Christmas in Branson, Missouri

The White Flight exhibit at Branson, Missouri’s Butterfly Palace provides a rather unique twist on the meaning of white flight. Now regular dear gentle readers know that last summer we moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Springfield, Missouri. When you mention white flight down South, it certainly doesn’t mean pretty black and white butterflies flitting around Poinsettias. I never thought I could say white flight is pretty.

Should We Bring Back Public Flogging?

DON IMUS: So, I watched the basketball game last night between -- a little bit of Rutgers and Tennessee, the women’s final.

SID ROSENBERG: Yeah, Tennessee won last night -- seventh championship for [Tennessee coach] Pat Summitt, I-Man. They beat Rutgers by 13 points.

IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and --

BERNARD McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.

IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some -- woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like -- kinda like -- I don’t know.

McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

IMUS: Yeah.

McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes -- that movie that he had.

IMUS: Yeah, it was a tough --

CHARLES McCORD: Do The Right Thing.

McGUIRK: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

IMUS: I don’t know if I’d have wanted to beat Rutgers or not, but they did, right?

ROSENBERG: It was a tough watch. The more I look at Rutgers, they look exactly like the Toronto Raptors.

I usually watch a little of Imus in the Morning on MSNBC but missed the comments that are causing the ruckus swirling about the I-Man. Boy, did he look uncomfortable this morning. You know it’s serious when a visit to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show is scheduled. The I-Man is set to visit Rev. Al this afternoon.

Should any of this surprise you? Some folks are acting like Don Imus is some normal pretty-boy broadcaster. Heck, I believe he might hold the title as the original “shock jock,” although he has worked to clean up that image and regularly gets politicians and pundits to appear on his morning show. He’s no stranger to controversy either. With a mouth like his, it’s no wonder he’s been fired before. Well, I’m not sure if it was the mouth or the coke and vodka and I don’t mean Coca Cola either.

But a contrite Imus with big ole cowboy hat in hand has apologized. On Friday he said,

“Want to take a moment to apologize for an insensitive and ill-conceived remark we made the other morning regarding the Rutgers women’s basketball team. It was completely inappropriate, and we can understand why people were offended. Our characterization was thoughtless and stupid, and we are sorry.”

And again today, more apologizing. It was a stupid thing to say and he shouldn’t have said it. And now he joins the cadre of foot in mouth public figures. Should he keep his job or not? As with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, Rosie O’Donnell and other full-of-themselves TV characters, I have the choice whether I will subject myself to their opinions, and quite frankly, I prefer to let the free market determine whether we will have Imus in the Morning.

A Mighty Fortress

“As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I wonder what message the builders of the massive fence intend. Are they hoping to lock out criminals, child molesters, door-to-door solicitors, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormans? Fences either keep people or animals out or in. Rarely do they do the job with complete success. Those guys on the TV show Prison Break found a way out of Fox River State Penn (a.k.a Joliet Prison). A dog can dig under a fence or jump over a fence if he is really set on escape. Kids will climb a fence to go swimming, retrieve a baseball or just because someone wants them to stay away.

Fences are necessary to corral animals like horses, cattle and friend Stan’s two ostriches. Necessary to enclose dangerous activities, swimming pools, military bases. Fences can be small like one set up to keep rabbits out of the garden, although Peter did manage to squeeze under. Huge fences can enclose an entire town like the ones that surround Times Beach in Missouri after the environmental disaster.

I have been watching the development of this fence for several months now since I pass by it often. Even before the streets were paved and the land plotted for houses, the fence was commenced. It’s a strong fence as I would think a brick fence or rather a brick wall would be. Once the houses are built and the people come will they be safe? Will they escape crime, abuse, addictions, job troubles, head-strong kids, worrying about money? Will they be isolated, insulated, or prisoners by choice?

From the Mending Wall by Robert Frost:

He only says, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.”

Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama

It’s the Bill & Hillary & Barack Show in Selma today as politicians of all stripes plan to make the traditional walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March.

Hillary Clinton is starting the day with a breakfast meeting in Montgomery with leaders from the Alabama Democratic Party before heading over to Selma to speak at the black First Baptist Church on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. St. and Jeff Davis Ave.

Barack Obama is the featured speaker at the Martin and Coretta Scott King Beloved Community Unity Breakfast at Wallace Community College and will afterward address the congregation at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church.

Throw Alabama’s Republican Governor Bob Riley in the mix, assorted members of Congress, state legislators, mayors and dogcatchers and you have a jolly big crowd. And oh yes, I nearly forgot, former President Bill Clinton is being inducted into the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute.

Black and white alike, politician and not, they’ll all join in to walk across that famous bridge. While some politicians have said this is not “political” but a spiritual experience (Rep. John Lewis, D-GA), you can bet your booty that this is political. Alabama’s lone black U.S. Representative, Artur Davis from Birmingham, is one of the first leaders to pick sides. The Montgomery Advertiser says in today’s paper, Davis, who urged Obama to travel to Selma, has said the senator’s candidacy would “ignite a feeling of national purpose and renewal that our country has not witnessed in my lifetime.” He could be right. There is energy and today, Selma will be host to several people with higher aspirations, Davis included.

Outsider Art and My Home Town

I grew up in the country outside of Prattville, Alabama. Back then Prattville was a little town of around 6,000. Today, it’s a fast-growing bedroom community for the white flight from Montgomery. In the past, the town was noted for its founding industrialist father, Daniel Pratt, and his cotton business. These days more people come to play golf on the nationally praised golf courses that are a part of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.

Prattville, or rather Pink Lily, is also home to outsider artist Charlie Lucas. Lucas, known for his metal sculptures, lives in this little community north of town. It’s just down the road from where I grew up, right near Bridge Creek. As a kid, I rode the school bus through Pink Lily, but no one got off or on since it was before school desegregation and Pink Lily was a “black” community. Who would have thought that this odd mixture of typical rural Southern houses would one day be home to someone famous?

Just driving by the sculptures randomly occupying a field in front of the Lucas home, you’d never know Lucas’s work can go for big bucks or that Prattville named a special day for him. Neither would you think that the house was home to a man who had lectured at Yale and traveled to France as an artist-in-residence but who could not read because of dyslexia.

I thought the nickname Lucas gave himself, the Tin Man, was because he works in metal. However, he says, it was because he only had ten dollars in his pocket. In an interview with Miriam Fowler in 1991, Lucas said of himself,

My career is at the point that I want it to be. I don't care if my name is in lights. My art is my family and friends. Through the Kind Spirit the pieces that I don't sell talk to me and teach me. I'm real happy about myself. I'm teaching myself to read. In school I just wanted to study art. My teacher said 'No! You need to learn a trade. Art is for white people.' Now I can do anything I want to do. . . Now people recognize me and say 'there goes Charlie Lucas.'

If you ever find yourself driving down Interstate 65 from Birmingham to Montgomery, pull off at the Pine Level exit and see Charlie's sculpture garden for yourself. I think it's the exit right after the giant Confederate flag and it would only take a few minutes of your time. E-mail me for directions or else you might get lost and run into Prattville's other roadside attraction, the Cross Garden.

A couple of local galleries feature Charlie's work, and it’s available online at Alabama Live Arts. He’s branching out into painting too. New York Woman featured above goes for $5,000. Not too shabby for Pink Lily’s most famous resident.