Assistant director,
@uofscsouth
Deborah Kaye and Terry Wayne's boy
Proud Son of Columbus County
Love books & smoked meats
Current rucking goal: 32/50 miles
@nealjclark1
You had a parallel version of this girl in the South in the 90s: her name was Amanda, she was really into outlaw country & grunge, chain-smoked Winstons, & had read all of Flannery O'Connor by 17. She cussed like a sailor & argued with the Baptist Sunday school teacher.
Y'all have no idea how much it warms my heart for the reporter for this story, from the Wilmington ABC station, to have an unashamedly pronounced Eastern NC accent:
On this day when people semiannually lament changing clocks, I would like to take a moment to remember my wife's late grandpa, who spent the last 15 years of his life not wearing a watch. He timed his life by the sun and his own hunger; never a happier man have I known.
At supper tonight my 6yo son tried to explain the difference between Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciations to my wife. "See mama, it looks like Sal-vay, but you say it Sal-way, unless you're Catholic, but we not Catholic, so we say it like they did in the old days"
Scan came back clean of the bad thing they were worried about. Nasty ear infection both in the canal and behind the ear drum. Antibiotics & getting dismissed soon.
Thank God for modem antibiotics; this is the exact kind of thing that killed children frequently a century ago.
I have realized in recent years that I may be the only man alive in South Carolina who still believes that men do not wear hats inside (& especially at the table). I'm teaching this to my son, too, but we are fighting a rear guard action here.
I didn't get a chance to say this last night:
My 8yo daughter, who has never gotten a hit in two seasons of softball, nevertheless gets compliments from coaches for working harder than any other girl in practice & having the best attitude on the team, gets love from the other
South Carolinians can tell if you're a local by asking you to pronounce Huger.
You see, a bunch of Huguenots moved to the Lowcountry in the 1680s, forgot how to speak French, but remembered it was pronounced differently. Place & family names got wild in their pronunciations!
There’s a town in Ohio called “Versailles” and it’s pronounced by the locals, and all Ohioans, as “Ver-sails” and if you try to pronounce it like you should (with the French accent), people look at you like you’re crazy.
Honestly, if you read traditional Appalachian and Southern (both White and Black) folk tales and the King James Bible you will know more literature than most English majors.
I am dead serious.
On his last day of life, he asked his home health aide to drive him to get bbq. He sat at the restaurant for an hour telling jokes & tall tales. At home, he looked at her & said, "I'm going to sleep. I'll see all y'all after a while", went to bed & died with a smile on his face.
That history class tends to reduce the Revolution to Lexington and Concord and Valley Forge is a travesty. The post-Saratoga shift to the South, and the civil war in the Southern backcountry for the entirety of the conflict, is an incredibly vital part of the American story.
I remember being at a Waffle House back in 2004 and this frat guy/sorority girl couple got in a fight about politics. She said that "Bush talks like Flem Snopes" & when the guy had no idea who that was she yelled "You've never read Faulkner? Why am I dating you?" and stormed out
In my class on the South from the mid-1500s through 1865 this semester, I'm really leaning into the ways in which the South was deeply embedded in and evolved through contact with a broad, globalized realities. We really need to move past this persistent idea of the South as a
Went to a Lutheran church this morning where the pastor was an ex-Baptist who preached Lutheran theology with a Baptist, fire-and-brimstone cadence and y'all, it was glorious
What an odd framing of the conflict. The North saw the South as participating in an illegal mass rebellion that needed to be quelled to preserve the Union, the South understood that it had made a legal secession & was now a sovereign nation. Neither side thought the South was...
Old widow at church, weighs about 90 lbs soaking wet, apparently had a dude break in her house this week. She pulled a 12 gauge on him, says, "Son, I pull the trigger and it goes boom".
Dude turned around and walked out.
At Piggly Wiggly this morning, the butcher was just hanging around the meat cases, asking if he could help anyone find something to cook for tonight.
I love this country.
After the game, coach gave her the game ball, saying "we've all been waiting a long time for her to make contact" and all the other girls mobbed her like she had hit a grand slam or something
We're gonna make it, y'all
I just don't know what to say. This will be a decade long infrastructure rebuilding. This is like Katrina, the southern Appalachians will never be the same.
Unpopular opinion as a Lutheran, but one I hold anyway: if we want to celebrate the Reformation, we should celebrate the presentation of the Augsburg Confession, not the posting of the 95 Theses. The latter is an interesting incident, the former a vital Gospel presentation.
