Back from the South!
Friday, March 12th, 2010
I just came back from a relaxing and interesting trip to see the former Jenny B. (now Jenny R.) in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. I was my first time in the South, except for maybe driving through a little. I found it hard to understand the white people, although I didn’t have as much trouble with black people. Jenny noted that another one of her friends had said the same thing, and that the person thought it might be because they had heard more black southern English on TV. I was thinking the same thing.
I had some typical Southern foods, like purple-hulled peas, which I had never even heard of before, plus grits, biscuits tamales and barbecued ribs.
The kids watched My Neighbor Totoro while we were there, and then Jenny’s daughter started planting acorns in the back yard.
We went to a few cultural places. We saw the Rosa Parks Memorial in Montgomery, and the Civil Rights Institute (which was VERY impressive) in Birmingham. The Institute was right across the street from the 16th Street Baptist Church, which was bombed by some racists during church school, killing four children and injuring others. This incident was the subject of the Spike Lee movie Four Little Girls. We talked to a very nice lady in the Civil Rights Institute who said her mother, who experienced the events of the time, couldn’t go there because it would be “too much for her” to relive everything, but that kids today couldn’t even imagine what it was like back then.
