Droopy Pants and Drippy Laws

Drought has gripped much of the south, while Texas, Oklahoma, and the upper midwest are plagued with storms and excess rain; either way, food prices are pressured upward. On top of the continuing violence in the Iraq mess is the rising boldness of the reformulating Taliban in Afghanistan, who has now taken to kidnapping foreigners. The sub-prime home lending crisis has crept into the general housing market, crimping everyone's home values and drying up credit. Misery and injustice are all-too-abundant.

But what has got Atlanta burning? Baggy pants, if the city council is to be believed.

Yep, Atlanta's city council has proposed an amendment to their indecency laws that bans baggy pants worn to reveal boxer shorts, the kind that urban black culture has made either popular or epidemic (your call). Ladies, wearing that waistline where your thongs show would also be illegal. Councilman and co-sponsor C. T. Martin said "I don't want young people thinking that half-dressing is the way to go. I want them to think about their future."

Their future? We're not talking about a full-torso tattoo. The solution is a lot easier than salt and a stick of butter.

Personally, the half-covered-seat look is just butt-ignorant. How many folks have felt an inkling to get a staple gun and affix some yahoo's britches up above the crack line? And it certainly doesn't look any better on some of the local appropriatin' white dudes where I live.

But the Atlanta amendment, and the similar local ordinances that have passed in Louisiana, is more ignorant than the look it combats. I think we can have a mature discussion of the value issues of hip-hop culture without resorting to dress codes. Besides, all of us adults drew the ire of our parents' generation with the way we dressed and groomed ourselves, from ten-inch pompadours to mod hair to purple hair, from spiked dog collars to the first Madonna look to the once-innocuous flannel shirt.

Though part of me may cheer a beating back of something that just looks stupid to me, we've had way too much government intervention the past few years. And, as I suggested above, we've got a lot more important things to be concerned with.

Overlooked Civil Rights Pioneer Dies at 90

I read today via Rational Review News Digest of the death of Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a woman who refused to give up her bus seat a decade prior to Rosa Parks' more famous act of civil disobedience. I'd never heard of Kirkaldy's act, which occurred on a Greyhound bus from Gloucester to Baltimore in 1944. She was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white couple and for resisting arrest. The former charge was appealed -- she willingly paid the $100 fine for resisting because she kicked the officer who tried to remove her, saying "Sometimes you are so enraged, you don't have time to be afraid" -- and the U. S. Supreme Court in 1946 struck down the Virginia law that mandated racial separation on buses as an invalid interference in interstate commerce. Kirkaldy was represented by an NAACP lawyer named Thurgood Marshall, later to become a Supreme Court justice himself.

Kirkaldy died last Friday at age 90 at her daughter's home. Her case did not get the notoriety that Rosa Parks' case did, but it led to the first Freedom Ride in 1947, where 16 civil rights activists rode buses and trains in the South testing the Supreme Court decision, and eventually to Parks' famous act in 1955. President Bill Clinton gave Kirkaldy the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001, the second highest civilian honor a president can bestow. Asked where her courage to not change her seat came from, she is quoted as saying "I can't understand how anyone would have done otherwise."

In an age where courage in the face of governmental power has been lacking until lately, Kirkaldy's passing deserves notice and her actions deserve spotlight.

Props to Glavine and Rodriguez

As a postscript to my earlier post "The Scandalous Sporting Life," let's note credit where it's due to this weekend's milestones achieved on the diamond. Tom Glavine reached the 300 win plateau yesterday, only the 23rd pitcher to earn 300 in MLB. Also, Alex Rodriguez not only reached the 500 home run mark this weekend, he became the youngest player to get to 500. Already, A-Rod has been hailed as the best hope to reach -- honorably -- the all-time home run record and eclipse that other guy who just tied Hank Aaron's mark of 755 this weekend.

Sometimes It's 'How' Before It's 'What'

The empty page before me now
The pen is in my hand
The words don't come so easy, but I'm trying

- Kerry Livgren, from "On The Other Side" by Kansas

This examinant ode to being stuck while writing always comes to mind when I'm, um, stuck while writing. I wonder, often impatiently, why ideas don't come when my conscious mind wants to create and express but my subconscious acts like it wasn't consulted.

Approaches to writing may vary, but I see it primarily in two camps. The one I historically belong to is reliance on motivation. There's just something you find that you have to say, and the writing becomes finding the best way to get across that which you just have to express. The other camp I have started dabbling with, what I call mining your experiences and interests in the hope that you find something that strikes your fancy. You're not particularly moved to write; you just sit your ass down and play with ideas or things that happened or how you see things that happened.

A songwriting book I once read by Kenny Rogers decried the former camp, stating that a certain writer of the First Edition's hit songs did not rely on "fickle inspiration" but on a regimented schedule of writing. My historic mistrust of that camp aside, I believe that it all depends on what you're comfortable with. So I'm dabbling with the mining approach along with the motivation approach to see if I can get comfortable with mining and still produce the level of writing I'm used to. And just maybe I can do away with the dry patches where I'm less inspired and can still create something worth the effort.

All this assumes that real life doesn't get in the way . . . as it does at least occasionally.

Never did decide what to say this time . . . just some thought on how to go about saying something, even when you're not sure and the mind starts as blank as the page.