Sofkee Times

Link Between Lost Colony and Georgia Wiregrass Pioneers?

2011-11-25T08:52:00.000-08:00

- A watercolor by John White of Monacan Dance

Did some of the Lost Colony inhabitants wind up in SE Georgia? While researching another topic, came across an interesting website on Wiregrass Georgia Pioneers with list of surnames that may tie back to surviving families? A Google search also turned up a DNA project tied to the Lost Colony as well as an interesting article in the December issue of American history.

Just to recap from American History article:

On July 4,1587, long before Jamestown or Plymouth, several boatloads of English
folk set foot on dunes near what is today Manteo, N.C. The colonists soon began
running out of food and had to deal with native populations already antagonized by
early explorers. Within a few months of landing, they sent their governor, John
White, back to England for help. Upon his return in 1590, White found that all 90 men, 17 women and 11 children left behind had completely disappeared. Included in the missing was Virginia
Dare, John White's granddaughter, the first English child born in America.
Excerpt from Research Website:
"White finds the location of the fort where he left the colonists, but the village was removed. On a tree White found the letters CRO and further on, to the right of the entrance to the fort, he found the word CROATOAN carved. White had agreed with the colonists before he left that if they were to move, they should carve the location where they were going where he could find it. White says they were discussing moving “50 miles into the main”, although neither he nor anyone else tells us that location. This would adequately protect them from the Spanish who were seeking to destroy them.

Furthermore, White made a secret pact with them that if they were distressed or in danger when they left, they were to carve a cross above the word. There were no crosses and furthermore, the village was not destroyed, but taken apart and moved, so there was no sign of a hurried departure or distress. The pinnace left for them was also gone, and only heavy useless items remained. White was overjoyed because he knew the colonists had moved to be among their friends the Croatoan, Manteo’s village. "

Missions to find them were launched as early as 1602, but hardly a trace has been
discovered in 400 years.

Surname list complied by Robert Noles- Excerpt Below
Mr. Noles theory - "It's quite possible that some of the Lost Colony survivors were initially absorbed by one or more of the small friendly Indian tribes along the North Carolina coast. The remnants of some of these tribes were later absorbed by the Indians who were congregating in the Robeson Co., North Carolina area for protection from other unfriendly Indian tribes and to escape the encroachment of the European colonists in the 17th and 18th centuries. The Robeson County Indians later became known as the Lumbee Tribe. Then as the land in southeastern Georgia opened up in the late 1700s for settlement some of the Lumbee descendants and other North and South Carolina residents migrated to what we know today as Wiregrass Georgia. The invention of the Cotton Gin in 1793 is probably greatly responsible for the migration south out of the Carolinas as these pioneers sought to seek their fortune via land and growing cotton."

The DNA Projects:

The goal of this DNA project is to compile a data base of individuals whose names are closely related to the Lost Colony project AND those whose genealogy and family history makes them a good candidate to actually be connected to the colonists or the Native tribes in the geographic area of interest. Clearly, if the colonists survived, they assimilated into one or more tribes.

Many people are interested in joining the project to compare their DNA to that of the colonists. Plain and simple, we don’t have the DNA of the colonists yet, or if we do, we don’t yet have the documentation to prove it.

We have established three different projects, each with its own special focus, to help us in our quest to find the colonists.

Three Lost Colony DNA projects:

1. The Y-line DNA project, for males who have a colonist surname or a surname of interest and whose families come from either Eastern North Carolina or England or have Native heritage. www.familytreedna.com/public/lostcolonyydna.

2. The mitochondrial DNA project, for males or females whose maternal line carries the Lost Colony surnames or surnames of interest and who are from Eastern North Carolina or have Native heritage.

3. The Family Finder project who is for anyone who believes they are descended from the Lost Colonists. This project was created specifically for those who have taken the Family Finder test.

Source:

Website: Lost Colony Research Group
Website: The Wiregrass Georgia Pioneer Surnames and Genealogies
Lost Colonies. (2011). American History, 46(5), 31.

Searching the Tri-States for Folk Art

2011-10-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

EARLY on a gray winter Sunday morning, Jeanne Kronsnoble and Cathy Clayton, friends and owners of different art galleries for almost 20 years, set out from Tampa, Fla., and drove north in a minivan with the middle seat removed. The tourists were flowing south, but they were on a different mission. They carried blankets, sheets of plywood, bubble wrap and cardboard. Maps, dogeared address books, bottles of water, bags of chocolates. And sturdy clothes. They would clump through damp fields and dark spidery places and sit down to midday dinners of baked chicken, turnip greens, cornbread, peach cobbler and presweetened iced tea. There was also a checkbook, and an envelope of cash.

Read Full Story

DUDLEY CLENDINEN,New York Times;ART; A 2,000-Mile Forage for Folk Art., 4/ 4/2004, p40, 1p

Florida Panhandle Through the Eyes of a Tourist

2011-10-15T16:21:00.000-07:00

The Florida Panhandle comprises about 12,000 square miles of diverse settings, from densely wooded state parks and oyster-rich river basins to small towns as neat as stage sets and dazzling Gulf Coast beaches with sand dunes as white as sculptured marble. It’s closer in culture to Georgia and Alabama than much of the Northern-influenced Florida peninsula, and has cool winters and a summer high season. Its visitors — just a small sliver of Florida tourists — tend to be the types who seek out off-the-radar regions.

Read the Full Story

Greenfield, B. (2008, March 7). On the Gulf Coast, the South Is Still the South. New York Times. p. 6

History of Fort Caroline

2011-10-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

France’s first attempt to stake a permanent claim in North America was at La Caroline, a settlement near the mouth of the St. Johns River in Florida. France was going through a time of religious civil war between the Protestants, known as the Huguenots, and the Roman Catholics. Florida gave the Huguenots a place to settle where they could worship freely.

In 1562, Jean Ribault was sent by France to explore the New World, and on May 1 his ships entered the River of May, now known as the St. Johns River. His men erected a column near the river's mouth claiming Florida for France. In 1564, when the French civil war subsided, three vessels left France under the leadership of René de Laudonnière to settle in northeast Florida.

. A triangular fort was constructed near the river shore and small
thatch buildings were constructed to house the settlers. The area was named "la Caroline" in honor of France's 14 year-old king, Charles IX.

French explorer Jean Ribault was impressed by the first native peoples he encountered in Florida. The Timucuans under Chief Saturiwa, who met the French at the mouth of the River of May in 1562, were one of a number of Timucua-speaking tribes who inhabited central and north Florida and southeastern Georgia As a result of their contact with the Europeans, thousands of Timucuans died of disease.

The Timucuans helped their new neighbors adapt to conditions in the “new world”—sharing food and even helping them build a village and fort. The French, well aware of their minority status, initially made every effort to avoid alienating local tribes. Mistrust turned to armed conflict, and the brief period of harmony between French and Indian came to an end.

Timucuan culture rapidly disintegrated. From a population possibly numbering tens of thousands at the time of contact, only an estimated 550 Timucuans were still alive in 1698. Today there are no known Native Americans who call themselves Timucuan.

Like the English pilgrims, most of the French settlers were spirited Protestants — Huguenots who saw the New World as a refuge and an opportunity to establish a model community. But unlike their English counterparts, the French pioneers also counted on direct royal patronage. The Huguenots had come to occupy key positions under the monarchy, and the main backer of the venture, Gaspard de Coligny, was a close adviser to the royal family, admiral of the French navy, and the undisputed Huguenot leader. He moved swiftly to resupply Fort Caroline the following year, dispatching seven ships, a thousand men, and provisions. Meanwhile, the situation at Fort Caroline had become dire as relations with the Indians had grown strained and the incipient French settlement had experienced mutinies. Just as the colonists were about to leave, the relief expedition finally arrived in the summer of 1565.

Hearing of this intrusion, Spain had dispatched Pedro Menéndez de Avilés with an armada under sweeping orders to "take the Florida coast." After the two fleets brushed briefly, Menéndez prudently retreated southward, where he broke ground for a new stronghold, St. Augustine, which has gone on to prosper and is today the oldest European-founded town in the continental United States.

Luck favored the Spanish. The French ships, which were roughly twice as numerous and much better supplied, ran into a hurricane, which blew some out to sea and forced others aground. Meanwhile Menéndez sent his men overland against Fort Caroline. At dawn on September 20, 1565, he and 500 men armed with arquebuses, pikes, and targets surprised the fort and overran it. Such men over 15 not killed at the outset were summarily executed. Only women, girls, and young boys were spared. Over the next few weeks Spanish soldiers mopped up the Florida coast, putting to death any French sailors who had managed to survive the storm and shipwreck.

Reséndez A. MASSACRE IN FLORIDA. American Heritage [serial online]. Winter2010 2010;59(4):25-26

Fort Caroline Background Information

www.nps.gov/timu/forteachers/upload/focabackgrndinfo.pdf

Fort Caroline - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Caroline

Linton Weeks Writes About Willie Morris Upon His Death

2011-08-26T22:28:00.000-07:00

On the way to see Willie Morris in Oxford, Miss., one night in the mid-1980s we stopped at a small liquor store and bought a big old bottle of Valpolicella. Over dinner, we told Willie what we had in mind. We wanted to start a publication called Southern Magazine, a monthly exploration of the region's complexities.

Willie, who knew a lot about magazines and a lot more about the South, opened up his mind and his heart. He reached for the sack the bottle was in and enthusiastically began to sketch out ideas before our very eyes.

"Does the South still exist?" he asked in his soft, mellifluous, rhetorical way. "That's what your first issue should be about: Is there still a South?"

On the brown paper bag he jotted down names of writers we should enlist, good friends of his, folks who would help us wrestle with the notion. The list was a Who's Who of contemporary Southern literature.

Willie Morris knew the answer to his own question full well. Of course there is a South. When he died Monday in Jackson, Miss., at the age of 64, he took some of that South with him. But what he left behind is a region and a world made lovelier by his talents and largess.

"He had one of the biggest hearts," said Sid Graves, founder of the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale, Miss. Graves knew and admired Willie for years. Paraphrasing Tennessee Williams, he said that Willie's heart "was as big as a football."

"He had an extraordinarily keen mind for literature and ideas. I liked to hear him talk about football," recalled Chicago poet and professor Sterling Plumpp. "There was a kind of generosity in Willie Morris that I liked."

"I was always struck," said William Ferris, chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and former head of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, "by his devotion to friends. His relationships with writers like William Styron, James Dickey, Ralph Ellison and Robert Penn Warren were deep and significant friendships. Many of these writers came to Oxford to honor Willie."

Willie honored Oxford by moving there in 1980 to become writer in residence at the University of Mississippi. Born in Jackson in 1934, Willie grew up in Yazoo City (pop. 7,000), a place he immortalized in several of his books, including "Yazoo" and "North Toward Home." He gloried in small-town life--baseball games, dogs, playing taps for military funerals. He went to the University of Texas on a baseball scholarship and was editor of the campus newspaper, then attended the other Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. He married Celia Buchan from Houston. They had a son, David Rae, in England. Under Britain's health plan, Willie told his friends, his son's birth cost him 87 cents. The couple eventually divorced.

In Europe, Willie traveled with fellow Rhodes scholar Edwin Yoder. Yesterday, Yoder, who lives in Alexandria, recalled their many escapades, including the timeWillie, on a lark, dangled from the bridge at Avignon.

After England, Willie returned to Austin as editor of the Texas Observer.

Playwright Larry L. King met Willie at the Observer and they became lifelong buds. In fact, almost everyone who met Willie became a friend for life. "I never knew Willie to do anybody harm or to want to," King said yesterday. "He was a helpful fellow to writers. That's unusual in this business."

In 1963, Willie went to work for Harper's magazine; he was named editor in 1967 and resigned in 1971. He opened the magazine up to new writers and longer pieces, said David Halberstam, a contributor to the magazine (and whose profile there of McGeorge Bundy became the seed of "The Best and the Brightest").

Willie had a mischievous mind. When Halberstam's book was near the top of the bestseller list, he received a phone call one day from a man who said he had written a diet guide that was also very high on the list. "Perhaps we could collaborate on a book that would have stunning success," the man said to Halberstam, who realized about this time that the caller was Willie. "We could call it 'The Best and the Fattest.' "

"Willie had the lowest index of malice of anybody I ever met," Halberstam said. "That probably worked against him as he got up higher in the world of publishing."

He added: "He was not a great infighter. I don't think he was great at protecting his flank. There was part of him that was like a little boy."

In 1976, Willie spent some time here as writer in residence at the Washington Star.

Though he continued to write for a few years in Bridgehampton, N.Y., and loiter with the literati--James Jones, Truman Capote, Irwin Shaw--he longed to see cotton fields instead of potato fields. In 1980, he moved back to Mississippi for good. He chose Oxford, a college town with a palpable literary history. One of his best friends there was Dean Faulkner Wells, the niece of William Faulkner, another Oxford favorite son.

Yesterday morning Dean and her husband, Larry Wells, were sitting at their kitchen table, grieving over the loss of their longtime friend and turning to Willie's writing and other literature for solace. "Larry and I were looking for the words Willie loved the most," Dean said, fighting back tears. They read the poetry of Wallace Stevens and A.E. Housman.

"He really took care of the people he loved," she said.

Oxford, circa 1980, was an exciting swirl of literary activity. Ferris established the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Richard Howorth opened his legendary bookstore. Larry and Dean Wells owned Yoknapatawpha Press, which publishedWillie's books and reprinted some of Faulkner's.

"It was a great time," Larry Wells recalled. "Willie always said, 'I came home and it was not too late.' "

In Mississippi, Willie gave guidance to young writers in the classroom and out. And he wrote new books, including "The Courting of Marcus Dupree," about an outstanding football player; "My Dog Skip," which was made into a movie; "Terrains of the Heart," a collection of essays; and a number of art books including "Homecomings," a collaboration with Mississippi painter Bill Dunlap (who now lives in McLean).

Yesterday Dunlap was remembering all that Willie meant to him and other expatriate Southerners. "He took a bridge out of Mississippi," Dunlap said, "then he took that bridge and came back."

To celebrate the publication of "Homecomings," Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.) threw a big bash on Capitol Hill for Willie and Dunlap in the late 1980s. The painter stood up and said a few words. Willie climbed on a table and announced that he was marrying the book's editor, JoAnne Prichard.

She was the one who answered his cry when he collapsed Monday afternoon at his writing table at their home in Jackson. He died in the evening of heart failure.

So, does the South still exist? True to his word, in the first issue of Southern Magazine, which appeared in October 1986, Willie Morris addressed head-on the question he raised along with a glass of red wine on that long, heady night in Oxford. In the answering, he also spoke of the way he chose to live his own life.

"One has to seek the answer on one's own terms, of course, but to do that I suggest one should spurn the boardrooms and the country clubs and the countless college seminars on the subject and spend a little time at the ball games and the funerals and the bus stations and the courthouses and the bargain-rate beauty parlors and the little churches and the roadhouses and the joints near closing hour. . . .

"Perhaps in the end it is the old devil-may-care instinct of the South that remains in the most abundance and will sustain the South in its uncertain future," he wrote. "It is gambling with the heart. It is a glass menagerie. It is something that won't let go."

