Category: Huntsville

Fly Over

It was a most unusual request to make at the end of a funeral: Please exit the building, walk to the parking lot, and look toward the sky.

Out the mourning masses went, the gravity of their grief pressing down on their shoulders like some kind of inviolable physical law. They knew what was coming, but the poetry of the moment still startled and stirred their souls. Two jets, one trailing a colorful, smoky ribbon of tribute, streaked past and were gone an instant later, reminding the mourners of the brevity of it all, of the “need for speed” in making things right in the time that we have.… Read the rest

Pray for Lamar

I realize that very few of you know Lamar Jackson, but take my word for it: He’s a great guy. Lamar played club and high school soccer with Number One Son, and he is a sophomore pharmacy student at Ole Miss. Like many college kids in town, he had come back to Huntsville to rendezvous with friends at Big Spring Jam. On his way back to Oxford, he apparently fell asleep at the wheel and was injured badly in a single car accident near Tupelo Sunday evening.

Things were touch and go for a while and he was on a respirator, but he is now able to breathe on his own.… Read the rest

Ivy League or Bust at Age Seven

Eyegal has just started doing some substitute teaching at a local, K-12 prep school that has the reputation (well-earned, I believe) of providing the finest academic training in North Alabama. There the sons and daughters of the area’s doctors, lawyers and corporate heads begin their long odyssey of learning which will someday lead to them taking their rightful place on top of the socioeconomic pile.

And there are others too who are not quite so well off, the sons and daughters of faculty plus those who are there on scholarship, trying to rise above bad starts and bad situations. She’s been teaching first and second graders, and overall, she’s found the kids to be bright, polite and charming to a fault and eager to learn.… Read the rest

Fire. At. Will.

JRB and I recently found ourselves in a discussion over the willingness of Alabama Coach Nick Saban to go for two points during the Vanderbilt game a couple weeks ago. He felt like St. Nick was “piling on” the points, and I felt that he wasn’t. One of the points I brought up was my memory of Alabama’s thrashing of the Virginia Tech Hokies when they came to Blacksburg in 1973. That final was 77-6 even after The Bear had gone through the entire 3rd string, the waterboys and a couple of tuba players.

As I pointed to JRB, 77-6 is something to complain about, not a measly 2-point conversion in a relatively low-scoring game in which your QB has had trouble finding his mark inside the Red Zone and simply needs the practice.… Read the rest

The Measures of a Good Life

Barbara died a few days ago. She lived two doors down and had been sick for about a year. It wasn’t Alzheimer’s, but something similar, another heartless, wasting disease that took her away, bit by bit, to the horror and disappointment of her husband and family who could do little but simply love her and try to ease her passage to the other side. It was not an easy death.

I did not know her well, beyond an occasional casual conversation on the sidewalk or a friendly wave as she made her way out to retrieve her morning paper while I stumbled by at the conclusion of one of my morning runs.… Read the rest

A Sacred Bond Between Doctor and Patient

I was at work doing an eye exam, where else would I be? And by the time my first patient’s eyes were fully dilated, mine were too–only for a different reason.

As I finished his exam, I told him what was unfolding, that we were apparently under attack and no one was quite sure where it was going to stop.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he replied, the blood draining ever so slightly from his face.

To this day, I will occasionally call up a patient’s records on the computer and there it will be in bold relief–9/11/01, 8:00AM.… Read the rest

Man’s Best Friend–It’s Not Just a Phrase

And God said, “Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals, each according to its kind.” And it was so. God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

–Genesis 1:24-25

We had all wondered if Amazing Gracie the Wonderdog would remember Number One Son when he came home from college for the first time. On Friday evening, that question was answered in dramatic fashion.… Read the rest

