Tuesday, September 27, 2011

First Fall Finds.........

Even though we are only 70 miles from the Gulf of Mexico....it's feeling like fall today!
Cool, dark, windy and stormy looking....

The Chick Prisoners are out and browsing around so I thought I would browse around too...


Found this patch of Mushrooms under the Pines.....


Maybe they are edible as it looks like someone has been nibbling the right one...

A Butterfly?
A Flower Petal?
You're guess is as good as mine....
DON'T EVEN......

Strange find....this Wegila is supposed to bloom in Spring....beats me!

White Rose of Sharon(Althea) is pretty.....


Hardy Hibiscus is 10 foot tall and only one bloom on it...........



Ahhhh Gardenias....heavenly smell


Green Garden, turnips, collards, spinach and kale....we'll be eating this soon!


Have a great rest of the week !!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

My Birthday Present !

Woke up to a Foggy Morn Birthday...........

Love the look of the Mexican Petunias against the fog.....

Hubby asked me a few days ago"what did I want for my B'DAY"
I replied; " if we could redo the guest bath, I'd be a happy woman"....

So that's what I got for my birthday, a remodeled bathroom!
Now I don't have a picture of before....but it was not pretty!
Palm Tree wall paper from ceiling to floor.....
A Jungle shower curtain...
An open space behind the door which was 4 ft deep and 17 inches wide....
A ceiling light but none over the plain mirror....
I had NOTHING to do with the decor....it was that way when I moved in!

Now it has Wainscoting( I call it bead board) and chair rail.....



A light fixture over the now framed mirror we framed with molding....





A border with Magnolias and books.........



And that open space is now a closet with shelves.........



I had to order a special tension rod to fit that 17 inch wide opening and a 94 foot long curtain..
So I'm happy with my new to me bathroom...



We are going on a trip too......
If we ever agree on a place! I want to stay at Bocage Plantation on the River Road in Louisiana but Hubby is terrified it's haunted....





This is the room I picked out!




Hubby wants to stay here at The Cajun Village Cottages in the same area and take a daytime tour of Bocage! HA!




This is the bedroom of the cabin we picked out.....
I'll probably give in to him since he got so spooked at that New Orleans Mansion we stayed in last year on his birthday. However I told him these we old slave cabins and they might haunted for sure! :)


What ever the outcome......I'll share it we you guys!

HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND !!!!!!!!!!!!

Sunday, September 18, 2011

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE ?

Earlier this summer we watched the TV program Who Do You Think You Are?It was a show in which several famous celebrities researched their family tree. Of course it was expert genealogy searchers who did all the work for them. We saw about 8 episodes which included Gwyneth Paltrow, Ashely Judd, Kim Catrell, Rosie O'Donnell to name a few. It really is a fascinating show.


Last year on the blog I posted about receiving this photo of my Great-great-great Grandmother Mary Ann Elizabeth Broughton Thames from a cousin. I could tell from the photo that she was indeed from high society so I decided to research the Broughton line of my family after watching the WDYTYA show. Was I ever in for a surprise!!

This is Broughton Castle outside Oxford, England built in 1300 by Sir John De Broughton!
I am a direct descendant of this man! I also found down the direct line from Sir John I have a (many times over) great grandfather named Andrew Broughton who was the Chief Justice for the trial of King Charles I and was the man who sentenced King Charles I to be executed! This plaque on his house in England contains the word Regicide which means " Killer of Kings"


You can see the plaque on the wall of his house Broughton House in Kent, England.


Above you see Colonel Thomas Edward Broughton a later son of a son of Andrew Broughton who we met above. Thomas was the Royal Governor of South Carolina Province from 1735-1737..............
In 1714 Thomas Broughton built Mulberry Plantation in Monks Corner (Berkley County) South Carolina on 4,000 + acres. Monks Corner is 30 miles north of Charleston, SC



I plan on visiting this plantation soon to see these huge Oaks planted by my Ancestors!



