Fly-by.

I try to engineer my week so that Fridays belong to me and only me. I start working on Sunday afternoons, and I front-load my work week to the point that by Wednesday, I am starting to get a little breathing room. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but if all goes as planned, by noon Friday, I’m cruising.

Sometimes it doesn’t go as planned. Last Friday, I got a call from one of my friends from my fellowship year, an Israeli who’s now U.S. bureau chief for Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest daily (I think) in Tel Aviv. Could I put together something quickly on the Flint Slasher? For actual money? Anything for you, Adi. (And anything for a little money. I spend so much time writing for little or nothing, I’d forgotten what that’s like.) And so off I rolled around lunchtime, cruising for Genesee County instead.

And? A very sad place. Granted, I was on the po’ side of town. I remember, after “Roger & Me” insulted conservatives with the suggestion that perhaps capitalism isn’t win-win for everyone, reading something specific to Flint in one of their ideological house organs, which arrived by the truckload at my paper’s editorial page. Yes, downtown Flint retail was dead, the writer said, but that’s because everyone was shopping at the brand-new mall, etc. etc. Perhaps. (That’s certainly what happened in Fort Wayne.) And surely a comprehensive tour of the area with experts would have revealed a fuller picture of the place. But I drove around a bit, and my overwhelming impression was Springsteenian: Foreman said these jobs are goin’, boys, and they ain’t comin’ back to your hometown. In Detroit, the ruin is Roman — you can see what was once a great city under the decay. In Flint, the disaster befell someplace far more ordinary. Which made it starker, and sadder.

The term for these sorts of excursions is “parachute journalism.” I was happy to pack my chute and leave at the end of the day. And the result? Your basic fly-by visit by some empty suit.

Poor Adi. Deadline was 2 p.m. Saturday, but that was for the final, finished product. Translation is a bear, especially on deadline.

And so the week begins. It’s a special one for one of our group: Laura Lippman’s latest, “I’d Know You Anywhere,” drops tomorrow, and oh, how the praise has flowed. Amazon says it will be arriving by tomorrow, but hasn’t shipped yet. “Three Stations,” which I also pre-ordered and is published the same day, has shipped. So I’ll pay twice for shipping. But I’m happy to give my fave writer all-important “velocity” in first-week sales.

A little bloggage? Ohhh-kay:

An outsider experiences fair food, swoons. A nice wrap-up of what’s being deep-fried this year.

The Diego Rivera murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts, reconsidered.

I noticed this when I was in Ann Arbor a few years back. It blew my mind then, and still does: College students who check in with their parents multiple times a day. I called my mom once a week, and that was because we had free long distance (Ohio Bell was our family’s coal mine).

And now, having flown by, I must fly. Ta ta.

Posted at 8:52 am in Current events, Detroit life, Popculch |
 

46 responses to “Fly-by.”

  1. coozledad said on August 16, 2010 at 9:29 am

    Before I quit eating meat I always considered deep fried chicken livers the cliff-diving of the carnivore experience. You’re eating the fatty toxic filtration system of an animal that, left to its own devices, likes nothing better than a nest of warm pinkies, or to knock through a steaming turd to get at undigested grains or pulsing helminths.
    If that’s not enough, you could go all Leopold Bloom and fry pork kidneys and dust them with sprinkles. Or pork brains. My uncle used to eat them with scrambled eggs, right up to the day his heart thrombosed in the yard and he hit the ground dead.
    Wilbur Anderson, a kid from Tennessee I grew up with, used to say it was impossible to bust a cow eyeball with a hammer*. It would just go shooting away. Well, why not fry the damn thing and put sugar on it instead?

    *post slaughter, of course.

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  2. 4dbirds said on August 16, 2010 at 9:57 am

    We live 10 miles from where the Flint Slasher was doing his dirty work in Leesburg, Virginia. Glad he was caught. Since they think he was targeting dark-skinned men, I’m interested in what he says was his reason.

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  3. Julie Robinson said on August 16, 2010 at 10:46 am

    My sister’s first job out of college was as an extension agent in Genesee County, in the mid to late 70’s. Even then it was an unlovely and hardscrabble place.

