Thunder Road

Today is Springsteen's 60th birthday? Damn! I'm sitting here listening to a 1976 performance of Thunder Road from You Tube - don't know where it was, but it was around that time that I got to see Bruce live at Auburn University. It was just after Born to Run was released and I'm not sure anyone in the South had heard of this New Jersey guy. But I'm a rocker, so I was going to be there.

It almost didn't happen - the fire marshal, obviously not a rock and roll fan, insisted that not only could there not be festival seating, but there was NO FLOOR SEATING at all! So we're all in the risers, and remember this is the days when everything was hard-wired, and as Bruce is singing the first song he sprinted from the stage, LEAPT into the risers and sang the entire concert from there. It was amazing. He even sat in a girl's lap to sing one song (regrettably not mine).

Fast forward to 1984, I'm working for a congressional campaign in Birmingham, driving around in the campaign van putting up signs. On the radio someone announces that Springsteen is coming and tickets go on sale the next day. This, thank god, was before Ticketmaster took all the fun out of ticket buying. I immediately told my co-campaigner-it was Robert Houston- to take me DIRECTLY down to the BJCC, I am going to camp out. This is also pre-cell phones, remember. So I get down there around 2 p.m. on a Friday and I'm like 20th in line. Robert goes back to HQ and calls my sweetie-pie Phil and gets him to bring me down some clothes and a blanket. I stayed down there the rest of the night. Even got my picture in the paper!

Got great seats on the 13th row, aisle and man I held on to those things like they were precious gems. The concert was great - it was shortly before Christmas and the encore was "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." Close to three hours of guitar and sax and that voice and those songs. I think we stood up the whole time and hardly felt it.

I know I'm a writer but I just can't find the words for the experience of Springsteen, whether I'm blasting "Thunder Road" on the car radio or tearing up when I hear "The River" and think of what might have been. They just give me the oomph to get up and do what needs to be done.

PACT, promises and politics

The Alabama pre-paid college tuition plan apparently isn't what it was sold as. We got "the letter" this week that says the PACT plan is running out of money and the board that runs it just isn't sure what to do. The fact that we were promised that our child's college tuition would be paid (I have the letter, "signed" by Lucy Baxley which tells you how long ago we paid for the plan), apparently is of no use to us now.

An interesting fact: on the PACT home page now, the plan is described as a "529" plan. But that is not what it was when it started. In fact, we got a 529 plan from out of state because Alabama did not have one at the time. Folks, pre-paid college tuition is not the same as a 529 investment plan and the PACT folks are stretching the truth by describing it that way.

Now to inject a little politics into the discussion: Our Republican state Treasurer, as head of the PACT program, apparently drank the Wall Street kool-aid and thought the market would always go up. When I was googling around earlier today, I came upon this newspaper article from the Decatur Daily during the last campaign, when the Democratic candidate sounded the alarm. But no one was listenting.

Segrest seeks PACT changes: State treasurer candidate says tuition program in trouble.

Article from: Decatur Daily (Decatur, AL) Article date:October 17, 2006
COPYRIGHT 2006 The Decatur Daily.
Byline: Bayne Hughes
Oct. 17--State treasurer candidate Steve Segrest believes Alabama's prepaid college tuition programs need a management change. The Montgomery Democrat told THE DAILY editorial board that Republican incumbent Kay Ivey is wrong if she believes the Prepaid Affordable College Tuition fund is in good shape financially and is one of the nation's top prepaid tuition funds. Segrest, a real estate agent and businessman, said Joe Hurley of Bankrate.com gives Alabama's PACT a two-star rating, while at least 15 other states' funds get a three-star or better rating.

We bought the PACT contract and finished paying for it more than 10 years ago. We got it because we figured that if we got a regular investment plan, and the market crashed the day before we wanted the money, that we were screwed. Prepaid tuition would guarantee that our children would go to college. They might have to live at home and go to the hometown university, but they would go. Now it looks like the whole thing was premised on a fabrication.

We're not taking our money out. That would be foolish - the amount we put in ten years ago wouldn't cover a year of college. And there's no way we could invest it and get a return that would cover tuition for a child who starts college in 2010. But my faith in the state of Alabama is shaken.

25 Random Things, the Facebook Game

1. I would rather sweat than shiver.
2. I am a cat person. I like being around creatures that don't need me.
3. I have never been bored with marriage and family.
4. Ever since I was little, I have always wanted to see where the trail goes.
5. I can be quite happy alone.
6. I never wear heels.
7. I rarely wear makeup.
8. I look pretty damn good for my age.
9. I take things too seriously sometimes.
10. I am fascinated with quantum physics and the concept that energy and matter are the same thing.
11. I am not very romantic.
12. Office work can be tedious but I do love a regular paycheck.
13. I love to travel. Especially to places I have never been before.
14. I will eat pizza beyond the point of reason.
14. Katherine Hepburn is my fashion icon.
15. I envy my nephew Josh and his off-the-grid lifestyle.
16. I am a politics junkie of the left-wing variety.
17. The only person who is allowed to call me by my husband's last name is my dad.
18. I'd rather be hiking.
19. I see money as a tool, not a possession.
20. I like putting things in order. I just wish I had more time to do it.
21. If I could do whatever I wanted, I would have a studio and make things.
22. My name is on a bronze plaque on a library in Birmingham.
23. Don't mess with my kids.
24. A vine ripe tomato still warm from the sun is nature's perfect food.
25. Gratitude is powerful.

