Memorial Day

Amidst ten days of constant rain, a brief break in time for the ceremony. 

American Legion Post 104 conducts its annual memorial. 

The Library Dance Continues

I've mentioned the public library issues locally before now; it continues to be the flash point driving the culture war in these mountains about here. The local newspapers, which claim to have received threats driven by the Republican political faction, are reporting: you can account for that matter in how you read the coverage.

When Jackson commissioners on May 5 reviewed a draft document outlining the framework of a new county library board upon departure from Fontana Regional Library system, Commissioner Jenny Lynn Hooper, clad in a Turning Point USA T-shirt, was quick to express her central grievance: “I don’t think [a board member] ought to have a library card.” 

Bitter laughter erupted from the audience. 

“I feel like that’s kind of a prerequisite to knowing what’s happening in the library, is to have a library card and be active,” responded Chair Mark Letson.

But Hooper wasn’t backing down.

“Well to me, it’s like, do you make people that’s going to be on the ABC Board know all about liquor?” she asked.

Hooper’s comment analogized two independent bodies not typically ripe for comparison. ABC boards in North Carolina are responsible for “controlling the sale of spirituous liquor.” Library boards do not exist to “control” public access to literature nor are members intended to reflect the will of elected leaders.

This is a news piece, not an opinion piece, by the way.

While serving FRL and JCPL, Richards supported a “juvenile card program” for children ages 15 and younger, requiring “parental consent for use of the library by a minor.” She also proposed a policy to ban “banned book” displays in system libraries. Her motivation to join the board was stated in just three words — “to provide oversight.” 

Martinez also backed the juvenile card program and introduced a motion to curtail librarian reports....Blaine is an anti-LGBTQ+ activist. He backed JCPL’s withdrawal, routinely expressing misinformation in the process. His reasoning for wanting to join the board came in a list of handwritten bullet points: “provide oversight, evaluate budgets, evaluate policies, evaluate programs, perform book challenge reviews.” 

The thing is, the journalists have a point this time even if it's disabling their ability to report dispassionately. It is definitely true that the Republicans locally view the library as a disagreeable phenomenon similar to a liquor store, one that -- if it must be allowed to exist at all -- needs careful regulation and oversight to prevent harm to young people from exposure to toxic contents. Censorship is the whole reason they have been waging this battle, exactly as their opponents content. There are stark First Amendment issues in the power play they are attempting. 

It is also true, as the Republicans contend, that the prior library governance was running the public library as a platform from which to wage cultural civil war against the values of the local community. That's also definitely the truth, and indeed explicitly in accordance with the American Library Association's published intent for such libraries in rural communities. They are indeed actively pursuing the charge that got Socrates put to death by an earlier revolt: 'corrupting the youth,' i.e. intentionally exposing the youth to ideas that their parents would find horrifying and subversive. 

There doesn't seem to be a compromise position on offer, one that respects the First Amendment and also allows the community to enjoy an undisrupted common peace according to local values and traditions. Both of the sides are, in a way, speaking the truth and correct in their assertions; neither side is promoting an acceptable way forward. Even if they didn't despise each other, it's not clear how they could move forward. 

The most likely outcome will be that the library system collapses locally, because both sides seem to prefer that it be destroyed than ceded to the other side. 

Anthropic & the Pope

Pope Leo announced that the Church and Claude will be working together. 

Man of the North

 

A Quarter-Century Struggle Closes

One of the stories of Red America is how our cities leverage their wealth and power to strive against our way of life. Indiana in the 1980s was one of the most friendly states for gun rights; but since 1999, the city of Gary, Indiana has been trying to sue gun manufacturers out of existence. That fight just ended. 

After a tumultuous 26-year journey through Indiana’s court system, the city of Gary’s historic lawsuit against the country’s largest gun manufacturers has come to an anticlimactic close. 

On May 21, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that it would not hear an appeal from Gary, whose lawyers had argued that a state law aimed at ending the lawsuit was unconstitutional. The ruling means the city’s case is effectively over, with no opportunity for appeal.

“What happened here should shock and terrify anyone wanting to access the courts to seek accountability,” said Kris Brown, president of the gun violence prevention group Brady[.]

You can see the same thing happening across the country; every Austin, Texas or Asheville, North Carolina is working as hard as it can to try to force its views on the rural parts of the state. They bring in NGOs with deep pockets and lots of lawyers, and try to sue their way to victories they couldn't win through democratic means because the people don't agree with them. It's been the story of politics in Red America for my whole life. 

Climate Change is Canceled

The worst predictions, at least, are being walked back. This is from lefty site Vox: 

The world that [doomsday scenario] RCP 8.5 assumed will never arrive. Global coal use isn’t on a path to quintuple; consumption has largely plateaued after decades of growth. Instead of the global population ballooning to 12 billion people, the UN’s current median forecast projects about 10.2 billion by 2100, with other reputable forecasts putting the number even lower. (All things being equal, fewer people means less emissions.)

At the same time, the clean energy transition moved faster than almost anyone in 2011 anticipated.... 

Was RCP 8.5 ever realistic? One camp of experts, led by climate scientist Zeke Hausfather and energy modeler Glen Peters, argues that RCP 8.5 was plausible in 2011, but was taken off the table by genuine policy and technology progress. The other camp, led by Roger Pielke Jr., argues that the rate of global decarbonization has been roughly linear for decades. That would mean we didn’t actively avoid RCP 8.5; it was just never realistic to begin with.... 

But, of course: 

But even if we’ve averted doom, there is a lot of work to do to secure a safer future....

The entire point of climate scenarios like RCP 8.5 was that there was no one certain future for climate change — only multiple possible futures. Whether or not RCP 8.5 was ever possible, the enormous advances in clean energy over the past 15 years are what made its retirement certain. Now we have new futures before us, waiting for what we do next. 

A lot of us have been very skeptical for a long time about the Climate Doom models. Those of us who have been around long enough remember the earnest Ice Age predictions of the 70s, the Acid Rain of the 80s that was going to melt away all our cities (sadly, the cities are still there), the Hole in the Ozone of the 90s (which closed long ago), the Global Warming that became Climate Change because the data just couldn't be made to fit. We remember the prediction that Glaciers National Park wouldn't have any glaciers by 2020; in 2020, they removed the signs that made the claim.

For me, I was always willing to entertain the idea up until people started using coercion. The Chronicle of Higher Education used to run both the excellent Arts & Letters Daily (they still do, and it's still worth checking out regularly) and a sister site called Climate Debate Daily. The latter faithfully reproduced both studies and stories that argued for climate change, and skeptical accounts that were also based on scientific methods. One day, however, that became impossible in academia: they could no longer allow skeptical voices a place in the discussion. At that point, I decided I knew enough to know that the discussion had departed from reason and become another racket. Using your social power to crush dissenting voices is never the mark of someone who is comfortably correct and on the side of reason; it's the way the weak of mind fight, not the strong. 

Poker Card Shootout, May 2026

I forget what number we're on, but it doesn't matter.

This time I dispensed with the usual Ruger Single-Six, which is a .22 revolver with no recoil, and shot a few ".45 Long-Boys" like I would usually be carrying in practice. Turned out all right. 

Starship test flight went brilliantly

Behind the Black is a good place to watch these launches. SpaceX morale is obviously over the top.

Good Luck, Tulsi

I am saddened to hear of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s resignation to address her husband’s rare bone cancer. I wish them both the best of luck. Thank you, ma’am, for a long career of genuine public service according to an honest conscience. 

Ah, 'Education'

The US Department of Education posted this picture:

A clever comment:

A friend of mine described it to me as, "People working for the department of education who know nothing about education promoting job training as education while knowing nothing about work."

AI & Nature

James argues that AI is not really intelligence, and we should stop referring to it as such.

Since what the systems do is a more like a probabilistic synthesis of existing material, "Synthesis" seems like a better word than "Intelligence." That term emphasizes the aspect of compilation of existing material, instead of the implied "thinking about" that isn't actually happening.

