Niota, Tennessee, a small town on Highway 11 in McMinn County, has come to national prominence twice in the past century. Most recently, it was during a time when all city government offices were held by women. The ladies were featured on GOOD MORNING AMERICA, and I still cringe to remember that during the entire interview, Charles Gibson consistently mispronounced Niota. For future reference, Charlie--and others who might not know--it's pronounced nigh-OH-dah, NOT knee-OTT-uh.

But I digress. In August 1920, a young man who was born, raised, and buried in Niota had a huge role in obtaining passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the vote in the United States. And he did so thanks to the influence of his mother.

Harry T. Burn was born in 1895. He was first elected to the state General Assembly at the age of twenty-two. In 1920, during his first term, he became embroiled in a major national battle: to get the Nineteenth Amendment passed. The history of the long fight even to get this measure to that point--it was presented to the states for ratification by the 66th Congress of the United States on June 4th, 1919--has been told by better historians than me in other places. At the time there were forty-eight states in the Union, and ratification was required from thirty-six of the forty-eight for it to be added to the Constitution. Tennessee's General Assembly was one of four states given the opportunity to become that thirty-sixth state; three others refused to call a session of their legislatures to take up the question.

To put it bluntly, things did not look good for its success. It was a measure opposed not only by men but in large part by women as well; many opposed it on the grounds that A) women were silly creatures, apt to be swayed by emotion rather than reason, and therefore to cast their ballots for some totally unsuitable candidate; B) that many would cast their votes the way some man ordered them to; and C)--inevitably--racism raised its vile head; the law did not distinguish between white women and women of color, and many who might have been inclined to give the vote to white women would not extend the same privilege to women of color.

In Tennessee, in that hot summer of 1920, supporters of the amendment wore a yellow rose; opponents wore red ones. This was the second "war of the roses" in our state history; the first had been when the Taylor brothers, Robert and Alfred, had run against each other for governor in the 1880s, and their supporters wore different colors of roses.

Harry T. Burn was twenty-four that year, and he was staunchly opposed to giving women the vote, wearing his red rose proudly. On the day the vote came before the General Assembly, he planned to vote against the amendment.

And then he got a letter from his mother.

Phoebe Ensminger Burn was a widow, living at the time on Mouse Creek. (Everyone refers to her to this day as Miss Febb, which has given rise to a story that her Christian name was not Phoebe, but February). She was a strong supporter of the suffragist movement, and when she knew the vote was coming up she wrote her son a letter in which she said:

"Dear Son: Hurrah and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt! I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the "rat" in ratification. Your mother"

("Help Mrs. Catt put the 'rat' in ratification" referred to a cartoon featuring the great suffrage leader Carrie Chapman Catt, who was in Tennessee at the time, lobbying hard for passage.)

On August 18th, the day of the vote, there was a surprising tie: forty-eight votes for, forty-eight against. Harry Burn was the final vote, the one that would break the tie. He was wearing his red rose, and all confidently expected him to cast an opposing vote.

Instead, with his red rose on his lapel and his mother's letter in his hand, Harry Burn stood and cast his vote IN FAVOR of the Nineteenth Amendment.

He was chased out of the chamber by angry opponents, only escaping a thrashing by climbing out onto a window ledge and clambering to safety in the attic of the building. The next day, when things were a bit calmer, he made a speech to the assembly explaining why he had changed his vote.

"A good boy," he said, "always does what his mother asks him to do."

Harry T. Burn continued to serve in state government until his death in 1977. He's buried in a small graveyard right on Highway 11 in Niota, and there's a historical highway marker by the road there. Another marker, in Nashville, also commemorates that historic vote.

The votes of women, so the media tells us, will be a huge factor in this 2008 presidential election cycle. And we owe that privilege to a woman who raised her son to be a good boy.

So thank you, Miss Febb, for raising your son right, and thanks, Harry T. Burn, for minding your mother.

Happy Mother's Day to my beloved mom, and to all moms.

In the past eight months I've written three blogs on losses of great singers: Porter Wagoner, Hank Thompson, and Dan Fogelberg. Today we have lost another: the phenomenal Eddy Arnold, just a week short of his ninetieth birthday.



Born in Henderson, Tennessee (now a suburb of Nashville; then a small farming community) on May 15, 1918, Richard Edward Arnold began to try to make a career in music following the loss of the family farm when he was eighteen. Because of those roots of his raising, he was for many years given the billing nickname "The Tennessee Plowboy." Oh, what a voice! In the early years of country music, as we now define it, Arnold was a rarity, a singer who sang from his diaphragm rather than his upper chest and nasal passages, in a silky baritone that could extend effortlessly upward into the tenor range (as in his hits "Cattle Call" {1955} and "The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me" {1966}).

