Wild Tangents
Marc talks about life in Nashville, life as a Catholic and life as a geek.

In my highschool days and quite a few of the years that followed, I was a part of the “punk rock” scene back in Memphis. This mostly involved going to shows at the Antenna club and trying real hard to look just like everyone else who was trying real hard not to look like anyone else, or something like that.

Sometime in 1992 Channel 5 News in Memphis did a special on the youth sub culture in Memphis. Well, it looks like someone took that and put it on Google Video. Here it is. See Joe Birch do the intros and Greeley Kyle do the story. I actually knew a lot of the these people. I wonder what happened to some of them, others I have a pretty good idea.
-6379917167248484605

Hat tip to Rachel And The City for first posting it.

Isn’t she beautiful.  Samantha is the daughter of Corrie and Brad.  Viki, who is Corrie’s mother is also my cousin.  I want to extend my congrats to Corrie, Brad and Viki on wonderful event.  My eyes are wet.  My Heart is warm.  I love you all!

Dad with the new baby girl.

My good friends Mark and Kathy Romer have a new addition to their household. It seems that after a hair raising experience, mother and son (Michael Joseph) are doing fine….

Go read the whole amazing story at Kathy’s blog.

We have a lot going on right now. We’re moving over the next month and have a lot of expenses going out. For this reason, I decided to do a reality check by logging on to regions.net and taking a look at at our checking account. You can imagine my surprise when I saw the bottom line at left showed our account was in the hole for seven hundred thirty nine dollars and fifty eight cents. Well, since I just deposited my check for accrued vacation from last job yesterday, I knew that wasn’t right. I mean really not right. I went ahead and changed the dates to be display to 01/01/06 to today. Well, it shows that I have had a negative balance pretty much the whole year so far. That’s not right. I called their automated number (901-580-6531 I only have one for Memphis, I anyone has the one for Nashville, let me know what it is please!), which told me what turns out to be an accurate number. Now I know I should take what data I can get through the website with a grain of salt, but I’m sure you can understand why I was a little concerned.

I can say I don’t remember having any trouble like with the Union Planters website….

I am really concerned for the next generation of lawyers if this is the best they have to offer. It seems a bunch of whinny law students at U of M have complained because their professor has banned the use of laptops in class.

On March 6, Professor June Entman warned her first-year law students by e-mail to bring pens and paper to take notes in class.

“My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing,” Entman said Monday. “The computers interfere with making eye contact. You’ve got this picket fence between you and the students.”

I tend to agree. When typing, your focus is on what you’re typing. When taking handwritten notes, your focus is still on what you are taking notes on. It makes perfect sense to me. Besides, doing a simple Google search for “laptop courtroom” will find plenty of articles where judges have banned laptops in their courtrooms. I can also that criminal courthouses might ban laptops for perfectly legitimate security concerns. How would these lawyers handle a criminal case if they weren’t able to use their laptop in the courthouse?

“If we continue without laptops, I’m out of here. I’m gone; I won’t be able to keep up,” said student Cory Winsett, who said his hand-written notes are incomplete and less organized.

Well, I don’t have any cookies to give you Mr. Winsett, perhaps you should get out and go into a different line off work that doesn’t require the use of a ball point pen.

At least these law students weren’t dumb enough to try to “Whoop that trick” though…..

[USATODAY.com - Law professor bans laptops in class, over student protest]

Hat tip to:
[moleskinerie: Law professor bans laptops in class]
For the heads up….

I just read over at Memphis Seminarian Dennis’ blog the following.

Last night, the bishop announced that in addition to yesterday being the 35th anniversary of our diocese, it was also the 39th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood, but that wasn’t the big news.

The big news was not just one announcement, but three:

1. The Jubilee Schools endowment had reached $44 million. With the interest earned on the endowment, they will be able to meet the budgetary requirements of the Jubilee schools indefinitely. The Catholic Diocese of Memphis’ urban schools will be able to change the culture of our city for a long time to come.

2. Memphis Catholic High School (my alma mater, class of 1984), will be renovated from top to bottom. I don’t know what that means or how much money is involved, but I say “Thank you, Jesus!” The school building itself is very much in need of an overhaul. Also as regards Memphis Catholic High School, the bishop announced that the school has entered into work/study partnerships with some 25 corporations around town, allowing students to earn valuable job experience, increasing the impact our Catholic schools will have on the culture of our city’s center.

3. Finally, the bishop announced that a new Jubilee school will be built. The land has not been purchased yet, but the school will be located at Resurrection Church in the Hickory Hill area of Memphis.

All of these announcements met with great approval from the people who had joined the bishop at the cathedral for evening prayer last night. Cool stuff, right?

This is really great news. The new Jubilee school are doing a great service for the city as a whole. It’s one of the wonderful things about Memphis (I hope me talking good about Memphis doesn’t shock anyone). For those of you that don’t know, the Jubilee schools are parish schools that have long been closed. Most of them are in poor neighborhoods that have a dwindling Catholic population. Now, I don’t know for sure where the money came from, but the Diocese received money that was earmarked specifically for re-opening some/all of the parish schools in memphis that had been closed. Now it looks like the endowment has reached a point where it’s self sustaining. If I am reading this correctly, the money for these schools is at a point where the schools are actually run using the interest from the money. That means they should be able to stay open indefinitely, assume there are not any economic disasters in the future. I am very happy to hear this news as I graduated from one of these schools that has been reopened. That parish is where i converted to the Church in 1981. I graduated from the 8th grad there in 1984. I’m glad to know that it’s back open and providing a valuable service to the whole community. Note that the children attending these schools are for the most part not Catholic. They are local kids who would otherwise not be able to afford anything more than a public education from the Memphis City Schools.

The news about Catholic High is also wonderful news. I know it was in need of refurbishment. It was probably in need of it way back in ‘84 when Dennis graduated, so it’s good that it’s being done.

I’d like to congratulate the Diocese of Memphis and Bishop Steib for this great accomplishment. It’s really a wonderful thing that the Catholic Schools are doing in Memphis.

[vita mea: Announcement from the Bishop]

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OK. I move to Nashville and the murder rate goes up. That is disconcerting.

NASHVILLE, Tenn. Nashville could end up with 100 homicides in 2005 — nearly double the previous year’s mark and one of the city’s deadliest years on record.
The total will reach 100 if police determine a woman whose body was found burned under a pile of debris Tuesday was a homicide victim.

That would make last year the third deadliest since countywide record keeping began in 1963 and approaches the record high of 112 in 1997.

In 2004, 58 homicides were recorded.

The homicide total excludes justifiable homicide or killings that were ruled self-defense.

One of the reasons I moved from Memphis to Nashville is the crime. I shouldn’t have to explain that. But for the uninitiated, Memphis has a bad crime problem. I don’t say that after looking at numbers or anything. I say that after living there. Nashville on the other hand seem to be much better, if we could only keep the politicians from Memphis out of the city.

I swear though. I did not bring it with me….

I also wonder about this anyway. Why is it being reported on the website for a TV station in Memphis?

[WREG-TV Memphis - Nashville homicides spike in 2005]

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