Linton Weeks. "Willie Morris, Heart of the South." The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company. 1999.HighBeam Research. 27 Aug. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com

"Old Atlanta Sears" Site Getting a Face Lift

2011-08-21T06:42:00.000-07:00

Used to shop at sears on this site while a student at georgia tech, great to hear its being redeveloped!

SQUARE FEET

Ambitious Plans for a Building Where Sears Served Atlanta

By ROBBIE BROWN

Published: August 16, 2011

REPRINTS

ATLANTA — As large as 20 Wal-Mart stores, the cavernous former Sears building now known as City Hall East towers above a motley assortment of restaurants, underground dance halls and a strip club a few miles northeast of downtown. The building, which at 2.1 million square feet is the largest brick structure in the South, according to its owners, has been mostly vacant since Sears left in 1989.

Enlarge This Image

Russell Kaye for The New York Times

According to its owners, City Hall East, once a Sears center, is the largest brick structure in the South.

Square Feet: A Suburban Town Sees Housing Where Retail Rules(August 17, 2011)

Enlarge This Image

The New York Times

But now there is a plan to salvage the space. A prominent Atlanta-based developer, Jamestown Properties, which owns Chelsea Market in Manhattan, bought the building from the city last month for $27 million. It expects to spend $180 million to convert it to a mixed-use cluster of restaurants, apartments, office space and perhaps even a rooftop amusement park, all renamed Ponce City Market, by early 2014.

“That’s a big hunk of building, and it’s been dead space for so long,” said David F. Haddow, a consultant and architecture professor at Georgia Tech. “But it’s not going to be easy.”

Others have tried before. The city bought the building for $12 million in 1990 — “the deal of the century,” Maynard Jackson, the mayor at the time, said — but ended up using only 10 percent of the space, mostly for police offices and storage. Then, in 2006, a well-connected former state lawmaker introduced a plan to build apartments there, but that idea fell victim to the economy.

The real estate market in Atlanta is still sluggish. But supporters say the project has a better chance than most. City Hall East is at the junction of four fashionable neighborhoods: Midtown, Virginia-Highlands, the Old Fourth Ward and Inman Park. In a city known for glittery newness, the 1926 building is raw, historic and authentic.

So the conventional wisdom among civic leaders is: right building, right place, right developer. But is it the right time?

“There are clearly challenges,” said David Bennett, a senior policy adviser to Mayor Kasim Reed who helped broker the deal. “There is a 20 percent vacancy rate in Atlanta in the office market, the condo market is in disarray and even the commercial market is down quite a bit.”

The city is so invested in the outcome that Mayor Reed spoke at the purchase ceremony, predicting that a successful development could have a $1 billion economic impact. A kickoff celebration in October will feature a concert by the Indigo Girls and catering by a who’s who of Atlanta chefs.

“We see this as being transformational for that area of Atlanta,” said Ernestine Garey, the executive vice president and chief operating officer for the Atlanta Development Authority. “It is a huge, huge opportunity.”

Early blueprints make Ponce City Market look not unlike Chelsea Market, the renovated biscuit factory that leases space to the Food Network and other technology and media companies. It will contain high-ceilinged office space, a range of restaurants, a food market, apartments, exhibition spaces, a skywalk and perhaps even an amusement park, Jamestown says.

The plan calls for reducing the building’s square footage by nearly half, to 1.2 million square feet, constructing a parking garage with at least 2,000 spaces inside the structure and demolishing many internal walls and ceilings. But Jamestown says it will preserve the exterior and as much equipment as possible from the original Sears department store and distribution center. A giant electrical panel will become the backdrop for a bar, and a train trestle will be repurposed as a pedestrian walkway.

“We think the history is really central to the culture we’re trying to create,” said Michael Phillips, a managing director of Jamestown. “We’re trying to keep the spirit of this place alive and to keep it true to its Southern roots.”

In its heyday, Sears shipped to customers across the Southeast. Older Atlantans remember picking up furniture or clothes there. “That’s where everybody shopped,” Trudie Wade, an Atlanta resident who worked at the Sears in the 1970s, says in a video that Jamestown produced about the building’s history. “It was huge. I was like, ‘Oh my God, it’s such a huge store that we’re going to get lost in here.’ ”

Other cities have refurbished Sears stores and distribution centers. In Seattle, a former Sears is now the headquarters of Starbucks. In Dallas, one has 400 apartments and a nightclub. In Boston, one has an REI, a Best Buy and a movie theater.

But Atlanta’s Sears center has its own difficulties because it was vacant so long. The city spent months removing and auctioning the office equipment that had piled up inside over the years, raising more than $100,000.

Architects are still figuring out how to avoid damaging a sewage system from the early 1900s that runs directly through the building’s lower floors. Although it retains its elegant maple flooring and tall glass windows, parts of the building have fallen into disrepair.

“The office spaces quite literally looked like terrorists had run in the front door and people had fled out the back door in a panic,” Mr. Bennett said. But Jamestown says it has faced obstacles with historic buildings elsewhere: Chelsea Market; the former Port of New York Authority at 111 Eighth Avenue, now owned by Google; and Warehouse Row in Chattanooga all required substantial overhauls.

For the 64 years that Sears owned City Hall East, the building was treated “like a Rolls-Royce,” said Jim Irwin, a vice president at Green Street, a subsidiary and development arm of Jamestown.

Tenants are already signing up. Anne Quatrano, an Atlanta chef and restaurant owner who has worked with Jamestown before, said she planned to open a po-boy shop at Ponce City Market.

“It’s a little scary,” Ms. Quatrano said of the building’s uncertain prospects. But if you like the building, the developer and the history of the neighborhood, she said, then you have to trust that customers will come.

ROBBIE BROWN. "SQUARE FEET; In Atlanta, Big Plans for a Big Former Sears Center." The New York Times. 2011.HighBeam Research. 21 Aug. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com

Pride of Southern Heritage Crosses Racial Lines

2011-08-20T11:33:00.000-07:00

Blacks have a complicated love affair with the South. Their ancestors were enslaved in the region for generations, then Jim Crow laws pushed them to the back of the bus. From inner-city slums to old plantation counties, being black too often still means a second-class existence.

Yet surveys show blacks who live in the South are more likely than any other racial or ethnic group _ even whites _ to identify themselves as Southerners. It's a label millions claim with pride and affection, yet uneasiness.

For many black people, feelings for the South come back to family, summer cookouts, stories told on the porch, graciousness, gospel and Atlanta hip-hop. Their emotional ties are no less strong, even as they see a place that has yet to completely live down its past.

"As an African-American Southerner, I enjoy our culture that includes our famousSouthern charm and hospitality," said Stephen Wicks of Savannah, Ga., co-owner of BlackBusinessList.com, a Web-based company that links minority businesses.

"On the other hand, it's very hard to walk the streets and see constant reminders of slavery and white supremacy," he said. "That Confederate statue may simply be a piece of history to my white brother or sister, but to me it represents a very dark period in Americanhistory."

Bryan Stevenson, a Montgomery attorney who specializes in representing death-row inmates, has similar mixed feelings churning within him. A Delaware native educated at Harvard University, Stevenson has lived in Alabama since 1989 handling capital cases.

"I have a lot of happy and pleasant thoughts about living in the South," said Stevenson. "However, I do think that being black means you feel at risk. You frequently feel subordinate because of a lack of power."

That impotence is economic in many ways.

According to Census statistics analyzed by the Center for Demographic Research at Auburn University Montgomery, 27.1 percent of the South's 12 million black residents lived below the federal poverty level in 1999, compared to 23.7 percent of blacks in the rest of the United States. Researchers say at least some of the disparity is linked to higher overall poverty rates in the South, affecting whites as well as blacks.

Southern blacks are also less likely than other U.S. blacks to graduate from high school or college, the analysis showed, and almost half _ 48 percent _ lived in a household with an income of less than $25,000.

On their face, the numbers suggest a people who wouldn't want any part of being called a Southerner. Yet a series of surveys found just the opposite.

Twice-yearly polls from 1991 through 2001 that were analyzed by the University of North Carolina found 78 percent of blacks in the region claimed the label "Southerner," compared to 75 percent of whites. The results punched a hole in the long-held assumption that only whites are proud to be from the South.

"Generally speaking, blacks are about as positive about the South as white folks," said Larry J. Griffin, who teaches sociology and history at North Carolina.

The Rev. Joseph Lowery, who along with Martin Luther King Jr. founded the SouthernChristian Leadership Conference, doesn't see any irony. He said it's actually easier for blacks to identify with the region because they don't carry the taint of its history.

"Blacks don't have that sense of guilt," the 84-year-old Alabama native said. "I mean, we never perpetrated any evil acts against people on the basis of race. So I guess we just don't have to carry that burden."

In a way, Lowery said, blacks, more than any other group, have earned the right to call themselves Southerners.

"The changes that have taken place in the South came at the initiative and the insistence of Southern blacks. ... It was Southern blacks who led the way."

A recent study by The Brookings Institution found that the South has had a net in-migration of more than 566,000 blacks since 1995, while the other three regions all had net losses, reversing a decades long trend of Southern black flight. The same study found that college-educated blacks led this new charge back to the South.

"Whites who are moving there are doing it for the economy, the warm weather, the amenities _ they're not moving there to eat grits and become Southerners," said demographer William H. Frey, the study's author. "For blacks, the economy's important for them too. But they see it as coming home. There's a strong cultural bond."

Indeed, some blacks talk about the South in a way that sounds a lot like the stereotypical white Southerner.

David Jansson, an assistant professor in geography at Vassar College, has written extensively on the complexities of Southern identity. In a study comparing the attitudes of blacks in Lynchburg, Va., with those of members of the pro-secession League of the South, he found striking similarities _ affinity for Confederate symbols aside.

"Being Southern meant valuing family, community, a slow pace of life, rural landscapes, and so on," he said.

"Values are stressed here; family, community, honor," said Bianca Matlock, who is from Arkansas and attends historically black Fisk University in Nashville, Tenn.

"Northerners are not used to the gesture of Southern hospitality," she said. "The female values of the `Southern Belle' representing grace and integrity are only found in the South."

As much as she likes the South, Matlock still comes back to Confederate symbols that, to her, are reminders of pain and suffering. She just doesn't understand whites who see them as benign symbols of "The Lost Cause."

"In my nearly white neighborhood, I see the Confederate flag. In fact, my neighbors explained to me that it's a sign of heritage just as the Black Panther sign is to some African-Americans and not of racial implications," she said. "Yeah, right."

Charles Evers, 82, is part of a generation of blacks who endured the worst of the South before desegregation. His brother, former NAACP leader Medgar Evers, was murdered by a white racist in Mississippi in 1963.

Still, he thinks of the South as a place of unending opportunity for blacks, whites and everyone in between.

"I've traveled all over the world, and I'll tell you: There is no place as honest as the South about its racial feelings," he said. "I think it can be the most wonderful place in the world if we can just keep making the progress we have."

_JAY REEVES, Associated Press Writer. "Many Blacks Take Pride in Southern Roots."AP Online. 2005. HighBeam Research. 20 Aug. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com__

Indian, Black Gospel , Baptist and Scottish Singing

2011-07-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

Creek Hymn

Choctaw Hymn

Scottish Psalm Singing

Primitive Baptist Hymn

Primitive Baptist Hymn

Jazz musician and Yale University music scholar Willie Ruff, who uncovered the links between 18th-century Scottish singing and black gospel music, has connected another group to the style: Native Americans.

A descendant of an Oklahoma tribe contacted him after learning about a 2005 Yale conference on line singing, an a cappella vocal form that originated in Scotland and is still sung in parts of the South. And this week, a second conference featured Muscogee Creek Indians singing with Baptist groups from Alabama and Kentucky.

Ruff said he was surprised to learn that all three groups know the same hymn: "Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah." They sang their versions at the conference.

"Never in my experience have such widely divergent groups of people, coming from traditions so vastly different, been brought together under one roof around a gratifying theme like this," said Ruff, who is black and a native of Sheffield, Ala.

Ruff is convinced that "presenting the line" -- the unaccompanied singing of psalms in Gaelic by Presbyterians of the Scottish Hebrides -- is the direct antecedent of "lining out," a hymnal style of singing of 19th-century slaves that is still practiced by the Alabama singers from the Sipsey River Primitive Baptist Association and a dwindling number of other Southern churches.

Ruff -- a bassist and French horn player who played with Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie -- believes that "lining out" evolved into the call-and-response of spirituals and gospel music that, in turn, influenced virtually every other type ofAmerican music.

In traditional line singing, a designated person sings a line solo, inviting congregation members to follow in their own time and with their own harmonies. The result is an echoing, surging and radiant chorus that critics have likened to waves of music crashing against the walls of a church.

Ruff's work has received extensive publicity in Scotland, where some news accounts and Internet postings contend his findings prove that the Scots invented gospel music. Although he regards that claim as vastly overstated, he said his research shows that gospel and other American musical forms have roots from someplace other than the slaves' native Africa.

Hugh Foley, a communications and fine arts professor at Rogers State University in Claremore, Okla., said the connections among the ethnic groups provide a fascinating insight into how American music formed.

"You have all these disparate traditions coming together to produce something new," said Foley, who is working with Ruff. "The Creeks were in between it all."

Ruff was unaware that Indians might practice the form until he received an e-mail from Jane Bardis of Tulsa, who is of Muscogee Creek descent. Bardis thought the line singing on a radio broadcast about Ruff's work sounded like what was sung in her local churches.

Intrigued, Ruff traveled to Oklahoma and became convinced that the Indians picked up the style from their original homelands in Alabama, Georgia and Florida. The forced resettlement of Creeks and other tribes (particularly the Cherokee) in the 19th century, known as the "Trail of Tears," took place as many tribal members converted to Christianity.

The influence of Scottish singing on the Creeks "has been an uncharted field, because it's not what people look for in Indian culture," Ruff said. "If [scholars] are going to study Indian culture, they want pure Indian culture."

Foley, the Oklahoma musicologist, said the Creeks combined the line-singing form with other indigenous styles to create something unique.

"The tonalities of American Indian singing are different than Western singing," he said. "Although the native people picked up the African and European styles, there were some aspects that, if you're just used to European music, sound a little off key, but they're working within that tradition. . . . What they all have in common is the lining-out style.

Muscogee Creek line singing can be heard at www.pilgrimproduction.org/nativeamerican/thewarlee/thewarlee.html.

Chuck McCutcheon. "Indian, Black Gospel and Scottish Singing Form an Unusual Musical Bridge." The Washington Post. The Washington Post Company. 2007. HighBeam Research. 31 Jul. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com

Broxton Rocks

2011-07-25T18:38:00.000-07:00

A rock outcropping in south Georgia's sandy, coastal plain is unusual enough. Add a few plants that don't normally grow in the area _ some native to the tropics, others to the Appalachian Mountains _ and you have a natural wonder.

That's the Broxton Rocks, an alluring, mysterious and somewhat dangerous place, where the nation's most venomous snake slithers amid mosses, ferns and colorful flowers, and large poison ivy leaves glisten in sunbeams streaming through the trees.

Botanists have come from all over the United States to study the rocks' 530 plant species, some of them threatened or endangered, and geologists marvel at the fractured sandstone rocks along a secluded four-mile (6.4-kilometer) stretch of Rocky Creek, a tributary of the Ocmulgee River, about 170 miles (274 kilometers) southeast of Atlanta.

It also is a home for about 100 bird species, plus a host of mammals and reptiles.

The tourism office in the nearby town of Douglas offers monthly tours to the rocks five times a year, but children under 10 aren't allowed and visitors must be able to work more than a mile (two kilometers) through rugged terrain.

The rocks can be slippery, the temperatures sizzling and the bugs _ mosquitoes, ticks and chiggers _ relentless, said Pattie Kirkland, the town's tourism director.

"This is not a day for being pretty," she said. "It's a day to get in touch with nature. You're going to sweat and the bugs will be there."

The next tours are being offered Sept. 17 and Oct. 15.

The rocks are part of a 15,000-square-mile (38,400-square-kilometer) band of subsurface sandstone known as the Altamaha Grit. They were pushed up by shifts in the Earth's tectonic plates eons ago. During wet periods, the creek gushes over the rock ledges to form roaring waterfalls, a rarity in south Georgia. When it's dry, the flow slows to a gentle trickle.

Douglas naturalist Frankie Snow recognized the ecological importance of the rocks in the 1980s, when it was a popular swimming hole and picnic spot littered with cans and beer bottles. He persuaded the Nature Conservancy to purchase a core area in 1992 and began cleaning it up.

The Conservancy added another 756 acres (302 hectares) in 2002, bringing its total to 1,528 acres (611 hectares).

That land, plus another 2,271 acres (908 hectares) owned by Coffee County and theGeorgia Forestry Commission, make up the 3,799-acre (1,520-hectare) Broxton Rocks Preserve. Volunteers have already planted acres (hectares) of pine seedlings in the upland areas surrounding the rocks and more habitat restoration is planned.

Noel Holcomb, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, describes the rocks as "a crown jewel" of the state's ecological treasures.

Holcomb said he was surprised to find plants growing at the rocks that are common more than 250 miles (402 kilometers) away in mountainous northwestern Georgia, such as the partridge berry and the green fly orchid, a perennial herb that normally grows on trees.

"It looked like a little piece of north Georgia had been set down in south Georgia," he said.

Years of erosion have created cave-like recesses and widened fractures in the rock, providing an ideal, mostly hidden environment for plants such as the green fly orchid.

"There are gardens of orchids hanging from the sides of the fractures because it's moist and shady," said Fred Rich, a geologist at Georgia Southern University.

He called the area on top of the rocks "xeric," a term that refers to a virtual desert. "It's the sharpest contrast in microhabitats that I've seen," he added.

The forest surrounding the rocks is a haven for coral snakes _ considered North America's most venomous _ as well as eastern diamondback rattlers and the threatened indigo snake, which is not poisonous. Sharing the sandy landscape with them is Georgia's official state reptile, the gopher tortoise.

Among the plants is the grit portulaca, a species found at only five sites in Georgia, and two state-protected species _ the endangered silky creeping morning glory and the threatened Georgia plume.

Dana Griffin III, a retired University of Florida botanist who has studied the plants at Broxton Rocks, said the area is considered a "minor refugium," an area where the flora of bygone eras is preserved and continues to survive.

Most of the refugia, such as the southern Appalachians, are far from the coast and protected from sea water, he said. The Broxton Rocks are special because they are in the relatively low coastal plain, yet they apparently were high enough to avoid flooding while atypical plants got established over thousands of years, he said.

Bill Buck of the New York Botanical Gardens said 35 types of liverworts, 75 species of moss and 200 species of lichens, including one from the Great Plains, have been discovered at the rocks.

"It's very special for eastern North America," he said. "Some flowering plants that have very limited distribution are found in the Broxton Rocks."

___

If You Go...

BROXTON ROCKS: Go to the Nature Conservancy Web site _ http://www.nature.org/ _ and search for "Broxton Rocks."

TOUR: The Broxton Rocks area is accessible by guided tours only, offered five times a year. Fall tours are Sept. 17 and Oct. 15. Tours are free but donations to the Nature Conservancy are encouraged. Details from (912) 384-4555 or http://www.cityofdouglas.com.

LOCATION: Douglas is about 85 miles (137 kilometers) from Albany, Georgia, and 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Jacksonville, Florida.

ELLIOTT MINOR, Associated Press Writer. "South Georgia rock outcropping shelters rare plants." AP Worldstream. 2006. HighBeam Research. 25 Jul. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com

Redneck Riveiera - It's the Season

2011-07-04T09:40:00.000-07:00

It was in 1978 that "Redneck Riviera" first appeared in print. Probably. And in the New York Times no less. That was when Times reporter Howell Raines published a piece that told of how former University of Alabama and then pro-football quarterbacks Richard Todd and Kenny Stabler spent the off-season on a "stretch of beach that some Alabama wags call the redneckRiviera." Raines, a Birmingham boy who one day would become executive editor of the Times and a popular author in the bargain, could turn a phrase with the best of them, and there are those who think he coined it. (1)

The "stretch of beach" to which Raines was referring, the stretch he defined as the RedneckRiviera, began just west of Gulf Shores, Alabama, and continued east to the Flora-Bama, a bar that still sits mostly in Florida to take advantage of more liberal liquor laws, but where enough hangs over into Alabama that the slogan "Doing it at the line" was and still is taken as a challenge by many.

One finds Gulf Coast Riviera references as early as 1941, when the WPA publication Alabama: A Guide to the Deep South described the area as a collection of "little fishing villages that remind the visitor of the southern coast of France." However, there is nothing to suggest that Raines or any of the other "wags," much less Stabler and Todd, saw any similarity between the Alabama coast and the Cote d'Azur, because by 1978 there wasn't any. Raines's Redneck Riviera was a scattering of vacation cottages, honkytonks, picturesque if seedy motels, shacks on pilings, and cafes that served smoked mullet, presided over by sunburned, bearded, beer-soaked refugees from civilization, driving rusted-out pickup trucks. It was where people could say, as Stabler did when a reporter asked if all the stories about him were true, "I live the way I want to live, and I don't give a damn if anybody likes it or not. I run hard as hell and don't sleep. I'm just here for the beer." (2)

And yet, without knowing it, Raines was giving his readers one of the last glimpses of a way of life whose days, or at least years, were numbered. But that is getting ahead of the story. Although Raines was writing about specific people at a specific place in a specific time, truth be told there were many "redneck Rivieras." And they shared a common history. In 1941, all along the northern rim of the Gulf Coast, from Pass Christian, Mississippi, to Panama City, Florida, there were a score or more of little villages that survived on fishing and a trickle of tourists from not too far away, vacationers who came down to spend a week or so in the few "mom and pop" motor courts. They'd swim a little, fish a little, eat raw oysters, buy something tacky at a local shop, and some, freed from hometown social restraints, would visit local night clubs, dance and drink and get rowdy.

After the war their numbers increased. Driving down on military-improved roads, they came mainly from Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia, and brought with them the culture of the rising southern white middle class. Children of the Great Depression, they were hard-working and frugal, but wartime experience had taught them that life was short and to be enjoyed. Raising their Baby Boomers, they coordinated trips with the children's vacations, and beach-folks expanded accommodations accordingly. Efficiencies and cottages were especially popular, for restaurants were few and, to most visitors, they were places to go for the occasional treat, not for every meal. So they came loaded with groceries, and many a family lived the week on fried bologna sandwiches and what they caught in the Gulf.

On the whole the visitors fit nicely with the local population, whose racial composition, experiences, and values were not unlike their own. Vacationers appreciated the live-and-let-live attitude of shrimpers, oystermen, and charter boat crews. They were happy to make do with wharfside bars and cafes that served the year-round residents. The idea that these establishments should change to cater to tourists was alien to their way of thinking. They were down to enjoy the coast, not remake it.

Slowly the tourist economy grew and by the mid-1950s the weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day--"the season"--became a cash cow for locals. Come September some folks shut down and lived the rest of the year on what they made in the summer. Others shifted to winter jobs and waited. While most visitors to the coast rented, a few decided to invest in the region, and before long small "developments" dotted the landscape. Designed to appeal to a more upscale clientele, these communities often included covenants that assured buyers that "no trailer, tent, shack, outhouse or temporary structure" would be put on the property and that no "noxious activities, offensive noises or odors" would be permitted. And since buyers came from the racially segregated lower South, the covenants often specified that lots would not be "sold, leased, or rented to or occupied by any person or persons other than the Caucasian race," although "domestic servants," white or black, would be permitted. (3)

This was the Redneck Riviera--only no one yet called it that. It was just Gulfport, Biloxi, Dauphin Island, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach, Pensacola Beach, Fort Walton Beach, Destin, Grayton Beach, Seagrove Beach, Panama City Beach, and points in-between. It was the small-town, segregated South, but without the biracial society found inland. Along this coast, except for occasional enclaves in Mississippi, black faces were few. White residents and white tourists liked it that way.

This family-focused summer economy changed little until 1960. That year Hollywood released Where the Boys Are, a movie about Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale. Before then, not many students from the Lower South went to the beach for Spring Break--at least not to the beaches of the northern Gulf. It was too cold and windy, and the Break back then was only a couple of days. But Where the Boys Are got students, war babies, and the first wave of Baby Boomers thinking that being "cool" offset being cold, and it was "cool" to Break at the beach. Communities along the coast had to decide whether the income from the invasion was worth the hassle and the damages, and as they would from that time forward, beach towns took the money. So another season was born. From mid-March to mid-April high school and college students ruled the coast. Then they went home, leaving motel owners time to clean up before the families arrived in June.

To accommodate the expanding tourist market local entrepreneurs built more motels. These were, for the most part, of a single plan: on or across the road from the beach, two or three stories, less than 100 units, maybe a cafe or bar (or at least within walking distance of one), and close to something for the kids (miniature golf, an amusement park, or a hangout, complete with jukebox, for the teenagers). It got to the point that the same people came down at the same times, and motel reunions were highlights of the trips. Because owners could count on tourists being largely from the same places, local establishments catered to their particular likes and dislikes.

Some hosts even supplied visitors with the newspapers they read back home, and in the racks at larger motels you could find (depending on where you were) papers from Jackson, Montgomery, Birmingham, and Atlanta stuck in with local editions. By then a certain demographic pattern was taking shape. Folks from Mississippi with a longing for the beach could be found around Gulfport or Gulf Shores. Alabamians took up territory from Mobile Bay to St. Andrews Bay. So many from the state's largest city descended on the strip west of Panama City that one enterprising bar owner named his establishment the "Little Birmingham." Georgia was divided on the issue, with some preferring the Atlantic, but it was pretty safe to say that if you lived south of Atlanta and west of Macon the Gulf Coast was your destination.

As the region grew up, so did the offspring of these early pioneers. Baby Boomers, the children of post-war passion, were part of the youth rebellion, with a southern twist. Along with the Beatles and the Stones, they grooved to Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers. In the clubs they danced to the music they danced to at fraternity parties back in Tuscaloosa and Atlanta. Sometimes the bands were black, but the dancers were always white. Alcohol (beer, in particular) was their drug of choice, though as the years passed the sweet smell of marijuana was increasingly evident--and yet, like their parents, they were middle class to the core.

These bourgeois Bubbas and Bubbettes created the Redneck Riviera that Howell Raines saw and described. Growing even slower than Florida beach towns, in 1978 the Alabama coast consisted of a few family motels, a state park with campgrounds, and a collection of charter boat outfits, bait shops, piers, and docks. Scattered in-between was a hodge-podge of vacation cottages, belonging mostly to south Alabama folks, and as fine a collection of beach bars as could be found on the Gulf--the L.A. Pub & Grub, the Bear Point Marina, the Pink Pony, the Seagull Lounge, and the Flora-Bama, where the "Interstate Mullet Toss" would soon exemplifyredneck recreation.

The Alabama strip was the Redneck Riviera distilled to its essence. Sports Illustrated writer Robert F. Jones visited and described the folks he found as falling into two categories: "upper-crust, matronly, Rotarian with cash register eyeballs," and "the Stabler gang, raffish, sunburnt, hard of hand and piratical of glance." (4) And because other parts of the coast shared this general ambiance it was not long before the name was being applied to the whole northern rim of the Gulf--and with good reason. While not every town could boast, as Destin could, of a group with a name like "The Trashy White Band," almost every coastal community could provide redneckery on request.

But even as the Redneck Riviera rocked along, the seeds of its destruction were being sown. First came the storms. In August 1969, Camille, one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded on American shores, hit Mississippi. When it leveled Biloxi, some said it was God's vengeance. Biloxi in the 1950s and 1960s had been one of the most corrupt places on the coast. It had gambling, prostitution, and liquor--all illegal in Mississippi--which gave country boys from the red clay hills and military men from nearby bases a place to drink their fill, lose their money, and watch women dance naked. Families might be welcomed at Gulfport, Gulf Shores, and other places, but Biloxi was where you went to get away from the wife and kids. It was redneckery at its outlaw best, and Camille laid it low.

But if God was mad at Biloxi, He took it out on everyone else. East and west of the city the storm destroyed old hotels, some dating back a century, flattened tourist courts, tore seafood joints from their pilings, ripped up 100-year-old oaks, and washed away scores of cottages where coastal people had lived and loved for decades. Away from the bright lights and the sleaze Biloxi was a charming city, and that too was gone. Some realized what they had lost. The writer Elizabeth Spencer lamented:

If I could have one part of the world back the way it used to be, I 
   would not choose Dresden before the fire bombing, Rome before Nero, 
   or London before the blitz. I would not resurrect Babylon, Carthage 
   or San Francisco. Let the leaning tower lean and the hanging 
   gardens hang. I want the Mississippi Gulf Coast back the way it was 
   before Hurricane Camille....

The western flank of the Redneck Riviera was devastated, and that was just the beginning. Six years later, Nature sent Hurricane Eloise against the eastern end, and Panama City's beaches felt its fury. When the winds subsided and the water went back into the Gulf, the Little Birmingham and the teenage hangout were gone, never to return, and so were so many of the small motels, cafes, and cottages that gave the beach its character.

Then came Frederic. On the evening of September 12, 1979, a year after Raines wrote of the region, Frederic hit the Alabama coast with 120-mph winds and a record storm surge. The hurricane destroyed homes and businesses on Dauphin Island, and the bridge connecting it to the mainland collapsed. Gulf Shores and Orange Beach also sustained heavy damage, but their bridge to the mainland held--about the only bright spot in an otherwise dismal picture. Dismal, that is, until the 1980s began and over in Mississippi someone discovered that state law allowed gambling offshore, a holdover from steamboat days. Encouraged by this, promoters bought a boat named the Europa Star, outfitted it as a floating casino, tied it to the dock at Biloxi, and promised folks that once again the town would be Las Vegas South. The rest, as they say, is history.

Meanwhile, coastal folks were learning what is now general knowledge: storms destroy, but they also clear the ground for builders to build. Gulf Shores is a classic example. Before Frederic, Gulf Shores had one chain motel, a couple of small condominiums, a few restaurants, bars, and beach cottages. There was one bank and no supermarkets. The hurricane leveled most of it. Then came the easy credit of the '80s. Banks had money to loan and Baby Boomers, now in their thirties and approaching their forties, were ready to borrow. Having learned to love the beach in their bourgeois Bubba days, they wanted to recapture the magic without having to sleep ten to a room--so they bought a piece of it.

