Alas, my tootsies.

I don't think I have ever stood up for more consecutive hours than I have today. Lordy, my feet hurt. I was even wearing sneakers most of the time! But I was standing, and cleaning, and waiting, and I guess I have always moved more when I was upright. I don't usually just stand there; I move around and walk.

Other than that, I love Miss Jackson's. Did you know that mannequin arms just pop up and out of their sockets? Very odd. They are also around a size two, and are even smaller than the dress forms we used at school. That's why the clothes are so often pinned on; the sizes that the store carries are too big for the mannequins, which are basically the same proportions as fashion illustrations.

I am having trouble figuring out where everything is. There are no windows on the second floor, so there are no reference points, other than furniture and clothes. It's very disorienting, especially because all sides of the building look the same.

There's a trunk show tomorrow from Escada. They still actually send everything in trunks, like fancy steamer trunks. I'm curious to see what the women who come in look like...

I was really proud of myself at this moment

Joseph and I have long struggled with creating a veggie burger from scratch that neither crumbles at the slightest touch, nor oozes out the back of the bun when bitten into. I don't really like buying them, because they cost so much, they can't really be seasoned, and they're really not all that appetizing when it's clear that they were cut out of a sheet of processed vegetable matter.

But we did it. We triumphed! After all the recipes that we have tried, promising great taste and texture but turning instead to mush or cardboard, we finally did it.

All because of me, of course (haha, yeah, right).

It wasn't even all that hard. We didn't use a recipe; Joseph would add things, and then I would.


The final process:

1. Mince one small onion; sauté it in a little bit of olice oil. Wait until they are clear and just beginning to caramelize.
2. Add two portobello mushrooms, chopped (the kind that you can get in packs of two at the grocery store, about the size of your hand). Cook until softened, and add a bit of white cooking wine; reduce.
3. Add a can of black beans, including broth. Reduce until sauce is thick and sticky, where it doesn't drip off the spoon easily.
4. Transfer to another bowl, and mash everything up until it's the consistency you like (all of our black beans were about halfway cut up).
5. Add two eggs and mix. It should be fairly liquid.
6. Add oatmeal until the mixture is thick and formable. I think we added between a cup and a cup and a half.
7. Spice the mixture to your liking. We used salt and garlic powder, which was plain but tasted really good.

I think this is the key step:
8. Grease a patty mold, and press the mixture into the mold and drop into a preheated skillet on medium-high heat. Cook until browned, about 3 minutes, and carefully flip, cooking another 3 minutes.


These actually stayed shaped, and got cooked all the way through. They didn't shrink up any, though, like real hamburger meat does. Still, though, they actually looked like patties! They bore a distinct resemblance to hamburgers! They even got nice crisp edges and browned in the center.

They even worked when we didn't use the patty mold, but we didn't make any big ones. I think that if it were formed into small balls and cooked really well, it could be crumbled and used as a substitute for ground beef, such as in spaghetti sauce or Sloppy Joes. I think it'd work much better than seitan (I really hate grating it to put into things, and it doesn't absorb things the same way, so recipes have to be adjusted).

Let's see if I can make a list of which Dr T approves

Someone told me recently that she was worried about how often Joseph and I had made the drive back and forth from Lubbock to Fayetteville. The reason? It was so "dreary."

I take offense at that. She didn't even drive the right way! Sure, she didn't take the interstate, but she took the turnpike in Oklahoma, and then went on state highways down to Wichita Falls. I think that way is actually a lot less interesting. The toll road has a speed limit of 80, and doesn't even have any interesting billboards. And, as is normal for train tracks, which the Texas highway follows basically all the way, the engineers chose the flattest and straightest way through the area. The only interesting thing about it is counting electrical posts.

The interstate is a lot more interesting. There are billboards, signs, crazy names--enough to keep my focus for basically all nine hours (or the eight after I have my coffee).


Between Fayetteville and Fort Smith, there are signs that my speed is monitored by airplane and helicopter. I've never seen it, but it makes me smile, because what could a helicopter do if I were speeding, besides radio it in? And I don't know of any airplane that can fly that slowly.

Inside Okahoma is Prague (Pray-gue, not Prah-gue), home of the Kolache Festival the first Sunday in May. I always kind of thought that was what you called the girls dressed up in white hats and wooden shoes. Apparently, it's a breakfast food.

Then comes Lake Eufala, a pretty enough lake with an exit sign for "Lotawatah Road" (I kid you not, and I guess there is a LOT of water there.)

