Redheads: Now You See'em; Now ..?

That fiery mane of red hair shared by notables Nicole Kidman, Queen Elizabeth I, William Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, Lucille Ball and my father may soon fade into a brunette future.

The shocking genetic warning is that redheads, and their alleged tempers, could entirely disappear within the next 50-100 years. The problem: only about five percent of the population has red hair and perhaps less than that carry the gene. It’s a recessive gene so red hair may or may not show up in the offspring of a redhead/non-redhead union. The cause, they say, is globalization. There are more genes out there for dark hair, and flame-haired folks are marrying them.

My father was a handsome redhead with a thick head of hair that never thinned. It just turned delightfully silver. His petite Irish mom was a redhead by both hair and temperament, but his father was not – proving that a redhead can emerge from that partnering.

Daddy married my lovely dark-haired mother and looked forward to a redhead daughter. During mother’s pregnancy, my dad clipped a magazine photo depicting a little freckle-faced, redheaded girl with pigtails attempting to eat a piece of corn on the cob despite the absence of her two front teeth. He loved that little girl and taped the picture to mother’s mirror in hopes that looking at it every day would produce the carrot-top he wanted. Guess he never took biology.

Well, as you know, I didn’t inherit Daddy’s red hair – only his ability to sunburn before you can say SPF. So that’s the challenge facing the future of redheadedness.

Where there’s a problem, there’s sometimes a possibility for solution. I saw an enterprising fellow interviewed recently who has created an international (remember, there aren’t many of them) redhead-only dating service. The goal: redheads marrying redheads, producing redhead babies, and ensuring the future of redheadedness.

Genetic selection at its most practical. Go forth and propagate, Rd.

Mike to Tour With James Burton

The Really Big Announcement: Mike is going to Europe next month as a part of James Burton’s band. They will play May 15 in Paris, the 16th in Holland and the 17th in Belgium. Very exciting!

You may remember that Guitar God James Burton, Elvis’ longtime guitar player, was the guest star New Year’s Eve with Mike’s band. Burton must have heard something he liked. He’s taking two members and a former member of Rob and the Rage on tour with him – Rob Haynes, Mike, and drummer Terry Moxley.

Mike is pictured above with Burton. On the right you see Rob getting into his Jerry Lee Lewis vibe. I know their shows will be great. I’m also certain that Mike will be bringing back extravagant presents for me since I’ll be here guarding the homefront.

Read more about The Burton at http://plunkchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/01/real-thang.html

Court Square - A Little Squirrely

Court Square is a small, beautiful park in the heart of downtown Memphis. It’s surrounded by office buildings and busy streets, but features towering old trees, statues, a gazebo and an impressive bronze fountain at its center. It’s a peaceful oasis populated by people-friendly squirrels.

If you saw the movie The Firm, you got a glimpse of the fountain. It served as a backdrop to a meeting between Tom Cruise and Gene Hackman.

In my teenage years, I seem to recall a late-night foray to the fountain with a bottle of dishwashing liquid in hand. Well, we thought the bubbles were pretty funny.

Mike and I both have more gentle memories, however, of trips to the Square when we were children. I recall that when my grandmother took a very young me downtown shopping, the day always included time to go sit near the fountain in Court Square.

There was a pushcart vendor who sold little brown paper bags of fresh-roasted peanuts in the shell. The routine was to pinch open a shell then toss the two peanuts it had held to some of the squirrels that had approached and were awaiting their reward. The little fuzzy guys and I took turns. Nuts for them. Nuts for me.

A person could spend a quiet hour doing just that while observing the various squirrel personalities and behaviors. Never once did it occur to me to wonder about the squirrels’ origin until Mike happened upon a small item last week in the newspaper.

It seems that back in 1847, the pet squirrel of a gentleman named W.A. O’Neal chewed up a tablecloth, and O’Neal took the mischievous fellow downtown to Court Square and set him free.

Can’t you just imagine Mrs. O’Neal’s outburst at the ruination of her tablecloth? “W.A., if you don’t get rid of that rodent this instant, you’ll be having him tonight for dinner!” Exit squirrel to safety.

The story goes that others followed O’Neal’s lead and let their pet squirrels find freedom in Court Square. Sort of Born Free for squirrels. As a result, generations have enjoyed the calm, scampering squirrels in the midst of downtown.

