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Dear Old Friend, It was wholly a pleasure to hear your theory about where the South ends, probably because any theory about the South will get a conversation going around dinner tables, at barber shops, in graduate seminars on Southern history, and just about anywhere else in these talkative latitudes. Your theory is that the South ends where the last monument to the Confederate soldier can be seen. This would mean that Bentonville, up in the far northwest corner of Arkansas, and known far and wide as the capital of Wal-Mart, qualifies as Southern. This might comes as a surprise,...

onathan Bray, one of the organizers of Southern Decadence, a celebration that has become known as the gay Mardi Gras, spent his time this week getting ready for the big party and watching weather reports. "I looked out in the Gulf and didn't see a storm," Bray said. "No Katrina, no Gustav. I'm so happy." In the almost four decades since it started, Southern Decadence has become a traditional Labor Day weekend, end-of-summer, event. But for two of the last four years, hurricanes crashed the French Quarter-centered party. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Gustav last year both generated evacuation orders...

The fallout from Senator Voinovich insulting conservative Senators DeMint and Coburn has been huge, echoing throughout the blogosphere and cable news. In response, Senator DeMint was far more gracious and polite about Ohio’s senile Senator than he had to be. What a classy guy: And so Wolf Blitzer asked DeMint about it on CNN this afternoon: “I wonder what you want to say to Sen. George Voinovich,” Blitzer asked. Said DeMint: “Well, he is apparently very frustrated. He has decided not to run again. And I don’t mind him taking out his frustrations on me. “But the fact is, if...

Y'all gotta watch this speech!

My oh my, what would the critics, the Civil War publications, publishers, and bloggers do if it weren't for the bad boys of the Confederacy and those who study them and also those who wish to honor their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy?

David Powell is a retired civil engineer who has resided in Pasadena for the past 37 years. He is a 1949 graduate of Caltech. His engineering career of nearly 40 years with Bookman-Edmonston Engineering was largely involved in the planning of public works projects, including project formulation, evaluation of alternatives (including economic evaluation), preparation of project reports, development of financing programs and related activities. A few thoughts on California water issues from one who had a reasonably responsible forty-year career a a water engineer and water engineering executive. I also can claim some familiarly with Pasadena, having lived in the...

Now comes Time Magazine with a piece saying that Calvinism is back as a dominating force in American culture. What does this mean for our future, politically and culturally. . .

A few months ago, another Civil War blogger mocked my contention that the South remains the last great bastion of Judeo-Christian conservatism in the United States, even though poll after poll shows that to be the truth - the South is still the "Bible Belt." Now comes this story . . .

"Today the division is no longer between slave and free states, or agrarian and industrial states, but between two models of industrial society — the Northern model, based on adequate public service funding and taxation and unionization, [also known as "bankrupt & failed"] and the Southern model, based on low-tax, low-service government and low-wage, non-unionized, [also known as "profitable & successful"] easily exploited labor . . . " It should be pointed out that Mr. Lind has made South-bashing one of his favorite pass-times, so his idiotic, socialist rant is not surprising. . .

Two news reports point to the clear and present danger the deteriorating situation in Mexico poses to our nation and our citizens. The first article, "U.S. Plans Border ‘Surge’ Against Any Drug Wars" appears in today's edition of the New York Times, while the second article, "Obama faces Mexican drug war" was published in the Washington Times last week, on January 2nd. In my judgement, the deteriorating situation in Mexico can be traced back to the relative ease with which the drug cartels were able to move people and narcotics into the United States because our nation's "leaders" have been...

<p>NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Snow is falling in the New Orleans area.</p> <p>The National Weather Service says a mixture of sleet and snow is falling Thursday morning from Baton Rouge east across much of southeastern Louisiana.</p> <p>The winter weather closed some schools and created hazardous driving conditions.</p>

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA - December 8, 2008 (OWSweather.com) Rare 50 year Arctic Blast Sets Sights On Southern California. With a week away, and a sure sign of things to come, OWSweather.com is making preparations on the server to handle the traffic from this next event. UJEAS is in line with the majority if not all the other models in keeping a near historical arctic air mass into the Southern California region. With a warm November, Southern California is finally ready for cold storms to make their way in. Resort level snow will be likely next week, and in pretty hefty amounts...