Then it's signs for Weleetka, Wetumka, Wetonga, and Wewoka. I assume that those were related tribes, but I wonder what the middle part means. I think they are in Citizen Potawatomi nation (spelled various ways on various signs). Thlopthlocco! I have no idea what that means, but a sign says it.

There are about 14 signs between Lubbock and Fayetteville for Cemetery Rd., and maybe 4 for Country Line Rd. Very creative.

There're signs for Robertson's Ham Sandwiches. I've always wanted to stop there, but I don't really like ham. They just repainted the sign this semester.

Oklahoma is apparently quite proud of Susan Powell, Miss America 1981, who is from Elk City, which is a certified Oklahoma city (a sign tells me so!).

There's a moon rock in Weatherford, OK.

There's a bent water tower in Britten, TX, with an abandoned truck stop nearby with an itty bitty matching bent water tower on top of their sign.

There's the biggest cross in the Western Hemisphere, where they are building a gift shop, where I suppose they will sell models of the Twelve Stations of the Cross statues that they have outside. Then there's the Top of Texas Catholic Superstore. I have no idea what makes it a superstore.

I just think all of it is so interesting. I want to stop at Sequoyah's Cabin, Roman Nose State Park, and the Heavener Runestone (heave, like puke, not like heaven. Much less interesting). I want to eat kolaches, or stop at the Cherokee Trading Post and pet a buffalo, even though I have no idea where they keep it. It's not dreary, it's fun, especially if you just pay attention.

My final fishing clothes project

I'll spare y'all the accompanying text, but:

Go Fish!
Spring 2011
Women's Fishing Apparel
Better price range (like Banana or Macy's)

Estimated garment pricing, assuming no overhead costs:
Shirt: $49.99
Pants: $129.99
Vest: $99.99

Who Knows

I don't know much about flowers. I don't even know much about plants in general. I can identify flowers commonly used in wedding bouquets (thank you, Martha Stewart) but I can't tell you what anything on the side of the road is.

That being said, I like to know that sort of thing. According to my StrengthsQuest (thank you, freshman seminar (not)), one of my top strengths is "Collector." I like collecting knowledge, especially collecting knowledge that helps me gain more knowledge. That's why I like having a bird field guide, and a guide to wildflowers of the Western Plains. Perhaps I won't need the latter anymore after this semester, but I have it if I do.

Fieldcraft has given me a basis upon which to build the foundation of a naturalist tendency. I don't think that I will ever be the kind of person who just goes out and identifies flowers for fun, but I could if I wanted to. Even if it's not an essential life skill, it's still good to have. Besides, it's kind of an ego boost to be able to say, "That's not a weed, that's tansy mustard!" and bask in the awe that surrounds that sort of comment.

I wish that I had been able to take Advanced Fieldcraft as well as the introductory course. The Bones, Birds, and Botanicals class (or whatever all those b's stood for) and Intro to Fieldcraft gave me a tantalizing glimpse of what it must have felt like to be Lewis and Clark, or Audubon as they found new creatures and took specimen samples. How would it feel to know that you have accomplished so much in a realm of science that is so readily accessible? To be a naturalist is to share knowledge with others, with the understanding that others will build upon your work. It is not research for the sake of research, or for the sake of money; it's research for the good of others.

That sounds kind of pretentious. I don't mean for it to be; I just like the idea of being able to go out into the world and possibly make a change. I also just like going out into the world. NHH was pretty much the most that I got to go outside during these last three semesters. Often, I would think, "What a pretty day to sit outside and read, or go for a walk." But I would have to sew, or write a paper, or do something indoors. Most days, the time I got to spend outside was limited to walking to and from class. That's not satisfying to me. I like going on field trips to places that I wouldn't even dream of going to on my own. I like sitting around telling ghost stories in the dark, or putting up teepees with Comanches from Oklahoma. Those are the things that I'm going to remember later, not sitting in class and learning about seam classifications and digitizing patterns.

Honestly, I think classes like this are the kind that are most important to a college career. So many classes just focus on rote memorization, learning things just because they're going to be on the test, and things that really won't matter in the real world. Honors classes, not just NHH classes, tend to be more about learning how to think, how to learn. Isn't that more important in the end? Sure, soon I'll have a degree, but shouldn't I know more than how to be an entry-level worker at some menial task?

