Georgia Girl Quotes

Love is not a weakness. It's the bravest act of our lives.

Love is not weakness. It's the bravest act of our lives.

Before there is science, there are stories to explain the world. They make it happier somehow.

The next day Georgia left for school before I even got to the breakfast table. From behind his newspaper, Papy asked tiredly, "Are you girls on World War Four now, or is it Five?

When girls walk home we put on lippy and makeup. We chat. Sometimes we pretend to be hunchbacks. But that is it. Perfectly normal behavior.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of "interposition" and "nullification" -- one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; "and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.

Let me get straight on this. You don’t want to be the girl to wear out your welcome, but you’ll be the girl who lets him wear out your vagina?” She slaps my arm in the dark. “That’s just crude, Laurie.” She giggles. “But oh so true. He did wear it out like a champ.

Summers with Rene began with a cigarette in one side of her mouth and a squinting of her eyes as she thought . . . . Shortly, she would make her pronouncement and it would seem magical no matter how often the words were said. "It's a beach day," blessed the day. The rest was understood. No more needed to be said. I knew that she knew. She had the gift to read what would come from the skies as surely as my mother could see births and betrayals in the cards.

[Greens] don't come through the back door the same as other groceries. They don't cower at the bottom of paper bags marked 'Liberty.' They wave over the top. They don't stop to be checked off the receipt. They spill out onto the counter. No going onto shelves with cans in orderly lines like school children waiting for recess. No waiting, sometimes for years beyond the blue sell by date, to be picked up and taken from the shelf. Greens don't stack or stand at attention. They aren't peas to be pushed around. Cans can't contain them. Boxed in they would burst free. Greens are wild. Plunging them into a pot took some doing. Only lobsters fight more. Either way, you have to use your hands. Then, retrieving them requires the longest of my mother's wooden spoons, the one with the burnt end. Swept onto a plate like the seaweed after a storm, greens sit tall, dark, and proud.

When I think back those tides were like women with different scents and different demands. Low tide was fruity and cool. It took a while to get to her edge. Low tide held back. The onus was on you to go on over to her. High tide smelled of heat that built up. It was Chanel No. 5 to her drugstore opposite. She went after you in no uncertain terms.

Come spring, the trees give us gifts. Green bits that helicopter down from above. When they land, Joey and I follow, retrieve them and bend the blades until they touch, releasing the glue inside so we can stick them onto our noses and call each other Pinocchio. This beats anything in my yard. Gathering buds that die and fall was fine once. But chasing helicopters and having a green nose is better.

It's because there are three guys in a girl's life: one she loves, one she hates, and one she can't get enough of. The three have one thing in common. They're all the same guy, and right now, Jack is the one you hate. You want to kick his nut sack into his gut, but you have to remember that he's also the one you love and can't get enough of.

You STUPID stupid girl. Honestly, you have done some stupid stupid things in your time, but this takes the biscuit of stupidity.

My cousin Georgia says that boys are like gazelles. She says the get alarmed when they get close to girls. And they have to leap off into the woods like gazelles in trousers. Or have I just made that up?

Boys are like elastic bands. It doesn't mean that boys are made of elastic, which is a plus because nobody wants a boyfriend made out of rubber. On the other hand, if they were made out of rubber, you could save yourself a lot of time and effort and heartache by just rustling one up out of a car tire. Boys are different from girls. Girls like to be cozy all the time but boys don't. First of all, they like to get all close to you like a coiled-up rubber band, but after a while, they get fed up with being too coiled and need to stretch away to their full stretchiness. Then, after a bit of on-their-own strategy, they ping back to be close to you. So in conclusion on the boy front, you have to play hard to get and also let them be elastic bands.

I love you pretty girl." "And I love you cave, man.

Hey, there's a song about me called 'Jessie's Girl.' I still hear it on the radio occasionally." "Yeah, everybody wishes they had Jessie's girl," he laughed.

A little girl learns about men through her Father." Sam Cameron

Look, girls and boys are different. Girls like to be touched twenty times a day in a nonsexual way to feel good about themselves - that is why I tickle you and link arms with you - but boys think about sex, snogging and football, and also snogging whilst playing football. Simple.

We're free agents. We can do what we want." Free agents. When my mother used those words she'd wave her keys. "We're like two bachelorettes," she'd say as we backed out of the drive. The road she took was always by the sea. Floods never put her off. "It'll pass" she'd say when I braced myself in the seat. If a wave hit the car, she'd drive on, floating sometimes for seconds. The wipers could clear off the sand and small stones. Seaweed was the problem. Not the one with poppers. That landed with a thud and rolled like a body off the windscreens. No, the problem was the smaller stuff, bright green and fine that wrapped itself like a feather boa around the side mirror. Usually, with one hand, she could throw it off. But sometimes, it took both her hands as if it were a scarf around Isadora Duncan's neck.

We got hungry around three in the morning, and ordered a ton of pizza from an all-night pizza place. Afterward, Blake talked a guy into letting him borrow his skateboard, and he once again entertained all of us. If it had wheels, Blake could work it. “Is he your boyfriend?” a girl behind me asked. I turned to the group of girls watching Blake. They were all coifed and beautiful in their bikinis, not having gone in the water. My wet hair was pulled back in a ponytail by this point and I was wrapped in a towel. “No, he’s my boyfriend’s best friend. We’re watching his place while he’s . . . out of town.” A pang of fear jabbed me when I thought about Kai. “What’s your name?” asked a brunette with glossy lips. “Anna.” I smiled. “Hey. I’m Jenny,” she said. “This is Daniela and Tara.” “Hey,” I said to them. “So, your boyfriend lives here?” asked the blonde, Daniela. She had a cool accent—something European. “Yes,” I answered, pointing up to his apartment. The girls all shared looks, raising their sculpted eyebrows. “Wait,” said Jenny. “Is he that guy in the band?” The third girl, named Tara, gasped. “The drummer?” When I nodded, they shared awed looks. “Oh my gawd, don’t get mad at me for saying this,” said Jenny, “but he’s a total piece of eye candy.” Her friends all laughed. “Yum drum,” whispered Tara, and Daniela playfully shoved her. Jenny got serious. “But don’t worry. He, like, never comes out or talks to anyone. Now we know why.” She winked at me. “You are so adorable. Where are you from?” “Georgia.” This was met with a round of awwws. “Hey, you’re a Southern girl,” said Tara. “You should like this.” She held out a bottle of bourbon and I felt a tug toward it. My fingers reached out. “Maybe just one drink,” I said. Daniela grinned and turned up the music. Fifteen minutes and three shots later I’d dropped my towel and was dancing with the girls and telling them how much I loved them, while they drunkenly swore to sabotage the efforts of any girl who tried to talk to my man.

