“You are not going out with that boy unless his parents are driving and that's that. I'm not just Spitting Grits here, young lady!”

. . . My father, John Thomas Cravey, USAF, to me in 1956.
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Mini-light Flu Shot and Blue Moon

One way to make a blue moon: use a blue filter. That's what Kostian Iftica did on July 2nd when he photographed this full moon rising over Brighton, Mass.

Christmas is, if nothing else, a hiatus, and it also demands hiatuses. Spittin’ Grits is therefore experiencing a hiatus.

Hiatus is a useful word, by the way. For example, it allows me not to say “Christmas is a real headache.” Which it is. Christmas has become too stressful, too costly, too loaded. Yet it is billed everywhere as the warmest, most joyful, most spiritual, most valuable family time of the year.

A lot of people out there know something I don’t know, or I’m just cynical.

Were it not for our 2-1/2- year-old granddaughter whom we have custody of, I probably wouldn’t be having it, except for cooking on the 25th. For her, I’m throwing a Christmas this year. We have watched The Polar Express a million times, talked about how Santa is watching for good behavior, and put up a tree and other decorations. My silver flatware, which I use maybe once a year, is sitting piled up, waiting to be polished for the first time in, I don’t know, five years or so. Yeh, I’m cynical.

I put up this mini-lighted garland in my foyer over the mirrored wall, which I have to get help with nowadays. The day Joanna Leigh came in from day-care school and saw it, her eyes lit up. She walked over to it, felt the fake needles, looked at the lights, and said “real pretty.” That sort of makes it worth the effort, I guess.

Then she took a mini-light, poked it on the palm of her hand, and said, “I get flu shot.”

What???? A flu shot? She didn’t even get a flu shot; she got the mist. I have no idea where on earth that came from.

Teddy in time out

The next day, I got the den tree up. She came in, her eyes widened, she walked over to it, and said, “I give Teddy a flu shot.” (For an introduction to Teddy, see the recent, November 11, post, De Facto Parenting, Part III.)

Christmas is memories, for sure. Some good, some bad. Christmas is family time indeed, but it also brings out the worst in individuals and their family dynamics. This Christmas will be the Christmas of the mini-light flu shot.

So, go have yourself a merry little Christmas NOW. And I’ll take a short HIATUS.

I appreciate your visiting Spittin’ Grits and I hope you’ll check in after Christmas.

Meanwhile, don’t forget about this year’s New Year’s Eve gift of a Blue Moon. See the September 6 post, The Worm Moon.

 

From First to Hifalutin

 

It has finally happened. The South’s sometimes famous, sometimes notorious, always dependable, comfort food has gone upscale. I suppose it was bound to happen. After all, grits probably saved our country.

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Glorious Grits, a new book by Susan McEwen McIntosh and presented by Southern Living, raises our comfort food to a new level for a new generation, with the gorgeous and scrumptious recipes from enlightened and creative American chefs. 

It took more than 200 years to go from Indian Pudding to Asparagus-Grits Strata, Huevos Rancheros on Cilantro-Grits Cakes, French Onion Soup with Gruyère Grits Croutons, Blueberry Muffins with Streusel Topping (made with blue cornmeal), Burgundy Beef Stew with Cornmeal-Thyme Dumplings, Chutney Salmon with Almond-Raisin Grits, Anson Mills’ Black Truffle Grits, and many more. 

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above, Asparagus-Grits Strata

But here we are. Just in time for Thanksgiving.

 

First Food

You may recall from Spittin’ Grits’ May 4 post, America probably owes its historical existence to Capt. John Smith, who knew enough about wilderness survival to be saved by Pocahontas and then to save that original handful of people who settled in Jamestown. In the fall of 1608, only 45 people of the original 144 who set sail for Virginia were alive. By the following spring and summer 1609, everyone would likely have been dead if Smith had not bargained with the native Indians for corn. Americans are nothing if not ingenious, so with corn in hand, could meal, hominy, and grits be far behind?

[225pxT_Jefferson_by_Charles_Willson_[2].jpg]The July 2 post reminded readers that Thomas Jefferson served grits, according to Craig Claiborne. Even before that, however, only twenty years after the American Revolution, a culinary cultural event took place in 1796, when a young orphan lady named Amelia Simmons published a cookbook, America’s first one.

 

AmericanCookery-MSUAMERICAN COOKERY or the Art of Dressing Viands, Fish, Poultry and Vegetables, and the Best Modes of Making Pastes, Puffs, Pies, Tarts, Puddings, Custards, and Preserves, and all Kinds of Cakes from the Imperial Plumb to Plain Cake Adapted to the Country and All Grades of Life – the first cookbook aimed democratically at the masses and slanted towards women; it is the first cookbook to show corn meal as a primary ingredient.  It includes the first recipes for Indian Slapjacks and Johnny Cake, as well as “A Nice Indian Pudding,” all of which became staples in the following centuries.

 Uptown Food

McInstosh, born and raised in the South, a registered dietitian and author of Southern Living magazine’s Cooking Light Cookbook, traveled and interviewed far and wide to bring these glorious grits, meal, and polenta recipes together. As a bonus, she also reawakens awareness for using real, stone-ground grits. Glorious Grits includes a grits trail map and addresses for gristmills from where stone-ground meal, grits and polenta may be ordered, as well as tips for cooking stone-ground grits.

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above,  Lime –Marinated Shrimp with Bean and Mango Salsa over Grilled Grits Cakes

Book chapters run the culinary gamut from a good old bowl of grits, quick polenta, and cornbread to breakfast, appetizers, breads, main courses, and desserts. Yes, desserts, including Pecan Grits Pie, Cornbread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce, and Coconut-Crusted Polenta Cakes with Triple Berry Sauce.

