My Cat Apparently Speaks The Queen’s English

So, a while back, I installed a locale switcher add-on for Firefox that I use specifically for US vs. UK English. Because I still do some work occasionally for a company in the UK, I find it comes in handy sometimes.

My cat Maggie, who has for some time seemed to think the left side of the keyboard is her personal pillow, is nowadays constantly switching my locale from the US to the UK.

I suppose if I wake up one day and find an online order for fish & chips from some takeaway place in England on my screen, I guess I will know who to blame.

Just A Helpful Hint To The Viagra E-mail Spammers

Dear E-mail Spammers,

I’m probably not going to open your mail about Viagra anyway.

But besides the fact that I’m a girl and not a Viagra-needing guy and never will be, I think you should know that I’m definitely not going to open any mail that’s addressed to Mr. Thelynnsterzone.

Just sayin’,

Lynnster

In Which I Ask, “How Is Beating Someone With A Tire Iron Not A Criminal and Arrest-Worthy Act?” – More on the Henry Granju Case

So I woke up today to find this flood of online stuff just everywhere – so much I couldn’t really keep up with it fast enough, and I haven’t even made my way over to Facebook today yet – mostly stuff resulting from the KCSO’s most recent announcement regarding their stance on the investigation of teenager Henry Granju’s death and the preliminary autopsy results, which set off  another firestorm pretty much around the globe, and rightfully so.

Also this morning, which I didn’t read until after I woke up today, Henry’s mama – who has tried extremely hard throughout this entire ordeal to be as patient, polite and respectful towards law enforcement as possible – expressed her disappointment with KCSO’s most recent statement on the case:

I am disappointed that… the Knox County Sheriff’s Office chose to release a statement in response to media coverage of Henry’s death in which they stated that the “preliminary investigation shows no evidence of homicide as a result of an assault.”

As a mother who has lost a child, it is certainly tempting to get into a point by point refutation of KCSO’s statement; I won’t do this however, because I do not wish to sully or interfere with their ongoing investigation. Suffice it to say, however, that the “preliminary investigation” to which they refer has been extremely disappointing at this point despite my own active efforts in following leads, talking extensively with witnesses, and BEGGING authorities to follow leads I’ve provided. Let me also say that as I sit here next to my dead son’s medical records that refer to “assault,” “skull fracture,” closed head injury,” etc it’s hard for me to understand reasoning that assumes at this point that the assault he DID experience in the 24 hours preceding his ER admission has no relevance to their investigation.

I have been trying pretty hard as well, though not always wholly succeeding, to hold my temper in deference to the family – especially in dealing with the species of troll that is an entire species unto itself and tends to feed mainly off newspaper and TV station websites. Trolls are trolls and always have been, but that particular breed of troll is always astounding in their sheer fortitude and need to expound on every single thing and towards everybody no matter what the subject, and almost always negatively or insulting. It’s absolutely amazing sometimes what people will say from behind the protection of their anonymous usernames and their keyboard. (I can assure you there is nothing on this blog nor anything I’ve ever written anywhere else on the Internet that I have any qualms about saying to whoever’s face, and nickname aside, I’m pretty non-anonymous after 15+ years of relatively high-profile activity in online music sects as well as elsewhere.)

In any case, yeah, all that happened today, and frankly – and especially since Katie publicly expressed her disappointment with KCSO’s statement – I’m not going to bother trying much to hold my tongue in check about it anymore.

People (mostly trolls) are coming to Katie’s blog and asking does everybody expect law enforcement to just “drop everything” to investigate this?

Drop everything? How does waiting almost five weeks to make any major moves on this investigation constitute “dropping everything”?

Can someone explain to me how five weeks (going now on six weeks) constitutes expectations of “dropping everything” or asking for “immediate answers”?

And the only other thing I really have to say today is pretty much what I said this morning before I went to sleep, in a discussion in response to a mutual friend’s similar statement.

Granted, I’m no expert. But I don’t get where you get to just walk around free for over a month when you beat someone nearly to death with a tire iron – AND there are witnesses.

Henry’s drug overdose is totally a moot point. How is that tire iron beating NOT a criminal act?

How in the world is beating someone brutally and violently and nearly to death, and to the point where it causes a jaw fracture, a skull fracture, a closed head injury and other damage NOT a criminal act? And how is it not reason enough to pick someone(s) up off the street, when you already have their names?

The fact that Henry eventually did die notwithstanding – I am really, really having trouble wrapping my brain around why his three assailants weren’t picked up WEEKS ago and charged with attempted murder, assault, WHATEVER. At the very least. Something.

They’ve had their names for weeks. They’ve had witnesses’ names for weeks. The people who beat Henry with a tire iron are still walking around. Why is what they did not criminal enough to pick them up on reason of beating someone with a tire iron alone?

For that matter, it’s been going on six weeks since the assault. They could be in Timbuktu by now, this much later.

I’ve seen people picked up and hauled in for far, far lesser offenses – if not almost immediately, within days - and I just don’t understand.

If there were NO witnesses it might be a little different.

But this makes no sense to me. Henry’s drug overdose is totally beside the point. Violent criminal activity took place and there were witnesses, yet these people are still walking around going on five, almost six weeks later. And weeks after their names, and the names of witnesses, were given to KCSO.

By the family, no less. Perhaps KCSO needs to budget some of their 2010 salary budget to pay Henry’s family for doing an important part of the investigation for them.