Those were later, though. Arnold began his career as a singer in Pee Wee King's Golden West Cowboys. He made his first recording as a solo act in December 1944, but it was two years later that he had his first hit, "That's How Much I Love You." Later in his career he had a television show, which he always closed with a gospel song, "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You."

He could have been as major a pop star as Frank Sinatra or Perry Como, but he chose to remain in Nashville. In the 1960s, he scored a number of hits with full orchestration, becoming a "countrypolitan" singer; but he never went completely pop. He became a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1966, and performed his final concert on May 16, 1999, although he continued to record until 2005.

Eddy Arnold lost his wife of over sixty years this past March. Shortly after her death he suffered a fall at his home and had been confined to a Nashville care facility until his death this morning. His friend and fellow Grand Ol' Opry star, Jim Ed Brown, has said that Eddy died of a broken heart.

If I might suggest two songs that epitomize Eddy Arnold for me, I would choose "That Cuddlebuggin' Baby of Mine" a swing tune that was according to the Web released in February 1963 but probably dates back a decade or more earlier than that, with no instrumental backing save a steel guitar, a piano, and an upright bass; the lack of clutter complements his winningly relaxed vocal. The other I would choose would be "You Don't Know Me," a 1956 release of a song he had written the previous year with the great Cindy Walker. The vocal is quite possibly the most achingly exquisite one ever recorded by a country singer, as the shy protagonist watches the girl of his dreams walk away with another man:

For I never knew the art of making love
Though my heart ached with love for you
Afraid and shy, I let my chance go by
The chance you might have loved me too. . .

you give your hand to me
and then you say goodbye
I watch you walk away
beside the lucky guy
to never, never know
the one who loves you so
no, you don't know me. . .

I didn't hear this on TV news; I ran across the item on Yahoo! As I was reading it, it began to rain, and has continued to rain the rest of the afternoon. Call me softheaded, call me a sentimentalist, but I prefer to think that the great singers who have gone before him are weeping for joy that he has come to join them.

The world is the poorer today.

I've spent the day running behind. Overslept (not uncommon) but then we had company and the rest of the day has sort of felt like I'll never catch up. As I type the mercury sits at eighty-two degrees; not uncomfortable thanks to a warm gentle wind and, as the afternoon wears on, clouds--probably the leading edge of that front that's drowning Arkansas--are beginning to pile up and will bring rain by morning.

Even with gas at the outrageous prices it's at, today would have been a good day for a long ride through the back country. Sound silly? Yes, but for this: this time of year, for no more than a couple of weeks, fire pinks are blooming.

Fire pink (Silene virginica) is a misnomer; they actually are a bright red, and it's said the name "pink" refers to the fact that the edges of the petal look as if they've been notched with pinking shears. They grow in the woods and on the sides of the roads, especially in places where shade holds moisture to the ground. They have five petals that splay out from a tubular center, and are sometimes called "catchfly" because that center is like--Velcro, like the sticky little pelt of a Venus flytrap or a pitcher plant, and flies and other insects can sometimes get caught (but not eaten! fire pinks aren't carnivorous).



Fire pinks aren't common right here around the house. The place where I've found the most blooming in one place is a stretch of road at the back of beyond in a little knob community called Cane Creek. When the road was cut through there, it left high banks with shade from oaks and maples on one side and the creek itself off down a slope on the other. The fire pinks peek out of the moss and wild grasses under the oaks and maples along the banks.

This year, I'm not going to get to see those unexpected little red stars--but I can look at pictures. They do my soul good.

And on that wistful note, fair thee well.

Generally speaking, I have declared Fairweather Lewis a politics free zone. However, a couple of days ago I contributed the following to a blog where, I think I may have mentioned, I offer occasional hillbilly political commentary but more often only bullshit. This piece quite nicely combines my passions for music and bullshitting, so I offer it here.

**********************************************************************

I decided while I was fixing supper that I needed to listen to music with more--what's the word I want? Something to get my blood pumping. So I chose my favorite Michigander--think that's what they're called--Bob Seger. Loved Bob Seger since high school. My favorites of his output are "The Fire Inside" (with killer piano by Roy Bittan of The E Street Band), "We Got Tonight," "Night Moves," "Like a Rock," and "Against the Wind." All of them pretty much downers about loneliness and aging; I'm not lonely, but I'm feeling my age the past few days.

Tonight, though, the one that gets my attention most is a meditation about life on the road from a musician's point of view: "Turn the Page." Seger originally recorded this, says Wikipedia, on the 1973 album BACK IN '72, but it didn't become a fan favorite until a 1975 live version.

