the cornbread wars

Bit humid but nice morning for breakfast out here on 7H porch. 

Who knew that jellyfish have neither a brain nor a nervous system. So not only can they not feel pain, they are incapable of feeling remorse for the terrible burning stinging they inflict on people who are touched by their tentacles. Ross Whitley on Channel 13 said there will be jellyfish in the Gulf waters, so stay alert if you go to the beach today.

Three leaves of one of Linda's porch plants showed up with long holes eaten through this morning. Searching, she found the culprit, a green caterpillar. What kind of animal will it morph into? Maybe a butterfly. She tossed it over the rail and watched until it landed in grass seven levels down. 

Do caterpillars have awareness? Not "self-awareness," but are they conscious of what's immediately around them? What about dragonflies, are they aware of their surroundings as they dart about just off 7H porch these late summer early fall evenings? An answer has to be "yes," because if they light on the balcony rail and we approach them, they fly away. 

Somebody had to do it: how would it be to have gotten my Being as a dragonfly instead of as a human? Or as a minnow living to evade the wading birds? How about a palmetto bug, one of those huge brown creatures that we call a roach, able to flatten myself to squeeze into or out of any space? We don't have roaches at HV, because the bug man comes about once a quarter and smears his treatment under several kitchen cabinets. If I were a roach I wouldn't live at Harbour Village.

Now and then on 7H porch we see those forked-tail little insects that are a middling stage of the creature that evolves into a dragonfly, and we leave them alone. Dragonflies are welcome in our world, not only do they eat mosquitoes, they add joy to our evenings here as they flit about in zigzags. 

I hate this: the heavy pain in my neck is signaling a BP drop, check it: 60/40, because of the cornbread I had for breakfast, so I have to cease typing for a while. Maybe not too long.

Squawking below, something must be irritating a wading bird, usually a dog rushing out in the shallows at it.

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I hope my mother never felt betrayed that I married into an Alabama family that was on the other side of the cornbread wars. Learning from her mother, my Pensacola grandmother, Mama was a great cook, and I grew up loving her special dishes. One was oven-baked red snapper, which is still a favorite that Linda and I fix from Time to Time. Another was okra & tomatoes, which were comfortingly sweet, Mama added lots of sugar. Our cornbread was sweet too. 

It never occurred to me that some folks preferred unsweetened cornbread because that was the way the BVM cooked it, and that cornbread with or without sugar was even more delicate a topic than the Filioque, much less what brand of mayonnaise your family ate. In Linda's family of Tuscaloosa and Birmingham natives, I found a breed of Southerners with strong faith in unsweetened cornbread. Linda's mother used to bake it for us, she used a little iron pan

that always baked crispy cornbread, that Linda's mother dipped in buttermilk, apparently a Southern tradition that she learned from her Aniston family the Nobles. I love buttermilk, especially the thicker buttermilk that's labeled "Bulgarian style," but I like my cornbread hot with butter. 

On occasion, such as this morning, hot buttered cornbread soaked with Steen's cane syrup. I like it with maple syrup too, but I'm talking Southern here.

So, without realizing all the ramifications, the Fall of 1952, seventy-one years ago this September month, I started attaching myself to a cute Alabama girl whom I had first noticed when she started at Cove School, who was in our church youth group, and who was a year behind me at Bay Hi, and trying to make sure no other boys got too close. Little did I realize that her people were cornbread enemies who liked their okra & tomatoes with acidic tartness. 

Quietly pouring cane syrup on warm cornbread is my no-mans-land.

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This morning was my day to have a go at tomorrow morning's Bible readings, but never mind. 

RSF&PTL

T88&c