Enjoy Court Square the next time you’re downtown. But don’t take along a tablecloth.

My Life as Lucy Ricardo # VIII: The Mouse

In a previous “Lucy” episode, I described my encounter with a really big, ill-intentioned spider. It wasn’t my only bad experience with a creepy crawly.

Back when I was a young divorced woman with a toddler son, I lived in a little rental house next to a field. Newspaper reporters there didn’t get paid much, so we were definitely in a modest neighborhood. Much to my distress, I’d discovered evidence that Alex and I weren’t alone in our little house. I was pretty sure that at least one mouse had moved in from the adjacent field. And the critter wasn’t even paying rent.

I asked around the newsroom what to do. Traps were out of the question with a curious toddler in the house. One of the guys said he could put poison traps in safe places such as behind the washing machine and, as a father himself, he’d make sure the positioning was completely child-safe. I warned him that the last thing I wanted was to run into a dead mouse. He assured me that the beastie would go back into the field and die peacefully with his mouse family. Silly me. I believed him.

One winter evening I arrived home, unbundled little Alex and went to the closet in the junk room to put up our coats. As I opened the closet door, I was surprised that it stuck about halfway open. Must be the weather or simply the sloppy workmanship in the rent-a-dump. I closed the door. I pulled it open again. It stuck again. And that’s when I looked down and discovered that the sticking point was a mouse corpse. EeeeYuck!

I fled the room, slamming the door behind me. Grabbed Alex, took him to his baby bed, gave him toys, and then closed that door. I can only imagine in retrospect that I thought the mouse was going to rise from the dead and get us. I paced the living room for a couple of minutes to summon up my courage, then decided to face the situation like a woman.

Fortified with a broom and dustpan, I re-entered the junk room, this time leaving the door wide open for a fast getaway. The dead mouse was still there. The closet door still had him pinned down. I pushed the closet door off of him which, of course, made the body jump and made me yell. I wasn’t feeling too good. I can face down all kinds of demons and problems – but not critters. I put the dustpan next to him. My plan was to use the broom to scoot him onto the dustpan, then I’d just dispose of him in the outdoor trashcan. Easy for you to say.

I backed away from the mouse and dustpan, holding the broom by the very end of its handle, and took a golf stroke at the not-so-dearly departed. Well, you see, rigor mortis had set in, and my swipe only made him stiffly plop over with his little legs pointed up at the ceiling. I ran from the room again. I regained my composure, retried the same strategy, and got the same result. Now I was the one who was stuck.

Pacing in the living room again seemed like a good idea while I tried to figure out a solution. Clearly, I could not manage mouse disposal. Just couldn’t. So the question I asked myself was “Who can I call to get rid of the mouse who won’t kid me about this forever?” It was the last part of the question that was giving me trouble.

It had only been a few months back in the summer when I’d arrived home to find an oversized grasshopper lurking atop the window air conditioner in Alex’s room. I had reason to scoop up the kiddo and slam the door shut that time. After pondering my alternatives, I called my mother to see what she and my step-dad were doing. Fortunately, he had three daughters of his own so he patiently agreed, and they drove the 20 minutes to my place to get rid of the grasshopper.

The guys in the newsroom razzed me a lot about having the former county sheriff dispose of my grasshopper. That incident seemed to drastically reduce my list of possibilities for getting rescued this time. Except . . .

I remembered seeing a L'eggs truck parked regularly in the driveway next door and a fellow going into that house. I didn’t know him anyway, so I didn’t care what he thought of me and, since we didn’t know each other, he couldn’t possibly shame me about my cowardice. I checked on little Alex who was blissfully unaware of the drama in the next room, then I marched across the yard and knocked on the neighbor’s door.

“You don’t know me, but I live next door and I’ve got this little situation,” I told him when he opened the door. He reluctantly asked what that might be, and I had to tell him about the dead mouse and my inability to get rid of it. There was silence for a moment or two. He might have been looking for the hidden camera. Then he replied, “Do you have paper towels?” Yes! Home run.

He followed me next door; I fetched the paper towels; and I pointed from the junk room door to the location of the body. It didn’t even occur to me to be embarrassed that a stranger was looking at my junk room. The L'eggs truck driver looked pretty much like the Lone Ranger to me at the moment.