Bottom line – a kid was beaten savagely with a tire iron.

The fact that he also overdosed on drugs is a moot point.

How is that savage beating NOT a criminal act?

And how is it not worthy of arresting someone(s) for committing it – whether someone’s dead or not?

All along, the family has been unbelievably patient. They never expected “immediate” answers or for KCSO to “drop everything” to investigate.

But five weeks later – going on six weeks – that is NOT “immediate”. Nor is it “dropping everything”.

Whatever the autopsy results show – and even if the medical examiner declares Henry’s death is not a result of the beating – as long as those people walk free for that brutal, savage and violent beating – the world is being told that it’s okay to come to Knox County and beat someone bloody until they’re nearly dead.

The young man’s drug overdose is beside the point here.

Until and unless someone(s) is/are held responsible and accountable for this beating, it must be okay to beat someone with a tire iron in Knox County. Or hey, if you do it – you’ll have several weeks to get away somewhere else, and therefore maybe get away with it.

That is the point. And it’s sickening.

I never really worried too much about my family, future in-laws, in Knoxville’s overall safety much, to be honest. Having lived down here in Crime Central as long as I have, Nashville and especially Knoxville always have seemed so much better in this regard. But this situation really, really gives me pause to be a whole lot more concerned about my people up there than I ever have. My family, my people, my many friends who are Knoxville and Knox County residents and tax-paying citizens.

In any case, that’s all I’ve got for right now. My head feels like it’s going to explode from all this stuff.

I just do NOT understand how and why that beating with a tire iron is not a criminal act.

Or not criminal act enough for someone to actually DO something about it.

I just don’t understand.

Aunt B. says some of my same and similar thoughts today much more eloquently than I ever do right here.

The inimitable Les Jones blogged about Henry’s case today here.

Michael Silence of the Knoxville News-Sentinel and Katie’s associate Shane Ryne have compiled fine lists of all the other blogs writing about Henry’s story and his case here. At last count I saw, Shane had compiled the list from 87 blogs, many with multiple entries.

Michael Silence also announced today that he will be writing about the avalanche and outpouring of support worldwide in blogs and social media networks regarding Henry’s story in his Sunday column for the KNS.

On another note, I know I mentioned the other day that I thought it was pretty downright not smart of KCSO sitting on this case for over a month as they did when they had a distraught mother on their hands who was not only well-known in Knoxville media overall, but a former employee/online producer (and not all that long ago for either) of the Knoxville News Sentinel and TV news station WBIR. I failed to mention at the time that Henry’s father is the director of a Knox County agency.

To their credit and as far as I’m aware, I don’t think either of them tried to use any of that to any advantage, and they have certainly been more patient with law enforcement through this ordeal than I probably would have been. But I do know a little bit about how violent crime investigations go and that information about the “alleged victim’s” (yes, I’m using that term loosely) parentage should have been turned up in any decent preliminary investigation almost right from the start – as well as the fact that it’s just plain common sense that someone down at KCSO most likely knew that info anyway, or someone who did know would likely have made someone aware of such a thing at some point. Come on, Knoxville is NOT that big of a town.

I guess that just goes to show you that obviously no preferential treatment is afforded anyone no matter who they are – nor am I saying there should be. But it does seem pretty ridiculous when you look at it (an acquaintance was not quite as kind, calling it “downright stupid”). If I’m Knox County law enforcement and I have a kid beaten nearly to death on my hands in the hospital with a severe head injury, and I find out not only is the kid’s mother a former KNS employee and WBIR producer, but that the kid’s dad is director of a county agency? Uh, yeah, I think I’m not going to be too lazy with that case, if it were me.

I’m sorry. I have dear, dear friends – especially two who are like little brothers to me, even though they are far from little anymore – who are police officers. I worked down at the record store many years ago with one of the finest Memphis PD officers I have ever known, who worked down there to make some part-time money. I know of other law enforcement officials who have been kind to people I know when their colleagues weren’t. I am not anti-law enforcement.

But much as Aunt B. said – things have become very strange in the case of Henry Granju. Something is obviously terribly wrong.

If I go beat somebody nearly to death with a tire iron tomorrow, and someone sees me do it and knows my name? I don’t expect to have more than a day or two – if even a whole day – to be free and out walking on the streets.

That makes sense.

What’s happened with Henry’s case doesn’t. Not at all.

I can’t do much. I am very sad that I can’t get to Knoxville for the memorial service on Saturday, but I’ll be there in spirit.

I can’t be there for hands-on support and can’t help cook meals and carry the other Granju and Hickman kids around to where they need to go, and get pianos tuned and arrange for musicians for Saturday, and all the other absolutely wonderful things so many others I know have been doing all along throughout this ordeal and doing now this week. All of these people are just absolute angels.

I can’t donate much money in Henry’s memory for the memorial scholarship fund, but I’ve sent what I could. And probably will continue to for a long time to come, and send much more when I am able to. I frankly cannot think of a more appropriate fund for PC and I to set aside any philanthropic funds we are able to for, for the rest of our lives – and the fact that it is in honor and in memory of Henry, even better. “There but for the grace of God” for us and all that, as PC was Henry at that age – we were just fortunate that he lived through it, and that his parents were able to afford treatment – which is what the Henry Louis Granju Memorial Scholarship Fund is for, for families that can’t afford to put their teenagers through drug and alcohol treatment. We also have another family member who’s been through the same terrible struggles. For us personally, it’s an entirely appropriate charity and we will support it indefinitely.