Sometimes my mind makes very peculiar connections. I got to thinking about how this song could also be applied to life on the road for the political candidates.

your thoughts will soon be wandering
The way they always do
When you're ridin' sixteen hours
And there's nothin' much to do
And you don't feel much like ridin',
You just wish the trip was through. . .

Makes me grateful not to be one, as the song goes on:

Well you walk into a restaurant,
Strung out from the road
And you feel the eyes upon you
As you're shakin' off the cold
You pretend it doesn't bother you
But you just want to explode. . .

(insert snarky remark here--especially if you're John McCain of the explosive temper)

Over and over: the same songs for the musician, the same tired rhetoric and speeches for the candidate. I recall the late great country singer George Morgan complaining that singing his greatest hit, "Candy Kisses," was "like going to work." At this stage it's no doubt very much that way for the candidates.

Here I am
On the road again
There I am
Up on the stage
Here I go
Playin' star again
There I go
Turn the page. . .

And they get up and they do it all again tomorrow.

No wonder they make mistakes, misspeak, take bad advice from people who have agendas other than the one the candidates profess.

Tonight, I'm inclined to give the candidates a pass. Their souls must be wailing like the saxophone that opens and closes this song, for time to rest, for time to be alone, for time to THINK.

**********************************************************************

My profoundest apologies to Bob Seger for my shameless freeform interpretation of his lyrics; to the candidates for my lack of gravitas; and to my readers for bringing on fits of yawning.

And on that facetious note, fair thee well.

I was watching another episode of the late lamented History Channel series HAUNTED HISTORY last night, this one about ghosts of Washington, DC and environs. It had the usual appearances in the White House--Abraham Lincoln, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison--; the sad tale of Stephen Decatur, the naval hero who died in a duel and sightings of whose ghost caused a window in his former home to be blocked up; and Octagon House, the misnamed former home of the Tayloe family, which has nearly as many ghosts as the White House itself.

My favorite of all DC stories actually comes from the city of Alexandria, Virginia, founded in the late seventeenth century and annexed by President George Washington in the 1790s when the federal city was being planned. After half a century as part of the District, Alexandria was returned to the state of Virginia in 1846 and now is home to the Department of Defense and many government officials and media people who work inside the Beltway.

In 1816, though, when this story takes place, Alexandria was still part of DC. A popular tavern and inn, Gadsby's, was already a favorite spot in the area. It was there that the Female Stranger died, and there she still haunts.

The young woman and her husband arrived in Alexandria in the autumn of 1816 and rented a room at Gadsby's Tavern. The lady was already gravely ill when she checked in, but the tavern's staff took tender care of her, sending for a doctor and helping her frantic husband with nursing duties. When it became apparent that she could not live, the couple made a strange request of the staff: that never, under any circumstances, would they reveal her name, or that of her husband.

The staff agreed. Legend has it that they even went so far as to alter the guest register to conceal the identities of their guests.

Two days after the curious request for eternal anonymity, the woman died. As her husband was indigent, but promised to make remission for any funds expended by the generous locals, she was buried at the expense of the tavernkeeper and others.

The husband, as you have probably already guessed, vanished the day after the funeral and was never heard from again. The locals, however, went so far as to provide the young woman with a tombstone. It's flat, and has a long inscription, said to have been written by her husband before his precipitous departure. The inscription reads:

To the memory of a
FEMALE STRANGER
whose mortal sufferings terminated
on the 14th day of October 1816
Aged 23 years and 8 months

This stone was placed here by her disconsolate
Husband in whose arms she sighed out her
latest breath and who under God
did his utmost even to soothe the cold
dead ear of death.

How loved how valued once avails thee not
To Whom related or by whom begot
A heap of dust alone remains of thee
Tis all though art and all the proud shall be

To him gave all the Prophets witness that
through his name whosoever believeth in
him shall receive remission of sins
Acts. 10th Chap. 43rd verse”

It's said that the Female Stranger still haunts the room at Gadsby's Tavern where she died, and also the cemetery where she has lain in her nameless, but nonetheless marked, grave for nearly two centuries.

The staff of Gadsby's Tavern, who cared for her in her last days, took the secret of her name to their graves. To this day, no one has any idea who she was, or why she laid this strange charge on her benefactors.

For more about the legend of the Female Stranger, check out these sites:

http://subvatican.com/femalestranger.html

http://alexandriadailyphoto.wordpress.com/2006/10/17/tale-of-the-female-stranger/

And on that sorrowful note, fair thee well.