If you need some Holiday amusement and/or want to feel better about your own family or community, you must see this movie.
It’s a cult favorite and was later made into an equally amusing series on TV….
Both are available on DVD.
If you missed it, especially if you are Southern, it might be a good way to spend a little time…
I loved it!
Filed under Movies, The South, Uncategorized
And what century is this???
As Gandhi said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”
From HuffingtonPost.com:
In a move to “promote greater unity” among its body and the Pike County community it serves, a small Kentucky church voted to ban interracial couples from membership and from participating in certain worship activities, Kentucky.com reports.
Though reminiscent of some Jim Crow-era mandate, the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church actually made the decision earlier this month, following a visit from 24-year-old Stella Harville, daughter of the church’s secretary and clerk, and her 29-year-old fiance, Ticha Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe.
According to Harville’s father, Dean Harville, Stella brought Chikuni to the church in June where they performed a song for the congregation.
Following the visit, pastor Melvin Thompson told Harville that his daughter and her fiance could not sing at the church again. Thompson later proposed that the church go on record saying that while all people were welcome to attend public worship services there, the church did not condone interracial marriage.
His proposal, which was accepted by a 9-6 vote last week, also suggested that married interracial couples be prohibited from becoming members and used in worship activities, except for funerals.
“It’s not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form,” said Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, according to Kentucky.com.
While Pike County and the surrounding community come to grips with the church’s decision, researchers at Ohio State University and Cornell University say black-white marriages in the United States are soaring, increasing threefold, from 3 percent in 1980 to 10.7 percent in 2008.
There is a new post up on my other blog….
Here are the intro paragraphs and a link to the full post:
Let me set the stage for the next few entries….
My college was Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. At the time I attended school there it was an all-male college.
And for those of you with dirty minds, let me get this out of the way right now. I never had sex with any of my fellow students- or professors- during the entire time I was an undergraduate.
I realize, only I could be a Gay man at an all male school and manage not to have sex. I’m special that way. I’ve always been really good at missing opportunities for sex.
And homosexuality was still “the love that dare not speak its name” back in those days.
I’ve since found out there were quite a few of us around-concurrent with, before and after me– and most were more adventurous than I. I’ve also discovered it seems about 90% of the Gay Alumni seem to have been members of my old fraternity- at various times. We’ve compared notes….
In any event….
How did I end up at Washington and Lee University? I’ve asked myself that a hundred times and tried to remember…
More: Chapter 60: Look Away, Dixieland | My Southern Gothic Life.
Filed under Scott's Commentary
From the “Only in the South” files via NPR….
When a loved one dies and is cremated, family members face a tough decision on what do with the ashes. Some want the final resting place to be spectacular — spread in the Grand Canyon, launched into space, sprinkled in Times Square; others just keep Aunt Jane’s remains in an urn at home.
“The ashes get put on the mantel, stay there for a couple of years, and then a couple of years later, they get put in the attic,” says Thad Holmes. “A few years later, the house gets sold and, ‘Oh gosh, we forgot the ashes!'”
Holmes, a conservation enforcement officer in Alabama, and his buddy Clem Parnell, came up with an unusual way to honor the dead. Their company, Holy Smoke, takes your loved one’s ashes and turns them into ammunition.
The idea was born one night when Holmes and Parnell were working the late shift, talking about how they wanted to be buried. Holmes said he wanted to be cremated, sprinkled on a nearby lake. His partner had another idea.
“I want my ashes placed into some good turkey-load shotgun shells,” Parnell said. That way, someone could go kill a turkey with him, Holmes tells Robert Smith, host of weekends on All Things Considered.
“He could rest in peace, knowing that one more turkey, the last thing he saw, was Clem screaming at him at 900 feet per second.”
Holmes’ first reaction when he heard his friend? “He just expressed what I’d like to do with my ashes.”
Holmes says his company’s services begin after the funeral. They take the ashes that are sent to them, put them into the requested shells, then ship the ammunition back to the sender. Their biggest concern, he says, is handling the ashes sensitively.
“We want people to understand that each shipment of ash is handled with utmost care,” he says. “So it’s not a simple process, you just going out, finding somebody that can go, ‘Here, I’ll throw ’em in there.’ It just doesn’t work like that.”