It is from Mulberry Plantation that my Broughton ancestors made their way south to Conecuh County Alabama when Mary Ann Elizabeth Broughton and husband Rev. Jesse Cornelius Thames moved there somewhere before 1848 when their daughter Margaret L. Thames( my gr-gr-grandmother was born. Margaret married Charles David O'Gwynn on November 2, 1871 in Conecuh County. One year later the whole family relocated to Wayne County, Mississippi.


It was there Margaret gave birth to a son, my paternal Great-Grandfather Charles James O'Gwynn on November 16, 1876. Pictured above is Charles James and his wife Sallie Maggie Jones/O'Gwynn.


Above is the Mt. Zion Cemetery located in Wayne County, Mississippi where 6 direct generations of my fathers side of the family are buried from Mary Ann Elizabeth Broughton to my parents. Someday....I'll join them there.

SO......Who do you think you are? You might be surprised if you go in search of those who came before!

Sunday, September 4, 2011

"The Lily Dale Series" by Wendy Corsi Staub

You know me.......my two great passions are books and the paranormal. So when I get the chance to read a book combining the two, I'm truly in my element! I've read several nonfiction books on Lily Dale, a small town in Southwestern New York. In order to live there, you must first pass a rigorous test to prove you are a medium. In case YOU don't know what a medium is (which I doubt there is anyone who doesn't) it is someone who can communicate with deceased spirits. They actually have their own organized religion founded in Lily Dale in 1880.

What you say? You believe this hocus pocus stuff? Actually I do! Even though I adhere to the Christian belief system, I do not believe it has all the correct answers to life and death. The bible speaks of Everlasting Life. If life IS INDEED Everlasting then it cannot in my opinion, end at physical death. Having had more than one experience with Ghosts, I'm a believer that something unknown is going on here.

Meet Wendy Corsi Staub..........I just discovered Wendy's books
( she's written over 70 books) and she is now on my list of author's I love to read!I started with her 4 book Lily Dale series. It is listed as a "young adult" series, now I'm not a young adult, but I loved it! Could not lay it down!

Calla Delaney is seventeen and living in Tampa Florida, she has just lost her mother after a freak accident, her longtime boyfriend had recently dumped her for someone else, her father a Professor, is scheduled to leave for California on a 12 month teaching sabbatical, can it get any worse? Yes it can if you have to go live with your maternal Grandmother whom you hardly know in Lily Dale, NY and discover when you arrive, that everyone in Lily Dale including "Grammy" is a medium! When Calla discovers that she too has "the gift" things get riveting! If you are the least bit curious about "mediums" and what they do, this series is for you! The order of the books: Awakening-Believing-Connecting-Discovering.........

I also discovered among her list of books another book set in Lily Dale.........
I'm almost finished with this one and it is AWESOME !!!!!!!!

Those of you who TRUST my judgement on books know " if it ain't good" it doesn't get reviewed on THE WRITERS PORCH ! Happy Reading !

Thursday, September 1, 2011

"THE HELP" - Dear Critics,Unless You Are From Mississippi

You need to refrain from giving an expert opinion on what you think you know about growing up in 1960's Mississippi !!!!!


Recently I wrote a blog post about how people are so quick to form judgements against people saying and doing things these judgemental people don't agree with.In that post, I also touched on jealousy amongst authors. This morning I read a scathing article criticizing author Kathryn Stockett's blockbuster novel "The Help". Everyone who reads this blog knows that I LOVED this book. In fact, when I reached the end of it, I sat and bawled my eyes out for at least an hour.
The reason I bawled was....it hit my heart like a hammer! I was born in Mississippi in 1952. In 1964 when the Civil Rights Freedom Movement formed here I was a 12 year old very impressionable girl. My state, my town, became a hotbed of racial turmoil. There were protest in the downtown streets, riots, bombings, murders. Hattiesburg was a very small town at that time, full of racial hatred and bigotry. What went on here was not something you can or will ever forget.