Some people ask who Studs Terkel who died last week was. Should it surprise you that some people don’t recognize the name of Terkel? To a greater surprise and shame should be the fact many folks don't know who George Washington, George Washington Carver or Robert E. Lee was. Would it surprise that some people don’t even know what the “War Between the States”, also called Civil War in the North, was about? There are some who cannot even name the men who served as president of the Union or Confederacy during that tragic war. There was a time when...

DACULA - As the famous twang of Hank Williams Jr. blasted from an SUV stereo Friday afternoon, about 30 folks socialized, sipped soda and puffed on cigarettes. No, this wasn't a Fourth of July backyard barbecue. It was the run-up to a wedding. In a Waffle House parking lot. The lucky couple, George "Bubba" Mathis and Pamela Christian - both 23 and employees at the Dacula diner located at the Ga. Highway 316/U.S. Highway 29 interchange - wouldn't have it any other way. "I don't know, it's something different," Mathis said while fixing his tie prior to the ceremony. For...

“All the illegal border crossings are down. It looks like the border patrol is doing their job. There’s really no need for a wall like that,” said Mark Abeyta from east El Paso. The El Paso sector has reported that they have apprehended 25,500 illegal border crossers during the first nine months of this fiscal year. This is the lowest since 2000, and it was made possible because of more barriers, increased agents and the zero-tolerance policies. Currently the Department of Homeland Security has completed around 300 miles of pedestrian and vehicle fencing and they expect to have a total...

At the outbreak of the War Between the States, a group of young men who were students at Washington College formed a military company that eventually would become part of the legendary "Stonewall Brigade."

The song is rich with rural, Southern themes. The upbeat melody combined with the sawing fiddles sets the song's mood perfectly. For those of us who grew up in the South, attached to a local church, a close-knit family whose connection to the land is generational, while immersed in the region's hard-core patriotism, it would be hard to imagine a song better suited to voice these sentiments: "Son of a farmer", - "daddy's daddy", - "working on the land", - "married up and settled down", - "pretty daughters", - "a house built with his own hands", - "keep his family...

All I want for Christmas is for Christians to listen to what Mike Huckabee says, rather than what the media say about him. The mainstream media keep flogging Huckabee for being a Christian, apparently unaware that this "God" fellow is testing through the roof in focus groups.

Bobby Jindal won tonight. I may live in Georgia now, but I'm Louisianian through and through. This is historic. No one has ever won a gubernatorial primary outright in Louisiana until tonight. I cannot really express what this means to me. It's like how the exiled English felt when Mary I died and Elizabeth was crowned. It was safe to go home again. If you don't live in Louisiana, you have no clue what it is like. You may think you do, but you don't. You make think your state sucks, but it doesn't really compared to Louisiana. Louisiana sucks...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Wednesday the Senate should apologize for slavery and segregation, calling them “dark chapters in our history.” McCain said he would support a planned resolution by fellow Republican Sen. Sam Brownback, who is also seeking the presidency, to apologize for racist laws, some of which ended more than a century ago. “They were federal policies,” Brownback told the Boston Globe on Monday. “They were wrong. The only way for us to move forward . . . is at the end of the day acknowledging those, taking ownership for it, and asking for forgiveness.” McCain agreed...

2007 ANNUAL MEETING October 17-19, 2007 The Cornhusker Marriott Lincoln, Nebraska The General Session will be held on Thursday, October 18th in Ballroom DEF1 from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. MORRIS DEES is this year's featured speaker. In 1967, lawyer Morris Dees had achieved extraordinary business and financial success with his book publishing company. The son of an Alabama farmer, he witnessed firsthand the painful consequences of prejudice and racial injustice. He sympathized with the Civil Rights Movement but had not become actively involved. A night of soul searching at a snowed-in Cincinnati airport changed his life, inspiring Dees to leave...

KISSIMMEE -- Nelson Winbush rotates a miniature flag holder he keeps on his mantel, imagining how the banners would appear in a Civil War battle. The Stars and Bars, he explains, looked too much like the Union flag to prevent friendly fire. The Confederacy responded by fashioning the distinctive Southern Cross -- better known as the rebel flag. Winbush, 78, is a retired assistant principal with a master's degree, a thoughtful man whose world view developed from listening to his grandfather's stories about serving the South in the "War Between the States." His grandfather's casket was draped with a Confederate...

