They recently found a 4 million year old whale in the Tuscan region of Italy. It seems that up until 1.5 million years ago, the entire country was underneath the Mediterranean. The skeleton was completely in tact except for the lower jaw. They even found the remains of the creatures that fed off of its decaying body for decades.

Once, when I was a child in Tennessee, we lived in a condominium built in the shadows of the Carnton Mansion, a plantation which, like many of these slave-owning southern farms, was converted into a hospital during the Civil War. They say that after an amputation, the surgeons had a habit of throwing the limbs out of the window, resulting in a pile of stumps two stories high when the Battle of Franklin finally ended. Convinced that there were bones beneath my yellow vinyl siding home, I began a solo excavation of the dirt-floored crawl space. All that I uncovered was an empty can of Budweiser and a puddle of cat piss. Digging in the dark can get lonely, especially with a snow shovel. And field hollers only work if you have someone to holler back.

In the fall you could see the re-enactments from my bedroom window. All of these weekend soldiers knew that they had but one death in this play, so they gave it all they had. Grabbing their chests and spinning in circles. Rolling down hills, arms a-wailin, canteens a -flyin, screamin rebel yells. They died a couple of miles from the places they were born. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound.