"Hammer and Nail"
Clearing webs from the hovel, a blistered hand on the handle of a shovel
I've been digging too deep, I always do.
I see my face on the surface, I look a lot like Narcissus
A dark abyss of an emptiness, standing on the edge of a drowning blue.

I look behind my ears for the green
And even my sweat smells clean
Glare off the white hurts my eyes
I gotta get out of bed, and get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose

I had a lot of good intentions, sit around for fifty years and then collect a pension
Started seeing the road to hell and just where it starts
But my life is more than a vision, the sweetest part is acting after making a decision
I started seeing the whole as a sum of its parts

And I look behind my ears for the green
And even my sweat smells clean
Glare off the white hurts my eyes
Gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose

My life is part of the global life, I've found myself becoming more immobile
When I think a little girl in the world can't do anything
A distant nation my community, and a street person my responsibility
If I have a care in the world I have a gift to bring

But look behind my ears for the green
Even my sweat smells clean
Glare off the white hurts my eyes
Gotta get out of bed, get a hammer and a nail
Learn how to use my hands, not just my head
I think myself into jail
Now I know a refuge never grows from a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose
Gotta tend the earth if you want a rose

On Monday night I went with a group of students, friends, and ministers (spearheaded by Deborah Lewis) to see Shawn Mullins and the Indigo Girls perform at the Charlottesville Performing Arts Center at a benefit for the Charlottesville Free Clinic. The show, to say the very least, was amazing. It was very much like an upbeat town meeting, with all sorts of people, young and old, women and men, gay and straight, coming together for a night of soulful music (and raising $70,000 for the free clinic in the meantime!) Shawn Mullins is a deeply talented and engaging singer/songwriter, and, seeing him alone with his guitar on the spotlight-bathed stage, I felt like I was taking part in a profound, melodic conversation. He closed with "Lullaby", which of course drew lots of recognition and cheers from the crowd, but his lesser known songs ('Where's Johnny?', 'Santa Fe', and 'Lonesome, I Know You Too Well' come quickly to mind) are even more poignant and resonant.

The Indigo Girls followed and were everything I had imagined and more! Their set was heartfelt, passionate, and prophetic, and they seemed to be having as much fun being transformed by their music as did their very involved audience. Singing along with them on 'Closer to Fine' and 'Power of Two' are experiences I won't soon forget. Like Andrew, though, I find myself at a loss for the words that would do justice to this encounter with the musically holy. The Indigo Girls themselves began with 'Hammer and Nail' and ended with 'Galileo'. Who am I to critique?

"Galileo"
Galileo's head was on the block
The crime was looking up the truth
And as the bombshells of my daily fears explode
I try to trace them to my youth
Then you had to bring up reincarnation
Over a couple of beers the other night
And now I'm serving time for mistakes made by another in another lifetime

How long till my soul gets it right?
Can any human being ever reach that kind of light?
I call on the resting soul of Galileo
King of night vision, King of insight

And then I think about my fear of motion
Which I never could explain
Some other fool across the ocean years ago
Must have crashed his little airplane

How long till my soul gets it right?
Can any human being ever reach that kind of light?
I call on the resting soul of Galileo
King of night vision, King of insight

I'm not making a joke
You know me, I take everything so seriously
If we wait for the time till all souls get it right
Then at least I know there'll be no nuclear annihilation
In my lifetime, I'm still not right
I offer thanks to those before me
That's all I've got to say
'Cause maybe you squandered big bucks in your lifetime
Now I have to pay
But then again it feels like some sort of inspiration
To let the next life off the hook
Or she'll say look what I had to overcome from my last life
I think I'll write a book

How long till my soul gets it right?
Can any human being ever reach that kind of light?
Except for the resting soul of Galileo
King of night vision, King of insight

How long till my soul gets it right?
How long till we reach the highest light?
How long?

. . . but this is my latest effort at literary brilliance. It may, in fact, be the first installment in the great American novel I'll soon write, which will be called Radio Land. This story is anything but perfect and could benefit from great amounts of revision, but it is what it is. And (for all interested plagiarists) it is now copyrighted, so don't steal...and I WILL know!

But all caveats aside, this is called "Jumping Bean Addiction". Let me know what you think!

Jumping Bean Addiction
David Vaughan

“That’s a big ten-four, Road Dog,” I said, in the biggest of my big boy voices. “This is Jumpin’ Bean saying niner and out.”

