The House That Built Me

Miranda Lambert is one of the many women of Country Music. She represents the Southern women beautifully, through her life and her lyrics. She can be a little raw, but so can we all. Her latest recording has captured my heart and imagination. The name of it is 'The House That Built Me'.

My brother, sister and I were the children of a Southern Baptist Minister of Music. As such, we moved every four years. There have been many houses, communities and churches that 'built' me. Some are treasured, while others... Not so much.

A couple of months ago, my father's oldest sister died. She lived in the Mississippi Delta. You know you're from Mississippi if you know where and what that is! Let me clue the rest of you in, it is the land that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo Rivers. Rich farmland due to the flooding of both rivers. This is the land that my father was born on. The tiny communities are the ones he grew up in. This is the land that 'built' him. He made sure that we, as his children, knew this land. We visited his parents, his sister. We attended as many reunions that we could.

Our dog, Poppins, was buried there on the banks of the Sunflower River. My brother and I would bury treasure (junk found in the shed). I wonder if an archaeologist hundreds of years from now would dig up and wonder at our treasure/junk. Here are some pictures I took, recording the landscape and textures of my Delta memories. One of the many places that 'built' me.

The Sunflower River

The drive to my grandparent's house

Melanie or Scarlett?

I'm sure this is true throughout the world, but here in the South, we seem to follow all the usual stereotypes. If you follow the novels, movies and TV, women down here seem to fall into two categories. You are either Melanie or Scarlett. The angel or the demon. Selfless or selfish. Giver or taker. Chaste or harlot. Love of a lifetime or one night stand. What people don't realize, though is that most women hold each one of these inside of us.

A few weeks ago, I watched The Blind Side for the third time. Now, there's a GREAT picture of a Southern woman! She's strong enough to take on a her family, her children's school, the worst part of Memphis and the NCAA! Not to mention her least favorite SEC football team. I have grown up with and known women like Leanne Tuohy my entire life. She is so much bigger than either the Melanie Box or the Scarlett one. To her fans, Laura Bush seemed more like Melanie, but those who hated her didn't. My stance is that she couldn't have survived eight years in the White House without some of that Scarlett survivor in her. Ruth Bell Graham might have seemed more Melanie as such a strong Christian. But the woman who raised all those kids while her husband was preaching the Gospel, had more than enough Scarlett in her.

If you ever want to have a more precise visual of a Southern woman, let me recommend some resources to you. First, Steel Magnolias is a very well rounded picture. The TV series Designing Women shows you our sense of humor along with how we build our friendships. Of course, The Blind Side is now one of my favorites. Try reading Jan Karon's books. She beautifully combines the Southern women with Smoky Mountain women.

Now, I could be wrong about all this, but I am a Southern woman and I have yet to meet any woman who is all Melanie or all Scarlett outside of that great movie, Gone With the Wind. But prove me wrong. I dare you!

Happy New Year 2010

You are all aware of the hoopla in New York City's Time Square every year on December 31st. The celebration with a falling crystal ball has been a tradition that began in 1907 with the exception of the years 1942 & 1943 due to World War II. In 1928, it began to be broadcast by radio waves. Before his stroke, the eternally young Dick Clark hosted the televised broadcast, but now the ever present Ryan Seacrest hosts. It has experienced many transformations from a wood and iron 700 pound monstrosity to a Waterford crystal ball. It is, by far, the most known American way to celebrate New Year's Eve.

Well here in the South, we like to be different. If you haven't been following this blog, you might want to read some of the older posts to prove to yourself just how different we like to be. No, we don't drop an iron and wood ball. We don't commission Waterford to craft us a ball. No we drop something else entirely. We drop a peach. Not a real peach, mind you. No, our peach is made out of fiberglass & foam and weighs in at 800 pounds. The first Peach Drop took place in 1989 at Underground Atlanta. What's the use of all this information? Not much. Just wanted you to know. New York has its Waterford and we got our Peach. We just like to be different!

Happy 2010 Y'all!!!

MERRY

CHRISTMAS

Y'ALL

Snowin' in the Kudzu

In Birmingham, there is one man that you can trust for you weather forecasts. It isn't that the others are unreliable, they are actually very good. It is that Mr. James Spann is that good! When James mentions the 'S' word, Alabamians storm the grocery stores for bread and milk. For those of you wondering the 'S' word does NOT stand for a swear word, but for snow. We have to whisper it here in the South or you won't find a gallon (or half gallon for that matter) of milk in any grocery or convenience store.

In the Deep South, we literally loose our minds when snow is predicted! Words like flurries or dusting automatically become translated to mean blizzard. You think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. It doesn't matter to us that it's actually ice that causes road problems. We will shut down schools, churchs & the court system for less than two inches of that white stuff. Birmingham is not a small town. Lots of people on the roads here. But we only have one, yes I said one, salt truck. I have seen evidence of sand when the temps drop below freezing, but don't know how it actually gets there.

The last two winters we had snow on Saturdays. This is a big deal since snow hasn't been seen here in several years. On those two weekends, local news broke into every broadcast. What did I see? Snow. People playing in snow. Children building snowmen out of 2-3 inches of snow. Southern accents explaining how excited they were to have snow. Every channel, with the exception of the cable channels, was covering the 'groundbreaking' snow fall!