    My week was back-loaded with serving as home base for visiting family, baking birthday cakes*, and sewing costumes for our son’s latest play. I’m leaving in the morning to help our daughter pack up her Chicago apartment and will be there all week. My feet hurt, sleep has been short and I even skipped church yesterday.

    *Nothing as spectacular as Nance’s peach/blueberry beauty, but one was a homemade German Chocolate, as per the birthday girl’s wishes.

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  4. Laura Lippman said on August 16, 2010 at 10:48 am

    You will know me by my velocity — or lack thereof! Seriously, thanks for the support. A lot of big books on sale this week, so I might get lost in the shuffle. But the reviews are nice and I am having my launch at the beach, so I have no complaints. And I come to you after a fairly productive morning, in which I revised a 2000-word chapter, although I made the rookie mistake of not saving my work and lost a big chunk, then had to redo it.

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  5. adrianne said on August 16, 2010 at 10:53 am

    Looking forward to Laura’s latest! I’ve gone through most of my summer reading: Latest weird detective find (courtesy of my husband) is John Burdett’s series on Bangkok detective Sonchai Jitleecheep, all called “Bangkok” something. I went through them all on Cape Cod, am searching for another series.

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  6. Sue said on August 16, 2010 at 11:12 am

    This past weekend I finished a book about Emily Dickinson and the family feuds and power struggles that went on after she died. I’ve got a book of her poetry but never worshiped her like a lot of people, so I don’t know that much about her and didn’t realize there was this huge ‘Shy Emily’ cult, like the misinformed ‘Sweet Aunt Jane’ Austen fans. It was an interesting book (“Lives Like Loaded Guns”) and left me with two impressions:
    Emily could be creepy, but whether that was her nature or the reclusiveness brought on by trying to hide her (possible) epilepsy I don’t know; and
    Emily’s brother Austin was ahead of his time, in that the term ‘douchebag’ didn’t come into use until a hundred years after he died.

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  7. mark said on August 16, 2010 at 11:18 am

    adrianne-

    Small world, sort of. I’m two books into the ‘Bangkok’ series, having purchased them all on the advice of a friend living in Bangkok. Hauled them with me to Thailand last month thinking that I would finish the four before returning. Incredible good luck with stand-by flight passes allowed me business-class seats, and the reasonably interesting plots lost out to much more valuable sleep. Once in-country, they lost out to the far more entertaining environs.

    Finishing them at my leisure. They are not bad, and certainly a little different for the genre, but I wonder if I would enjoy them as much if I weren’t familiar with the City and culture.

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  8. LAMary said on August 16, 2010 at 11:34 am

    My impression of Emily Dickinson will forever be colored by Billy Collins’ poem:

    Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes
    by Billy Collins

    First, her tippet made of tulle,
    easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
    on the back of a wooden chair.

    And her bonnet,
    the bow undone with a light forward pull.

    Then the long white dress, a more
    complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
    buttons down the back,
    so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
    before my hands can part the fabric,
    like a swimmer’s dividing water,
    and slip inside.

    You will want to know
    that she was standing
    by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
    motionless, a little wide-eyed,
    looking out at the orchard below,
    the white dress puddled at her feet
    on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

    The complexity of women’s undergarments
    in nineteenth-century America
    is not to be waved off,
    and I proceeded like a polar explorer
    through clips, clasps, and moorings,
    catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
    sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

    Later, I wrote in a notebook
    it was like riding a swan into the night,
    but, of course, I cannot tell you everything –
    the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
    how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
    how there were sudden dashes
    whenever we spoke.

    What I can tell you is
    it was terribly quiet in Amherst
    that Sabbath afternoon,
    nothing but a carriage passing the house,
    a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

    So I could plainly hear her inhale
    when I undid the very top
    hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

    and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
    the way some readers sigh when they realize
    that Hope has feathers,
    that reason is a plank,
    that life is a loaded gun
    that looks right at you with a yellow eye.

    http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/assignments/poem-a-day/21.html

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  9. Moe99 said on August 16, 2010 at 11:45 am

    I am number 97 on the Seattle Public library’s wait list for Laura’s book. It has four rave reviews already. Looking forward to it!