...the second thing my brain registered was this girl was trouble wrapped up in psycho.

The air is so clean out here, so fresh. Reminds me of when I was a little girl in Georgia." Then she took More from her pack and lit it.

Orphan Annie stood her ground. She had been raised that way in the Georgia canebrakes by a father who told her, “You don’t back down, girl, not for nothin.” Jean Ledoux had been a crack shot whether drunk or sober, and he had taught her well. Now she opened fire with both of Drummer’s handguns, compensating for the .45 auto’s heavier recoil without even thinking about it.

In this part of America, 'R's' are the dissidents of the alphabet. They won't be ruled. Behind closed doors, they conspire and print leaflets. They make love to many women. They smoke cigarettes in place of eating food. Then, in front of witnesses with no recourse to justice, they are pulled from their beds in the middle of the night. Some are imprisoned. Some silenced. Others go missing. A few reappear sealed up in the wall of another word if they are found at all. Thus, a thought that is valued is truly an 'idear.' Wanda comes out as Wonder or Wander and both fit her.

The following quote is from a Ted talk my sister sent to me that blew my mind.... We talk about how many women were raped last year, not about how many MEN raped women... We talk about how many girls in a school district were harassed last year, not about how many BOYS harassed girls... We talk about how many teenage girls got pregnant in the state of VA last year, rather than how many men and teenage boys got girls pregnant... So you can see how the use of this passive voice has a political affect. It shifts the focus (and blame) off men and boys, and onto girls and women.

Southern Girl Secrets #107: If someone’s tryin’ to bring you down, it’s just ’cause they know you’re above them.

My mother and I get up in the dark. We dress in the dark. We walk down the stairs from the bedroom we share out of the house in the dark. Outside, the street is quiet. Too early for cars or buses, children playing, or others walking. It's too early even for talk that is soft.

But Leo began nuzzling the back of her neck. "You can run, but you can't hide, Georgia girl. Even if you give me the cold shoulder on the plane today. Even if you go all shy on me. It's on.

If Mrs. Child's ghost was planting, my father's was building. Half finished, nearly finished, and just started projects which waited throughout the house. In Evie's room, the closet he built swung open with a bang, impatient for a latch. The closet without a door in Rene's room just stared - day and night - like someone gone mad. The garage let in birds that left a mess where planks had been pried off for a second car to rest. Worst of all, the hole that he dug for my mother's patio filled with rainwater and grew grass as tall as in the marsh. Instead of a place to entertain in summer, it became a nature reserve which she could not close down. A holiday park for mosquitos. A rest home for caterpillars and other things that she loathed that squirmed.

Streets were quieter then. Dogs had the run of the town and children played outdoors. The side streets were for Simon Says and Green Light and Giant Step and other games. We set up our own carnivals. We told fortunes and sold coin purses that we made. But the buses on Wisteria Drive meant no one played outside my house. Even the dogs were wary except for one who only had three legs and still chased cars.

Those faces on Main Street shaded by wide straw hats are surrounded in my child-memory by hardware and ploughs, seed bags and bales of cotton, the smell of guano and mule lots, hot sun on sidewalks and lovely white ladies with sweet childlike voices and smooth childlike faces, and Old gardens of boxwood and camellias, and fields endlessly curving around my small world. I know now that the bitterness, the cruel sensual lips, the quick fears in hard eyes, the sashshaying buttocks of brown girls, the thin childish voices of white women, had a great deal to do with high interest at the bank and low wages in the mills and gullied fields and lynchings and Ku Klux Klan and segregation and sacred womanhood and revivals, and Prohibition. And that no part of this memory can be understood without recalling it all of it.

I asked why he was so angry all the time. I told him that while I agreed with Alabama blacks who boycotted bus companies and protested against segregation, California blacks were thousands of miles, literally and figuratively, from those Southern plagues. "Girl, don't you believe it. Georgia is Down South. California is Up South. If you're black in this country, you're on a plantation. You have to deal with masters. There might be some argument over whether they are vicious masters, but be assured that they all think they are masters . . . And if they think that, then you'd better believe they think you are the slave. Maybe a smart slave, a pretty slave, a good slave, but a slave just the same.

For girls, junior high is a daily dystopian nightmare of apocalyptic emotional warfare. Kill or be killed. Gossip or be gossiped about.

I was going to say, No, no, don’t cry, I’ll go out with you. Anything, but don’t cry. . . . But I still couldn’t make my voice work. And then he sort of cleared his throat and said, “Georgia, don’t feel bad. It’s always tough to hurt someone and tell them the truth. I know that. You’re a really lovely girl. Lovely . . . mad . . . but lovely. I’ll always like you. Don’t worry.

For as long as she can remember, telling stories has been her momma's gift to those around her, fables filled with rich, detailed accounts of gods and monsters, of love and curses. She can weave a tale from Spanish moss and moonlight that will make a young girl's heart resonate with yearning or weep with anguish. Her coastal Georgia roots add a dark sweetness to all her narratives, one that stains her stories with sorrow like a drop of molasses dissolving in warm butter.

