I’ve seen the bright lights of Memphis, and the Commodore Hotel
And underneath the street lamps, I met a Southern belle...
Like poles on opposite ends of some weird Midwestern planet, Southern California and the South exist in a state of magnetic attraction and repulsion. In some ways no two areas of the country could be less alike, and yet within each you will find, often quite unexpectedly, aspects of the other.
Bakersfield and Galveston are 1,700 miles apart, but psychologically they’re just down the road from each other. Great swaths of Gwinnett County are like Orange County with pine trees. Drift in ...
Last week, for the first time, I defriended somebody on Facebook.
This individual, who will go nameless, posts scripture online on a daily, often hourly, basis, but tossed the seventh chapter of Matthew out the window within a few hours of Ted Kennedy’s death and launched into the sort of bitter, vile spew which has poisoned public discourse in this country.
It’s vulgar to defame someone who’s just died, whether it’s Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy or even Saddam Hussein, but that’s not entirely the reason I defriended this person.
Others have committed this offense on Facebook and I haven’t gone and found that ...
Riding the first real hot streak of his short life, Jimmie Rodgers hit town in October, 1928, recruited a backup band in an Atlanta speakeasy, and in two sessions the following week recorded four of the songs that would send his name around the world and into our century: “Blue Yodel No. 4,” “My Carolina Sunshine Girl,” “I’m Lonely and Blue,” and his greatest hit, “Waiting for a Train.”
All around the water tank, waiting for a train,
A thousand miles away from home, sleeping in the rain
I walked up to a brakeman to give him a line of ...
It is a summer night in South Alabama, shortly before the 20th Century’s first great collision with hell. Austria-Hungary will declare war on Serbia in five days; within two weeks, the slaughter will be under way on both the Eastern and Western Fronts. The pace of events throughout the world is accelerating like a teamless wagon clattering down a hillside, but as Sarah Clementine Murdock picks up a pencil to write her daughter, time still moves at its immemorial pace.
Clio, July 23, 1914
My darling Belle,
I have been trying to get the chance to write to you all this week; ...
Some years ago the St. Petersburg Times ran a feature story about a former neighbor of the writer William Faulkner, who reminisced that on Sunday nights, the Nobelist would sneak across their adjoining back yards to watch “Car 54, Where Are You?” at his house. Scholarly research on Google indicates Faulkner eventually made no secret of his fondness for the ‘60s sitcom, but I like the image of him sneaking next door to watch it.
That old story came to mind recently when I read that Bob Dylan, pressed in an interview with Rolling Stone to name his favorite songwriters, replied: ...
Life is full of misery
Tears so many I can't see
Seems somehow
I never can be free
Blues stay away from me
Blues why don't you let me be
Don't know why
You keep on haunting me
("Blues Stay Away from Me")
The Centers for Disease Control last month released what amounts to a map of the blues, though befitting a government study, it was wrapped in a colorless title: Geographic Patterns of Frequent Mental Distress.
The map and the report it's in, published in the April issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, are based on data from the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which bills ...
Meet Katherine Jenerette, a former aide to US Rep. Henry Brown (R-S.C.) who hopes to unseat him in next year's Republican primary. This ad – direct and somewhat unconventional in approach, low budget and lodged on the Internet – is a harbinger of more to come in 2010.
We have some idea of what the campaign pitches we'll see next year will look like based on the trends that were so evident in 2008. Predicting what particular kind of political ad will work next year – and in what medium -- is still a tricky proposition.
"This may be the most fluid ...
Maybe it says something about how next year's governor's race in Georgia is shaping up that the early jostling has involved two back surgeries.
The more widely publicized of these was performed, reportedly with good results, this week on Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle. He had been viewed as a top contender in the race for the Republican nomination until he announced at a tearful press conference earlier this month that a back problem had convinced him to abandon the governor's race and run for his current job.
There was so much skepticism about the real reason for Cagle's departure that he showed ...
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