Dixie Babble

Well, hell, y’all, I’ve just started this damn thing and I’ve already had to spend two posts marking passings.

Earl Scruggs died yesterday in Nashville.  If I have to explain to you who Earl Scruggs was, you’re probably not reading this in the first place.  I’d be willing to bet, though, that the majority of people in this country and around the world, when they think about the South, hear Earl Scruggs in their heads.

Harry Crews passed away yesterday, as well.  Next to Crews, Hemingway was an effeminate pretty boy, but Crews also had the self-awareness to say things like, “I like a lot of things that are really not fashionable and really not very nice and which finally, if you’ve got any sense at all, you know, are totally indefensible. Anybody who is going to defend much of the way I’ve spent my life is mad.”

That’s a lot of loss in one day, and I’m not happy about it at all.