AMERICANA, Brazil Now well past 90, Judith MacKnight Jones is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the illness that robbed her of all of her memory, her most precious asset. She has been lying here for the past 11 years, covered by a patchwork blanket, made from pieces her great-grandmother brought from the United States between 1865 and 1885, after the Confederacy lost the Civil War. Unable to speak or remember now, her book "Soldado Descanso" ("Rest Soldier") is written in Portuguese, but soon will be translated into English, as the publisher thinks Americans should know about the proud history of Confederate...

Few parts of the world are as loved and loathed with the intensity that is felt for the American South. Thanks to a long line of contributions to the popular culture from Gone with the Wind to Borat, via Deliverance, Dixie, the great muggy swath of the southeastern United States, from Washington DC to Texas, has a firm grip on the imagination of Americans and foreigners alike. To its detractors it is a terrifying and contemptible land full of racist rednecks, Bible-toting hypocrites and downtrodden blacks. To those of a more romantic disposition, and certainly to most of its inhabitants,...

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary offers coursework in Greek and Hebrew, in archaeology, in the philosophy of religion and _ starting this fall _ in how to cook and sew. One of the nation's largest Southern Baptist seminaries, the school is introducing a new, women-only academic program in homemaking _ a 23-hour concentration that counts toward a bachelor of arts degree in humanities. The program is aimed at helping establish what Southwestern's president calls biblical family and gender roles. Coursework will include seven hours of nutrition and meal preparation, seven hours of textile design and "clothing...

More than 140 years after the Civil War ended, a Mason-Dixon line of sorts still persists when it comes to iced tea. Order an iced tea at a restaurant in the Deep South or Texas, and the frosty beverage set before you likely will be a world away from what you’d be served in New York or Chicago. Sweet tea, as Southerners call their iced tea, is named for its two key ingredients – tea and lots of sugar. There’s no such thing as an unsweetened sweet tea. And unlike its summer-loving Northern counterpart, sweet tea is consumed year-round. “About...

US in thrall to southern drawl By Alex Spillius in Washington Last Updated: 2:21am BST 11/06/2007 To British ears, an American southern accent carries connotations of cowboys and country singers, but in the US it signals something quite different: political success. Ronald Reagan was not southern but possessed home-baked charm Four of the last five US presidents have been southerners, and the only exception, Ronald Reagan, possessed the demonstrably southern virtues of straight talking and home-baked charm. But in the early stages of the competition to succeed George W Bush neither the Republican nor Democrat parties boast a bona fide...

Jesse Rae Beard is one of the 'Jena Six' students on trial This World investigates the rise of discrimination in America's deep south as six black youths are charged with an alleged attack on a white student, which could see them jailed for up to 50 years. Three rope nooses hanging from a tree in the courtyard of a school in a small Southern town in Louisiana have sparked fears of a new kind of "stealth" racism spreading through America's deep south. Although this sinister episode happened last August, the repercussions have been extensive and today the town of...

A local woman thought getting a cake decorated would be simple. However, she ran into some problems she didn't expect, when she approached different bakeries. Connie Ansley is part of the Daughters of the Confederacy. She wanted a cake with the Confederate emblem on it, for the opening of a new memorial museum. Ansley says several big chain stores refused to decorate a cake with a confederate flag on it. They told her it was because of the emblem, which some consider a symbol of racism and slavery. "It's a constant battle we fight every day to keep our heritage,"...

For a taste of the old South, you can attend a Civil War battle re-enactment. Or you can visit Bob Jones University in Greenville, S.C. This fundamentalist school - catchphrase: "Brains are no substitute for God" - forbade interracial dating among its students until 2000. The place is easy to mock, and people often do. The Bob Jones rulebook bans all the things that other students think make college fun: booze, cigarettes, fornication. Mark Lopez, one of the 4,200 smartly dressed and unfailingly polite students at Bob Jones, says he applied there because he wanted to study "conservative Christian music":...

Source: American Chemical Society Date: March 5, 2007 Elevated Arsenic Levels Reported In Rice Grown In South Central States Science Daily — The largest market basket survey of the arsenic content of rice grown in the United States has found elevated levels of arsenic in rice produced in the South Central part of the country, scientists report in an article scheduled for the April 1 issue of ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology, a semi-monthly journal. The University of Aberdeen’s A. A. Meharg and colleagues did the study, which involved analyses of rice purchased at U. S. supermarkets. A previous study...

