The Whirlwind

As the semester winds down, the pace of my life seems to accelerate. Suddenly there are things to do and places to go--and a bunch of assignments for which procrastination is no longer an option. I'm livin' in the whirlwind, baby!

Among the many things to do, I gotta say that going to the many guest lectures offered by the UTK History Department is one of my favorites. At one such event, an historian (I forget where she's from) presented her in-progress research on the Indian chief Massasoit and his place in American collective memory. Massasoit was one of the Indians who greeted the Pilgrims upon their 1620 arrival in Plymouth. This historian traced the weird story of the statue of Massasoit at Plymouth and the copies of the statue that found their way across the U.S.  Of course, it's all about public memory, so I really enjoyed it. 

Another lecture I recently attended was on the subject of a woman named Merz Tate, someone who has sort of fallen off the historical radar. Tate was an African American female intellectual, educated at Oxford, and quite well known for her take on world affairs back in the 1940s and 1950s. The lecture was a good one, although the historian presenting was not a wiz at modern technology (PowerPoint problems). 

These lectures are a terrific opportunity to find out what is happening in the wider world of historical research. I try to go to as many as I can, and I wonder why ol' Sac State didn't have programs like this. 

Of course, my madcap social life continues, adding to the whirlwind. Calhoun's on the River seems to be home-away-from-home for my little band of classmates. 

As I have mentioned before, the weather has warmed and I've taken to hanging out by the pool again. Of course, Leatherback consistently makes his presence known. It's almost as though he were committing some slow form of suicide by actively courting melanoma. But that's not the worst of it. He's acquired something new since last summer....

Miss Two-Piece has entered the picture!

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Leatherback has a sweetheart. I caught my first glimpse of this unusual creature while sharing a special birthday telephone call with my beloved nephew, Joe. I had just put some clothes in the washer when he called, so I grabbed a lounge chair in the shade and settled in for a nice gab fest. When Leatherback and Miss Two-Piece arrived on the scene, I was compelled to interrupt the conversation so I could describe to Joe the scene unfolding before me. 

The sunbathing couple was pretty disruptive upon their arrival in the pool area. They needed to move their chairs around, move one of the small tables to suit them, and generally get themselves situated for maximum exposure to ultra-violet rays. Then, as Leatherback turned on his little music-making device from yesteryear, Miss Two-Piece slathered herself with what appeared to be some sort of bodybuilding shiny oil. Leatherback took a couple of generic beers from the ever-present cooler and they each fired up a cigarette. While Leatherback is soft-spoken, Miss Two-Piece has a voice that, unfortunately, carried to the other side of the pool and washed over me. She has that harsh, Hillary-Clintonish voice with a just a hint of smoker's rasp to make it uniquely her own.

And that drawl!  I never realized until I lived here that there are two distinctly different drawls. There is the cultured, sweet-to-the-ears drawl of people like Tess, Matthew, Michael, and Liz. That kind of drawl says "welcome to the South" and "please enjoy our down home hospitality."  That drawl brings humor, wit, intelligence, and kindness with it. But that's not the drawl of Miss Two-Piece. Her's is the strident tone of someone living in a trailer park and wailing about someone prying their Confederate flag/assault rifle/girls' bathroom from their cold, dead hands. She could have been the woman on the bus tour Yvette and I took to Giverny years ago, the woman who, after an hour-long speech by the tour guide about the life of Claude Monet, got to Monet's house and inquired, "What did he do for a living that he could afford this house?"

And it wasn't just the voice of Miss Two-Piece. It was the constant stream of cigarettes moving to and from her drawling mouth. It was also the moment when she bent down in her two-piece swimsuit to smell some flowers and gave us all a good look at her covered-yet-robust behind. 

God knows, I have no room to criticize anybody's body shape. And Miss Two-Piece's is a far sleeker shape than my own. But for fuck's sake, woman, cover up that big white belly!  It's too much, I tell you!  

I am left to ponder how often Miss Two-Piece will grace the poolside with her overly exposed presence. I guess I'll find out this summer. For now, my focus remains on finishing the semester and, in less than two weeks, heading home to see my dingo, my babies, my parents, my BFF Yvette, the Princess, and so many others. 

For now, it's Knighty-Knight from Knoxville!