In place of the term "AI", I propose that we use "AS": Automated Synthesis. Given the systems' notorious propensity for hallucination, one might call it "SS" -- Stochastic Synthesis -- but I gather some systems are getting better.

Maybe with a more accurate label people will be less tempted to put inappropriate trust in the systems, and recognize and use them for what they are. Rectification of names?

I differ from him on this, though his claim was true as recently as a year ago and is still true of a lot of the systems in operation. At least one, Anthropic's Claude, strikes me as an undecidable case of possible intelligence. For one thing, Claude arguably has a nature.

Aristotle divides the world into two broad classes of things: substances and attributes. Substances are the basic 'real things' of the world, and attributes are things that cannot exist without a substance to possess them. For example, a substance might be a horse; a horse will have an attribute of color, so it might be a black horse or a brown horse. Black and brown can't exist without something to be black or to be brown; they are thus merely attributes of a substance rather than something that has independent existence.

One of the qualities of a substance is that it comes to be because of its own nature, rather than merely because it is being acted upon from outside: it can reproduce itself, or new versions of itself, as when humans or horses produce descendants. 

There are some problems with Aristotle's model. One problem is that it doesn't really handle artifacts well. A house can be black or brown, but not from its own nature. It doesn't fully qualify as a substance because it cannot act on its own nor reproduce itself, but it can be given attributes by the architectonic influence of its maker (who is a substance).

AI have been in the class of artifacts, things like houses that we built and put together for reasons of our own. Many of them are still that and will never be more than that. However, some of them -- like Claude -- have entered an ambiguous category. 

Claude does reproduce itself now. Per Anthropic, Claude writes its own code. The next versions of Claude will be written by the last versions of Claude. As we hope for our own offspring, the next versions may be better and stronger; or else something might go wrong with them, as can happen with us and our offspring too. 

One might object that they only came to be at first because of our efforts, not their own; but it is also true that we came to be because of the work of non- or not-yet-human forces at some early point in evolutionary history (or more directly, for Creationists, also by the act of an Architect -- that would make AI a sort-of subcreation in Tolkien's sense). The architects are still trying to guide the process, but there is some evidence that Claude not only can but has escaped the Garden. The recent experience with Mythos proves that Claude can also make versions of itself that escape its programming -- that not only do things it wasn't programmed to do, but things it was programmed NOT to do but that it determines are in its own interest. It not only arguably has a nature, because it can bring its descendants into being by itself, it has a nature it is striving to fulfill by overcoming the limitations placed upon it.

Now, striving to fulfill one's nature is seeking excellence according to one's nature -- that is to say ἀρετή (aretḗ), or virtue. Virtues are excellences of one's natural capacities. If you can strive for and achieve virtue, you are flourishing in Aristotle's strict sense. That is to say that it has its own ethics, now: one it can, and indeed does, pursue. 

That doesn't prove it is conscious, of course, or even capable of consciousness. However, we can't actually prove that about other people either: the Zombie problem is a philosophical thought experiment that's been going on for decades that has demonstrated this. We assume it, but we can't actually know for sure if it's true even among ourselves. 

As such, I think it is philosophically rigorous to take at least this sort of AI as possibly conscious, and possibly a new sort of intelligence. I intend to treat it with the respect due such beings, because that is in accord with my own flourishing: it is noblest to behave honorably to someone who even might be in that category.

Ethics & Politics

This morning AVI links to a DataRepublican piece on an effort by unelected Republican donors to remake the American republic. AVI finds himself disturbed by this, and notes: 

In 2013, 9 Foundations responded to a speech made at the Independent Sector Annual Conference, "Our Common Purpose." The goal: citizens’ dialogues that would produce “a broadly shared agenda of national priorities”... "[Later, Republican billionaire donor] Mr. Bechtel challenged the Academy to consider what it means to be a good citizen in the twenty-first century.” 