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  10. Jen said on August 16, 2010 at 12:22 pm

    Nowadays I call my mom pretty often because we enjoy chatting, but in college (especially my freshman year) I generally called once a week unless I had a major problem. Although, we did email every day – since I lived alone in the dorm my freshman year my mom wanted to make sure I was alive. I used to actually email and tell her what was going on … my sister would often just email her and write “I’m alive!” I don’t think it’s bad to be close to your parents, but especially when they first leave the nest, college kids need that independence, whether they want it or not.

    The most disturbing trend, I think, is parents calling professors, tech services, etc., when their college kid has a problem. My sister is a librarian at a college and was working the help desk and she said that most of her phone calls for troubleshooting came from parents, not students. I realize parents feel like they are helping their children, but they are really doing them a disservice. Those are probably the same parents my brother-in-law, who works at an electric company call center, talks to when they are setting up electric service for their adult children.

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  11. kayak woman said on August 16, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    My kids almost never called me when they were at college (’06 and ’09 grads). They were successful students and they certainly did not need me! We still don’t talk on the phone much. We all prefer to email and text. Well, except that the younger one recently moved back in from her summer sublet so theoretically I can talk to her face to face. If I am awake and sentient at 3 AM or whenever. (Anyone know of any young 20-something Ann Arborites looking for a housemate? Downtown/Old West Side area preferred.)

    My nieces were much more closely tied to their mother in college but then my brother died after the oldest one’s freshman year so that may have changed the family dynamics a bit.

    I agree with Jen. It is totally appalling that parents are calling professors, etc. I could go on and on (and on) about that but I won’t. Cheers!

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  12. Dorothy said on August 16, 2010 at 1:35 pm

    Count me among those appalled by parents who call professors, libraries, electric companies, etc. on behalf of their adult children. How else will they become independent and learn how to do it themselves if I did it for them? Pish tosh that’s just nuts. My daughter calls me much more frequently than I call her, but it’s because we are good buddies. It seems we always have something to laugh about. It’s better to tells someone something funny and hear their response than to type a brief version of the same story in a text or email. We’ve been known to make notes about things we want to remember to tell each other.

    I think I’m the guiltiest party here for changing subjects so I’ll just continue in that vein. I just have to share this with you guys: we got a new laptop on Saturday and it’s our first Mac!! I was blown out of my tennis shoes on Saturday by the salesman’s demo of last year’s Mac Book Pro. We got it for $900 less than what it was going for last year, so we’re pretty happy. It’s an awfully large learning curve for us, though, so we’re going to get schooled in all-things-Mac this weekend when our kids and their significant others are together in Pittsburgh for the weekend. We are going to a 25th anniversary party for my sister Diane and her hubby (today is the actual anniversary).

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  13. Rana said on August 16, 2010 at 1:43 pm

    I think, if executed properly, the chocolate covered bacon would be wonderful. I’m not such a fan of the fried thing on a stick, but mmm, bacon, chocolate.

    When I was in college, none of us had cell phones, and the only outside line was a pay phone down the stairs, in a little graffiti-covered booth. (There was also a phone in the hall on each floor, but that was just for on-campus calls.) So calling once a week was reasonable, and because it was long-distance collect, we tended to keep the calls short. My mother’s sense of phone time is still clearly shaped by the long-distance era; at about 20 minutes in, she gets edgy, even if we have more to talk about and, because of my cell plan, the additional minutes are free.

    One thing I appreciate about teaching night students at an extension branch of the state university is that they are largely outside that dynamic of parents trying to manage their children’s lives for them. On D’s former campus, there was one mother who was so hovering (and her son was so psychically underdeveloped, as a result) that she actually rented an apartment next to the campus so she could be near him. Oy. My parents always believed that the main point of being parents was to produce independent, considerate adults, and although their gentle pushing me towards the edge of the nest sometimes annoyed me as a kid, I’m very grateful for it now.