So I can’t do much. But I can blog, and use various other social media to keep Henry’s story out there, so hopefully other families won’t have to suffer this same tragedy. And to keep it out there until this case is fully, thoroughly, and finally brought to justice.

So that’s what I’ll do, because it’s all I can do.

It’s been five weeks. Going on six weeks. No one’s ever asked for anything “immediately” or to “drop everything”.

And even if they had, “immediately” and “now” has long since passed, these five – almost six – weeks later.

When the people responsible for savagely beating this young man with a tire iron until he was nearly dead – and who now has died – are off the streets, then maybe I’ll really sleep again instead of waking up every five or ten minutes.

How that brutal and violent beating was not a criminal act worthy of hauling someone’s butt into jail – as soon as their names and the names of witnesses were known – is something I am just not ever going to understand.

First, The Good Part

Somewhere in my WP drafts getting dusty and still unfinished, I have several posts – including the long-delayed Alex Chilton related one, one about the flooded and destroyed Opryland Hotel and the realization  (something I’ve known for a few years now, but haven’t written about) that I’ve been wrong all along about who my REAL “high school sweetheart” was, and a few other odds and ends and mostly goofy stuff.

But all that’s on hold right now because, honestly, I’m just too frustrated and aggravated – and yes, a little bit angry – over all that has transpired over the last couple of days in the wake of Henry’s death. And, naturally, so terribly sad and heartbroken for Henry, his family, all of their friends – many of whom are also my friends and acquaintances and people I’ve known for many years, whether just online or off. It is absolutely killing me and breaking my heart to see folks I’ve known for years, who’ve known the Granju-Hickman clan for years, preparing to go to his memorial service on Saturday. Or people like Henry’s former guitar teacher – who doesn’t know it, but he’s an old pal of my significant other – just now today finding out that Henry had passed, and horrified. It’s all been so heartbreaking to watch.

And I’ve seen a lot of angelic, wonderfully kind and generous and thoughtful acts among that same group of folks too, some that have just taken my breath away at how sweet and thoughtful they have been through this ordeal. This particular tribe of Knoxvillians and Knoxville-related folks, most of whom have been yakking with each other much of the last decade – we’re kind of like a dysfunctional family and there’s plenty of infighting just like most slightly dysfunctional families. But when someone’s been wronged or hurt, or something terrible has happened – man, to see the whole bunch come together as they have is just something amazing and life-affirming.

Watching “the blogosphere” come together as they have in such loud and vocal support of Katie and her family – and not just the Nashville-Knoxville-TN-etc blogosphere this time, but literally ALL over not only the country but the entire planet – again, amazing and life-affirming.

I just wanted to say that before I went on to the next subject on my mind, because my next thoughts related to this situation aren’t too terribly pretty and I didn’t want to spoil this with those. Out of something so horrible and so tragic, good things have sprung like that, and like the memorial scholarship fund Henry’s family has set up. Everything is awful right now, but out of such awfulness springs such kindness and hope that it’s just breathtaking.

OMG WTF, I’m Old

As I’ve mentioned before, since I have now been without cable a few years, instead of watching TV I usually watch original comedy stuff on YouTube – guys like this one and this one and this one, gals like this one, this piece of citrusy goodness, and, of course – these guys, as they’re the home team.

A month or so ago, I was voting in a Survivor-type contest among YouTubers, and I kept seeing this one three-letter acronym used over and over again in comments on people’s videos. It was confusing me terribly as to why people were repeatedly writing this acronym in regards to YouTubers they apparently liked.

Because when I was in college and thereabouts in the Eighties – and into the Nineties, for that matter – all those bad boys with their Black Flag and Minor Threat and Bad Brains records (i.e., the ones I always wound up with – go figure) used to stencil this three-letter acronym on guitar cases and skateboards and stuff. Or my ex’s slightly nerdy, acid-dropping, D&D-playing friends would fake tattoo it on themselves. It was spray painted on the walls (always either in black or red) of at least three apartments I remember in Murfreesboro and two in Nashville, and on the outside of one garage.

You’d have been hard pressed to walk into Cantrell’s, the Exit/In, or Elliston Square in the Eighties and not seen this acronym scrawled on a t-shirt, an Army jacket, or a pair of torn jeans in black magic marker. After all, it was all, everybody’s an anarchist, yada yada and all that… way back then in the ol’ Dark Ages. After all. (I just wanted to fit “all” into this paragraph somehow, just one more time.)

And it – said three-letter acronym – it wasn’t very, well… nice. (And understandably so, since everybody was an anarchist and all that.)

So a month or so ago, I was really having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why in the world people kept leaving in comments things like:

“(insert YouTube comedian’s name here)… FTW!”

I guess it’s one of the disadvantages to not having kids/teenagers to set me straight – and next time, maybe I’ll have enough sense to just go straight to Urban Dictionary instead of straining my brain over something like “For The Win!” for days. Or a week and a half exactly.

But I guess at least not having teenagers meant I got to spare myself the inevitable ridicule when Mom asked why all these people on YouTube were telling all these other people to f*ck the world, right?

My City Was Gone, But Not For Long

I got in the car to run some errands and go to the bank a couple of weeks ago, and – knowing I might be waiting in line a little while – I’d taken my MP3 player with me, which I don’t usually do if I’m just running the usual errands. My MP3 player pretty much stays on shuffle.