And then there's the truth beyond that, sitting like an old rock under green creek water: none of these things matter. Right now, in this moment, we have love. We have it in the sound of my daughter's laugher, in Mom's and Georgia's locked fingers, in the warm pressure of J.T.'s hand. It will leave, and it will come again, and when it does I'll give up everything and take it. Just like an addict. Like dry grass in new rain. It's not something I'm proud of necessarily. Then again, maybe I am.

When running late, "it's OK." When I have a million things to do and not enough time to do it, "it's OK." When I get stuck in a fantasy about plane crashes or normal girls, "it's OK." It's my mantra when I need to override the voice that tells me nothing I do is OK.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. ‘I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down to gether at the table of brotherhood – I have a dream. ‘That one day even the state of Mississippi – a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of op pression – will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream.’ He had hit a rhythm, and two hundred thousand people felt it sway their souls. It was more than a speech: it was a poem and a canticle and a prayer as deep as the grave. The heartbreaking phrase ‘I have a dream’ came like an amen at the end of each ringing sentence. ‘. . . That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character – I have a dream today. ‘I have a dream that one day down in Alabama – with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification – one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers – I have a dream today. ‘With this faith we will be able to hew, out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. ‘With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. ‘With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.’ Looking around, Jasper saw that black and white faces alike were running with tears. Even he felt moved, and he had thought himself immune to this kind of thing. ‘And when this happens; when we allow freedom to ring; when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city; we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands . . .’ Here he slowed down, and the crowd was almost silent. King’s voice trembled with the earthquake force of his passion. ‘. . . and sing, in the words of the old Negro spiritual: ‘Free at last! ‘Free at last! ‘Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

Poppy Litchfield was just a seventeen-year-old girl from a small town in Georgia. Yet, from the day I had met her, she tipped my world on its head. And even now, after her death, she was still changing my world. Enriching and filling it with a selfless beauty that would never be rivaled.

The front door goes again, and Josh appears. Cate’s heart lifts a little. While Georgia always arrives with news and moods and announcements and atmospheres, her little brother arrives as though he’d never left. He doesn’t bring things in with him, his issues unfurl gently and in good time.

Dr. Mary Atwater's story was so inspiring. Growing up, Dr. Atwater had a dream to one day be a teacher. But as a black person in the American South during the 1950s, she didn't have many great educational opportunities. It didn't help that she was also a girl, and a girl who loved science, since many believed that science was a subject only for men. Well, like me, she didn't listen to what others said. And also like me, Dr. Atwater had a father, Mr. John C. Monroe, who believed in her dreams and saved money to send her and her siblings to college. She eventually got a PhD in science education with a concentration in chemistry. She was an associate director at New Mexico State University and then taught physical science and chemistry at Fayetteville State University. She later joined the University of Georgia, where she still works as a science education researcher. Along the way, she began writing science books, never knowing that, many years down the road, one of those books would end up in Wimbe, Malawi, and change my life forever. I'd informed Dr. Atwater that the copy of Using Energy I'd borrowed so many times had been stolen (probably by another student hoping to get the same magic), so that day in Washington, she presented me with my own copy, along with the teacher's edition and a special notebook to record my experiments. "Your story confirms my belief in human beings and their abilities to make the world a better place by using science," she told me. "I'm happy that I lived long enough to see that something I wrote could change someone's life. I'm glad I found you." And for sure, I'm also happy to have found Dr. Atwater.

Besides having baseball and success in common they also had Claire Merritt Hodgson, a Georgia native and a Ziegfeld Follies girl who was Ruth’s second wife. In her autobiography, The Babe and I, Mrs. Ruth said she had known Cobb “very well” as a teenager back in Athens, before he married Charlie, and for what it may be worth, Al Stump, in his second book on Cobb, suggests they were young lovers.

If the girl’s going to end up with a dude who’s a monster,” Chloe says, “it needs to be—” “Phantom,” Georgia finishes for her as they head outside, because she’s heard it five hundred thousand times. “Monster on the outside, but on the inside, he cares about her career goals!” Chloe says. “Call me old-fashioned, but a man’s place is in the basement, preparing vocal exercises for his more talented wife.

Summers with Rene began with a cigarette in one side of her mouth and a squinting of her eyes as she thought . . . . Shortly, she would make her pronouncement and it would seem magical no matter how often the words were said. "It's a beach day," blessed the day. The rest was understood. No more needed to be said. I knew that she knew. She had the gift to read what would come from the skies as surely as my mother could see births and betrayals in the cards.

We know about this. People are going to say a lot of idiot things to you.” She meant I should remember what it was like when she had the stillbirth and her first husband left her seven months later. Her voice came sort over the phone. She still sounds like herself, hasn’t picked up that Georgia molasses accent. “Just give them the bereavement face and say, ‘Bless your heart.’ Down here they teach girls to say that instead of bullshit. This is one of those times when people crowd in, nothing anyone says is the least comfort, but no one has the sense to know to shut up.

I’ve lived near here at several different stretches across time, but once, when I lived here a few hundred years ago, I had a camel I named Oded. He was just about the laziest creature ever to talk the Earth. He would pass out when I was in the middle of feeding him, and making it to the closest Bedouin camp for tea was a minor miracle. But when I first met you in that lifetime-“ “Oded broke into a run,” Luce said without thinking. “I screamed because I thought he was going to trample me. You said you’d never seen him move like that.” “Yeah, well,” Daniel said. “He liked you.” They paused and looked at each other, and Daniel started laughing when Luce’s jaw dropped. “I did it!” she cried out. “It was just there, in my memory, a part of me. Like it happened yesterday. I came to me without thinking!” It was miraculous. All those memories from all those lives that had been lost each time Lucinda died in Daniel’s arms were somehow finding their way back to her, the way Luce always found her way back to Daniel. No. She was finding her way to them. It was like a gate had been left open after Luce’s quest through the Announcers. Those memories stayed with her, from Moscow to Helston to Egypt. Now more were becoming available. She had a sudden, keen sense of who she was-and she wasn’t just Luce Price from Thunderbolt, Georgia. She was every girl she’d ever been, an amalgamation of experience, mistakes, achievements, and, above all, love. She was Lucinda. “Quick,” she said to Daniel. “Can we do another?” “Okay, how about another desert life? You were living in the Sahara when I found you. Tall and gangly and the fastest runner in your village. I was passing through one day, on my way to visit Roland, and I stopped for the night at the closest spring. All the other men were very distrustful of me, but-“ “But my father paid you three zebra skins for the knife you had in your satchel!” Daniel grinned. “He drove a hard bargain.” “This is amazing,” she said, nearly breathless. How much more did she have in her that she didn’t know about? How far back could she go? She pivoted to face him, drawing her knees against her chest and leaning in so that their foreheads were almost touching. “Can you remember everything about our pasts?” Daniel’s eyes softened at the corners. “Sometimes the order of things gets mixed up in my head. I’ll admit, I don’t remember long stretches of time I’ve spent alone, but I can remember every first glimpse of your face, every kiss of your lips, every memory I’ve ever made with you.