Even if I do wind up that way, at least for a while, I'll know how to go out and learn things on my own. I'll know how to find the resources to tell me what that plant is, or that bird flying overhead. I can make educated guesses, not just about that, but about a lot of things. I tell people that NHH is kind of about learning to be a forest ranger or a nature writer, but it's also about being an independent person with critical thinking skills. I thought that was what college was supposed to be about; maybe Natural History just distills all those classes and ideas into just a few, so that each class maximizes knowledge.

All I really know is that I enjoyed them at least as much as my other classes put together. I never dreaded going to one of these classes; I never thought, "I wonder if we're doing anything important," or "Can I skip class today?" I always wanted to go.

Milnesand, New Mexico

The lesser prairie chicken is one of the goofiest animals I have ever seen. Like the wildebeest, the LPC must have been a good laugh that God was having.

Proof:

(photo from the Audubon 2007 Watch List)

Does this not look to you like an anxious man pacing, like one who is waiting to be told if it's a boy or a girl? Such a charming creature, if bizarre in appearance and behavior.

Like zebras, the banding on the lesser prairie chicken helps to camouflage it in the grasses. I was amazed at how well-concealed the birds were, especially when they weren't moving. It took me some time to find the females out in the grass (of course, at first I didn't realize that they were in the grass; I thought the lek (or mating display field) would be out on the bare earth in front of our van).  We could hear them well before we saw them, before the sun even really thought about coming up.



(video by DisapprovingRabbits on youtube)

The plainer specimen is the female (very nice sexual dimorphism); while the population of about 4,000 in the Milnesand breeding range is fairly evenly divided between males and females, we only saw a handful of girls in comparison to the boys. We joked that the females came out when they felt like it, and reported back to all the other girls still having their morning coffee.

You can't see it in that video (not mine, by the way; I was too far away to get good pictures or video, though I could see them really well in my binoculars), but the males also stamp their feet while they run back and forth. It's a booming noise that I'm sure is quite sexy for the ladies.

While we were in Milnesand, which is where we saw the prairie chickens, we camped out (in wind so strong that we couldn't pull the rain fly all the way away from the tent, so it was a moot point anyways), had good food cooked by the sweet ladies of the town, and marked four miles of fences so that the chickens would see them when they are flying away from predators.

Mentioning predators, we also saw a male golden eagle in captivity. He was just kind of hanging out in the back of this guy's truck, looking around imperiously. There was a dead hare at the foot of his perch, which was covered in Astroturf for some reason. He had apparently been killing and eating livestock in Montana (?), and the government stepped in to have him relocated at the rancher's request. The guy that took him has some sort of agreement where, even though he is not a government entity, he can capture the eagle and take him around and show him off. I thought it was awesome.

One last image:

Fishin' Clothes

One of my projects this semester, an NHH senior project, is to make a set of women's fishing clothes that is attractive and not just a "unisex" version of men's clothing. Oftentimes, what is marketed as being for women is just plain unattractive, lacking both hanger appeal and body appeal. Instead of making the clothes to fit, flatter, and be comfortable on women, it is just sized-down menswear that is full or tight in all the wrong places.

Even big-name companies, like Bass Pro Shop, carry very few women's items (around a dozen, compared to literally hundreds of men's items), and what they do carry tends to be unisex blobs of clothing that are uncomfortable. Pants rely on drawstrings to fit at the waist, or have a long, narrow crotchseam that binds at the hips and sags at the inseam. There's no real reason for the dearth of women's fishing clothes; niche markets are generally fairly sustainable in the long run, especially ones that have so many potential consumers. I know many women who fish in spite of discomfort, and many others who would fish if they could be comfortable.

So what I've been making is a pair of women's pants, a knit top in a pretty color but still in a technical fabric, and a vest that fits a woman's contours and needs (also in a pretty color). Instead of anticipating that a fisherwoman will just buy what approximately fits, regardless of what it looks like, this is designed to attract her based on what she actually likes, not just what she needs. Instead of breast pockets on the vest, I hope to be able to put magnets inside slits to create places for the flies to attach. There will be magnetic closures, instead of velcro that will get nasty with time, or snaps, or a zipper.


Haha! I triumph over computers, and win! Here's the picture.

Discomfort

I hate being uncomfortable. I would rather be in outright pain than uncomfortable. I prefer the pain that accompanied my broken collarbone than that with the stress fracture in my foot. It was a much more honest pain, that could be dealt with stoically, instead of with fidgeting and whining.