I plugged it in and started the car, and The Inmates’ 1981 version of The Standells’ “Dirty Water” started up. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I’d go to check the weather online and type in my zip code and the next thing I’d see, on the pages with the weather forecast – ads for water damage restoration experts.

My auto insurance company has finally stopped sending me e-mails asking me if I need to get my car checked out since there has been severe flood damage in my area. No, thank you. I’m just fine.

I know there are people right here in Shelby County, and nearby, and up yonder a little ways, in just as desperate straits as people in Nashville and Middle Tennessee – and in some cases, maybe more. But still, overall – as a whole – we got off easy, here in Memphis, this time. The tornado warnings here that same weekend were pretty scary, but the last time we had a really bad storm like that, I saw debris on the street and trees pushed over dotting the landscape on my little route from here to Kroger. This time, the following Monday, I think I counted only one house that had some limbs on the curb. The north part of the county got slammed, and there were spots of bad flooding even here in the central city – but still, overall and as a whole, the majority of us, we were fine.

But you know, as far as the cities go – in a lot of ways, I’ll always be more connected to Nashville and Murfreesboro and Middle Tennessee than I ever have been to Memphis, even though I was born here and have a long history here and strong connections here, including having had strong family connections here. And probably more than I ever will be to Knoxville. Don’t really have any to Chattanooga, other than a family member living there for a while who no longer does.

But I spent some pretty crucial years in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as a pretty significant number of days throughout childhood and my teen years.  My phone number started with 615 (back in ancient times before there were more than two area codes) for a good portion of the Eighties. It’s almost as much home to me as Northwest Tennessee is.

What a month it’s been. The week after the flood, I was kinda just feeling shellshocked, although I hadn’t actually DONE anything but sit here at the computer catching up on all the news in between periods of working. I kind of drifted off to Facebook for an evening on the following Monday, I think, and got into digging thru old high school photos various friends had posted, after having spent about 15 hours straight reading flood-related updates on Twitter and the Web. Feeling guilty the whole time, because I could get away from it all for a little bit while so many people I know couldn’t. Because they were right there in the middle of it.

Then I was committed to something work-wise from that Tuesday onward, and it was really the end of the week before I really had a chance at all to truly even attempt to catch up on what all had transpired since Monday and the big day of the flood. Couple being completely and totally swamped (no pun intended) with work with the fact that the fourth of the Christian-Newsom trials started that same Monday in Knoxville, which I would have liked to have been able to keep up with throughout the week but there just wasn’t enough time in the days to do so; checking on updates of online acquaintances who have been been dealing with a nightmarish tragedy of the non-flood type; and scrambling to put Band-Aid fixes on what I guess is just going to keep being an ongoing calamity of sorts here on the home front – even if I’d had four or five clones of myself, I’m not sure there would have been enough for me to go around.

So, the flood…

For the benefit of what few of you here reading don’t already read everyone else’s oft-more-updated and finer blogs in Nashville and in Tennessee, the Nashville flood finally got some national attention, though I’m not sure it really would have much if not for all the Tweeting and blogging there was about it. MSNBC was one of the first to give it decent air time, here and with another mention from Keith Olbermann that I think, in particular, was much appreciated by the community at large.

My buddy Travis Harmon – certainly the most successful of the bunch from that wide circle of friends from old ‘Boro and college days – and his comedy partner put out probably the best edition of Red State Update ever, and made me laugh (and laugh and laugh and laugh) and cry at the same time. Many of my personal friends and acquaintances up there have been volunteering their asses off all month, and continue to. I’m so proud to know all of them.

My mom – back in one of the few sectors of West Tennessee that mostly escaped both wind and flood damage almost completely last week – usually gets her faculty a little gift for Nurses Week every year. This year, she made donations in their names to one of the community relief organizations that WKRN had listed on their website instead of gifts. She said it just seemed like the right thing to do this year. I’m very proud of her too.

So many of my friends wrote great truly stuff that week. This was one of the very best, as was this post that led me to it. This was another one that particularly touched me. This angry one from one of our own forced to watch it all unfold from thousands of miles away clear across the country, expressing all the frustration pretty much all of us who still had power and Internet access were feeling that day. And pretty much everything over here all week long, but especially this one. I wish I could list more, and there are more I probably haven’t gotten around to seeing yet as I’m still (always) catching up. But they all outdid themselves on the writing thing that week, especially those many that were smack dab in the middle of it all.

Most everyone I know was okay and while many had flooded basements and such, overall everyone I know made it through and, most importantly, alive and uninjured. I’m thankful for that. I know everyone up there, though, has continued to be almost all exhausted beyond belief, though, mentally and physically.

I still have a little bit of a nagging worry – because I have known SO many people throughout my life from all over and have been fortunate to have made many friends throughout – that news has yet to turn up that won’t be as good. I think I’ve now accounted for most everyone I “need to know about” – if not directly, I’ve seen them Tweet or someone else mention them on Facebook or Twitter or on the phone – and have racked my brain all month long trying to figure out who hasn’t crossed my mind that should have by now.

One friend who didn’t get too lucky was an old college friend and ex-boyfriend who arrived home after a week in Chicago to find thousands of dollars’ worth of musical instruments, studio equipment and gear swimming in his basement. He was prepared for it, as his neighbor had been able to reach him by phone and warn him, and luckily the water damage was limited to the basement only – by about a half inch below the upstairs door. It was a too-close call for the rest of the house, but things could have certainly turned out much worse.