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above, appetizer Grits Bruschetta with Tomato Salsa

below, Cornmeal Focaccia with Rosemary

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My neighbor and friend Nancy is going to Chicago for Thanksgiving and wants to take a Southern dish. I’m going to suggest the Grits Bruschetta with Tomato Salsa as an appetizer, the Cornmeal Focaccia with Rosemary, Lime-Marinated Shrimp with Bean and Mango Salsa over Grilled Grits Cakes, and the Pecan Grits Pie (shown below).

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Bon appétit, grits!

At Home, Not Alone

One of the worst effects of sappy, sentimental, maudlin takes on life -- like Beaver Cleaver’s family -- is how this kind of baloney makes us feel so alone with our real lives and relationships. Think how daring it was to put Archie Bunker’s flawed family center stage.

One of the most sensitive relationships subject to being presented as sugary nonsense is being a grandmother. Truth is, I have often felt alone in my role as a parenting grandmother. Making this subject the centerpiece of Spittin’ Grits was one way I could ward off feeling so alone in my reality.

So, how daring would it be to offer real portrayals about being a grandmother? Is that possible? Or are we destined to feel alone in this special, but often real, role as grandmother?

EyeofHeart

Editor and writer Barbara Graham has taken the daring approach in Eye of My Heart. She and 27 top-notch, award-winning women writers reveal the good, the sad, and the real about being a grandmother, and they are all from the heart. These prolific writers took the time to look at the special, even archetypal, relationship between a grandmother and grandchild and to share their always touching and tender stories that capture the reader's heart. It’s the real thing.

The book looks at what Graham notes is “the gap between this purest of loves and the realities of complex human entanglements.”

One pervasive theme runs through these essays by writers like Beverly Donofrio, Marcie Fitzgerald, Ellen Gilchrist, Marita Golden, Judith Guest, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Sallie Tisdale, Judith Viorst and others: The unbounded love grandmothers can feel for their grandchildren, despite whatever thorny or unhappy conditions make up the context.

The writers look at stressful family relationships, grandparents looking at their own parenting in a new way, watching your own daughter giving birth, grandparenting your children's step children from previous marriages, parenting your own grandchildren, living far away from the grandchildren, dealing with distance from grandchildren because of the emotional distance from your own children, fearing loss, fearing ineptness, having to be seen and not heard, and so many real situations.

An added bonus is how the essays throw the subject of parenthood into relief: Looking honestly at being a grandmother more clearly defines the outlines of being a mother, which can include a sense of failure or guilt or disappointment, along with the good feelings. Says Sharon Shreve,

“What a grandparent knows that a parent does not know are the years of small failures, of wishing you had been this kind of parent instead of that kind, of decisions made and revisions tried, then the slow, inevitable, terrible, wonderful breaking away.”

I agree with Mary Pipher in the introduction: “I am not the same person as a grandparent that I was a parent. I have different roles, different responsibilities, and a different perspective.”

Eye of My Heart also reminds me that being a parenting grandmother is different from being simply a grandmother. As Marcie Fitzgerald points out as a parenting grandparent, “It’s impossible to parent both my daughter and her son – and probably crazy to even try.”

I have to choose, which disallows my having some of the luxuries of being just a grandmother – total acceptance with abandon, being the easy pushover, loving with no real responsibility. It’s just my reality. Marita Golden offers a most useful reminder to me as a parent, woman, and grandmother:

“I’ve discovered that you become a woman the way you become human – over and over again – and both processes are rooted in surrendering to the reality of more pain than you may feel is fair, but pain woven into our earthly existence.”

Life is simply too real to be portrayed through Hearts-and-Flowers glasses. Sugar coating reality or offering solutions flown in by the Bluebird of Happiness offend sensibilities. Happiness-a-Day calendars inspire satire. Sappy e-mails deserve e-shredding.

So I’ll be giving my grandmothering friends a gift of Eye of My Heart during Holidays or birthdays or births of grandchildren.

Eye of My Heart is available through on-line book sellers like Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Eye-My-Heart-Pleasures-Grandmother/dp/0061474150/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258229175&sr=1-1) and at local book retailers.

 

De Facto Parenting, Part II: Thrice Removed

 

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At two-and-a-half, my granddaughter runs a lot faster than I can run. The last time I remember running was in an intra-office softball game in 1991. After running around the bases a few times, I spent the next two or three days with a heating pad on my calves. Now I find myself having to run again, and I avoid a mental image of that scene at all costs. As the last post explained, parenting a grandchild has become extremely real lately.

Agile and athletic, Joanna Leigh can really run. She runs up and down the driveway just for sport. She also runs toward the street or from between cars in a parking lot for sport. So, when she heads that way, I scream.

Getting hit by an oncoming car is one of the many fears – some irrational, some not -- that I have as a parenting grandparent. Parenting a grandchild is about a far removed from being a grandmother as your fourth cousin thrice removed is from you.

Halloween Butterfly Fairy - 2

After putting her butterfly-fairy Halloween costume on her and handing her the wand that came with it, she headed straight for the wall socket that I had once covered with the plastic gizmo that keeps children from sticking things into the electrical outlet. She had taken the gizmo out.

I shouted. Then I screamed.

Later, I read on one of the many parenting articles, books, web sites, and blogs I look at that shouting has become the new spanking for disciplining children, and like spanking, it is under fire. (Read Hilary Stout’s October 21 New York Times article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22yell.html ).

Hunky-Dory

Now what? Do I stand there and reason with her about being run over? Or electrocuted?