And then I slammed down the receiver and jumped in the bed before Mom could come in and catch me. I really wasn’t doing anything wrong, but Mom doesn’t know that. See, she doesn’t know about the radio land like I do. She doesn’t know how you never wanna take the Watermelon 500 during rush hour or how Bertha’s, just off I-95 south of Fayetteville, has the best barbecue in the Carolinas or how Smoky J never wears his ring on the road if you know what he means. She doesn’t even know how all those guys are my friends and just want me to keep them company while they’re out on the road. Truthfully, she says that the radio land is a place only for grownups like them and not for six-year-olds like me, even if I do get all my homework and do all my chores and wash behind my ears and everything. And not even after my birthday on May 11, when I’ll be seven years old and not really even a kid anymore but almost a teenager. She says as long as I live under her roof I have to follow her rules and rule number one is no talking on the radio without her permission. And she’ll never give permission, so that’s why I have to sneak. I don’t want to sneak and I don’t want to lie to Mom and Daddy, I really don’t, but it’s like the Red Rabbit always says when he’s in town on a run, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” You better believe that goes double for me.

Anyway, I jumped in bed before Mom could even suspect a thing and I was waiting there already when I heard her in Brian’s room reading him his favorite story, which is called The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. Brian is my brother. He’s older than me, nine years old and in the fourth grade at Mountainview Elementary School, which is where I go too. We used to sleep in the same bedroom and Mom could read to us at the same time, but then he got too old and said that I was just a tag-along and that I should have to sleep in a baby bed all by myself. I’m still mad at him for that, even though Daddy said that he didn’t really mean it and he was just joking about the baby bed part especially.

But this time I wasn’t even thinking about how Brian had been so mean to me or how I wished that we could still sleep together. All I could think about, when Mommy was reading about how Lucy goes inside the closet and suddenly it’s snowing and she finds a magical lamp post there, were the lights out on the ole highway tonight and how they’re so bright and the truckers are making one last run and how I needed to be there talking to them instead of just laying there in my bed waiting for my mom to come tuck me in.

I’m planning to be a real live trucker myself some day, just like all my good friends out in radio land. Mommy and Daddy say that this is just a phase I’m going through, that really I need to go to college and get a job they can be proud of and put bread on the table and things like that. They talk about how I must be adopted, ‘cause no son of theirs would be caught dead driving those big old deadly machines down the road. But they don’t know how great truck driving life really is. It’s hard of course---you have to stay up super late and you miss your mommy and daddy very much while you’re out on the road and sometimes bad stuff happens to you when you‘re gone away---but it’s worth it because you get to really make things happen. You get to see all of America and meet all kinds of neat people, and you even keep a book with you that tells about all the places you’ve been and all the places you’re on your way to. But mostly I wanna be a trucker because you get to talk to people all night long and nobody ever tells you you’re stupid or you should just go to bed or you’re not cool enough to be their friend. Smoky J and the Road Dog and Princess Maggie and all the other people there like to hear me talk and give me advice about stuff. Lucy, the girl from Brian’s story, goes into a closet, which in England they call a wardrobe, and finds a new world. I pick up my papaw’s old c.b. radio to find a new world that’s just for me.

When I heard Mom finish up Brian’s chapter and could tell she was coming toward my bedroom, I curled up in a ball and pretended like I’d been asleep for hours. That way, she would never guess what I was really doing and what I really wanted to do, but would only think about what a good boy I was. I don’t know how she figured me out, but she must have, because the first thing she said was, “Patrick Nathaniel, don’t try to tell me you’re laying there asleep, when I know perfectly well you’ve been playing with that radio again.”

At first I tried to defend myself: “But Mommy, I really wasn’t this time, honest. I was fast asleep when you came in here, just like you wanted. And why did you have to wake me up like that?”

But it was no use, so I decided just to give up and listen to her shout for a while, like normal. She didn’t used to shout so much at me, and she still doesn’t shout at Brian very much, but ever since Dad’s accident it’s hard for her to talk to me. Maybe just because I still like big trucks so much, or maybe because I’m still little and don’t know lots of things and can’t help out around the house as much as Brian can, I don’t know.