Unfortunately he got hit by a double whammy, though, as he still owns and rents out his mom’s old house in Bellevue, and it was nearly completely submerged. Last we spoke, which has been a while now, he still didn’t know where his renters had fled to, but presumably by now they’re probably some of the folks out there having to sift through and throw away most of the entire contents of the house. I know he sure wasn’t looking forward to the expected hassle forthcoming with his insurance company and was already preparing himself to be SOL.

Lots of teary moments that week, often over the oddest of photos, of all the many horrific ones that were hitting the Internet out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Lots of times just sitting there gaping, open-mouthed.

Highway 96 from Murfreesboro to Dickson was my usual route back and forth between college and home for me. Naturally, if I had five bucks for every time I was back and forth on I-24 between Murfreesboro and Nashville, whether going out downtown or going to work, I could have probably retired on that. I worked at Southern Hills, so you Middle Tennesseans know what my usual route to work was. To see that intersection in Franklin on 96, and those stretches of I-24, with cars and trucks nearly completely submerged – just surreal.

The (current) Opry House, which wasn’t very old when I attended a rock concert there in the garishly neon, New Wave, how-many-items-of-Esprit-clothing-do-you-have-in-your-closet days of 1983. My friends and I thought it would be a kick to get matching outfits made for the event, and – though they were each made of different colored material and design – we all showed up in matching camouflage miniskirts (with equally matching skinny ties) and just about every color of chunky neon jewelry you can imagine. I think we probably all looked like Catholic schoolgirls, except in camouflage instead of plaid – which I guess was unintentionally ironic, since we were from a small town in West Tennessee where dates on the weekend during duck and deer season ended at 8 pm, because your date had to go home and go to bed so they could get up at four in the morning and go shoot stuff.

So I was looking at the flood picture of the Opry stage that first week, and in my head seeing clearly what the stage looked like from the floor, standing in the third or fourth row in from the stage that night in 1983. Remembering that I was looking, basically, up – since I’m short anyway, but still, it was relatively high off the floor.

Realizing that that water I was looking at in the picture was quite a bit – a lot - higher than I am tall.

I wrote in a post that’s yet to be published that the Opryland Hotel’s what really did me in, sifting through pic after pic as I was early in the week. I know it’s silly, and I know they’ll repair it and build it back. It’s just seeing a place like that where you have a really strong, clear and special memory so devastated – that’s when it really hits home, when you’re having to watch like this from afar.

And speaking of home over here in West Tennessee… although I had heard and read about and seen some of the horrible devastation in Dyersburg, pictures that were forwarded to me of the flooding in Jackson struck it home even more.

Though things have progressed a great deal in many of the smaller towns, when you’re from Northwest Tennessee, Jackson’s a big hub – that’s where you go shopping for Christmas or your prom dress, that’s where you go to the orthodontist once a month, where people end up in the hospital when they have things more severe than the smaller ones can handle, where folks go to the doctor regularly – all those things. Many friends and old classmates live there. I lived there once briefly too, matter of fact.

The pictures from Jackson were as awful as the ones I’d been seeing out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee all week. A main stretch of road with vehicles as submerged as all those pics from I-24. A Sonic Drive-In with water up to the lighted menus, menus that are generally quite a bit higher than the bottom of your average car door’s window.

Virtually almost all of West Tennessee, as well as so much of Middle Tennessee, has now been declared a disaster area by the Federal government. Of my two little hometowns here in the West, one is in one of only maybe two or three counties in West Tennessee that were not. My other home county is.

I know a lot of people who were watching from other places on Twitter and Facebook and the like, and folks from other places reading Nashville and Tennessee bloggers’ blogs – and probably especially people who live in cities and areas that do experience such devastating flooding fairly often – maybe thought we’d all gone mad, overboard with it all.

But it just doesn’t happen here. Not like that.

Not but in a few pockets of the state (like up around Reelfoot Lake and off the Mississippi to the north), and certainly not like this. And absolutely not in this state’s largest cities.

Tornadoes – we know tornadoes, yep. We are all too familiar with tornadoes. Maybe not quite on the scale of, say, Kansas – but we know tornadoes.

Floods like the one earlier this month – they just don’t happen here. Not at all in Nashville since the 1970s – and bad though it was, that was really nothing compared to this one.

So yeah. Most of this state, except for those in the mountains in East Tennessee – we’re a little loopy right now, still. We’re better than we were, but things are still pretty bad for a lot of people down here. We’ll be okay, eventually.

But so much help is still needed, and will continue to be. It was heartbreaking a couple  of weeks or so ago to see one of my friends who’d gone out to volunteer and help Tweeting for more help, because apparently a lot of elderly people showed up at the location and she was only one of a few (if not the only) volunteer that showed up. I know a lot of major relief efforts went on all the following weekend after the flood, and I’m sure the larger ones have been more successful than that one was. I hope not too many of the smaller ones had problems like that one did.

It’ll be a long ongoing process for a long time, and daunting. In Nashville, the potential economic repercussions alone are a little bit terrifying. Not only are many of Nashville’s biggest landmarks and tourist attractions, and other large industries, going to be under repair for some time – some of the largest are out of commission for possibly the rest of the year at the very least, and literally thousands of people are about to be (or already are) without jobs.