Nine to Five

Well, I finished my first week (actually four days since Monday was Labor Day) at my first "regular" job in more than 15 years. It has been a long long time since I worked in an office, with a regular schedule and if not a time clock then at least keeping track of time.

I have definitely been spoiled working for myself. The upside of self-employment is flexibility, but the downside is that you're never not working. That is, I would fit in house work during the day but then that meant doing work work at night when the rest of the family came home.

The other downside of self-employment is, of course, financial insecurity. You never know when you'll get, or lose, a job. That's not a whole lot different from any job in today's economy, but self-employment seems even more tenuous. So when I got an opportunity to work in a new field and get a regular paycheck, I just had to give it a shot.

It doesn't leave much time for blogging (not that I have been especially loquacious anyway) but I'm thinking that once things settle down a little I can do more writing in the evenings. We'll see.

For now, I am enjoying a little structure and looking forward to that first paycheck!

Waiting for the bus

I had just turned seven years old when Dr. King made his "I have a Dream" speech. I don't remember it. But I do remember, somehow, that a couple of months later a church was blown up in Alabama and four little girls were killed. In my mind, they were the same age I was and all I was terrified because people would kill little children. I, who had not ever actually seen a black person so had no reason, I suppose, to hate them, thought that I myself was in danger, because I didn't hate black people and they would kill you for that, too.

When I was in seventh grade, we were living in Panama and so the intensity and chaos of 1968 just passed me by. But one thing did happen. We had an assignment to memorize a speech and deliver it in an assembly. I went to the library and got a book of Great American Speeches and I found one by this guy named Martin Luther King. I was enthralled, "my four children will be judged not the the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Again I felt like I was part of that, that I, still never having met a black person, was entitled to be judged by my character as well. When I gave the speech, it was the only public speaking I ever did as a child where I did not stutter and shake.

The next school year, we were living in Summerville, South Carolina, outside of Charleston. My dad was in Vietnam. All the buzz in my junior high school was that the schools were going to be integrated the next year. That year, I rode my bike to school. I would ride from home, down a couple of roads, then turn left along the fence that enclosed the elementary and junior high campus. The campus was on the right, and across the street were houses that were made of wood, a little shabby with metal roofs. Little black children were standing in front of those houses waiting for the school bus. Little children, like me, who had to look across the street to a school that all these other children were going into, but they had to wait in the cold and rain for a bus to take them somewhere else.

How could anyone be so cruel to a child? I somehow understood that the people who made those rules really did not see these children as people. If they did, they would not be so cruel as to force them to watch as other children went to a beautiful shiny school while they had to wait for a bus.

On this night, Barack Obama will accept the nomination for President. I know in my heart that he will win. And this middle-aged white woman has tears coming to her eyes at the thought. Those little children are probably grandparents now, and I hope that they will be watching too.

=^..^=

We lost our precious kitty Piglet today. She joined our family 15 years ago, when Anna was just a toddler. She has been a good cat and we'll miss her.

She was an indoor cat although she would escape into the great outdoors every once in a while. She loved sunny windowsills and liked to sit in front of the window and look out. We have a picture of her not long after we got her, sitting on the back of the couch and staring at the fish in our aquarium. She was a good sitter.

Her name came from her curled-up tail, which we considered having taken off but the vet said wouldn't bother her. It never did, and it made her extra-special. We called her Piggle and Squish-ems because she was always fat and squishy. That's how we knew she was sick - she wasn't fat any more.

Piglet liked to just hang out and chill. When she was still a kitten, she would play inside with her companion Tigger (figure out where we got the names?) but went outside only rarely. Tigger was an outside cat who came in at night and slept with Genny. We lost Tigger to leukemia in 2000 just before we moved to Hoover.

We're put Piglet where we are building a courtyard, and we will make a plaque to set among the bricks and flowers.

We'll miss you.

On stimuli

We just got the much-vaunted "stimulus" check in the mail, the one that's supposed to save our economy even though the money was borrowed from China and Saudi Arabia. For a lot of folks, the money is probably going right back out to products from those two countries - cheap plastic crap or gasoline.

So my plan was to be subversive and put it into savings. But then... a couple of weeks ago the Taurus that we bought for our daughter ($1,500 off govdeals.com!) blew a serpentine belt. We got a new belt on it, but then the shop told us the reason it snapped was the compressor on the air conditioner siezed up and the whole AC had to be replaced. There went our "stimulus" check, but at least it was spent locally.

There's a little bit left - I got my hair cut at a good salon and I'm going to get a new pair of glasses. At Costco, the left-wing warehouse store. So I can still be a little bit subversive.