A few years after you disappeared, a postal worker named Ben Carver was sentenced to death for murdering six young men. (He is a homosexual, which, according to Huckleberry, means he is not attracted to murdering young women.) Rumors have it that Carver cannibalized some of his victims, but there was never a trial, so the more salacious details were not made public. I found Carver’s name in the sheriff’s file ten months ago, the fifth anniversary of your disappearance. The letter was written on Georgia Department of Corrections stationery and signed by the warden. He was informing the sheriff that Ben Carver, a death row inmate, had mentioned to one of the prison guards that he might have some information pertaining to your disappearance.

A form of entertainment that has recently become very popular, particularly in the smaller towns, is the Coca-Cola party. Usually the ladies assemble between eleven and twelve in the morning at the home of the hostess. Trays of tall iced glasses filled with Coca-Cola are passed, followed by platters of crackers and small iced cakes. The dining table is decorated like any tea-table with flowers, fruit or mints, except that there are little buckets of ice so that guests may replenish their glasses as the ice melts. Other bottled drinks are usually provided for those who do not like Coca-Cola, but these are few in Georgia. This simple, inexpensive form of entertainment is particularly popular with the young matrons and young girls, who use it to honor a visitor or a bride. Occasionally the parties are held in the afternoon, but usually the afternoon is time for the more elaborate tea.

It was destined, however, to receive an unprecedented publicity, for the fight between the policeman and the soldier ended with the shooting of the soldier. Rumor, flowing immediately to the streets outside, stated that the soldier had been shot in the back, an instantaneous and revealing invention, and that the soldier had died protecting a Negro woman. The facts were somewhat different—for example, the soldier had not been shot in the back, and was not dead, and the girl seems to have been as dubious a symbol of womanhood as her white counterpart in Georgia usually is, but no one was interested in the facts. They preferred the invention because this invention expressed and corroborated their hates and fears so perfectly. It is just as well to remember that people are always doing this. Perhaps many of those legends, including Christianity, to which the world clings began their conquest of the world with just some such concerted surrender to distortion.

As painful as it was, reading about sexual violence toward Black women and girls helped me with necessary creative depictions. My book could not have been written without Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as well as Beloved, and Alice Walker’s The Color Purple—this last book is so special to me because Ms. Walker is a native of Eatonton, Georgia, the home of my maternal ancestors. (My mother was one of Ms. Walker’s teachers.) My mother—Trellie James Jeffers—published an early germinal essay about colorism in the Black community, “The Black Black Woman and the Black Middle Class,” which allowed me to witness (vicariously) intra-racist sexism in African American communities. Another essay by her, “From the Old Slave Shack: Memoirs of a Teacher,” offers historical background about Mama’s experiences attending segregated schools in Eatonton, Georgia, in the 1930s and 1940s, before attending Spelman College in 1951.

The Cherokees left the beautiful mountainous land of their ancestors. They were forced to live far away, in the West, which many of them felt was the home of evil spirits. Perhaps evil spirits did dwell in the new land, for the Cherokees were never the same again after they had left their mountains. Now, no man alive in Georgia remembers the Cherokee Nation. The growing capital city of the Nation has been destroyed. There are no Cherokee women and girls left to pick the berries which grow along the creeks of the Georgia mountains. The deer which graze on the mountainsides are no more hunted by Cherokee men and boys. All that is left are names. Some of the towns and rivers in North Georgia have names which sound like music and make one think of the time when Cherokees ruled this land. There is a small town named Hiawassee and another named Ellijay. Such names sound like the wind whispering in the mountain pines. Other towns are called Rising Fawn and Talking Rock and Ball Ground. There are the rivers with strange names such as Chattahoochee, Oostenaula, Coosa, Chatooga and Etowah. Nacoochee is the name of a beautiful valley and Chattanooga the name of a great city. There are Cherokee names, given to these places a thousand years before the white man came to America. Now the Cherokees have gone. Only the names remain.

the cotton fields and strawberry patches of a much harsher world whose tragedies and daily burdens had blunted her temperament and quelled her emotions. But its most immediate impact on this teenage girl was not the lack of a demure coquettishness that otherwise might have defined her had she grown up in better circumstances; it was the visible evidence of the hardship of her journey. This was not a pom-pom-waving homecoming queen or a varsity athlete who had toned her body in a local gym. My mother never complained, but it was her struggles that had visibly shaped her shoulders, grown her biceps, and crusted her palms—while in a less visible way narrowing her view of her own long-term horizons. Decades later, when I was in my forties, I suppressed a defensive anger as I watched my mother sit quietly in an expansive waterfront Florida living room while a well-bred woman her age described the supposedly difficult impact of the Great Depression on her family. As the woman told it, the crash on Wall Street and the failed economy had made it necessary for them to ship their car by rail from New York to Florida when they headed south for the winter. Who could predict, she reasoned, whether there would be food or gasoline if their driver had to refuel and dine in the remote and hostile environs of small-town Georgia? My mother merely smiled and nodded, as