I bring this up because on Wednesday we planted trees in class. I was expecting, and hoping for, that feeling in my muscles that hurts when I first move them in the morning but loosens into a satisfying warmth. Instead, only the back of my right thigh hurt, and in a way that was nagging instead of gratifying. I don't even know what I did. My left side is dominant, not my right, so I'm not sure what I could have possibly done to pull that particular muscle. I guess it will just be added into the category of "things that happen that I don't know why," like getting a blister on the very tip of my big toe at the same time. Alas.

I enjoyed planting the trees, though. Because I show up midway through class each time, I only got to help in planting two trees out of the eleven, a soapberry and a hackberry, but it was still enjoyable.

For one tree, we had to dig through caliche to make a big enough hole. Nic attacked it with a fury, and then we shoveled it all out to put in the tree. Roots were trimmed so that they stood out straight from the trunk; this was to discourage them from curling around and making the tree root-bound. Around each tree, we built a trough and rim capable of holding two or three inches of water for the tree to soak up. Young trees need a lot of water, especially after being transplanted.

The trees were planted almost at random. Scott and Matt looked at the land and decided where they wanted trees, picking low land and high. Then, after marking these places on the map, they compared it to their map of known archeological sites. If the trees were marked in one of the sites, they moved it off to the edge, to prevent any further disruption of these historical places. The class got about half the trees that they had planned planted, so this coming week we are going to hopefully plant the rest.

I enjoyed being outside, not cooped up in the lab. The sun was hot, and it was a good fifty degrees warmer than it had been the week before. I actually managed to get sunscreen on all exposed surfaces this time; maybe next time I can keep it up!

Weather Predictions

The weather on Wednesday was something that I am used to, but not this late in the year. It was cold, it was wet, and it was rainy. I expected the wind—that just comes with West Texas. I just wasn’t prepared for how cold it was on the week after spring break.

Our assignment last week was to predict the weather for the following few days based on what we knew about the weather. Dr T told us that we tend to have sinus pressure issues when the weather is changing, like going from a low to a high-pressure system. Low pressure is bad weather; high pressure is good. So, if my nose doesn’t find itself equal to the outside world, it means that the weather is going to be getting better! It’s the same idea as a water barometer, like the ones my grandparents have on their back porch. If the air pressure is falling, indicating impending bad weather, the water in the spout rises (and sometimes spills over, just like the rain does! Sometimes childish devices are the best way to remember things).

So my nose was stuffy, which meant either I had a cold, or the weather would be changing for the better. My prediction was also helped by the fact that Tuesday was already a nicer day than Monday.

We observed cirrocumulus clouds in the sky that day, which have an appearance like fish scales. Since they weren’t cumulonimbus clouds, the large thunderhead clouds, they didn’t signify bad weather. According to Wikipedia, cirrocumulus clouds are formed high up in the atmosphere, and usually denote a simple change in the weather, not necessarily for better or worse. It also says, though, that they can be the remnants of a thunderstorm, like the storm we had in the days preceding class.

Good weather means clearer skies, warmer temperatures, and lower winds because there are fewer clouds in the sky to reflect back the heat and cause air movement. This makes the daytime skies warm, while at the same time, the lack of clouds allows the heat to dissipate at night. This means that the highs and lows are more extreme than they would be if it were cloudy; this is why in the winter, the temperatures are much less variable. The clouds are gone because the water in the air is more soluble in warm air, and doesn’t precipitate out as easily as it would in cold air.

The weather changed like I thought, and hoped, it would! It got clearer, and gradually got warmer during the daytime. Today, the forecast even said that it was supposed to get up to ninety—I am so glad. I love being warm and toasty. That just means, though, that I need to remember my sunscreen every single day, and not forget anywhere. There’s always somewhere I forget, like my eyelids or my ears or my part. Somewhere always winds up pink, usually right before some sort of photo opportunity (or right before an interview for my summer internship! Oops). That’s a shame, because I honestly like the smell of sunscreen. It makes me think of plastic pool toys and chlorine and that smell your skin puts off just because you’ve been out in the sun. That’s the smell of spring and summer to me, more than the smell of fresh-cut grass or flowers.

Working Man

There’s a particular smell to a working man’s truck: dry, dusty, hot paper, and sticky leather. I associate the smell with my grandfather, who did landscaping and gardening, and would drive my sister and me to the water park on hot summer days when we visited. It’s a smell that I didn’t realize could come attached to other people, to other men who did the same thing that Papa did.

