Tennessee Trip, Israel Takes Iran Apart, + Book & Video Recommendations (posted 6/18/25)

I’m back from Tennessee, and still processing the trip. 

Heartbreakingly, mom didn’t recognize me three different times over the week, but only for about 10 minutes at a time, and the good moments outnumbered the bad.  I had to remind her literally a few hundred times that she lives there, and that I was visiting from Florida while my sis and her husband were in Memphis for a week.  “So you’re my babysitter,” she said, but without rancor.

She wears glasses on a cord around her neck, and has hearing aids.  When I took her to church on Sunday morning we were cutting it close on time, so I didn’t notice that she had neither her glasses nor hearing aids until she couldn’t hear the sermon very well, and also couldn’t follow along in her Bible.

“You’re not much of a babysitter, are you?” she said in the middle of the service.  And because her hearing aids were at home in the charger, she said it loudly.  We got a few looks.     

I’ve always been able to make mom laugh, and she’s never so much herself as when she’s laughing.  She’s always loved running jokes (I come by it naturally), and I got her with a stupid one dozens of times.  I’d ask, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” and she remembers that cliched old set-up well enough to roll her eyes and start to make some dumb reply, which I’d interrupt with, “Be-CAWS!” in my eerily accurate chicken voice.

Each time she’d get startled, then remember that I’d got her with that one many times before, and she’d laugh at the stupidity of the joke and my shamelessness in repeating it.  If being startled and then belly laughing could cure Alzheimer’s, I’d be up for a Nobel prize in medicine. 

We took day trips to small towns in the area each day. On Saturday we went to the small town of Pulaski, but arrived to find the downtown cordoned off and the place jammed with people celebrating Flag Day.  (Because: Tennessee!) 

But because it’s 2025, there was also a small group of protestors doing their “No Kings” thing.  There were maybe 30 of them, and you could tell that we weren’t in Seattle or LA: they skewed older and well-behaved, and their signs weren’t obscene, and they had American flags.  That could be because they know their audience in Tennessee – folks don’t take kindly to violent rioting by Mexican-flag-waving d-bags there – but I prefer to think it’s because they are well-meaning people who are exercising their free speech rights and protesting for a cause they believe in. 

Of course, I think it’s silly to believe that Trump is a fascist or would-be king on the verge of establishing his monarchy.  One subtle clue that that’s not the case: over a thousand groups protested in 50 states, and nobody was beheaded or pierced by crossbow bolts, and there was no drawing or quartering.  No one was even arrested or hassled, unless they were violent.   (In which case I would have rooted for a healthy bout of crossbowing.)   

Of course my sweet mom didn’t know what was going on, but when she saw all of those people holding flags and signs and waving, she waved back happily.  Which is one more poignant memory for me.  Mom was happy to encourage people waving American flags, and the protestors now feel like they’ve reached at least one supportive old lady – not knowing that she’s got Alzheimer’s and has no idea what ideas they are supporting. 

So God bless us, everyone, I guess.

Meanwhile in the larger world, Israel was making me very happy by dropping a whole series of kosher kabooms all over the Iranian nuke program and the top people involved in it! 

People didn’t think Israel could top the exploding pagers, then the exploding walkie-talkies, then the killing of various Sinwars and Nasrallahs (plus assorted Achmeds waiting for their chance to move up from triple A – and yes, the “A”s all stand for “a-hole”) with drones and missiles.

And Israel said, “Hold my Manischewitz and watch this.” 

I love every detail.  The Israelis built a drone base inside Iran, from which they launched drones to destroy a bunch of Iranian missiles and launchers.  They devised a ruse to keep a bunch of top Iranian generals in one place so that they could wipe them out with one missile.  (Sure, those guys buy their missiles wholesale and not retail, but there’s no sense in wasting them!) 

It’s a sign of the mullahs’ dysfunction that they steer young Iranian science nerds away from fields that would improve the world and the lives of the Iranian people, and toward developing Jew-killing nukes instead.  And since Friday night, Iran has become a much less nerdy place, inshallah. (That’s Islam talk for, “I regret all of my decisions.”)

I enjoyed the hilarious clip that CO (peace be upon him) posted of the Iranian Rachel Maddow, aka the gal reading the news when a “Hebrew Hello” hit very near the newsroom.  (She’s got more burka and sex appeal than Rachel, but less America-hatred.)  And though my Farsi is a little rusty, I think I’ve come up with a pretty accurate translation of what was said in that short video.

She starts out with the usual, “Death to America!  Death to Israel!  Trump is a fascist!  We like the cut of Gavin Newsom’s jib.  We will wipe out the evil pig-dogs with our swords of justice and—”  BAM!  WHAMMO! KAPOW!  (Yes, I did watch a little Batman when I was a kid, thanks for asking.)

The lights went out and came back on, and everything on camera shook for a few seconds.    

“Aaaiiiiieeeee!” she continued. “I’ve soiled my beekeeper outfit. Forget that pig-dog comment.  MAGA!  And also MIGA! (Make Israel [and Iran] Great Again)  I for one welcome our new Hebraic overlords!”

And, scene.

One other highlight was the pic of where an Israeli missile hit one specific apartment’s bedroom, killing a top Iranian general and the leaving the rest of the building remarkably undamaged.  Reports that his three mistresses staying in the apartment at the time – two of them goats – were also unharmed have not been confirmed.

Finally, I’ve got a quick book and a song recommendation.  The book is “The Promise,” by Robert Crais.  Crais has written over 20 detective novels featuring main characters Elvis Cole and Joe Pike, and I thought I’d read them all.  But I had somehow missed The Promise (2015).  I especially liked a great sub-plot involving a military K-9 with a second career as a police dog in this one.  (As always, they had me at “K-9.”)

The video is for Oliver Anthony’s new country/blues song, “Scornful Woman.”  He released it two weeks ago, and I heard about it on Joe Rogan’s show right before I headed up to TN.  Anthony went from unknown to a famous singer/songwriter with his anti-politician song “Rich Men North of Richmond” less than two years ago.  His songs are always raw and personal, and now that his wife has filed for divorce, this one is 3 minutes of pain from a talented musician.

The video and song were recorded in a small house in West Virginia during a snowstorm in January, and the visuals are great: an old barn and three big dogs in the snow and in the house, and Anthony and two other musicians recording in make-shift conditions inside.  Interspersed video clips of firefighters battling a burning house echo the lyrics perfectly.

Anthony sings and plays a Dobro resonating guitar and drums, and he’s joined by two virtuosos, one on the violin – although in this context, it’s really a fiddle – and one on the electric guitar.  (“Hey Martin,” you might be asking, if you don’t have my vast musical expertise, “What’s the difference between a violin and a fiddle?”  A violin has “strings,” whereas a fiddle has “strangs.”  You’re welcome.)

The song slides back and forth between grieving and furious, and Anthony’s delivery elevates his plain but evocative lyrics.  (When he rhymes “nightmare” with “right there,” both simple lines cut deep.)  And the two instrumental solos tear through the small house like the fire imagery does. 

The fiddle player goes first, somehow ripping a guitar solo out of a violin.  And when the guitarist closes things out, he wails on his instrument like it owes him money, and possibly slept with his best friend, too.  The final effect suggests three talented musicians who just went through horrific divorces and are dealing with it the way men do: by howling and breaking things.

The pivotal lines are a cri de coeur: “And the court said fifty-fifty, but the math don’t seem right, with a scornful woman.”

Whoo.  The song is great, and painful, and it makes me very grateful that I miraculously closed on my smoke show wife 36 years ago, and have never had to feel her scorn.

Hamas delenda est!