Despite indications of affection, a strong Anti-Semitic bias remained. In an 1878 campaign speech Senator John T. Morgan of Alabama referred to a candidate as a 'Jew-dog,' and the following year Senator Morgan opposed the appointment of a postmaster in Montgomery because he had been endorsed 'by a parcel of Jews.' In Nashville, Tennessee, in 1878, Christian mothers threatened to withdraw their children from a private school for girls after two Jews had been accepted. The principal yielded to the pressure and rescinded the enrollments. And in a Rome, Georgia, courtroom in 1873, the plaintiff's attorney declared that one cannot accept the word of a Jew 'even under oath.' Louisiana had anti-Semitic demonstrations in the late 1880s. Then, in 1893, farmers in the Bayou state wrecked Jewish stores in a particularly harsh outburst. That same year Mississippi night riders burned Jewish farmhouses, and a Baltimore minister preached: 'Of all the dirty creatures who have befouled this earth, the Jew is the slimiest.

Some people smoked when they were upset, some did yoga, or drank, or paced, or picked fights, or counted to one hundred. Georgia cooked. As a small girl growing up in Massachusetts, she'd spent most of her time in her grandmother's kitchen, watching wide-eyed as Grammy kneaded the dough for her famous pumpernickel bread, sliced up parsnips and turnips for her world-class pot roast, or, if she was feeling exotic, butterflied shrimp for her delicious Thai basil seafood. A big-boned woman of solid peasant stock, as she herself used to say, Grammy moved around the cramped kitchen with grace and efficiency, her curly gray hair twisted into a low bun. Humming pop songs from the forties, her cheeks a pleasing pink, she turned out dish after fabulous dish from the cranky Tappan stove she refused to replace. Those times with Grammy were the happiest Georgia could remember. It had been almost a year since she died, and not a day passed that Georgia didn't miss her. She pulled out half a dozen eggs, sliced supermarket Swiss and some bacon from the double-width Sub-Zero. A quick scan of the spice rack yielded a lifetime supply of Old Bay seasoning, three different kinds of peppercorns, and 'sel de mer' from France's Brittany coast. People's pantries were as perplexing as their lives.

Nik waited a few seconds for a response and, when nothing came, he moved in front of the girls, so Georgia couldn't escape. 'You must really hate that guy.

Sideline Story By Barbara Dooley, Georgia Grits When you have a lot of children, and we had four, you get worn slap out. By the time the last baby arrives, you just let them do just about whatever they want. We had a rule that our first son, Daniel, could not go to the sidelines with his father, who was the head coach at the University of Georgia at the time, until he was ten years old. Our youngest son, Derek, got this chance a lot sooner. When Derek was five, Georgia played our biggest in-state rival, Georgia Tech, in Atlanta on Thanksgiving night. We spent Thanksgiving without the coach, then drove to Atlanta for the game. When we got to the hotel, Derek immediately asked his father if he could sit on the sidelines. Feeling guilty about Thanksgiving, Vince compromised and told him that if we were beating Tech by a large score at the end of the third quarter he could go down on the sidelines. There were two rules: he could not get near the team, and he could not get near Dad! At family prayers, Derek prayed, “…and Jesus please let us be beating Tech by a big enough score that I can get to the sidelines.” At the end of the third quarter the score was 42--0, and I thought that was a reasonable lead to take him down to the sidelines. By the time we got to the fence, Tech had scored and it was 42--7. By the time I got him over the fence, it was 42--14. By the time I got back to my seat, it was 42--21 and Derek Dooley was pulling on his dad’s pants leg. That night in the hotel, we put the children down in their room and turned out the lights. We went to our adjoining room and Vince turned out the light. I knew, womanly instinct, that something major was about to be said. I just lay there as still as I could, waiting. Finally he said, “Barbara, the strangest thing happened tonight on the sideline. Tech had the ball going down the field to score and Derek was pulling on my pants leg. I pushed him away, anything to get him to turn loose of my leg. Finally when Tech scored, I looked down and said, ‘Derek, what do you want?’ I was ready for anything except for what he said. He looked up at me with his big brown eyes and said, “Daddy, don’t worry about a thing. Jesus is just having a little fun.

“When a New Yorker asked a Savannah society woman what she did, she looked at him, puzzled, ‘Why ah live--ah live in Sa-vannah!’ she replied with proper hauteur.” --Rosemary Daniell, writer and Georgia Grits

My Daddy and My Car By Marilyn Akers, Georgia Grits At fifteen, I came home from school one afternoon to find a faded red car with a white hardtop and a damaged front fender parked in the driveway. Since my daddy often worked on cars, both for himself and others, I noticed it only in passing. That is until my daddy explained that it was a 1971 Mercury Comet…and it was mine! Trouble was, it had a blown engine, and it was my job to overhaul it. So after school and on weekends I washed car parts, rode to the junk yard for replacement parts (and foot-long hot dogs from the Dairy Queen), handed my dad all sorts of tools, fixed coffee with cream and sugar, and occasionally got to do a “real” job under the hood. I remember being so excited when he asked me to get on the creeper and roll under the car (the children were never allowed under the car!) to tighten a fender bolt. Another day, I helped him connect the spark-plug wires to the distributor cap. I asked him why this particular job was so important for him to show me. He replied, “So if you’re ever out with a boy and the car breaks down, you’ll know what to look for.” He meant intentional removal of the wires, and it didn’t occur to me until many years later to ask if that advice was from personal experience! When the engine work was done, we took it to Earl Scheib for one of his infamous $99 paint jobs. I was so proud of that car and the work done side by side with my dad. We sold it less than a year later, after I stuck my foot through a rusted hole in the floorboard. I lost my dad in 2001 following a sixteen-year battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. But the bond formed between a teenage daughter and her father, and the lessons I learned from him, will be with me for a lifetime.

The midwife looked about on the floor, as if worried for a moment that Alice's nose had actually dropped off.

