Masquer

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Originally uploaded by 1DeadMule

Only the historical depth of Mobile's Mardi Gras makes it what it is. Go to Pensacola or, heck, even Tuscon, and you'll find other Mardi Gras parades (sponsored by Linksys, et al.). It has to be something that is born out of the culture.

Quentin Compson was obsessed with his past and with the actions of Thomas Sutpen and his posterity. His past consumes him and eventually leads to his demise, and I cant help but think that the South and Southerners to some extent do the same thing. There are many people who are consumed with the South and with the pride and history that come with it, but where I think many Southerners mess up is they avoid the darker side of their past and they also try to defend the South to non-Southerners. The South does not need defending, mainly because I feel like it is something that a non-Southerner would understand. But people get caught up in the past and it can destroy them and the south from the inside out. It can hold us back and keep us from moving but then again it also allows us to retain that part of the soul that much of the country has lost due to "progress." So I guess we have to strive for a middle ground, or do like those that started the Southern Renassance and glance back to where we came from while continuing to walk forward.

Sugary South

Yup, we don't like to drink the bitter. If you've got something to say, make it sweet. Women, be sweet--at least in public. Southern hospitality! Music, sweet music!!! Blues, bluegrass, grassroots, soul, country, gospel, jazz, rap, etc. We've just got a lot of sugar down here, I suppose. It covers lot of things...like a coat. If our Ms. O'Hara didn't talk so sweet, would we love her so much? Oh that Southern drawl is sweet like our tea. :) A friend of mine uses his accent to get girls and whatever else he wants, really. He's drunk with the sweetness of the South. Sometimes I am, sometimes I'm not. Well, very appropriate that sweet tea be the beverage of the South... There's more to be said here.

Random Quotes on the South...

"All I can say is that there's a sweetness here, a Southern sweetness, that makes sweet music. . . . If I had to tell somebody who had never been to the South, who had never heard of soul music, what it was, I'd just have to tell him that it's music from the heart, from the pulse, from the innermost feeling. That's my soul; that's how I sing. And that's the South." -- Al Green

"Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well."-- Florence King

"What can be more Southern than to obsess about being Southern?"

-Elizabeth Fortson Arroyo

"Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one."

--Flannery O'Connor

"The biggest myth about Southern women is that we are frail types--fainting on our sofas...nobody where I grew up every acted like that. We were about as fragile as coal trucks."

--Lee Smith

"There is as much dignity in plowing a field as in writing a poem."

----Booker T. Washington

" If things get any better, I may have to hire someone to help me enjoy it."

--Southern Saying