I encountered the working man smell yesterday at the Eastlawn Memorial Garden. I showed up halfway through class, as per the agreement, and set off in search of the class. I walked all the way to the back of the cemetery down what they called Gardenia, a quarter mile or so. I heard dogs barking and trucks driving, and I saw statues and monuments and brightly colored flowers moving in the breeze, but I saw neither hide nor hair of my classmates and heard no voices on the wind.

I walked back to the east side of the cemetery to where I had seen two men working. One was rummaging in the back of his truck, and I stopped and asked him, “Have you seen a big group of college students?”

“Yeah,” he said. “They were back over there.” He pointed back towards where I had come from.

“Well, I thought I had walked all the way back there, but I didn’t see them. You’d think twenty kids or so would be easy enough to find!”

“Hop in, and I can drive you around to look for them. Their cars are all still here, so they can’t have gone too far!”

“That’s what I thought, too. Thanks.”

I opened the door, and it was an immediate recall to my childhood. There was dirt on the floor, wedged into the cracks on the rubber floor mat. Notebooks were in the center of the seat and next to the gearshift. Papers littered the dash, all crumpled and brown from exposure to the elements. It was just like Papa’s truck.

I pulled off my backpack and got up onto the flat bench seat. It was more comfortable that I thought it would be, especially considering that generally, one doesn’t just get into a car with a stranger who offers to drive around looking for something. It just seemed natural, as if any other progression of events would have been absurd.

He used his walkie-talkie to call someone and ask if he had seen the group. He hadn’t, not recently, but he thought they couldn’t have gone too far either. It wasn’t a long ride, and halfway back through the cemetery he spotted the class walking out of the corner of his eye.

He got as close as he could without hitting anyone, and let me out. I said thanks, and ran to catch up with the class.

Naturetainment

I don’t see what’s wrong with nature as entertainment. If we’re not going to use it, see it, or touch it, what’s the point of having it? If I have a shirt that I haven’t worn in three years shoved in the very back of the bottom drawer, why do I keep it? I should just give it to some poor person. Maybe we should just give all of our unused nature to Canada.

That was at least a little bit sarcastic. Just a little. But I do wonder: what is the point of nature if we’re not going to do anything with it? To a certain extent, I think that people should be able to go where they want, and do what they want. Kind of like bears do, or wolves, or bunnies. I don’t think that we should go out and traipse all over the habitat of the endangered wild purple-spotted buffalo spider or anything, but really-—why not build a few walkways to see the mud pits at Yellowstone? We don’t have to be able to go all over kingdom come to use the land; maybe even just seeing the perimeter or watching things from a distance would be good enough.

The ability to see something and visit it is part of what makes a thing “ours.” We, as Americans, do not define things that we cannot see as ours—that’s why, for the restoration of the star-spangled banner from Fort McHenry, the scientists left it in full view of the public. Only the places that we can visit and touch become part of America. Who cares who owns the North Pole? We’re never going to go there. The moon belongs to no one but the astronauts who have been there, or who have at least been in space.

Nature as entertainment is an idea inherent, I think, to the human race. We see this not only in America, but also in nations like France, where the reproductions of the cave paintings at Lascaux are more French than the real ones inside the cave. The real cave belongs only to scientists, not Frenchmen. While keeping things like that off-limits except to the scientific community is one way to foster an international perspective on important aspects of our heritage, I don’t think that would work for things like national parks. As a nation of consumers, we feel the need to partake in things for which we contribute tax dollars. Otherwise, it’s just so much pork barrel spending that doesn’t even benefit a minor part of a congressman’s constituency.

Owning and enjoying something does not mean that we have to go in and tear it up. We can enjoy it, the same way we enjoy a day on the ocean. Not everything, contrary to what the media would have us believe, is about finding pleasure in demolishing things. Sometimes, it’s about seeing something one time that can change a person's perspective. How do we know how important we are in the grand scheme of things without knowing that one day, we might see a thousand-year-old tree? Or a volcano that is possible of obliterating everything within miles?

And as (Disney’s) Pocahontas says, “You can own the earth, and still / All you own is earth until / You can paint with all the colors / Of the wind.”

Heritage

Old houses have always given me the heebie jeebies. I think about who lived there, and more importantly, who died there. I shiver a little to think about it anywhere, even at the house my parents built. I’ve had this problem from the time I was little. Maybe I watched too much CSI, but I can’t help but think about the history of places.