Folks who had seen their cottages wash away and were wondering how they could rebuild were being offered more money than they had ever dreamed of for their little piece of sand, and they took it. Developers then pieced the pieces together, and the condominiums and resort hotels began to rise. In less than two decades the quiet beach towns of Gulf Shores and Orange Beach became the destination of over i million tourists a year. Panama City's beaches experienced the same sort of growth, and soon it spread to communities never touched by the hurricanes. Where there was beach property to be developed, there were developers to develop it. With few environmental controls and with county governments in the hands of inland agricultural interests who cared little for the coast, the foxes were loose in the hen house. And folks paying big bucks for a condo were generally not the sort who came down to "redneck" it up. Maybe they had been once, but not any more.

However, if you want to pick a date when the decline of the Redneck Riviera began in earnest, try 1982. And a place? How about a plot of sand and scrub, no more than 80 acres, about 1,000 yards of it on the Gulf, midway between Panama City and Destin? That was where Robert Davis, an Alabama native with a northern education, set out to build an "old fashioned" Florida village and ended up building what Time magazine declared "could be the most astounding design achievement of its era." Seaside. (6)

In a sense Seaside reflected what had become of the Baby Boomers who were evolving from bourgeois rednecks to just plain bourgeois. It began simply enough with developer Davis copying Florida vernacular architecture--single-story wooden "cracker cottages" built along dirt streets just like they used to be. Influenced by the school of New Urbanism, Davis envisioned a community of likeminded citizens who would live and work together, and in their spare time sit on front porches under ceiling fans in a serene (and sweaty) society.

But bourgeois Bubbas and Bubbettes didn't like the dusty streets, so homeowners had them paved--with bricks. They didn't like the heat, so no one sat on the porches. They wanted more than shack-vernac, so they began building bigger and bigger. It is hard to say whether Davis inspired this or if it inspired him, but it wasn't long before Seaside had become a code-controlled community of architecturally designed wooden houses, painted colors that never appeared in nature, topped with tin roofs, and christened with cute names. Pedestrian-friendly streets connected houses to a central business district made up to look like an Italian holiday town and to beach pavilions that were works of architectural art. "Pastel Hell," as the neighbors called it, was designed to appeal to the upper-income, Southern Living-reading, Lexus-driving, Republican-voting, Dixie yuppie. No road houses, no bait shops, no drink-'til-you-puke parties; just clean, pretty, and (according to the New York Times, which you could buy at the newsstand there) "as relentlessly tasteful as any place on the planet." (7)

Seaside, with its art shops, up-scale restaurants, concerts, and private croquet field, was created for and by the South's (mostly) lily-white Baby Boomers. It was a place where the capitalist urges of the 1980s and 1990s blended comfortably with the southern counter-culture urges of the 1960s, where people in clothes that matched the colors of their cottages and $100 high-tech sandals drank designer coffee at a sidewalk cafe and read the Wall Street Journal, then returned to the family back at the house they rented for $3,000 a week to get ready for the wine tasting festival, the proceeds from which would go to benefit Habitat for Humanity. Observers called Seaside many things, but no one called it redneck.

The success of Seaside inspired others and soon clones were appearing all along the coast--some of them gated, which, to its credit, Seaside was not. And people who bought into that lifestyle were a far cry from those who bought into beach life three decades before. First with money from the hot stock market of the 1990s and then with low interest loans after the dot-com bubble burst, Baby Boomers began to buy into a coast that a Baby Boomer generation of developers was developing to sell.

One example might serve for all. Down in the Florida Panhandle the St. Joe Paper Company owned over i million acres of land, which included some five miles of undeveloped beach and about zoo miles of property on rivers, inlets, and bays. Faced with declining profits from paper and increased environmental pressure, in the 1990s the company reinvented itself, got rid of the paper mills, and concentrated on being the St. Joseph Land and Development Corporation. Then, around the turn of the century, right next to Seaside, they built "Watercolor," an upscale community with all the amenities one could want, but without the artificial ambiance of Seaside. Although Watercolor had a small stretch of beach for residents, salt water and sand were not what attracted investors. Recreational shopping and eating, leisure activities, and nearby golf were what kept owners and visitors entertained. At the same time, the rapid rise in property values made a house in Watercolor a much better investment than the intemperate stock market.

So it was that the Redneck Riviera, which had been slowly dying as Baby Boomers aged, became an investment opportunity for some, and a place of calculated and carefully controlled leisure for others. Meanwhile, more and more of the sort of people who had come down to make the region what it once was found themselves priced into a shrinking selection of motels and condos, and the bars and seafood joints they once frequented became in-vogue eateries with designer decor and ferns.

Remember the folks that the Sports Illustrated writer found when he visited the coast in the '70s--the "upper-crust, matronly, Rotarian with cash register eyeballs" and "the Stabler gang, raffish, sunburnt, hard of hand and piratical of glance"? As the 1990s approached historian Emory Thomas looked at what they had become and decided that the two types "had mated and produced a new generation of raffish Rotarians, pirates with cash register eyeballs, and hard-handed matrons." (8) He was right. Yet in their own way these "raffish Rotarians" and "hard-handed matrons" were just as freewheeling as the less-sophisticated rednecks they replaced. They just had more money and built better.

This became apparent when in the fall of 1995, after a period of relative calm, Hurricane Opal slammed into the Florida Panhandle. Older, low-lying beach communities were badly damaged, but Seaside, built high and back and under a strict construction code, only lost its architectural award-winning dune walkovers to the surge. The beach erosion, however, was significant and the discussion that followed--should the beach be restored, who would restore it--warned of a coming conflict between beachfront property owners who claimed the beach they overlooked was theirs and folks down for a week or so who believed the beach belonged to everyone.

Then the storms subsided, or at least went elsewhere, and the sense of urgency subsided as well. State and county agencies tightened building codes, largely from the lobbying of the insurance industry, but old construction that was grand fathered in sat awaiting another blow. It came with a vengeance in September of 2004, when Hurricane Ivan blew in right on top of Orange Beach and tore the Redneck Riviera apart. Ivan did more damage than Hurricane Frederic, for, after twenty-five years of post-Frederic development, there was more to damage. Less than a year later, Hurricane Dennis followed almost the same path. However, except for those people directly affected by the storm, Dennis soon became an afterthought, for a few weeks later Hurricane Katrina crashed into New Orleans.

Because it hit a major city, one made more vulnerable by location and poor disaster planning, when people think of Katrina today they naturally think of the Big Easy. But the Mississippi Gulf Coast, that western wing of the Redneck Riviera, had it just as bad--some would say worse. Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, and Gulfport seemed to disappear with the wind and the waves, while the casinos of Biloxi were torn from their moorings and tossed inland.

Inland, however, was just where the owners wanted their casinos to be. Building them on barges so that they would not be on Mississippi soil was a sham and everyone knew it, a compromise the state made with itself so that opponents of gambling could claim there was no gambling in Mississippi, even as the state was reaping the benefits. Mississippi had done this before, and the Gulf Coast (Biloxi in particular) had profited from it. Mississippi was one of the last states to remain "legally" dry. This was accomplished by a casino barge-like arrangement that prohibited the sale of liquor in the state, but added that if a county decided to let what was illegal be sold, those selling it would be required to pay what came to be known as the Black Market Tax. Coastal counties quickly went "wet," the tax was collected, and since it was illegal anyway, virtually anyone who could afford to drink was allowed to drink.

Lawmakers did the same for casinos, and folks came from all around the region to roll the dice and play the slots just off shore, not in Mississippi. The benefits were many and immediate. In a state with historically high unemployment and low tax revenues, the casinos provided jobs and filled state and local coffers, so when Katrina left them wrecked and stranded, a cry rose that they should be allowed to rebuild on dry land. just as Mississippi lawmakers had done when someone challenged the legality (not to mention the logic) of the Black Market Tax, rather than risk losing such a profitable enterprise the state ignored the feeble pleas from church groups, and less than two months after Katrina hit the Mississippi legislature legalized gambling on Mississippi soil.

Just what else will come from the destruction wrought by Katrina is yet to be determined. In the wake of the storm, government and private interests held meetings, consulted with New Urbanists, laid plans, and talked of rebuilding the Gulf Coast in a series of communities not unlike Seaside. But talk is cheap and rebuilding is not. Moreover, the social consequences of such a project caused many to question the whole undertaking. Although Seaside began as an experimental community where people from all walks of life would, as an initial investor recalled, live together and "love each other ... like back in the old days," that dream quickly died as the price of land went up and the houses became more elaborate and expensive. We set out "building Kansas," one of Seaside's early collaborators complained, and we ended up "getting Oz." In Oz there were no poor people, no black people, and little if any of the cultural and class diversity that had characterized parts of the Gulf Coast before the storm. Many feared that what was being put on the drawing board for a post-Katrina revival would drive diversity inland, leaving the coast to wealthy whites?

This was already happening in places other than Seaside. Unable to find workers locally, resort owners bussed in people from upcountry, many of them part of the wave of Hispanic immigrants (legal and illegal) who had come to the States looking for work. In the evening they were bussed out again, leaving the coast to those who could pay the price. From time to time coastal city councils would discuss how to provide low-cost housing in their communities, but to date little has progressed beyond the discussion stage.

During the first decade of the new millennium the Redneck Riviera has been a region in transition and in conflict. Orange Beach, Gulf Shores, Destin, and Panama City Beach, once playgrounds for people like Stabler and his gang, have become a get-rich-quick investment opportunity for Baby Boomer empty nesters. Aided by liberal lending policies, pliable local governments, aggressive developers, and overzealous real estate agents, Boomers began to buy pre-construction condo units, resell them at a profit before a nail was driven to someone who would sell to another buyer who would sell again, sometimes as many as five times before an owner finally received a set of keys. Although this "flipping" was a national phenomenon that even spawned reality TV shows, along the coast it generated what one writer called "condo mania."(10) One enterprising agent organized his "flippers" into what he called "The Dolphin Club" (cute, no?) and they made a lot of money--for a while. Soon double-digit storied condominiums replaced many of the remaining mom-and-pop motels, vacation cottages, and low-rise condos, and absentee owners settled back to watch their investment grow while they made mortgage payments by renting to "snowbirds" in the winter and to anyone else who had the money the rest of the year. Then, when the time was right, they would sell and smile.

Over the years this "snowbird" trade had become particularly important to the local economy as retirees from the North descended on the coast in search of weather a little warmer at a price a little less than they'd have to pay farther south. In income and attitude these folks were more like the middle-class southerners who came to the beach after World War II than the well-heeled who wintered in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. But unlike their post-war counterparts, who liked to "redneck it up," the snowbirds were more inclined to sit by the pool in the sun, play cards at senior centers (some opened just for them), hit the buffets for the "early bird special," and maybe drop by a local bar for a beer before bedtime. (One enterprising owner puts polka music on the jukebox when the snow begins to fall in Minnesota.)

Full-time residents are of a mixed mind about this migration south. Chambers of Commerce full of "raffish Rotarians" love them and the money they spend, although they wish the visitors would spend more. (The running joke is that Canadians come down with a white shirt and a $100 bill and don't change either.) Locals also complain that the old and northern drive too slowly, clog up the check-out lines at the grocery stores, are rude and pushy and, more than anything else, are Yankees--which explains the popular bumper sticker that reads: "If this is snowbird season, why can't I shoot one?"

And there are other changes. Although African American faces remain few--even as a traditional labor force, which Hispanics largely have taken over--the sort of in-your-face racism that characterized the Riviera early on has become more subtle and in some places seems to have disappeared all together. Gone are the covenants that reserved beach communities for whites only--a consequence of court decisions and federal legislation rather than a conversion to racial tolerance. Even "redneck" stalwarts like The Trashy White Band now offer up a variety of music that on stage is mostly country and offstage is often gospel, for the very culture that gave rise to the Redneck Riviera was also a culture full of churchgoers who wanted to visit the beach for the family activities it offered. However, once arrived they found that for every goofy golf course, water park, and carnival-like attraction in family-friendly surroundings, there was a bar or a club, liquor store or lounge, often in the motel where they were staying.

So what were good Christian families to do? Go to a church retreat. During the boom of the 1980s a number of large churches in cities like Atlanta and Birmingham bought old motels, refurbished them, and turned them into places where other churches would feel safe taking their youth groups. Local churches encouraged this and opened their doors to visitors. More conservative in dress (no bikinis) and more organized in activities (group trips to Ocean Opry), they represented an aspect of the white, middle-class South that those who focused on the region's redneck reputation often overlooked. (Over on Mississippi's segregated coast Gulfside Summer Assembly, an African American religious resort, had long offered middle and upper-middle class blacks the same "safe" surroundings for their families, though it is doubtful that white churches saw this as a precedent.)

Not surprisingly, church retreats presented a problem for the "raffish Rotarians" who ran things, for what they pumped into the local economy hardly compared to the money spent at the clubs and restaurants for which the region was famous. Then the rumor spread that some of the retreats planned to declare themselves churches and force local officials to close down nearby bars because of ordinances that prohibited liquor being sold within a prescribed distance from a house of worship. So far nothing has come of that; however, in an ironic twist, one minister successfully convinced a county to waive its distance restriction because he and his congregation wanted to build a church but were prohibited from doing so because the land was near an establishment that sold alcohol. (11)

And then there was the evangelical angle. A Birmingham mega-church decided to use its retreat as the headquarters for a missionary effort in the wilds of Panama City Beach. Young volunteers came down, roomed at the retreat, paid their way with church-arranged jobs at local businesses, and when they were not at work or at worship the church expected them to use at least some of their free time walking up and down the beach talking with other young people about the wages of sin. It wasn't an easy sell, at least according to one of the missionaries who observed that "it was hard to witness to someone who was drinking a beer and wearing a thong," but at least the missionary tried. (12)

There is also the question of who owns the beach, which wasn't a question at all during the Stabler era. Back then, there was plenty of beach to go around, and those seeking a spot on the sand seldom came in conflict with those who owned Gulf-front property. Motels often denied the public use of their access points, but anyone who wanted to sit on a motel beach could walk in from next-door. However, as more and more people came to the beach and set up umbrellas and canopies in what beachfront homeowners considered their backyards, "Keep Off, Private Property" signs began to appear. The matter came to a head when the storms of 2004 and 2005 eroded the beach and tourist development folks sought government help in restoring what was the region's main attraction. Some property owners, fearing that if the government restored the beach the government could also claim ownership, went to court to stop restoration. At this writing some are still in court.

Yet of all the clashes, cultural and otherwise, going on along the coast, the one that seemed to capture both the differences and the similarities between the people who created the RedneckRiviera and the ones who are shaping it today took place in the spring of 2008, when the town of Orange Beach, Alabama, decided to build a second public boat ramp. The folks who put the "redneck" in Redneck Riviera perhaps best expressed themselves through their relationship with their boats, which they considered an extension of their personalities. Whether built for speed or for fishing or both, whether used on the Intracoastal Waterway, taken back into the creeks and marshes, or powered out into the Gulf, the boats were lovingly maintained and treated with respect. But boats needed water, and since most boat owners did not have a dock of their own, they depended on public ramps--the common man's marina.

