The Crab Chronicles

Observations About the South

My grandmother Memaw Hasty was from a wealthy family in Marietta, Georgia, but she loved pig's feet. That always seemed really bizarre to me. How could someone who never went out in public without wearing a corset and full makeup love to eat pig's feet?

She would correct improper English in a heartbeat but she liked to eat pigs feet.

I realized that her love of pig's feet makes her a unique person right about the time I realized that Southern stereotypes abound in books and movies, and if we are going to dispel them, we best get busy. Makes me want to pitch a fit, just thinking about it. Or I might need to have a tantrum. Or throw a hissy fit. Pick your favorite. [right, Memaw as a young girl in a tree]

The New York Times published an article yesterday entitled Is It Southern Food, or Soul Food? and it's a pretty provocative article, albeit one that makes a lot of observations without really delving very deeply into them. Take a minute to read it. 

I love this: "A lot of Southern cooking comes from just figuring out how to keep things from spoiling in the heat." So true. It's hotter in the summer here. Southern cooking, like everything else, evolves. Most buildings are air-conditioned now, thank God. So we can cook a pan of biscuits in the middle of the day without fainting.

"You had to know how to clean a fish or kill a squirrel" is another great quote from the article. So true. My dad used to talk about eating squirrel, or brains, or other things I wouldn't touch. My Thompson grandfather shepherded his family through the Depression really well, though, and his kids always had food [he owned a country store] and shoes for school [he would go into Augusta sometimes and hustle pool for money]. Southern life fifty or a hundred years ago wasn't just about dealing with hot weather, it was about survival, especially in the late 19th century after the devastation of Reconstruction. 

Food stereotypes are hard to dislodge, but there are other stereotypes equally as annoying to southerners.

So are southerners more lazy because of the heat? You normally don't see southerners out running in 90 degree heat in the middle of the day. I've known my whole life that in the summer it's best to stay indoors or at the pool or lake in the middle of a summer day. There is a stereotype, however, that we are lazy because we let the heat slow us down, but not everyone fits that. My father used to try and mow the lawn in the middle of the day and he got heat exhaustion several times, and came close to heat stroke. Common sense had nothing to do with it. 

I don't think we are lazy, just because we don't have to shovel snow all winter. Are all New Englanders thrifty and industrious, as movies would have us believe? I doubt it.  Is everyone in California a pot-smoking, aged hippie? I've never been there but I doubt it.

In my mind stereotypes are fun to joke about but they can also be harmful. I always wonder when I apply to work for a company outside the south if I am perceived as a dullard or a jerk.

The other stereotype I encounter all the time is that Southerners are portrayed in movies as usually evil or stupid. I was watching the movie Kingsmen: The Golden Circle recently, and enjoying it, and the character of the US president, played by Bruce Greenwood, was as southern as fried chicken [based on his awful accent] and an utter jerk. The character played by Channing Tatum wasn't much better, although he was more idiotic than evil.

It's gotten to where when I am watching a movie and the bad guy character is introduced I am waiting to hear if he has a British accent or a redneck one. The British accent usually happens in the higher-budget movies, just FYI. 

One of my favorite movies is Forrest Gump, but the chief annoyance there is that so many of the Southern characters are either stupid or mean. The nicest character, in the long run, is Captain Dan, because he takes care of Forrest financially for the rest of his life, and of course Captain Dan was not southern.

I remember trying to watch the movie Cape Fear, years ago, and I found the southern bad guy so annoying I turned the movie off because the bad guy was both stupid AND evil.

The final stereotype I want to address is that all southerners are racist. The south is a very culturally diverse place and if we are all racists, why are so many African Americans moving back to the south? Why are there so many Hispanic people here, and Asians? Turn on any TV station in the South and you will see a lot of brown faces. 

Tyler Perry is a southern guy and a brilliant writer/filmmaker and he chose to build his new state of the art studio in suburban Atlanta.

I am always amazed when non-southerners come here for a visit, or even live here for a few years, and presume to know everything there is to know about us. If I did the same thing with any other region and tried to hold myself out as an expert after only a short time there, it would be laughable.

The longest I've ever lived outside the south was the 3+ weeks I spent in Kazakhstan adopting my son. Does that make me an expert on Kazakh culture?

Lord no.

How do we combat the insane notions that outsiders have about us?

I keep plugging away, writing novels, that hopefully one day will be turned into movies, and maybe in some small way I can dispel the ridiculous stereotypes about the south. We are all different races. We are good folks and bad folks. We are rednecks and we are high falutin' folks. We like NASCAR and we like museums. We eat fried chicken and sushi.

Most of our teenagers don't even sound Southern any more, because of TV and movies and the influx of folks from other places. 

I am not alone in my quest to end the stereotypes. Others have paved the way for me.

National publications like Bloomberg have noticed others are moving here all the time, as evidenced by New Yorkers Flock to Booming Sunbelt as Trek South Resumes. If we were all all evil redneck idiots I doubt anyone would want to move here.

My friend Chuck Reece over at The Bitter Southerner is destroying stereotypes right and left. He was featured recently in Meet the 31 People Who Are Changing the South, in Time magazine.

This guy below, Andy Griffith, is my hero. He built a career on actually using the southerners-are-idiots stereotype to his advantage. Every time a city slicker went to Mayberry and tried to best Andy he showed them he wasn't an idiot. Ditto for Matlock. He looked like a stupid country redneck lawyer but he always won because non-southerners underestimated him.

So what can be done? I don't know the full answer to that. I plan to keep writing about the South, and embracing the wonderful things about this place I love, and I will try not to vent too much about how we're portrayed in the media -- just enough to stay sane, not sound too bitter.

Y'all be sweet, and stay in the air conditioning.

Living History

There is an African proverb that goes, "When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground." I was thinking about that because my mom has several friends who will turn 90 this fall, and they are still lucid and active, and filled with wisdom and insights. If I live to be 90 that's how I want to be -- still vital and engaged in life, despite slowing down physically. 

My 84 year old mom knows a lot of things I don't know. I know things millennials don't know. I watched a funny video of a bunch of young teenagers trying to figure out how to use a rotary dial phone. They had never used one before. 

To be fair, if you handed me the type of phone used in the 1930's I wouldn't know how to use it. My mother has laughed recalling the old "party line" days where several people shared a phone line and you had to wait your turn to make a call. Phone numbers were things like "Madison 3467." You talked to an operator, a live human being, to get your call through. I know that much just from watching old movies. Calling was much more of a big deal then, actually. My grandparents had a little table/chair combination thing that looked somewhat like a school desk, where you could sit while you talked on the one telephone in the house.

 

My son calls his friends multiple times a day, on a phone he carries in his pocket. He sends them photos. He doesn't worry about the expense of a long distance call. 

I mention all this simply to illustrate how much making a phone call has changed. Also, I want to show how different generations understand different things. 

above, my grandmother and some of her sisters, on a picnic, 1950's

 

To me, hearing about history is always a lot more interesting when a live human being is telling me about their experiences. I have microcassette tapes I made years ago of my mother recalling what it was like to live through World War II, and The Cuban Missile Crisis. Mom has also written a lot about her life experiences on her blog. If you read about The Cuban Missile Crisis by doing a Google search you will turn up a lot of facts about what happened. However, if you talk to my mother about it, you will hear a very human story, about a young family with an infant (me) and a toddler (my brother) living just a few miles from a nuclear power plant (The Savannah River Plant) and terrified about getting out of town and trying to survive a nuclear war. Mom had only a limited supply of milk for me, and didn't know where she would be able to find enough formula, if they left town, as so many were doing.

The closest memory I have to that is my memory of 911. I was sent home from work around lunchtime and called my mother before leaving. She told me -- in very forceful tones -- to go to the bank and withdraw as much cash as I could, then to get a full tank of gas, and then hightail it back to my condo. We were wondering if the US was about to be invaded. She was very nervous and upset -- much more so than I was, but then I had not lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, or World War II.

Most people think of history as dry and boring but to me it's fascinating. 

I used to be a voracious reader. (I still read, just don't have as much time, since I am taking care of Mother, a big house, and a dog.) I loved to read novels set during interesting periods of history. My aunt recommended a novel called The Nightingale -- wonderful book, about how French civilians coped during the World War II German occupation. I highly recommend the book. 

If you want to interest a child in history, don't recite a bunch of facts to them. Tell them stories of real people and how they fared during the crisis. Do what my dad did and take them to civil war battlefields, and explain what happened. Take them to visit aircraft carriers and let them run around and experience the size of those things, and see the living conditions of the sailors. Show them the sword that was carried by great great granddaddy a hundred years ago in the war. Show them the butter churn Granny used. Let them touch history. I treasure a handkerchief my Thompson grandfather sent to his mother when he was in France during World War I. 

Visit places like The Atlanta History Center, and show the kids what history looks and sounds like.

Likewise, value older people who understand and appreciate history. Talk to them about their experiences. Audio or video record them. Don't let their libraries of memories die with them.

I love the story of Rishi Sharma, a California teenager who has made it his mission to interview and record as many World War II veterans as possible (link). He understands the importance of capturing those memories for future generations to appreciate. What an incredible young man.

We need to encourage kids to video their grandparents and great grandparents. We need to record stories from long before we were born. We live in an age when recording devices are literally in our pockets and we record everything, all the time, so why not record memories?

Dad's family picnic/reunion, mid 1950's

What It Means to Be Southern

I read a publication called The Bitter Southerner, started by my friend Chuck Reece, and I have thought a lot about the influence of that publication on my inner life. Two of my essays have been published by them Memories of Segregation and A Recovering Food Snob. Both reflect some of my feelings about being southern, but they really only scratch the surface. 

What likely distinguishes me from some Bitter Southerner readers and writing contributors is that I am not actually bitter. 

The only thing that makes me bitter is the idea that I should be ashamed to be southern. I am not ashamed. I am actually proud to be from the south. 

I am also proud to be a Thompson.

Does that mean I condone or agree with everything said or done by any southerner or by members of my Thompson family? No. Not at all. 

There seems to be a movement afoot, though, to be ruthlessly politically correct these days, and I am horrified by that. If anyone not southern expects me to apologize for my region, my family, my southern accent, my southern ancestors, the southern food I like to fix -- well, let's just say it will be a cold day in hell before I'll do that.

I have a friend in England who was asked to remove his flag from his front yard because some people found it offensive. God help anyone who asked me to remove an American flag from my yard. You're offended by patriotism? Too bad. I am offended that you would take offense.