I was lying on a chaise lounge trying to get some sun on my legs and arms when two pigeons, thinking I was a slab of concrete and glad for the shade, started mating beneath me. The sounds were getting louder. This was not how I had wanted to spend my first summer out of high school

White caps or white horses. Take your pick. They are the same. They are nature's warning before beaches had flags. I had heard my uncle point them out. It sounded fanciful as the drawings beside poems about giants using pillows for clouds. . . . When my uncle said they were there and we wouldn't be going in his boat that day . . . I didn't understand. White horses, I thought, were my uncle's poetry. Better even than calling the swells on waves "white caps." Pilgrims and nurses wore caps. Who wanted to think of them? White horses were another matter. Brothers to unicorns. Galloping. Long haired and free. I ran into the sea.

[Collard] greens are special. They don't come through the back door the same as other groceries. They don't cower at the bottom of paper bags marked"Liberty." They wave over the top. They don't stop to be checked off the receipt. They spill out onto the counter. No going onto shelves with cans in orderly lines like school children waiting for recess. No waiting, sometimes for years beyond the blue sell by date, to be picked up and taken from the shelf. Greens don't stack or stand at attention. They aren't peas to be pushed around. Cans can't contain them. Boxed in they would burst free. Greens are wild. Plunging them into a pot took some doing. Only lobsters fight more. Either way, you have to use your hands. Then, retrieving them requires the longest of my mother's wooden spoons, the one with the burnt end. Swept onto a plate like the seaweed after a storm, greens sit tall, dark, and proud.

Mama, is that Aunt Eula’s chicken recipe?” Emily tore into a drumstick with enough fervor for both of them. “Sure is.” Her aunts had been up since before dawn cooking. The sweets table was piled with pies and sponge cake with fresh berries and Aunt Marline’s divinity fudge. She picked at her chicken, feeling her appetite improving with each bite of familiar cooking. “Can I have seconds, Mama?” “Of course. let me get some for you.” Alaine took Em’s plate to the buffet, still loaded with more food than an army could do away with. She chose a drumstick from the plate of chicken, then froze. “Now, Stella, it’s quaint,” Mrs. Mark Grafton, Pierce’s mother. Alaine stiffened. “They’ve done the best they can— and I think they rather expected us to enjoy a country luncheon.” “But chicken fricassee? For a wedding luncheon? Are they going to have us dance a reel next?” A woman younger than Mrs. Grafton, but bearing the same sharp dark eyes, tittered quietly. “I told Pierce they should have a fish course, at least. And a consommé. Of course I knew an aspic would be asking far too much.” “Pierce always did have an independent streak.” Stella said this as though it were a blight. “Marrying some country nobody when the Harris girls or Georgia Lawson would have—” “Not polite to speak of it now, dear,” Mrs. Grafton said with a tone that told Alaine it was only propriety keeping her from joining. Alaine seethed. Delphine wasn’t a nobody— she was better than any of these Perrysburg ninnies. “Pierce has his career to consider, that’s all I’m saying. She can’t go blundering about, mucking that up. After all, we stand to catch the ill effects of any mistakes she makes.” “I’ve advised Pierce how to handle himself, and he’ll make sure she knows her place. You needn’t concern yourself with your brother’s affairs.” Mrs. Grafton swept away in a wake of heady perfume, but not before Alaine heard her add in a sharp whisper, “He didn’t listen to me about marrying the girl, why do you think he’d listen about a fish course?” Neither Grafton woman had noticed Alaine; they were, Alaine presumed, well practiced in ignoring anything that didn’t benefit them specifically. Country nobody, indeed— Del would show them all up before Christmas. If the best chicken in the county wasn’t good enough for the Graftons, she would enjoy it double.


The internal slave trade became the largest enterprise in the South outside of the plantation itself, and probably the most advanced in its employment of modern transportation, finance, and publicity. It developed its own language: prime hands, bucks, breeding wenches, and fancy girls. Its routes, running counter to the freedom trails that fugitive slaves followed north, were similarly dotted by safe houses - pens, jails, and yards that provided resting places for slave traders as well as temporary warehouses for slaves. In all, the slave trade, with its hubs and regional centers, its spurs and circuits, reached into every cranny of southern society. Few southerners, white or black, were untouched. In the half century following the War of 1812, planters and traders expanded and rationalized the transcontinental transfer of slaves. During the second decade of the nineteenth century, traders and owners sent an estimated 120,000 slaves from the seaboard to the west, with the states and territories of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, and Louisiana being the largest recipients. That number increased substantially during the following decade and yet again during the 1830s, when slave traders and migrating planters uprooted almost 300,000 black men, women, and children. By this time, though most of the slaves still derived from the Upper South - particularly Maryland and Virginia - their destination had moved further west. Alabama and Mississippi had become the largest recipients, with each receiving nearly 100,000 slaves during the 1830s. The Panic of 1837 and the subsequent decline in cotton and sugar production deflated the price of slaves and the trade slackened for a few years. But prices soon revived and with them the demand for slaves. Nearly one quarter of a million slaves left the seaboard for the interior during the 1850s, with more than half being taken west of the Mississippi River. The 'mania for buying negroes' easily overwhelmed periodic bans against slave importation and did not cease until the arrival of Union troops.

He sees all of her, the joy and sorrow, and knows at that very moment that he is going to marry this girl.

While pulling clean drafts together took thousands of hours of work, the stories had all but revealed themselves. Facebook had allowed human trafficking to take place in the Persian Gulf on its platform as long as it occurred through brick-and-mortar businesses. In trying to improve the platform and boost user numbers, it had actually made the site, and the people who used it, angrier. Mental health researchers had concluded “we make body issues worse” and that Instagram was a toxic place for many teen girls, in particular. We divided up the stories among ourselves. Georgia Wells began interviewing young women who had developed eating disorders or body image issues of the sort that Instagram’s researchers worried their product might aggravate. The story she led would cite company documents that found “comparisons on Instagram can change how young women view and describe themselves,” citing research that found 32 percent of teen girls said that “when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel worse.

the girl had a gift…...she was the clit whisperer.