He scooped up the dead, cold mouse and I ran ahead of him to open the front door thanking him repeatedly on the way. Out he strode into the night. I saw him a time or two after that when we were coming or going from our driveways. Oddly, he never spoke or made eye contact.

It Ain't Me, Babe

A while back, I wrote a post about coincidence. ("It’s a Teeny World After All" - http://plunkchronicles.blogspot.com/2008/02/its-teeny-world-after-all.html) It was about learning from a tax client of our associate that he’d met my niece Shannon in some foreign airport a year ago. She’d told me about the nice family that she and her girlfriend met and traveled with back to the Memphis airport, and here that family was sitting in front of me. Pretty bizarre.

Well, now I can do that one better. Last week I was doing what Mike and I sometimes do, which is to google our names to see what, if anything, new pops up. Imagine my surprise when a link popped up called Diane’s Blog. I write the Plunk Chronicles, but it’s never been called Diane's Blog – or, to my knowledge, referred to in that way. There are a lot of Dianes, but I clicked the link anyway and found myself looking wide-eyed at a web page by Diane Thomas, my maiden name. But it wasn’t me -- although I had to scroll over to the photo to prove it to myself. Maybe I’d been sleep-writing.

I went to her bio first, and the coincidences kept coming.

Obviously, the name and the blogs are at the top of the list.
She lives in Georgia. I used to live in Georgia outside Atlanta, and my Thomas ancestors hailed from Georgia.

She’s a writer. I’m a writer of a less grand scale, but with a career of writing and some freelancing behind me.

She was a reporter/feature writer. I was a reporter/feature writer. She stayed in the profession longer than I, however, and became entertainment editor of the Atlanta Constitution magazine.

Her first book has been published and is doing quite well. The book is called The Year the Music Changed, and one of the main characters is a fictional version of . . . Elvis. Music watches The King as his career gains momentum. You do recall, I’m sure, that he was discovered at Sun Studio in Memphis. “Oh, my,” I had to say as I sit here just outside Memphis. I write about Memphis, Elvis, Sun Studio and music.

(By the way, we have a new Elvis connection coming up that I can’t tell you quite yet. Curious?)

After going into Mike’s office with a “You won’t believe this” story, I quickly emailed the other DT and introduced myself. She wrote back and was pretty surprised herself by all the coincidences.

Not to make your head spin, but the author of Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile is also named Diane Thomas.

I’ve ordered Music from amazon.com and I’m looking forward to reading it. You can learn more about that Diane's book at http://www.dianecoulterthomas.com/.

It's either a teeny, tiny world or The Twilight Zone.

A Town by Any Other Name . . .

When the Plunks entered this country from Germany, they initially settled in Pennsylvania and later migrated to Lancaster County, North Carolina. In 1824, a group of Plunk families decided that Lancaster County was getting too congested so they packed up and headed west.

The wagon train traveled for six weeks to get to West Tennessee. After a short stay around Jackson, TN, the Plunk clan moved to McNairy County. They cultivated farms, built homes and barns, and relished the rolling countryside. The time came to name their county seat, and the good citizens chose to name it after the city of Selma, Alabama.

Years moved on as the county and its residents thrived. But a small problem arose. When asked where they were from, residents would reply, “Ah’m from Selmer.” It seemed that more folks mispronounced the name than pronounced it correctly.

Being pragmatic people, the town fathers made the most obvious decision. They changed the name of the town to Selmer. You gotta love a simple solution.

Dylan Gets Pulitzer

A surprising milestone was reached this week in rock and roll history. Bob Dylan was recognized with an honorary Pulitzer Prize – the first time a rock performer has received this high honor.

The official announcement proclaimed Dylan as “the most acclaimed and influential songwriter of the past half century, who more than anyone brought rock from the streets to the lecture hall.” Dylan was cited for his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

The full news story is at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080408/ap_on_en_ot/pulitzers_arts_11

Back in the way-back when Mike played his acoustic guitar more than he does now and we sang together, Mike did a lot of Dylan songs. Bob Dylan, born Robert Zimmerman, was a big influence on Mike’s musical development. But then, Dylan was a big influence on a lot of musicians including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles and Tom Petty. Hendrix did many Dylan songs. He had a huge hit with “Watchtower.” Hendrix even adopted the Dylan hairstyle and headband. From Jimi Hendrix to Johnny Cash seems like a big leap, but the already-famous Cash also performed Dylan songs and was a large admirer. Dylan was a guest on the first episode of Cash's tv show in the late '60s.