Where is it written that anyone who finds something offensive is to be treated with kid gloves? What is wrong with being offended? I am offended all the time, countless times a day. I watch TV and I get offended. I read books that contain offensive things. Every time I go out in public and see some boy with his pants falling off or a girl showing her boobs I get offended. Conversely, most major religions offend me in some way. My friends and neighbors offend me on a regular basis. So what?

I can sit around and dwell on being offended or I can GET OVER IT AND MOVE ON. People who are constantly offended are inviting negativity and drama into their life and I don't have any interest in that. I choose to live in peace.

I choose to move on. 

I don't fear offending anyone but I don't go out of my way to do it, either.

For example, I know people who actually make money from blogging. That's fine. Good for them. I don't. You know why? If I accepted ads it would imply I approve of the products. If I let an advertiser or sponsor give me money I would have to dance to their tune -- and it would undoubtedly include worrying about offending people. I won't do that. 

I write exactly what I want to write and if you find it offensive, go read something else. It won't bother me a bit. 

Most bloggers I was reading years ago have stopped blogging. I think it has to do with offending people, in part. If you live your whole life worrying about offending someone, you are essentially in a prison of your own making. 

One of the integral parts of the American identity is the idea that we can be who we are without reservation, as long as we don't physically harm someone else. Some want to expand that definition and say we cannot offend anyone else. I don't agree with that. 

Now, I feel compelled to mention a couple of things I consider exceptions. When offensiveness becomes emotionally harmful then it must not be tolerated.

One, confederate monuments. I have never paid much attention to them. Ditto for confederate flags. However, if a black person (or a person of any race, really) finds them offensive, they need to be relegated to history museums. If there were a giant Nazi flag flying in a public space and Jewish people found it offensive would anyone argue about taking it down? Of course not.

Two, sexual harassment. Is it okay for men to sexually harass women? Nope. Never. It's not only offensive it's harmful. Is it okay for women to sexually harass men? Nope again. No human being should ever be made to feel like an object.

 

Now, having explained the exceptions, I want to circle back to my original premise, being southern. If someone is offended by the very fact that I am southern, or they expect me to apologize for it, forget it. I bear no responsibility for what my ancestors did, or what they believed. I won't apologize for their actions. Do I condone racism or slavery? Of course not.

I cherish my southern identity. There are so many good things about living in the south.

I cherish the fact that I was raised to have good manners. Countless times in my life I have been thankful that my parents taught me to be gracious and to have good manners, because manners are, quite simply, kindness.

I cherish the idea that family is important. I can trace my family members back hundreds of years. In college, I was friends with a girl from Michigan who didn't even know the names of her own grandparents. I was appalled.  I can tell you the names of most of my second, third, and fourth cousins.

I cherish the fact that we talk slower, and generally are not in such a hurry. I remember the first time I ever went to New York City, feeling stress just from being in the city, where there were almost no birds or trees, and there were huge crowds of people. It didn't feel like a friendly, welcoming place to me. Ditto for Chicago and Philadelphia. Drop me into Macon Georgia or Raleigh North Carolina, though, and I will feel right at home. I will not feel stressed out. 

I love visiting big cities, but I don't want to live there. [Just fyi I live in Tucker, not downtown Atlanta. My life is far more rural than you might imagine.]

I embrace the diversity of my home. I have friends of all races and religions. Sometimes outsiders think everyone in the south is just an inbred redneck. That's laughable. In Tucker Georgia you can get a great Indian meal, a wonderful Thai meal, Mexican food, Peruvian food, etc. 

I have a dear friend who is black, whose wife is white. He grew up in New Jersey. I asked him recently why he preferred to live in the rural south. He said "Because there is less racism down here." Amen, brother.

Thanks for reading. Don't get offended easily. Don't be bitter, y'all. It's a waste of energy.

 

 

In the Spotlight

I enjoyed reading Frank Bruni's piece in the New York Times about Jenna and Barbara Bush, the twin daughters of former President Bush. They have written a joint memoir which was published last fall, Sisters First: Stories from our Wild and Wonderful Life. (Since there are two of them, shouldn't the title be "Wonderful LIVES"? -- my inner grammar nerd cannot be silenced).

I have not read the book, but it looks like a loving tribute to their parents, and as the Amazon page reports:

"In SISTERS FIRST, Jenna and Barbara take readers on a revealing, thoughtful, and deeply personal tour behind the scenes of their lives, as they share stories about their family, their unexpected adventures, their loves and losses, and the sisterly bond that means everything to them."

I would like to read the book one day but I will get it at the library.

One thing that intrigues me about the book is that these two are famous only because of their family, not because of their own accomplishments. I see Jenna all the time on the Today Show but she doesn't seem to me to have any outstanding journalistic talent. Why did she get that job instead of somebody else? Hmmm.... her NAME, probably. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Jenna. I usually enjoy her stories, and she seems like a genuine, nice person. I just wonder about her qualifications to ascend the journalistic ladder so quickly. 

