On Thursday we got a shower of rain that lasted from 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM--and our temps were below 80 degrees all day for the first time since sometime last April. (I started to say last December but Willard was reading over my shoulder and warned me against unnecessary exaggeration. She says my nose is quite long enough. Not to mention I don't want to be mistaken for a member of the present administration. Whatever else the ornery are, we aren't prevaricators without good reason.)

Back at the Twist and Shout I spent the evening (Thursday)watching things about Pink Floyd and Queen on VH1. Sad stories don't just happen to people in country songs, and the sad tales of Syd Barrett and Freddie Mercury are about as sad as they get, one sidelined by mental illness and the other dying of AIDS in what should have been their most productive years.

Whatever. Check in again soon. Hang in there. Luv, Fairweather

Hey guys, Fairweather here with a very brief message. Still in a heat-induced stupor, but we have in the past few days had a couple of showers of rain--only lasted about twenty minutes apiece, but hey, rain's rain, right? It is my sorrowful observation though that you know it's a drought when your most intimate fantasies get to be about rain instead of sex--and that is all I got to say about that. (Except--pay attention, SD--if you can work Josh Bernstein in a wet tee shirt into the fantasy about rain.) More later. Hang in there and send us rain. Fairweather

Hello Guys, Willard here. During this week of record high temperatures I’ve been trying to come to terms with a thing called death and funeral practices in East Tennessee.
We live in an area that has been called the buckle of the Bible belt. We have our religious "extremists" who will turn any event into a "call to the altar" even funerals and burials. Now I don’t mind these hellfire and brimstone sermons with altar calls at revivals or even in their proper churches, but really, a grieving family does not need this at a funeral which is where I heard it on Saturday night. Death just is not a Hallelujah meeting even if it does have an Amen corner.
Within a week I’ve lost an uncle, a child I helped raise (Child? He would have been 26 in January—and is the first of my "kids" to pass), and an infant cousin who was born with a rare and deadly blood disease.
I got to thinking about funerals I had been to and wondering about funerals in the far distant past.
Now I’ve been going to funerals since I was 6 months old. I think that I can say with all certainty I’ve seen some doozy’s over the years. From the one where there was only an undertaker present to the one where an Aunt tried to climb into the coffin with her murdered son.
Well, Fairweather has mentioned that my family is a little unusual or as she says "eccentric". But one thing we do, however odd, is band together and try to help when there is a death within the family, from caring for the littles to just being a shoulder to cry on. I guess my family is a little more of the pre 1900 traditionalist in that way. Many times, back then, families and neighbors would come from miles a way to tend the sick and help when there was someone they knew was dying or dead.
Historically, here in East Tennessee, we have cases like Big Haley Mullins who had to go out the side of her house because she was too big to be brought out the front door. And there were cases where the family were traveling in a wagon train and could only stop long enough to bury the dead and move on within one short afternoon. That being the case with one of my ancestors. And poor Bob Boyd whose undertaker and sister (they being the only ones going to be there) had to hire pallbearers to move his body.
There are now many practices that really don’t fit with what was traditional in the past. Irish families had wakes before the funeral (somewhat like the current "receiving of friends" but more so—often there was drinking and toasts to the dead person. There were good memories of the person were shared.) Catholic families would have masses for their family members. Today’s receiving of friends is tame by comparison and the after burial get togethers are more of a family reunion than a celebration of the deceased life.
The thing I’m not fond of today is the newer habit of night funerals and burials the next day. I’ve watched the wives, mothers and children literally go mad with the thoughts of bodies laying in cold rooms just waiting for burial. On at least one occasion the mother died within the month. (More so since the finding a few years back of uncremated remains at a crematorium in north Georgia). There is a little bit of the bandage effect by having the funeral the same day as the burial. You get it over with fast as opposed to a slow drawn out pain. Fairweather reminded me of the woman who went over the edge at the first of winter thinking of her husband lying under the cold snow.
In the 1800’s we didn’t have the choices we do now. Undertakers would have a pine box (or family and friends would build one) which the family would line with a sheet or quilt and the body would have family and neighbors come sit all night (originally to make sure the person was dead instead of a coma) then the next day would be the funeral and burial. Although this didn’t always help insure they didn’t bury a living person. In my family there is the story of one woman who was buried the next morning and "was still warm". (If the ground was too cold to dig in the winter the body was kept on cooling boards until the ground thawed enough to bury them.)
If you were wealthy enough the embalming was an infusion of arsenic. If not, then let’s just say, you won’t find a lot of remains from that time period. A cremated body then meant you were in a house or wagon that burnt or maybe were caught in a wildfire, although that happened less often.
There are all kinds of ghost stories (and other tales) about people buried alive but I believe one of my favorites is the tale about this man who was set up in the parlor with an elderly woman taking her turn sitting there late at night. The family had a cat who had been put outside the house. A screen was set up to keep it out. Unfortunately they didn’t realize it had another way inside. It gets behind the table where the coffin is with its lid propped back and bumps against the pine box. The poor woman, who was dozing, jumps thinking the body moved, hits the table and the lid slams closed. The poor cat narrowly misses losing its tell and runs through the screen leaving a big hole. Okay I admit it’s not a ghost story but it does say a lot about the mores of the time.
Until next time fare thee well.

