Tag Archives: the south

May 28, 2011 · 1:09 pm

Chapter 55: Integration- Part 1: Or When Sunny Gets Blue | My Southern Gothic Life

New post up on my other blog….

Here’s an excerpt and a link to the full post:

I’ve said it before, growing up in Danville, Virginia in the late 1960′s to early 1970′s was like growing up in South Africa under Apartheid.

Brown vs the Board of Education took many years to be fully implemented in the South and, as usual, I think Danville, Virginia  was one of the last cities to be desegregated.

But desegregation did finally happened in Danville- when I was in the 5th grade.

I still remember that day….Our white school was pretty much transferred en mass to a Black Middle School.  That’s how they did things then…

It was a very big day.  All our Mothers- who usually couldn’t be bothered by their children-  either took the day off from work or cut their Valium doses enough so they could take us to school.

Until this point, we had simply walked to school and they had done whatever it was they did…This level of interaction was unheard of- and frankly, unwelcome.  We were used to being left alone to work things out on our own and they were used to being, well, left alone.  But the times, they were a changing and this was the least we could all do…

via Chapter 55: Integration- Part 1: Or When Sunny Gets Blue | My Southern Gothic Life.

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April 30, 2011 · 11:19 am

Secret shame: Paula Deen hides diabetes from fans while continuing to promote high-fat recipes | Mail Online

Is anyone truly surprised by this?

Everyone knows how unhealthy our native Southern cuisine is…

And Paula Deen’s version is Southern Cuisine on Steroids….

You can’t blame her from trying to hang on to what made her rich and famous…

Still, you also would think she would start preaching a little moderation…

A family friend of Deen’s told the Enquirer: ‘When Paula was diagnosed with diabetes I think she was worried that if her secret got out, it would make her look like a hypocrite.

‘Ironically, the very thing that made her rich and famous turned her into a poster child for what could happen if you follow in her footsteps.’

One of Deen’s most famous dishes is the Lady’s Brunch Burger, which is a hamburger topped with bacon and a fried egg and served on a glazed donut.

Her devastation at allegedly being diagnosed with diabetes went further than her career – the friend told the Enquirer that she simply loves to eat high-fat, high-calorie foods.

The source said: ‘At first she resisted doctor’s orders to drastically change her diet, but eventually she realised that if she didn’t it would put her into an early grave.’

Her health conscious husband Michael Groover is said to have helped to persuade Paula to change her ways, added the source.

This thing is disgusting….

INGREDIENTS OF PAULA’S BRUNCH BURGER

1 1/2 pounds ground beef

3 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley leaves

2 tablespoons grated onion

2 tablespoons butter

3 eggs

6 slices bacon, cooked

3 hamburger buns

3 English muffins

6 glazed donuts

via Secret shame: Paula Deen hides diabetes from fans while continuing to promote high-fat recipes | Mail Online.

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April 21, 2011 · 9:00 am

Chapter 53: Easter: Or How I Became a Fashion Victim | My Southern Gothic Life

New post up on my other blog, MySouthernGothicLife.com….

Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full post:

I come from a very presentational family. Easter always brought out the best and worst of that trait.

To give you a perspective, my mother was a Cheerleader.  My sister was a dancer and a Majorette.  My niece is following in their footsteps as a Cheerleader and dancer.  I come from a long line of people who stood out in 30 degree temperatures in a sequined swimsuit in front of hundreds of people.

Makes you kind of understand why I always tried for-with varying degrees of success- a more quiet, classically elegant personae –at least until my third drink.  I couldn’t compete in their arena nor did I want to…

MORE:   Chapter 53: Easter: Or How I Became a Fashion Victim | My Southern Gothic Life.

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April 20, 2011 · 11:06 pm

“The Help”: First Movie Trailer is here….

And it looks like it’s going to be good…

I’m so glad because I loved this book….

Here it is:

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April 17, 2011 · 8:36 pm

Chapter 53: By the Time I Get To Phoenix | My Southern Gothic Life

New Post up on my other blog:

I just don’t get Phoenix, Arizona.  There is something about this place that just isn’t natural.

