Posts

Shawi, the Trash Panda God

  Shawi is the Choctaw name for the raccoon ( Procyon lotor ),  a ring-tailed species of mammalian bandit. Raccoon in its family tree. I've known a bunch of them well. And I owe the trash pandas a blog post. The Trash Panda Family Tree  (Mandatory Mammal Speciation Lecture) Without belaboring the biology more than it's worth (which for me is a lot), raccoons are classified by taxonomists in the family Procyonidae , which they share with coatis, ringtails, kinkajous, and eleven other species. Giant pandas, on the other hand,  are in the same taxonomic family with as bears, black bears, brown bears, polar bears, big bears, little bears, and the bear that watched the still while Lord Buckley went into town to vote Raccoons were in fact long thought to be related to bears. (The German name for raccoon means "washing bear.") But truth is, raccoons are more closely related genetically to weasels, skunks, badgers, and otters than they are to bears. Collectively, they are a

Nerd: Another Strange & Terrible Saga

  We all called the guy "Nerd." Of course, he had a real name, but I didn't know it then or now. For this I am eternally grateful. He was a type specimen. If they had such things in the Field Museum in Chicago, he'd be stuffed and on display, the paragon of his subspecies. I'd say he was straight out of the "Revenge of" movies, but those didn't come out for 10 or 12 years after "Nerd" fell off my radar. White socks, black oxford shoes, highwater slacks, button down white short sleeve shirt, a pair of calculators dangling on his belt, pocket protectors, all that jazz, he was the full tilt boogie of Nerddom. We took a class called "Air Pollution Control & Abatement" together in the early 70s. Think about it. Anybody, myself included, who took Environmental Science classes back then was a nerd. And Nerd stood out among us.  [ A stock photo of    "A Man Out Standing In His Field"   goes here but is not included,     b

Turpentine Blues: The Strange & Terrible Saga

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Slash Pine Slashed For Turpentine (photo: North Carolina State University) Turpentine business ain't what it used to be.  I grew up in the Piney Woods. I still live in the Piney Woods (or the "Pine Belt," as the public relationists and promoters have tagged the underbelly of Mississippi). But the Piney Woods ain't quite as piney as they used to be, unless you happen to think suburban development isn't a sappy mess or wind up in the Pine Grove Treatment Center in Hattiesburg. Among other things, they specialize in sex addiction , so you might want to check in for a few rounds of golf or some heavy metal music . At $37,000 for a month and a half, it's probably no more expensive than renting a condo at Hilton Head and paying greens fees. But that's not the point here. Or maybe it is. They cut down a bunch of trees to build the city where "Pine Grove" is. The Jefferson Starship built a city on rock and roll, but the city where rock and roll was bor

The World is My Oyster. The Oyster is My World.

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A Dozen Fine Gulf Oysters (It's not my fault the shucker can't count!)   "The time has come," the Walrus said, To talk of many things: Of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - Of cabbages and kings." With the new Mississippi state flag finally approved and flying, my preoccupation with vexillology must sadly and fortunately come to an end. I'm cool with this, because I can go back to writing about books and food, both of which I find more filling. And at some point -- there being no time like the present -- I'm going to have to extol the virtues of another favorite food, oysters! So that's what I'm going to do! There will be other days to explore the strangeness of Mississippi politics and Southern Culture. Like two other favorite foods I've belabored on this blog -- grits and okra -- oysters have lovers and haters. Oyster lovers think these noble mollusks are among the finest victuals Mother Nature has bestowed upon us. Oyster haters think oy

Wrapping Up the Flag

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 And so in the fullness of time the esteemed Governor of the Great Sovereign State of Mississippi, Tate ("Tater Tot") Reeves signed the bill authorizing the new state flag. Thus, the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia has been permanently removed from the state banner. Whoopie do. "In God We Trust" is included, because the enabling legislation required that in the "winning" design. According to what I've read, the gold star at the top represents the five Native American tribes that originally lived here. As an aside, there was a brief news bite on the local TV station last night showing the COVID vaccination site at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum. The new flag was shown, proudly upside down! So on January 11, 2021, the new flag was raised over the state capitol. Various politicians declared this a symbol of unity. And of course, this was especially weird coming on the heels of the invasion of the U.S. Capitol building by knucklehead flaunting

More Flag Wrapping

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  I pledge allegiance to the Great Mosquito and to the Yellow Fever which it spreads The Mississippi Commission to Redesign the State Flag received over 3,000 proposals. Some were obviously jokes, which was expected, and at least one of those jokes -- or at least we assume it was a joke -- inadvertently made its way onto the published list of 147 "finalists." Supposedly this happened because of a typo on a commissioner's "first cut" list.  While it's not exactly dignified enough for courtrooms, the Great Mosquito Flag certainly strikes a chord in the hearts of all Mississippians. According to one source , the mosquito pictured on the proposed flag would be capable of sucking 12 gallons of blood per hour! As far as I know, the only bloodsucking parasite capable of exceeding this rate of consumption is a Mississippi politician.  Seriously (and in my opinion, sadly), the Great Mosquito flag was a joke . The guy who submitted it did so to poke fun at a coworker

Bigger Fish to Fry

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Once it had mandated the removal of the 1894 "Confederate" state flag, the Mississippi Legislature realized it had bigger fish to fry. First up, repealing Prohibition . That's right, Prohibition. You know, the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The same Prohibition that ended in the United States of America in 1933.  Okay, it's not quite as weird as it sounds for Mississippi to be repealing Prohibition almost 90 years after the fact. It's weirder.  It's instructive to begin with the beginning. Mississippi enacted statewide prohibition of alcohol in 1907 . And it was the first state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment twelve years later. But in truth, the Great Sovereign State of Mississippi has a much longer history with restricting the sale of booze. Around 1839, there was a (short-lived) state law that banned the sale of alcohol in amounts less than one gallon. Naturally, this didn't sit well with tavern keepers, and the law was r