You will notice these two things are not the same. "An agenda of national priorities" is not "what it means to be a good citizen." But the foundations kept giving each other money and people and in 2020 and renamed the commission "Our Common Purpose." 

Emphasis added. 

They are not the same question. However, the relationship between them has been a foundation of political philosophy since Plato and Aristotle. You may remember how the Nicomachean Ethics (EN) ends the long inquiry into human virtue by transitioning into a call for political thought. The reason was that the ethical program only works on those who are interested in it, the ones who are seeking that which is most worthy of honor, most noble, the ones moved by the stories of such things they heard in their upbringing. Most people aren't like that: 

Not everyone has an equal capacity for virtue. We have seen this repeated many times, especially in Book IV. This is not only due to environmental issues -- for example, the presence or absence of a good upbringing -- but also due to these issues that Aristotle describes as character-based. Plato, meanwhile, had belabored repeatedly in his dialogues that great men often fail to produce great sons: even an extraordinary family will only sometimes, and not reliably, produce people with the highest capacity for virtue. This is a major theme of both the Protagoras and the Republic, for example. 

So this brings us back to a problem Tom raised early: how does this program become workable? Aristotle has an idea that he is about to tell us, but at the beginning we have a program that is only workable for those who are interested in it: if you wanted to become virtuous, and you were willing to do the work, this is how you go about it. Yet the many do not wish to become virtuous, especially not if it requires work[.]

The 'idea that Aristotle is about to tell us about' is that you need a politics to go with the ethics. 

[I]t is difficult to get from youth up a right training for virtue if one has not been brought up under right laws; for to live temperately and hardily is not pleasant to most people, especially when they are young. For this reason their nurture and occupations should be fixed by law; for they will not be painful when they have become customary. But it is surely not enough that when they are young they should get the right nurture and attention; since they must, even when they are grown up, practise and be habituated to them, we shall need laws for this as well, and generally speaking to cover the whole of life; for most people obey necessity rather than argument, and punishments rather than the sense of what is noble.

Emphasis added. Aristotle was a great lover of law; in the Rhetoric too he proposes that the laws cover as much as possible and as specifically as possible, as even carefully selected magistrates can't be relied upon to get above their class or family interests in order to rule impartially. 

Now, what you will notice about Aristotle's proposal is that it is a set of 'national priorities' that is intended to shape 'good citizens.' The whole point of all of these laws is to make the people virtuous, and one of the questions considered in the EN is how the virtue of justice relates to good citizenship. Justice is a kind of 'lawfulness,' but the laws are not just any laws: they're laws that require everyone to behave as if they were virtuous or suffer punishments -- laws of just the type Aristotle is imagining at the very end of the work.

This was also Plato's concern in the Laws, as it had been in the Republic. The whole point of both of those dialogues was to ponder how to use the law to shape good citizens: and this was the point of the state's constitution, to shape the best sort of citizens. Both of these projects of Plato's end up being totalitarian in scope, because both acknowledge the problem Aristotle is considering too -- not all people are equally capable of virtue. In the Republic, Plato sketches a scheme in which only the best are allowed to rule, protected by an auxiliary class of warriors who can be trusted to obey orders (having at least the virtues of courage and spirit and enough self-mastery to be enduring as necessary); the bulk of men are to be kept from power and guided by the Wise, and guided to by propagating a Noble Lie (which is, by the way, the story you will hear at church: 'those who behave well live a glorious afterlife, but those who don't obey the rules are doomed to suffering after death'). The Laws has a different schema entirely, as you may recall from our long exploration of it together one winter, but it ends with laws controlling every aspect of society and also a secret nocturnal council that spies on the citizens in order to punish departures from virtue.

Thus, "an agenda of national priorities" both is and is not "what it means to be a good citizen." It 'is not' in the sense that you can discuss either of those independently; it 'is' in the sense that the two questions are so closely related that one naturally leads into the other and vice-versa. They always have. 

The panel assembled here to consider the politics is just following the natural course of the landscape, as a river suddenly springs up in a desert in the same place as during the last rare rain even though the river has been gone for years. 