I think the main reasons I don’t get it are that I’m both Southern and from the East Coast.  It’s just too different.  It doesn’t seem natural…

You will never convince me that nature meant for 4 million people to live in the middle of a desert so they could play golf all year. In no way, does that make any sense to me.

To me, the only people who seem to live in Phoenix are people with enough money to pay for a lot of air conditioning and pools or people too poor to leave.

No matter how hard they try, there is no cultural life here.  It’s all about golf and sports.  In a place where it gets to be 120 degrees in the summer, that’s just not sane…to be out playing sports in that kind of weather.  And I hate to think how much money it costs to keep all these golf courses green in the middle of a desert….

Like I said, it’s just not natural….

MORE:    Chapter 53: By the Time I Get To Phoenix | My Southern Gothic Life.

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April 13, 2011 · 11:30 pm

Forever Prep in Virginia

This is for my fellow Virginia Preps…

By that, I mean those of us who went to Washington and Lee, Sweet Briar, Randolph Macon Woman’s College, Mary Baldwin, UVa, Hollins and a few other colleges in Virginia in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

We were the preppiest group of people you could ever hope to see…

Those of you who are my friends on FaceBook have seen the pictures…

I referenced the pictures to this “Virginia Living” magazine article last month.  Now the full article is on line.

Here is an excerpt and a link to the full article:

If you happened to attend college in the early 1980s, then you probably remember The Official Preppy Handbook. Izod shirts and pastel sweaters were experiencing a fashion moment at the time, and the book arrived as a wryly affectionate satire of a culture where the house wine was a gin and tonic, “summer” was a verb, and a man could appear in public dressed in wide-wale corduroys embroidered with a repeating motif of Irish setter’s heads, and no one would laugh.

Though the Handbook largely concerned itself with the northeastern preppy, the breed’s Virginia cousin was entirely recognizable in the book’s pages and even accorded the occasional nod. And in fact, though we were much more likely to summer at the River instead of Nantucket, and we considered Princeton about as far north as we’d be willing to go for an Ivy League education (or better yet not go north at all when we had better options right here at home), Virginians were confident that we could out-prep the preppiest Groton grad with one hand tied behind our Lily Pulitzer-clad backs.

For one thing, timelessness and tradition are cornerstones of the prep ethic, and it’s not for nothing we named ourselves the Old Dominion. There have been Virginians with a preference for things the way they used to be since the first Jamestown colonists stole a last fleeting glance backward to the receding shores of England—and in most matters your traditional Virginian has always considered it safe to trust in the principle, “What would Mr. Jefferson do?”

More:   Forever Prep – VirginiaLiving.com.

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April 12, 2011 · 11:48 pm

150 Years Later, Tea Partiers Still Aren’t Over The Civil War

Unbelievable….

But not really…

I could have guessed this of the Tea Party and most of the GOP…

More like sad, but true….

From ThinkProgress.org:

Today is the 150th anniversary of the Civil War’s beginning, when secessionists fired on Union troops at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. According to a new poll from CNN, the Civil War’s legacy remains unresolved. The poll finds that Republicans and Tea Party supporters are more likely to support the Confederacy and confederate leaders than Democrats or Independents.

According to the poll, nearly one in four Americans sympathize with the Confederacy more than with the Union. That number grows to nearly four-in-ten among white Southerners. Among Tea Party members, 26 percent sympathize with the Confederacy more than the Union, and that number grows to 28 percent among Republicans.

via ThinkProgress » 150 Years Later, Tea Partiers Still Aren’t Over The Civil War.

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April 11, 2011 · 11:04 pm

Danville Workers’ Complaints Surround IKEA’s U.S. Factory

Extremely interesting article about the IKEA factory in Danville, VA, the city I escaped from, I mean I was born in…

Thanks to Tim Flowers for making me aware of this article in the Los Angeles Times…

Funny….I don’t recall seeing it mentioned in the Danville Register and Bee…

“It’s ironic that Ikea looks on the U.S. and Danville the way that most people in the U.S. look at Mexico,” Street said.

