Pop Song of the Week: "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"

Joan Baez, Confederate apologist.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Doctor Who (The Second Series): “Rosa”

Yes, I get that Rosa Parks was a very famous person and she justly deserves to have her story told and retold. But I can't help but find it a tad amusing that this show's writers assume that the average TV viewer will think of only one person whenever they mention the name "Rosa." After all, Rosa is a popular name among Hispanics even if it's not so popular with Britons.

Oh, well. There were worse things to worry about in this episode -- one of them being the bizarre philosophical questions raised by this episode. After all, the episode's premise revolved around the idea that an alien time traveler was trying to interfere with the American civil rights era by seeing to it that Rosa Parks' famous protest never happened. So the Doctor and her friends were put in the position of -- what? -- making sure Rosa Parks had something to protest about? There was something not quite kosher about that scenario.

I just hope that this doesn't become a trend. I'd hate to tune in each week to see the Doctor and her friends do their damnedest to make sure that a depressing episode of man's cruelty to man goes ahead right on schedule.

Christmas Song of the Week: "Mr. Heat Miser"

This week I post one of my favorite versions of an old standard.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Loreta Janeta Velázquez!

Born June 26, 1842. Died c.1897.

She was a Cuban-born woman who claimed to have fought in the American Civil War while she was disguised as a male Confederate soldier named Harry Buford. According to her memoirs, she enlisted without the knowledge or permission of her soldier-husband. She allegedly fought at Bull's Run and other battles but was then arrested and discharged when her true gender was uncovered while she was in New Orleans and she was suspected of being a female Union spy in disguise. She then re-enlisted and fought at Shiloh before she was revealed once more to be a woman. She then became a spy who posed as both men and women depending on the assignment. Eventually she became a widow and remarried, only to become a widow again. She remarried two more times and became a widow each time. Eventually she became a member of the U.S. Secret Service and a double agent for the Confederacy. The circumstances of her death are unknown though she did give birth to a baby boy.

Everything known about her comes from her book, The Woman in Battle: A Narrative of the Exploits, Adventures, and travels of Madame Loreta Janeta Velázquez, Otherwise Known as Lieutenant Harry T Buford, Confederate States Army. She claimed in the book's preface to have written the book in order to earn money to support her child. The accuracy of said book is still disputed by historians so it could be that Ms. Velázquez was little more than a very imaginative woman. Then again maybe she was more than that.

Stranger things have happened in history. Until additional evidence comes in, Ms. Velázquez is perhaps best ranked with such legendary figures as Lady Godiva, figures whose stories seem too interesting to be true and yet not fictional enough to be entirely dismissed. Then again if her life story were totally made up, I doubt she would deliberately choose to mention fighting for the losing side of one of the U.S.'s most hard-fought wars. As it stands, her story is so paradoxical that part of me wishes that it were true. Then again I am no fan of the Confederacy so part of me also hopes that it is untrue. Time will tell.

Pop Song of the Week: "Copperhead Road"

And because of our traditions, every one of us knows who he is and what God expects him to do...

Movie Song of the Week: "Way Down in Dixie"

Come to think of it, I'm from the South, too. The South of Michigan, that is.

Hey, I Remember This Show: Petticoat Junction

The original opening and closing credits from one of the most famous train-related sitcoms of all time. It says something about how young I was when I first saw this series that I never thought to ask what those three women were doing in the water tower until I was much, much older. And given that it was supposed to be a family show, it's just as well I never thought about it too much when I was younger. Though, for the record, it should be noted that the cast members in question have admitted in interviews that they were actually fully clothed during the filming of that famous intro. So shame on all of you who thought differently.

Hey, I Remember This Show: Designing Women

In honor of the late Dixie Carter.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

True Blood: “Strange Love”

This show is all about the South and how weird it is down there. (Sounds almost Freudian, doesn't it?) Okay, actually it's about Louisiana -- or to be more accurate, a Hollywood screenwriter's version of Louisiana -- and how weird it is down there. At least, that's the impression one gets from the show's opening credits.

To be fair, the show is also based on a series of novels written by Southern author Charlaine Harris about a telepathic waitress named Sookie Stackhouse and her various supernatural acquaintances. Not the easiest type of material to depict in a believable fashion and it's to the show's credit that the lead character looks more sympathetic than ridiculous. However, producer Alan Ball of Six Feet Under fame can't resist taking a more sensationalistic approach to the material than Ms. Harris did -- for example, he never resists the opportunity to show off yet another unclad female body -- and I'm not quite sure I appreciate the “improvement.”

