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It practically gallops!

A to Z in the USA

A St. Louis real estate agent emailed me about a journalist moving from Los Angeles to Knoxville. I’ve known Bruce Butler, the real estate agent selling Aunt Dee’s condo, since the days when he worked for a radio syndication company in L.A. He wrote to me to say that he had a St. Louis friend whose daughter had graduated from the University of Southern California and was moving to Knoxville to start a new job at the ABC affiliate. He asked if I could suggest any places downtown where she might want to live.

I was reminded of a loft-warming party my wife and I attended several years ago. Larsen Jay had moved into the then-new Sterchi Lofts. One of the other guests was Larsen’s future wife, Adrian MacLean, who was a reporter for WATE. They had only just met a few days earlier when Adrian did a live shot from the grand opening of the Sterchi Lofts.

A couple of weeks after receiving Bruce Butler’s email, I got an email from Alexis Zotos, immediately followed by a notification from Twitter that she was now following me. Alexis wrote that she was getting settled in her new place and her new job at WATE. As it turned out, she chose not to live downtown. She’d found a place near where some of the other reporters lived.

I followed her back on Twitter, which is how I knew to keep an eye out for her report on Ole Smoky Moonshine during last week’s “6 Around Town” episode on East Tennessee History. Having lived in California and being familiar with Ole Smoky, I was amused by the thought of what Alexis’ SoCal friends must have thought.

March 31, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

Shopping Lister

A clerk at a Walmart in St. Louis was changing an end-cap display from one item to another as I walked by. It caught my eye and I bought some store-brand whitening mouthwash on a whim. I’ve used it almost every day since. When I ran out, my wife bought a similar product at a Target in Knoxville. I thought it was odd that, except for the labels, the two plastic bottles are identical. They have the same caps and the same grooves on each side. Most importantly, the ingredients are the same.

I mentioned the mouthwash in a conversation with two people at work yesterday. We were talking about how there isn’t always time to wear a whitening strip. Or more likely, it’s easy to forget to wear one when there is time. I drove all the way to Sevierville on Saturday with a strip in my pocket that I forgot to apply. One of the sales guys agreed and pointed out that the hydrogen peroxide in the mouthwash helps to heal the little sores that come from biting a cheek or burning a tastebud.

March 13, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 1 Comment 

Dry Tortuga

“It’s the real muscle, the real skeleton, the brain is all still with the pet,” said taxidermist Anthony Eddy in a news report on KDSK-TV. The St. Louis station ran a story about freeze-dried pets near the end of February sweeps. The website for Anthony Eddy’s Wildlife Studio is pet-animalpreservation.com. Most of his business comes from dog and cat owners but I noticed at least one freeze-dried rat in the TV report.

The word taxidermy is derived from the Greek words for movement and skin. Normally, just the skin of a deer or other game animal is preserved and stretched over an artificial frame. That work would be extremely difficult with small animals like house pets. Instead of skinning them, all the moisture is slowly removed during the freeze-drying process. I learned all this when my pet tortoise died.

About eight years ago there was another news story about another taxidermist. When I couldn’t imagine burying my deceased tortoise, I called the Al Holmes Taxidermy Studio & Wildlife Museum in Wetumpka, Alabama. I hadn’t started my blog yet, but I did write about the experience elsewhere on my website.

When Mo died, I wasn’t even going to say anything on the air. He was supposed to live longer than me and I felt somehow at fault for his respiratory infection. Thankfully my partner, Ashley Adams, saw the humor in the situation when I told her that I hadn’t buried Mo but instead put him in the freezer next to the Turtle Tracks ice cream.
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The saga of Mo played out over the next six months on our show. We called local taxidermists trying to find one who would preserve him. One refused to do reptiles. Another said that small animals were too difficult. A third refused to do pets. A listener called and reminded us that several months earlier we had interviewed a taxidermist who specialized in pets. We made a call to that taxidermist, Al Holmes of the Al Holmes Taxidermy Studio and Wildlife Museum in Wetumpka, Alabama. Al explained that he freeze-dries the smaller critters and would be happy to “fix Mo up” for me.
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Mo, my freeze-dried pet tortoise, on the console at Oldies 95.7 By a strange coincidence, my co-host had relatives in Wetumpka and was planning to bring her 2-month old son to visit them on Mother’s Day weekend. Rather than pay shipping charges, I wanted to somehow convince her to take Mo’s carcass along on the six hour drive. I waited until we were live on the air to spring the idea on her and asked listeners to help me convince her.
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After she reluctantly agreed, we asked Al Holmes how to pack Mo for the trip. He was already in a Ziploc bag in my freezer. I wrapped him (and the bag) in newspaper and put him in a Styrofoam cooler surrounded by some frozen bottles of Aquafina. I taped the cooler shut and brought it to work with me. It sat on the studio floor during our whole show that Friday. The next day Ashley delivered the cooler to Al Holmes. When he opened it, they drank the Aquafinas which had thawed but were still cool and refreshing. Creepy.