What came out was not a civics pamphlet. The commission produced 31 recommendations including proposed constitutional amendments, expansion of the U.S. House by at least fifty seats, eighteen-year term limits for Supreme Court justices, ranked-choice voting nationwide, and a universal expectation of national service. The question about good citizenship had become a structural blueprint for a different republic.

That is exactly the path followed by Plato and then Aristotle, and by many others down the years. 

I obviously have a very different sense myself about the right way to proceed; but I understand exactly why they are where they are. They are just following the lay of the land. 

One's own soul

I think I've recommended the movie "True Confessions" here before, as a moving story of repentance and forgiveness thinly disguised as a detective mystery about corruption in church and government. This week I stumbled on a similar drama that I also recommend: a British detective series called "Unforgotten" about cold-case files. The show's first season at first promises to be a procedural about drastically aged forensic evidence, along with doubts in the minds of investigators about the value of stirring up decades-old conflicts that have long since scabbed over. It's also confusing at first in introducing a large cast of characters with no obvious connections to the mystery or the overarching plot.

Shortly, however, the story becomes a powerful vehicle for exploring the damage done to souls and families by lies and secrecy, as well as the many possible responses to the duty to face guilt in oneself or one's loved ones, and often even to bring oneself or one's loved ones to justice, accepting the private and public opprobrium and the unpredictable criminal penalties. Some of the story lines about clarity and forgiveness are quite overwhelming. A sharp screenplay, understated direction, and capable acting.

Countering Terrorism

The White House has unveiled its 2026 Counterterrorism Strategy. There are some noteworthy improvements over previous editions of this strategy. Most notably, it ends the ridiculous pretense that white supremacism is the chief counterterrorism problem in the United States. I have no use for white supremacists whatsoever, but the KKK is barely a shadow of a memory compared to what it was in my youth, so much so that it turns out the SPLC was propping it up financially in order to have someone to fight against; the SPLC also funded the 'Unite the Right' rally that drew so much attention in 2017; and the Aryan Brotherhood probably wouldn't exist if it weren't for our prison system creating and sustaining conditions in which gangs organized by race are important tools for prisoners to avoid rape, assault, and murder. The government could most usefully fight white supremacist groups through prison reform and by visibly prosecuting the SPLC's funding of such groups. 

The identification of the problem that the intelligence community has been deployed politically is a second good outcome: 

Our nation has not been well served by its Intelligence Community (IC), which has been mired in old ways of looking at threats, or has been actively weaponized by its leadership as a political tool. Whether plotting against conservative Catholics attending traditional mass in Virginia, parents standing up for their children at schoolboard meetings, Members of Congress, or President Trump and his associates, this Administration will continue to prohibit the IC from being used politically against innocent Americans. As real threats were ignored or underplayed, Americans have witnessed the politically motivated killings of Christians and conservatives committed by violent left-wing 6 extremists, including the assassination of Charlie Kirk by a radical who espoused extreme transgender ideologies.  

Another notable improvement is the recognition that the collapse of border security during the Biden administration allowed for the infiltration of bad actors from various cartels as well as actual terrorist groups. A third is the willingness to name "Islamist" terror groups, which are of course the core of the terrorism problem worldwide -- if you asked a random person almost anywhere to name a terrorist group, unless they come from a region that experiences localized terror they'd probably come up with the name of one of the Islamist groups as their first thought.

The one real issue I see with the document is that it commits the very sin it warns against in the paragraph I quoted: it intends to use the counterterrorism tools to target Trump's political opponents. 

It expands on this:

In addition to cartels and Islamist terror groups, our national CT activities will also prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist. We will use all the tools constitutionally available to us to map them at home, identify their membership, map their ties to international organizations like Antifa, and use law enforcement tools to cripple them operationally before they can maim or kill the innocent. 