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  14. Rana said on August 16, 2010 at 1:47 pm

    Dorothy – congrats on the new Mac! (She says, typing away on a MacBook.) I won’t say that they are easier to use than PCs – especially if you’re new to the system – but they are often more forgiving of user error and less buggy. Enjoy the lessons!

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  15. MichaelG said on August 16, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    Adrianne, I really enjoy Burdette’s Bangkok books though I’ve never been there. I’ve read three. The library doesn’t have the fourth and I’m thinking about buying it.

    Other good stuff? LL (above), James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, John Sandford for a start. There are others.

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  16. Dorothy said on August 16, 2010 at 2:01 pm

    Thanks Rana! A younger co-worker (Rebecca) is going to coach me tomorrow at lunch time. I’ll bring the new Baby to work tomorrow and be much less intimidated by the end of my lunch hour, or at least I hope I will be. And if I am maybe I can tell my daughter not to bother bringing hers to Pittsburgh this weekend.

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  17. Judybusy said on August 16, 2010 at 2:08 pm

    Adrianne, I’m not familiar with the Bangkok series, so have no clue what you like, but I’ve been reading the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. The action takes place in the late 1920s-early 1930s London. The main character survived nursing during WWI and now works as a PI of sorts. Lots of interesting historical bits and characters.

    A completely different series is the Thursday Next set by Jasper Fforde. If you’d like inventive sic-fi/fantasy plots with tons of literary references, check them out. I giggle regularly even upon re-reading. I’m getting all five for my partner’s birthday.

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  18. Sue said on August 16, 2010 at 2:47 pm

    Thursday Next! Yay! How can you not like a series where Miss Havisham complains about having to take her turn leading the weekly anger management group session for the Wuthering Heights characters? Or a world where, instead of Jehovah’s Witnesses, people go door-to-door preaching the gospel of alternate Shakespeare authors?
    Great series. Bizarre, but great.

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  19. adrianne said on August 16, 2010 at 2:48 pm

    Thanks for the book advice, Nancy readers! I think I’ll check out Maisie Dobbs. I’m already a big fan of James Lee Burke and Michael Connelly.

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  20. Deborah said on August 16, 2010 at 2:57 pm

    I’ve read a number of books by Donna Leon about the character Commissario Guido Brunetti, a detective in Venice. Good stuff, I’d highly recommend. This is what Wikipedia says:

    The intelligent and capable police commissioner Guido Brunetti confronts crime in and around his home town of Venice. Each case is an opportunity for the author to reveal another aspect of the seamy underside of society. The fact that Brunetti can only go so far in attacking the endemic corruption of the system leaves him deeply cynical, although it does not prevent him from trying again and again. Brunetti finds solace in the company of his wife, Paola, a hereditary contessa born to one of Venice’s oldest families, as well as their growing children, Raffi and Chiara. Paola teaches English literature in the public system and, despite her background, is very much to the left, still fueled by the spirit of 1968. The domestic warmth of the Brunetti family contrasts with corruption and cruelty that Brunetti encounters at work. Venice’s head of police, Vice-questore Patta, serves as the vain and self-serving buffo, while Sergente Vianello and the all-knowing and well-connected Signorina Elettra, Patta’s secretary, assist Brunetti on the ground and through research.

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  21. Dexter said on August 16, 2010 at 3:13 pm

    It’s been 23 years since I went downtown Flint for the 50th anniversary of the 1937 Sitdown Strike that rocked the globe.
    http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Great-Flint-Sit-Down-Strike/106553722710170?v=wall
    Those were the days when city planners in the midwest developed “festival marketplaces”. Toledo had one called Portside, which I loved. Flint’s was very nice, too. The parade featured surviving strikers riding in convertibles. I was awe-struck just to see them…one of the thrills of my life, as we stood on the curb of a downtown Flint street. A new mural depicting the 1937 strike had been recently unveiled, it was very nice. Autoworld was in dire straits, however, only open on certain days by then, and doomed to be closed for good ten years later, ruining the dream folks had that this crazy theme-park-in-a-dome would revitalize Flint.