The ultimate goal of Dressage is to create a picture of horse and rider moving as one.

Eventing:

Horse Trainer: Shaping Equine Athletes

Riding Instructor: Guiding Aspiring Equestrians

Equine Artist: Capturing Equine Beauty

Equine Event Planner: Creating Unforgettable Experiences

Equine Journalism: Storytelling in the Horse World

Georgia had beaten Auburn last night. The town was sleeping off the win.

Love is when a girl puts on perfume and a boy puts on shaving cologne and they go out and smell each other. —Karl, Age 5

Atlanta, Georgia—a city where little girls in $50 smocked dresses romp around on filthy playgrounds. Where every freshly birthed Southern baby gets two names and women wear pastel pantsuits to lunch. These ladies instinctively understand closed-toed shoes and slips and no-white-after-Labor-Day-unless-it-is-winter-white.

We need role models who look like real girls.

King’s voice shook with emotion as he said: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ “I have a dream that one day, on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood—I have a dream. “That one day even the state of Mississippi—a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression—will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream.” He had hit a rhythm, and two hundred thousand people felt it sway their souls. It was more than a speech: it was a poem and a canticle and a prayer as deep as the grave. The heartbreaking phrase “I have a dream” came like an amen at the end of each ringing sentence. “That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character—I have a dream today. “I have a dream that one day down in Alabama—with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification—one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers—I have a dream today. “With this faith we will be able to hew, out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope. “With

Being addicted to soft-porn romance novels in Ithaca, Georgia, was like filling a prescription for head lice or genital herpes. It just wasn’t the kind of thing you went around bragging about, not if you were a good Southern girl, anyway, from a good Southern family.

Kathleen doesn’t look like you,” Henry said suddenly, staring at me. “Uh, no. She doesn’t. Not really,” I stammered, not knowing what else to say. Without another word, Henry turned and left the kitchen. I heard him run up the stairs and looked at Georgia who met my gaze with bafflement. “Did you hear that, woman?” I asked Georgia. “Henry doesn’t think Kathleen looks like me. You got something to tell me?” Kathleen shrieked again. Georgia wasn’t moving fast enough with the jar of bananas she’d produced. Georgia smirked and stuck out her tongue at me, and Kathleen bellowed. Georgia hastily dipped the tiny spoon into the yellow goo and proceeded to feed our little beast, who wailed as she inhaled. “She may not look like you, Moses. But she definitely has your sunny disposition,” Georgia sassed, but she leaned into me when I dropped a kiss on her lips. It didn’t hurt my feelings at all that my dimpled baby girl looked more like her mother.

There’s no such thing as a timid fighter,” Henry parroted. “That’s what Tag says. And he says Amelie fights every damn day.” “Hallelujah and praise the Lord for that,” Georgia said, sounding just like my great-grandma Kathleen. They were both small-town Levan girls who had spent a good deal of their lives as neighbors. So I guess it wasn’t surprising. “Amen,” I agreed. “Muhammad Amelie,” Georgia joked. “Floats like a butterfly . . .” “Stings like a bee,” Henry and I finished.

May 4, 2006 Blog Entry #1 There once was a girl who took everything for granted.
 She had friends.
She had good friends—friends who saw her geeky exterior but loved her anyway, friends who had known her since before she knew herself. But she wanted more.
She had people who loved her. She had a huge house on a hill. A bedroom as big as a studio apartment. But she still wasn't satisfied. She moved to the ends of the earth … Long Island, New York. She thought it would be exciting. And for a little while it was. But she soon found that life in the “city” wasn’t everything she hoped for. Before long, all the shops and landmarks were meaningless, and she realized that all the parties in the world meant nothing—especially if she didn't have the people to share them with. She decided to make a distress call. She lined up coconuts. H–E–L–P She spent one and a half years on her “deserted island.” Then, a moving truck finally answered her call. But little did she know that she was returning to her home as a different person. She was returning with lessons of contentment that would stick with her forever. Lessons of gratitude, integrity, faith, and love. Exposure to things and ideas she would have never seen in Snellville, Georgia. How she could be and how her life could be… She drove back down only to find that she wasn't the only one who had changed.

Actually, I think you sound more Southern than me." "I blame my Mama for that, too," he replied. "She was an old-time rodeo queen from Amarillo, Texas. She homeschooled me and my brother Dirk until high school, so the Texas twang kinda stuck. Now as for Georgia, I find it a real shame you'd want to get rid of it. I find a woman with a soft Southern drawl incredibly sexy." "Tell you what, when I decide I want to be sexy for you, I'll be sure to turn it on full force." She was a real firecracker, this Georgia girl. He liked that. He answered her with a grin. "I'll look forward to it." "In your dreams, cowboy," he thought he heard her mutter under her breath. He cocked his head, "What was that?" "Coffee?" She smiled wide. "If I recall, you promised me Starbucks.

500In Smart Girls, Gifted Women, Barbara Kerr explores the common experiences of girls who grew into strong women. She studied the adolescent years of Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, Eleanor Roosevelt, Margaret Mead, Georgia O’Keeffe, Maya Angelou and Beverly Sills, and she found that they had in common time by themselves, the ability to fall in love with an idea, a refusal to acknowledge gender limitations and what she called “protective coating.” None of them were popular as adolescents and most stayed separate from their peers, not by choice, but because they were rejected. Ironically, this very rejection gave them a protected space in which they could develop their uniqueness. Many strong girls have similar stories: They were socially isolated and lonely in adolescence. Smart girls are often the girls most rejected by peers. Their strength is a threat and they are punished for being different. Girls who are unattractive or who don’t worry about their appearance are scorned. This isolation is often a blessing because it allows girls to develop a strong sense of self. Girls who are isolated emerge from adolescence more independent and self- sufficient than girls who have been accepted by others.

The girls were riveted by Georgia’s lecture on the importance of sports bras and the dangers of the uni-boob, double busting, slippage, unsightly bulges, and my personal favorite, head lighting. I thought she made valid points and I would never have guessed that bouncing boobs were so problematic.

SpottieOttieDopaliscious [Hook] Damn damn damn James [Verse 1: Sleepy Brown] Dickie shorts and Lincoln's clean Leanin', checking out the scene Gangsta boys, blizzes lit Ridin' out, talkin' shit Nigga where you wanna go? You know the club don't close 'til four Let's party 'til we can't no more Watch out here come the folks (Damn - oh lord) [Verse 2: André 3000] As the plot thickens it gives me the dickens Reminiscent of Charles a lil' discotheque Nestled in the ghettos of Niggaville, USA Via Atlanta, Georgia a lil' spot where Young men and young women go to experience They first li'l taste of the night life Me? Well I've never been there; well perhaps once But I was so engulfed in the Olde E I never made it to the door you speak of, hardcore While the DJ sweatin' out all the problems And the troubles of the day While this fine bow-legged girl fine as all outdoors Lulls lukewarm lullabies in your left ear Competing with "Set it Off," in the right But it all blends perfectly let the liquor tell it "Hey hey look baby they playin' our song" And the crowd goes wild as if Holyfield has just won the fight But in actuality it's only about 3 A.M And three niggas just don' got hauled Off in the ambulance (sliced up) Two niggas don' start bustin' (wham wham) And one nigga don' took his shirt off talkin' 'bout "Now who else wanna fuck with Hollywood Courts?" It's just my interpretation of the situation [Hook] [Verse 3: Big Boi] Yes, when I first met my SpottieOttieDopalicious Angel I can remember that damn thing like yesterday The way she moved reminded me of a Brown Stallion Horse with skates on, ya know Smooth like a hot comb on nappy ass hair I walked up on her and was almost paralyzed Her neck was smelling sweeter Than a plate of yams with extra syrup Eyes beaming like four karats apiece just blindin' a nigga Felt like I chiefed a whole O of that Presidential My heart was beating so damn fast Never knowing this moment would bring another Life into this world Funny how shit come together sometimes (ya dig) One moment you frequent the booty clubs and The next four years you & somebody's daughter Raisin' y'all own young'n now that's a beautiful thang That's if you're on top of your game And man enough to handle real life situations (that is) Can't gamble feeding baby on that dope money Might not always be sufficient but the United Parcel Service & the people at the Post Office Didn't call you back because you had cloudy piss So now you back in the trap just that, trapped Go on and marinate on that for a minute

Okay, so we’re in Georgia. I can do this. I’m not just the new girl. I’m a vampire. I don’t have to be afraid of mean girls and gossip anymore. I could snap their necks in half—er, not that I will or anything, but it’s nice to know that I can.

Ask me why I never joined a sorority. I went to college in Georgia. Still... never tempted. Why?" *lady in leather making speech with man tided to alter* "That's why. Delta Delta Delta. Kiwanis. Girl Scouts. They all lead here-- to the basement of the Hellfire Club.

I’m a Georgia girl at heart. I slept in a University of Georgia T-shirt for more nights in middle school than I care to admit. I’ve been cheering for the Atlanta Braves since Dale Murphy wore the uniform in the 80s. My parents still live in the same house they built in 1980 on the property my grandparents have occupied since the 1950s. I grew up in Marietta, a cute little Southern town where the same guy has done my parents’ dry cleaning for thirty years and the waitresses from Po Folks Restaurant came to my grandmother’s funeral. You know, Mayberry kind of stuff, but with more cliques and monogrammed purses and high school football games.

Modern life conceals our need for diverse, wild, natural communities, but it does not alter that need.. if you want to feel what it is like to be human again, you should hunt, even if just once. Because that understanding, I believe, will propel a shift in how we view and interact with this world that we eat in. And the kind of food we demand, as omnivores, will never be the same.

I do not hunt for the joy of killing but for the joy of living, and the inexpressible pleasure of mingling my life however briefly, with that of a wild creature that I respect, admire and value.' –John Madson

The fate of the javelina in my suitcase is very much the same as the cattle I left behind at the ranch; it is also the same as my fate. But it is the journey to that place that is utterly different.

Georgie Porgie puddin’ and pie. Kissed the boys and made them cry. What kind of name is Georgia?” “My great-great grandma was Georgia. The first Georgia Shepherd. My dad calls me George.” “Yeah. I’ve heard him. That’s just nasty.” I felt my temper rise in my cheeks, and I really wanted to spit on him from where I sat atop my horse, looking down on his neatly shorn, well-shaped head. He glanced up at me and his lips twitched, making me even angrier. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not trying to be mean. But George is a terrible name for a girl. Hell, for anyone who isn’t the King of England.” “I think it suits me,” I huffed. “Oh, yeah? George is the name for a man with a stuffy, British accent or a man in a white, powdered wig. You better hope it doesn’t suit you.” “Well, I don’t exactly need a sexy name, do I?

. little girls don’t stay little forever. They grow into strong women that return to destroy your world. Kyle Stephens, victim impact statement at the sentencing of Larry Nassar, 2018

Baby girl, don't settle for a man who doesn't treat you like a princess. You are worthy of someone who will love and respect you. Hold out. He's searching for you too. Until that time comes, be the strong, independent woman that you were intended to be.

Never thought they would last with him being tall and lanky as hell and she being the typical overly thick Georgia peach woman, but if yall niggas reading this ever hear

Georgia: God, talk about a swoony moment! Kline won’t stop talking about it. Kline: I haven’t been talking about it. Thatch: Brooooo. Impressive showing of dick size.

My mother gets up and puts the needle back to the start of the record or onto a select song. Light ones, famous with tourists, aren't her favorites. She prefers those that tear like an ache in your heart. Afterwards, she exhales a deep breath and looks up as if she is waking to the clap of a hypnotist. She leaves the smoky club, the sulfurous streetlights, the even darker cars, the clouds of ouzo in glasses, plates of chicken livers crusted with oregano and salt, and the man with a mustache at the door who calls the hat check girl his 'little doll.