BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:Grid
PRODID:-//Sitemason, Inc//Sitemason Calendar//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
METHOD:PUBLISH
BEGIN:VEVENT
UID:http://www.sitemason.com/element/9pnto7m/id/27885
SUMMARY:Starbucks Wisdom\: Chuck Berry and Elvis
DESCRIPTION:Somewhere between writing The Wind Done Gone and Pushkin and the Queen of Spades I developed an addiction to tall chai Starbucks (full fat\, full caf) that I eventually kicked. In my tall chai days David drove me to St.Louis with my feet up on the dashboard and a tall chai in my right hand one Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon so we could hear Chuck Berry sing in a the basement of a place called Blueberry Hill. David bought the tickets on the internet for twenty-five dollars. We had to stand in line forever to get in and get our seats. The boy taking tickets was fresh out of Hampshire College. We sat on folding chairs. It was a very good date night for an old married couple.   When Chuck Berry took the little stage\, with a band that included his adult son and adult daughter\, I was struck by the audacity of a black man saying\, let alone writing\, “Roll over Bethoven\, tell T-chai-kovsky the news—and then making it come true. Rock and Roll has become the world’s music and classical music has become something that requires subsidies to exist.\n               Country boys doing something new with the blues. Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley are two sides of the same coin. Bobby Braddock (who wrote what I think is the greatest country song of all time “He Stopped Loving Her Today” as well as this summer number one “People are Crazy”) and I wrote a song about Chuck Berry and Elvis and Thomas Jefferson called\, well we call it now Blackabilly\, about the common culture that is the underclass south\, black and white. Tall Chai is the official drink of my blackabilly nation. \n                 Tall chai is a good addiction. When I drank it every day I lost weight—almost fifty pounds. I was\, at the time\, also trying to walk a few slow miles three times a week during that period\, eat a high protein diet\, and only drink red wine\, but I ascribe most of the weight loss to Starbuck’s chai. Unfortunately\, when I discovered how many carbohydrates were in a Startbucks chai I stopped drinking them.\n               I think I’m going to start again. I am also going to hula hoop with my weighted adult exercise hoop I have nicknamed "the black Cadillac". And possibly leap on a personal trampoline. Furthermore\, I have promised myself\, though this is exactly\, and only the kind of promise I have a tendency to break\, but I am promising myself\, again\, that I will take ten minutes out of each hour I spend writing at my computer crosslegged on my bed to get off the bed and dance around my own hardwood floor.\n               Towards the end of my first chai-a-day era\, Starbucks decided to put my words\, “Mother love is not inevitable the good mother is a great artist ever creating beauty out of chaos.” on a few million cups. Almost as soon as Starbuck’s began handing out the cups bloggers began writing about the quote. Comments on my comments continue to pop up in the blogosphere on a very regular basis. Some of them are weird\, some of them are kind of wonderful. Most are a bit of both. I want to holler back to those of you who have shouted out to me with a few more words on the subject.\n               Sometimes\, the chaos is the chaos of the world. Sometimes it’s the chaos of the child\, Sometimes it’s the chaos within the mother herself. On very challenging days it is all three. Mother love transforms\, by seizing something precious\, something beautiful\, and waving it before the child’s eyes. Even when all there is to seize is the mother’s own radical unselfishness towards her child\, her reasonable appreciation of her child\, her graceful engagement with her child\, everytime the child learns to let that be enough\, to allow themselves to be distracted from misery and sustained by joy\, resiliency deepens.\n                 Unselfishness is not always a grand thing. The gestures can be frivolous. Sometimes it’s just taking your Starbucks card from your wallet and pressing it into your daughter’s hand as she gets in the security line to go back to school and three days later when something is provoking her towards misery she buys herself a tall chai\, no fat\, full caf\, and smiles remembering the first time you wiped away her tears and told her she’s going to have to trust you\, this is no big deal\, NBD\, get up and get on with what you want to do. Or the last time you said\, “Never ascribe to malevolence what incompetency will explain.” When that child laughs at the current misery\, with a wise chuckle\, knowing--even if they have encountered\, this time\, the malevolent\, or this time a problem that is a big deal-- they are not alone and they will want what is just and good even when the just and  the good is unlikely\, that is a chai scented victory.\n
URL;VALUE=URI:
CATEGORIES:bobby-braddock,chuck-berry,elvis-presley,mother-love,starbucks,tall-chai
CLASS:PUBLIC
SEQUENCE:11
DTSTAMP:20100121T191013
CREATED;TZID=US-Central:20090722T173809
LAST-MODIFIED;TZID=US-Central:20090823T233317
DTSTART;TZID=US-Central:20090722T172000
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR