This coming Monday, April 14th, will be the ninety-sixth anniversary of the sinking of SS TITANIC. This liner, the pride of Great Britain's White Star line, struck an iceberg that had drifted dangerously far into the North Atlantic shipping lanes at roughly 11:40 PM EST on April 14th, 1912, and sank within two hours. Of roughly 2200 passengers and crew, some 1500 were lost.

Whether due to the hubris of the company that built her or the hyperbole of the media (strictly print, in those days) who breathlessly detailed her luxurious appointments and gossiped about her first class passengers, TITANIC was proclaimed unsinkable. She was not, and was proven not, on her maiden voyage. Some religious people deemed this misfortune a judgment of God; others pointed out that a disproportionate number of the dead came from third class and steerage--the equivalent of "cheap seats." And of course, there were reports of premontions. Some of the more outstanding such came years before that alpha and omega voyage.

One of the eeriest of these "premonitions" involves a book called FUTILITY: Or, The Wreck of the Titan, published in 1898 by an obscure American writer and journalist named Morgan Robertson (1866-1915). Not only did Robertson give his fictional liner a nearly identical name to TITANIC; the respective sizes and displacements of the two ships were virtually identical, as were details as to the number of passengers aboard the two ships and a serious dearth of lifeboats. And most uncannily, both ships struck icebergs and were fatally damaged on the starboard (right)front, in the month of April. (A table showing the similarities between story and truth can be found at http://members.aol.com/ken63728/morgan.htm.)

Arguments have been made that Robertson, far from showing premonitory ability, made a series of educated guesses--somewhat in the manner of Jules Verne and his nuclear submarines and trips to the moon and the like. But then one runs up on the striking similarities between TITAN and TITANIC--and I don't mind saying, I find it odd at the least.

Another writer, the British progressive/muckraking journalist/editor William Thomas Stead, had published TWO alleged premonitions of TITANIC's demise nearly a decade before Robertson's story. On March 22, 1886, according to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._T._Stead), Stead published a story with a title as unwieldy as Robertson's called "How the Mail Steamer Went Down in Mid-Atlantic, By a Survivor", in which he detailed how a liner is sunk after hitting another ship, with great loss of life because of--you guessed it--a shortage of lifeboats. (Have to say, this one reminds me more of the 1956 ANDREA DORIA disaster than of TITANIC, although the circumstances are markedly different.) He drove the point home with this sentence: "This is exactly what might take place and will take place if liners are sent to sea short of boats." In an 1892 story called "From the Old World to the New" Stead tells a story of a White Star liner called MAJESTIC that rescues suvivors from another ship that collided with an iceberg.

Stead was interested in the paranormal, and was also known to draw pictures of ocean liners and of himself drowning--which may have been the most true premonitions he ever had. Stead was friends with the palm reader Cheiro (aka Count Louis Hamon), whose 1922 experience with the ghost of Pharaoh Akhenaton's daughter might be a blog topic for another day. In 1912 Cheiro gave Stead a "reading" and told him under no circumstances should he travel by water in April. Stead, however, was committed to attend a peace conference being held in that month at New York's Carnegie Hall, at the specific request of President William Howard Taft. In those days before air travel, he had no choice save to travel by ship. His choice? The new, unsinkable luxury liner TITANIC.

Stead drowned on April l5, 1912, at the age of sixty-two.

Gives me the willies just to think about it.

On that watery note, fair thee well.

Yes, yes, YESYESYESYESYES!!!!!

Our Lady Vols have won their eighth national championship tonight!!!! Last game for seniors Alexis Hornbuckle, Shannon Bobbitt, Alberta Auguste, and Nikki Anosike, and for Candace Parker, who is foregoing her last year of eligibility to go in the WNBA draft.

Lady Vols 64, Stanford Cardinal 48. A long hard road with another championship banner for Pat Summitt and her team.

Yeah, I know it's crude to gloat--but CONGRATULATIONS, LADY VOLS!!!!!

Hey guys--I had a yearly physical this AM. It was about the same as usual: I arrived spot on time, 8:45 AM, the doctor arrived at 10 o'clock-- Bloodwork left me with bruises, a pap smear--the female equivalent of that prostate exam you guys SO look forward to(insert evil grin here)--been prodded, squeezed and squished from one end to the other--tinkled in a cup--the only thing they didn't ask for was a stool sample, and I didn't remind them of that one.

It left me feeling, quite frankly, ill-used. I go back in six weeks for results.

And I got a treat afterwards. Willard came up and took me for the appointment, and when I finally got out we rode up to our migratory wildfowl sanctuary at Fort Loudon State Historical Park. This park commemorates an obscure incident from the French and Indian War (1757-1763). This time of year, though, it has my favorites of all the blossoming trees: eastern redbuds



and the flowering dogwood:



That last, with its four petals tipped with an odd little brownish red splotch, has a legend attached to it: it's said that the splotches represent the wounds of Christ.