In Kathryn's book, we don't hear much about the public turmoil that took place here in the 1960's. What we do read about is the turmoil that took place inside the mind of a young white girl trying to find the gray area between black and white where LOVE knows no race boundary.
When it comes to racial turmoil, Mississippi has NO EQUAL! Alabama runs a close second but it's Mississippi who hangs her head in shame for her unspeakable atrocities!
Kathryn came as close as any white author will ever get to capturing that shame in the written word. I left Mississippi in 1974 and moved to Nashville, Tennessee. I wanted to raise my children somewhere less prejudiced. I spent the next 30 years in Tennessee but visited Mississippi often as most of my family lived here. Was it different in Nashville? It was still the south but yes, it was different. In fact, my middle son Marty played on an all black baseball team in 1982 when he was 10 years old. The coach, Marty, me and my other 2 children were the only whites on our sideline. We had a wonderful summer! This could NEVER have happened in 1982 Mississippi! There would have been a cross burning in my front yard!

Back to The Help....my maternal grandparents here in Mississippi employed a black maid during my childhood. Her name was Ruby. Of course back then...god forbid, she was addressed as none other than N----r Ruby. I cannot tell you how many times in my adulthood I have racked my brain trying to recall having called my beloved Ruby by this horrible name. I can honestly say; " I don't know" but I cringe that I probably in my childhood ignorance did. My sister Brenda and I discuss this and we are so hurt that we didn't know any better. We grieve that we never got to express our love or our ignorance to Ruby in person. Ruby adored us as did we her, Ruby Hurst was my " Abilene". One of my favorite parts of the book and movie is when Abilene tells Mae Mobley; " you is kind, you is smart, you is important".

I started trying to find Ruby around 2000 when I got my first computer. My grandmother had passed in 1980 and my mother did not remember Ruby's last name. Finally, in 2003 shortly before I moved back to Hattiesburg, my aunt remembered that it was Hurst. I went to work.
A researcher at the Hattiesburg Public Library e-mailed her obituary, she had died in 2002. I was devastated! Kathryn Stockett had the same experience with the black woman in her life. It's the reason she wrote The Help.

So this is why I say to all the critics.....some who have yet to even read the book or see the movie, unless YOU were raised in this turmoil in 1960's Mississippi, unless you were raised in part by your own Abilene and never got the chance to say; I loved you and appreciate the love you gave me back, you have know right to critic an experience you've never had. What you do have a right to say is this; I did not like this book, I did not like this movie.

I have been an avid reader since I learned to read. I've read thousands of books! I read lots of different genres. I am a good judge of well written books. I've read bad books, good books, great books and excellent books. I was one of the first to read The Help thanks to an ARC. I told Kathryn this would be a #1 blockbuster! She didn't believe me!

Now to the particular critic named Duchess Harris............

You are correct in 2 things, YOU are not her sister, You are not her help.
I do not care that you are black, that you are an award winning Civil Rights Expert, a Feminist Activist and author, You are not an expert on 1960's Mississippi!
You were raised in Connecticut. Your father was a Traffic Controller. You went to a Northern Ivy League school. You have NO IDEA WHATSOEVER what it was like to live in 1960's Mississippi from a black or white perspective.
What YOU ARE is a judgemental and jealous woman. You are jealous that a young white woman from Mississippi took her own expert experience and turned it into a fictional novel that made her rich and famous! Get over it!

I'm sure that Kathryn is unfazed by this critics opinion of her book, she's too busy to worry about it but it just infuriates me! LAWDY B ! If you read something and you don't like it, don't say anything! I never talk about the bad books I've read. The author spent their time and put their heart into it. Who am I to use my opinion to break their heart? If you can't say something good, don't say anything at all!!

After my daughter and I left the movie which we loved, I said to her; Now do you understand why I wanted to raise my children away from here and WHY I never allowed the N word to be used" ?