I'm filling you in on the Southern mindset when it comes to snow, because this most trustworthy of meteorologists, James Spann, believes that there is a chance of snow at Christmas. Now, those of you reading from the northern states who think that this means nothing, take note. It is not unusual to have temperatures in the 70's or 80's on Christmas day. Some enterprising soul finally switched from Christmas sweaters to Christmas T-shirts and has made a killing in the Deep South! Rarely do I get to wear those sweaters & sweatshirts here in Birmingham. That may be different this year! We get excited when it's cool for Christmas. Snow on Christmas, here, may never happen again in my lifetime. Enjoy it fellow Southerners! And try to ignore us, you Yanks! Remember, snow makes us children again!

Delta Dreamin'

Last weekend, my parents came home from visiting my father's hometown of Anguilla, Mississippi. It is found in the cotton rich lands of the Delta. If you don't know what that means, those are flat lands that used to be flooded regularly and those floods deposited rich nutrients that are ideal for farming. In my mother's hands was a book of the art of a Mississippi artist named Gary Walters. This book is entitled 'Delta Dreamin'. The pages found in this book beautifully capture memories from my childhood. Memories from days spent visiting my paternal grandmother's home on the Sunflower River in Anguilla, Mississippi. Flat lands where the crickets sang me to sleep. Where my brother & I would bury things we found in the garage and would dig for the buried 'treasure' on the next visit. Where my sister I would sleep together in a room that my grandfather built. Where the bath water was so soft, I never needed lotion. Where my uncle would nail sheets of plastic to the windows to keep the cold winter wind out. Where fans would reside in those windows all summer long in attempt to cool the house. Where I first learned about 'party line' phones. Where I would always ride home with flowers in my lap, stems wrapped with wet paper towels, placed in old coffee cans. Where the TV was always too loud and my grandmother would call my grandfather, "Old man." Where my father was the baby.

Check out Mr. Walters' website http://www.garywalters55.com/ Take a visit with me to the Mississippi Delta.

Mississippi Girl

This article was in last Sunday's Parade magazine. Just wanted to pass along this beautiful Southern belle.

Sela Ward's Southern Charm

The stucco patio of the restaurant Orso is one of Sela Ward’s favorite havens in L.A. But today we’re under attack.“Would you prefer to go inside?” she offers, as a breeze blows through the fruit trees overhead, releasing another hailstorm of berries. One pings off the rim of her glass of iced tea. “It’s just that it’s so lovely out here,” she cajoles, her soft voice sweetened with the slightest Mississippi drawl.“Let’s stay,” I concede, as a nut bounces sky-high off my balding pate. How could anyone ever refuse Sela Ward?

A rare combination of Southern charm and Northern grit—you don’t win two Emmys for two separate hit TV series (Sisters and Once and Again) by hiding your light under a bushel—Ward, 53, sits back in a black T-shirt and jeans and luxuriates in the beauty of the garden. With a new movie co-starring Dylan Walsh and Penn Badgley due out Oct. 16—a remake of the 1987 thriller The Stepfather—and half a dozen other projects in the works, Ward doesn’t get much downtime.“I was such a late bloomer, I’ve had to do a lot of catching up my whole life,” she says. By “late,” she means 27, when she moved to L.A. to start acting. Ward had first headed to New York to work in advertising, then quickly segued to modeling, which she credits with giving her a lifesaving skill in Hollywood: “I got very well-prepared for rejection,” she says. “You’d walk in one door and the photographer would say, ‘Oh, my God, you’re fabulous,’ and you’d walk in the next and they’d say, ‘Uh, thanks very much’—and that would happen three or four times in only one day. I developed a thick skin early on.” Yet, try as she might, the girl still comes across as sensitive and refined.

“Growing up in the South, it’s all about manners and propriety,” Ward says. “Every weekend, I went to charm school in the Sears department store, where I learned such fabulous tidbits as how to blot your face with a damp cloth to remove some of the powder and give yourself a little glow.” She also learned another wily strategy: “how to make a man feel like he’s the center of the universe.” That turned out to be the inverse plan of action employed by her husband, venture capitalist Howard Sherman, on their first blind date. “He took me to an L.A. Raiders football game, and what I loved about him right from the start was that he took me seriously. He was interested in what I had to say and what I thought. That’s every man’s key to a woman’s heart. Women want to be cherished,” Ward says.Today, the couple live in L.A. with their two children—Austin, 15, and Anabella, 11. They also have a farm in her hometown of Meridian, Miss.

“When I go down there, I feel like I’m wrapped in a warm blanket of community and belonging,” Ward says. “I love the heat, the smells, the sound of the frogs and the cicadas at dusk. Oh, and those little bottles of ice-cold Coke—that’s my guilty pleasure.” In fact, for her milestone 50th birthday, Sherman invited 80 guests over for grits, quail, and assorted Dixie delicacies. A big sign on the barn read: SELA IS TURNING 50—IT'S ALL GOOD!“It’s the only thing I could think of to say about it,” Ward admits with a resigned laugh. “We even put it on the paper fans—because in the South, honey, you have got to have fans!”

by Robert Masello