A Digital Dialog and Dialect 24

Southern culture was all over the airwaves - and no, it wasn't coming out of Austin. My current state of SXSW attendance-envy: about off the charts.

Sigh... like He Who Must Not Be Named would even think to bring me a tee shirt; the absurdist things I long for and know I'll never have. And the reality is that I'm so goddamned easy to please. One stupid little tee shirt would rock my world for days. Months even. (Note to AMB core committee from Wednesday night: I think we've seen the emergence of the Cape Society. Here lies the need. And the handshake is... TBD!)

But back to the real South... Morning Edition had a wonderful piece about the translating of the New Testament into Gullah. You can listen to a bit here. How wistful. My mother can lapse into Gullah in a second flat, having grown up in the Lowcountry. I think when white folks use the same dialect they call it Geechee, though.

Then later in the day Thursday, there was a dedication of a reading garden at Wren's Nest, the Atlanta home of the 19th century AJC and Uncle Remus stories (Brer Rabbit) editor, Joel Chandler Harris. H.L. Mencken sure didn't think much of his efforts though.

The reading garden is a gift from the Troy-Bilt tiller company. Mom notes that she once drove all the way to Atlanta in the '70s to have our Troy-Bilt serviced. Those things used to be Hummers of the organic gardening hippie crowd. No self-sufficent, self-sustaining pine scrub complex, compound, commune or cult could've functioned without 'em.

If you like storytelling, and especially Southern ghost stories, there's no better place to get your fix than with fellow Atlantan, Craig Dominey's Moonlit Road. Take a turn down that one if you dare.

tags : SXSW, Brer Rabbit