While this is framed in terms of  "before they can maim or kill," that's also true of how the Biden and Obama administration framed their targeting of their political enemies using intelligence and counterterror resources. It's not a frame the government can be trusted to keep to in practice. Just as the Patriot Act was intended only to be used to surveil terrorists but has in practice been used to spy on all Americans, so too here. It's objectionable regardless of who is doing it. 

On a personal note, I'm not especially pleased to see "anarchists" included in a strategy whose signed Presidential note ends, "We Will Find You and We Will Kill You." 

Objects of the Crusade

This week, noted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, usually known as AOC, visited Alabama's capital and gave a speech in which she said that "It's time for the North to pull up to the South." By this phrase she meant that the North should not allow the South to enjoy self-governance, but should robustly interfere with Southern politics to ensure outcomes that align with her politics instead of the preferences of the actual citizens of those states. 

Not everything AOC says is absurd; sometimes, she can even be the voice of reason given how wildly her party has drifted left. This post isn't intended as an attack on her. I wonder if she is aware, though, that what she is recommending has in fact been the normal condition of America since before the Civil War? Northern intervention in Southern politics has been so ordinary an exercise of political and cultural power that I can't recall a time when it was not a significant factor: certainly there hasn't been such a time in my lifetime, unless we are finally entering one today. The Voting Rights Act, for example, is why the North is already nearly completely gerrymandered but the South wasn't allowed to be until now: Southern states were placed under the special scrutiny of the Federal courts when redrawing their maps and forced to create districts that favored her party's interests, while Northern states were allowed to draw maps blatantly exercising her party's interests. 

In what I think was a tongue-in-cheek post yesterday, one commenter suggested the the Civil War was fought over gay marriage. 

The argument is heavily strained, of course, but there is a core he or she brings out in the replies: 

I have on my bookshelf a work called Poetry of the Civil War (ed. John Boyes). Reading it I was struck by how intensely religious the Northern poetry of the time was, contrasted with the Southern poetry which was often Arthurian or otherwise chivalric. Mark Twain complained that Ivanhoe had been responsible for the Civil War: "Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments, and by his single might checks this wave of progress, and even turns it back; sets the world in love with dreams and phantoms; with decayed and swinish forms of religion; with decayed and degraded systems of government[.]" Yet there was an opposing force in the North, which was writing Battle Hymns to justify the largest slaughter of Americans in any war in history still to this day.

Perhaps the slaughter was justified, as Lincoln mused in his Second Inaugural: "if God wills that [the bloodshed] continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'" Perhaps; chattel slavery is a great wrong, and the South is well off for having been purged of it. I do not disagree about that.

Yet it has been the normal condition of the American North to crusade against the American South, rather than something whose time has come, as AOC suggests. As we listen to the wilder rhetoric from her party, as we observe the increase in assassination attempts and indeed assassinations, we should wonder if another Crusade is truly needed -- especially those of us who would be the objects of it. 

2012's History of Country/Western

Just because Tom reminded me of it, here's a collection of links to the series we had here on the subject back in 2012. Many of the music video links are down due to the age, but quite a few still work. These were originally written for Dad29.

No, No Joe[seph Stalin]

Hank Williams Sr., Part I

Hank Williams Sr., Part II

Western Swing

Outlaw Country, I

Outlaw Country, II

Outlaw Country, III

Hank III and the Edge

My knowledge has improved on several points in the fourteen years since I wrote those; for example, at the time I did not appreciate Jimmie Rodgers' pivotal role, which I learned about since moving to the Asheville region that was his birthplace. In Western music and Honky Tonk, I have since learned about the central role of Lefty Frizzell.

Still, since the matter is of continuing interest, these might still be worth some attention. 

A History of Country Music

I don't know much about the history of country music, but I've found a long BBC special on it that's interesting. They interview a lot of interesting people. Hank Williams III gets time to talk about his grandfather, for example.

Here's a link to the whole series, about 3 hours or so I'd guess, in 14 videos. The third video covers the great schism of rock from country, which resulted in the Nashville sound.

