“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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Out of Focus – and IN

We Are Not Amused - Web

While a lot of tweaking remains, the Spittin’ Grits format and template are largely finished, thanks to Caitlin W., who is a young, multi-talented University of Alabama student. She is privy to mystical secrets of the computer’s highways and byways. She is artistic and talented with languages, including HTML, CSS, and human versions. I hope she will stick with me a while longer.

Caitlin and I agree that being focused is overrated. Being highly specialized just may not fly in this economic environment. Having more interests than you can manage and jumping from one thing to the other just may become the IN method, giving us more of popular than dull and dependable, more of effervescent than flat, more of flighty than grounded. Voted “Best All Around” instead of “Most-Likely to Succeed.” Oh, I could go on and on.

In fact I will go on. I had a colleague once (only once??) who would come into staff meeting and say, “We MUST be focused in order to meet our goals; go out there and be focused.” I thought he was anal-retentive at best.

Physics, Magic, Pictures, Books, Underlines, Teachers, Germany. . .

Oral-expulsive personalities just might take over from now on.

My first cousin is a physicist by education, a juggler and magician by practice, and now an amateur-toward-professional photographer. What a résumé. He came over to take pictures of my granddaughter’s 2nd birthday party. Here’s one or two:

2nd Birthday - Web

MINE! - Web

 

Maybe this marvelous personality trait runs in the family. If so, it missed my sister, who is very focused and organized. But I think it makes her tired a lot. My methods drive her nuts; she tells me so.

My granddaughter, who just turned two, is not focused. Either that is a two-year-old trait or I am two.

I’ll read anything I can get my hands on. I have a personal library of thousands of volumes, and I keep adding to it. I jump from one book to the other, until I’m reading four or five books at a time. Then when it gets all too confusing, I just go back to the first one and review all the underlines and writing in the margins and notes to myself on the pages, which, of course, I was taught not to do in elementary school. My third grade teacher’s name was, and I’m not making this up, Mrs. Word, and I guess I took it literally. That was in Munich, Germany, where my father was stationed after World War II, and . . . .

ReportCard-Munich2

MunichClass1 Top: My 1951 report card from Mrs. Word’s class.  In the class photo

I’m the girl on the back row near Ms. Word.

Stop it. Shut up.

I have really digressed this time.

Here’s the point. I confess that I have high hopes that Spittin’ Grits will be a focused place where I can jump from one thing to the other. Notice all those topics in the right-hand sidebar: Just click on one and posts on that subject will pop onto the screen.

In honor of jumping from one thing to the other, I’ll leave you with a grits recipe; there will be more to come. I hope you will click on other topics, comment, tell you friends about Spittin’ Grits, and come back.

From Talk About Good!: Le Livre de la Cuisine de Lafayette, 25th Anniversary edition. Junior League of LaFayette, Louisiana, 1992.

Grits Pudding (p, 118)

4 c. milk 2 slices American cheese

1 c. grits 1 Tbsp. butter

2 eggs salt and pepper to taste

Cook grits with milk instead of water according to directions on box over asbestos mat. Pour grits into greased casserole when stiff, stir in eggs, butter, and chopped cheese. Bake in moderate oven until brown.

Mrs. T. Randolph Freret, Jr.

Photos by Emory Kimbrough

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