B.B. King and Homecoming

My audio work about B.B. King and Homecoming this weekend. _______________________ _________________________________

Proud to Help with a Bucket List

Now I am hungry for chicken after reading all that is on First We Feast's Chicken List. I was also tickled at the list-people I admire and then there's little ole me! Guess it's time for a road trip!

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Where I still need to go

Who would have thought I'm still needing to see more of America? I've traveled and lived east and west yet never lived in the mountain time zone! Guess it's time for another road trip!
Create Your Own Visited States Map _______________________ _________________________________

ABQ Balloon Museum and Being (Breaking) Bad

During my two years at Ole Miss, I had the opportunity to present papers at the Southwest Pop Culture Conference. This is an amazing conference because they really encourage young scholars through awards. My first year, I won the Lawrence Clayton Award for Texas Culture.

My first visit to Albuquerque was a quiet affair. I had only been to USITT (technical theatre) conferences before, and had no idea of what to expect with this one. Did I say it was quiet? Although dress attire is casual (I've been told many academic conferences are business attire), I still wasn't meeting or chatting with many people. Although seeing a movie was an antisocial move, it became the most social thing I did that trip.

The conference has an annual tradition of screening Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.  I was late. Being late, it was dark and I ended up with my cohorts for the night, a writer from Texas and a writer from Australia. They were sneaking drinks and sipping Bourbon so naturally we quickly became good friends. Not wanting to retire to our rooms after the sing-along, it was decided we should go to a cigar bar in town. I can not remember the last time I was in a smoke filled bar. It was nice and horrible at the same time. We ended up in the cold of the night, sitting on a rooftop terrace, mostly due to the noise of the place over the escape from the smoke.  So what was next?

Albuquerque  has food trucks that line up downtown and it was strategic in geography to our hotel. I made the mistake of dressing for the next agenda and had my coat. While we did get food, the next idea was to go into a bar close-by, The Library.

Both gents had to pay a cover AND had to be frisked whereas my purse wasn't even really checked. It was turning out to be a night (and I have said this to people before on nights like these) where I said to my mates, "We're either going to get beat up or knifed." (Granted the last time I said this was in Durham and I said beat up or arrested but you get the idea.) We got some libations, found the perfect table and proceeded to people watch. Our table was strategically central to a unfortunate step that people kept falling down or drunken stumbling down, depending on inebriation. The booth was also front row to a section of VIP velvet rope action. We were definitely a minority but since my companion from Texas apparently always wears a three piece suit, guys were approaching the table and shaking hands with him—I guess the Barney factor of “suiting up” is important. The Australian just snickered and shared that no matter what, “He’s always the whitest guy in the place.” Extreme people watching means staying ’til bar close and I look back at what an amazing, unexpected night.

The next year was as quiet with a slash of whacky as the previous year. I presented my research on Mississippi Gas Station Food, which complemented nicely with the other motoring papers, one being a case study of Winslow, Arizona.  The next day became a 8 hour tour of Breaking Bad filming locations with a car load of strangers in my rental car. I always hate driving a lot of people due to blind spots and distractions and with the addition of an unfamiliar car, in an unfamiliar city, I get nervous. I worry about people critiquing my driving ability. The day ended with a few of us seeing the sunset on a reservation, and drinks with some amazing American Studies and Pop Culture academics. 

The next day, with a little time to kill (the year before had been a trip to Santa Fe, with me ending up with locals at a brewery), I went to the balloon museum. One of my reasons for going had been that I wanted to see it since before I moved to Mississippi. My last year in California was spent as a trainer at a computer store and one couple I worked with had been through this museum and the wife laughed at how her husband couldn’t get out of the simulator for a hot air balloon. The whole reason for my trip was to see the simulator for myself, and now I know how he felt. It grades you and you keep wanting to land and navigate better. As a “museum rat” this is one I would recommend to anyone visiting the city and I’d tell them in part just for the simulator.  

Albuquerque in February isn’t ideal but it’s been two great trips with good memories. I’d like to still experience the festival and explore Albuquerque, Taos, and Santa Fe a little more. This penny represents a lot of memories! 

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What is GARC? Ole Miss Rifle

Report for Rebel Radio on the weekend's championship

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My Interview with Jonathan Miles, Author of Want Not

A few days ago, I spoke books, writing, food and squirrels with author Jonny Miles.  What a treat- he helped me remember how great the town of Oxford MS can be. _______________________ _________________________________

At Last Cover Cyndi Lauper

I am a huge fan or at least I was as a little girl ( I danced in play clothes to the album- I repeat album She's So Unusual). My friend just posted this and although I am a huge Etta fan, there is something about this take on this song that keeps me playing it repeatedly at the moment.

