Joplin, Missouri

There were a thousand people in the worship center at the College Heights Christian Church this morning. A guy with a modified mohawk, white tie and distressed charcoal gray shirt was leading the congregation in rocking songs of praise with the lyrics posted on giant karaoke screens to the left and right of the stage. His name was James Tealy and he had come from Nashville for the occasion. A member of the congregation named Jared Kendall stepped into the baptismal pool, on the right of the stage, and, with a shakey voice, filled with emotion, baptized his beautiful 10-year-old daughter, Sophie.

Conway, Arkansas

“You are sitting in a room with visionaries,” Mike Coats, the proprietor of Mike’s Place, told me. The visionaries looked pretty average old-fashioned American to me–a small city mayor, a small city Chamber of Commerce manager, a lawyer, a furniture store owner, a young African-American employee of Hewlett Packard. But they had done something entirely radical: they had launched a campaign to revive their city, and a big part of that campaign had been to convince the state liquor authority to allow Mike Coats to sell booze by the glass. The revival of Conway, Arkansas–using federal funds, including earmarks (!)–is the sort of story we don’t hear much anymore in this Tea-tinged anti-government environment, but it contains some important lessons.

It began in 1998, when Axiom, a major financial services company, decided to move its corporate headquarters out of town.

Little Rock, Arkansas

First things first, I have a new print column lurking here, behind the paywall, about my frolics with the Miller County Patriots down in Texarkana a few days ago. To make a long story short, the Patriots raised some very valid points about government intrusion into their own lives–very similar to the arguments made by Dennis Ramsey, the mayor of Hope, in this space yesterday. A commercial real estate builder named Curt Green told me that he had been able to move quickly on deals in the past because his bank gave him “character loans”–that is, they knew and trusted him because of his past record of repayment and his place in the community–but Dodd-Frank had made such loans impossible. It would now take 6 weeks to shuffle through the paperwork, and he lost the deal. (I should note that “character loans” given by unscrupulous mortgage-mongers to people who didn’t deserve them was a root cause of the financial collapse in 2008.)

The Patriots became markedly less reliable, though, when I asked them…

Hope, Arkansas

Well, I’ve known the guy for about 25 years and I couldn’t just let his birthplace pass me by. The house where Bill Clinton first lived is on the main road into town and it’s been restored beautifully. It isn’t exactly overrun with visitors, but it’s a nice, quiet place filled with lots of pictures of Billy Blythe as a chubby baby. Hope is a nice quiet place, too. I had a sweet tea with the Mayor, Dennis Ramsey, who told me that the local economy was stable, as was the local population–about 10,000.

What about the housing market? I asked. A lot of foreclosures? This got Ramsey’s attention, since he’s a local banker.

Arkadelphia, Arkansas

Yes, it’s really important for me to out here listening to non-Beltway people. I truly enjoy doing it and I learn a lot. But this is one week when I’d just as soon be back East, with all that’s going on.

Austin, Texas

And here’s the first verse:

I murdered my iphone in a margarita last night

We’d just seen Arcade Fire and I was feelin’ all right

My wife set her traveler where the cup holder had been

Michele Bachmann says I’m-a just payin’ for my sins.

The good news is the Apple store folks replaced the phone today, free of charge (you get one of those per lifetime of the phone, as it happens). The better news is there’s one more day of the Austin City Limits festival. But here’s what we saw yesterday:

Austin, Texas

It rained here yesterday, briefly but furiously–for the first time since June. I attribute it to the arrival of Swampfrau, who has mystical powers that are enhanced by the presence of fabulous bass lines. In any case, the rain came and went in the hour before we arrived at Zilker Park–and it was pleasantly cloudy when Brandi Carlile took the stage for a fine, rocking set, especially her tribute to Johnny Cash. Here’s a brief capsule of some of the other things we saw:

Austin, Texas

Chuck Gordon couldn’t find anyplace to store his stuff. He was a UCLA art major, about to spend junior year abroad in Singapore. He checked out the regular storage places in LA and it was going to cost something like $1000, which his father said was just too expensive. But his girlfriend had a garage, and she could take half his stuff; and his roommate, Mario Feghali, a psychobiology major, had some space available, too.

And then he had an idea.

Austin, Texas

I watched the Republican debate on Monday with the Webb County Republicans, down in Laredo (where there aren’t very many Republicans) and you can find my report here, if you pay your money and subscribe to TIME. There was some interesting stuff I couldn’t fit into the column, so I’ll let ‘er rip:

Austin, Texas

The Folktales’ Black Women’s Literary Society has been meeting and reading for 17 years. Time reader Peggy Terry invited me to join the group for some barbecue and talk at the George Washington Carver museum in East Austin last night.

Austin, Texas

We hit a hellacious and inexplicable traffic jam–no construction, no apparent accidents–halfway between San Antonio and Austin yesterday, which gave Turk Pipkin and me time to listen to some music. Turk, you should know, is a Willie Nelson pal and occasional amanuensis, the author of The Tao of Willie. He is also as much of a music hound as I am.

Laredo, Texas

“Are you here for the convention,” the woman with pink and bronze hair asked me at the hotel in San Antonio.

“No,” I replied, “Which convention?”

“The hairdressers’ convention.”

“Do I look like a hairdresser?” I asked.