Phoebe Kate

I’m always on the lookout for intriguing contemporary art and this is my latest find.  For the last 25 years, peripatetic photographer Sam Fentress has been immortalizing the peculiarly American art form of roadside religious signs.  He’s just published a book and here’s a sneak peek at a few of the goodies he’s found on the highways and byways of our Bible-thumping country.  Just click on “View Images from the Book” and enjoy.

Living in the South, one is inundated with commercial messages from our heavenly Sponsor on rough-hewn signs tacked to barns and outhouses, in yards and on trees and fences and about anything else that’s handy.  Once I even saw a cow in a field with “Jesus Saves” spray-painted on its side (I wish I’d had a camera with me that day.) 

The first example of this kind of thing that I ever saw was as a little kid in rural central Florida.  Every day on our drive to town, we passed a gigantic, weatherbeaten and decidedly ominous-looking sign at the edge of an orange grove that posed the unsettling question: DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU WILL BE ON DOOMSDAY?  The sign-maker, obviously a rather talented albeit morbid artist, had decorated his billboard with vivid likenesses of the Grim Reaper, Satan & his demonic homeboys and lost souls burning in the flames of hell.  That damned thing scared me so badly that I begged my mother to take a different road to town. This being the Floridian back-of-beyond, no alternative route existed, of course, so I ended up spending the daily drive huddled on the floor of the car while my mother, a lady from the Ozarks who’d gotten her fill of fundamentalism early on in life, muttered dark things under her breath about “those damn Holy Rollers.”

Now, my father, who was a devout Roman Catholic, had a completely different reaction to that sign.  He just laughed and said, ”Sure, I know where I’ll be on Doomsday.  In Purgatory!”

Gotta love those Papists with a catechism that answers every possible theological question.    

–phoebe kate

My step-granddaughter Jocelyn came home from school today with bad news.  A classmate of hers in the 5th grade died in a motocross accident Thursday evening.  Classes were suspended and students spent the day discussing their reactions and feelings to the tragic event, writing letters to their departed friend and getting help from a counselor.

There is little that can be said when someone dies so young.   It is a terrible thing for parents to have to bury their own child.  

Unfortunately, though, the grim reality remains that too many kids of his age experience serious injuries and even death as a result of extreme forms of recreation. Around here, it’s all too common to see kids even younger than Emery tearing around on dirt bikes or in ATVs or careening through heavily trafficked parking lots on skateboards.  Sure, these activities are fun — but it’s fun with a very high risk factor nobody really likes to think about.  Young Mr. Humphrey was wearing a helmet at the time of the accident, but sad to say, it didn’t help him.  

I know Emery appreciates the outpouring of love and letters from his classmates.  If he could write a letter to them, I think he’d say, “You guys mean a lot to me.  Be careful.  Play safely.  Enjoy a long and healthy life.”

My condolences to Emery’s family and all who knew and loved him.

–phoebe kate  

By the time he or she starts to walk and talk, you can get a pretty good idea of what this sweet babboo of yours is going to be like for the rest of its life — that is, if you’re willing to take off the rose-colored glasses of new parenthood and see the kid as everybody does.

Let me give you some examples from my own family.  My cousin (who shall remain nameless because I always protect the identity of the guilty) was rather late, as standards go, in learning to talk but she sure as hell made those first words count big time.  Her first utterance wasn’t Mama or Dada or bye-bye or binkie or blankie or anything else you might expect.  It was “Move over!” and she said it to her older sister who was sitting with her on the sofa.  You don’t believe it?  Well, I was there and heard it — and I can assure you that she’s still getting in everybody’s faces 50 years later.

Since toddlerhood, my older son Davio has been Mr. Personality.  They say that redheads are lively — that doesn’t begin to describe my boy.  He learned to talk at six months and was speaking 3 and 4 word sentences by the time he was one.  He’d sit in supermarket grocery cart and chat up shoppers.  “You like bananas?  I like bananas.  You see the orange?  My hair is orange!  You have kids?  Can I come play?” To this day, Davio is still turning on that million megawatt charm for everybody he meets.  He’s the only person I know who can walk into a room full of strangers and get invited out for drinks by them all.