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The Civil Wars cover Elliott Smith's Between the Bars

Every time I hear Elliott Smith, I think of the very intimate performance I saw him give after the Oscars in Minneapolis.  Smith sang this song, but wouldn't sing Miss Misery.  A drunk guy tried to coax him into it and I like to think it was the same guy that sang along with this song.  Smith, on the encore said he just couldn't sing that song anymore and drunk guy yelled-PLEASE? JUST FOR US, WE WON'T TELL ANYBODY!!
Smith was amazed at how calm we were after the warm up band but the truth was, the stage wasn't that high above the audience and once everyone negotiated a spot to see Smith perform, no one moved around that much from their viewing window through lots of other heads.
I always say that I want to go get my picture made by the Elliott Smith mural when in Los Angeles and perhaps the next visit, I will make it happen. _______________________ _________________________________

Covers-Jenny Lewis and Watson Twins- Handle WIth Care (Live)

I heard this cover this morning via KCSN and it took me a moment to say, "hey, this isn't the Traveling Wilburys!" It also gives me one more reason to think the Rabbit Fur Coat Album is a solid work that I need to rediscover.  I saw Miss Lewis play at the Hollywood Bowl a few years back before Ray Lamontagne and that girl can rock! She brings IT as always.  Enjoy what may be a new discovery for ya! _______________________ _________________________________

Wordless Wednesday- Saying Goodbye (for now) Savannah

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Savannah CIty Hall

It was worth the free reservation to get an informed tour and a look inside city hall.  These tours happen the first Tuesday of every month at lunchtime.

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Wordless Wednesday- #30dayphotochallenge Savannah and the Lowcountry

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Doorways and gates of Savannah

Here's a few things I have found walking around the historic district in Savannah.  

It always feels like a scavenger hunt!

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Wordless Wednesday- #30dayphotochallenge

Just a few days worth-moments in Savannah, Georgia. _______________________ _________________________________

Afternoon at Bonaventure Cemetery

With a mix of locals, semi-locals, and tourists, I joined a large group to take advantage of the Bonaventure Historical Society's Free Tours that take place second Sunday of each month.  There were three tours-one at 2p.m., another at 2:30 and the last one at 3p.m.  The last group was large and I was ill prepared.  I walked away unscathed but tired and thirsty.  Although the tour would be by the river with some breeze relieving some of the heat (I fought for shady spots), I would recommend to anyone wishing to take advantage to think about water, sunscreen, and bug spray.  Our guide did offer repellant  and warned to watch where we stepped or stood as there were fire ants to keep an eye out for...

Although I had been out visiting Bonaventure before, it had been quite a bit of time and after reading a lot of Savannah history, it was fun to have a guide show us around and point out the founding fathers of Savannah. He connected the graves and family names to the homes and squares in the historic district. 

We walked by where the inspiration to Hard Hearted Hannah is lain, spent some time talking about Johnny Mercer, and said hello to little Gracie Watson, the monument of the little girl is a likeness based on a photo taken of her in her Easter finest, shortly after, she caught pneumonia, died and was laid to rest.

Once plantations, the cemeteries are said to be for the living.  My experience has been that of meeting family gardening and taking care of the plots and tourists in our group referenced "the book" where the author has cocktails in the cemetery.  Our guide pointed out that just recently Bonaventure had been named one of CNN's top ten list and I thought it funny that a women next to me commented how it's unusual to visit a cemetery on a trip, but I find just like museums, I have visited a number of cemeteries and the amount of history is amazing, like Our Town and Spoon River Anthology-the lives are celebrated and they seem to whisper stories to us and demand to be remembered.

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Tunica Trip

It started with meeting the museum director and hopping into his 1976 Triumph. We headed down the highway to the county jail to talk to an amazing cook and then a lunch treat at the famous Blue and White- more to come as I start to write my article for my magazine class on Tunica, food, and the casinos.

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No need for pets when they are where you visit!

Moses likes to hide in Chicago

Still reflecting on the holiday and looking to a week or so more before I go back to the school thing! Right now, I think I'll share the adventure through the pets I was able to love as a house guest this Christmas/New Year's visit.

   
Elliot was home in Libertyville, Il
                                                               

Big Boy said hello in Seattle

 