Then again, I probably shouldn't point fingers. I got my first paralegal job because Dad was friends with the attorneys and his bank gave the firm business. However, before my first day at the firm he sat me down and said sternly, "I got you the job, but it's up to you to keep it. I expect you to work hard, be nice, and do what you're told. Never say that's not my job - if they are paying you, it's your job. Remember your manners. Don't embarrass me. Oh, and I told your boss if you don't do a good job to FIRE YOU -- I wouldn't hold it against him." I remember thinking WOW, thanks a lot. I worked my butt off in that job, and stayed three years, and although there were certainly some negatives, the experience made it possible for me to get other paralegal jobs. 

I do remember feeling great relief when I moved here to Atlanta because nobody in the legal community even knew my father, much less owed him any favors.

I kind of understand and sympathize with the Bush sisters.

I imagine the Bush twins wrote the book to try to present their family as human, not godlike creatures or privileged elitists. The tributes and outpourings of fondness which have recently marked the passing of their grandmother Barbara might make up for, in some small way, the negative things about living in the public eye. Or not. 

When you are the child and grandchild of presidents you learn to be careful about what you say and do, and the sisters have been schooled well, obviously. Bruni criticizes them for being circumspect about political opinions but I admire their poise. They aren't running for office. They don't have to explain themselves when he fires questions at them.

My dad was a little bit famous in his own way. 

Most everyone in the business communities in Knoxville -- particularly lawyers and bankers -- knew Dad, or had heard of him, in the 1970's thru the 1990's. He had bucketloads of charisma and charm. People who met him typically either liked him (98%) or loathed him (2%). Most liked him. (There were over 300 people in the church at his memorial service.)

I remember walking down the street with him countless times and he would always spot someone he knew and greet them, or be greeted by them -- whether it was downtown Knoxville, downtown Augusta, the mall, the gas station -- and it was tiresome, sometimes. Everyone was a friend of his, or so they thought. 

I once met a man in Knoxville, a local politician, who was on the board of some organization with Dad and he made it clear he despised Dad. I told him after he said that, that I was the daughter of Tony Thompson and he laughed with embarrassment. I couldn't wait to get back to the office and tell Dad, who laughed. "He doesn't like me because I always vote against him in meetings. He likes to spend too much money." Dad was never afraid to take an unpopular stand because he always valued doing the right thing over doing the most expedient thing.

I have never had to hear a lot of unfair criticism leveled at my dad, like the Bush girls have, obviously. That one incident rankled a lot, though. Take that and magnify it a million times and that's a bit of what those girls have had to deal with almost their whole lives. 

My grandfather Bob Hasty was a major league baseball player for five years and then played minor league ball for years afterwards, and was well-known around Atlanta. Mom remembers being so annoyed when they would be in public and people would bug him for an autograph, or just want to chat. Mom resented them pulling him away from her, and rightly so. [In the above photo, he is on the middle row, third player from the left.]

He never courted fame, but he didn't shy away from it either.

My grandfather would be horrified by the behavior of today's sports stars, who routinely get arrested, use drugs, get women pregnant and don't marry them, gamble, and on and on. Papa felt like sports stars should always be gentlemen, and always behave themselves. They are role models for kids. Obviously that's an old-fashioned view. I sure wish it was still followed, though.

Fame is never easy to deal with, whether it's yours or you're caught in the fame-light of someone you love. I can remember meeting people in the business community and feeling really self-conscious because Dad was so handsome and I'm... not. I always winced at the unspoken comparisons. It wasn't always easy to be his child. 

It hasn't always been easy to be the grandchild of a sports star, either. I've had to defend him against some unfair accusations over the years. Also, I have a deformed shoulder and I can't throw a baseball to save my life. I'm not tall and movie-star attractive, either. To make it a bit more uncomfortable, I am the daughter of a drop-dead gorgeous mother, and I don't look much like her.

It isn't easy to be the child of two really attractive people, and deal with scrutiny and sometimes pity. 

I have watched members of the Bush family in interviews on television the past few days and I have to extend kudos to them, for how they have handled the attention surrounding Barbara Bush's death. Poise and grace don't begin to cover it. 

I should mention that I am not a Republican and no huge Bush fan. I certainly didn't agree with all of the political views of either of the Bush presidents, but then again I never agree 100% with ANY politician, from either party.

I guess in summary I'd like to just say, living in a spotlight is far more difficult than most people realize. You have to not let all the negative things, the comparisons, the potshots taken, etc. get to you. You also have to carve out your own niche in life, and be happy in your own skin -- which is not always easy to do. I have a tiny bit of an inkling of what it's like to be part of a family members' fame.

Anyone in the public eye deserves the same basic respect as the rest of us -- including not having their families pounced on unfairly. 

Just some observations.. 

Leaving Our Stories

When I was in 6th grade I won Honorable Mention or something like that in the Social Studies Fair with a poster I made called City of the Future. Basically, I envisioned that everyone would live in apartments on top of shopping malls. Everything would be in the mall that we needed -- doctor's offices, grocery stores, etc. We wouldn't need cars. We could roller skate down the hall to school. 

For a 6th grader who hated doing yard work it seemed like the perfect Utopia. 

Ironically, here I am forty-four years later, and I live in a house where I can use a computer to order gifts and groceries, and I really don't need to go anywhere. I do, of course, still go to the grocery store, the gas station, the doctor, the beauty salon, friends' homes, etc.

