Sherry Chandler

I have had one of those weeks when ducks refuse to stay neatly lined up in rows. Do they ever?

Which reminds me that, in the current Oxford American, Alan Gurganus had this to say about choosing this year’s New Stories from the South:

Like the Bible parables that oftentimes inspire them, Southern stories can come front-loaded with tag-line lessons. Others are so nostalgic for our cotton-picking past, they resemble the cutesy Mall Art you’ve seen while trying not to.

Such plaques show three small farm-girls, bonnets in profile worn over matching gingham granny-dresses: they are depicted herding a row of pretty geese about the girls’ same height. (Now, on farms I knew in Eastern North Carolina, geese would have fought all children’s sticks and guidance. Geese that size attack kids so little! But not in “art.”)

My week has been like those North Carolina geese, fighting all efforts of mine to bring it into line.

But like Gurganus, I digress.

What I meant to say is that I haven’t really had time to think much about the International Day of the Woman or Blog Against Sexism Day. Instead, therefore, I’ll defer to I See Invisible People. Though she currently lives in the northwest, Terry has roots in the southern Appalachians and she knows how to tell a tale:

I was a “bad girl,” born in the wrong part of town and with the wrong last name to be considered intelligent. Still, I collected As when I bothered to show up, which I did for my math and science classes. I was good at it, and that was powerful feeling of success. The end of my junior year, I aced my ACTs and the college offers started flowing in. When I was offered a full scholarship to Boston University, I went in to see my guidance councilor for help in deciding where to go.

She took a look at my transcript and my test scores, and told me I shouldn’t bother thinking about a real college; perhaps I could take the nurses aid training course at the community college, and after a few years maybe I could get into a nursing program. I shouldn’t get above myself. I ignored her and sent off my acceptance letter to Boston.

And this was where Hollywood would leave it, with one of those Mall Art moral tagline. But this is real life and the story goes on. Go and read the whole thing.

I love these bunny parodies.

Here’s the bunny version of Brokeback Mountain.

Found the link on I See Invisible People.

What is it?

Look here at the Bank of International Art Money

or here at the work of JSG Boggs

or here at Noney, the value of which is negotiable.