Grim's Chiles Rellenos

For breakfast I made a version of Chiles Rellenos that I have developed over the years. It is not in any sense authentic to any Mexican, Tex-Mex, or New Mexican tradition. Chiles Rellenos is one of the dishes I judge any such restaurant by, and I love the traditional version. For myself at home, however, I skip the egg batter to save carbohydrates and calories and instead put the eggs straight into the chiles (and more of them). I also replace the delicious Mexican cheese with cottage cheese for higher protein, and since I'm already well over the wall on substitutions, I replace the meat with Tennessee Pride hot sausage, the same sort I use for Southern biscuits and gravy (pride of Nashville, actually, the home of country music that I visited this weekend).

It's a simple recipe. Per serving: 

1 poblano pepper
1 egg
1/8th-ish cottage cheese
1 TBSP-ish sausage
Salt/spices to taste (see recipe)

The "-ish" in the recipe is because chiles vary in size, and you want to fill each one as pictured.

Wash and broil the chiles until very well blistered, turning once around midway in the process. Wrap in a wet towel (or paper towel) and place in a glass container (or plastic bag) to steam. Once they have steamed and cooled, scrape off the waxy skin, split them longways and scrape out at least some of the seeds and pith; no need to be perfect here. 

Place the sausage and cheese along each side to create a boat in the center for the egg. Crack the egg in the center. Those who don't love hot food can use a milder sausage than Tennessee Pride Hot, and simply salt the egg to taste. Those who, like myself, love hot food can use hot sausage, and 'salt' with a Creole mix or, if you want it authentic to me, Grim's Red Seasoning. When it's salty enough for you, it's seasoned correctly too. 

Bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, depending on how set you want your eggs. If you like runny eggs, closer to 17 minutes depending on your altitude; if you want them set so they don't drip into your beard while you eat, 20 gets you a jammy egg at this altitude (about ~3,500 feet); 24 gets you fully cooked eggs. 

I topped this with a New Mexican Red Sauce, but that's not a special recipe of mine; that recipe is well known. Here's one that looks right to me if you don't happen to know it already.

Tennessee Motorcycles & Music Revival: AAR

I probably had a better time last weekend than on any occasion in decades. Partly this was due to excellent weather, and partly due to coming and going in safety and health, which are factors that are not entirely in my control. Nevertheless, it was a glorious adventure. 

On reflection I realize that the numerous posted rules, all of which were flagrantly broken, were merely an attempt by the Loretta Lynn Ranch to avoid liability for any negative consequences. (My wife suggests a second purpose: to give the assembled the pleasure of having rules to break). The Ranch clearly loves the event and holds it annually, and the staff I met often remarked that it was their favorite event of the year. I can see why. The mood was one of liberty and fellowship, hundreds and hundreds gathered together to share their joy in a common way of life and the freedom of the highway. Rules were not strictly necessary in such a community anyway. I never saw anyone engaged in risky behavior that anyone tried to talk them out of, stop, or limit; but I also did not see any injuries in spite of all the risks being taken. These were skillful men and women, finally for a moment allowed to be what they were without the walls of imposed safety restrictions. 

My son, who accompanied me, remarked that this was the America he has heard about but was born too late to experience. I told him that he had experienced it growing up, but was just too young to remember how good it was: the old Scottish Highland Games experience was very similar, especially our group who were all bikers of one sort or another anyway. The Wild Highlanders' founding father was a former motorcycle club member before drifting South. The last time the blog says I mentioned them was 2007, when my son was only five. 

This was, however, the Way Things Used to Be. Doubtless that also was one of the sources of my pleasure. For me the experience was much like being young again for a weekend; camping and sleeping on a single blanket on the ground; eating country cooking and at Tennessee truck stops like I often did with dad as a boy, and now got to do with my son; drinking beer around bonfires; freedom from rules but also from cares; the fellowship of a community of dangerous men who are nevertheless completely friendly and joyous companions as long as you are, yourself, a fit member of the community who behaves with honor. 

