Blog Title: Salem's Lots

Musings from Salemtown (a neighborhood in North Nashville). I'm a progressive Christian who loves baseball, movies, politics, White Stripes and my family, probably not in that order exactly. I dislike predictability and incivility.

Carolyn Maddux

Carolyn King Forrister Maddux ‘Come on up for the rising‘ - Bruce Springsteen The mother of some of my closest friends passed away last Saturday night. To some of you, she was the mother of ‘the playwright’ (Vali Forrister). Others knew her from her church. Many of us knew her as a read more..

What has caffeine and lives in Germantown?

Hallelujah, coffee at last, coffee at last. The coffee has come to Roos(t), in the Kat haus known as ‘DrinkHaus’ (the owner is Kat Roos, who also lives in Germantown), down on Madison in downtown Germantown. I’ve been living in the general neighborhood for four years now, and for each of those roughly 1,460 days read more..

When God teaches patience, or, Job never went to the 8th Avenue Kroger

I suppose I have many faults. Probably a few I can’t name, but ones my family could probably recite in their sleep. I’m often quick to anger, but in my heart of hearts, I’ve gotta believe that lack of patience is my top-of-the-charts, slow burning, double-grinding-stomach-churning crime of gnashin’. To teach me and my read more..

Why I love baseball part 285

Just don?t do it (not feeling the flying love, actually)

I didn’t take my first airplane flight until I was 23 years of age. It was a time (yeah, it was after spats and in the early years of the push-button phone) when people actually dressed up to fly. Flying was special, a treat reserved for important-looking-brief-case-carrying-besuited men and rich kids on vacation. I flew read more..

Ting ting, uh, attention please..I?d like to interrupt this prolonged blogging hiatus

by proclaiming that the best summer song of many seasons is ‘That’s Not my Name’ by the fabulous ‘The Ting Tings‘. I’m not kidding. It starts out a little like ‘Hey Mickey’, but it quickly moves into infectious compulsory-dance mode after a minute or two. The last two minutes of the song just kills me. You read more..

5:46 seconds of late-night zen

Baseball where it?s meant to be..

Meant to be watched, that is…In a bar with the sound down. An engineer, a high school basketball coach, a Radio Shack manager, a executive car deliver-er, and a state employee walk into a bar, just like they have for the past 25 years. The bar is Brown’s Diner, and the occasion is annual: The read more..

Wired to the tubes, the best five TV shows ever

Thanks to Jagadiah’s Buffy-a-rama, I felt the need to place Buffy in the pantheon of great TV shows. The best shows, in order: 1. The Wire - HBO’s opus about Baltimore owes as much to Charles Dickens as to the brilliant observations of David Simon and the incredible stable of writers. If Dickens was read more..

Pith(ier) in the Wind: Mise? hors de scene?

Liz Garrigan and the Nashville Scene have decided to tidy up their ‘Pith in the Wind’ blog. The only writers that will regularly appear in PITH will be Garrigan, Bruce Berry, Jeff Woods, and Matt Pulle (big coup to get Pulle back), with occasional posts by ace blogster, Roger Abramson. Quite a nice read more..