I was watching the movie Passengers, and thinking about its' vision of the future, thirty or more years from now. The main characters record their story, of life as the lone surviving passengers. (I won't say more, in case you haven't seen the movie. Excellent movie, BTW.)

My grandchildren and their descendants will not have to wonder what Memaw Dee was like. All they have to do is read my blog, or my book about my daughter's adoption, or my poetry or short stories. I may write another memoir one of these days, too. I like to document my life and share it. 

Why? Where does this impulse come from? 

I don't know, but I have a theory. 

All my life, I have heard my parents talk about my father's parents, who died before I was born. 

I can look in Grandaddy's face and see Dad's face. I can look in the mirror and see Cordelia's high forehead -- and truthfully, I can see shadows of all my grandparents' faces there.

Mom always says I have Cordelia's giggle. 

I also have Grandaddy's impatience -- I am impatient and impulsive. He once got mad and shot a chicken that wouldn't get off his car. I've never shot a chicken but I could see myself doing that, if I was running late for work.

I wish I had more. I wish I had a letter one of them wrote, or a diary. I would love to hear their words, talking about their lives, sharing their ideas and philosophies with me. I would love to hear Grandaddy talk about what it was like to fight Pancho Villa in 1916. I would like to hear about his time as a professional gambler in South Georgia [a brief period, thankfully]. I would love to hear Grandmother Cordelia tell me what my dad was like as a little boy. I'd like to hear her talk about how it felt to have to go back to teaching school in World War II because there was a teacher shortage, and she found herself teaching her own son [my dad] one year. I so wish that I could read their words and imagine their voices talking to me, reaching across the years. 

I have one letter that my grandfather [Bob Hasty, Mom's father] wrote, in the late 1950's, to her. When I read it, I hear his voice. 

That's the power of the written word. 

Every blog I write, I give out little fragments of my heart, or I try to, at least. However, you cannot explain an entire life in a blog, or even a multi-volume autobiography, but you can offer glimpses.

What I long to do is read the words of some of my ancestors, to hear their ideas, their opinions, their thoughts. Sadly, there are no letters or diaries of my great-grandparents or further back. 

I had a membership to Ancestry.com for a while but I canceled it. It's too frustrating. I could spend hours running names through their database and only find stuff like census data, possibly land records, deeds, the occasional newspaper mention. Find a grave is mostly just photos of graves. Occasionally you get more, but it's rare. Even photos are rare. 

That's my great-great grandmother, Charlotte Wood Butler. Her son, Robert Edward Butler, I know a bit about, because my mom and my uncles remembered him. I know nothing about her, except she was well-off financially and lived in North Georgia, or possibly South Carolina.

I have a photo (not scanned in) of my father's grandmother, Annie Lou Lewis Thompson, made when she was a tiny, wizened old lady in the bed. They called her "Little Granny." She was widowed young, and my grandfather had to quit school and go to work to support her and his younger siblings. I wish I could sit down and chat with her, ask her about her life. I'm sure it was very hard.

I'd like to know, for instance, why she named one of her sons "Chillie" and one of her daughters "Nannie."

I have many friends who now have grandchildren. Most of us post on Facebook, write emails, send texts. What will our descendants know about us, though? We live in an age when it's so easy to take photos, to communicate in words, or Skype calls or Facetime calls. We walk around with tiny computers in our pockets. I feel strongly we should leave memoirs and tell our stories, all of us, so future generations will understand us. Doesn't matter if we are rich or famous, or very ordinary. What matter is, we were HERE. We made their parents, or grandparents, etc. 

We should tell our stories. We owe it to them. 

My ancestors lived in an age when paper was not easy to find, and pens and ink were not easy to get, either. Very few pieces of paper survive more than a few decades. It was very hard for them to leave records for us. 

Now, it's very easy.

We need to tell our stories, in our own words, and leave words and pictures, so they can learn, so they can know where they came from, and how we felt, and what we believed in.

In the end, it's the most important thing we can do, I think. Tell our stories. 

A Note to Matt Damon

The allegations against many famous men that they have sexually harassed and in some cases sexually assaulted women, have drawn a variety of responses. I have seen the news articles and been shocked and horrified by the allegations against famous men such as Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, and Dustin Hoffman. 

However, I have not been surprised.

They are all famous men in positions of power, who used that power to get away with horrible behavior.

I was reading this morning [see People] how Matt Damon made some controversial remarks about the allegations against Hollywood figures Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, and Louis C.K.

Matt:  “I do believe there’s a spectrum of behavior… There’s a difference between patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right? Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated.”

Matt, you are right. There's a big difference between a pat on the butt and assault. However, what you fail to understand is how the pat on the butt opens the door, and it swings wide. A man who thinks it's OK to pat a woman's butt -- especially a powerful man -- may think it's OK to take it a lot further, and therein lies the issue.

In Twitter land, several actresses including Alyssa Milano and Minnie Driver jumped all over Damon. 

 Matt, here's what you don't understand, though, and why you [and 99% of all men in the world] simply cannot understand it: You cannot understand how it feels because you cannot ever have been in our shoes. It's physically impossible. 

I could never understand what it feels like to be black or Asian or Hispanic because I am white. I can greatly sympathize but it's literally physically impossible for me to empathize.

No man [unless he is transgender] can understand how it feels to live in a woman's smaller, weaker body. It's just impossible.