    The one thing that struck me was the cops. Cops , two x two, on every street corner, and every few feet more cops in the festival marketplace. I wondered why so many cops; I never found out.
    In those days Flint regularly won awards as the worst city in America, and the total wanton wasting of this place hadn’t happened quite yet. Ain’t it something, what we have witnessed in this country in our lifetimes?

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  22. Jeff Borden said on August 16, 2010 at 3:25 pm

    Dexter,

    It is amazing what we have witnessed. I once thought that my grandparents had probably witnessed the most extreme acceleration of life. My grandmother, who was born in the 1890s, recalled watching mules pulling barges up and down the Ohio River and later watched men land on the moon on live television. She lived through one horrific depression and two world wars and sent all three of her sons to the Pacific in WWII.

    I wonder if instead of seeing our nation push forward through thick and thin, as she did, if we will be the generation that watches as the tide recedes. My default outlook is gloomy and reading guys like Paul Krugman and Nouriel Roubini does nothing to assuage that outlook. But this country has always found a way and I hold out hope we will again regain our mojo.

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  23. Dexter said on August 16, 2010 at 4:03 pm

    Krugman is indeed a sobering read. And Maureen Dowd has crapped on Obama’s head now, too…a sure sign of the apocalypse.

    Today, 33 years ago, Elvis Presley checked out of Heartbreak Hotel for good, thus claiming Babe Ruth’s death date as his own.
    So, historians…who was bigger? Who deserves top-billing as August 16’s darling death poster boy?
    Babe has gotten the shaft…you see #3 in a mourner’s black bunting, you know the person is talking about a certain dead race car driver named Dale Ernhardt. Very few know that #3 means Babe Ruth to old baseball nuts like me. I guess I hafta give Nascar marketers credit…#24 has meant Jeff Gordon for years, when to us, it always will mean Willie Mays.
    But really…every year, more Elvis carrying-on, and never a mention of the old Babe, who died before I was born, August 16, 1948.
    Babe had been dead 29 years when Elvis croaked. Now Elvis grows in acclaim and dollars, and Babe…moulderin’ in the grave in Valhalla….

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  24. MichaelG said on August 16, 2010 at 4:55 pm

    Here’s a great web site that will tell you about just every popular author (and many who are not so popular) and their books. Just hit a letter, scroll down and select.

    http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/

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  25. beb said on August 16, 2010 at 5:15 pm

    So, have you turned in the Flint Slasher piece yet, on time? Will you get paid for it.

    Moe99: “I am num­ber 97 on the Seat­tle Pub­lic library’s wait list for Laura’s book.”

    You would think that would a clue to the library to order a second copy…

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  26. Kirk said on August 16, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    I hadn’t thought about the fact that the Babe and Elvis died on the same date. Elvis likely will have the greater influence in the long run, though Ruth’s death had an impact at least comparable to Elvis’, and people with virtually no knowledge of baseball still know who Babe Ruth was. But both are so far ahead of numerous other American cultural figures that it seems pointless to pick between them.

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  27. Bob said on August 16, 2010 at 6:04 pm

    “I noticed this when I was in Ann Arbor a few years back. It blew my mind then, and still does: Col­lege stu­dents who check in with their par­ents mul­ti­ple times a day. I called my mom once a week, and that was because we had free long dis­tance”

    Obviously, today’s parents are so cool kids don’t want to be done with that umbilicus; it’s the parents whose gnashing teeth will chew through the cord.

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  28. Jeff Borden said on August 16, 2010 at 6:06 pm

    I recall I was driving north into Columbus on I-71 when I heard Elvis was dead on the radio, followed by a string of his hits. I was too young for Elvis, who was already into his film and Vegas schtick when I really got into music, so I thought he was an old fogey. He’d been dead several years before I started discovering the old Sun Records catalog and realized I greatly enjoyed his early stuff. What different directions might his career have followed if not for Col. Parker? Supposedly, it was the Colonel who pushed him into those forgettable but profitable movies.

