Tennessee Backroads

Recently traveled through a part of Tennessee that I had not visited previously in my many miles of driving...an area between Memphis and Nashville close to the Mississippi and Alabama state lines...Started out near Lexington just east of Jackson on Hwy 412...driving through small towns on a beautiful sunny day, it was very uplifting to see people going about their business and chores with smiles on their faces...old folks, long into retirement, sitting on their front porches giving me a friendly wave as I went by...I also noticed an abundance of small, wooden churches along my route..not the ostentatious, mega-churches personified by Joel Osteen, Rick Warren, Robert Schuller and others...and I wondered, who had a closer bond with their god....the small congregations of maybe 100 or so??...or the 2,900 worshippers who show up at Schuller's Crystal Cathedral every Sunday? Somehow, I just can't visualize a Sunday evening potluck supper at the $17 million(nearly $60 million in today's dollars) California shrine...oh, well...if it makes them happy, I guess.. Another thing I noticed was that every bridge more than 100 feet long seemed to be a memorial to some obscure person that I doubt was even familiar to the local residents...such as the "John Calhoun Brown Memorial Bridge"...perhaps John was remembered for his service in the Civil War(isn't that an oxymoron? Are wars ever civil?)....there is no end to the Civil War historical points in the South... Interesting signs along the way, too..."Rabbits for Sale"...I wondered if they were for pets or stew...I didn't stop to inquire...they might have been better at selling rabbits than my ability to say "No"... I moved along through the towns Darden, Linden, Hohenwald...seeing towns as they used to be..no malls...no big-box stores...just main streets lined with mom & pop stores and houses with well-kept lawns and century-old trees...I turned south on Hwy 43 and began to see road signs to be cautious of horse-drawn wagons...turns out this area of Lawrence county has a substantial Amish community..being from the Midwest, I just assumed most Amish were in the Indiana-Ohio-Pennsylvania corridor...obviously, I was wrong...I stopped at the Dutch Country Bakery in Ethridge and bought a jar of banana nut butter...it's akin to apple butter in texture and color..very flavorful... A few more miles down the road is David Crockett State Park...evidently, the famous pioneer lived in the county for many years... I then headed south on I-65...I stopped at a truckstop for a coffee to-go...at the cashier counter was an Easter display of individual chocolate marshmallow eggs...most truckstops might have candy, gum, cigarettes, work gloves or key chains near the cashier...I get that...but I'm not seeing marsmallow eggs as an impulse purchase for your everyday trucker...just as I crossed into Alabama is the tourist welcome center which has an Atlas missile on the grounds in reference to the Redstone Arsenal near Huntsville...I guess I'm a northern snob because I somehow just can't equate Alabama with rocket science... It was really one of my favorite trips in sometime...hope to get through that part of the country again...

Political Pizza

Fair and balanced? I report you decide...Let's face it...the only person Bill O'Reilly is looking out for is....Bill O'Reilly...
More and more, the topics of his program segments are less informational and more promotional of the blustery host himself...it becomes more amazing every night as he manages to link any subject to himself...he often refers to when he was a teacher in his early 20's; where he has lived; how he wrote about a particular subject in one of his books...I have no doubt that a guest could tell him "you know, Bill...I had oatmeal for breakfast today"...and O'Reilly would respond, "I wrote about oatmeal in Culture Warrior "....
He, of course, promotes his appearances on other programs (Today Show, The View, Letterman) and on his own subsequent programs, he will have "unbiased" guests (read "sycophantic ass-kissers) on to assess how he did on those other shows...
His most common guests who appear are conservatives Dennis Miller(he is funny, though), Dick Morris (has he ever been right?), Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck(is he still crying?), Bernie Goldberg and Karl Rove...none of whom are challenged by an opposing liberal guest...Goldberg used to be paired with American University journalism professor Jane Hall, but it appears she has been dumped by O'Reilly due to her thoughtful and moderate liberal views..... and yet, O'Reilly maintains that he, himself, is an independent...