I was subjected to a variety of unwanted attentions from a male supervisor many years ago, when I was a paralegal. The man who harassed me was known as a jokester. He was also well-liked by the other men in the firm. If I had complained about what he did, I would have been told to ignore it, or quit. In the unlikely event he was reprimanded or confronted in any way about my accusations, he would have retaliated against me. I would quite likely have been made so uncomfortable I would have wanted to quit. I saw just that kind of thing happen.

This is the reality women live with EVERY DAY. We are viewed as objects. Rarely ever are men viewed in the same way. 

I was in a restaurant when I was a college student and a drunk guy came up and grabbed me and gave me a long, passionate kiss on the mouth. He was a complete stranger. I had been drinking and I was so startled, I did nothing but leave. I ran for the door as quickly as possible hearing laughter behind me. I went back to my dorm and shook for about an hour, thanking God  friends had been with me. My friends were all drinking too. 

So is it ok that he grabbed me and kissed me without my consent, since we both had been drinking? NO. Had I been a few years older I likely would have slapped him. I was 19, though, and just wanted to get out of there.

For the sake of argument, let's say a man was viewed as simply a sexual object, a collection of body parts. The male reaction will likely not be the same as a female reaction. Why?

Males are dominant in our society. They are almost always bigger and stronger than females.

Males hold the power positions physically, professionally -- in almost every way.

Males STILL run the show, in almost all situations.

I read the Salma Hayek article in the New York Times with great interest and sympathy.  What she had to endure to get the movie Frida made was horrible. Harvey Weinstein put her through hell. He was in the more powerful position and he could do it. 

The mentality that women have been up against since the dawn of time is the "boys will be boys" mentality. We endure or even shrug off horrible behavior because that's how we are conditioned. That attitude is why women have stayed silent for so long. That's why many women in my mother's generation don't understand what all the fuss is about -- unless they have been assaulted. 

I am amazed at the courage of the women who have come forward against powerful men, now, and said NO MORE.

I don't expect men to change overnight. I hope and pray that within perhaps 20-50 years we will see men who have evolved and will treat women with respect, so harassment and assaults will not be so common. 

Matt, I hope and pray none of your daughters ever experiences sexual harassment in any form, from a pat on the butt to outright assault. However, if one of them did, maybe you would understand a tiny bit of the unfairness, shame, and fear that women have endured. Maybe then the notion that men will view YOUR precious little girls as simply sexual objects will outrage you and you will alter your beliefs.  I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but I wish you could imagine for a moment how you would feel in that instance. 

Maybe if all men could imagine how it feels to be a woman, we would see real change.

A Monumental Quandary

I try to avoid political discussions because they almost inevitably lead to hard feelings and resentment, and sometimes they end friendships, much to my sadness. I am fully capable of saying to someone "I don't agree with your point of view, but I respect your right to have a point of view and express it."

I've used the phrase "Let's agree to disagree" many times in the past year.

Unfortunately, certain of my friends have chosen to exit my life because they disagreed with my presidential choice. This makes me quite sad because they should be more mature. If we can't have civil discourse -- and recent violence makes me really wonder about that -- then we are heading into dangerous waters, as a nation.

I asked my brother not long ago what he thought about taking the Confederate flag down in Columbia, South Carolina, where he lives. My brother is a retired Army major who drives a truck, chews tobacco, and works for a company that sells guns and equipment to police departments. You might think there could be no more conservative guy on the planet.

You'd be wrong.

He answered immediately, "If the flag makes black people uncomfortable, then it should come down. Period."

I didn't argue with him. I feel the same. I look at the Confederate flag and see a historic artifact. What if it was the Nazi flag, though? I would shudder in horror because that flag represents a terrible time in history, and horrific crimes against humanity were committed by people committed to that philosophy. I can imagine, therefore, what a black person might feel, looking at the Confederate flag. I sympathize. Those flags should only be in museums.

I am totally in a quandary over the taking down of Confederate monuments, however.

On the one hand, one can make the same argument about the monument as one would about the flag - it represents a very painful time in history. It's a time long gone. As my friend Tom Lee writes in The Politics of Memory and Marble, which discusses the Alabama Memorial Preservation Act of 2017, "The new law prohibits relocation, removal, alteration, or renaming of any "monument located on public property and has been so situated for 40 or more years." 

I am very uncomfortable with a state forcing its citizens to keep monuments that a lot of its citizens find profoundly disturbing.

However, I also think that monuments are about more. They are about history. They are about art.

For me, too, they are personal.

above, the Butler Marble Works, owned by my great-grandfather Robert Edward Butler

As my cousin Steve Butler wrote about the monument above: This Confederate Memorial is located in Forsyth, Georgia (Monroe County) and was contracted by the Butler Marble and Granite Company of Marietta for a cost of $3,000. The seven-foot soldier was cast by the American Bronze Foundry of Chicago. The memorial was unveiled on June 20, 1908.

I never met my great-grandfather. I love the fact that he was part of history, however. His company supplied the marble for monuments that were placed all over the south.

I have passed the one below many times and never knew that Grandaddy's company supplied the marble until Steve did some research. Steve: "Confederate memorial located in Decatur, Georgia, was created by the Butler Marble and Granite Co. in Marietta for a cost of $2,500. It is located in front of the old courthouse and was dedicated on Confederate Memorial Day, April 25, 1908. 2,000 people attended the dedication."