My middle son, the indomitable J-K (for whom I am going to buy a small country on E-bay so he has some place to rule with impugnity) has been telling people what to do for as long as I can remember.  When he was about 3, I put him down for a nap and went off to enjoy one myself.  Just as the tired maternal bones were getting comfy, I heard a blood-curdling shriek.  Envisioning the worst — he’d fallen out of bed, smacked his head on the bedside table and was hemorrhaging from a gaping wound – I rushed into his room.  He was lying on his mattress, unscathed and obviously very unhappy.  “What’s wrong?” I asked him.  “Does your tummy hurt? Do you feel sick?”  He glowered at me and screamed, “I DON’T LIKE MY CEILING!!!!!!”  I gaped at him.  ”You WHAT?” I asked.  He screamed at me again, ”I DON’T LIKE MY CEILING!!!!!!”  I cast my gaze upward at the offending part of the room.  It seemed fine to me.  “Did you see a bug up there?” I inquired.  He screamed, “NO!  I DON’T LIKE HOW IT LOOKS!”  Bewildered, I asked, “Why???”  He replied, eyeballing me sternly, ”I don’t know.  But FIX IT!”   

He’s 22 now and hasn’t changed a bit.  Since arriving home for Christmas break, he has informed me I need to rearrange the furniture in 2 rooms, change the brand of mayonnaise I use, brush the cats every day so they don’t shed on his black sweaters, quit putting flannel sheets on his bed, buy some new pillows and go out every morning at 7:00 A.M. to jog with him so I can get in shape.   Bless his heart.

Any dictators out there looking for a midlife career change?  Drop me an email and I can hook you up with someone highly qualified to take your place and straighten out your unruly populace.

–phoebe kate                     

Dick Wilson, who played curmudgeonly but charming storekeeper Mr. Whipple for over 2 decades in Charmin commercials, recently died in Los Angeles at the age of 91.   Not only was he arguably the best known face in TV advertising but in the country as well.  A 1970s survey reported that more people recognized him than they did then-President Jimmy Carter. 

Charmin is currently taking a break from their incredibly crude double entendre cartoon spokesanimals to air a dignified and touching tribute to Wilson.  I only wonder what he thought about being replaced by a family of dirty-bottomed bears.         

–phoebe kate 

Ran across a report this morning on the most drunken and least drunken cities in America.  There are some surprises here.  For example, Denver CO leads the pack as the most tipsy town in our country.  It appears the granola-eating, nature-loving, ski slope slaloming, tree hugging, no-public-smoking citizenry are doing their damnedest to be the Mile-High City in every sense.  Columbia SC comes in 13th.  Up until recently, liquor in bars was served in those airplane size micro-bottles.  Now that they’ve okayed free-pour, I guess everybody’s taking full advantage of it.  In my own home state, Greensboro, Charlotte and Raleigh made the cut.  I haven’t spent much time in the first two places but can attest to the fact that nobody in Raleigh is ever sober.  I’ve even been in some bars that give patrons cocktails-to-go in styrofoam cups.  Amazingly enough, New Orleans – which has been purveying portable potables to French Quarter strollers for decades – didn’t even make the list.  Come on, Big Easy!  Whatever happened to that good old “laissez les bon temps roulez” spirit of yours?

On the roster of the alcoholically abstemious are even bigger surprises.  New York City, for heaven’s sake.  What’s going on here?  Did everybody stop sipping when they banned smoking in bars?  Durham, NC.  With at least 8 colleges in the area, I can’t believe it.  I would have thought that Duke alone was enough to put it at the top 10 of boozy burgs.  And here’s the real shocker – Miami.  What are they drinking in those glitzy South Beach watering holes?  Water?!?!?  Last time I was there, a few months ago, I sure didn’t see anybody ordering a Mountain Dew instead of a mojito.

Cheers.

–phoebe kate