Dylan frequently asserted that his songs were not political; they were “just songs.” His social commentary, however, was unabashed, and many of them became anthems for an era. Do you remember these?

Blowing in the Wind
Oxford Town
The Times They Are A'Changin'
Masters of War

Bob Dylan is a genius and a modern poet who’s still out there performing. His most recent studio album, Modern Times, entered the album charts at #1 making him, at age 65, the oldest living person to top those charts.

Click this link for one of my favorite Dylan songs, “Don’t Think Twice; It’s Alright.”
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GtkVGClqrT4

Celebrity Sighting

Mike doesn’t get all the credit for having celebrity stories. I’ve had a few close encounters of the star kind myself. One of the most memorable was with the Oscar-winning Joanne Woodward.

The experience took place in the late ‘80s when I was doing community/media relations for a Southern California school district, and The Woodward came to one of our schools. I can claim no credit for arranging the visit. It had been handled through the school. I guess by being that close to Hollywood, everyone knows someone who knows someone else. Seven degrees of separation.

It wasn’t planned as a media event (darn it), but I was asked to be present in case reporters showed up. For most of the event, I just kept track (from a professional distance) of the Georgia-born guest and observed. Born in 1930, Joanne Woodward must have been in her 50s at the time and was still beautiful. No surprise that she had won several beauty contests in her teen years as a step to advance her acting career. She has a classic look that will make her beautiful when she’s 90.

Finally, the event was over; everyone had left; and the principal, assistant principal and I were walking Joanne out to her car. The four of us paused on the way and stood there on the school sidewalk having comfortable, casual chitchat. Joanne was warm, down-to-earth and completely unpretentious. I don’t recall what led up to the comment that woke me up. I was engaged in the conversation, but the happy voice inside my head kept repeating: “I’m talking to Joanne Woodward. I’m talking to Joanne Woodward.”

One of the school administrators told a funny story about trying to get her husband to do a household chore. We all laughed, and Joanne chimed in with “I have the same struggle with my husband! Just last week . . .”

I don’t remember the rest of her story because it immediately hit me.
OH
MY
GOD!
She’s talking about Paul Newman! She’s actually talking about getting one of the most handsome, talented men in the flippin’ world to take out the trash!

I guess the moral of this story is that no matter how beautiful the couple – no matter how many Oscars each has accumulated – no matter how recognizable they are – the trash must still go out.

Memphis Madness, Now Melancholy

It’s very quiet in Memphis right now.

The NCAA championship game against Kansas was hard-fought, a nail biter. Kansas was fast and had a lot of hustle. We made some mistakes with big consequences. Kansas tied the game in the last two seconds sending us into an overtime that we would lose 75-68.

It was a sad group of Tigers who politely shook hands with their opponents when the championship had been decided.

We had a great season. We have a great team. There’s always next year. Go Tigers!

Tigers Win 78-63 Over UCLA!

We did it. We absolutely did it. Memphis is whooping and hollering today because we’re headed to the NCAA championship game. But, even better, we beat the giant UCLA! And, if it couldn’t get any better, we dunked them by 15 points – their biggest defeat of the season.

It was practically a grudge match around here. It was UCLA that bumped us out of the Elite Eight two years ago. And, the biggest blow, it was UCLA that tromped us for the national championship in 1973. Revenge is sweet.

I remember that ’73 game vividly for a number of reasons. A month or so before the game, I’d had orthopedic surgery on both my feet. It was an ordeal. They told me not to do both feet at once, but that’s not my style. Of course, I didn’t think ahead that having surgery on both feet would mean that I absolutely couldn’t place any weight on my feet for a while. I was stuck in bed. Finally, they put casts on both legs from my toes to my knees. The doctor repeatedly warned me that they weren’t walking casts, so I balanced precariously on crutches and the “knob” toward the heel of each cast.

March Madness reaches play-offs around my birthday. In the accompanying photo you can see me leaning on crutches while trying to cut my birthday cake in 1973.