US denies southern Somali attacks UN officials fear the air strikes could lead to an escalation of hostilities US forces say they have carried out no fresh air strikes in southern Somalia against Islamist fighters since Monday. Residents in Afmadow town, north of Kismayo, have described two attacks, whilst another was reported by Somalis in the coastal area of Ras Kamboni. Reports suggest Ethiopian MiG fighters and helicopter gunships seen in the city of Kismayo may be involved. There has been considerable criticism of the US after its first overt military action in Somalia since 1994. The Pentagon confirmed that...

The organizers of the Miss USA pageant said Thursday they are evaluating the "behavioral and personal issues" of the reigning winner and will decide her future within a week. Pageant officials and Donald Trump, who co-owns the Miss Universe Organization with NBC, would not say what Kentucky native Tara Conner, 20, had done to prompt the serious evaluation. "I can't really talk about it now," Trump said. "But we have to make a decision. There is no question about that." Internet gossip Web site TMZ.com reported that pageant officials and NBC met Tuesday to discuss Conner's alleged bad behavior, "including...

Southern Ocean Could Slow Global Warming The Southern Ocean may slow the rate of global warming by absorbing significantly more heat and carbon dioxide than previously thought, according to new research. This image shows the oceans and continents that surround Antarctica. The tip of South America is on the upper left, the tip of Africa is at the upper right and Australia is at the bottom right. The ocean colors indicate temperature, with the darkest blue indicating the coldest water. The black arrows show the direction the Southern Hemisphere westerly winds and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current take as they swirl...

1. "Strange Fruit" -- Billie Holiday (1939). Atrocity becomes bitter poetry in this anti-lynching song written by a Jewish schoolteacher and union activist from New York named Abel Meeropol (aka Lewis Allan). When Billie Holiday took it on, it became one of the most powerful pieces of popular music ever recorded. The chilling images are made even more horrifying by Holiday's reportorial, matter-of-fact delivery.2. "Summertime" -- written by George and Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward (1935). Our favorite version is by jazz goddess Sarah Vaughan, who sings smooth and slow, capturing the pace of life in a land where time...

Vandals pour paint on Elamite bas-reliefs in southern Iran Tehran Times Culture Desk TEHRAN -- Unidentified men have poured paint on the bas-reliefs of the Elamite Tarisha Temple in the Izeh region of Khuzestan Province, the Persian service of CHN reported on Sunday. In response, the Izeh Cultural Heritage Lovers Society has asked Iranian cultural officials to mobilize security guard teams for the Tarisha Temple, which is also known as Eshkaft-e Salman, and for the nearby Kul-Farah site. The security detail for Izeh’s ancient sites has no means to defend themselves or the ancient sites, society chairman Faramarz Khoshab told...

If you've ever read Willie Morris' My Dog Skip, or seen the movie, then you know a great deal about my own youth, growing up in the Deep South. My hometown was not unlike many small towns across the South, and the similarities between Morris' Yazoo City are many. Other than the technological differences between the 1940's and the 1960's, only the backdrop of the American Civil Rights Struggle, and the War in Viet Nam provide the more significant differences between the two periods. As I write this, I remember the shoot 'em up games that boys often play: Cowboys...

Although my days of overplaying my Beach Boys albums are over, whenever I happen to catch California Girls, I completely ignore that Mike Love wishes all girls were cute, tan Californian girls. Instead, I take pride in my geographical origin and grin at "The northern girls with they way they kiss, they keep their boyfriends warm at night." I have lived in the state of New York my whole life, and although I often joke that I went south for school, Penn State, with its copious amounts of colorful trees surrounding old collegiate buildings, couldn't possibly exude the northern university...

The group Sons of Confederate Veterans met at Orlando's Lake Eola Park to show off their proposed personalized tag late Friday morning. They said it's simply a matter of time before the plate becomes one of the many you can purchase as a specialty license plate. The group said the plate honors Florida's heritage by showing all five flags of the confederate army, including their battle flag. But it's a heritage some say simply represents hate. Standing below the memorial for confederate soldiers, a small but vocal group made their point Friday. They want Floridians to learn that the Civil...

WASHINGTON, August 6, 2006 – The NATO force in southern Afghanistan has met resistance from the Taliban and other criminal elements, but the force remains committed to establishing a safe and secure environment in the region, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe said Aug. 4. “NATO's operations in the southern region are focused on establishing a safe and secure environment in order to permit the government and international aid organizations to bring elements of reconstruction and hope for a better future to this region,” U.S. Marine Gen. James L. Jones, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe and commander of U.S. European Command,...