 

There is also a Confederate monument in Abbeville, South Carolina, made of Butler marble. Ironically, my paternal grandmother Cordelia Henderson Thompson was born in Abbeville and her family had lived there for generations before moving to Georgia in 1900.

 

I cannot say that all the Confederate monuments should be removed. I cannot say they should be left alone. The Historian in me is battling with the humanitarian. Perhaps there is a way to compromise. Perhaps the monuments should not be hidden or destroyed, but they should be located in or on the grounds of museums, because they are historical artifacts.

Regardless of where they are, the Confederacy lost the Civil War. No statue or flag will ever change that.

My ancestors fought in that war. I can celebrate the fact that they fought for their beliefs, even if I don't agree with those beliefs.

If I had lived back then I likely would have had the same prejudices they had. If they could have foreseen me and my friendships with people of all races and ethnicities, and foreseen my mixed-race children, they might be horrified.

It's easy to sit here in 2017 and pass judgment on people who lived a long time ago. Just remember, though, the door swings both ways. One day my great-great grandchildren may look back in horror at things I did or said.

Future generations may judge me harshly. I can live with that. I do want to state for the record, though, that I may never know the correct way to feel about Confederate monuments.

 

Broad Street Augusta Georgia, 1946

I found some old photos and an old book manuscript in a box in my garage. Apparently it was a book about the history of the old First National Bank in Augusta where my dad worked, but the manuscript never got published. Really cool to see a folder preserved since 1946, more than 70 years. This photo is my favorite so I scanned it in. This is what Broad Street looked like in 1946. It looks the same today but very different. Lots more trees planted today, plus a statue of James Brown, Augusta's favorite son.. If you're from Augusta or you've ever been there to visit, you should get a kick out of this. I was born in Augusta in 1962 and lived there until we moved to Tennessee in 1971. Still love the town. My Dad grew up there. I still have family there.

Growing Up in the 1930's and 1940's

The world was a very different place in December of 1933 when my mother was born. The Great Depression was in full swing and millions of Americans were out of work -- the unemployment rate was 25%.

Franklin Roosevelt had just taken office a year before, and launched the New Deal.

Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933.

It cost 3 cents to mail a letter in 1933.

A lb. of ground beef was 11 cents.

A new Plymouth was $445.

The 21st Amendment is passed repealing the 18th Amendment ( Repeal of prohibition ) on December 5, 1933.

right, the family before Elva

My grandparents were in a bind, just like most of the other folks in America. My grandfather had been a professional baseball player since 1919, but in 1933 he couldn't find a job playing baseball. He was 37 years old.

On New Year's Eve, 1933, they nonetheless welcomed their third child and only girl, Elva Elizabeth Hasty.

My grandparents brought baby Elva home from the hospital and both her older brothers came down with whooping cough. Papa stayed upstairs and nursed the boys, and Memaw stayed downstairs with baby Elva. They lived in Marietta, on Powder Springs Road.

below, a clipping from 1932 when Papa played with the Birmingham Barons

My grandfather soon found work with companies around Atlanta who wanted him to coach and play baseball on the company teams, and gave him a token job to do the rest of the year, which he hated. He changed jobs so often when Mom was small that she never went to the same school twice until the family moved to Atlanta after World War II.

below, Papa playing on a team in Buford, Georgia - Papa in seated on the right, between the two men in white shirts

My grandmother, who had been raised in a wealthy family, found herself the mother of three small children, trying to manage a household during the Depression, when money was tight. She made aprons and dish towels and oven mitts out of flour sacks, and made clothes. We still have two of the flour sack aprons.

Everyone saved buttons. If a shirt had to be thrown away, the buttons were removed. Mom remembers being put at the table and told to "sort the buttons." When a new dress or shirt was being sewed, the buttons would be re-used.

At one rural school, there was no school lunch program. My grandmother had studied Home Economics at Bessie Tift College and she organized a school lunch program for all the children. Lunch might only be a bowl of soup and a piece of cornbread, but Memaw and the other mothers made sure each child was fed.

In the late 1930's the family left Smyrna and moved to Inman, South Carolina, then to a farm outside of Moore, South Carolina. The pipes were there for water but there was no water in the house - it came from a pump in the yard. There was no electricity in the house. It was during the war and when they built the house they couldn't get the wiring for the house because building materials were needed for the war effort. The family was put on a waiting list and eventually got wiring.

Mom recalls those times without electricity as not being so bad. After dinner, the family would sit around the big pine dining room table with oil lamps on each end of the table, kids doing homework and grownups reading or sewing.

In addition to trying to take care of their own kids, my grandparents often took in relatives.

My grandmother had 11 siblings and Papa had 7 siblings. Oftentimes, nieces and nephews were sent to stay with the family while their parents looked for work or if childcare was a problem. "Visits" lasting several months were not uncommon. Mother grew up with two brothers, but many cousins in and out, all the time. If they ran out of beds, quilts were put on the floor for the children.

Picnics were a source of fun, and long drives in the country. Ice cream was churned by hand, a great treat. Kids read comic books and played cowboys and indians. Mom played dolls and made "mud pies."