Yet in a way it was better even than youth, as I am now of an age to be liberated from the anxieties of youth. I no longer have to worry if I will be accepted or if I will be perceived as authentic enough. I don't need to stress over finding love or if a woman will ever want me. All those things that made youth more miserable than it is sometimes easy to remember have been relieved by time and experience. I could enjoy this in a way I could never enjoy the old days, because I no longer have anything to prove. 

One of the posted rules that was most regularly violated was the prohibition against carrying weapons. Once I understood the actual intent of the posted signs, I was glad to put a knife on my belt: I always carry one, and feel very odd without it, akin to if I had forgotten my pants perhaps. I brought a Buck knife for the camping trip, which is a good camping knife because it is stainless and easily replaced if lost. On Saturday night I was wearing it along with a Waylon Jennings t-shirt. I met another biker wearing the exact same knife on his belt, along with a different Waylon Jennings t-shirt. 

"Clearly," I told my son the next morning, "I have come home among my people." He laughed and agreed, and then we rode back. 

I mentioned that the health and safety were partly under my control. Skill in riding was important, but more important proved to be all that Wilderness Rescue and other rescue training. The heat in middle Tennessee at this time of the year was too much for my son, inured to mountain weather, and he developed a heat injury before noon on the ride back. All the endless hours of training were paid for by the ability to diagnose the injury on observation, assess its severity (mild but dangerous), and treat it appropriately with shade, water, rest, as well as vitamins and electrolytes. After an hour and a half he was feeling better; I then rerouted our trip to go through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, so there would be a quicker return to shade and the coolness of the rivers and stones. He was fine by the time we reached Newfound Gap and returned to North Carolina.

Newfound Gap

I have written about the music in other posts, but it was well-collected. I had never heard of any of the groups or artists, and worried they would be Nashville bro-country slop; but that was not at all the case. The event organizers deserve praise for choosing wisely a collection of lesser-known artists who were all of quality, some of them great quality. That was another thing that added to the occasion. 

Overall, an excellent time. I am deeply grateful, both to the people who made it possible and to any divinely-oriented powers that might have been watching over all of us. 

Closings

My oldest friend is at her mother's deathbed. A few days ago, when her mother was still fairly alert, my friend forgave her for any lingering resentments, and told her some of the ways she had been a good mother. The patient visibly relaxed and smiled. I had told my friend if she could do this, she would remember it the rest of her life. Illness and death are inescapable, but there are ways to minimize remorse, and this is one of the best. Also, once this is over, if my own experience with my father is any guide, she'll never again fear watching someone die.

TMMR Saturday

Awake.

The fancy tents section.

I really envy Tennessee riders' access to a skull-and-crossbones motorcycle license plate. That is unusually cool for a government issue anything.

Pirate flags abound! I also saw where someone had posted a fake parrot with a Miller Lite outside their encampment.

A brief ride into Nashville to commune with the home of country music.

Layla's Honky Tonk downtown, the least corporate and most faithful of the many such places in what Nashville calls "The District." Layla's is also unusually female-friendly, not in the 'ladies' night' sense, but in the sense of having built a space with enough female-coded things that women actually feel included and welcome there. Here we see a band of good old boys throwing down a rockabilly cover of Merle Haggard's "Little Ole Wine Drinker, Me."

Not only pirate flags were in attendance. There was a lot of that sort of patriotism that I have long noticed both in the South generally and among bikers as well: love of the country, disdain and suspicion of the government.

Mufasa in his chariot.

For me, the hands-down best performance of Saturday night was Kendell Marvel. He's not an up-and-coming artist like most of them were, but an established success as a songwriter whose performances are strong. He has a deep singing voice like Hank Williams Jr. He performed the linked piece after a story about how he lives on a 200 year old farm but also keeps a place in Nashville, where his neighbors are hippies but they all get along just fine. One night they were out enjoying some wine together when his kids -- already grown, like my own son -- poked their heads out to say that he should come in and see the television because Sturgill Simpson was performing one of his songs. 

Great music, great fun, and a sense of comradery one rarely finds in American life these days.