Hey Guys Willard here.
We're currently on the way to a record for August-- the hottest in quite a few years--so far averaging 85.3 for the month. The previous record was 83.5.
Anyway we are temporarily on hiatus due to heat, drought and summer pneumonia in my case. Fairweather is in a blue funk that appears to be heat related.
For all our friends out there stay cool. And those in the flooding areas of the country-- Stay safe and think about sending us some of that liquid.
Until next time.

As I write this the southeast is melting under a massive high pressure system that not even the jet stream can budge; no rain, little wind, an unsettlingly brassy sky, temps way in the nineties and heat indexes as high as 108 degrees, the nasty stinking dog days of summer.

It all reminds me no end of British author W. F. Harvey's short story "August Heat." First published in 1910 and usually anthologized as a ghost story, it's not a ghost story at all; it's a series of stray thoughts and curious coincidences that build up to one of the most ominous endings in any genre.

The story is dated: August 20, l90-. It opens with an artist named Withencroft, writing about the odd things that have happened to him on this unbearably hot humid day. He is overwhelmed by an idea for a sketch, which, finished, depicts a monstrously fat, unshaven, sweating man, standing in a courtroom; he has apparently just been sentenced to death. Withencroft refers to the sketch as "the best thing I have done."

He puts the sketch into his pocket and goes out for a walk despite the oppressive heat. On his way he impulsively enters a stonemason's shop, where he finds the proprietor, Atkinson, on whom he has never laid eyes before, is the image of the criminal in the dock whom Withencroft had sketched only hours earlier.

Atkinson has been preparing a tombstone to take to a sales exhibition, complete with a name, birthdate, and a date of death. He explains that he used the first name and dates that popped into his head, but the name is Withencroft's, the birthdate is Withencroft's, and the date of death is August 20, 190-.

Both men are understandably spooked by these coincidences. Atkinson invites Withencroft to stay with him until midnight, lest Withencroft should meet with an accident on his way home; Withencroft, ignoring the sketch in his pocket of Atkinson as a condemned criminal, accepts.

The story ends with the two men sitting in an upper room of Atkinson's home; Atkinson is whetting an edge on his chisel, while Withencroft passes the time writing his account of this strange day as they wait for midnight. He writes:

It is after eleven now. I shall be gone in less than an hour.
But the heat is stifling.
It is enough to send a man mad.

And if that doesn't send a chill (a very welcome chill here) down your spine, you've better nerves or less imagination than me. Till next time, fair thee well.