“I’ve worked with thousands of parents and I can tell you, without question, that screaming is the new spanking,” Amy McCready, founder of Positive Parenting Solutions, which teaches parenting skills, told the reporter.

Furthermore, according to Stout, “psychologists and psychiatrists generally say yelling should be avoided. It’s at best ineffective (the more you do it the more the child tunes it out) and at worse damaging to a child’s sense of well-being and self-esteem.”

Well this is just hunky-dory.

Not surprisingly, the article didn’t deal with any alternatives.

Next I read that both bribery and time-outs are no-no. Yeh, no time-outs. No more “clean your room and we’ll go to the zoo.” Or “if you run out in the street, you go to time-out.” Only “punishing children with love,” whatever that is. (http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/24/punishing-children-with-love/ ).

But, he says in the original essay for the New York Times Magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15mind.html?_r=2&em ), he backed up his article’s thesis with a study. Two Israeli researchers and experts asked more than 100 college students “whether the love they had received from their parents had seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and fear.”

College students. Aka, teenagers. Probably in the middle of finals or in a bar. Why not ask them at age 28 or 30, when they’ve gotten a decent job with health benefits, if they appreciate what their parents shoved into their heads?

A Get-Real Study

So, I conducted my own study. Joanna Leigh is captivated by time-outs, which she rarely gets sent to at her day-care preschool. At home, we say, “Ok, you want to go to time out?”

She says, “Yes.”

Teddy in time out

Comforting friend Teddy in time out

 

But she puts Teddy, her stuffed -- and not-so-fluffy-anymore -- bear friend and comfort, in time out a lot. She points her finger and says, “Go to time out, Teddy.” The she sits him down in a chair or a corner, until she needs him. She looks back at him, reminding him he is in time out.

I asked her, like a researcher, “Does Teddy like time out?”

She answered, “Yes.”

She once tried to put our lab Maggie into time out. That didn’t work out.

She knows time out better than any 19-year-old college student. That’s real. That’s settled.

 

De Facto Parenting, Part I: The Swine Flu

H1N1 Logo_addsite

I’ve been sitting at my computer staring at the dreaded Blank Page for the past week or so. Being the de facto parent of a 2-½ -year-old has been especially real lately. When it’s this real, I’m hyper-aware that being a parenting grandparent is nothing like being a grandparent in a love relationship which carries certain luxuries. You know, like appreciating that you can hug, kiss, read, dance, and sing, but you don’t have the responsibility of sculpting an emotionally resilient, morally upright, educated, and competent human.

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 The Swine Flu Virus

 

 

 

 

Image and information available at: http://www.cdc.gov/H1n1flu/

Last week Joanna Leigh had an appointment to get the first phase of the H1N1 flu shot. Like jillions of people, I had been waiting and worrying, anxious to get her inoculated, as she is for the regular seasonal flu. I picked her up at her pre-school early and headed for the doctor’s office. It was raining. A parking place was some distance from the entrance. I stopped. Looked at the distance. Looked for the umbrella. Looked for the diaper bag. Looked for her snack. Looked at her. Looked at myself.

I said to myself, “Ok, self, get your 66-year-old self in gear and get going. No one else is going to do it.”

I got her and all the stuff and started running for the entrance. Chronic back trouble aside, I’ll stop here to be grateful my knees still work.

The entrance seemed to be miles and miles away, as in a dream, when you’re running and running and getting nowhere.

Finally we were in. We headed to the waiting room with all the other kids, several of them looking feverish and sick, where you worry about all the germs on the chairs, toys, tables, everything.

The nurse called for Joanna Leigh. Relief set in. They weighed her. She’s still a pipsqueak at 25 pounds, in the 10th percentile, but compact and healthy. She opened the computer to record everything. She looked up at me with a weird look.

“We are out of vaccine.”

“What?” I said, mouth hanging open. “You’re kidding, right?”

“I am so sorry. We ran out 15 minutes ago. There’s no more in the building, because pediatrics was the last section to have it.”

We left. I was nearly in tears. It would be another two-plus weeks before University Medical Center would get replenished. I called my husband. He said we could all go out for supper.

On the way, I spotted the Doc-in-a-Box where I had walked in for my seasonal flu shot. “Pull in there,” I said. I ran in. They didn’t have any. We went on to supper. Afterwards, on the way home a different route, there it was – another Doc-in-a-Box I had forgotten was there in that spot. “Pull in there,” I said.

I ran in. Yes! They had it. I motioned for my husband to get Joanna Leigh and bring her in. It was moments before closing, and there was literally no one else waiting. Bingo, the elixir spray up her nose.

“We did it!” I said back in the car.

“We did it!” Joanna Leigh repeated, clapping. She sang her version of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” all the way home.

I was exhausted from all that real stuff. The next few posts will deal with all that real stuff.

 

http://www.flufacts.com/about/cold.aspx

http://www.kdheks.gov/H1N1/download/Difference_Between_Cold_and_H1N1.pdf

 

UA Press Treasure, Part II: Folk Artist, Remade

Tin Man is a triple play for The University of Alabama Press.

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This new book about folk artist Charlie Lucas is a gift, plain and simple, for the eye, mind, and heart. It brings together Lucas’s art, Chip Cooper’s photographs, and Ben Windham’s narrative skills into a visual story of the magic in the human spirit that can redeem a soul, make art, and know life intimately, despite deplorable odds.

Left to right: Cooper, Lucas, Windham, and art

An added bonus in Tin Man is Georgine Clarke’s insights into the art. Clarke is Visual Arts Program Manager at the Alabama State Council on the Arts and founding director of the state’s nationally known Kentuck Festival. Yes, it is “folk art,” but it creates a path to a broader art world through his “formal aesthetic values combined with a consistent vision and purpose.” Yes, it belongs in Alabama’s strong folk art tradition, capturing the state’s diversity and special character, but its thematic foundations “speak to the world as well as to his neighbors” of Pink Lily and Selma, Alabama.

