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.

I have always been fascinated by the painted caves of the Pyrenees, especially Lascaux's Hall of the Bulls, where extinct wild oxen thunder across the ceiling. At one point I even worked out the plot for a novel about a modern-day prehistorian with a specialty in cave art, but I never got it written; like many another would-be novelist, I suffer from little talent and even less ambition.

That's why my most recent purchase from one of my book clubs was THE CAVE PAINTERS, a 2006 book by Gregory Curtis. He has written for publications as varied as TIME and ROLLING STONE. He too has a passion for cave art, and he spent a couple of years actually visiting the caves and researching both archaeological findings and the prehistorians past and present who devoted their lives to the inventory and (attempted) interpretation of cave art.

Curtis writes in a clear style that avoids jargon and uses dates rather than the names of the various periods of cave art. He gives especially vivid descriptions of the caves of Les Trois-Freres, Font-du-Gaume and Chauvet, all of which he explored with prehistorians who have worked in them. He also puts it in perspective the eons of time that the culture that produced the cave art persisted; Chauvet, only explored by moderns for the first time in the 1990s, has paintings dating to 32,000 BCE, while Lascaux, first explored in 1940, dates to l7,000 BCE, yet the art from Chauvet is equally as sophisticated as that in Lascaux. It is also a sobering thought to realize that the painters of Lascaux were separated in time from those of Chauvet as we are from the Lascaux artists. Their culture had a stability that no subsequent society has attained.

The largest part of the book is devoted to the great prehistorians who studied the caves from the earliest discoveries: Sautuola, the Spaniard who found bison on the ceiling of Altamira and was ridiculed to death for his pains. Cartailhac, who savaged Sautuola in l878 but was forced to repent of his doubts in l902. Abbe Breuil, the Roman Catholic priest who never served a parish and rigidly held that religion and science were two distinct disciplines that never intersected. Max Raphael, the art historian/Marxist who first looked at the caves from the perspective of art rather than of archaeology. Leroi-Gourhan and Annette Laming-Emperaire, who pioneered the notion that there was a significant order to the arrangement of the art. The Begouen family, four generations of prehistorians who have had the advantage of owning the cave at Les Trois-Freres. Jean Clottes, who in the l990s not only led the study of Chauvet but ran afoul of orthodox archaeological thought when he tried to interpret the art in terms of shamanism.

My one quibble with Curtis's book is that the illustrations are far too sparse, although there is one marvelous two-page spread of Lascaux's Hall of the Bulls that almost stops my heart. And I have to say that I always wished that Josh Bernstein of DIGGING FOR THE TRUTH had done a segment on cave art. Oh well, maybe someday. Till next time, fair thee well.

Hey guys, nothing new to report, except that here in TN rain is still a scarce and infinitely precious commodity. A cousin barely three miles up the road from me got 2 l/4 inches on Thurs.; here on the creek we got a grand total of about twelve drops. Apparently we don't live right.

Otherwise all is the same. Hot, humid. Bubba is having a classic attack this week; he's listening to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath (the Ozzy years) and Queen. Last I heard from Miss A she was downloading Johnny Cash, and the Princess had been on a field trip. Fortunately hers did not end the same way as the kids on the I35W bridge did. Thank God they're all safe, and God be with those who lost loved ones, those still waiting for word, and those who are alive but injured.

Until next time, fair thee well.

Hey guys--down here in the Volunteer State it's still hot, sticky, and not enough rain to raise the creek to normal levels. I've been playing and singing Billy Joe Duncan's "Give Us Rain"--recorded on Ricky Skaggs and Kentucky Thunder's 1999 CD ANCIENT TONES--a lot lately. It starts out about a grandfather praying for rain on his cotton fields, then talks about other kinds of drought--spiritual, emotional. It's a gorgeous piece.

Other than that, life goes on. Willard's still cleaning houses, Bubba's getting ready to go to college (mine and Willard's alma mater--we're so thrilled), Miss A is writing about crop circles and hunting a prom dress (she'll probably be the first punk ever to attend a local prom, and more power to her) and the Princess has been singing Merle Haggard songs and then pretending she's not--like she could fool Aunt Fairweather.

Other than that I've spent a very little time wondering about Tucker Carlson's intelligence. I've watched him as far back as the CNN days, and even that strange interlude at PBS, where his major achievement was an excellent interview with Phil Lesh of The Grateful Dead. I even voted for him on DANCING WITH THE STARS because as I've said before southerners are suckers for lost causes. But of late he's been so far over the top that I'd call him the male counterpart of Ann Coulter--I hesitate to say male though because last I heard Coulter was having a gender identity crisis.

His latest is about Democrats/liberals refusing to use the term Islamic terrorists. Okay, I realize that his take is that all Muslims are terrorists, but he can't seem to grasp the corollary, that not all terrorists are Muslims. Last time I checked, the badass Tamil Tigers were atheists, and the Chechens, who are Muslim in the main, identify themselves by their ethnicity, as do the Basques. And God only knows what our most infamous homegrown one--the late Timothy McVeigh-was.

Have to wonder if Tucker is really as big a bigoted jerk as he seems, or if that's a persona he puts on and takes off the way he does those ill-matched shirts and ties he wears. Not anything I expect I'll ever get an answer to, but I wonder.

Nuff said--and Lord, we sure could use a little rain. Till next time, fair thee well.

Some might say you don't have to be drunk to read this blog, but it helps. Me, I sing the songs and occasionally signal myself for another round of CF diet Pepsi.

Anyway, in reverse order, top five second tier great drinking songs:

"Drivin' Nails in My Coffin" recorded by Ernest Tubb. Uptempo for an ET song, closer to western swing than country, another that spans lost love and drinking; he "started drinkin' for pastime" to forget a departed lover and can't stop.

"No Reason to Quit" recorded by Merle Haggard. A real downer, similar in theme to Jim Reeves's "Bottle, Take Effect," this one's about a guy who defiantly says "I could sober up tomorrow" (yep, the "I can quit anytime" excuse)". . .but I've got no reason to quit." Basically a note on an extended suicide.

"This Drinkin' Will Kill Me" recorded by Dwight Yoakam. A gem from Yoakam's 1987 CD, HILLBILLY DELUXE, this one's actually bluegrass played on country instruments. As usual, there's a woman to blame, and, given the choice between death by broken heart or by the bottle, he's drinking to speed up the process.

"She's Lookin' Better by the Minute" recorded by the Wilburn Brothers. Thematically similar to Mickey Gilley's "Don't the Girls All Get Prettier at Closin' Time," this one's earlier, cheekier, sexist, ageist, and roll in the floor funny. A guy in a bar is checking out a woman: "She's not much to look at/A little old and a little fat" but he allows that she looks better as he gets drunker. By the end of the song "she looks like a movie star" and he decides he'd "better pick her up before I start to sober up." Teddy's irrepressibly droll solo cracks me up. (Willard points out that, by the next AM, this will turn out to be Mel Tillis's "What Did I Promise Her Last Night," but that's a whole nother blog.)

"There Stands the Glass" recorded by Webb Pierce. . .and Billy Walker. . .and ad infinitum. Same theme as "Pop a Top" except this guy's not getting off his barstool. Sung half to the bartender and half to a woman who's not coming back, it's a drinking song par excellence, perfectly suited to Pierce's nasal tenor.

And I STILL didn't get to "Stomp Them Grapes" and "Little Ol' Wine Drinker Me" and "Jose Cuervo" and. . .Ah well. Maybe sometime when I'm feeling low again--the blues, as Ol' Hank sapiently observed, come around. Till next time, fair thee well.