There’s a green house with a windmill next to Texas Tech campus. I didn’t realize for the longest time that no one lived there; it was just a lovely house, albeit one right next to the interstate. All through college, I thought that it was just a random house, nothing more-—until I started taking the bus out to the satellite parking lot this year.

The house is part of the National Ranching Heritage Center. I don’t know how many times I rode past it unthinkingly, until the day that something suddenly clicked. I realized that it wasn’t just any normal creepy old house: it was a tremendously creepy old house. The Ranching Heritage website tells a lot about the story of the house, but essentially what it says boils down to failed dreams. A man wanted to build his wife a house next to the train tracks, but the train went though another town after he had already built the house.

The Barton House, as it is called, has artifacts of times gone by placed inside. Some of them are from the Bartons; some of them are reproductions. I didn’t go in to see any of them. I don’t know if I think it’s disrespectful, but I don’t want hordes of people coming in and puttering around in my house after I die. Maybe, to some people, an empty high chair conveys warm memories of babies playing with Cheerios but, to me, it doesn’t. It’s like an old doll, found in the dirt—even if it’s not the ghost of a dead child, it’s the ghost of a memory of a child. In some ways, I think that is even creepier than an actual ghost; no priest can exorcise the demons of memories.

Mrs. Barton bequeathed the house to the Ranching Heritage Center, so perhaps she didn’t feel the same way. I just can’t get past the history of what has happened to an object. I don’t even like to buy used clothes, because who knows what has happened in it, to it? If these walls could talk-—I wouldn’t want to hear them. All they would say would be words of disappointment, of abandonment by the humans that they took care of for so long. How could I possibly stand the grief that emanates from each of those silent, empty houses?

Vernacular

Wompyjawled |wämpijôld| adjective
1.To be off-kilter or askew, to be messed up and not in order: when you sleep like that, it’s not hard to see how your sheets get so wompyjawled.


I have said words that I have never seen written down. I say things in a way that would make Henry Higgins spin in his grave. I have spoken to strangers and had them look at me like a tentacle had suddenly sprouted out of my forehead. It doesn’t bother me too much, though, because that’s just how I grew up speaking.

My first realization that I even had an accent was in seventh grade, when I made friends with a girl who moved to Arkansas from Chicago. In English class, we were reading Huckleberry Finn. Oh, how she struggled. She had to read all of Jim’s words out loud, and even then she couldn’t always understand. She would say things just as they were written. “P’simmon. P simmon. Pee simmon. What could that be?”(1) Me? I had no trouble. All those words were just written the way that I said them. It was the same with The Grapes of Wrath—I had no language barrier with those Arkies and Okies.

However, language barriers with other people were more pronounced. I visited New York City once, and at a deli counter, neither the server nor I had any idea what the other was saying. Once I realized that I had a potential situation on my hands, I tried my hardest to eradicate the accent. I’m not ashamed of how I used to (and sometimes still do) speak; I was more ashamed of how people treated me once they heard me say something. Inevitably, no matter how educated my vocabulary was, my diction was a signal to others that I was slow and dimwitted. I tried to cultivate a nondescript American accent, with no harsh sounds or drawn-out syllables. It was hard, and I still slip up sometimes, especially if I’m tired or upset. The main reason I even try is that I hate to be judged based of something that has no real bearing on my intelligence.

Sometimes, though, I put words into my writing or my speech that confuse the heck out of people. I’ll say that I’m all stove up today (2), or that my britches are too loose. Sometimes I waller on my sister’s bed, ruck up the sheets, and haw on her pillow (3) . I forget that other people didn’t grow up with me, and that maybe they don’t hitch their socks up or mash the buttons on their remotes.

However, sometimes a little drawl is good for getting things done. Maybe it’s the teensiest bit dishonest to do so, but from time to time I’ll play up my accent to get someone to help me with things, or to get what I want. Southern girls can be a mite helpless, especially when it comes to getting heavy things off of high shelves. A slow and cultivated Southern accent can be quite helpful for getting people to answer questions and to help me out with something. What I’ve discovered, though, is that it’s best to use my accent and hometown vernacular judiciously, and not to waste its impact. To add just a word or two in an entire paper is enough to convey a sense of “otherness” in my writing, but not enough to distance the reader from the content. It’s a fine line to tread, and it doesn’t take much to knock it off-kilter.


(1) A persimmon.
(2) My back is tight.
(3) Roll all over it, mess up the sheets and breathe on her pillow to make it hot right before she goes to sleep.