House

We love our house.

Ever since the early days of our marriage, Cathy and I knew we were "old house people". We're the type who slow down and gawk when driving through the old section of any town we travel through. And its why we are completely delighted with the 96-year old house we live in.

So today, I thought I'd give you a little history of our old house.

Our house was built by Wade Dexter Fowler. Wade was born on July 1, 1863, and grew up in Laurens County. He married Mamie Jones, but she died in 1899. At some point, he remarried, to Nannie Hunter Stewart. In 1911, he bought the plot of land on which our house sits. We assume, although we're not sure, that he built our house sometime shortly afterward.

From the old documents shown in this post, we know that Wade Fowler was the president of the Bank of Simpsonville, and also was president of Simpsonville Realty Co. When the Great Depression came, the Bank of Simpsonville went under. (The other bank in town, Farmer's Bank, was reportedly one of the few banks in the country that did not lose any money, and stayed open). Wade died on May 31, 1931. I always wonder if the stress of losing his bank (and all his clients' money) had anything to do with it!


Wade's second wife, Nannie, lived in the house as a widower until her death in 1949. I believe it was at that point the house went to the Todd family. Clara Mae "Macie" Todd lived in the house for the next 50+ years. Her nephew, Sammy Todd, lived with her in the 1990's. Sammy used to sit out on our front wraparound porch in his pajamas, waving to traffic (not sure why, but that was his thing!).

Macie passed away in Feb 2003 at the age of 87, leaving Sammy as the sole occupant of the house. Sammy had a medical condition which required him to wear an oxygen mask, but he also smoked cigarettes. One day, his cigarette ignited the oxygen line and blew up the tank. This started a fire, which was quickly put out by the Simpsonville Fire Department, whose fire station is about 500 feet from the house! Sammy survived the incident, but died a couple months later in the hospital (not sure if it was due to complications of smoke inhalation or not).

The house was bought by a Todd family member and her husband, who actually lived on Pliney Circle near the house where we raised the boys (and where Brandon and Megan are now!). This couple renovated the house to repair the smoke damage. This renovation included replacing the plumbing, wiring, heating and air conditioning, and windows. Some of the plaster walls were taken out and replaced with drywall, and others were patched. Instead of trying to clean the smoke and soot off the original beadboard ceiling, they put in new drywall ceilings throughout. On one side of the house, some walls were moved and reconfigured to make a master suite: bedroom, walk in closet (room), and master bathroom with attached laundry room. The original trim was re-installed, and the heart pine floors were refinished.

Before the house officially went on the market, we bought it from this couple, and have been continuing the renovations. I have tried to find out more information about Dr. Fowler (as he is sometimes listed in old documents), but it is certainly hard to find. Our neighbor, Frances Barnett, was kind enough to give us an old photograph of Wade and Nannie (and some other ladies) sitting on the back porch of the house. Since Wade died in 1931, I assume this picture was from the 1920s...

In any case, we are thankful that the Lord gives us so much more than we deserve. This is our "dream house", and we don't plan on moving again, unless the Lord has different plans!

CD

Woo hoo!

Big news this week. My band Last Road's CD project, which took most of the winter and spring, is finally done. This week, our first shipment of CD's arrived, hot off the presses from these guys in Nashville Tennessee!

Our new CD is called "Highway 81", and contains 13 original songs, all written by band members Benji Merritt and Dave Snyder. You can listen to some sound clips here.

Here's a summary of the tunes:

• Gospel tunes
• Get Away From Me
  
• There Is A Promised Land
  
• Did I Please You Today Lord
  
• This Thing Called Sin
• Set A Place At The Table
• Hard-charging bluegrass numbers
• Made In The Shade
• I Don't Like Cold Rain
• Grandpa's banjo
• Ansley
• Medium and slow tempo ballads
• One Foot In The Mill
• Bluegrass Broken Heart
• Knoxville
• Highway 81

We sent some promo copies of the CD to some bluegrass-friendly radio stations, including WNCW in Spindale NC. Every Saturday, for 8 straight hours, WNCW plays bluegrass music on their show, Going Across The Mountain. Today, they played at least 4 cuts from the CD on the show, about one per hour!!! I've been listening to this radio program since getting into bluegrass 15 years ago, and it was really cool to hear my own band getting airplay along side the "big bands" of the genre.

If you are of the bluegrass persuasion, and like traditional bluegrass with strong vocal harmonies and good songwriting, give our CD a shot. If you are interested in getting a copy, leave me a comment and I will get in touch with you.

I guess its true - hard work pays off!

Science?

Science!

For most people, that word brings back bad memories of stinky high school chemistry labs, impossibly difficult physics tests, and nerd-boys with taped horn-rimmed glasses. (For some people, like me, it actually reminds me more of a 1980's Thomas Dolby tune..."she blinded me....with science!" But I digress.)

I have a lot of respect for science, scientists, and the scientific process. Scientific breakthroughs are responsible for a great deal of the modern comforts we enjoy. Science helps us understand the huge world around us, and make sense of our physical world.

However, science has its limitations. Science, like anything else, is good at what its good at, and not very useful when used outside its limits. Wikipedia describes the scientific method this way:

Scientific method refers to the body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. It is based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.^[1] A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.^[2]

The key words there are observable and measurable. Science is your tool if you are wanting to measure the temperature at which Dr. Pepper boils, for example. Or the stress-strain curve for Silly Putty. Or the chemical composition of the plastic keys on my laptop. If it is measurable and repeatable, science can help you understand it.

However, science is NOT an appropriate tool for all areas of knowledge. For example, I love my wife, Cathy. I am 100% sure of this, and there is evidence to prove it (I hope!). However, there is no scientific method for measuring how much I love her. It is a real, emotional quantity, but science measures the physical not the emotional. In the same way, science cannot measure the spiritual (faith, hope, love) or the historical (origin of mankind, the world, etc).

This last point, using science to tell us about our historical distant past, is a great problem among scientists today. I believe that a lot of the work going on today that is passed off as "science" involves scientists attempting to use science to "prove" things it can never prove.

Take the evolution-creation debate. Believers in evolution claim that science is on their side, since a majority of scientists today believe the (ever-changing) theory of evolution to be "scientific fact". In fact, all we can do today is measure and study physical clues and phenomena (rock strata, levels of chemicals in the atmosphere, etc) and then make guesses (hypotheses) about what happened in the past to cause what we see today. Evolution and creation are two hypotheses about what happened long ago to cause the evidence we see and measure today.

For example, an evolutionist and a creationist look at the same data, say rock layers in the Grand Canyon, and each comes to a different conclusion. The evolutionist would say that these layers were deposited over many millions of years, very gradually. The creationist might argue that these layers were deposited suddenly, in a massive global weather event (flood, perhaps?). Same observations, different conclusions.

The reason two people can look at the same thing and come to radically different conclusions is based on their worldview. A worldview is like a lens through which you see the world; it colors everything you see, based on the lens. The evolutionist has a secular worldview: there is no God, there is no supernatural (only the natural), and so science can be used to explain everything. The creationist has a Biblical worldview: there is a God, He operates in both the natural and supernatural realms, science can be used to measure the natural world, but only God can open our eyes to see the supernatural world.

I read a news article the other day that really floored me. It was one of the best examples of sloppy, non-scientific "science" that I've seen in a long time. As in, "I believe X, and I'd like to prove X, so I'll set out to find evidence of X, I really think I'll find some...whoah, look, here's evidence of X!" But since this post is so long, I'll give you the details another day...

Peace out.

Computer

I like my computer again.

Those of you who know me know that over the last few months, I have been MASSIVELY frustrated with my Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop computer. And I do mean MASSIVELY frustrated.

It's not a bad computer. In its former life, it served Brandon faithfully for his first few years in college. When he upgraded to some ridiculously modern Mac, I bought the old laptop, thus eliminating the conflict between Cathy and I, who were having to share one desktop between the two of us.

When I first started using it, things were great. It was fast, wireless, and ALL MINE! No sharing, no begging. Cathy and I were both happy with the arrangement. Really, it ran well for a couple years.

But, over the last few months, two problems have cropped up that have driven me NUTS. First, the wireless card has become flaky. I'd be on the internet one minute, and off the next. Sometimes it would reconnect by itself, but other times (many times) I had to reboot. And rebooting this computer is about a 15 minute process...

The other problem cropped up when I "upgraded" my antivirus software from Norton 2006 to Norton 360. In short, Norton 360 is the worst software I've ever used. It completely slowed my machine down to a standstill, worse than any virus I ever had! Its biggest problem was that it would decide, on its own, to run a virus scan in the background, WHILE I WAS USING THE COMPUTER. Not at midnight, not after detecting 30 minutes of non-use... And to make it worse, there is no way to change the settings to prevent these background scans. After reading literally hundreds of negative reviews of N360 on the internet, I decided I had had enough.

So, Sunday, I made two changes. First, I ran a wire under the house from the router in the bedroom to "my seat" on the couch, where I keep my laptop. Is my laptop wireless now? No, its wired. Is it faster and more reliable connecting to the internet? YEAH BABY! One down, one to go.

The second big change involved completely uninstalling Norton 360 (even though it is paid for through next year), and installing the highly-rated, free anti-virus program "Avast!". Avast is much much much easier on system resources than Norton 360 ever thought about being.

The overall result of these two changes is that my old Dell is faster and more reliable than it has been in many months. The internet is fast, always connected, and rebooting doesn't take 15 minutes (and actually isn't required very often now). Needless to say, I'm a pretty happy camper!

So, no excuses now for not blogging!!!

Update

Hello, world!

It's been a while since I've blogged (again). Different reason this time... There is a topic I have been wanting to blog about, an important topic, but my perfectionist tendencies are preventing progress. In fear of not writing something perfectly, I don't write it at all.

So, I'm gonna delay the important topic until the mood feels right, and just get back to blogging about whatever hits me.

We have been busy lately, of course. In the last month, Cathy and I have finished up the outdoor spring tasks (build and paint picket fence, lay down landscaping fabric, plant shrubs & such (Cathy), and spread mulch...LOTS of mulch). Then, over the last couple weeks, we painted our bedroom. What was formerly a bright, cheery yellow is now a cool, soothing lavender. Much better for a bedroom, IMHO.

So summer is here, and I'm loving it. The A/C went out on Sunday, and I had a brief taste of what life was like in the days before air conditioning. I actually kinda liked it! Well, not totally, but I liked it a lot better than freezing to death. Megan will back me up on this one (and Cathy will agree to disagree!!!)

Last Road has been busy as well. A couple weeks ago, we played three weekday gigs in the same week! Monday was a fundraiser for Lindsey Graham (sigh) at the new baseball stadium downtown, then Thursday was a corporate party, and Friday was a wedding rehearsal dinner. In addition to the gigs, we sent our new studio CD off to Nashville for printing...first copies should arrive this week! I'll do a blog post on it later.

Oh, one more thing. This past weekend, Cathy and I scooted up to Hendersonville for an outdoor antique fair. We found a couple things we liked - read all about them here. All in all, I enjoyed getting to spend some great quality time with my awesome wife.

Anyhoo, it feels good to get the ole fingers flyin' once again on the computer. More posts to follow!