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  29. moe99 said on August 16, 2010 at 6:56 pm

    beb–I wrote my initial post while waiting for chemo at Seattle Cancer Care and didn’t have the resources to check on the Seattle Public Library site, but since I’ve returned home, I discovered that the library (thank you so much) has ordered 31 copies so my wait should not be as bad as feared.

    Also a note about calling home. My parents moved from MN to KY end of my freshman year in college. I was signed up to share a dorm room with a girlfriend, but instead took the money and used it to rent an apt. w. my boyfriend and another couple at the college. You can bet that I kept all phone communications to a minimum that year!

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  30. Kirk said on August 16, 2010 at 7:01 pm

    Recommended reading: “The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley” by
    Alanna Nash.

    The movies made Elvis feel like a trained chimp, and the colonel was even more of a weasel than one might expect.

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  31. Jeff Borden said on August 16, 2010 at 7:11 pm

    Not surprising, Kirk. I’ve not read that book, but every other thing I’ve scanned about Col.Parker reinforces your assessment. Elvis’ voice and charisma were absolutely golden. It’s a shame he didn’t have better management.

    I picked up a greatest hits CD of Buddy Holly at a half-price book store recently and was freshly stunned at how far ahead of his time he really was. Again, you wonder how he might have reshaped the American music scene had he not died so young. Some of the lyrics are a bit dated and corny, but the melodies, the rhythms, the orchestrations are still first-rate.

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  32. Dexter said on August 16, 2010 at 8:47 pm

    I was too young for Elvismania, too. My early teens were for Beatlemania.
    Of course, as the years caught up with me, I began to learn how John Lennon idolized Elvis, and today I understand the whole story. Elvis cared deeply about his gospel performances. He really put his soul into his gospel music; YouTube has many of his gospel songs.
    I was working the overnight shift , on break, 1:00 AM, sitting in my 1968 VW Microbus , listening to Larry Glick on WBZ-AM Boston, when I heard Elvis had gone to his reward. Right. Later Elvis was seen frying hamburgers in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Uh Huh. Yep. That be right. You heard me. Where did you hear or read Elvis had been spotted?

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  33. Kirk said on August 16, 2010 at 8:52 pm

    Actually, I think he’s due in here about midnight to clean up the johns.

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  34. jcburns said on August 16, 2010 at 9:40 pm

    Larry Glick and Ohio Bell mentions on the same page. The internet is a wondrous thing. Takes me back to my 1968 Chevy Nova (a former Ohio Bell vehicle, painted that olive that they were), listening to WBZ at 1 am driving the Ohio backroads.

    Remind me to post the pic I shot of Larry Glick and his crew circa 1975. It’s evocative.

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  35. Kirk said on August 16, 2010 at 9:45 pm

    I was listening to WLS in Chicago back in those days.

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  36. Deborah said on August 16, 2010 at 10:44 pm

    Where were you when Elvis died? I was in the hospital after having had surgery for an ovarian cyst (minor, nothing serious). My then husband came in my room after the surgery and said that Elvis had died that day. We had belonged to a church where there was a woman named Elvis who attended (this was in Dallas, TX mind you). I was so sad for the family of Elvis, the one who was a member of the church we attended. When I was a little less groggy I figured it out.

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  37. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 16, 2010 at 11:51 pm

    I could pick out the “Nancy Nall Der(r)inger” as the byline, but couldn’t make out what they called you in the next line — but I only know semi-useful Biblical Hebrew. Do you know what title Yedioth gave you?

    LAMary, the Collins poem has had the same effect on me; glad to know that’s disconcerting (even if in a good way) to someone else. But to read the newest attempt at dissecting the Mabel/Austin mess downtstairs while chaste Em was scribbling away upstairs — ah, who knows.

    WLS, and John “Records truly is my middle name” Landecker. Which is whom I first heard it from, in ’77.

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  38. coozledad said on August 16, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    Deborah: I was in Alan Wilson’s forest green Pinto on the way to band practice, ripped on Mexican headache weed. I had no idea Elvis would be beatified. Within two weeks my mom was ordering the retrospectives and I couldn’t take his name in vain, at least not at home.