The redbuds are in full bloom; the dogwoods are just beginning, a few in sunny areas bloomed out while others lag behind, the tiny blossoms a soft foamy green color until the petals spread full out and turn that lovely creamy white.

And on that flowery note, fair thee well.

(Please refer back to http://sylviasdaughter.blogstream.com for background to this blog.)

Willard and I were completely taken aback by Sylvia's news that a rather bedraggled Madame Sadie has turned up on her East Texas doorstep. We could not WAIT to find out what sent her on such a long bus ride. (Aunt Ornery merely checked her supply of cherry bark cough syrup, remarking, "It's about ninety proof, and if the old bat got into THAT, she probably won't remember a danged thang about Texas.")

Willard called me awhile ago to tell me she'd had a psychic flash of Madame hopping on the back of a Harley at a bus stop in Chattanooga and shouting to the rider, "MONROE COUNTY--AND MAKE IT SNAPPY!"

I figured the Harley would drop her off at the Monroe County line and from there she'd be barely two miles from home--less if she came through the woods and pastures. But no; just after four PM a Harley thundered by and went down the creek and up the holler. A minute or two later it thundered back. I tried to flag the rider down but he nearly blew me off the porch in his eagerness to get away. "Oh Lord," I thought. "What's the old bat done now?"

So I hotfooted it down the creek and up the holler, and nipped in the front door just as Madame plopped down in her recliner with a Bud Light. "Okay, Sadie, why'd you take off to--"

"Gimme a minute," she groaned. "Ain't had a drink since we crossed the state line into Arkansas."

"Do you good to dry out some," I said unsympathetically.

"Easy for you to say. You actually LIKE water." She took a long swallow, then smacked her lips appreciatively. "If you must know, smartass, that Sylvia sent me a telegram."

"She WHAT?"

"She sent me a telegram," Sadie said sullenly, "and she said that my beloved D.A. was gonna be in Houston all week and was just pining for my company. She said I needed to get out there in a hurry. So I put a message on my answering machine for all my clients that they could all go to hell, cause I was goin' to Texas, and I bought a bus ticket."

Totally aside from her shameless pretense of channeling the great Davy Crockett, I KNEW there was something fishy about this story. Sylvia would never have used Western Union to do what she could do on the computer. Moreover, she's ORNERY, not mean, and would never take advantage of Madame's hopeless passion for D.A. Not to mention that we've heard from across the pond that, on hearing that Madame had been to England looking for him after that Sadie Hawkins Day caper, a terrified D.A. had had himself put into protective custody and is, even as we speak, doing psychic readings for the inmates of a minimum security facility on the moors in Devon.

"Sadie--have you still got that telegram?"

Madame, by now well into her third Bud Light, waved vaguely at her reading table. "I think it's under the crystal ball."

I tried not to raise too much of a cloud of talcum powder as I retrieved the telegram, but some did get stirred up. When I stopped sneezing I looked at the piece of paper. It didn't look like Western Union to me. The writing was green; it had a broad gold border around the edge; and the "i" in Sylvia was dotted with a shamrock. "Dadgummit, Shorty," I said aloud.

Madame, who had fallen asleep, answered with a snore.

I stepped out onto the porch and surveyed the yard. There seemed to be a disturbance in the tulip bed, and I said sternly, "Come out of there, you folkloric delinquent."

Shorty, the leprechaun, slowly stood up. I reached out to grab him by the collar, but he made a run for it. Fortunately Madame's black cat, Familiar, came around the corner just then, saw Shorty, and pounced on him from behind, pinning him to the ground.

I squatted down beside the indignant little man. "Okay, you Brooklyn brat, tell me what that was all about."

"She deserved it," he snarled. "Thinking I was a gnome! Wanting me for lawn sculpture!"

"Oh, get a grip!" I snarled back. "Okay, maybe the old bat did have it coming for dissing your traditional status as an Irish icon, but using Sylvia to pull off your April Fool joke was just plain wrong."

His shoulders slumped, and he said sheepishly, "I guess I owe Sylvia an apology, don't I?"

"Yeah, you do. And I think I know how you can do it. Do you want to take a road trip?"

So, Sylvia, if a short man carrying a five-pound box of Godiva chocolates turns up on your doorstep, it's just Shorty, trying to make up for his bad.

Just whatever you do, don't answer the door wearing Daisy Dukes, or if you do, don't turn your back on him!!!

PS: He left Madame a couple of cases of Bud Light, so she forgave him on the spot when I told her what he'd done.

And on that boozy note, fair thee well.