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Death by Meeting

11 Apr

I was going to do a little blogging last night, but after sitting in a two-hour meeting listening to my brain cells scream as they jumped to their deaths, I decided that it just wasn’t in me to put fingers to keyboard. On top of that, I had to watch the season finale of Justified, the third greatest show in television history. As you can tell by the title, this post isn’t about the show. It is about the meeting that I had to sit through.

Before my rant, I must say that the people on the committee are good folks. They volunteer their time to help the community, and I commend them for it. I am more of a big idea guy who likes to think stuff up and back away to let someone else do the work. However, there are times when people get focused on the details and forget the big picture. Last night’s meeting was about details and went something like this.

Minutes – You know when people take the time to read the minutes of the last meeting word-for-word that it is going to be along night. Needless to say, we talked about the minutes for a while.

Sunshine Report – This is where announcements are made about people being sick or having other troubles. This is a nice thing to do I suppose. I’m not sure why it is in the regular meeting because these things can be talked about after. But, it was fine except for the lady who talked about her own problems. She is going into the hospital next week and needs our prayers. Something about that makes me feel weird. I’m not sure people should announce their own problems.

Committee Reports – This didn’t take long at all. We talked about buying some heaters for a few minutes. This despite the fact that there is no money. How do I know this? Because the treasurer didn’t show up for the Treasurer’s Report that was supposed to come before the Sunshine Report.

(Oh, I should tell you that the committee oversees a historic village in my town. It’s not really historic because old buildings have been moved there, and new ones that look old have been added to it. I’ve tried to tell them it’s not really historic, but I am only a history professor and really don’t know what I am talking about.)

Controversy arose during this part because of a scheduling conflict. There is a free event and a pay event Saturday. The guy in charge of the pay event was concerned that free people might get in. The chairwoman of the committee got really upset and said the free event has been planned for a year, and the pay event needs to work with it. This is a good time to remind you that we have no money.

Next, the pay event guy talked about his big project – live online streaming of country music from our site. It sounds good, but I don’t trust him. He’s from Australia, but each time he talks I think of the word carpetbagger. He has been talking about this for a year without anything happening. There always seems to be an excuse.

Also, we are building the world’s largest dinner triangle – you know, a thing that people rang on farms to tell field hands that food was ready. It looks like this.

Except, ours is going to be 10 feet on each side.

After this announcement, it was time to talk about acquiring more buildings. Remember, we have no money, so adding buildings is a good idea. Old buildings are expensive to keep up but adding some more shouldn’t be a problem.

One good idea came out of this part of the meeting. We are going to inventory our possessions. I was going to suggest some ways to protect our artifacts, but that’s really not the point I reckon.

Once the committee reports were completed, we moved to Future Projects. They are working on a 25th Anniversary book and want to copy Foxfire. I hope they don’t plagiarise.

Of course, we also talked about the upcoming county fair. We have the largest one in Tennessee don’t you know. Very impressive indeed.

Finally, we got to Unfinished Business, and a local producer of commemorative knives presented the idea of us buying some. We could put our name on the blade and sell them. Unfortunately, buying the knives will cost $16,500, and we have a lot of commemorative stuff that’s been lying around for years. I wonder how much building maintenance we could do for $16,500.

That;s it for the meeting, but I have one more pet peeve. People involved in this village address each other in a strange way. They call people Mr. Joe or Miss Jane – mixing prefix titles with first names. I’m not sure it’s bad, but I think it’s weird.

That was my meeting. When it was over, I was thinking it would have been better to be in a shootout with Raylan or Boyd. You’re probably thinking that also would have been better than reading this post.

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It’s a Conspiracy

4 Mar

This semester, one of my fellow history teachers is offering a cool class on conspiracies in American history. I wish I could sit in on the course because he covers conspiracies from different eras and explains why people have been attracted to the theories during those times. It is interesting to hear his students talk about the subjects they cover in class and the assignments that he gives them. I can tell that they are having a lot of fun and learning along the way.

A few days ago, a couple of students were in my office talking and explained that each of them have been given a specific conspiracy to research and write about. As one talked about their assignment, I said that I had been there. Then, the other one talked about their assignment, and I have been there as well. Finally, one of them said that I must be the one behind all of the secrets because my travels have made me a common denominator. We laughed, but I began to think, “Damn, I have been to a lot of these places.”

With that in mind, here is a list of the places I have been lucky enough to visit that are connected to some vast conspiracy.

Cape Canaveral – One of the coolest tours anywhere, you can get a upclose view of the launch pads used from the 50s to the present. It is amazing to take a journey through the technological changes. What makes this prime conspiracy territory? Ask any moon landing skeptic, and they will tell you that these launches didn’t go anywhere. The astronauts were walking around somewhere in the desert.

Mount Rushmore – Actually, I didn’t know a conspiracy surrounded this monument until I watched an episode of Brad Meltzer’s Decoded. I thought the only conspiracy involving this place was by the people who made that stupid National Treasure: Book of Secrets movie. However, Meltzer’s minions looked into the possibility of the mount paying homage to racial purity. I don’t know about that, but I know that the Black Hills were the sacred land of the Sioux. The fact that it is now a tourist trap is conspiracy enough.

Roswell – In 1947, a UFO crashed near this New Mexico town, and the government has been covering up the incident ever since. It must be true because there is a museum dedicated to it with a lot of cool exhibits.

What? You didn’t know Bigfoot is an alien?

Then, you probably didn’t know that they have real recreations of alien autopsies.

Actually, the museum is interesting and has an extensive collection of UFO videos, research and writings.

Memphis – I wrote in a recent post about my visit to the National Civil Rights Museum, built on the site of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination.

This conspiracy springs from the idea that a petty criminal like James Earl Ray could not have shot King and escaped to Europe without help. Ray fed this idea with his insistence that he was working with a man named Raoul. I have also wondered how Ray got away but had my questions answered after reading Hellhound on His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin.

Dallas – The granddaddy of all conspiracy theories is based around the assassination of John F. Kennedy at Dealy Plaza. Most people probably believe that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Some say it was the mafia. Others say it was the Cubans, the Russians, or even the vice president. I don’t know about any of that, but I believe this conspiracy lingers for a couple of reasons.

First, a president, Abraham Lincoln, was actually the victim of a conspiracy.

Second, a visit to Dealy Plaza leads people to believe that something else must have happened. Walking around the grounds, it just makes sense that the gunman was on the grassy knoll and not in a window on an upper floor of a building. It is difficult to describe the area, but everyone should take a look for themselves. I must admit that of all the conspiracies this is the one I come closest to believing.

There you have it. The list of conspiratorial places that I have visited. I promise that this doesn’t make me the Cigarette-Smoking Man from The X-Files. Where’s my proof? If I was, then the following would happen.

Derek Dooley would resign as the head football coach at Tennessee, and the team would never lose another game.

I would win the lottery.

People would be breaking the law when they throw chewing gum on the ground.

I would win every hand of Blackjack.

All of us bloggers would be world-famous.

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