Orange Beach had one public ramp and parking there was limited. So when the weather warmed and boaters arrived, trucks and trailers spilled out of the lot and onto the shoulders of the road. Neighbors complained about the noise and traffic--and the pollution. The ramp was on a slow-moving bayou, and the gas and oil that boaters spilled into the water did not flush out. Environmentalists, whose influence on coastal planning had been increasing for years, called for the city to do something to clean up the mess. The city had a solution: at the east end of town was a plot of waterfront land, public-owned, with access to the pass that led into the Gulf. It was undeveloped, just big enough for a ramp, parking lot, and restroom facilities.

This seemed the perfect fix. Only it wasn't--at least to owners of upscale condos nearby and to the folks with homes on Ono Island, a gated community across the pass from the proposed ramp. They protested to the City Council that the noise from the rednecks and their boats would take away their peace and tranquility and spoil their quality of life. The City Council was aware that most condo and Ono owners were not residents (and therefore did not vote), whereas many of the boaters lived in town. Plans for the ramp went ahead.

The opponents tried another tactic--stop the ramp to save the beach mouse. In recent years environmentalists had employed federal environmental protection laws to stop a number of projects and change the habits of beachgoers. In Walton County, Florida, regulations to save sea turtles put an end to the long-standing tradition of leaving chairs, toys, umbrellas, and tents on the beach overnight. On the Fort Morgan peninsula developers put their plans on hold when it was determined that the endangered beach mouse's habitat would be threatened. If the mouse could stop work at Fort Morgan, opponents of the ramp reasoned, it could stop work at Orange Beach.

Although the folks on Ono and in the condos previously had shown little if any interest in saving the beach mouse, overnight they became advocates for the endangered rodent. And to help them in their crusade they brought in environmentalists who they were sure would be their allies. But it did not work out as planned. When environmentalists appeared before the City Council they testified that building a ramp wouldn't endanger the beach mouse, because there were no beach mice where the ramp was to be built. Surprised, but undeterred, opponents announced that they would catch some mice at another location and turn them loose on the proposed site. Won't work, said the environmentalists, because the feral cats will eat them--just like they ate the mice that once were there. You can't restore the mice until the cats are gone.

Now, feral cats have been a problem for native species for some time, but this particular cat population had a specific origin. It seems someone pointed out to a developer planning a condo nearby that he might have trouble getting the necessary permits because there were beach mice on the property. Not to worry, said the "raffish Rotarian" developer, and he went down to the local animal shelter, adopted some cats, and turned them loose. They solved the beach mouse problem by putting a cat problem in its place. To complicate matters, some local ladies with political connections started feeding the cats (being out of mice to eat they were hungry) and the cat-feeders were not about to allow the solution suggested by one wag: hold a cat hunt. So the condo/Ono coalition hired a professional trapper to humanely trap the cats, move them to another location, and open the land for the mice. But the trapper trapped a cat that was not feral, the owner was outraged, and it looks like this too will wind up in court, which is where so many coastal conflicts are resolved today.

But in Alabama the courts seem to be siding with the rednecks. When Hurricane Ivan battered the beach in 2004 it destroyed the lodge at Alabama's Gulf State Park. A simple (some would say "Spartan") facility, before the storm some had suggested that it should be taken over and maintained by the state Historical Commission so future generations could see what a RedneckRiviera motel once was. But when Ivan washed it away the administration of Republican governor Bob Riley began to lay plans for a convention center and upscale hotel with more than twice the rooms renting at more than twice the price. Critics sued, claiming that the governor's plan not only violated state leasing laws, it failed to take into account "the average per capita and average family income of Alabamians" who had used the old facility but could not afford the new one. When the courts agreed that the plan was illegal, some hailed it as a victory for the common man.

Meanwhile traditional beachgoers were getting another break. The heady days of "condo mania" and "Dolphin Clubs" were coming to an end. The warning signs were already there when, late in 2008, the housing bubble burst and, as one real estate agent put it, "the flippers flopped." Pre-construction loans dried up. Grand plans were put on the shelf. Scores of units sat foreclosed and empty. Developers, those who could get financing, began considering hotels and convention centers for paying guests, instead of condos for flipping.

Then, just as things looked darkest, a light appeared. As condo prices fell, cautious buyers began to emerge; people who were more interested in a vacation place that could generate a little money on the side than in a unit for quick sale and a quick profit. These folks, mostly from the Lower South, were much like their parents and grandparents who came to the coast in the '50s and '60s: white, middle class, and comfortably so, but with just enough redneckery in them to help keep places like the Flora-Bama going strong. And down on the coast, another generation of "raffish Rotarians, pirates with cash register eyeballs, and hard-handed matrons" are stepping up, ready and willing to help them. Though much of the old Redneck Riviera has declined and fallen dormant, from these seeds a new one may one day sprout and grow.

There are those who hope so.

Jackson, Harvey H., III. "The rise and decline of the Redneck Riviera: the northern rim of the Gulf Coast since World War II.(Essay)." Southern Cultures. University of North Carolina Press. 2010. HighBeam Research. 4 Jul. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>

Kudzu Gets a Festival in Mississippi

2011-06-27T17:17:00.000-07:00

Kudzu Covered Houses - Check out this site, lots of dwellings covered by kudzu.

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At least Diane Coble isn't afraid of it: kudzu, the crawling green vine that creates mayhem throughout Dixie.

In fact, she has befriended the leafy monster. Every day, as the blazing sun beats down, Mrs. Coble hops on her tractor and plows through miles of the plant. But then she collects some of the mass of twisted vines and makes kudzu furniture - tables, chairs, even beds.

"You just have to get a handle on it," explains Mrs. Coble, wiping sweat from her tanned forehead at the 11th annual Kudzu Festival in Holly Springs, Miss.

In this small town framed by kudzu-covered wooded hillsides, she and other folks in Mississippi are paying homage to a scourge that that has become a fixture in Southern landscape.

"We know we have something unique down here," says Ruth Khola of the Holly Springs Chamber of Commerce. "So we started the festival to celebrate kudzu."

Since the town was able to escape the rampages of General Ulysses S. Grant during the Civil War, it has retained some of its historic character. Grant had housed his wife, Julia, in Holly Springs at the castle-like plantation called Walter Place while Union soldiers occupied the area. The Confederates ordered their soldiers not to disturb the house while she was present. Because of this chivalry, Grant spared the city - and its houses - from destruction. It now has more than 60 antebellum homes.

On this sultry Saturday morning, the historic court house square in Holly Springs bustles with activity at the Kudzu Festival. As the controversial Rebel flag blows in the breeze, a booth hawks paintings of Confederate war heroes and T-shirts emblazoned with the word GRITS, short for Girls Raised in the South. A band plays Southern favorites under the white gazebo, and down the road, a barbecue cook-off gets under way.

By noon, however, the kudzu jelly has long vanished.

"You cook the blooms from the plant," explains Helen Mason, who occasionally makes the delicacy. "It's a light purple color and sweet. You can also cook the leaves of the kudzu and use it as a vegetable."

And that's not all. Dealing with a yearly invasion of kudzu requires creative innovation. Hence, the myriad kudzu products - necklaces, soap, baskets, candles, and syrup.

Kudzu blankets more than 2 million acres in the South. Like the man-eating plant Audrey II in "The Little Shop of Horrors," kudzu engulfs everything in its path. It smothers houses, railroad tracks, farm equipment, trees, and, locals say, even a person standing still long enough.

Perhaps it's slightly strange for Southerners to honor a plant so loathed in the region.

"Hey, we've been trying to make peace with this plant for years," says Johnny Pollard of Water Valley, Miss. "It takes over everything. You know it's in control so you might as well bow down to it."

In 1876, Japan introduced kudzu to the United States at the Centennial Exposition, where it was used in the Japanese pavilion as a fragrant ornamental vine. Americans fell in love with the plant during the expo when its lavender-blue, wisteria-like panicles flowered, filling the air with a grape juice scent.

When Southern farmers found that livestock ate the fast-growing kudzu like gourmet salad, they began planting field after field of it. It was also found to prevent soil erosion.

But the plant grows 100 feet per year, or at times 18 inches a day. Now, almost one third of plant species run the risk of extinction as kudzu gobbles up 4,600 acres of public lands every day. And kudzu continues to migrate northward.

"When kudzu invades, it screens out all other life and brings the plant cycle to a screeching halt," says Ed Bostick, a biology professor at Kennesaw State College in Kennesaw, Ga.

Kudzu will die after the first frost and leave behind knotted vines and roots that harden like cement. A kudzu patch can sink a root 8-feet deep and create a knot the size of an oak stump.

"You can't even budge this stuff in winter," says Coble. "I figure we aren't getting rid of this stuff anytime soon, so I might as well make the best of it."

Parker, Suzi. "Even a scourge is an excuse for Southern hospitality; A festival in Mississippi pays homage to kudzu, the plant that overtakes everything from country hillsides to houses to farm equipment.(USA)(A Letter From)." The Christian Science Monitor. Christian Science Publishing Society, 210 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, MA 02115 USA. 1999. HighBeam Research. 27 Jun. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

Georgia's Past

2011-06-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

Cairo Georgia Movie Theatre

Cairo Georgia

Top 2010 Attractions in Alabama

2011-05-12T05:23:00.000-07:00

Some 541,000 golfers played the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail last year, ranking it number one among state attractions that charge admission.

The U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville ranked second with attendance of 540,153. The Birmingham Zoo was third with 431,061 and the McWane Science Center, also in Birmingham, placed fourth with 388,707 visitors. The Huntsville Botanical Garden was fifth with 300,000.

USS Alabama Battleship Memorial Park in Mobile was sixth with 286,848 and the Barber Vintage Motorsports Museum in Leeds was seventh with 235,000. The Gulf Coast Exploreum Science Center in Mobile attracted 191,687 for eighth place. The Montgomery Zoo came in ninth with 185,833. Point Mallard Park in Decatur placed tenth with 185,000. Attendance figures released by the Alabama Tourism Department were submitted by local tourism organizations.

In other categories, the Birmingham Botanical Gardens attracted 350,000 visitors as the most attended free attraction. More than 800,000 people attended Mobile's Mardi Gras for the largest festival. The Alabama Gulf Coast beaches were the state's number one natural destination, attracting 3.6 million visitors last year. Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa was the top sports destination with 712,747 fans attending Crimson Tide football games. The top shopping destination was Hoover's Riverchase Galleria with 15 million shoppers. For more information visit www.alabama.travel.

Following the Birmingham Botanical Gardens among free attractions, the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts ranked second with attendance of 150,561 and the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery placed third with 118,196. The Birmingham Museum of Art was fourth with 115,576 and the U.S. Army Aviation Museum in Fort Rucker ranked fifth with 108,737. Aldridge Botanical Gardens in Hoover was sixth with 80,000. Sloss Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Birmingham came in seventh with 64,100. Fort Conde in Mobile attracted 39,141 for eighth place. The Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery was ninth with 36,269. The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Hanceville was tenth with 25,000.

Following Mobile's Mardi Gras celebration among festivals, Bayfest in Mobile was second with 300,000 and the Fairhope Arts and Crafts Festival placed third with 265,000 in attendance. The Annual National Shrimp Festival in Gulf Shores ranked fourth with 250,000. The W.C. Handy Music Festival in Florence placed fifth with 150,000. The Gulf Coast Hot Air Balloon Festival in Foley was sixth with 75,000. The Trail of Tears Commemorative Ride in Waterloo placed seventh with 65,000. Christmas Around the Merry Go Round in Valley was eighth with 63,717. The Spirit of America Festival in Decatur attracted 60,000 for ninth place. The Elberta German Sausage Festival was tenth with 50,000.

Following the Alabama Gulf Coast beaches among natural destinations, Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores ranked second with attendance of 711,474 and Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park in McCalla was third with 507,350. Lake Guntersville State Park in Guntersville was fourth with 483,745. Eufaula National Wildlife Festival attracted 474,537 for fifth place. Wind Creek State Park in Alexander City was sixth with 344,799. Monte Sano State Park in Huntsville placed seventh with 270,000. Joe Wheeler State Park in Rogersville ranked eighth with 265,770. Little River Canyon National Preserve in Fort Payne was ninth with 192,574. Goose Pond Colony in Scottsboro was tenth with 180,000.

Following Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa among sports destinations, Jordan-Hare Stadium in Auburn ranked second with attendance of 688,692 and the Birmingham Race Course was third with 297,488. Birmingham Barons Baseball placed fourth with 275,887. Montgomery Biscuits Baseball attracted 269,840 for fifth. Talladega Superspeedway was sixth with approximately 215,000. Mobile Baybears Baseball was seventh with 190,000. Huntsville Stars Baseball was eighth with 91,000.

Following the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover among shopping destinations, the Unclaimed Baggage Center in Scottsboro was second in attendance with 830,499.

"ALABAMA TOURISM DEPARTMENT RELEASES 2010 ATTENDANCE NUMBERS." States News Service. COMTEX News Network, Inc. 2011. HighBeam Research. 12 May. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

A Son's Memory of His Mother

2011-05-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

'To die will be an awfully big adventure,' says Peter Pan, and the line has suddenly come back across a century to haunt me, not because of Neverland or any other of the ghastly Pan movies, but because one of J.M. Barrie's last god-daughters died a few days ago. She was my mother Joan: she was in her 95th year, and she died peacefully in the bed where she had given birth to my brother and sister more than 50 years ago. She had suffered no serious illness and was in no pain: one of the last things she told me was that in a long lifetime she had never seen a hospital ceiling, only ever entering such buildings as a visitor. Her death was, as they say on these occasions, a peaceful blessing. Except, of course, for the rest of us.

By the rest of us I mean relatively her sister, her seven grandchildren, her three great-grandchildren (one new, barely three months old), and of course her three children - and that's before we start on all the in-laws and ex-in-laws and godchildren to whom she was the ever-loving and beloved centrepiece. She was a caring and careful rock in an uncaring and careless world, the best of ports in all kinds of personal and professional storms, when her advice would be unchallengeable - stay indoors, like any sensible person, or at the very least try not to lose your umbrella, and of course we always did. (Lose the umbrella, I mean.)

The miracle of Ma was that in a noisy world she spoke quietly, and at the heart of a family over-full of extroverts she remained all her life both modest and calm. When, years ago, Robert Morley, my father, came home with the dread news that they owed the Inland Revenue £100,000 pounds in back tax and were therefore now almost certainly bankrupt, Ma replied, 'Yes, dear, and the Hoover is broken.' 'You can't have heard what I told you,' said Pa. 'Oh, I heard, darling,' said Ma, 'but there's nothing we can do right now about £100,000; on the other hand, we could go and get a new plug for the Hoover.'

That, in one of many ways, was my darling mother. In one sense, she lived a life surrounded by giants: her father was Herbert Buckmaster, founder of both the Club and the Fizz that took the first half of his surname and still survive to this day. Barrie had been her godfather because her mother, Gladys Cooper, had been one of his very first Peter Pans, and mother and daughter were equally ageless, defiant and unbeaten by life. Joannie left her childhood to marry my father Robert Morley, like Dame Gladys an extreme theatrical, and she became the still, ever-reassuring, consoling and congratulatory homemaker for a vastly extended family of actors, playwrights, directors, restaurateurs, cooks, bartenders, artists, producers and photographers. Sometimes that was just one relative trying it all, often it took more than one of us. In a highly theatrical world she remained wonderfully untheatrical, and whenever one of her large brood managed, unusually, to make a sensible marriage or to choose a reliable career, her quiet relief was almost equal to her loving amazement.

