. Corker faces U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., D-Tenn., in the Nov. 7 general election. The two are vying for the seat being vacated by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
“Congressman Ford and the Democratic Party are willing to politicize and perpetuate lawsuits for short-term political gain,” Mr. Mitchell said Thursday.
Michael Powell, senior adviser for the Ford campaign, said they have nothing to do with the lawsuit.
“This lawsuit was filed three years ago, and Congressman Ford has nothing to with it,” Mr. Powell said. “The only politics that has been played is by Mr. Corker, whose lawyers went to court in a effort to seal the proceedings.” Mark Brown, spokesman for the Tennessee Democratic Party, said the party is not advocating for the lawsuit.
“I think there are legitimate questions there that are being asked in the court of law,” he said.
Hello! I'm Alice, which is my real name (most of the other names here have been changed, though, to protect the innocent). I live in an almost-100-year-old house in downtown Chattanooga, TN with my first husband, G-Dog (who is from New Canaan, CT), and a cockapoo named Nonnie (the moniker comes from a Laurens van der Post book). We have one kid (that we know of) -- a daughter, Emmie, who plays a supporting role on the blog. She's off being a student, but she pops in often enough to keep things interesting.
I originally hale from Batavia, NY, a quiet little town in rural western New York. G-Dog and I met while attending college in Carlisle, PA, and then moved on to Chapel Hill, NC together before finally settling in Tennessee. Other places we've lived in long enough to have a mailing address include London and San Francisco.
This blog is about a lot of things -- the places I visit, things I cook, people I meet, photos I take, things I read, and -- of course, politics. I'm an unrepentant, arugula-eating, progressive, liberal, lefty, euro-loving, educated elitist and I'm looking forward to an administration that doesn't raise my blood pressure quite as often as the outgoing one did...
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