However, Anna Paquin makes for a believable Sookie Stackhouse and Stephen Moyer does a fair job of depicting her vampiric future novio, Bill Compton. Moreover, as a fan of Ms. Harris's work, I'd like to think that the TV series has as much potential as the book version has had thus far.

So for now, I'm keeping my fingers -- ahem -- crossed.

I Looked at Ice from Both Sides Now...

We actually had a minor ice storm here in Dallas last night. A storm so bad I could not even open my car door this morning without first pouring water on it -- and even then I could only open the car door that was on the side facing the rising sun.

Okay, it could be worse. I could have had snow to contend with as well. And now that the sun is out, I suspect most of the worst ice patches will be gone by noon.

The ex-Detroiter in me should be glad about this weather. And if I were still a young kid who lived for snow days and snowball fights, I probably would be disappointed that the winter weather wasn't more wintry. But now that I'm an adult, ice and snow don't seem like that much fun. Especially if you have to drive somewhere and contend with all the drivers who seem to forget everything they ever learned about driving on snow and ice every winter. Or if you have to walk outside for a long while and have little more than a thin coat to protect you from the wind.

I thank God I have a good supply of thick gloves and winter caps. Then again I really need to break down and buy a good scarf. The habits that I acquired up North always seem to be useless in the South but then a day happens like today and suddenly I'm glad I learned them.

The only problem is that over the years, I've become addicted to the South's warmer temperatures. If I ever had to move back to Michigan where days like this are more frequent, I don't know what I would do.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the South

When I first moved to Texas from my native Michigan, I hated the South. I didn't hate it so much because it was the South but because it wasn't Michigan where all our relatives were. And I wasn't alone in my distaste for all things Southern. My siblings and I cried so much about having to live in Texas that my father promised my mother that our family would move back to Michigan if we hadn't adjusted to life in the Lone Star State within a year.

Well, we adjusted all right, but for years afterwards, part of me could not help feeling like an exile who was forever banned from his native land. As far as I was concerned, everything was better up north: the land, the people, the music, the food, the weather. I was always comparing notes with my fellow Yankees about how bad things were in the South and, of course, how better things were in the North.

It wasn't until I was in my mid-twenties and able to spend a whole summer in Michigan that I realized that this wasn't necessarily so. Almost everything I hated about Dallas -- the traffic, the racial problems, the bad schools, the rude people -- could be found in Detroit, and the few advantages I enjoyed in Dallas -- cheap book stores, air conditioning, etc. -- weren't all that widespread in Detroit. Because air conditioning was not as common up north as in the south, the summers seemed a lot hotter than they had to be and the winters, of course, were a lot harsher. (Fortunately, the Northerners believed in central heating far more than they believed in air conditioning.)

I didn't realize how attached I was getting to the South until I realized one day in Michigan that I actually missed my life in Texas. I didn't kid myself that things would automatically be wonderful when I got back, but I did miss it in a way that I never thought would be possible.

I can't help but find it an odd coincidence that of the handful of women with whom I have actually fallen in love, at least six were Southern women. My best friend is a Southern woman (and gasp! a non-Catholic to boot) and, of course, the one woman I have ever got engaged to was born right here in Texas. The one time I dated a Yankee woman (actually, a Latvian immigrant who grew up in New York but I considered her a Yankee) proved a disaster. And when I got into a conversation last week with an Irish Catholic women from Chicago who insisted on badmouthing Southern women, my first instinct was not to say, “Right on.” It was to contradict her.

I'm not going to pretend that the South is perfect or that there aren't a lot of areas for improvement here in Texas. I'll never be the type of person who proudly displays the Stars and Bars or waxes nostalgic over the old Confederacy.

But I no longer kid myself that I would be happier up north than I am here in Texas. If I was forced to move there tomorrow, I'd probably learn to adjust. But it wouldn't be a process that I would look forward to.

Why I Like the South

Everytime I start getting nostalgic for my hometown of Detroit, the temperature drops down to the 30s and 20s and suddenly I'm glad to be living in the South. I hate cold winters. Yes, I know. Hot summers are no fun either. But Detroit winters -- brrr!!!