Lowcountry History Tour

Cap'n JoeBob, seen here on his boat narrating this short South Carolina history doc from the S.C. Intercoastal Waterways, and I used to work together for years in small dark rooms all day long editing corporate videos for The Home Depot. We never got a whole lot of corporate-y work done for all our chronic Lowcountry daydreaming and reminiscing. Bless our hearts, we tried though. Kinda.

Needless to say, Joey made it out of the ATL and back to Paradise faster'n I did. I do get to visit when time/life permit though; Joe and his wife Annie's southern hospitality is as rich and plentiful as their kindness and friendship. Here's a recent outing... in what is now Joey's backyard.

One For The Civil War Folk

Check out more great offerings from EggMan Films here.

Timrod and Nimrod

Yowzer. I got a little panicky when I overheard something on Weekend Edition this morning about Bob Dylan "borrowing" from a Civil War-era poet on his latest album. (Doesn't Dylan "borrow" on every record he puts out? But that's neither here nor there.)

That kinda info, emanating vaguely in the background of the kitchen while whipping-up a Saturday morning omelet and pouring the coffee, was momentarily startling since my namesake is the Civil War-era poet, William John Grayson, an ancestor, lawyer, writer and Representative from South Carolina.

The poet of whom Dylan is rumored to reek is Grayson's contemporary and fellow South Carolinian, the tubercular nursery-room tutor, Henry Timrod, often cited as the "poet laureate of the Confederacy."

And that's a good thing as no one I'm aware of, including any of my immediate family, has ever been inspired by a single line of 'ole W. J.'s poetry. For good reasons, as Grayson's poems surely fall into the "had to have been there" category of Civil War poetry making. Rather, throughout the generations, we've about worn out the name.

An excerpt from Grayson's The Hireling and The Slave is here.

It Ain't Easy Being Southern - Part 2

Nope, it just isn't. Although being Southern can be about being easy. I love that classic joke:

Question: What's the Southern girl's mating call?
Answer: "I'm sooooo DRUNK!!!!"

See the movie Junebug and you'll know what I'm talking about. The movie is brilliant, even if you loath Outsider Art, which I happen to, but that's another blog for ya.

Come on, Grrll, I hear you say. Urbanista Southern gals don't really ponder Old South all that much? Given that we're so immersed in New South, right? Well, I wish it was that easy. I don't really like sitting around thinking about The War or Gone With The Wind or Episcopalians paying reparations for slavery.

But as I am a southerner, a movie lover and an Episcopalian, there is simply a point of inevitability, although I've yet to hang with Brad Pitt and Bono and The Archbishop. Actually, one of Ava's friends was baptized by The Archbishop Hizseff on his whirlwind drive-by of (hopefully not insignificant) southern parishes a few years back. (I wore a lovely brown velvet hat and cream colored suit, if I recall correctly.)

Bono was not with him at the time, as that was before Archbishoping duties included hanging out with rock stars to end World Suffering. And if you believe Episcopalians are going to do much of anything that involves leaving the club or the bar (see Bunny's World) then I personally have already ended World Suffering -- singlehandedly!

But then most of you don't drive along Peachtree Street, right over the very spot where Peggy Mitchell died, virtually every day. That alone is weird. Then another time, I was watching Gone With The Wind, yet again, on one of Ted's Gone With The Wind Channels, where it plays in a loop, and Ava came running in just as the Battle of Atlanta was raging on our 18" TV set.

Being fascinated by warfare, and what inquiring child wouldn't be, Ava asked, "Where did that war happen, Mommy?" I tried to be tactful, as children have little sense of "the past," and if you talk about events in history they more or less believe them to be unfolding right here and now, often lurking in a closet in their own bedroom, or under the proverbial mattress.

Still, I found myself blurting out, "Oh that? It happened right out the window, dear."

Actually, the real Battle of Atlanta site is now covered by Tattoo Target over on Moreland Avenue in Reynoldstown, near Little Five Points. Talk about a weird shopping vibe.