The United States (Southern end)

[Roy Corduroy]

The people: warm, friendly, made to feel welcome. Nice accent down in the South. ... Quite a few times we were told: "it's a pleasure to have you here" and that really does help.

Mr. Mac, of any compliment you might bestow, this is the best.

I'm glad you enjoyed some southern hospitality.

Roy

[Hunter]

American homes: absolutely beautiful from the outside, but we were scratching our heads as to why we never saw anyone outside on the porch or any lights from inside; there seemed to be no signs of life in house after house regardless of the time of the day. Imagine if we had that weather in England! We'd be on the porch naked and praying to the sun god!

Thats 'cause everyone was in the back yard - or in someone else's back yard. That's the center of activity down here - except those two nasty weeks in January when we have winter. Even in the city, folks have a big back yard.

When you visit someone, you go round to the back door. The only folks who go to the front door are the law and preachers. We do everything in the back yard...cook, target practice, swim in the cement pond, nap in a hammock, or just sit around in lounge chairs and chew the fat. At night the yard is lit up with floodlights. When I was a kid, my parents and kinfolks would play croquet until 2 in the morning (wonder where we got that from?)

If you come to the front door, you'll be greeted with suspicion. If you come around back, and there's already folks outside, someone will hand you a beer and asks you how well you can shoot - unless they're Church of Christ. They'll hand you a glass of iced tea and ask you what religion you are.

The main thing is though... did yall ever get a chance to try some fried green tummaters?

[Ally]

I was wondering if he'd tried grits.

[j.r-ahde]

Hello you all!

Is there anything for a vegetarian in the southern US?!

(No, I am not. But I know a girl, who is... )

All the best
Jukka

[Phil Carter]

Phil, can your mates in the travel business get me involved in this in some way? Don't tell 'em I'm a ringer as my knitting skills are legendary!

The fjords are the main thing. Also, we tend to like quaint towns/villages/rural areas rather than the big cities. But, we will go to Oslo for a day or two just to have a look round. We'll be going June/July time, and I'd guessed they'd have nice summers over that way.

I didn't appreciate the size of Norway, though. Is it realistic to attempt to cram Sweden, Denmark and Norway into 2 weeks?

Hello FM,

I will send a pm or two for you to look through within a few days, as the answers to your queries here may well be a little drawn out. I moved here 30 odd years ago as an adult, am a born and bred London fellow... so am aware of the North Eastern dialect that involves the "nordic" language.. the City of Jorvik being York, another example of Viking influence, of course.

Phil

[Hunter]

Hello you all!

Is there anything for a vegetarian in the southern US?!

(No, I am not. But I know a girl, who is... )

No.

Even the vegetables are cooked with a piece of fat meat (usually pork) in it.
We know our place in the food chain.

[lynn cates]

cuisine

Hello Cris. I'm sure you heard the story of the Texan who went to London and ordered biscuits and gravy for breakfast?

Cheers.
LC

[Hunter]

Might had, but tell it anyway. Sounds like a goodun'.

[lynn cates]

story

Hello Cris. Thanks.

The waitress said, "Sir, we do not normally serve biscuits with gravy."

"Well, you have biscuits?"

"Yes. The finest."

"And gravy?"

"Yes indeed. Serve it with a joint of beef."

"Well, put two biscuits on the plate and pour gravy on them."

She did. As I recall, BOTH were chocolate chip.

Cheers.
LC

[Errata]

With all due respect, Errata, you only think you know.

I think I'm not explaining myself well, which is to say that everything you said is true, and I know that, but I was trying to distinguish between Scotch-Irish and Irish, one being Presbyterian one being C of E (I think) and that in general Presbyterianism is sorted into the category of "Protestant Dissenters" like I think Calvinism is, and some other branch of Scottish... Covenenters? More extreme? It's a soiological label. It has nothing to do with anything they did.

"Abrahamic religions" is another one of those labels. And while I think Christians think Abraham was a swell guy, I don't think the consider him the origin of their religion per se. They just get sorted that way.

None of which of course is why the Scotch-Irish left Ulster. That was pure economics.

And we do have "regular Irish" here as well who settled in the same areas. Areas with coal. So I imagine Ulster neighbors, but I can't swear to it. And it's one of the great mysteries as to how such isolated cultures in the Appalachias blended. There would be no reason for them to intermarry. But they did exchange a lot of culture. Instrument making, tool designs, music, clothing design. It's really neat, but totally unexplained. Especially when you consider that a guy had to hike 10 miles straight up a mountain in order to get to the next settlement. But even today those ornery bastards are tougher than the rest of us combined, so who knows.