Good friends Judy and Robert invited me to their championship viewing party and were kind enough to be responsible for getting the cripple to and from their gathering. I was staying at mother’s in her second-floor apartment, so going down those stairs and facing the return climb was daunting, but we did it. Once at their place, my friends settled me into Robert’s recliner (now, there’s a friend for you) and surrounded me with munchies and cokes.

I was grateful to have an outing with friends, and we had high hopes for the game’s outcome. A bunch of people were there, so there was great enthusiasm, excitement, cheers, and then moans. UCLA’s Bill Walton was just too much for us. It was a sad day in River City. And I still had those darn stairs to climb when they took me back to mother’s.

Last night’s win over UCLA was a long time coming, and the Tiger Nation is brimming over with anticipation for tomorrow’s game against Kansas.

Today I heard an interview with UT’s basketball coach. UT was the only team that beat us. He pointed out the strengths of both teams, but refused to pick a winner. He summed up tomorrow’s game politely by saying, “The two teams with the best athletes in the nation are playing tomorrow night.”

A local fan summed it up a little differently. He said: “Kansas, you can kiss our grits!” We’ll wait and see.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On April 3, 1968 Mike and I celebrated my birthday and went downtown. On April 4, 1968 the city and the nation were stunned by the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony of the downtown Lorraine Motel.

We were at home that afternoon when we heard the shocking news. Mike didn’t work that night. The whole city shut down. So we sat in disbelief and watched the news stream across the television screen.

Dr. King had come to Memphis to march with striking sanitation workers, and his stay ended abruptly with a single gunshot.

On April 7, a grass-roots group calling themselves “Memphis Cares" drew a crowd of 7,000 to Crump Stadium in an attempt to heal racial tension and to hear speakers eulogize Dr. King calling for unity and an end to the strike.

On April 8, approximately 19,000 people from across the nation quietly marched through downtown Memphis to the City Hall plaza to commemorate Dr. King. Mike and I and one of our friends stood in the crowd that lined Main Street. The somber walkers were led by Coretta Scott King and three of her children. The widow was flanked by the Director of Fire & Police and the Assistant Chief of Police, intent on the safety of the King family.

Also at the head of the march were Dr. Benjamin Spock, Jerry Wurf, Dr. Ralph Abernathy, the Rev. James Lawson, Harry Belafonte and labor leader Walter Reuther of the United Auto Workers.

The Memphis Commercial Appeal wrote: “Obviously fatigued and fighting off a cold, she (Mrs. King) spoke for almost 15 minutes, her voice never wavering. Mr. Belafonte held her children's hands as she spoke, and the two smaller ones took turns sitting in his lap. A breeze rustled the black lace mantilla on her head as she reiterated her husband's philosophy of nonviolence and his belief that ‘with every Good Friday, there comes Easter’."

In the years following the assassination, the National Civil Rights Museum was built adjoining the defunct Lorraine Motel. Room 306, Dr. King’s $13-a-night room, was preserved and can be viewed by museum visitors. The museum is educational and moving. Guests can track the history and milestones of the civil rights movement and step into exhibits to experience a lunch counter sit-in and Rosa Parks’ refusal to follow bus driver orders to give up her seat for a white passenger.

The museum should be on the must-see list for all visitors to Memphis. Read more about it at http://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/

Happy Hundred (or so)

I intended to note the 100th post on Plunk Chronicles, but you know I’m number-impaired so now I’ve missed it by 20 or so.

Looking back at the first couple of posts, it’s obvious that the Chronicles have certainly evolved. As the blog gained maturity, it seemed like a good time to initiate some statistic gathering with an available freebie service. And what a gratifying surprise that was.

There are a lot more of you than I anticipated, and you’re scattered far and wide. I was truly humbled to learn that we have regular readers in Vermont, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, the Carolinas, Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, Oregon – and elsewhere. (Not forgetting you, California. You guys are primarily why I started this.) Thank you all for reading and for coming back for more.

I encourage you to hit that comment button and let me know what you’d like to see here – what you’d like more of – what you’d like less of. We’d like to keep you coming back.

Enough is Enough

New York Gov. David Paterson has issued a statement saying that he will no longer discuss his personal life. I’m relieved. Ever since I hailed him as a role model for the visually disabled, he’s confessed to everything except gun running in Central America.

I never said that blind people were superhuman – just plain human with as many flaws as anyone else.