Ain't is a perfectly fine English word with a rich literary history and long usage by all levels of English-speaking society, it serves useful grammatical purposes, and the derision directed at it is evidence of pseudointellectual snobbish pedantry.
30 minute rants between dudes is a warm up. You open the bottle if whiskey & we will begin explaining the agricultural history of the Eurasian steppes to our interlocutor for the next three hours. Sometimes you're the rantor, sometimes you're the rantee, it's swell either way.
Psst, I'm not a Nikki Haley supporter, but seeing as a bunch of y'all need to hear this from someone:
She didn't whitewash her name. Nikki is her given middle name, it is a Punjabi name, and she has used it her entire life
Stop saying stupid things, people
A month ago, my literature class had a single student enrolled and was on the verge of getting cancelled. Today, we are exactly one week from classes beginning and it is almost full.
#blessed
It was the first time I've ever seen this movie and honestly, this was Bridge on the River Kwai levels of "Dudes rock so much". I'm gonna watch this like twice a month with my son as soon as he turns 8
The course is currently capped at 100 students. I want there to be so many overrides that the fire marshal does not let me include a single additional student. I want it to be so big that next year I teach it in the biggest classroom on campus.
Halloween in the suburbs is as close to a medieval holiday as is possible in America. You have permission to walk across & through other people's property, you show up at the door and are given beer whilst your children get candy, the entire community is joined in decoration, etc
@bog_beef
He's a dude who's like a month sober and never expected to be anything bigger than a guy playing County fairs with maybe a couple thousand YouTube subscribers & the internet does its thing.
I am honestly worried about his mental health & the grifters eating him alive, ngl
backwater when, in fact, from its earliest days it was amongst the most sophisticated and cosmopolitan of New World places. Its 19th-20th century focus on place and local specificity develops downstream of those realities. Thus, its latter "provincialism" is born of an organic
Man it hurts my heart when I'm grading papers & kids have strong ideas & arguments ruined by basic lack of things like poor sentence structure & misused punctuation. K12 failed them in one way or another and it just stinks that I don't have the time to teach them what they need.
I know this stretch of highway intimately, it's part of the geography of my life and soul and this hurts. I don't know what to say other than that.
Lord have mercy.
@CSandbatch
This man is Levi-Strauss come back from the dead.
I'm being facetious, obviously, but not glib. He understands Benedict Anderson whether or not he's ever read him.
My 8yo daughter has finally found a book she can't crush in two days: _Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH_.
She's been reading it all week and told me, "it's really good, it's not my favorite, but it's probably the best book I've ever read. It just makes me think about things."
@kingcurtis27
@nealjclark1
Dude you knew her too? Amanda from Sanford?
Last I heard, she became a elementary school art teacher, married a dude with a comp sci degree, and had four kids.
I hope she's doing well.
Been sitting here for two hours waiting for the CT scan results. Bubba keeps drifting off to sleep, waking up, asking when we can go home.
Can't wait until I know something.
girls for leading the cheers the loudest, being everyone's bestie, and playing a really nice 3B.
Well, last night, she finally, after two seasons, made contact. She knocked the tar out of one (it was foul, unfortunately) but she got a pop like Stone Cold at Wrestlemania.
tying together of plurality that makes the region so vibrant, varied, and yet coherent.
Things a man thinks about while writing lectures in the office on a Saturday morning.
@NoJesuitTricks
This is exactly true. The Potomac and the Ohio to the North, the Ozarks to the Northwest, the Texas hill country to the west, The Empire of the Mouse to the South.
Y'all have no idea how much it warms my heart for the reporter for this story, from the Wilmington ABC station, to have an unashamedly pronounced Eastern NC accent:
At supper tonight my 6yo son tried to explain the difference between Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin pronunciations to my wife. "See mama, it looks like Sal-vay, but you say it Sal-way, unless you're Catholic, but we not Catholic, so we say it like they did in the old days"
160 years ago at this exact moment, my great great great grandfather lie dying from a minie ball that shattered his jaw, fired at him by a Michigander. By some miracle, it didn't turn septic, he was able to return to his daddy's Eastern NC dirt farm and get married, & here I am.
@CrankyFed
This drives me nuts for a variety of reasons, mostly because it's a really easy etymology to confirm. Essentially, "Easter" is the English version of the old Germanic word for Spring, which is when Easter happens, etc etc.
We were sitting in a Mexican restaurant tonight and my 6yo son starts talking to me about how Texas used to be part of Mexico and then it was its own country.
Y'all, I ain't told him none of that. I have no idea where he learned the history of the 1840s.
Spent all day yesterday with my boy fishing and shooting bb guns. He dug worms for two hours.
Afterwards he said, "Daddy, that was my favorite day ever."
Mine too, son.
Found out today that my barber is going to have to close because his landlord is not renewing his lease (he wants to knock out a wall in the shop and expand it into the neighboring property for a fast casual restaurant). The shop has been open (under different owners) for 90 yrs.
I am begging
@ford
to make a pickup for weirdos like me. I want a full-sized bed, manual windows, manual locks, and a manual transmission. Also, no computer so I can work on it myself.
Basically, make an early 90s Ranger or square body F150 again.
Daughter finished softball tonight. Coach singled her out for being the hardest worker, having the most hustle, the most focused & serious. He then gave her a game ball. For an unathletic girl who did all those things & still struggled, she lit up like she just won league MVP.
Found out that a guy at church who had just come back to faith died today. He was exactly four months younger than me and has a daughter my son's age.
I'm pretty shook up by this.
We did it. One of the girls asked why my 6yo son dresses better than most guys on campus. He also spent the entire time on thy floor playing Hot Wheels. My girl hid her embarrassment at my lecturing behind Beverly Cleary's Henry and the Paper Route.
All things considered, a win.
My sister is in the hospital with fluid in her lungs and around her heart as a complication/side effect from chemo. I'd appreciate whatever prayers/vibes you could spare her.
Internet Archive is down because some moronic hacker group decided to grandstand about Israel/Palestine by...attacking a nonprofit devoted to cultural preservation and democratization of knowledge?
@ShesBasedBabe
I made a QT joke, but in all seriousness the regional variety of food traditions is one of the greatest things about America, not gonna lie
Pumped for a thesis defense this afternoon. A student in the Honors College has written a thesis looking at the archival records of the secret societies of the South Carolina College on the eve of secession and how Confederate nat'l identity was formed intellectually on campus.
Watching Andy Griffith on President Carter's 100th and I'm reminded of the particularly mellifluous accent of rural Southern men born in the '10s & '20s. I hate that it's almost all gone.
Update: I had four students add yesterday. One is a "returning customer" (student from a previous semester who is seemingly doing "fun classes for senior year") the other three are freshman.
Respect the hustle.
Shout out to the student who showed up to my office at 7.30 and asked, "can you tell me how to do research"
Yes, son, I can. You're running short on time, but here's what you do. Also, here are some books from my own collection you can take to get you started, just bring em back
Increasingly convinced that as your follower count goes up, you find yourself more and more committed to a bit, which is bad for you, existentially speaking.
Enjoyed breakfast at Waffle House 974 this morning. Georgia State Highway 166 between Carrollton and Douglasville is one of the prettier drives I've taken in a while. I didn't realize Georgia's piedmont extended that far west!
The passing of the WW2 generation feels like how America must have felt in the 1830/40s and 1920/30s, the gods who had walked among us are finally all dead at a moment of seismic change in the meaning of America.
Periodic reminder that neither Luther nor Calvin "removed 7 books from the Bible", that the early Protestant position on the Deuterocanon is indistinguishable from St. Jerome's, & that Rome's Augustinian maximalist position on those books was only codified at Trent.
Pat Conroy, writing in 1980 about a spring day in a fictional 1967.
As a resident of Columbia, an instructor at USC, and a regular traveler through Five Points, I can acknowledge that, as the French say:
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose
Storytime: My sister once had a job interview in Charlotte. The interviewer offered her a beverage. She asked for water, and said it like this (which is how I say it). When the interviewer mocked her accent, she threw it in his face, told him to move back to Ohio, and walked out.
One of my favorite pronunciations from NC is the way folks along the coast say water. Demetri’s family has been in Brunswick County for generations. Just listen to that accent, y’all! Sounds just like my mama. 🥰
The Carolina Barber Shop has been open since 1937. It closes today. I have the last appointment today. I will be getting the final haircut in that historic place.
I know I'm really old fashioned, but kids calling their coach by first name instead of Coach So-&-So is something I've noticed happening disturbingly often recently and it's about to drive me absolutely insane.