CHARLIE-PINK LILY Charlie Lucas in Pink Lily

We call his materials recycled. He calls himself recycled. His pieces range from small iconic items to sculpture to wall art to life-sized statues to large murals created by discarded metals, paints, whole buildings, garden hoses, picture frames, tools, wheels, wire and fencing, and cloth.

BEINGTAKENAPART Being Taken Apart

CARRYINGAHEAVYLOAD

Carrying a Heavy Load

 

After his serious truck accident, he explains that he had to reinvent himself: “And that’s when I feel I was really free from the old Charlie Lucas. The Tin Man was the new part of myself.”

“I had a professor come down from Yale to study me. I mean, they didn’t come down just because I was a person out in the woods, they wanted to know how could I have this knowledge about stuff when I didn’t go to school and I couldn’t read.”

BLUEMADNESS Blue Madness

Cooper’s 150-plus photographs capture the spirit of the art, in some ways better than an exhibition of a limited number of pieces could. The latter section of Tin Man is an art gallery of photos that capture the depth and breadth of Lucas’s work.

CAVEMAN Caveman

Ben Windham, retired journalist and editor with The Tuscaloosa News, currently writes a Sunday column, Southern Lights, for the News: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20091025/NEWS/910249958/1216/OPINION01?Title=SOUTHERN-LIGHTS-Learning-not-to-accept-some-lessons

Tin Man also showcases a university press working at its best level, offering a first-class book on a sometime overlooked topic, folk art in this case; a book that showcases a treasure unique to this state and of interest to the nation; and a topic as presented through the eyes and ideas of experts.

GRANDMOTHERINBLUE Grandmother in Blue

GROWINGTREES Growing Trees

To order Tin Man on line, go to: http://www.uapress.ua.edu/

To order by phone, call: 800-621-2736 or 773-702-7000; to order by FAX, send it to: 800-621-8476 or 773-702-7212.

To inquire about Charlie Lucas’s folk art pieces, contact Chip Cooper at ccooper@ur.ua.edu, 205-348-8329 or 205-454-2335.

JUMPINGOVERTHEFENCE Jumping Over the Fence

BORNONTHECOLOR Born on the Color

For a broader look into Cooper’s photography, go to Southern Artistry at http://www.southernartistry.org/. Click on “Photography” and find Cooper in the alphabetical listings.

Cuba Revealed: Photos on Exhibit

lone-person-havana-street Photos: Chip Cooper

Although the Obama administration has loosened some restrictions on relations with Cuba, you still can’t just go there. An upcoming exhibit, however, opening Nov. 6 at Patina Gallery in the art community of Fairhope, Alabama, will give viewers a look at Cuba that hasn’t been possible for most  Americans since 1962.

In 2003, The University of Alabama was able to travel to Cuba after receiving an academic travel license to initiate educational development and cooperation. UA photographer Chip Cooper went several times and returned with stunning photos and an agreement to a joint exhibition, “Side by Side,” with Néstor Martí, which has shown in Havana’s Julio Larramendi Gallery in the Hostal Del Havana, and will show at UA next year.

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Havana at night

Don’t wait. Travel to the quaint town of Fairhope to see images of Havana, other parts of Cuba, and the “beauty and grace” of the Cuban people as seen through Cooper’s eyes and lens.

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The Patina Gallery is located on Church Street. For more information, call 251-928-2718. For information on purchasing limited edition photos, contact Chip Cooper at ccooper@ur.ua.edu or 205-348-8329.

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Long-range plans include a book-length publication.

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Nestor Marti (l) and Chip Cooper “Side by Side”

For information about UA's 2003 Cuba Initiative, go to: http://dialog.ua.edu/2003/02/ua-deansfaculty-explore-opportunities-in-cuba/.

UA Press Treasure, Part I: An Astonishing Ride on Alabama Rivers

Spittin’ Grits’ last post, October 14, promised to feature several treasures published by The University of Alabama Press. Like other Southern university presses, the UA Press is a treasure trove of books for everyone, not just scholarly and research books, but also books of general interest, gorgeous art books, nature field guides, books on the particular presses’ states and regions, great cookbooks, books on off-beat topics, books on overlooked subjects, and books the major publishing houses wouldn’t touch for fear that they wouldn’t contribute to profits.

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Headwaters: A Journey on Alabama Rivers is the first of the series of treasures; it combines the features of an art book, a nature guide, and a portrait of Alabama’s natural beauty. Headwaters takes the reader on a breathtaking trip down the abundance of rivers, called metaphorically Alabama's Great River, from the northern part of the state to the fall line, through the coastal plain to the Gulf of Mexico. Truthfully, it is an astonishing ride.

Conservation photographer Beth Maynor Young teamed with John Hall, longtime UA professor, former curator of UA’s Museum of Natural History, and currently curator of the Black Belt Museum at the University of West Alabama, Livingston, to raise awareness of the rivers’ beauty, the wildlife they serve, and the need to continue conservation efforts in Alabama. The Dedication says it all:

“For all of the people: advocates, scientists, teachers, paddlers, fishermen, and agencies; who are working to secure a future for these waters, that our children and grandchildren and great grandchildren may enjoy and be inspired by the mystery of rivers.”

Locust Fork / Cornelius Falls

The Beginnings

Alabama’s “Great River” begins in the state’s northern uplands, particularly in Jackson County – as drops, trickles, seepages, creeks, falls, streams, which transform into the big rivers that all make their way to the Gulf.