No matter. Scene suggests the best in Southern songs, books and fried food Is Southern culture on the skids? We think not. In fact, with wrastlin' in Newberry this weekend and that artsy-fartsy Hippodrome State Theatre rompin' through Starke and gettin' all jiggy in single-wides, there never has been a better time to revel in the gritty guilty pleasures of the blue-collar South, even if your collar is white, starched, sweaty or splattered with strawberry jelly tossed by youngins chowin' down on frosted, generic-brand breakfast pastry treats (or "Pop-Tarts" brand pastry rectangles for special occasions). So you want some Southern-fried...

She was called the diarist, the grande dame, the confidante of the Civil War. She moved in the highest circles, and was personally acquainted with Varina Davis, wife of the president of the Confederacy. Mary Boykin Chesnut was all that and more: She brought the war to life as did no other of the time. For her writings and her insight at the most critical time in the history of the United States, she is a heroine of the Confederacy. She was born to Southern aristocracy: Her father was Stephen Decatur Miller, a lawyer and later governor of South Carolina...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Israeli troops sealed off a Hezbollah stronghold Tuesday and widened their foothold in southern Lebanon, but officials said Israeli bombs killed six people in a south Lebanon town and two U.N. observers in a border outpost with two other peacekeepers feared dead. Two weeks into the war, a senior Hezbollah leader said the guerrillas had not expected such an Israeli onslaught when they snatched two Israeli soldiers July 12. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other key Mideast players gathered in Rome for a meeting Wednesday to discuss proposals for ending the fighting that has claimed more...

WASHINGTON, July 20, 2006 – A total of 341 Americans successfully convoyed out of southern Lebanon and are shipping out of Beirut harbor for Cyprus, State Department officials said today. Maura Harty, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, said the bus convoy got the Americans to the harbor, where they are boarding the Orient Queen cruise ship. They are among the 2,250 Americans that left Lebanon today. "That brings the total of assisted departures to 3,850, and there are another 400 people our embassy in Damascus has confirmed have made it out by land to Syria," Harty said during...

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 19, 2006 – Afghan and coalition forces reasserted authority in two villages reported to be under Taliban control in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, military officials reported. The combined forces moved into the village of Narwa in the Nawa Barakzayee district yesterday, meeting no resistance and finding no Taliban extremists. There were no indications of damage or violence as the village was secured. Although media sources had reported the Taliban was in control of Narwa, village elders said a group of Taliban had been in the village, but had since left the area well before Afghan...

Posted on Mon, Jul. 17 Matera: A southern Italian town revives its ancient cave dwellings By Carol Pucci The Seattle Times (MCT) MATERA, Italy - Nicola Rizzi stands in front of his boyhood home where chickens and ducks used to wander, closes his eyes and smells bean soup and tomato sauce boiling on pots heated by wood fires. He was 11, a survivor in a neighborhood of windowless caves and damp walls, where animals and humans slept side-by-side and half the children born there died, among them three of his brothers and sisters. Mostly though, Rizzi remembers the smell of...

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 11, 2006 – Violence in southern Afghanistan is caused not just by militant extremists, but also by regional issues such as a lack of governance, the U.S. general in charge of coalition troops in Afghanistan said today. The Afghan government has not traditionally had strength and presence in certain provinces in southern Afghanistan, so the Taliban can easily gain strength, Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, commander of Combined Forces Command Afghanistan, told reporters in Tajikistan before boarding a flight here with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "It's not a question of the enemy being strong; it's very...

NEW ORLEANS - After most of New Orleans sat submerged in water for weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the eight months since Oct. 1 have been the driest southern Louisiana has been during the 111 years that records have been kept, the state climatologist says. Since October, most of the southern half of the state has averaged just 21 inches of rain, down from the usual 40-inch average, climatologist Barry Keim said. The National Weather Service says the rest of June promises more of the same. "We're in what's called extreme drought," Keim said of the state's record-breaking dry spell. "We've...

A kiss is just a kiss unless it's inflicted! It's that time of year, again, when experts have a warning about the desert-dwelling "kissing bug." It's a blood-sucking insect that can cause life-threatening reactions in some of us. "That's disgusting." "No, I've never heard of it." "Don't want any kissing bugs going in my mouth." No matter who we talked to around town, the kissing bug was not very popular. Just what is a ‘kissing bug?' "They are blood parasites that must suck the blood of other animals in order to survive." Doctor Leslie Boyer is the Medical Director of...