Updating the Lexicon

I'm compiling a new family of words post-Katrina. Most of them, I'm happy to say, are imbued with the Rabelaisian wit you'd expect from New Orleanians.

Hurrication
Katrina-Break
Re-beer (as in reopening Dixie Brewery)

More to come.
Listen to the Bruno's attempt to revive Dixie here. I got discombobulated the other day and asked for an Old Style in Athens, Georgia. The keep looked at me as though I were speaking Greek.

Stirring the Pot?

OK, it's definitely on the level of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," but could Chuck Berry's "Promised Land" be considered a genuine Civil Rights song? The narrator would like nothing better than to get the heck out of the South and to Southern California. Your bus breaking down in Birmingham might be more problematic than it seems at first. And there's a reason you might want to get across "Mississippi clean." I'm just saying.

Listen to ol' Chuck below. I'm also including Otis Redding's version of "Change," my favorite, although Aretha's burns a pretty bright flame.

From His Best, Vol. 2:


From Otis Blue:

Foodies

From Georgia Organics' The Dirt, Spring 2007:

Ivey Doyal hits a home run in the Spring issue, articulating perspicuously what I've been pounding at for a year:

"The subsidies guarantee that, despite an almost continual surplus of commodities that drives market value down until it is well below the cost of production, farmers will continue to grow them in greater quantities year after year in order to get their government check. In other words, farmers are being compensated by the American taxpayer to grow something we do not want and cannot use. Is this what Americans have in mind when they praise the free market?"

Also, from "Seeds of Change in the 2007 Farm Bill":

"The wealthiest 10% of farmers receive 72% of all direct payment subsidies, and according to the USDA's own economic report from March 2006, '93% of farm households have negative farm operating profits, on average, and draw most of their income from off-farm sources."

"As a result of chemical use and long distance food transportation, our agriculture industry now consumes 1/5 of the total oil used in the United States."

Guess what, we're about to become a net importer of food. "We are importing vegetables and fruits from across the globe while we waste valuable farmland here growing crops that don't make fiscal or ecological sense. At the same time, small-scale farmers struggle to make their enterprises viable because there is no infrastructure to sell their food to their neighbors, an issue which the farm bill should address."

Suzanne Welander illustrates just how that last bit about markets is relevant to us Georgians: "Based on figures from the end of 2006, no other state has fewer farmers' markets per million residents, and only Delaware and Alaska have fewer total markets than Georgia. Based on market activity in cities of similar size, Atlanta alone has the potential for supporting three times the number of farmers' markets."

The 2007 Farm Bill is being debated in Congress right now.

Cavilling We Will Go

"Known in Latin as Phaselous vulgaris L., soup beans are, along with cornbread, a first choice, winter choice, a traditional Appalachian food."
Mark Sohn, "Soup Beans: An Appalachian Tradition" from Gravy #24

Sohn waxes on about the mountains, Harlan, and the mystical relationship with soup beans. I've got no big objection, just that I'm not from Kentucky and I wouldn't necessarily consider myself Appalachian—foothills, maybe. Nevertheless, I've grown up on soup beans, yes, "served with cornbread, chopped onions, and long-cooked greens." (Let's add some sliced tomatoes to the table.) Soup beans, or pinto beans, are the staple of my step-mama's chili.

Why don't you join me at the Festival of Mountain Masters this November 24-25 in Harlan, Kentucky to iron everything out? And don't forget the SFA's A Memphis Barbecue Adventure the second week of September.

By the way, inveigle, as in I'm going to inveigle your last piece of sopping cornbread from you. Just wanted to use the word finally.

The Best Quote from a Recent Children's Book

I'm about to recommence the blog and initiate a spate of New Orleans-centered posts. First, I've got to tend to the rubbage heap, picking through the cultural detritus I've been storing up.

The following selection comes from The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron, winner of the Newbery Medal. Listening against the wall, the protagonist Lucky hears another character say that he saw a rattlesnake bite his dog, Roy, on the scrotum (the pronouns are confusing)....

"Scrotum sounded to Lucky like something green that comes up when you have the flu and cough too much. It sounded medical and secret, but also important."

No accompanying picture. Never ever execute an image-search for scrotum, I'm serious as a heart-attack.

P.S. The new Oxford American is out, and you can find my ode to Plum St. Snoballs at your nearest retailer of fine curios and literary sundries near you.

More Juvenile

Quiz. Before or after the storm?

Juvenile Crosses His T's

We're back from New Orleans. Pics and stories to come.