Precisely because she was all her life surrounded by noisy, highly strung eccentrics, she saw it as her mission to remain throughout her long life an oasis of calm intelligence and tranquillity. We all went home to Ma because we knew she would celebrate our successes, forgive our failures and urge us on to the next project, even if she never quite understood why we all insisted on treating life as a contest, when to her it was really more like the weather, there to be either discreetly celebrated or mildly regretted.

But now there's no going home because, with her, the home itself has gone; and I have to admit at the last that, like Robert, I loved my mother passionately and, like him, never quite managed to explain, perhaps until now, why she mattered so much to us both and, of course, to all of us. When she told her mother that she was about to marry Robert, Gladys wired back: 'Well, dear, if you love him he can't be all that bad,' and I think it matters to put on the record now, as she never did, that she really was all that good. She was just wonderful to all of us, even if we didn't always deserve her. When in the 1940s the actor Clifton Webb achieved my age, his mother also died and he became inconsolable until Noël Coward sent the following message: 'Clifton, you have really got to stop all this grieving and mourning over your mother's death: in my experience, it is not entirely unusual to be orphaned at 65.'

Morley, Sheridan. "Remembering my mother." The Spectator. Spectator. 2005. HighBeam Research. 8 May. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

The Forgotten Coast

2011-05-01T18:53:00.000-07:00

IT WAS LATE, the wine had been mostly dispatched, and the candles had begun to weep crazily across the patio table. It was end-of-the-party conversation, desultory and rambling, about our favorite places. Favorite place in Florida, my husband mused. That's easy, St. George Island. Everyone but me looked at him blankly.

Finishing each other's sentences, we painted the picture: Some of the darkest, most star-filled skies in the continental United States, partly because of nighttime light restrictions to aid the nesting loggerhead sea turtles. Paved bike paths the length of the island, a gorgeous and underpopulated state park beach, flounder fishing off the Bob Sikes Cut.

And then there's the charming historic port of nearby Apalachicola, founded by 19th century cotton and lumber barons, with its Georgian and Victorian manses and its oyster bars. It was an idle comment: We should all go sometime.

Then the e-mails started. Were we serious? How expensive would it be? Could we find a house big enough for all of us?

Thus, the first week in May, five families loaded up five cars with beach essentials. For some this meant kites and sand toys, for others long-deferred paperbacks and quality chocolate. In a house called Afternoon Delight, we spent four unforgettable days on Florida's Forgotten Coast.

A simple approach

The Forgotten Coast is bounded on the west by Mexico Beach and on the east by St. Marks. From west to east, it includes the communities of St. Joe Beach and Port St. Joe, Simmons Bayou, Cape San Blas, Indian Pass, Apalachicola, St. George Island, Eastpoint, Carrabelle, Ochlockonee Bay and Panacea. The area is served by U.S. 98, a poky and picturesque roadway that stretches for about 250 miles along the northwest Florida Panhandle coast.

There are rolling dunes, miles of white sand dotted with perfect sand dollars and hardly another person in sight - but the area does not offer everything to everyone. There are no multiplexes or amusement parks, few malls, even fewer fast food restaurants. High season here is very different from that in the rest of coastal Florida. It stays cooler here than elsewhere on the Gulf, making it a little nippy in the winter and more than tolerable in the summer.

Summer is peak, with rental prices jumping accordingly on beach houses on St. George and hotel rooms in Apalachicola. Still, the area's overambitious real estate scramble of a few years back means that there are a lot of vacancies and some deals to be had.

Before the Forgotten Coast was collectively overlooked, Apalach (that's what the locals call it) was Big Time. Established in the early 1800s, it initially provided the South's cotton plantations an accessible port. Cotton warehouses were erected to house and bale the Old South's most successful crop; at one point the town boasted 43 warehouses, making it the third-largest cotton port on the Gulf Coast. After that, it was sponge diving, timber and turpentine from slash pines that kept the region afloat, followed by the St. Joe Co.'s paper mill. Now, St. Joe has turned its attentions toward developing its massive landholdings in this area into environmentally conscious residential and resort communities. The indigenous fisherfolk and oystermen don't pay these tourist enticements much nevermind, concentrating instead on their oysters, crabs, shrimp and fish.

On a rebound

We drove west through Carrabelle, its weathered pickups sporting the bumper sticker "A small drinking village with a fishing problem," and then on through Eastpoint. With "for sale" signs as common as weeds, Eastpoint looks a little down at the heels these days. Hurricanes and red tide have threatened the local bounty, and the oyster industry has been hurt by drought in Georgia to the nort h.

Continuing to St. George Island and Apalachicola, though, there's a palpable feeling of optimism. On the island, the new Cape St. George Lighthouse had its dedication ceremony in April, the white tower a testament to civic pride and perspicacity. In 2005 the lighthouse, built in 1852 on nearby LittleSt. George Island, collapsed into the gulf. Volunteers cleaned the mortar off the thousands of old bricks, lugged them to a safer location and, with the help of state and federal officials, erected a new lighthouse in the center of town. Seventy-two feet, 92 stairs and a gasp-worthy view.

In Apalachicola, the 900 historic homes and repurposed cotton warehouses (most now containing antiques shops and darling seafood restaurants) were honored last year by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of its Dozen Distinctive Destination s. Stroll past the little white Greek Revival Trinity Episcopal Church, the sixth-oldest church in the state; Orman House, an original 1838 home of cotton merchant Thomas Orman; and then take a swing through the Gibson Inn.

Built in 1907 as a hotel, never a private residence, the inn is another source of hopefulness these days. In February, seriously decorated chef Michael Feil set up shop in the inn's restaurant, launching Cafe Momi, which has garnered raves near and far local seafood, but with sophisticated Hawaiian touches.

Something for everyone

Afternoon Delight was a monster, three-story, six-bedroom affair on stilts in the gated community called St. George Plantation, which stretches from gulfside to bayside on the island's west end, with slow, winding roads and lots of speed bumps to keep the pace leisure ly.

The Plantation contains the island's swankiest digs. The four miles in the center of the island are called the Gulf Beaches area. In this, the first populated area on the island, the architectural styles are all over the map, from little Cracker cottages to huge windswept wooden structures on stilts, kitted out with widow's walks and zany decorative fillips. Farther east is East End, comfortable-looking houses widely spaced, and townhouses in a community called 300 Ocean Mile. And then there's Sunset Beach, a gated community of Spanish terra cotta tile and stucco villas, densely packed.

Like the less-crowded Nantucket or Cape Cod of a generation ago, St. George is about easy, beachy pleasures, the toughest decision of the day whether to head back to the beach or take a dip in the pool instead. A drift of flip-flops accumulated in the foyer, sand found its way into the sheets and a few of us dropped a bundle chasing spotted sea trout and whiting out in the pass. There were sing-alongs and fierce games of Spoons, night beach walks and morning Ashtanga yoga for the early risers.

We frittered time deliciously, each in our own way. I'd wager for the next "my favorite places" conversation, St. George and Apalachicola won't be forgotten.

CAPTION(S):

apalachicolabay.org photos

The new Cape St. George Lighthouse had its dedication ceremony in April. The original light collapsed in 2005. Built in 1907, the Gibson Inn has served as a hotel - never a private residence - for its entire history. Grady Market, a repurposed cotton warehouse, is one of the town's 900 old structures. apalachicolabay.org

The little white Greek Revival Trinity Episcopal Church in Apalachicola is the sixth-oldest church in the state.

"or go SOUTH to Apalachicola, Fla. Head south for quiet times on Florida's Forgotten Coast St. George Island: a gem along Florida Panhandle's Forgotten Coast.(Daily Break)." The Virginian-Pilot (Norfolk, VA). The Pueblo Chieftain. 2009. HighBeam Research. 1 May. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>

Manatees Enjoy Blue Spring

2011-04-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

"Greg," Jon Kramer called out calmly, as if trying to whisper and shout at once, "manatee." - We swam into a creek leading to Florida's Crystal River. Breathing through my snorkel, I looked underwater and soon saw it: a blimpy gray shape propelled by a broad flat tail. Jon was already at its side. - I'm not an experienced snorkeler and had never swum with such a huge animal. The underwater environment - silent, slow and abstract - made the experience all the stranger. As we swam, I ran my fingers over the manatee's taut skin. The warmth surprised me; I'd forgotten for the moment that they are warm-blooded mammals. - I turned slightly and saw another, much smaller, manatee. Suddenly, the animals kicked into high gear. Then, I saw wetsuits everywhere and I popped to the surface. We were surrounded by other snorkelers. - A pontoon, trailing a flotilla of canoes, pulled into the creek as news of the manatees spread. Soon the channel was plugged. AMy wife, Susan, and I spent a week last winter exploring Florida's springs with our friends Jon Kramer and Julie Martinez, Minnesota snowbirds who travel to central Florida each winter.

From coast to coast, the bellyband of Florida north of Orlando is a weedy, lively landscape, mostly flat with scrubby piney woods and slapdash roadside gas stations and stores. Scattered about are stylish towns of Victorian vintage, such as DeLand and Mount Dora. But most captivating are the lowland creeks and forests flanked by palms and moss-draped oaks, with ibises and anhingas in the branches and black vultures circling overhead.

Florida is underlain by pocked and fissured limestone. Upwellings of groundwater form springs of clear 72-degree water that attract fish and other organisms from freshwater and salt. Jon, a freelance museum exhibit curator, and Julie, an artist and illustrator, thrill to the creatures they discover in these spring waters.

A year before, the two were married on the banks of Silver Glen Spring. An hour before the ceremony, Jon led guests on a snorkel tour of the pool formed by the spring, where we were amazed by schools of crevalle jack and mullet, nesting tilapia and largemouth bass. On a canoe trip to Lake George after the ceremony, we spotted turtles, alligators, ospreys, anhingas and a solitary raccoon scrounging for food.

We had returned to search for manatees, the lumbering half-ton vegetarians that live in coastal waters by summer and seek the warm water of inland springs in winter. Leaving the canoes and crowd behind, we anchored our own boat just outside the rope barring entry to the sanctuary known as Gator Hole. Gator Hole isn't as wild or ominous as it sounds; it is surrounded by groomed lawns and million-dollar homes. But because it gushes spring water, it attracts manatees. We stood watch for ghostly gray shapes and upwellings from powerful tails, speaking softly and pointing in various directions to confound anyone who might be watching.

After several minutes, a big manatee swam out of the sanctuary. We slipped into the water and tried to follow, but the manatee dove and we were unable to keep it in sight. "I saw its mud trail down deep," Jon said as he surfaced. "He didn't want to have anything to do with us."

Some manatees avoid people, he said, and some are indifferent. Others actually seek people out. Those are the manatees we were seeking.

We putt-putted into Kings Bay, an island-studded expanse of the Crystal River. After watching an osprey snatch a needlefish, we spotted two manatees cruising beds of sea grass. As they circled the boat, we eased into the water and began to mingle. Manatees may eat 100 pounds a day, and these weren't about to let us distract them. Underwater, I heard the munch, munch as they tore at the vegetation. It was the sound of a cow grazing.

Gators and dozing manatees

"The magic number is 68," said Wayne Hartley, ranger at Blue Spring State Park, located along the St. Johns River between Orlando and Daytona Beach. When the St. Johns turns cold, manatees flock into Blue Spring, the second largest spring in Florida, gushing an average 100 million gallons of warm water daily. "The colder it gets below 68, the more manatees we see. Anything in the 50s is really going to get them in here."

From the park's boardwalk, we looked down into the spring-run - the third-of-a-mile-long stream that connects Blue Spring to the St. Johns River. In the blue-green water were sliders (large turtles), gar, tilapia, exotic armored catfish, and even a 2-foot-long tarpon. A 10-foot gator basked on the far bank. Several manatees - nine to the best of our ability to count - dozed over a patch of sand. Without waking, they slowly bobbed to the surface for a breath of air before sinking to the bottom. Two more swam by.

"There goes Phyllis and her little calf," Hartley said.

"How do gators and manatees get on?" I asked.

"They totally ignore one another," he said.

But manatees do have enemies. Cold water, for one. Prolonged cold causes tissue damage much like a burn or frostbite. Hence the migration of manatees to springs (and nowadays, power plant outflows). The concentration makes manatee watching feasible but leads to another problem: collisions with boats. During 2004, boats killed 69 Florida manatees, 25 percent of all deaths.

In fact, our own trip did not begin auspiciously. Fishing the Indian River in south Florida, we were speeding along the main channel (which is legal) when I spotted a gray-brown shape in the water ahead and waved my arm furiously. The driver cut the motor but we whacked the manatee all the same. We saw nothing more of the poor guy, but later, as we fished, a manatee circled the boat and snuffled at the anchor rope.

"I know who you are and I know what you did," Susan intoned, in her best vengeful manateevoice.

The fact is, nearly every manatee has distinct lacerations and scars on its back. Hartley relies on these unique patterns to count the manatees visiting Blue Spring and track them year to year.

When Blue Spring became a state park in 1972, fewer than a dozen manatees took refuge there. Back then, boats could motor into the spring-run. Now no boats are allowed. Swimming is permitted in the upper end of the run, and only when no manatees are around.

"We gave manatees just a little bit of protection," Hartley said. "That's really all we've done. No boats coming in and out. No people swimming up and down the run with them." The number of manatees visiting the refuge has grown steadily. By mid-February 2005, when we visited, 196 manatees had taken refuge at Blue Spring.

Manatees are protected under the federal Endangered Species Act. Statewide, the population seems to be holding steady. A ground and air survey in early 2005 accounted for more than 3,100 manatees, evenly split between the Gulf and Atlantic waterways. It was the second-highest total on record.

Meanwhile, manatees valiantly soldier on despite horrible injuries. Hartley told of one yearling female. "She was hit so bad she looked deformed." Four ribs bones poked out her side. "It looked really strange, like someone had managed to stick her sideways into a meat grinder. Every year we found a new reason she was going to die." But she didn't and in fact produced four calves before she finally disappeared.

Encounter with a canoe

Manatee-boat encounters are usually to the manatee's detriment, but sometimes manatees turn the tables-even though they are probably the most docile animals of their size in existence. Twice Hartley has been surprised by the animals.

Once it was Howie, the other time Wanda. Neither animal knew anyone was nearby, a fact Hartley realized in each case a moment before the unsuspecting manatee grazed his canoe. Both episodes unfolded pretty much the same way: a flick of the tail, an upended canoe, Hartley in the water, and everything of value at the bottom of the spring-run.

Undoubtedly it is with these stories in mind that Susan shouted from the bow of our canoe with what would otherwise seem undue alarm: "Oh my god, oh my god! It's a manatee."

We were paddling a creek near Chassahowitzka National Wildlife Refuge. We had been watching ducks and mullet frolic in the shallows as herons, cormorants, vultures and kingfishers went about their bloody business of obtaining food. We had just passed two men in a battered fishing boat, a young man casting a net from the bow.

"We want to get a couple of mullet for dinner," growled the old man in the stern. Then he added in a conspiratorial voice, "What they don't tell you is that there are a couple of manatee lying up in that second spring hole to the right."