Holy Smoke, which has been in business for a couple months, charges $850 for a case of shells. The company has shipped out two orders. The feedback, Holmes says, is positive.
MORE: Ashes To Ammo: How To Reload Your Dead Loved One : NPR.
Filed under Social Commentary, The South, Uncategorized
Well, this is one of the dumbest, most outrageous ideas from the GOP yet. I’m surprised it didn’t come from South Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama as well…
I guess someone in Georgia got the idea from “Gone With the Wind” when Scarlett used prisoners to run her lumber mill.
They’ve never been real good at separating fiction from reality in Georgia….
Not only does this endanger the prisoners, it endangers professional firemen who have to work with them as well as the general public since they will have neither the training nor the enthusiasm of a professional.
Next, they’ll be trying to use prisoners to fill the gap in General Practice doctors. Or as school teachers. Or as policemen!
Dumb, dumb, dumb….
Almost as dumb as voting for these fools…..
From ThinkProgress.org:
A select group of inmates may be exchanging their prison jumpsuits for firefighting gear in Camden County.
The inmates-to-firefighters program is one of several money-saving options the Board of County Commissioners is looking into to stop residents’ fire insurance costs from more than doubling. […] The inmate firefighter program would be the most cost-effective choice, saving the county more than $500,000 a year by some estimates. But that option is already controversial, drawing criticism from the firefighters who would have to work alongside – and supervise – the prisoners.
The Camden program would put two inmates in each of three existing firehouses, and they would respond to all emergencies – including residential – alongside traditional firefighters. The inmates would have no guard, but would be monitored by a surveillance system and by the traditional firefighters, who would undergo training to guard the inmates.
The inmates would not be paid for their work, but upon release they would be eligible to work as firefighters five years after their conviction dates instead of the normal 10.
Naturally, many are questioning the wisdom of asking prisoners to put their own lives at risk in a dangerous job they don’t necessarily want to do. Not only would the program jeopardize inmates’ safety, but their potential lack of enthusiasm and training could jeopardize the lives of fire victims they are supposed to be saving. Firefighter Stuart Sullivan told the Florida Times-Union that firefighters choose the profession because they have a passion for serving the public and helping people, while the inmates would only be there as an alternate way to serve their sentences.
Many firefighters are speaking out against the idea, and don’t relish the additional responsibility of having to guard and worry about inmates as they are trying to put out fires and save lives. This distraction could be another life-threatening consequence of the measure. The program also runs the risk of inmates escaping — all in all a very dangerous proposition for public safety just to save money.
Georgia is not the first state to use prison slave labor to try to cut costs: in California there are more than 4,000 firefighting inmates stationed at 45 camps throughout the state. (HT: Gawker)
via Georgia Considers Replacing Firefighters With Free Prison Laborers | ThinkProgress.
Filed under Politics, The Economy, The South, Uncategorized
Elections- and Laws- have consequences….
These Racist Tea Party Republicans better be careful what they ask for; they just might get it….
They need to be aware of the consequences of putting their slogans into laws and actions….
But then, Alabama probably forgot slavery was now illegal and figured they would pick the cotton, er, tomatoes
These little facts keep getting missed by the home schoolers……
At least they still have Mississippi to make them look good….
From Wonkette.com:
Alabama is just the latest backwards state to legally codify its crusader witch hunt against the illegal immigrant wizards working their back-breaking field labor black magick on Alabama’s giant agriculture industry, but the state’s recently-enacted set of draconian worst-ever anti-immigrant laws are working a little too fast: zillions of Alabama tomatoes are rotting away in the fields this harvest season as undocumented immigrants flee like hell. Tomato farmers got together to protest these vicious dingus laws and make GOP state senator Scott Beason — the same creepy racist turd blossom who called African Americans “aborigines” — haul around one of the tomato buckets for five seconds to see how heavy they are. Beason felt he was too good for this and refused to pick it up, which is…hey, exactly like every other legal worker in Alabama!
The AP has the details of the Tomato Bucket Incident:
Tomato farmer Brian Cash said the migrant workers who would normally be on Chandler Mountain have gone to other states with less restrictive laws.
After talking with famers at the tomato shed, Beason visited the Smith family’s farm. Leroy Smith, Chad Smith’s father, challenged the senator to pick a bucket full of tomatoes and experience the labor-intensive work.