I wish I could describe those digs for you. Finding all kinds of relationships we thought were impossible. Seriously I love this stuff.

Not in the book I have in front of me. Do you have the book and I'll give you the page numbers?

Not the book, in that passage. He talks about the coal miners from Cornwall moving to Durham. Now I'm pretty sure you guys have a Durham, but we do too. It's in North Carolina on the other side of the mountains from Tennessee. It's a community that was not unlike the Appalachians, except of course less isolated. But North Carolina was one of the original 13 colonies. And English dissenters did settle there. But despite being a territory of North Carolina, we weren't settled by North Carolinians. We were settled from the north and the south. Not the east, because of the mountains. So during the settlement of the original 13 colonies, we are talking about a mostly English influx. Tennessee ended up with a different mix, because of our geography. And of course, who is willing to clear an appalling amount of forest in order to plant.
But that's why I say he's talking about the original 13 colonies. He is talking about the settlement on North Carolina, one of the original 13 colonies.

Seemed like prefectly reasonable people to me.

We are. Especially Southerners who tend towards the terribly practical.

But our national character is... well I can't even swear we really have one. I don't know if you have ever seen our debates on guns, or health care, or military matters, but we can be, often are in fact, an incredibly polarized people. Which isn't to say that everyone in England agrees. But we really take it to an absurd level. I mean, we have 600 million people, we are one country. Sow how on earth do we manage to have 5 separate opinions on gun ownership, opinions that cannot be swayed for love or money? We can't even make any laws on the matter because they require a certain majority that will never come to pass.

Every state you go to will be markedly different. Some industrial, some agrarian. Some outgoing, some standoffish. And it's like, in our own state. If you went to a coffee house in Nashville and ask who wants to ban guns, everyone would raise their hands. If you went to a bar in Nashville and asked the same question... run. You'd think "gee in the same city I bet they'd mostly agree". Nope. I think our national character is that we don't come together on a lot of things based on where we live. We're stubborn. We don't like people telling us what to think. We are attached to our independence. Which doesn't make for rock solid communities. We are individuals first.

And that's an English thing. And a Scottish thing. And an Irish thing. And a French thing, German thing, Swedish, Russian. Depending on who settled our communities is how we see individuality. Tennessee tends to see it as a somewhat isolating, but it manifests that individuality as the freedom to get involved. Help others. Sometimes it's personal, sometimes global. Alabama sees it more as a legal thing, a set of rights. New York City sees it as the freedom to not give a **** about other's opinions. No one is wrong, no one is right. But most people can't even come together enough to agree on what to get on a pizza. Which on a national scale doesn't make us look so good.

[Errata]

Fischer prefers to speak of "borderers" (referring to the historically war-torn England-Scotland border) as the population ancestral to the "backcountry" "cultural stream" (one of the four major and persistent cultural streams he identifies in American history) and notes the borderers were not purely Celtic but also had substantial Anglo-Saxon and Viking or Scandinavian roots, and were quite different from Celtic-speaking groups like the Scottish Highlanders or Irish (that is, Gaelic-speaking and Roman Catholic).

These "borderers" of Fischer's are not interesting to me because of the cultures they represent. They are interesting to me because they are the Typhoid Marys of tradition, manner, and socialization. Borderers (and the like) are the heroes of every modern culture. They are how we transmit and receive culture. They come in all shapes and flavors. Some like these borderers are very concrete. They live at a crossroads of cultures, absorbing all of it, transmitting as they go. Or traders. Or even captives. Some are more ephemeral. Those who intermarry. Those who convert religions. Those who move across country, those who pioneer. As a territory, just about everyone who settled here was a "borderer". Bringing something of the old to the new.

These aren't really the peoples who make history (although the Romans were certainly prolific) And people don't identify with them the way do the Celts, or the Vikings, or the Japanese. But they are my favorites. They were like early Anthropologists, except instead of studying culture, they were creating it.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Errata,

I probably should have explained myself more clearly when calling them a pack of idiots. There is nothing idiotic about celebrating your traditions. I probably misrepresented the Irish, too, who, like the English generally find it all ridiculous.

You have two communities. One catholic; one protestant. In Ulster these people would walk in a bar and shoot you for being a catholic (a matter of a decade back) or have you kneecapped for being a protestant. In Glasgow, the feeling is similar. You have the protestant community who are loyal to Britain and the catholic community who are loyal to Ireland, and when the two football clubs play, Glasgow Rangers and Glasgow Celtic, who both draw crowds of 50,000 plus at home matches; it is not unheard of for someone to be stabbed to death or shot with a cross-bow after the match for the crime of being a catholic or a protestant.

They really are not Irishmen disagreeing with Irishmen at all. The rest of Scotland refer to the fans of these two clubs as 'Scotland's Shame' for their ridiculous sectarian violence.

Just thought I'd show you this, Errata. This is Glasgow Rangers playing Glasgow Celtic. The first song you hear is Billy's Boys (William of Orange) and includes a line: "we're up to our knees in Fenian blood, surrender or you die". And another is Derry's Walls about 14 minutes in which is a song about a battle in 1690. These aren't songs sung by a minority - the whole football ground's singing it! Rangers fans are all protestant and many travel over from Ulster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-lJ3m_R8UAo

On another one here this is the tune of Derry's Walls and the Rangers crowd in a sea of British Union Jacks, and the blue of Protestantism. These people are either Ulstermen or Scotsmen who are loyal to Britain. They are basically the same people as it was mainly the lowland protestant Scots (e.g. Glasgow) who colonised Ulster.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHhQ_csVDnU

If you think these people remotely see themselves as Irish then you're miles away from the mark.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Mr. Mac, of any compliment you might bestow, this is the best.

I'm glad you enjoyed some southern hospitality.

Roy

Can't say how much we enjoyed their company. Nice people and you also felt that the welcome was sincere providing you took care of your manners.

[Fleetwood Mac]

Thats 'cause everyone was in the back yard - or in someone else's back yard. That's the center of activity down here - except those two nasty weeks in January when we have winter. Even in the city, folks have a big back yard.

When you visit someone, you go round to the back door. The only folks who go to the front door are the law and preachers. We do everything in the back yard...cook, target practice, swim in the cement pond, nap in a hammock, or just sit around in lounge chairs and chew the fat. At night the yard is lit up with floodlights. When I was a kid, my parents and kinfolks would play croquet until 2 in the morning (wonder where we got that from?)

If you come to the front door, you'll be greeted with suspicion. If you come around back, and there's already folks outside, someone will hand you a beer and asks you how well you can shoot - unless they're Church of Christ. They'll hand you a glass of iced tea and ask you what religion you are.

The main thing is though... did yall ever get a chance to try some fried green tummaters?

Ah, that explains it.

Wish I'd known. I'd have popped round the back with my own beer. Can't shoot but would have given it a go!

We did try the fried tomatoes and tactfully declined to eat the full plate. I was only asked my religion once and that was by a bloke from Wisconsin who was probably catholic as he kept talking about his Polish ancestry. My other half wears a cross around her neck and it's usually assumed that you must be catholic to do that (but the Church of England retains catholic practices to this day). I saw him eyeing up her cross (at least I think it was her cross) and then began a religion discussion - it sharp ended when the response was Protestant - Church of England and Methodist.

[Fleetwood Mac]

I was wondering if he'd tried grits.

No, no grits. Would have tried them, should have tried them, but just didn't get round to it.

We did get some food from Shoney's one night in Nashville and as fast food goes it wasn't bad at all. A chicken and mushroom pie, some nachos and a fudge cake. But, bizarrely, we'd clearly ordered 6 helpings and they came out with two...."errrmm, think you've missed a few, mate"....."ah yes, we'll be back"...then they came out with another two...I was thinking are this lot taking the Mick?! Turned out that the lass who had put the order in had two jobs, got up at 5 for the first one and finished the second one at 11, so she was a struggling a bit with the digits and an unravelling mind at that time of night.

Oh, while we were over there I noticed the government had shut down and there's a fair chance it will again in the coming months. Didn't quite grasp what 'shut down' meant but I assumed something was on a downward spiral and the natives weren't happy about it. Saw the Texan governor stand defiant, and I supposed 'ObamaCare' had something to do with this.

Some Texan turning up in England asking for biscuits and gravy wouldn't get very far at all. "No mate, but here's a sausage, some fried bread and black pudding." He'd love it and be taking the stuff back with him to the US. The biggest myth and most wanton disregard for the truth on this planet is the usual stuff trotted out about English food - if only they knew.