Archive for the ‘Southern history’ Category
“Art was not separate from everyday experience.”
The face jug is a staple motif in southern folk pottery, portraying the humorous "aesthetic of the ugly." I spent over two hours of pure joy and pleasure this weekend drinking in an exhibit that told its story with folk art: hand crafted chairs, cotton-picking plows and tools, buttons made of sea mussels, the most [...]
September 3rd, 2011Atlanta needs a song.
No, the one by Jermaine Dupri and Ludacris (“Welcome to Atlanta“) just won’t cut it; there is much beyond the parties “’til 8 in the morning.” The remix version is also not quite good enough to fully represent us. (But, they are crunk, I suppose.) This crossed my mind as I was driving home from [...]
October 14th, 2010“Let us begin by discussing the weather”
So spoke the southern historian U. B. Phillips at the start of his book Life and Labor in the Old South, which was published in 1929, and in which he argued the environment as having a very existent role in cultural development. Several generations of historians later, and the field of environmental history has expanded [...]
September 23rd, 2010Stirring up old leaves, long settled: Willie McGee, family history, and good storytelling
Last Friday, while waiting to depart for Charleston, S.C. to visit my brother, I was listening to All Things Considered. Nothing too unusual for five o’clock on a weekday, until I heard Bridgette McGee-Robinson’s story, of an enduring curiosity and quest for answers regarding her grandfather, Willie McGee. In 1951, in the small town of [...]
May 12th, 2010