rafi-dangelo

Dixie Alley, The Tornado Alley of the Southeast

Apparently, I’m in Storm Chaser mode right now and I can’t get enough of weather stories.

When I was growing up, I remember special after special about one of two things: the Mississippi River flooding and wiping out a town, oftentimes the same town that was wiped out the year before, or a tornado in Kanssouribraskahomakota wiping out a slew of small towns.

That whole middle part of the country from Texas to Dakota, The Mississippi to the Rockies, is known as Tornado Alley because they have the perfect conditions for and the highest percentage of tornadoes anywhere in the country. But let’s take a look at Dixie Alley.

Go to this link.
Slave-owner's wife requests $1000 from an escaped slave who made his way to freedom with their horse.

While I was reading the letters, I didn’t realize I had stopped breathing until I got to the end and exhaled loudly.

You say you have offers to buy me, and that you shall sell me if I do not send you $1000, and in the same breath and almost in the same sentence, you say, “you know we raised you as we did our own children.” Woman, did you raise your own children for the market?

This may be the first historical record of something literally giving me life. I did a praise dance and everything after this.

Southern Words With Foreign Origins

English is a horrible hodgepodge of language bastardy and appropriation. Still, I fell into a Wikipedia Hole and I was surprised by where some of my favorite southern words come from.

According to Jon Hubbard (R-AR), slavery was a blessing in disguise for black folks.

“I never understood why blessings wore disguises. If I were a blessing, I’d run around naked.” —Sophia Petrillo

That’s a really amazing disguise slavery was wearing. I’m glad this Arkansas representative has let me know it really was a disguise though. From where I’m sitting, it looked a lot like racism, rape, oppression, murder, and inhumanity, but thank goodness this white man has guided me toward the path of enlightenment, to the reality of the situation. Oh white man, bless you. Oh where would I be without you?

Probably back in my homeland, not fighting wars I don’t even understand against people I should be cooperating with because you and your guns divided my continent into colonial money machines, pitting my people against each other for the next three centuries.

Mom’s Funeral, Part Two.

The plan was to write the other half of this the day after posting the beginning, but life got in the way and everything got dramatic and weird. I’ll try to pick up where I left off.

Why shouldn’t the South be allowed to secede?

From Better Off Without Em by Chuck Thompson (via JMG):

“What really led to this call for secession was understanding that a lot of people from the South are just as sick and tired of people like Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid having an impact on their country as I am sick of people like Newt Gingrich and Jeff Sessions, Eric Cantor, and Haley Barbour having an impact on my country. So why shouldn’t each of these societies that are really very different from each other in the way they approach the fundamental building blocks of society – education, religion, commerce, politics … both sides of the country really approach their problems in the way they want to put their societies together in very diametrically opposed ways. Why shouldn’t people be allowed to live in a pseudo-theocracy if they want to? If the majority of the people in a very large part of the country wants to have the Ten Commandments emblazoned in front of their legislative houses, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so?”

I know everybody in the South doesn’t feel the same way (hi, Asheville) and I know everybody up here isn’t on the same page either (what’s up, rural New Hampshire), but on the whole, if they wanna go, let em go. And they can take the rest of the red states with em. And I have five lists to show you why.

Look at this photo.

The Geography of Intolerance
(via JMG)

The darker the purple, the more tolerance. More tolerance = different kinds of people and more opportunity. Basically, stay out of the white areas.

I grew up in SC.

See that little white stripe in the northern part of the state? That’s where I grew up.

Yeah, I don’t really know how all of This Greatness came out of that either…

Slavery really wasn’t a big deal; I don’t know why everyone’s so upset about it.

See.

I thought if I made a bunch of these and tried to make light of the situation down in Tennessee, it would keep me sane. Keep me calm. Keep me from wanting to scream at the top of my lungs at the ever-growing frustration of being a black person in this country.

Why did nobody tell me about this in January? How did I miss this? Oh right, because slavery was no big deal so it’s OK if Tennessee wants its public school teachers to put a positive spin on it.