And the same goes for other places in Tennessee, with varying degrees of what and how much those counties are going to be hit economically. In a state that has already been struggling with disastrous state budgetary issues, widespread unemployment, and general economic downturn statewide for some time now – it’s no wonder if everyone’s holding their breath to see where we go from here.

Some resources for those who want to help (many of these are also aggregating efforts for other Middle TN counties as well):

• The United Way of Metropolitan Nashville – you can also text RESTORE to UNITED (864833) to give $10 to help victims of the Nashville flood.
• Hands On Nashville – also in the process of major relief efforts for Nashville
• DonateNashville.org - a Craigslist-type resource recently put together by The United Way of Metro Nashville and Cool People Care to more efficiently organize directly what people need and what people have
• The Red Cross – you can also donate $10 to the Red Cross to help the flood victims by texting REDCROSS to 90999
• Cool People Care also has some great “We Are Nashville” t-shirts for sale with proceeds going to help flood victims

Speak to Power has put together some listings of resources for help, donations and more in several of the worst hit counties in West Tennessee also:

• Dyersburg – Dyer County Relief & Donation Resources
• Tipton County Relief & Donation Resources
• Shelby County – Millington Relief & Donation Resources
  

My hat’s truly off to Christy and Morgan (and anyone else helping behind the scenes that week) at The Nashvillest, who did an outstanding job of collecting, organizing and getting information out on the Web through this whole ordeal that week and just really became the central point of Internet communication regarding the Nashville flood and continue to be. I should point out, too, that the website is not their job – they have full-time jobs elsewhere – yet they still managed to kinda outshine the local print and television news media when it came to the WWW. The local media still did a good job and continues to, but in this situation, they kinda got pwned as far as getting critical information out on the Internet goes.

(Sadly The Tennesseean‘s website, though better than it was in the past, is kind of a great big cluttered mess and I really don’t know how anyone finds anything on there. Messy, messy, messy. I’m not a big fan of the Scripps template that The Commercial Appeal and the Knoxville News-Sentinel are using these days, but it’s 110% better than the garbled cluttered up mess I see every time I go to The Tennesseean looking for something. And while I know newspaper and television news sites pretty much MUST have ads on them these days, and that’s fine – it’d be nice if someone would come up with a solution for nearly all of the media sites nationwide where advertisements wouldn’t cause the page loading issues they do. There’s nothing more annoying than going to your local TV news station’s site when the tornado siren’s going off outdoors… only to see the page hanging FOREVER when it’s trying to load via some ad supplier’s domain.)

Anyway, so there. I would say that’s all, but yesterday the floods came back and a little too close to home for me – way too close to home for many of my friends.

Summer hasn’t even really begun in Tennessee and, this year, I don’t think winter can come too soon.

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On a final note – I’m going to make a valiant attempt to start posting again at least a few times a week, if not more. Even if it’s stupid. I’ve been so busy for so many months now and it really has been almost impossible to get here and post most of the time. But I feel better when I do, so I’m going to make an effort again and guess we’ll just see what happens. I’ve decided it wasn’t just because the week of the flood was so grim and critical – it just felt better, being on Twitter more, being here more. So there you go. It might get really dumb around here, but I guess that’s okay too.

If Tennessee Floated Away, Would The Other 49 States Notice? (Bizarro World Weather, Nashville Waterworld, and the Tennessee Complex)

We interrupt this (really mostly unplanned) posting moratorium ‘cos I just wanna say, WTF?

Having survived Hurricane Elvis, the Great Ice Storm of 1994, and – even more up close and personal than I like to think about very often – the 2003 tornado that tried to eradicate Jackson from the planet, there’s not much about natural disasters that comes as a surprise anymore. I’ve seen lots of crazy whacked out weather down here.

But this weekend was like Bizarro World Weather down here. In almost 22 years of living in the same house (and a hop, skip and jump from the same tornado siren at the fairgrounds), I am pretty certain I have never heard that thing go off five (at least five, it might have been six) times in a 24-hour period. And I’m absolutely certain I’ve never heard it blare for TWO HOURS (could have been three, definitely two). Having really only fairly recently gotten to where I’m not practically hyperventilating and paralyzed anymore when the thing goes off, it was better than it would have been a year or so ago, but still – decidedly on edge for a very long period of time.

At the time of that two or more hour siren, they were also evacuating the thousands of folks down at the Beale Street Music Festival (i.e., MudFest) on Saturday night. And then last night, people in the crowd were acting like jerks and booing when headliner Three Doors Down had to be canceled and couldn’t make it down here because they were having trouble getting from Nashville to Memphis, because of the flooded mess this state is right now. Nashvillians John Hiatt and Alison Krauss’ BSMF sets were also canceled due to the flood situation, as was a Dierks Bentley show in Knoxville on Sunday night, seeing as how Bentley was in his flooded basement with a bucket just like most everyone else in Nashville. (Why the Beale Street Music Festival hasn’t yet been moved to a different weekend in May after all these years is beyond me, since it almost always rains and storms that weekend, and either doesn’t rain at all or hardly rains the rest of the weekends in May. Seriously.)

And while things are fine right here where I am in the center of the city, they definitely are NOT around the whole region in general. It was kinda bad enough in Memphis and Arkansas and North Mississippi, with all the flooding (in places I’ve never seen flood before) and storm damages and, sadly, several deaths. The tornadoes that did come through (mostly hitting the more rural areas) were terrible with horrific damage – but the rain itself just gutted the entire Mid-South. It just kept on coming down, and coming back again and again, and it wouldn’t go away.