Lulu, now Christened Edwina was in Santa Monica

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Criticizing Cultures

Elizabeth S.D. Englehardt’s A Mess of Greens was a well written and accessible book. Many in class have related that friends not in food or academics have read and enjoyed this book and it would be one that I would recommend. Perhaps because I still feel like a teenage girl, I most enjoyed the chapters about them. Although I have not participated in illegal activities and never brewed beer, let alone moonshine, I felt that the chapter on Moonshine shed a light on much of what was going on in the South at the time and pop literature reflected that. At a time of jazz, flappers, migration from rural towns to urban metropolises, and teenagers and leisure, fear of all this change could be wrapped up into a want and need to tame a young woman, especially a moonshiner. Female moonshiners in literature also shine a light on how could one provide for oneself if the main provider died or was no longer in the picture. Lack of opportunity and skills for a woman made the prospects dismal. So dismal, that to empower young women and in hopes of keeping them home instead of heading off to the mills, tomato girls clubs were formed. These clubs helped keep girls at home but enabled them to earn money, help supplement the family income and in some cases, save money to go off to school and become teachers and librarians. These clubs were the foundation and precursor to 4H and I wish that the chapter had taken that further step to explain and paint of picture of the transition from boys corn clubs and girls tomato clubs to 4H’s beginnings. Of some interest to myself today is how many urban schools and areas are taking youth and funneling them into urban 4H competitions and projects. The book also talks of educated women heading to the hills to help educate the women of Blue Ridge to move from corn bread to “cleaner”, more “sanitized” biscuits. This triggered the first time I ever saw a debate on placing ones ideals and criticizing another way of life. Surprisingly, I was 25 and in grad school and I walked in on a girl who was talking before class about how inhumane rodeo was...odd since the class of Cinema Against the Grain and we were viewing avant garde films. A brave kid in front turned around and calmly stated that one should be careful on criticisms like that, and that this girls was taking on a whole way of life where animals are an integral part and that rodeo is a celebration and competition and gathering of farmers and ranchers. I guess because my father had grown up on a farm and visited the grandparents there, I was always interweaving and navigating between different cultures and ways of life. Although I knew I didn’t fit in there, I had enough respect and enjoyed things like auctions and fairs and rodeo. It may have been this moment, that I realized thinking before speaking is important and trying to put yourself in someone else’s shoes is a saying that goes a long way. It is perhaps the basis to why when I started teaching technology, I decided to try something new every year so that I could remember what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes and also how hard a new skill can be. It also made it less of a “bucket list” and more of an active adventure to look forward to and now I can say, I’ve traveled alone to a country, not knowing any of the language, I’ve learned to skeet shoot, I’ve barreled raced and I’ve rowed crew- to name a few. All these experiences have created eye opening moments that have helped me to avoid criticizing other cultures. _______________________ _________________________________

Keeping it Local- Solutions? to a Giant Problem

Civic Pride gets pulled through a machine in Alabama Getaway. The answers or questions Allen Tullos raises put me more in Belfast Northern Ireland in 2002 than in the South. By questioning putting efforts into education over jails and other blights in society I kept seeing why I was in Northern Ireland. My father worked for Allstate Insurance for most of his life and was sent as a consultant to Northern Ireland for half a year or so in 2002, after a delay due to the terrorist attacks and travel logistics post September 11, 2001. Allstate’s company line was that because of the tech and dot com boom, “they just couldn’t find enough programmers” but the reality was that Allstate Insurance like all American companies was outsourcing. The company set up in Belfast was called Northbrook Technologies Northern Ireland and within three years was one of the largest employers in Northern Ireland, eventually taking on other projects beyond the Allstate workload and demand. NTNI was seen as a stop gap to keep the best and brightest in Northern Ireland in Northern Ireland as many would go off to University and stay in London or find other lucrative jobs elsewhere. The argument is that while preparing youth with a better education foundation, if one only invests in this, the bigger picture is missed. If we do a better job of educating youth in these poor states, what industry is here to keep them in the region? Allen Tullos seemed to criticize and suggest but the writing and theories went beyond a utopian ideals. The picture was as if all is broken and rusted and can’t be fixed but it should be fixed. Even with this feeling from the reading, I felt as if Tullos needed to talk to Gerry Adams and those involved in Sinn Féin politics as this book and much of Tullos’s arguments seem close together on the political wheel. The desire for better roads, education, and industry ideally can help improve quality of life for the people of a state and keep them there rather than the alternative of relocation, away from family and community. _______________________ _________________________________

Local Tourism

Mockingbird Song by Jack Temple Kirby was a book chosen for class with a category of Ecological South and although the book twists and turns and talks of terrain and how people of the south have manipulated and worked with it, we determined that this book is as much autobiographical as it is about where one lives. It feels as if I have been labeled the California girl here in the Southern Studies program, partly because when asked where I moved from, the response is Los Angeles. I then often expand that I had lived in Minneapolis, Chicago, Savannah, Durham and Hendersonville (as well as Daytona Beach) for stints of time. My favorite response by a woman in the Southern Studies program was - ‘well more importantly, where were you born?’ and I always find myself light up when I respond Dallas. The long answer is I can usually navigate and find enough to talk about that relocation and moving from different states can be easier but people who don’t do it (and that is a majority) do not realize how regionalistic the United States can be. This same majority is impressed with all the places in Europe I can name and yes, Dublin, Madrid, and Prague are places I would return to in a heartbeat, Savannah is just as magical and special for me. An acquaintance (and fellow Southerner in LA) once talked at a dinner we were at about the importance of being a local tourist and asking everyone about this place- whatever place you are in. It’s an instant in because in his experience, everyone has some sense of civic pride for the place they reside. This thought kept running through my mind in reading Mockingbird Song where Jack Temple Kirby seems to embrace history and where he lives. All the interest in Florida shared in his book shows how he embraced retirement and relocation and change to mold it into the civic pride he expressed in the book. I am in the rocky waters of relocation where solitude and loneliness make the days and nights long. I have laid groundwork, but eagerly await festivals and events where I can get involved and meet a variety of people in the community but sadly these can’t come soon enough. I think I shall be pleasantly surprised what civic pride and what becomes endearing about this new community I have put myself in. _______________________ _________________________________