“At Cheaha, walk the Chinnabee Silent Trail from Turnipseed to the top of the [Cheaha] mountain. Follow the little stream up on the flank of the mountain to where the little trickles run down and it smells like damp earth and mint and Galax.”

Or start at Lethe Brook in north central Alabama’s Winston County: “Surely the Great River of Alabama must begin in a place like this. Humidity fills the air, and groundwater oozes onto the roots of ferns and mosses. Slowly the trickles gather and begin to flow downhill, five hundred miles, home to the Gulf of Mexico.”

The Falls

Where the waters of the uplands fall from the geologically older granite rocks onto the younger, softer rocks into the coastal plain is the Fall Line. Below that, rivers become slower, lower, more meandering. In Alabama the fall line runs from the Shoals, with Florence being the fall line town, down to just below Tuscaloosa, over to Tallassee at the falls of the Tallapoosa River, into Georgia; after that the waters begin to fall into the Atlantic Ocean, through the Appalachians, and all the way to New Jersey.

The fall line physically demarcates features that can or cannot occur on either the up- or down-side of the line. For example, our Cahaba Lilies (shoals lily) can only survive on the upside of the fall line. The water’s flow must be strong enough to sweep away fine sediments that can smother the lilies’ roots.

Cahaba Lilies / southern experiment in biodiversity

The Exit

The waters of the Great River seep, drain, and spill into the Gulf by way of two major rivers – the Tombigbee, which gathers the western waters, and the Alabama, which gathers the eastern waters; these two rivers merge north of Mobile Bay to form the Tensaw Swamp. Finally fresh water merges with salt water in salt marshes. The journey is then completed.

Headwaters boasts more than 150 full color plates of Young’s inspiring photos, each with descriptive and informative text comprising the captions.

Once readers complete this journey, they have the knowledge and inspiration to ensure the future of Alabama’s Great River. And it’s a trip they can take over and over again.

For a slideshow of a sample of the photographs at Young’s Web site, go to: http://www.kingfishereditions.com/headwaters/phpslideshow.php?directory=.&currentPic=14

To order go to http://www.uapress.ua.edu/.

Options include ordering on line, calling the toll-free number, or faxing an order. Photos reprinted by permission of the UA Press.

By phone: 800-621-2736 or 773-702-7000

To fax: 800-621-8476 or 773-702-7212

 

Treasures from Southern University Presses

University presses are treasure troves of books for everyone, not just of scholarly and research topics. University presses publish general interest books, gorgeous art books, nature field guides, books on the presses’ state and region, fabulous cookbooks, books on off-beat topics, overlooked subjects, and books the major publishing houses wouldn’t touch because they might not contribute enough to the bottom line. You may not find university press-published books anywhere else.

You may not be aware of these treasures, as the marketing budgets at university presses are extremely limited. If you like books for yourself and for gift ideas, check out University presses. Christmas is creeping up.

Mighty The University of Alabama Press has three winners for fall/winter, and Spittin’ Grits will spotlight these in several future posts.

 

Young_Headwaters

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Here are links to the major Southern university presses, a few of which have blogs, that hold membership in the American Association of University Presses (AAUP):

l University of Alabama Press (http://www.uapress.ua.edu/  )

*Note the difference in the addresses of the Alabama and Arkansas presses

l University of Arkansas Press (http://www.uapress.com/ )

and blog (http://uapress.blogspot.com/ )

l Duke University Press (http://www.dukeupress.edu/ )

and blog (http://www.dukeupress.typepad.com)

l University Press of Florida (http://www.upf.com/ )

l University Press of Georgia (http://www.ugapress.uga.edu/ )

and blog (http://ugapress.blogspot.com/ )

l University of Kentucky Press (http://www.kentuckypress.com/ )

l Louisiana State University Press (http://www.lsu.edu/lsupress/ )

and blog (http://lsupress.typepad.com/lsu_press_blog/ )

l University Press of Mississippi (http://www.upress.state.ms.us/  )

and blog (http://upmississippi.blogspot.com/ )

l University of North Carolina Press (http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/

and blog (http://uncpressblog.com/ )

l University of South Carolina Press (http://www.sc.edu/uscpress/ )

l University of Tennessee Press (http://utpress.org/ )

l Vanderbilt University Press (http://www.vanderbiltuniversitypress.com/ )

l University of Virginia Press (http://www.upress.virginia.edu/ )

Peter Givler, executive director of AAUP (http://aaupnet.org/ ), wrote in a 2002 article originally appearing in Scholarly Publishing: Books, Journals, Publishers and Libraries in the Twentieth Century, edited by Richard E. Abel and Lyman W. Newman, Wiley, 2002:

The history of university presses in the twentieth century largely has been one of growth: growth in both the number of university presses and the number of books and journals they publish. It has also. . . seen growth against the odds, growth against a pattern of declining support for universities generally. Through this process, university presses have become tough and resourceful, adaptable to changing market conditions.

In perusing university presses on line, a few books caught my eye.

UNC Press

ferris_give Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues by William Ferris, Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The book is the 2009 Okra Pick: Great Southern Books Fresh Off the Vine, Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. It is illustrated with Ferris's photographs of the musicians and their communities; it includes a CD of original music and a DVD of original film and features interviews that relay narratives about black life and blues music from the American South. Celebrities such as B. B. King and Willie Dixon, along with performers known best in their neighborhoods, express a range of human and artistic experiences.

American Conservatism: Thinking It, Teaching It by Paul Lyons, professor of U.S. history and social policy at Stockton College and author of five books, deals with how a scholar's teaching informs his research, in this case an examination of the nature of American conservatism. In it, Lyons reflects on some of the most difficult issues in higher education today, such as how to handle racism and political passions in the classroom, as well as how a teacher presents his own political convictions.