March 10, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

Your Dollar Buys More

The signs for Schnucks supermarkets make me chuckle every time I visit St. Louis. The name reminds me of the Yiddish term schnook, which is a gullible person.

According to a recent article in Supermarket News, Schnucks says more men are doing the grocery shopping than five years ago. I’m one of those people. Over the past five years, I have assumed the responsibility for all the grocery shopping in my family and I love doing it. Most of the time, I’m only shopping for two people, which isn’t that difficult.

The process of food shopping is the modern equivalent of hunting and gathering. I have learned to spot bargains, especially on poultry and produce, which I buy every week. My latest discovery is that local supermarkets are selling cored pineapples for the same price as whole pineapples. Now I can enjoy one of my favorite fruits without the messy process of cutting off the rind.

February 23, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

Musical Truth

The music chosen as the Mass setting in the Diocese of Knoxville is okay but it’s not my favorite. As I wrote at the start of Advent, I was looking forward to hearing different settings when I traveled.

I was in St. Louis a week ago, at a church that uses the Mass of St. Ann by composer Ed Bolduc. It has a much more joyful sound and is ideal for youth choirs. In the old days, we might have heard that sound at a “folk mass.” You can hear a demo version of it by clicking on the play button to the left.

In conversations with Fr. Gary Braun in St. Louis and Fr. Michael Woods in Knoxville, both priests mentioned the misguided video entitled “Why I Hate Religion but Love Jesus.” In it, Jefferson Bethke begins with the erroneous claim that Jesus came to eliminate organized religion. Jesus actually said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets. I have come not to abolish but to fulfill.” He said to Peter, “upon this rock I will build my church.” He instructed the disciples to carry on without him, forgiving sins (the sacrament of penance) and commemorating the Last Supper (the sacrament of the Eucharist).

This morning, Fr. Michael Woods suggested I read a column by fellow parishioner Bob Hunt in yesterday’s Knoxville News Sentinel. A week earlier, I had told Fr. Gary that Catholic blogger Frank Weathers (another All Saints parishioner) said organized religion is like the military. It may not be perfect, but you need it to fight evil.

A blog called “Bad Catholic” posted a great repudiation of Bethke’s video. Perhaps even better, they shared a link to the following response video by a priest in Evansville, Indiana, named Fr. Claude (Dusty) Burns aka Fr. Pontifex.

January 22, 2012 | Filed Under Catholic | Comments Off 

But Moses Invests

unusual minivan in St. Louis parking lot One of my favorite church sign sayings is “If you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?” I assume that the owner of a decorated minivan in St. Louis wants the answer to be yes.

unusual minivan in St. Louis parking lot From a distance, it wasn’t clear why one car in the Walmart parking lot stood out from the others. Upon closer inspection, my family and I could see that it had been painted with religious messages, the largest of which was “Jesus Saves!” The license plate referenced Yahshua, another name for Jesus.

As I photographed the van, a police car pulled up behind us. For a second, we thought that the officer was going to tell us to stop. However, she just wanted to get a closer look at the van too.

January 20, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments 

Say Good Night

Burns and Allen might be the reason I didn’t sleep well the other night. Or maybe it was Hazel. My wife and I fell asleep with the TV on while we were staying at Aunt Dee’s condo in St. Louis over the weekend. At one point I woke up and heard Gracie Allen’s voice. A little later, the strident voice of Shirley Booth woke me again. In a weird way, I’m a little bummed that I didn’t wake up during “The Jack Benny Program.”

The classic sitcoms air on channel 2.2, which we watched using the digital converter box that we bought for the condo a few years ago. The local Fox affiliate fills its secondary channel with programming from a network called Antenna TV. It would be great if a Knoxville station became an Antenna TV affiliate. I can say that because there’s no TV in my bedroom.

January 17, 2012 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off 

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