My father would say that the only difference between Mississippi (which was a dry state) and its neighbor Tennessee, which was wet, was that in Tennessee a man could not buy liquor on a Sunday. –Willie Morris I’ve always been perplexed by the differences in blue laws from state to state. Blue laws are designed…
Read MoreI would venture to say that loudly denouncing Emmylou Harris will get you killed in any establishment that serves liquor south of Delaware. –Steve Earle Ahhhh, Steve Earle. For all his piss-and-vinegar-laden griping about Nashville, he still will stand up and pick a fight with anyone who hasn’t earned the right to criticize its ambassadors…
Read MoreSo, I’m giving The Quotable South a break for a bit. This morning, I’ve decided to share with you some random bits that deserve, in their own perverse way, an award. Greatest News Headline This Week on MSN.COM: “Travolta Spurns Daylight” So, apparently John Travolta and his wife are night-owls. And Scientologists, in case you…
Read MoreA Southerner speaks music.–Mark Twain Southerners can probably say “shit” better than anybody else. We give it the ol’ two-syllable “shee-yet,” which strings it out quite a bit and gives it more ambience, if words can have ambience.–Lewis Grizzard If you are going to be underestimated by people who speak more rapidly, the temptation is…
Read MoreJust before you go on the academic job market, everyone tells you that one of the most important things you can do is to figure out a way to distill and encapsulate your entire project into a roughly 2 minute soundbite, otherwise known as a “blurb.” This is a difficult, but immensely practical, endeavor. Chances…
Read MoreA while ago, I noted Eduardo Mendieta’s review of Adams’ Habermas and Theology. Mendieta hit the nail on the head by opening his review with the claim: “Adjoining two nouns in the title of a book is like writing a blank check to ‘cash.’ One better know who is receiving the check and one better…
Read MoreTonight is the “50 Years of Stax” reuinion concert here in Memphis. As you probably know, Stax Records was a cultural/musical phenomenon rivaled only by Motown, Elvis, and the British Invasion. Stax recording artists included: Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, the Staples Singers, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, Booker T & the MGs, Luther Ingram, Rufus and…
Read MoreEvery Southerner alive, at many, many points in his or her childhood, heard the words, “But what will people think?”–Julia Reed I love this quote by Julia Reed (author of The Queen of the Turtle Derby and Other Southern Phenomena). I used to say that the structure of the Southerner’s psyche is different from the…
Read MoreBefore you undertake the massive project of writing a dissertation, you should be forewarned of the strange physiological anomalies that will accompany it. Some of them are obvious and expected (loss of sleep, anxiety, depression), but others are…well… mysterious. Fortunately, I haven’t developed anything remarkably strange (like my friend Kyle’s apotemnophiliaphobia), but here’s my own…
Read MoreI’m often amazed at the size of my students’ egos and, to be honest, their cajones. An illustrative anecdote: I recently read several midterm papers by students who lambasted Plato, Aristotle, Kant and other great thinkers of the West for being, variously, “naive”, “idiotic”, “illogical”, and “close-minded.” While seemingly unburdened by the assignment’s requirement that…
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