The Swedwood factory is situated on the outskirts of Danville, in the midst of rolling tobacco country, just north of the North Carolina border.

For most of the last century the town of 45,000 relied on textiles and tobacco for jobs. Today the riverfront is lined with empty red brick warehouses and crumbling mills. With the unemployment rate high — currently at 10.1% — the city has put muscle behind attracting new companies, including Ikea.

“They’ve definitely given jobs to people that desperately needed them here,” city manager Joe King said.

Swedwood says it chose Danville to cut shipping costs to its U.S. stores. The plant has been run mostly by American managers, along with some from Sweden.

via Ikea: Workers’ complaints surround Ikea’s U.S. factory – latimes.com.

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April 10, 2011 · 7:36 pm

Some Thoughts from 37000 Feet

First of all, I’m amazed that I can blog from an airplane 37000 feet in the air while I’m traveling to Phoenix on a business trip.  It’s so cool to be able to access the internet in flight, but I’m so thankful they still don’t let people use cell phones.  This is as good as it gets while traveling….

I’m sitting here listening to Spencer Lewis on my iPod while I type this…I’ve flown cross-country and around the world with Spencer more times than I can count and he’s never known.  Maybe he will now.  His music makes it so easy to create my own peaceful, pleasant bubble while surrounded by travel madness.

And travel is madness now.  There is no longer anything pleasant about it.  Planes are packed solid and less comfortable than the old Greyhound Buses.  The airlines are out to get every penny they can from you any way they can.  Customer service is non-existent.

And my fellow travelers…

I frequently think of the old Noel Coward song:  “Why Do the Wrong People Travel?”

So many of them complain constantly and I don’t know why.  Sure, its miserable to travel, but why do people have to wallow in it?  Why can’t they just make the best of it and muddle through.

I will offer them a few travel pointers:

  1. Never argue with the airline.  You will not win.  They do not care and you will only raise your blood pressure.
  2. When your flight is delayed and you originally only had 30 minutes to make your connection, do not complain loudly to anyone and everyone within ear shot.  Yes, we realize you are going to miss your connection and we do not care.  You should never have booked a flight with a connection that tight in the first place.  We should all know better by now.  I certainly do.
  3. If it is cold enough for you to think you need to wear a sweat shirt, it is too cold to wear flip-flops, so don’t complain loudly about your feet being cold.
  4. If you are a man over 40, and certainly over 50, you have no excuse for wearing shorts on a plane.  No one wants to see your  legs anymore.  Where is your sense of dignity, man?
  5. When you travel, you are on an airplane.  They do now have the internet, but they do not yet have gyms.  Dress accordingly.  No need to wear your workout clothes…
  6. It is beyond tacky to bring a whole box of Bojangles Chicken on the plane and eat it by yourself.  Yes, someone is doing that a couple of rows behind me…

That’s it for now.  I’m going to put up the laptop and go back to listening to Spencer Lewis on my iPod with my Bose noise reduction headphones and reading my Kindle.

I’ve learned these are all necessities for my frequent travel in today’s world.  They help me pretend to be anywhere but where I am.  This is one moment I do not need to be in….

I just had to take advantage of the moment and the access to all this new technology.

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April 8, 2011 · 3:30 pm

Shock poll: 46% of Mississippi Republicans think interracial marriage should be illegal | The Raw Story

I hope some time in my lifetime, Mississippi steps forward to at least join the 20th Century.  They’ve been stuck in the 19th Century for over 200 years now…

A new poll out of Mississippi finds that in a bastion of America’s south, many Republican voters have tightly held onto the old, hateful views of race as a dividing line in society.

A full 46 percent of Mississippi Republicans said they believe interracial marriage should be illegal, according to the left-leaning survey group Public Policy Polling. Only 40 percent said they thought it should remain legal, with the rest unsure.

Republicans who said they were in favor of banning interracial marriages were most frequently supporters of Fox News contributor Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor (R) who quit half-way through her first term. Their least liked candidate was Mitt Romney, the former radio executive and Governor of Massachusetts (R).

via Shock poll: 46% of Mississippi Republicans think interracial marriage should be illegal | The Raw Story.

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