Mother remembers on the farm my grandfather would often pick broccoli out of the field and bring it home for Memaw to cook -- and she would throw it in the pressure cooker and reduce it to mush. My grandmother could also use her trusty 410 shotgun to shoot the head off of a chicken, pluck it, and fry it for supper. Everyone also worked very hard canning fruits and vegetables, and in South Carolina harvesting peaches. To this day, my mom and uncle Don love South Carolina peaches.

 

I feel very fortunate that my mother has an incredible memory and often tells me stories of her childhood. She describes people and events vividly and I can hold in my hand a flour sack apron that's over 70 years old, and light the antique oil lamps that my grandparents used. I eat on a table that was made by my great-grandfather more than a hundred years ago. History is a living, vivid, touchable thing, to me.

 

above, Mom and my grandparents, early 1950's

below, my grandparents and their children and grandchildren in March 1970 - Mom has on a red headband and I am wearing a red jacket

 

A 1959 Dinner Party Menu

My mom and I have been cleaning out old photos and papers a lot lately, and Mom came across a piece of paper yesterday that instantly flooded her with memories of being a young newlywed in the late 1950's and trying to entertain. It's hard for millennials, I think, to understand what a different world their grandparents inhabited, and how bound they were by societal customs and rules.

Mom was trying to plan out her menu and get all her ducks in a row here, to celebrate New Year's Day with my dad's family. How do I know it was New Year's? Easy. It's the only time we ever serve blackeyed peas to company, here in the South. You eat blackeyes peas for good luck. You eat greens for money.

The peas were dried and they would have needed to be blanched and soaked to bring them back to edible. No self-respecting Southern cook would have fixed them without hog jowl/fatback. I used to love to eat fatback, as a kid. It's actually making a comeback, only now chefs call it "lardons" because I guess it sounds more elegant than hog jowl or fatback.

Mom and Dad got married in February 1957 and she thinks this dinner was Jan. 1, 1959 and she was already pregnant with my brother Bruce. Mom and Dad were still living in a small apartment, although they built their first small house a few months later. The guests included my grandmother Cordelia, her sister Ceph and husband, their son and his wife, my uncle Bobby and his wife and daughters. A lot of folks.

Mom was still learning to cook. That was a huge undertaking in those days. You couldn't buy convenience foods and takeout foods like you can today. Produce was seasonal. For instance, you could get apples in the fall and strawberries in the spring and early summer, but likely wouldn't find them other times of the year - or if you did find them, they were quite expensive.

Mom remembers that she went over the menu on the phone with Mamaw (her mother) who was an experienced cook and had studied Home Economics at Bessie Tift College.

The menu is ambitious -- beef roast, scalloped potatoes, blackeyed peas, stewed tomatoes, pineapple. I asked Mom about the "pineapple on lettuce" - a very elegant food, for that time. Nobody ate the lettuce and the pineapple was from a can and included a cream cheese topping.

I asked Mom to tell me more about the menu. "Sometimes mother would do the same thing with a canned peach half, or sometimes should put some grated yellow cheese over it. That was a pretty salad. My mother didn't eat tossed salad."

The tomatoes would have been canned, probably at least 16 oz.

On the strawberry shortcake, you could buy a pound cake that was a loaf cake. You couldn't buy Cool Whip. You bought fresh whipping cream and whipped it with a mixer. Strawberries would have been expensive that time of year, or I would have used strawberries that were frozen."

The note at the top "Call Daisy" was a reminder to get the apartment professionally cleaned. Mom has a wealth of Daisy stories and I remember her quite well. (When I read the book The Help I was fascinated and appalled, because although we had Daisy as a maid off and on when I was small, we were never allowed to be rude or disrespectful to her. I never saw my parents treat her with anything but respect and courtesy either.)

I think what fascinated me about this little party menu is that Mom was trying so hard to feed Dad's family a lovely and elegant dinner, with a very limited budget. She could barely cook. Dad wouldn't help her at all. Plus, she was trying to fulfill the role that society said, in 1959, a wife needed to play. Most clothes had to be ironed. Many people didn't own dryers, and clothes had to be line-dried. There were few convenience foods. Housecleaning was a lot of hard scrubbing, not easy at all.

Women's magazines at the time were filled with advice like "keep a small makeup kit near the door so when your husband comes in he sees you with hair combed and fresh lipstick, not looking tired." Didn't matter if you had worked yourself to death all day and were exhausted, you had to keep up appearances and look like you had your s**t together or your husband might stray, was the underlying message there.

[BTW, as long as Dad lived, my mom always had a little mirror, comb, and makeup stashed away in the kitchen, so she could "fix her face" when Dad's car pulled into the driveway.]

Nowadays, young people often hook up and break up, and have children without feeling the need to get married. Is that a better way? Or is it better for women to feel burdened and subservient to their husbands? I don't know. I just feel like life works better when a couple forms a true partnership.

below, photos of the dinner guests from around the same time period

left, my grandmother Cordelia and cousin Frann. Above, Dad's brother Bobby, my grandfather Thompson (who had died in 1957) and Aunt Ceph holding Frann. Thompson and Cordelia babysat for Frann when she was small because my aunt worked.

below, Mom pregnant with Bruce, and her parents, in front of Mom and Dad's first little house in Augusta

Below, Mom and Dad on their wedding day.