The UNC Press is also having a half-off fall sale: http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/browse/page/622

LSU Press

hurricanes Hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico by Barry D. Keim and Robert A. Muller, looks at hurricanes close up. The ominous announcement --

 “The storm has entered the Gulf” can strike fear in the residents all along the Gulf Coast, especially now, after the horrific hurricane strikes in recent years, including Charley and Wilma in southwestern Florida and Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike along the northern Gulf coast from Panama City to near Galveston. Climatologists Keim and Muller also examine the big picture of Gulf hurricanes—from the 1800s to the present and from Key West, Florida, to Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula—providing an extraordinary compilation and interpretation of the entire region’s hurricane and tropical storm history.

Letters to My Father by William Styron and edited by James L. W. West III, is part of the LSU Press Southern Literary Studies series, edited by Fred Hobson. From 1943 to 1953, Styron wrote over one-hundred letters to William C. Styron, Sr., detailing his adventures, his works in progress, and his thoughts on the craft of writing. In 1952 the twenty-six-year-old budding author wrote to his father, “I’ve finally pretty much decided what to write next—a novel based on Nat Turner’s rebellion,” Styron would not publish his Pulitzer Prize–winning The Confessions of Nat Turner until 1967, but this letter undercuts those critics who later attacked the writer as an opportunist capitalizing on the heated racial climate of the late 1960s. Letters to My Father collects this correspondence for the first time, revealing the early, intimate thoughts of a young man who was to become a literary icon.

University Press of Kentucky

HarrisWatson_PaperSample.indd The Oprah Phenomenon by editors Jennifer Harris, assistant professor of English at Mount Allison University, New Brunswick, and Elwood Watson, associate professor of history at East Tennessee State University, looks at Oprah as an icon and as a brand built on her personal style. Contributors examine the origins of her public image and its influence on politics, entertainment, and popular opinion; they also look at criticism from detractors and admiration from supporters. Authors assert that the foundation of Winfrey’s message to her vast audience is her belief in self-actualization, which says that anyone can be a success regardless of background or upbringing.

The Philosophy of Popular Culture Series, edited by Mark T. Conard, assistant professor of philosophy at Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, publishes books that explore philosophical themes and ideas that occur in films of well known directors like Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, the Coen Brothers, Steven Spielberg and others; the series also includes book on football, basketball, science fiction films, and other topics. One goal of the series is to look at how philosophy intersects with popular culture in the entertainment media, such as movies, TV shows, and music. The authors attempt to elaborate on connections between traditional philosophical ideas and the ever-expanding world of popular culture.

 

 

The Mast-O-Con Club Card

 

Vietnam, Lost

Iraq, Costly

War on Drugs, Priceless

The War on Drugs, the Mast-O-Con Club card, is priceless because it has already cost us what the War in Iraq has cost us, yet the Drug War was lost decades ago.

 

image

It’s priceless because it will continue to cost at least $50,000,000,000 -- that's $50 BILLION -- a year until we put an end to it. Putting an end to the War part doesn’t mean we can afford to get out of the business of attending to the drug problem in the United States.

The con job is not the huge cost of the Drug War; it’s that we’ve been waging this war for 35 years and gotten NO WHERE. We are not one step closer to putting a dent in it. Therefore, the money you and I continue to spend getting nowhere will continue to get us nowhere.

Yet we have the knowledge to finally get somewhere, to put a dent in this lost war just by shifting focus a bit. But it will take changing the public’s minds and adjusting public policy. The same things are at stake in this Drug War as in the Iraq War – human lives, including yours and mine and the millions of other touched by one individual’s substance abuse and addiction.

One Person

You know someone abusing or addicted to drugs or alcohol. That person has an immediate family of grandparent(s), parent(s) and sibling(s), and in many cases step families. The extended family includes aunts, uncles, cousins. All those immediate and extended members have close friends and acquaintances. There are teachers and classmates, the users’ friends, law enforcement people, attorneys, drug court personnel, counselors, and on and on and on.

The effects roll outward, outward, outward, like a stone in water that creates circles, circles, circles, until you have a wave. The people affected increases exponentially.

Six Degrees of Separation

It is extremely difficult to get an accurate number of drug users/abusers/addicts in the U.S. The primary method of calculating the number is – and I am not making this up – for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to interview, a.k.a., call by telephone, American households. We have to rely on the respondents to tell the truth.

 

image

How many winks, I wonder.

The common sense assumption says that the figure of some 20 million Americans has to be a low-ball figure.

Then consider the “six degrees of separation” theory and soon you have the entire American society affected. We’ve looked everywhere for answers.

This Drug War, lasting 35 years, has gone on longer than all America’s wars added together. This one has cost millions of lives, billions of dollars, more than a few Czars, and 11 federal agencies – including the State Department, Justice Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, and more. We’ve thrown millions of non-violent drug offenders into jails and prisons, which cost umpteen more dollars.

It’s crazy. As Einstein said, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

And now, finally, after looking everywhere, using untold resources, spending billions of dollars, we know where alcohol and drug addiction lives. We finally know. We were staring at it all along, but didn’t have the technology to show it until the recent past. Now we have no more excuses for waging this insane Drug War.

More in later posts.

The Matter of the Harvest Moon 2009

The full moon tonight in the Central and Eastern time zones is the Harvest Moon, not the Hunter’s Moon. On the west coast of the United States, the full moon occurred just before midnight on October 3, last night. That little tidbit has to do with the occurrence of first full moon following the Sept. autumnal equinox. So?