It’s a Good Weekend When…

It’s a good weekend when…

  • The two soccer teams that your sons play for go a combined 4-1 for the weekend…
  • When you oldest son manages to travel from Tuscaloosa to Huntsville for a brief visit, then on to Atlanta for a Dave Matthews/Allman Brothers concert and then back to Tuscaloosa without getting into yet another wreck…
  • The Crimson Tide beats the so-called “experts'” 3 1/2 point spread against Vanderbilt and wins by a margin much closer to what you predicted…
  • You become a full-fledged convert to the Crimson Way by staying up late watching Auburn lose in OT to South Florida and then high-fiving it with Number Two Son, the former Vols fan…
  • You step on the scales and learn that you’ve actually lost 2 lbs over the past week and a half despite the fact that you haven’t run a single step…
  • You get to teach a class at church that you’re actually excited about (Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline)
  • Your friend who moved to Egypt shows up unexpectedly for a visit bringing with him his friend Akhmed who is visiting a Christian church for the first time in his life…
  • Akhmed enjoys your class and you get to visit with him for a while and make a new friend from a faraway place…
  • You get to teach Akhmed the all-purpose, always-appropriate phrase, “Roll Tide, Roll!”
… Read the rest

Those Sunburn Blues

sun.jpgWith temperatures in the triple digits this week, I had a flashback to a scene from a few years ago when our family sought relief from those sunburn blues in the form of a jazz concert at Big Spring Park in Huntsville. Afterwards, the muse struck, and the result was a wee little essay (or is it a beatnik poem?) which was published in The Huntsville Times about a week later:

A simmering sun burns off the last of the July haze and slips beneath the rim of the Von Braun Center.

Over by the Big Spring, the Grissom High School Jazz Band tunes up for its upcoming European tour in front of a hometown crowd.

… Read the rest

Grace, Raw and Uncensored

Grace can take a myriad of forms, but for a 16-year-old male who suddenly beholds the set of wheels that he has longed for all his life, this is Grace, raw and uncensored:

first-sight.jpg

When he was about 4-years-old, I recall taking Number Two Son to an outdoor store in Bowling Green, Kentucky where he spied the ride of his dreams: a colorful mountain bike that was several sizes too large. He just couldn’t conceive of why he couldn’t simply drive it off the lot, and he cried huge, Cadillac-sized tears. My heart broke a little bit watching that, but I hoped the day would come when that would be replaced with a scene like that above and those tears would be a distant memory.… Read the rest

Good Fences Make Bad Neighbors

For the most part, we’ve enjoyed our neighbors over the years and had good relations with them. But there’s always the exception. Like the septuagenarian widow next door who from the moment we moved in 12 years ago has viewed us at best as a modern-day reincarnation of the Adams Family and at worst as a clan of pesky rodents dead set on ruining her pristine, picture-perfect Southern Living magazine house and showcase yard.

Over the years, she’s accused us of various neighborly transgressions including damaging her sprinkler heads while mowing the property line (she actually has one sprinkler head on our property, and it’s never been damaged), mowing too far onto her property, not caring about or keeping a showcase lawn like hers (guilty!),… Read the rest

E. Coli Anyone?

One of my favorite restaurants in Huntsville, Little Rosie’s Taqueria, is in a bit of hot water over the largest outbreak of E. coli poisoning in Alabama in over 20 years. Or maybe they should have used more hot water, I’m not sure.

We eat at this place a lot, so I’m not sure how we managed to dodge this particular bullet. Of course, the lawyers are closely monitoring the situation (thank God!), and health inspectors are reassuring everyone that this was an isolated incident and that in fact Little Rosie’s, in the wake of this, is probably the safest place to eat in Huntsville.… Read the rest

Interesting Religious Reads

USA Today starts the week off with two interesting religious reads.

First, a report on the growing New Sanctuary Movement, a coalition of houses of worship which is providing shelter and protection to illegal immigrants.

Second, it seems at least some boomer offspring are outdoing their parents when it comes to faith and fervor.

I find the notion that sacred space might still exist and that it might be recognized by civil authorities in this post-everything world intriguing. During the Civil War, Union cavalry soldiers commandeered local Huntsville churches to serve as stables and barracks.

Well, except for one. Above the front door of the Episcopal Church of the Nativity is a marble inscription–“Reverence My Sanctuary”–taken from Leviticus 26:2.… Read the rest