We checked it out, easing into the spring-run as if into a secret world, cloaked by live oak and Spanish moss, with water so clear we seemed to levitate above the streambed. Susan spotted the ghostly gray shape - no, two of them - in 8 feet of water, directly beneath us and began to holler.

Suppressing unreasonable concerns of a mama manatee on the rampage, we paddled to one side and waited. Soon, the manatees rose to the surface-in unison as if by some secret signal between them. They gulped air, and sank again to the bottom, oblivious to our presence.

We hadn't brought snorkeling gear. Even if we had, I'm not sure we would have had the heart to disturb them. Except for the two fishermen, by now far downstream, we were utterly alone. Just us and the manatees. For a quarter hour or more, we watched the animals rise and fall to their own mysterious rhythms. Then we paddled off, content to let sleeping manatees lie.

Breining, Greg. "swimming with gentle giants; Manatees, drawn by warm water, flock to springs in central Florida during the winter. Human visitors come in droves too, to see these odd, shy and endangered creatures.(TRAVEL)." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). The Star Tribune Company. 2005. HighBeam Research. 29 Apr. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

Florida's Sea Turtles

2011-04-25T04:47:00.000-07:00

Seven species of sea turtles inhabit the world's oceans. These air-breathing reptiles have survived virtually unchanged for 200 million years. Sea turtles are unique among marine animals because they must return to land to reproduce; they lay their eggs on tropical, sandy shores. These amazing animals have outlived the dinosaurs, yet now they are threatened with extinction due to the actions of humans. Nowhere are the threats to their survival more evident than on Florida's beaches.

Florida hosts more sea-turtle nesting than anywhere else in the continental United States. The Western Hemisphere's largest colony of loggerhead turtles nests on Florida's coast, along with large numbers of green and leatherback turtles. But Florida's beaches are in trouble--from poorly sited coastal development, sea-wall construction, repetitive beach nourishment, increasingly strong storms, and rising sea levels. Sixty percent of Florida's beaches are eroding, and 46 percent are "critically eroding," meaning upland structures already are under eminent threat. Sea turtles now struggle to find a suitable nesting habitat.

The continued development of Florida's coastline and the engineering tactics used to protect structures from erosion combine to threaten the health of the beaches that sea turtles need to reproduce. The most widely used erosion-fighting tactics include coastal armoring (sea walls) and repetitive sand-dredging projects to rebuild beaches. Public subsidies, including redevelopment assistance, taxpayer-backed coastal-wind insurance, federal flood insurance, and publicly financed beach-building projects encourage development along even the most erosive beaches. Loopholes in Florida's coastal-building laws allow development to the seaward-most "line of construction," regardless of erosion rates or beach width. A series of regulatory loopholes to accommodate private-property rights even allows homes to be built seaward of the 30-year erosion line--the area coastal regulators anticipate will be underwater before an average mortgage can be retired.

Florida established its coastal regulatory program in 1986. It was intended to balance development and private-property rights with the need to protect the coastal system by controlling the location and design of structures. However, nearly half the beachfront homes constructed under the regulatory program now sit on critically eroded beaches. The balance clearly has shifted in favor of risky development at the expense of beach protection.

Florida's sea turtles are being squeezed between rampant shoreline development and increasing coastal erosion. Their long-term survival depends on a comprehensive reform ofFlorida's coastal-management policies. Stronger building setbacks are needed to restrict development adjacent to eroding beaches. Creative policies are needed to promote "strategic relocation" of existing development away from the eroding shore. These strategies could include aggressive land purchasing, transfer of development rights, easements to restrict sea-wall construction, and tax incentives to relocate landward. Public subsidies encouraging high-risk and damaging coastal development should be eliminated or should include restrictions on repeat claims and prohibitions against building seaward of the 30-year erosion line.

Time is running out to make the sort of policy changes needed to ensure the long-term protection and sustainability of Florida's beaches--for the well-being of sea turtles and people.

David Godfrey is executive director of the nonprofit Caribbean Conservation Corporation (CCC). Based in Gainesville, Florida, CCC is the oldest sea

Godfrey, David. "Florida's sea turtles besieged.(OCEANS & COASTS)." The American Prospect. The American Prospect, Inc. 2008. HighBeam Research. 24 Apr. 2011 <http://www.highb-turtle research and protection group in the world.

Sopchoppy Worm Gruntin' Festival

2011-04-20T19:57:00.000-07:00

SOPCHOPPY, Fla. As professional grunters, Gary and Audrey Revell get up before sunrise and drive 25 miles over dirt roads deep into the heart of the Apalachicola National Forest to catch worms.

As the sunlight barely pokes through the pine trees, they climb out of a Ford pickup truck adorned with a bumper sticker that reads "Welcome to the South. Now go home." Audrey hauls a sack filled with empty one-gallon buckets and Gary carries a 10-pound iron rod and a wooden stake.

After hiking off the trail a short way, Gary slams the stake _ called a stob _ into the ground, gets on his knees and starts rubbing the iron across the top. He keeps a steady pace and the vibration is rhythmic, almost like a musical instrument. Within a minute, the ground is writhing with worms and Audrey quickly picks them up and tosses them in a can.

"See 'em all," Gary says. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight _ it's magic."

Indeed, it is a sight to behold, and this Panhandle town honored the work of people like the Revells on Saturday with the annual Worm Gruntin' Festival.

A couple thousand people from around the South and beyond pulled into this town of 600 about 30 miles outside of Tallahassee near the Gulf of Mexico.

"We've been traveling around the country trying to find things like this," said Dave Hodgkins of Anacortes, Wash., who was with his wife, Fran. "We've been to some strange stuff, but this ranks right up there near the top."

In a field near town, the crowd watched as 5-year-old Emma Donaldson was crowned the wormqueen, with rubber worms dangling from her tiara.

Then about 50 children and adults began rubbing their stobs with irons. The ground started to shake.

Jeff Allen, who grunted professionally until about two years ago, stood back and watched with a smile.

"I love it," he said. "They're doing good. You feel that vibration? When you feel that rhythm in your feet, they come up."

He's more then qualified to assess the technique.

"Back when I was 6 years old, Mom and Dad had us out there" in the national forest, Allen said. "I've picked up a million cans."

It's not an easy way to make a living. The Revells make about $20 a can on the worms, which they sell to bait shops and fishermen. Each can holds about 500 worms. The day before the festival, it took almost two hours to fill their first two cans.

"People I bring out here say 'Man, you're crazy to go in the woods like that,'" Gary Revell said as mosquitos and flies swarmed around.

Bad weather can make it difficult to find worms and the wildlife can add to the adventure. He and his wife have run into rattlesnakes and bears while on the job.

"Rattlers and moccasins, I don't like those jokers. They will bite you and they don't like you out there in the first place," he said.

In years past, they also had to contend with a lot of competition.

"I remember being out here and there would be 25 or 30 vehicles. You' d really have to hump it," he said. "Those woods have been harvested, so if you don't find the right spot it can be tough."

The work can be tough on the body, too. Revell grips his iron so hard that a hand print has worn into the metal over time. As he rubs his stob, he grunts as if he's lifting weights.

"It takes a while to get that hand print in," he said. "The vibration on you hands, sometimes it makes them swell at night and hurt. And being down on your knees on that wet ground and the cold _ they ache."

While tough, it still beats raising crickets for bait. The Revells tried that, too, but found that the return on the investment wasn' t too good.

Plus they require much more attention, Gary Revell said.

"They're like raising chickens. You've got to baby-sit them things."

BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press Writer. "Fla. Town Celebrates Worm Grunters." AP Online. 2002. HighBeam Research. 20 Apr. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

Apalachicola Oysters

2011-04-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

APALACHICOLA -

The Gulf Coast of Florida is renowned for its tasty bivalves and succulent crustaceans. After years of procrastination, I recently packed my van and set off in search of small shanties and independently-owned restaurants serving fresh, affordable seafood and shucked-to-order oysters.

My oyster-eating, fried-shrimp-sampling, grouper-gobbling, and gumbo-tasting tour stretched from Apalachicola to Perdido. Road trip stats: one week, 175 miles, 15 establishments. Consumed: 117 oysters - raw, baked, and char-broiled - plus fish tacos, shrimp poboys, grilled grouper, shrimp, and five varieties of gumbo.

One unexpected treat about oysters on the half shell in the panhandle: Order six and you often get seven. Order a dozen and there might be 13 or more on your tray. This was explained to me as Southern hospitality. Another tradition, eating them on saltines, was harder for me to swallow. However you like your oysters, here's a guide for your own road trip.

Boss Oysters

Apalachicola is celebrated for its oysters, which are generally plumper and saltier than most Gulfoysters. At Boss Oysters, overlooking the Apalachicola River, each table is equipped with a roll of paper towels, plastic squirt bottles filled with cocktail sauce, ketchup, and tartar sauce, and four varieties of hot sauce. Raw oysters are served on a bed of ice, and can be dressed with toppings such as citrus and ginger salsa or seaweed and wasabi fish roe. There are a dozen baked oyster choices, as well as chowder, gumbo, oyster stew, peel-and-eat shrimp, and fish served grilled, broiled, or fried. Sweet corn fritters are crispy bites of goodness. 123 Water St., 850-653-9364, www.apalachico

lariverinn.com/boss.html)

Dusty's Oyster Bar

"Hi, my name is Trouble," said the woman sitting next to me at Dusty's in Panama City, the place where everyone in this beachside community gathers. It's the kind of sand-in-your-shoes place where graffiti-covered dollar bills are taped to the ceiling and walls, TVs are tuned to sports, and the oysters, shrimp, and seafood can be baked, fried, grilled, broiled, or boiled. If you like youroysters raw, they can shuck them fast. Behind the bar on any given day is one of the three top-ranked Florida state shuckers as well as the 2010 national oyster-shucking champ, Mike Martin. "It's a little Southern honkey-tonk," said the congenial hostess Carolee Harper. 16450 Front Beach Road, 850-233-0035

Hunt's Oyster Bar and

Seafood Restaurant

"Shut up and shuck," reads the sign in Hunt's Oyster Bar and Seafood Restaurant. This 41-year old, family-owned establishment specializes in wild caught Apalachicola oysters that are trucked in daily in 60-pound sacks. Sit at a table or the bar and eat them raw, steamed, or baked. There's also Cajun steamed shrimp, fried shrimp, fresh seafood sandwiches or dinners, and sides of fries, beans, fried okra, and hush puppies. Located in a bright yellow building in the historic district of Panama City, Hunt's has a national reputation and local devotees. "Most people have been coming here since they were kids," said Robert Daffin, Florida's current oyster shucking champion. "Ninety-percent of our customers come in with their kids and their grandparents. They'll wait two hours to get in here." 150 Beck Ave., 850-763-9645, www.huntsoysterbar.com

Hurricane Oyster Bar

and Grill

It's worth the detour off the main drag, Route 98, to find Hurricane Oyster Bar in Grayton Beach. No ordinary oyster bar, Hurricane steps things up a notch with chef-inspired offerings such as tangy and slightly spicy fish tacos served with homemade garlic red pepper sauce and tangy pico de gallo. Other menu offerings include grilled lobster tacos, grilled crab claws, crab cake poboys, coconut shrimp, peel-and-eat shrimp, pan-seared fresh fish, gumbo, salads, sandwiches, and, oh yes, oysters. Wash it all down with one of 13 beers on tap, or choose from an extensive wine list.

37 Logan Lane, 850-231-0787

Acme Oyster House

Acme has five locations, but don't call it a chain. Founded in 1910, it specializes in traditional New Orleans food such as seafood gumbo, jambalaya, oyster Rockefeller soup, grilled marinated shrimp, and fried oyster, catfish, shrimp, and crawfish tail poboys. This is the only location outside of Louisiana, and it isn't easy to find. The Village of Baytowne Wharf is a gated community; you must stop for a visitors pass. Don't let this deter you from tasting the best buttery and garlickyoysters charbroiled on an open flame - topped with Romano cheese - outside of NoLa. 140 Fisherman's Cove, Sandestin, 850-622-0200, www.acme oyster.com

High Tide Restaurant

and Oyster Bar

Thirty years is a long time in the restaurant biz, so you know they're doing something right at High Tide Restaurant and Oyster Bar in Fort Walton Beach. A roadside lounge with an old-fashioned ambience, High Tide is renowned for its shucked-to-order oysters. "In the summer, we go through 175 to 200 boxes a day," said manager- bartender-shucker Graham Skrivanie. "People are offended if we run out, as if we didn't serve anything else!" But they do: gumbo, chowder, fried or char-grilled fish, soft shell crabs, farm-raised catfish, scallops, and all manner of shrimp. The grilled grouper sandwich is so good that it reportedly has a fan club. 1203 Miracle Strip Parkway, 850-244-2624

The Boathouse

The Boathouse calls itself "Destin's Best Kept Secret." This tiny establishment is packed to its dollar-bill-covered rafters most nights of the week with crowds flocking there for live music, pitchers of beer, frozen drinks, award-winning crab and shrimp gumbo, and Apalachicola oysters shucked to order. The menu also offers crab claws, all manner of shrimp, crab cakes, fried oysters, and grilled mahi-mahi or yellow fin tuna steaks served with corn on the cob, coleslaw, and hushpuppies. It's quieter in the afternoon. 288-B Harbor Blvd., 850-837-3645, www.boat

houseoysterbar.com

Marina Oyster Barn

A no-frills restaurant with a dozen tables and booths overlooking Pensacola's Bayou Texar, the Marina opened in 1968 as a boathouse and bait shop. The following year the Rooks family began serving raw oysters, boiled shrimp, gumbo, chowder, and fried mullet. The menu has expanded to include catfish, grouper, flounder, scallops, and shrimp, available fried, broiled, or grilled. For baked oysters, try the sampler platter: Oysters Rockefeller, Texar Crabsters, Texar Shrimpsters, and Supreme Steamed with blended gooey cheeses. If you like them raw, local East Bay oystersare big, plump, and slightly salty. "Our East Bay local oysters, in my mind, are the best," said the young man shucking my order. 505 Bayou Blvd., 850-433-0511, www.marinaoysterbarn.com

Brian's PoBoys

The island of Perdido Key offers plenty of places to enjoy the seafood that defines the region. For a sublime shrimp po'boy served with creamy tartar sauce on crunchy bread, drive beneath the Theo Barrs Bridge, on the mainland side of the span leading to the island, and look for Brian's next to Nix Brothers Seafood. A glorified roadside stand with picnic tables, this Pensacola establishment is open for lunch every day except Sunday. Brian's serves other types of po'boys, such as fish, oyster, chicken, and sausage, plus seafood dinners with fries and homemade slaw. Top it off with a slice of key lime pie (the only dessert on the menu) and sweet tea. 13470 Perdido Key Drive, 850-492-1234

Flora-Bama Lounge

Flora-Bama on Perdido Key is a classic roadhouse bar, complete with live music on three stages, and an oyster bar that serves them raw or Cajun-steamed, as well as peel-and-eat shrimp, and all things fried, including pickles. The slightly spicy gumbo, thick with okra and tomatoes, is laced with tiny shrimp. Located on the beach, a spit away from the Alabama border, it's where beach bums and bankers mingle. Save yourself a Northerner's embarrassment and pronounce it like the locals: Flora-Bama rhymes with the neighboring state, and not our president. 17401 Perdido Key Drive, 850-492-3048, www.florabama.com

Necee Regis. "Florida's Gulf Coast, or where the oysters are." The Boston Globe (Boston, MA). International Herald Tribune. 2011. HighBeam Research. 8 Apr. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

Cairo, Georgia Pictures

2011-03-26T16:25:00.001-07:00

Designed by Jinright, Ryan & Lynn Architects and completed in 1985, to replace the previous courthouse, which burned in 1980.

