A true panhandler as there ever was died yesterday. He was a farmer, an avid fisherman, a loving grandfather, and a true fan of Johnny Cash.
He is survived by three children, eight unruly grandchildren, a gaggle of brothers and sisters, and one love of his life. He will be missed.
Actual (if less than factual) Postcard from Friend
So recently, I have become addicted to the entire “Life Series” by David Attenborough (e.g. The Life of Birds, The Life of Mammals, The Living Planet, Planet Earth, etc.). While watching this whole series I’ve had many revelations about the nature of life on Earth (this is truly a transformational experience for those who take the long journey of watching the whole series). One such thought, however, struck me when considering mammals…
Human Evolution
It is generally believed that mammals use 80-90% of the food they eat in maintaining their body temperature. This is indeed a costly adaptation, but one which makes us (and birds) always ready to get our bodies moving when danger, or mates, or food comes around. However, I thought to myself, what effect must air conditioning have on mammals? Or, more importantly, could the greater prevalence of air conditioning in the South, be making Southerners especially fat?
Well, a little digging on the internet shows that I’m not the first first person to think of this. Researchers at the University of Alabama Birmingham have considered the same possibility. They do not offer much in the way of evidence, beyond the suggestive comment that the South has seen both the highest rise in air-conditioned homes and also in obesity rates. But given how much of our energy is expended in maintaining our temperature, it seems likely that the temperateness of Southern homes and buildings must be playing some part in their not burning as much fat.
Interestingly, they also suggest another alternative factor which may be influencing Southerners’ obesity: the decrease in smoking rates (because people coming off of smoking often want to compensate for the loss of stimulation by eating food). With higher rates of smoking in the South, it wouldn’t be surprising if a greater number of people coming off of smoking would find comfort in food. This would probably still hold, even though rates of smoking have decreased less in the South than elsewhere; because of the much greater number of total smokers living in the South.
Ever wonder what the Panhandle looks like? Well why not take a quick spin through Baker, FL — home of my grandparents Sylvia and Jesse Lundy?
Click on each picture below to see some interesting insights about each picture.
Today marks the remembrance of a very important Southern man who fought an important, and largely Southern battle: the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While certainly everyone knows the struggle for civil rights that King spearheaded, probably few know the controversial history of this holiday.
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Ronald Reagan officially signed the bill making MLK Day a holiday in 1983, even though he was vocally against the creation of a holiday honoring King. In fact, even when announcing he would sign the bill, his resignation at doing so is clearly evident:
Since they seem bent on making it a national holiday, I believe the symbolism of that day is important enough that I would—I’ll sign that legislation when it reaches my desk.
And Reagan wasn’t the only one to fight the passage of this historic national holiday. Sen. Jesse Helms of South Carolina mounted a filibuster against the bill, and also impugned King’s character by calling him a “Marxist.” And don’t forget another notable Senator who fought the passage of a national King holiday: a certain Arizonan Senator by the name of John McCain. McCain even defended the rescinding of the holiday by then Arizona governor Evan Mecham.
“Harder than Japanese Arithmetic”: Very hard or difficult.
Not all news is good news...
Combing the news over the last week, I came across two articles that continue a trend I’ve recognized in news coverage: there’s never any good news about the South. Why the South (and a few other places, e.g. Detroit) never receive good news, I’m not sure … I would love to hear our readers’ thoughts on the matter. Is it because there truly is nothing good to report? Is the South a whipping boy for the rest of the country? Do fancy-pants reporters not value the valuable things about the South?
Apart from this question, here’s a weekly update — both spell bad tidings for Mississippi:
1) Teen Pregnancy Rates – http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090107/ap_on_he_me/med_teen_births
So a good friend sent me a post from The Economist about an interesting (non)controversy in the upcoming Obama presidency. Apparently, there has been some murmuring that Obama is neglecting Southerners in his cabinet appointments. This (supposedly) is surprising, giving a several-decades-long trend for Southerners to be disproportionately represented in Presidential and Congressional politics.
Capitol Building
Now, in terms of staking a claim on this debate, I completely agree with the short piece from The Economist. People are neglecting a lot of Obama appointments that are clearly southerners. So really, from the perspective of the substantive debate raised (i.e. “Is Obama neglecting southerners?”), I think the answer is simple: he isn’t neglecting southerners. However, what this “debate” does raise are a couple of other interesting questions:
1) Why are some people so quick to discuss the decline of the South in politics?
Most US regions have historic racial divides; but few have been as staunch as the political and economic system that began in the 17th-century South (at least if Lawrence’s excellent installment on early Southern history is to be believed). This division between black and white southerners constitutes a central axis in the history of the South, and has defined most the region’s important historical events.
Mmmmmm.... cultural influence....
But after surviving abolition, emancipation, and Civil Rights, a new development might finally undermine this old Southern dichotomy for good: immigration. While most Americans think immigration is isolated to places like New York, California, Texas, or South Florida; few recognize that a new wave of immigration is shifting away from these traditional gateways into more unlikely places.
Now it’s important to not overstate the issue – Mississippi is not a “majority-minority state,” like California – yet, even on a smaller scale, immigration is having a noticeable impact on some places in the South. Consider North Carolina. Between 1990 and 2000 the state experienced 274% growth in the percent of the population that was foreign-born. Below, you can see the growth in all state’s whose foreign-born pop.’s doubled between 1990 and 2000.
Which US state was the first to make Christmas an official holiday (Post your guess as a comment before you read below — no cheating!).
I’ve been doing some recreational reading here while visiting family in Florida (by the way – Lord I had forgotten how much happiness the Sun brings me). Right now I’ve been reading The American South in the Twentieth Century and I came across a passage worth sharing. I’m not sure how much I would agree with the rest of John Shelton Reed’s work (this is just a short anthology piece); but I think this passage sums up the spirit of what we’ve found at the Guide:
To allow that southern culture has changed, is changing, does not mean that it is disappearing as a variant on the American norm (whatever that might be). It is difficult to summarize the facts of southern cultural difference, however, because nearly every logical possibility of what could be happening is happening.
For example, most of the recent economic and demographic change in the South has been a matter of the South’s converging on nonsouthern patterns (and the same could be said, in general, about changes in race relations), so those “southern” characteristics that were, in fact, the characteristics of poor, rural, poorly educated folks are plainly on the wane. But other longstanding cultural differences are hanging in there. For instance, attitudes toward the role of women have been changing everywhere, but the South remains relatively conservative on this score.
Some regional differences are getting larger: the South is more Baptist now than it was a century ago, for instance; regional differences in churchgoing are larger than they used to be; southerners are now more economically conservative than they were a generation ago. And they’re more likely to say “fixing to” and “might could.”
(It’s a wonder we came up with eight things, am I right?) Over the next couple of days, each of us will uncover 2 or 3 of the panhandle’s most awe-inspiring features. So, at nummmmmmberrrrrrrr onnnnnnnnnnne…..
Okaloosa Island
There are places in this area where the dunes are so high, driving past them you could mistake yourself as traveling the Sahara, were it not for the sea oats and bright-white sand. Fancy magazines probably exclude these beaches because of the surrounding environs (“Redneck Riviera“); but I have no doubt that if you carved these high-caliber shores out of North Florida and put them on a tiny island in the Indian Ocean, they would be the #1 destination for the rich and famous.
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