Whose House?

Jeff Davis' House!

Well the 2005 Tilt-Up Awards are in, and it’s very exciting. I was kinda hoping this Blog might be able to at least squeak through into to runner-up category, but no, ‘twas not to be. Especially once I read the Tilt-Up Award website (sponsored by the Tilt-Up Concrete Association) and found that, “The purpose of the Awards Program is to recognize outstanding site cast Tilt-Up structures and advances in technology, products and methods used in the Tilt-Up industry.”

So since I'm in a "historic district" I knew I was screwed, but I’m still very proud that this blog is a gut-rehab of the original structure that was built on this site in 1958. At that time, the blog was three-stories high, covered a full city-block, and employed a dozen men full time whose sole job was to wear these capacious aprons stocked with fresh vacuum tubes and run back and forth changing them as they burned out. The daytime temperature of the building ran as high as 700 degrees, and there are still “shadows” burned into the ceiling of employees who did not get out of the way fast enough during the publication of a new blog post.

Those were the days, baby!

Big Iron. Adlai Stevenson’s crude MoveOn.org V. 1.0 personally hacked out in FORTRAN by Eleanor Roosevelt. The tricksey crew of Kennedy’s Best and Whitest Hats digitally remixing and streaming the Kennedy/Nixon Debates so that Nixon looked like a pasty, unshaven weasel instead of the buff Venice Beach stud he actually was. And if you wanted vote fraud, you damned well did it yourself.

Now it’s all jobbed out to consultants. So sad, but I can still look around me and see the pride of bygone days in the original brickwork lovingly tuckpointed with real, American ones-and-zeroes...in the coaxial cable mined by honest labor from the Great Co-Ax Flats of Utah...and fridge-sized packet-switchers of hand-coffered copper still humming and clicking with genuine, made-in-the-USA Marilyn Monroe, Tina Louise and Raquel Welch porn.

I had mantle space all set aside for the Tilt-Up (or “Tilty” as we call it in the biz) and a party planned, and so after crying and crying I decided to be a grownup and check out the details of the worthies that beat me out of this signal honor. Always a chance to learn from one's betters in this life.

The usual suspects (I don’t mean to be petty, but it sure seems “political” to me) and then I spotted an oddly familiar name: The Cary Christian School of Cary, North Carolina. The overview stated that, “The school required occupancy within nine months from the start of construction, which ruled out masonry or precast on schedule constraints prior to price considerations. This very aggressive schedule required a detailed critical path of scheduling to accommodate and provide efficiency for this fast track project.”

And boy howdy, does Cary Christian ever need the space. As “The News and Observer” reported last December,

“At a time when a number of Triangle Christian schools have lost enrollment and even closed, Cary Christian has seen rapid growth since it opened in 1996."

"The school has 623 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. With a relatively low tuition -- up to $5,000 -- it has attracted families from 55 churches. At least one parent must be a regular attendee of a church.”

Perhaps it’s the day care? Perhaps it’s that the school does not settle for anything less than the full 128-box of Crayolas for it’s students. Well, not the full-full 128 Spectrum, because I’m guessing that Cary Christian maybe removes anything in that Black or Brown area...

Why? And why does Cary Christian ring such a bell. And why is it sooo popular?

In the final analysis, perhaps it has something to do with the curriculum.

Let’s go back to The News and Observer from 12/04 for a bit of what Paul Harvey used to call, “the rest of the story”...

Leaders at Cary Christian School say they are not condoning slavery by using "Southern Slavery, As It Was," a booklet that attempts to provide a biblical justification for slavery and asserts that slaves weren't treated as badly as people think. Principal Larry Stephenson said the school is only exposing students to different ideas, such as how the South justified slavery. He said the booklet is used because it is hard to find writings that are both sympathetic to the South and explore what the Bible says about slavery.

"You can have two different sides, a Northern perspective and a Southern
perspective," he said.

The booklet isn't the only connection its two co-authors have with the school. One of the authors, Douglas Wilson, a pastor in Moscow, Idaho, wrote a book on classical education upon which the school bases its philosophy. Wilson's Association of Classical and Christian Schools accredited Cary Christian, and he is scheduled to speak at the school's graduation in May. Some school leaders, including Stephenson, founded Christ Church in Cary, which is affiliated with Wilson's Idaho church.

The booklet's other author, Steve Wilkins, is a member of the board of directors of the Alabama-based League of the South. That is classified as a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil rights group.

"Doug Wilson and Steve Wilkins have essentially constructed the ruling theology of the neo-Confederate movement," said Mark Potok, editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report.

Oh yeah, that Cary Christian.

Gotta love that Antebellum reasoning: a “Northern perspective and a Southern perspective” as opposed to an Evil, Traitorous Perspective and a Not Evil, Not Traitorous one.

So here’s to you, Mighty Tilt-Up 2005 Award Winning Segregationist Academy Cary Christian!

Now every time some fetid, jellied-eel, Brooksian Accommodation wants to pretend that both side of the culture war are somehow evenly balanced and equally wrong, we can point to your Shiny New Hate School and ask them to explain exactly what the Progressive equivalent of your Jesus-n-Jeff Davis Goodthinkfulness Academy might be?

Or did you think we soft-headed liberals would forget?