And Nashville, poor Nashville, is practically totally under water and now the Cumberland, which was 19 feet on Friday, has a flood stage of 40 feet, and was currently 55 feet last I looked at the news – the river’s on the verge of completely swallowing up downtown Nashville. I spent most of Sunday reading friends mentioning that co-workers had had to abandon their homes, neighbors had totally lost their homes, just about everyone I know up there has water in their basement (and rising in many places), and many of my friends discovered on Sunday that they now own lakefront property all of a sudden.

I saw a photo snapped not far from where an ex-BF used to live used to be (officially I never lived there but technically I did), and at first I thought well, we’d have been all right probably because the living space was actually on the second floor. Then I remembered how small the building was and how low those ceilings were. If this had happened 23 years ago, we’d have been like those other people clinging to their roofs or the top of their vehicles waiting to be rescued. (Consequently, that same ex moved back to Nashville a few years ago and texted me last night, lamenting the thousands of dollars in musical instruments, equipment and other gear currently swimming around his basement – according to his neighbor, that is. He was in Chicago this weekend, so he hasn’t yet seen it for himself.)

And it’s not just Nashville. One of my two little hometowns an hour to the west is being besieged by an overflowing Big Sandy River (and though I haven’t seen photos, I’m sure the Tennessee River is flooding the other end of county at the beach and beyond), and judging from the conditions in this photo that was sent to me in e-mail last night:

… if I was still in high school, I would have had to had a boat to get there on Monday morning. That building in the photo is NOT “out in the sticks” out in the county – it’s very much inside the city limits – and really isn’t all THAT close to the river in question, so presumably nearly every business on that side of town was fighting the same watery madness.

Most things south of Nashville in Middle Tennessee are apparently a wreck as well, including this house. She was supposed to leave for NYC in three weeks, they have no renter’s insurance, and they’ve lost everything.

Levees are leaking and breaking all over, sinkholes are developing everywhere (including still in West Tennessee as well as Middle Tennessee), people and animals are stranded, drowning. So many roads closed and it’s bad all over, but Nashville itself has kinda turned into one gigantic lake with thousands of little islands around.

I am old enough that I vaguely remember the major flood Nashville had in the 1970s, but that was nothing compared to this. There are places up there that have never been under water in my lifetime – or probably for hundreds of years, or ever. It’s just stunning.

All of this coupled with the fact that three members of my family were in Nashville on Saturday – and had already planned to stay in a hotel overnight (good thing) – but trying to get them out of there Sunday was a bit daunting, especially when – after hearing road after road after road was closed or closing, and downtown was closed in all kinds of places and flooding, and most especially when authorities up there were practically begging people not to drive, all of which I was texting with every new closure or warning I read about – after encouraging them to stay put, they left anyway. They couldn’t go what would be the usual route back on I-40 West (we already knew the main highway off the interstate was marked as flooded by the Highway Patrol, and knew most of the other alternatives were probably little better.)

It took them a while to get through downtown, but once they made it to I-65 North, things were okay to Clarksville and beyond. But I pretty much held my breath until I knew they’d gotten out of Nashville, and still until I knew they’d made it home.

And Nashville, poor Nashville – later Sunday morning, friends and others were Tweeting that the waters in their basement were starting to recede. And then around noonish – just like the weather and news folks had said it would – the rain and sirens and everything else started up again.

People are going to need serious help to put Nashville and Middle Tennessee back together again. It’s such a mess, but you probably heard that already.

Or maybe you didn’t – because apparently much of the national news has mostly ignored what’s happening in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as the rest of the damage in West Tennessee and our neighboring states. Little blips here and there, but you know, it’s not like when some other cities have gotten decimated by Mother Nature and you can’t get away from it on the news and in your newspaper, no matter where you are.

And it’s kinda doubly puzzling because some of those cities I can think of that have had their disasters plastered on TV and other media for days at a time – the hurricanes and floods and such that have happened in those places, they happen fairly often. What’s happening in Nashville right now has never happened in my lifetime (and I’m getting kinda old, you know) – we have some rural flood zones with relatively small area dotting the state, but a national emergency-type flood of this proportion is just unheard of.

It’s kinda like the (cough) “straight line wind” storm dubbed Hurricane Elvis that paralyzed Memphis for weeks in 2003 – I recall one of our city officials commenting at the time that a hurricane that wound up not even materializing and hitting one coastal city got more national coverage than Hurricane Elvis did. People died, the city was in pieces (including parts of the city that had never or rarely seen such kinds of damage), the whole city was mostly without power in 90+ degree weather for weeks – yet unless you lived fairly close by, you probably had no idea what was going on down here.

What, do we (Tennessee in general) need to switch deodorants or something? At this point – and after this many crises that have gone mostly ignored – it’s enough to give an entire state a complex.

Aunt B. writes about the current situation and similarly puzzling lack of interest here and here, and the fine folks at The Nashvillest have done a stand-up job gathering and providing information during this awful time up there. Honestly, The Nashvillest and Twitter, as well as the Internet in general, have become invaluable resources for sure time and time again, and kept a lot of folks in the loop and informed that would have otherwise not been.