Here is a gorgeous photo taken of the 2009 Harvest Moon last night in Tijeras, New Mexico, by Becky Ramotowski, who posted it (along with several others) on Spaceweather.com at http://www.spaceweather.com/. The moon reaches full stage for me at 1:10 a.m. tonight.

Becky-Ramotowski-harvestMoon_1254627778_med

The “so what?” has to do with Time and what means to me these days. Over the international dateline, it’s already tomorrow and I wonder when they saw the Harvest Moon. It’s weird. It requires math, I think.

But here’s why it matters to me. There will not be a true Harvest Moon again until 2017 and then 2020, and it’s cloudy and rainy here, so my granddaughter and I won’t be able to see this year's. (See “The Worm Moon,” Sept. 6, in the Grandparents category.)

The years to come are no longer a given. Depending on what life has in store, in 2017 I’ll be 74 and Joanna Leigh will be 10-1/2. And 2020 promises to be an especially good Moon Year, hosting a Harvest Moon, Hunter’s Moon, and Blue Moon – all in October.

The Difference Between the Harvest Moon and the Hunter's Moon

More often the Harvest Moon is the full moon in September and the Hunter's Moon is the full moon in October. The Hunter's Moon is the full moon that follows after the Harvest Moon; therefore the Hunter's Moon can occur in early November. So an October full Moon is either the Harvest Moon or the Hunter's Moon. In 2020, the Harvest/Hunter’s Moon will appear on Oct. 1; the second full Moon of the month – a Blue Moon -- will appear on Oct. 31.

Time is often compared to a river, constantly flowing, constantly changing. I guess I’m feeling like Time has become a flooded, raging river, moving too fast and dangerously.

So, I will catch all the special natural phenomena I can and hope I don’t fall into the raging river too soon.

Never Seen a Grit

Highfalutin: The theme of My Cousin Vinny is the clash of the familiar with the foreign. The New York Gambinis meet the Alabama Good-ole-boys in the Sac ‘o Suds and in the courtroom.

Regular American: My Cousin Vinny is hilarious. Like many classic comedies, this 1992 movie starring Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei has quite a camp following, and you can see lots of the scenes on YouTube.

 

Vinny

One of the funniest is when Vinny (Pesci) meets a grit in the Alabama version of the greasy spoon.

 

 

 

Grits Recipes

I remembered this scene when I ran across a copy of food article featuring grits from a now defunct magazine written by the food writer Lydia Itoi. In it, grits meet Spain and China in two recipes, Striped Grits – Polenta Torta and Nancy’s Chinese Grits. To understate it, they are interesting. Itoi says she likes grits better than polenta, but the recipe pits the two directly against each other. It’s a good brunch dish for a crowd.

The Torta

For the Polenta:

1 ear fresh corn on the cob

2 cups water

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup quick-cooking polenta

For the Grits

2 cups water

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup quick-cooking hominy grits

2 oz. brie cheese, rind removed and cut into small cubes

Butter a 9-inch loaf pan. Wrap the ear of corn in plastic wrap and microwave on high for 1-1/2 minutes. Remove the wrap, hold the ear of corn vertically on a cutting board, and slice the kernels off with a sharp knife. Measure out ½ cup kernels.

Bring the water and salt to a boil and gradually stir in the polenta. Lower the heat to medium and continue cooking, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes or until polenta is very thick and starts pulling away from the sides of the saucepan. Remove from the heat and stir in the ½ cup corn kernels. Spread this mixture evenly in the bottom of the loaf pan and set aside.

Bring the water and salt to a boil and gradually stir in the grits. Lower the heat to low, cover and continue cooking, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes or until grits are very thick and creamy. Remove from the heat and stir in the cheese until it melts and is thoroughly combined. Spread this mixture over the polenta. Cover with plastic wrap and chill until firm, at least 2 hours.

Before serving, slice the torta into thick slices and spread them on an ovenproof serving dish. Broil for 10-12 minutes, or until the top turns lightly golden. Serve warm. Makes 6 servings.

Nancy’s Chinese Grits

3 cups water

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon grated fresh ginger

¾ cup quick-cooking grits

¼ cup chopped ham, imitation crabmeat, or fish balls

¼ cup peas or sliced snow peas

3 tablespoons chopped green onions or chives

Ground white or black pepper to taste

In a medium saucepan, bring the water, salt and grated ginger to a boil. Gradually stir in the grits, ham (or crabmeat or fish balls) and peas and cook according to package instructions. Remove from heat and stir in green onions. Season to taste with pepper and serve hot. Serves 4.

Now, regarding highfalutin or hifalutin or highfaluten or hifaluten:

Mainstream dictionaries agree that it means absurdly pompous or bombastic in style, pretentious, but they disagree on origins. It is very American, however.

The American Heritage dicltionlarly of The English Language, fourth edition, 2000, gives a regional note: “H.L. Mencken, in his famous book The American Language, mentions highfalutin as an example of the many native U.S. words coined during the 19th-century period of vigorous growth. Although highfalutin is characteristic of American folk speech, it is not a true regionalism because it has always occurred in all regions of the country.”

Humble Pie

Which makes you fatter? Lemon pie or humble pie.

I’ve had plenty of both. Humble pie is dessert after a meal of eating your own words. It’s the prize for being wrong.

Which is harder? Going on a diet or facing your wrongness? Both, I guess.

It’s now almost a year since our granddaughter Joanna Leigh came to live at our home, which was several months prior to being awarded legal custody. She was 17 months old. Since she had been living in our house with her mother, our daughter, for the better part of those 17 months, she felt secure and happy here, reducing the harshness of such a change. We didn’t see any signs of distress in her sleeping, eating, or other behavior, despite being separated from her mother, who was again being ruled by her drug addictions.