This time, she told me how if I’m gonna disobey her like that I should at least pick up my stuff out of the middle of the floor when I’m done, which was truthfully a good idea, and how she couldn’t understand why my papaw kept on insisting that she keep this old thing in my room in the first place, especially since everything that had happened to her in the last six months, on account of Daddy’s accident and all. And even though I didn’t want to at all, I started to cry just a little. I thought she wouldn’t notice, but she notices everything.

“Oh, I haven’t even touched you yet. You want me to give you something to cry about, young man?”

“No, ma’am,” I said, and then couldn’t control myself anymore. I must have laid there and cried for an hour straight, maybe even more. I can’t remember if she tried to read to me before I calmed down. We were on something called A Common Yankee in King Tut’s Court then and I didn’t really understand it, so I didn’t care whether we even read or not. Plus I was so upset at being caught and being screamed at again that I didn’t know what was happening.

The next thing I knew I was all alone in my room, which I sleep in a big kid’s bed thank you very much and not in any crib or baby bed, and it was very dark all around. Even my night light, with the blue dolphin that jumps out of the water, wasn’t plugged in like it normally was. And I was a little bit scared, but not because of how dark it was. I was scared that I would get caught again and this time I would remember what happened to me.

I even thought about not going back to radio land again that night. I thought about how proud Mom would be if she found out I had stayed asleep in my bed all through the night. She would be so happy she wouldn’t even know what to do with herself. And I would be happy too. It would prove that I could be a good little boy and do the right things all by myself.

But it was so dark. And Brian was all the way in the other room. And every time I closed my eyes to go to sleep I kept having day dreams, the ones where you’re not really asleep but your brain thinks you are and so it dreams anyway, about talking to the Road Dog and hearing what he was hauling tonight and what time he thought he’d be able to call it a night. I remembered the time he told me about when he was my age, how he used to climb up in the cab with his pop and go riding in his big rig, just the two of them out to see America. I was so jealous when I heard about the truck stops they ate in and how Road Dog, when he was just six years old, got to officially read the map and tell his daddy where they were going. And I don’t know why, but that made me think about my daddy and how much I miss the times we used to go places with just the two of us or with just me and him and Brian. I thought about how much I wish he’d never been in that accident, how I wish I could’ve made him not go driving to work that morning, how I wish he wouldn’t have drove his car right in front of that big truck. And how I wished Mom didn’t always think it was my fault for what happened. And I know it sounds weird, but I even got kinda mad at my daddy because of his wheel chair and because he can’t do things like that with me anymore and because he can’t protect me when she comes to yell.

And whenever I would open my eyes from these dreams I would be even more scared, because it looked like there were shadows all over my room. And the only thing I could think to do that would be safe was to go and talk to the radio people, just for a little bit, not long enough to hurt anybody but just enough to help me sleep. I could be really quiet and then get back in bed this time without being caught, I just knew it. So I did it, like I always do. I hopped out of bed, as quiet as I could, like a mouse even, and I laid down on my belly in the floor where the radio was sitting, and I started to turn the dials until I found the signal again.

“May I have your attention, everybody,” I said into hand piece just as soon as I’d got everything ready, “this is the Jumpin’ Bean back in action. Come on, everybody, you’re burning daylight, so talk to me, baby!” That was my favorite way to start talking. Everybody out in radio land loved it when I would talk in a TV voice like that.

“Well, I’ll be, honey chile! Who let you out of your cage this time?” It was Princess Maggie. She always said something like that, like she would call me her baby or tell me that I was like a fox and you never knew where I’d be coming from next, but she was always was so nice to me that I didn’t even mind.

“Hi Princess,” I said. “What brings you to this neck of the woods on this dark and stormy night?”

I wonder if it really was dark on that night, or stormy. That’s such a weird thing to say, especially when you don’t even know if there’s a storm, but everybody always says it in radio land. That’s one of the cool things there--you always know what to say, because it’s always the same every night. Just like the roads and the maps and the trucks and the lights. It’s like one of those cartoons that you’ve seen a thousand times, so you always know what’s coming next. No surprises. No accidents. Nobody to tell you what to do or remind you how you’re not as smart as your older brother or how you should be a better reader by now or anything like that. Just questions and friends and laughing and me in my own happy place.