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And finally – yes, there was supposed to be an Alex Chilton post in March and no, you weren’t imagining things. As I kinda said the day I posted the last one (about Doug Fieger), the Alex post was nagging at me so much it was going to make me sick if I didn’t post it that day – and then I never posted it. Because I haven’t finished it. Because for some reason, I can’t. There’s a personal piece to that post that I’m struggling with – maybe it’s because I’ve told the story many times before, but this will probably be the last time I ever tell it. Maybe I’ll finish it and post it soon. Stay tuned.

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EDITED TO ADD: What a beautiful and horrific photo at the same time @brittneyg‘s place:

Nashville Submerged

Well That’s A Pleasant Surprise…

Finding a new Twitter widget in your WordPress dashboard that you didn’t know was there is pretty cool for a Friday the 13th.

Wonder how long that thing’s been there without me noticing…

Music Education 101: Open Letter to NBC Universal

(NOTE: Not the usual case, but this post is being posted on both blogs since the series that is the subject of this post resides on both blogs…)

So, based on a glance at my Tweets on Twitter that night, I noted that I spent approximately nine hours replacing YouTube videos that have been removed since the last time I looked at my (so far) four-part Music Education 101 series of posts. If you missed that before (or just want to check them out again), all the video links except maybe one are working now, although I’ve had to replace several with “alternate” versions (some I’m not too thrilled about), but also added some extras that weren’t there before.

The series lives in my Music Education 101 category on both blogs, or here are the links:

• Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts – The Beginning
• Coming Into My Own – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• No Turning Back Now – Lynnster’s Musical Education in Three (Now Four) Posts
• Postscript – Lynnster’s Musical Education, Now In Four Posts

I can’t even begin to illustrate what a painfully tedious process it was, searching for and updating all those video links – made even worse by the fact this series is on both my blogs, since it was begun before I added the music blog, so that doubled the work. But of all the posts on either of my blogs – spanning back nearly 13 years on the main blog – those four are probably the most important to me, so whatever.

What pains me, really, is the number of them removed because so-and-so company/organization has declared their ownership/copyright. Fine.

Do these people not understand the power of YouTube these days and the potential for financial gain in a YouTube partnership? When there are everyday people uploading their own videos – be it comedy, commentary, their own music, or what amounts to the video version of a traditional blog (i.e., vlogs) – and making better money doing that than they would with the salary of many very good full time jobs – is the potential financial gain of allowing music and video to be heard and seen on YouTube completely beyond the comprehension of the music and visual media companies?

If Joe Blow next door is able to make a living wage off of YouTube these days, just think how much cash these record companies and other media companies could be raking in by putting up their own partnered YouTube channel. Some have, yes (mainly individual artists/bands though) – but not nearly enough.

There’s one case in particular that gripes me the most – some of what are undeniably the most important performances – American debut and otherwise – of many artists’ careers are their first appearances on Saturday Night Live. These are almost impossible to find – if they get uploaded, it doesn’t take long before they get pulled. Replacing some of those (like Elvis Costello’s famous show-stopping appearance from 1977) is what took me so darned long the other night, and it just irritated the crap out of me.

So here’s my open letter to NBC Universal:

Get your heads out of your collective asses and put up your own YouTube partner channel with these fantastic performances so that they’ll be back in public view where they SHOULD be, for people to enjoy these fabulous pieces of music history – instead of repeatedly blocking them and keeping them hidden from public view.

In this day and age when almost anything can be instantly viewed on the Internet in all kinds of different venues, it’s a doggoned shame that some of the finest musical performances in rock & roll history are being withheld like this. You have the potential to make far, far more profit on those clips as a YouTube partner than you likely ever will recoup in DVD or video sales.

I guess there’s a DVD or music video out there on the market already – point being, I don’t care, and they probably don’t contain the clips I want to see most anyway. How many DVDs have I bought in the past three or four years? Less than ten, and virtually all are feature films.

That said, I’m your target audience with those SNL music clips, NBC Universal – listen to me. Do the right thing and get those clips up on YouTube under your own account so those precious pieces of musical performance history are out there for the public to enjoy (and for those young musically-minded kids, like I once was myself, to learn from) – and make money off of me and everyone else who will watch, rate, and favorite those clips time and time again.

You have nothing to lose – except for the profit you’re not making by withholding them for DVD or whatever purposes, in which case you’re never likely going to profit nearly as much as you would have as a YouTube partner – and instead, the whole world is losing out by not being able to easily access and view these like you now can most anything else on YouTube. I know a big music fan – and Elvis Costello fan – in his twenties who has never even seen that priceless infamous clip. It’s a danged shame.

C’mon, NBC Universal. The solution’s so simple, and everybody wins. You line your pockets probably a lot more than you would have counting on DVD sales – and that music’s back out there where it belongs, for folks to dig. Simple.

Ask Swifty: HACKED

Remember the other day when I told you guys about a couple of really hilarious YouTubers you should all be checking out and subscribing to? SwiftKarateChop‘s latest episode of “Ask Swifty” features a whole bunch of some of the funniest of the YouTube bunch, so check it out, this one is great:

Also just a reminder to please (if you don’t mind) change any bookmarks and blog links to the Zone to the default WordPress URL of http://thelynnsterzone.wordpress.com/ (and for the music blog, http://lynnstersmusiczone.wordpress.com) – I think the feeds are pointing correctly (but if you’re not finding my new posts in your feed reader, please let me know so I can see what’s up with the feed). I really don’t know when I’m going to be able to get this situation resolved with my domain host and get thelynnsterzone.com pointing back here (donations welcome, LOL) but you can always find me at the default URL anyway. Thanks!