Joanna Leigh was on time with repeating words at about a year old, with “ba-ba,” “dog,” “go,” and the infamous “NO!” She began quickly referring to my husband as “Papa.” She was not yet calling me anything in particular, even though I had begun referring to myself as “Mama Jo,” my other granddaughter’s name for me. Then the process quickly went to two-word combinations, like “my yogurt,” “my color.” The “mine” phase took on a life of its own, which I chronicled in two Words and Language posts, June 10 and July 9. (See the categories in the right sidebars.)

Then suddenly, Whammo, Bam, Pow: the trickle had turned into a torrent. Joanna Leigh was suddenly in the throes of learning language at about 150 miles an hour. We were flabbergasted daily.

When she was not speaking English sentences, she was babbling some other language, Jabberwocky, maybe. For practice, I guess.

But she still wasn’t really calling me anything. There were times when I thought she might be trying to call me “mama,” which, as it turns out, was feeding my misconceptions.

How toddlers begin using language is also humbling. According to Steven Pinker in his 1994 book, The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language, at about 18 months, toddlers’ language production “takes off.” Pinker says that language development goes from babbling at about eight months to “All Hell Breaks Loose” at this stage.

Vocabulary growth jumps to the new-word-every-two-hours minimum rate that the child will maintain through adolescence. And syntax begins, with string of the minimum length that allows it.

He also says that there is more going on in children’s minds than is revealed by what comes out of their mouths.

When children do put words together, the words seem to meet up with a bottleneck at the output end. Children’s two-and-three-word utterances look like samples drawn from longer potential sentences expressing a complete and more complicated idea.

My misconception began with believing I could protect Joanna Leigh from the hurt that would come with being separated from or even losing her mother.

Then I added to that the belief that I could be an adequate mother figure as her memory of her own mother began to change or even fade.

I was wrong on both counts.

In late April and early May, Joanna Leigh began seeing her mother periodically, while she was in a Birmingham treatment/housing facility for women. After several trips to the facility, Joanna Leigh woke up in the night crying for her “mommy.” The blow was hard and complete. I felt as if a tornado had spun out of nowhere, picked me up, and thrown me out into the backyard. I was afraid, sorrowful, distressed, and heartbroken for her.

It was a hard way to learn that I could not keep Joanna Leigh from hurt and to discover that she wasn’t calling me or thinking of me as “mama” or a mommy substitute. I realized she needed to see her mother.

She held the concepts in her mind, but she didn’t yet have the language to let them out. She needed her mommy and she needed me, Papa, and her home. It took language.

Right now, she sees her mother; it may or may not last. She thinks of this house, Mama Jo, Papa, Maggie, Patty, her toys, her stuffed friends in her room, all of it, as Home. This Home helps her feel secure, happy, and confident. When or if the time comes for hurt, all we can do is be here.

Language is humbling. It’s so built into us that we simply take it for granted.

Being so wrong about something so important to a child is humbling.

So I eat the Humble Pie. I need to find a way to stay off the lemon pie.

TwiKu: Follow-up Words on Tweets

A Haiku is to a poem as a tweet is to a newsy telephone call. (See the previous post.)

Twitter-2_0002_edited-1

A Twitter’s tweet is about two Haiku long. That’s all. I’m suggesting – or challenging: Twitterers, speak in Haiku.

If you recall from your school days, a Haiku is a short, very short, stylized Japanese poem, but it is very pithy, descriptive, insightful. Or just fun. It is three lines consisting of, in English, a total of 17 syllables: five in line 1, seven in line two, and five in line 3. Depending on the length of your words and numbers of punctuation marks and spaces, two Haiku could be a Tweet.

A TwiKu. Or Haikeet. Or Tweetku. Or . . .

Two, Two, Two Haiku

A Twitter’s Tweet make on-line.

Syllables endure.

The Long and Short

For a short poem, Haiku writing has a long list of “rules,” but only a few, including the 3-line, 17-syllable rules, are widely suggested:

l Include some reference to the season or time of year.

l For immediacy, write in the present tense.

l Rely on images to create a moment of understanding, harmony, humor or irony.

l Have some fun.

Conversely, Tweets, long in meaning, impose a limit of 140 letters/characters/spaces. The longest English words with only one syllable, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, are nine letters: screeched, scrounged, stretched, some plural nouns, and a few others: Long words, short sound, too many spaces.

 

sakura09

The Japan Program at The University of Alabama (http://uanews.ua.edu/2009/02/ua-japan-program-presenting-23rd-sakura-festival/) has sponsored for 23 years The Sakura Festival, and part of the celebration is a Haiku contest. Here are several winners’ Haikus:

Through the winter mists

Steel beams of the crane appear

As lace, fragile, still

Amelia Heath - Northport, Alabama [92 characters/spaces]

 

Poems are my home;

Haikus those rare visitors

That quicken the heart.

Christa Pandey - Tuscaloosa, Alabama [67 characters, spaces]

Here is the 23rd annual 2009 Sakura Haiku winner:

Swelling clouds, the curves

of your body in darkness,

your whispers, the rain.

Sam Martone – Tuscaloosa, Alabama [78 characters, spaces]

Ok, here are a couple of my own:

Cows on interstates,

Tuscaloosa News got it.

Bizarre modern life.

63 characters/spaces

Hummingbirds act out

Too early: Winter Comes soon.

Sun leaves: Eat. Fight. Fly.

68 characters/spaces

Memory is Autumn’s

Gardenia. Once new, once sweet,

Now overripe husks.

69 characters/spaces

That’s all. Sometime in a future post, I’ll tell you about the cows on the interstate.

 

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