That doesn’t answer the question about the dark and stormy night, though. Maybe it always seems dark in radio land because I usually only get to go there late at night, while everyone else is sound asleep. It’s kinda like Narnia, the place where Lucy goes after she finds the lamp post inside the closet. In Narnia, it’s always winter time, so it gets really cold and dark outside. And then, when Lucy gets to come back home to her friends it’s summer time again and everything is light and warm. The truckers who live inside my radio are my friends. Okay, I know they don’t really live inside the radio, but I mean that is where I always talk to them, so it’s like to me they live there. And they are my best friends. And someday I will be one of them. But for now, I can only just talk with them sometimes and make that be enough to hold me over. And now I can’t even do that anymore, but you’ll have to wait for that part of the story to come.

Finally, after I had talked with Princess Maggie for a few minutes and she had introduced me to some of the other people out there in truckers’ land tonight, the Zombie and Italian Stallion are two guys I remember meeting that night, came the moment we had all been waiting for. Without further adieu, to the pleasure of the crowd, are you ready to rumble, came the Road Dog himself back to the radio.

I could barely even contain my laughter when he got there. “Road Dog, Road Dog, this is your main man the Jumpin’ Bean. I’ve been waiting all night for you to come back, buddy. Why don’t you tell me what you know?”

“Aww, Jumpin’ Bean, I don’t know a thing,” he said, and I just knew that he’d come back only so he could talk to me. He said he’d been stopped at the Flying J in Knoxville getting a little shut eye before his evening run and that I really should try the sausage links there, ‘cause they’re to die for.

“I’ll be sure to do that,” I told him, “just as soon as I get my license.”

“That’s only another week or two, ain’t it?” my new good friend the Italian Stallion piped in.

“Oh gee whiz, I sure do wish so,” I sponded. “The thing is, I have to make it through the first grade first. Ain’t that a doozie?”

And I thought I was still being quiet and not waking nobody in the house up and doing my best to only talk a little bit and then go to bed before anything bad happened. But the next thing I knew, before I could even have time to put the radio up or even finish my talk with the Road Dog, there was my mom, standing right in the door to my bedroom. Only she didn’t look mad, exactly, like I figured she would. It was almost like she was the one crying this time.

And for a long time nobody said a thing, except for the Road Dog, who wanted to know how school was going and didn’t I need to get in bed so I could be rested up and what was I doing taking so long to talk back to him? And when Mom finally did talk, she didn’t yell and scream like normal, but she kinda whispered. She told me that she wasn’t gonna take away the radio tonight, since she didn’t want to wake up Daddy with my protest, but that I’d better say all my goodbyes, cause first thing in the morning she was gonna throw it out with the garbage and I would never disobey her like this again.

But then, even though she said there would be no discussion, she kinda hung around for a few minutes, like she wanted to talk anyway. Or like she wanted to run away to radio land with me. I guess maybe she only wanted to see what I would talk about while I was there, maybe so she could decide to throw away the radio even that night. But I just sat stone-still waiting for her to leave before I started back up talking to Road Dog and all my other friends. And finally she left.

And even though I was scared and even though I knew it would be the last time I’d ever get to do this, I truthfully had a great time that night. It was like I went deeper into radio land than I ever had before, since I knew I would never be coming back. I lied a little bit and told the Road Dog that school was canceled the next day, on account of him not wanting me to get in any trouble, and then I just talked like I was with old friends, which in truth I think I was. I’d never felt so good in all my life, and for the first time ever I didn’t even have to worry about getting caught. A kid could really get used to that.

Well, not this kid, of course, since I knew that it was only temporary. And, as they say in radio land, time sure does fly when you’re having fun, so soon enough I heard birds singing far away and alarm clocks buzzing and I knew that it must be time for the new day. I never did have the heart to tell the guys on the radio about how this would be the last time they’d be seeing me for a while, but I think they must’ve known because I was crying and they all said what a pleasure it was to talk to me for such a long time that night and how they’d miss me so. And finally, when I’d said all my goodbyes and made up my mind to call it quits, without Mom even having to come in the room and tell me, I turned the radio off for good and headed back to the magic lamp post.

I mean, back to my bedroom.

Andrew Marshall has done an awful, costly thing to me! He introduced me to the world of I-Tunes, where I can *legally* download songs for only 99 cents a pop. In an effort to minimize my own spending and to ensure that I do still take into account what artists are doing with an entire album of work, I'm limiting myself to buying music which I would otherwise never own (i.e. one hit wonders, songs by artists I wouldn't normally enjoy, random works, etc.) and would like your help in my pursuits. So far, I have purchased the following songs, which may or may not fit actually meet the requirements I've just laid down: 'Sweet Southern Comfort' by Buddy Jewell, 'I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)' by The Proclaimers, 'Walkin' Away' by Diamond Rio, 'Here's to the Night' by Eve 6, 'I Washed My Face in the Morning Dew' by Tom T. Hall, and 'The World I Know' by Collective Soul.