Beason declined but promised to see what could be done to help farmers while still trying to keep illegal immigrants out of Alabama.
Smith threw down the bucket he offered Beason and said, “There, I figured it would be like that.”
Oh well, at least Alabama and Scott Beason got to make their Important Point, about being dicks. [AP]
via Dumb Alabama Immigration Law Working So Well Its Crops Are Rotting.
Filed under Immigration, Jobs, Politics, Uncategorized
This is one of the saddest cases I’ve ever read about….and that’s saying a lot.
This case, alone, should make people realize how unjust the Death Penalty is and how we will never be able to separate it from racism.
And another word to my Republican “Friends”, you can’t be “pro-life” and “pro-death penalty”. It’s a contradiction in terms….
From RawStory.com:
Over 67 years after 14-year-old George Junius Stinney Jr. was put to death by the state of South Carolina, he may soon be cleared of the crime that people familiar with the case say he never could have committed.
A lawyer and an activist both told Raw Story recently that new evidence will show that the black boy could not have possibly murdered two white girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and seven-year-old Mary Emma Thames.
Stinney, the youngest person to receive the death penalty in the last 100 years, was executed on June 16, 1944. At five feet one inch and only 95 pounds, the straps of the electric chair did not fit the boy. His feet could not touch the floor. As he was hit with the first 2,400-volt surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off, “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth,” according to author Joy James.
After two more jolts of electricity, the boy was dead.
MORE: New evidence could clear 14-year-old executed by South Carolina | The Raw Story.
Filed under Death Penalty, Race
Another sign of just how bad the economy is out there for some folks. This is unheard of in the South.
Those of us in the middle class are generally insulated from this type of situation-but not always. And it appears it’s happening more and more frequently to people who probably didn’t see it coming…
From the Greensboro News and Record:
GREENSBORO — The number of bodies that go unclaimed each year is rising across the country — even in the South, where traditions die hard and cousins twice-removed could once expect a family burial.
Bodies are being abandoned everywhere — from hospital morgues to the funeral home that picked up the person who died at home.
“They’re being outright unclaimed by family because family members claim they have no money,” said Clyde Gibbs, North Carolina’s chief medical examiner, whose agency has seen an increase from 45 unclaimed bodies in 2006 to 73 in 2010.
Numbers are not kept by the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services or most states, although a county’s social services agency is responsible for disposing of those bodies. Agencies contract the services to local funeral homes or crematoriums. State law requires a mandatory 10-day hold on unclaimed bodies.
“Weddings and funerals are the last vestiges of tradition,” said Paul Harris, executive director of the industry-regulating N.C. Board of Funeral Service, which is getting more calls from funeral homes stuck with remains.
“I’m hard-pressed to believe our human nature doesn’t cause us to want to do something.”
Filed under The Economy
New post up on my other blog:
I think I’ve been away from this blog for a while because I’ve been trying not to write this entry….
I didn’t want to write this. I didn’t mean to write this…but I need to write this before I can look either backwards or forward with any additional clarity.
It’s what’s on my mind and has to be exorcised…
I’m going to write about my college years. I meant to stop before I got here. I meant to save this for the book….
But I really can’t move on until I introduce this part of myself into the dialogue. It’s too much a part of who I am.
This is hard for me to write. I’m going to be as general and evasive, yet truthful, as possible, but I have to write this….
See, I woke up one night recently, crying in my bed, silent tears running down my face…..thinking about these boys and who we were and who we are…and I have to weave them into the narrative or I can’t honestly go on with this experiment…
I guess it’s part of being “middle aged” and some sort of middle aged crisis….
They are too much of a part who I am not to recognize them….I value them too much.
More: Chapter 59: All the Sad Young Men: Part 1 | My Southern Gothic Life.
Filed under Scott's Commentary
Lost in the 21st Century 
Chapter 61: Bosom Buddies | My Southern Gothic Life
I posted a new post on my other blog a day or two ago…
Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full blog entry….
via Chapter 61: Bosom Buddies | My Southern Gothic Life.
Share this:
Leave a comment
Filed under Scott's Commentary, The South
Tagged as aging, Friends, Friendship, Southern Gothic, Southern Gothic Life, Southern Writers, the south, Virginia