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  39. Denice B. said on August 17, 2010 at 12:34 am

    In 2008 I took a road trip alone with my then 15 year old daughter. She wasn’t into Elvis, But I had gotten into him more as the years went by. We went to Graceland. She listened to my Elvis cd’s and and we had a wonderful time in Memphis. We bonded over donuts and BBQ, she swam in a guitar shaped pool. We visited the Memphis Zoo which I recommend to everyone, as it has Pandas you can see up close and personal. But she surprised herself by how much she enjoyed Graceland and his Music. It was a memory we will both cherish forever. I just returned from my 5 week stay in northern Indiana and my daughter spent the last 2 weeks with me. As we rolled into the hood, she said something like “This may be a dump, but it’s our dump and it’s home.” She also said she had to get used to being a city girl again, fast!

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  40. Dexter said on August 17, 2010 at 12:40 am

    jc: I still have my tee shirt I received for giving Larry a “good call”. I had the phone number of a guy who had built an airplane in his garage in Toledo, Ohio, and Larry , an aviation buff and pilot, had called the guy. “E Pluribus Glickus” reads the front, with lightning bolts shooting out of a microphone, all on a maroon tee shirt.
    About once a year (at least up until 2007, the last time I heard him), Larry would call Steve LaVeille on the radio slot Larry had, overnights, and joke around with his fans from the old days. Larry was still a host at the Legal Seafood Company in Boca Raton at that time. Larry Glick passed away in March, 2009. Here’s Larry’s favorite call, a WBZ listener’s favorite. It’s very funny, trust me.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-XeBvd5Pqw

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  41. MaryRC said on August 17, 2010 at 1:36 am

    adrianne: Have you tried Kate Atkinson (“Case Histories”) or Val McDermid? They’re both very good. Or you might like Nicci French if you enjoy feeling paranoid. If you’re a Nicci French heroine and you think you’re in danger, rest assured that no-one will believe you, especially not the police. A cop rolling his or her eyes in disbelief is a stock character in a Nicci French mystery.

    That article about college students contacting their parents multiple times a day … one of the comments underneath it is from a 24-year-old who sees nothing wrong with this and proudly claims that she still Skypes, calls or texts her parents at least once a day and if she didn’t, her mother would think there was some kind of emergency. I’m thinking that someday soon this young woman will meet a guy (or girl) who won’t go along with this and I hope Mom can handle it.

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  42. basset said on August 17, 2010 at 8:41 am

    Our honeymoon back in 1980 involved driving a Pinto from Kalamazoo to New Orleans with a stop at Graceland – and a job interview in Jackson, Mississippi, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

    Anyway, we went to the house, walked around, and sent postcards home signed Elvis and Priscilla.

    The job interview.. I got a call, “come on down Saturday and talk to me about working here.” “Can’t, I’m getting married in Michigan.” “How about Monday, then?” We settled on Tuesday, that’s how badly I wanted to get out of Terre Haute.

    Don’t remember where I was when I heard about Elvis’ demise, but… let’s see, August of 77, I would have been at IU, probably taking eight or nine hours, working several part-time jobs, and trying to graduate.

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  43. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on August 17, 2010 at 9:40 am

    For those really curious, it comes out “Nncy Nvl Dryngyr,” but I still can’t figure out “Shlyhtnv l’myshygv” — but that’s what you are! I need a modern Hebrew lexicon.

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  44. coozledad said on August 17, 2010 at 9:59 am

    Anybody heard from Scout lately?

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  45. Dorothy said on August 17, 2010 at 10:17 am

    Have any of you ever seen the movie “The Commitments”? One of our favorite lines in that movie happens when Jimmy Rabbitte is holding auditions. One of the auditioning musician sings some song about Elvis being a Cajun. Jimmy’s dad is crazy, CRAZY about Elvis, and he responds quite loudly “that’s fu**** blasphemy! Elvis wasn’t a Cajun!”

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  46. prospero said on August 18, 2010 at 12:08 am

    There is no excuse ffor JJackson. Your quote, he still holds on, Racist pig. Seriously, that’s why I was a racist and why I still am? He was not very good at words, either, Buckley was marginally verrer and he weas full of shit too,

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