So upon reflection, I realize these are mostly artists whom I greatly admire, many of whose albums I do in fact own. Rules are made to be broken anyway, no? In any case, the request (challenge?) remains: please help me choose some great, random songs to purchase and enjoy!

Thanks and blessings!

Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel Everything is Illuminated offers a brilliant, startling portrait of life in an eighteenth-century Ukranian shtetl. The villagers of his fictional Trachimbrod are hilariously human, with their competing synagogues (the 'Uprights' and the 'Slouchers'), their constant bickering, and their complicated relationships with art and life. They are also, at times, more profoundly wise that I can possibly communicate. They have, in their town's central gathering place, a volume of communal memoirs, called The Book of Antecedents, in which the story of each person's life (where they were born, whom they loved, how they lived, even what they ate for breakfast on a given day) is dutifully recorded and celebrated. The book reads very much like a randomized encyclopedia, with countless section titles including "Yankel D's Shameful Bead"; "Trachimday, 1796"; "The Time of Dyed Hands"; "Jews Have Six Senses"; and so many more. More than anything, the bold and faithful theology of this Book is truly remarkable. The sections on "Unhealthy Babies", "The Existence of Gentiles", and "The Entirety of the World as We Do and Don't Know It", for instance, all point readers back to the section simply titled "God" (which, of course, we do not get to see in the nove). The following two entries may capture the truest essence of Foer's work in this chapter and certainly offer us much-needed words of truth:

The Problem of Evil: Why Unconditionally Bad Things Happen to Unconditionally Good People: They never do.

The Problem of Good: Why Unconditionally Good Things Happen to Unconditionally Bad People: (See God)

On April 27 (this is the last day of classes for folks at UVA), Charlottesvile's Ben & Jerry's store is giving away free pints of ice cream for people who come to donate for Virginia Blood Services between 3:00 and 6:00pm. This is a great opportunity to make a real difference in our community and to go home with some very tasty dessert!! The catch is that they need 40 people signed up to donate in order to hold the event in the first place. So please let me know if you're interested, have questions, need a ride, etc.

Grace & Peace!

"There's an old saying in Tennessee...I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee., that says fool me once....shame on....shame on you....fool me can't get fooled again."
--President George W. Bush, 17 Sep 2002

Each year on April Fool's Day, The Cavalier Daily puts out a hilarious spoof edition. So these are today's headlines....they're not real, but might the world not be a better place if they were?
--Casteen issues 64 gay marriages
--Zeta Tau society thriving in prison
--U-Guides repel entire incoming class of 2008
--Boy prodigy Greg Smith joins frat, drops out
--Mel Gibson to take over direction of Cav Man films
--Olsen twins coming to U.Va., local hobo says
--Pete Gillen signed as new Lucky Charms spokesman

April 1 is important in our family not only because of the witty practical jokes which abound on this special day (Brian "Gampy" Lee, of upstairs Dwelling Room #2, was actually duped into arising early this morning for the long-awaited Grand Opening of the Bodo's on the Corner), but today is also my parents' 24th wedding anniversary. On April 1, 1980 they eloped and tied the knot in Halifax, North Carolina. It's crazy for me to think that, when he was my age, my dad had already been married for a year...he always jokes that it was the world's greatest April Fool's prank...

...another brilliant glimpse of God's upside-down kingdom came on this laughable day this year, as I was elected to serve as student president of the Wesley Foundation next year. Well, okay, there wasn't exactly any competition for the position, so perhaps 'elected' isn't really the right word. In any case, I feel a little like those unsuspecting Hebrew prophets, called to positions of ministry far beyond their imagination and capability, but blessed with grace and support.

Tempting as it is for me to envision the befuddled president of our country, or this befuddled Wesley Foundation president, as the model for April Fool's (un)wisdom, perhaps it's actually those prophets who offer the greatest example anyway---tireless, undaunted victims of the divine sense of humor who know their own inadequacy and let God work through the imperfection of themselves and their people to bring hope and life abundant (and laughter) to a broken world. Truth through parody indeed. Thanks be to God!