'Peacemaker’ Sailboat Arrives at Port St. Joe

2011-03-12T05:09:00.000-08:00

Port St. Joe -- The 150-foot sailing ship named “Peacemaker” has arrived at Jetty Park in Port St. Joe. Even land-lubbers are invited aboard, to take a look around the one-of-a-kind vessel.

Peacemaker is a flagship of the Twelve Tribes – the Commonwealth of Israel – a spiritually based community with about 1,000 members in the United States and about the same number overseas. The New England area is called the Noth East Judah tribe and it runs from Maryland west to Missippi and up to Maine. ”It’s our goal to get back for today how the first church was years ago – that’s when people shared what they had with others and took care of each other,” said the captain. He referred to the Book of Acts specifically in the Bible.

The Peacemaker is registered in Georgia and has no home port. She ”wanders” from port to port the looking for a berth in a place where she can spread the word of her mission. She was built in Brazil by an Italian family of boatbuilders. The boat was first launched in 1989 under another name. Eventually, she ended up in Savannah, Ga. where it was expected that the owner would complete her rigging. Instead, she sat in the yard for several years until Captain Philips and the Twelve Tribes discovered her. They bought her for a good price and set about making her seaworthy again.

The Peacemaker was built on a riverbank in southern Brazil by an Italian family of boat builders, using traditional methods and the finest tropical hardwoods. The ship was first launched in 1989 as the Avany, a name chosen by her designer and original owner, Frank Walker, a Brazilian industrialist. He planned to spend some time traveling aboard with his family, and then operate it as a charter vessel in the Caribbean.

After an initial voyage in the southern Atlantic, they brought the ship up through the Caribbean to Savannah, Georgia, where they intended to rig her as a three-masted staysail schooner. Other demands captured the attention of the Walker family for many years.

In the summer of 2000, it was purchased by the Twelve Tribes, a religious group with 50 or so communities in North and South America, Europe, and Australia.^[2] They spent the next seven years replacing all of the ship’s mechanical and electrical systems and rigging it as a barquentine. The refit vessel set sail for the first time in the spring of 2007, under the name Peacemaker.^[3]

The Peacemaker has a large deckhouse and spacious cabins finished in mahogany. It also has an innovative transom that can be lowered while in port to reveal a watertight bulkhead with two large doors opening into a cargo area and fully equipped workshop. The Peacemaker will be used to travel between the communities of the Twelve Tribes while providing an apprenticeship program for their youth in sailing, seamanship, navigation, and boat maintenance.

The ship has a United States Coast Guard attraction vessel permit and is available for festivals and dockside hospitality events.

Folks like Mr. Nap are disappearing

2011-03-04T09:51:00.000-08:00

**A Wonderful Article- If You have a Mr. Nap in your community, let him or her know how much they mean to you and your family**

History will little record the life of Nap Smith. And his like -- a family man, a faithful churchman, a small businessman and World War II veteran -- is rapidly disappearing these days.

However, through the people he touched in each one of those roles, his influence will be felt for years.

Smith, 92, died a week ago today, having been stilled suddenly after going outside on a bright, sunny winter day to putter in his garden.

At his memorial service at Northside Presbyterian Church this week, his pastor, the Rev. Ben Skidmore, described him as "always considerate, always loving, always responsible and detail-oriented" and having a "real sense of fun."

"Every time I see an American flag," another man said, conscious of the Arkansas native's service as a Navy radar officer in Washington, D.C., and the Pacific, "I think of Nap Smith."

"He always seemed to cheer you up," one woman said.

My life intersected with Smith's when I was a child and he was the owner of a toy store, Nap's Toys and Gifts.

Walking into the toy store was like walking into paradise. There were affordable items such as balsa wood airplanes. There were items you saved for, such as Matchbox cars. And there were the big-ticket items only Santa had access to such as the Big Bruiser tow truck.

But the possibilities, in the relatively tiny store, were endless. Items were on shelves, on walls, on the floor. Super balls, models, train sets for guys. Barbies and other dolls for girls. Games for both.

While Smith could put on a stern demeanor as a shopkeeper -- and with lots of little baby boomer rugrats running everywhere, he had a right to -- he also could display a twinkle in his eye.

Mr. Nap, as we called him, knew his customers, knew what they liked and knew what they wanted. I could just stick my head in the door to see if the newest Matchbox car had arrived, and he would tell me with a shake of the head or a few words so I didn't have to approach the rack where they were sold.

A woman at his memorial service said her young boys once ran in his store and came back to her with items she knew they couldn't have paid for.

"I think Nap gave them the toys," she said.

As time went on, Smith's beloved wife, Mary, began to have a small corner of the shop to sell knitting supplies. Eventually, her part grew and grew, and when they moved from the Dalewood shopping center where they'd been for a decade and a half, they opened two shops -- one for toys and one for knitting -- on Lee Highway.

Friends at his memorial service described a man who made furniture, who opened his store on Christmas Day to sell batteries to parents who'd forgotten to buy them, who greeted everyone at church after the service, who would stay with Interfaith Homeless Network guests when people decades younger wouldn't, who finally quit working on his roof at the age of 90.

His life, according to one man at the memorial service, "would have been a good movie."

As Smith's like continue to pass away, it's a movie we may wish we'd seen again and again.

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Anonymous. "Folks like Mr. Nap are disappearing." Chattanooga Times Free Press. . 2011. HighBeam Research. 4 Mar. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness

2011-02-28T16:51:00.000-08:00

What do I really want for my children? If you spend some time thinking about his question, your reply will almost certainly include one particular word, the simple, even silly-seeming word, happy. Most of us parents just want our children to be happy, now and forever. Oh, sure, we also want them to be good people; we want them to contribute to the world; we want them to care for others and lead responsible lives. But deep down, more than anything else, most of us want our children to be happy.

One way to define happiness is as a feeling that your life is going well. That feeling doesn't have to begin in childhood but it's a good place to start if you want it to become a habit that endures. One researcher studying the roots of happiness has concluded that "happiness is not something that happens to people but something that they make happen."

We can't control everything in our children's lives, but we can make sure that they learn the basics of the skill of happiness. When I say we, I mean both we as a society and we as individuals interested in the welfare of children. And the we's need to work together to plant the roots of adult happiness solidly in childhood.

As parents, we don't get unlimited time with our children to set down these roots. We get about fifteen years of real, at-home, muddy-river, big-dream, go-out-and-play, kiss-me goodnight, time-is-forever, I'll-never-die childhood. Recently I said to my youngest child, who had just turned six, "Tucker, could you try to find a way to grow up more slowly?"

So how can we protect children long enough for a good spell to be cast, letting the magic of childhood turn them into resilient and joyful adults? A whole new field of research into the ingredients of happinesshas sprouted in the past few decades (see the sidebar on this page). We now have a more solid idea of what can go right, not just wrong, what can be changed and what can't and what children need in order to stand the best chance of finding happiness later on.

The ability to create and sustain joy.

The capacity to deal with pain and adversity.

These are the childhood roots of adult happiness and here is what children need in order to thrive now and in the future.

Connection

Connection in the form of unconditional love from an adult, usually one or both parents, is the single most important root of adult happiness. When parents expect more than a child can deliver-when they imply, for example, "I love you but I would love you even more if you get an A"-they are raising children who feel that they can never please their parents, no matter what.

There are many other kinds of connection that, when combined, form an all but unshakable foundation on which you can build an entire life. They include family togetherness, positive connections to friends, neighborhood, school and community, sports, the arts and to a sense of the past. (See our Parenting page next month for an expansion of these ideas.)

Play

Many children these days spend too much time rushing from one lesson or "enriching" activity to the next without ever doing the single most enriching activity ever devised: play. Play builds the imagination. It teaches skills of problem solving and cooperation, the ability to tolerate frustration and the all important ability to fail. And a child who learns to play alone will never be lonely.

In addition when you play in your mind, you daydream, a special talent most children have and a crucial one. We chart our courses in our dreams. Dreams can also lead to or reinforce belief. The stronger your ability to play in your mind-to dream-the greater the likelihood that your beliefs won't begin crumbling as you grow older. Play generates joy and becomes its own reward.

Practice

Rare is the child who can ride a bike on the first try without falling off. But such is the allure of being able to ride that frustration becomes bearable. She might not enjoy practicing, but she will keep at it because she likes how the final result feels.

In addition as the child practices, he usually receives some help. Learning how to receive help through teaching or coaching is another important skill.

Mastery

After a certain amount of practice and discipline, a child will achieve the great feeling of mastery, "I can do it." Few feelings in life are any better than that. When a child masters something she couldn't do before, her self-esteem naturally rises, whether she receives praise or not. With mastery comes not only self-esteem but also confidence, leadership skills, initiative and an enduring desire to work hard.

Recognition

Each act of mastery leads to recognition and approval by an ever-widening circle of people. When who the child truly is coincides with what the larger group values, this reinforces a child's desire to do well as well as her or his sense of mastery, of belonging and of contributing. If you feel recognized and valued by a larger group, you will feel connected to that larger group and you will want to do right by that group. This feeling of genuine connectedness to a larger group is the root of moral behavior.

-Adapted from the author's new book The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness (see page 8).

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Hallowell, Edward. "The Childhood Roots of Adult Happiness." Work & Family Life. Work and Family Life. 2003.HighBeam Research. 28 Feb. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

TAKE YOUR FAMILY FISHING FOR BREAM

2011-02-06T09:15:00.000-08:00

Many anglers will tell you that the first fish they ever caught was a bream -making it a good bet that if you teach someone to fish, that may be the first thing they catch. Not a bad thing, considering that members of the bream (sunfish) family are among the most widely distributed fish in the state, according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, Wildlife Resources Division (WRD). The bream family includes bluegill, redear sunfish (also called "shellcrackers") and redbreast sunfish.
"This time of year is a great time to try bream fishing because these species move into shallow water and become more active and easier to catch," say WRD Chief of Fisheries Management Chuck Coomer. "They also put up a good fight and even better, they are good on the dinner plate."
Beginner bream anglers should start out with equipment that is simple and easy to use, such as light to medium rods with light spin-cast reels or medium size open-face spinning gear with 6-8 pound test line. Cane or fiberglass poles with small hooks (size 8-10), small split shot and a float also work well. Baits and lures to consider are small spinners, small 1/16 to 1/8 ounce jigs, beetle spins and live bait (crickets, meal worms and earth worms) fished under a small float. For those who use fly rods, popping bugs, wet flies and small spinner-fly combinations are effective. One especially effective fly rod lure is a small (size 10) sponge rubber spider with rubber band legs. It is best to fish bait on the bottom for shellcrackers while bluegill prefer baits suspended off the bottom.
This time of year brings bream towards shallow waters (less than five feet deep) as they search for places to spawn. This includes the backs of major creeks, downstream end of sandbars, small coves and points off the main lake. Bream are attracted to natural shoreline cover (fallen trees, stumps, rocks and vegetation) and artificial cover (boat docks, fish attractors). Look for bream beds -plate-sized, bowl-shaped depressions in shallow water where adult fish will stay for extended periods of time.
Good bream fishing can be found throughout Georgia, including the following hot spots: Rocky Mountain Recreation and Public Fishing Area (PFA), Lake Russell, Lake Rabun, Buford Hatchery Kids Pond, Clarks Hill Lake, McDuffie PFA, Lake Oliver, Goat Rock Lake, Big Lazer PFA, Charlie Elliott Wildlife Center, High Falls Lake, Lake Juliette, Lake Jackson, Hamburg State Park, Lake Blackshear, Lake Seminole, Hugh Gillis PFA and the Satilla, St. Mary's, Altamaha, Ochlocknee, Flint and Ocmulgee rivers.
Take Me Fishing! A recent national survey indicated that 87 percent of Americans believe fishing and boating have a positive effect on family relationships. So take your family fishing and you will always have something in common.
For more information on bream fishing in Georgia, visit www.gofishgeorgia.com .

"TAKE YOUR FAMILY FISHING FOR BREAM." US Fed News Service, Including US State News. HT Media Ltd. 2007. HighBeam Research. 6 Feb. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum

2011-01-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

In The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum, Don Howard Dean documents sugar mills and the Americans who made and sold them in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In Part 1, he reviews the botanical history of sugarcane and sorghum and the technological history of mills that pressed the sucrose-rich fluid from the stalks. Part 2, a catalog of American cane mill manufacturers, makes up most of the text. This section consists of alphabetically arranged business histories illustrated with sales catalog pages and patent drawings. Photographs depict artifacts in the author's and others' collections and those literally rusting in fields. Dean even includes firms he only suspects of making or patenting sugar mills. The result is a compendium that will both delight and frustrate historians.
Dean tracks the movement of sugarcane and sorghum from the Eastern Hemisphere to American kitchens. He finds that sugar from evaporated cane juice was first made in India about 1000 bce. Tracing sugarcane's diffusion through the East and the Arab empire, Dean then describes its transfer from the Mediterranean Sea basin to the Atlantic islands and the Americas. His use of a sixteenth-century etching of sugar workers, likely Slavic slaves, on a Mediterranean plantation demonstrates his appreciation of the transfers, but he delegates to others the examination of the tragedies attendant to the industry. To sugar's five centuries of history in the Americas, sorghum's compares with five decades. French and British agriculturists introduced the grain to the United States in the 1 850s. It flourished in the Midwest before migrating south in the 1880s when production began to wane. By the 1890s it was considered marginal as a source of sucrose.
A chapter on the methods used to extract the fluid from these plants follows. Humans first chewed the stalk and pounded it with pestles or hammers; later devices involved pressing, first with horizontal rollers and then horizontal presses. The vertical roller mill - what Dean calls "the greatest single advancement in the sugar industry" - became the prevailing extractor (p. 39). After reviewing the secondary literature on this technology's origins, Dean agrees with those who find cognates in the Indian roller cotton gin but believe that seventeenth-century China was the source. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, mills evolved at the hands of Europeans, Americans, and Asians. Millwrights built models with two and three rollers made of wood and, later, iron, arranged them in straight and triangular formations, and powered them by wind, water, animals, and eventually steam.
In Part 2, Dean intends to catalog American foundries that made sugar mills but documents a larger legacy instead. Of the more than 160 companies profiled, only about one-fifth were firms that specialized in sugar mill production. The rest also provided other indispensable tools and machines, including mills, to farmers, artisans, and householders. Collectors and historians will appreciate the inclusiveness but will regret the absence of citations for quotations, references, and illustrations. Nevertheless, the book, published posthumously, admirably chronicles American sugar mills and American industry.
[Author Affiliation]
Auburn University ANGELA LAKWETE

Lakwete, Angela. "The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum." The Journal of Southern History. Southern Historical Association. 2010. HighBeam Research. 16 Jan. 2011 <http://www.highbeam.com>.

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TAKE YOUR FAMILY FISHING FOR BREAM

The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum

Used to shop at sears on this site while a student at georgia tech, great to hear its being redeveloped!