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Life Stories

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Jan. 10, 2012

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How certain women get by in a man’s world

I first heard the term when I was in college at University of Montevallo. My roommate was using it to describe a girl she didn’t like. “She’s a guy-girl,” she said of the enemy. She wasn’t talking to me directly, but to her best friend who was sitting on our living room sofa. Her face [...]

Life Stories

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Dec. 22, 2011

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One family’s Christmas Eve story

War time and the holidays…

Life Stories

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Nov. 16, 2011

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Portrait of the Arkadelphian

I found myself on Arkadelphia Road. On those nights when I felt I didn’t have a home, either in Bluff Park or in a dorm room, I made one for myself under streetlight and starlight in my black Volvo S70, on Arkadelphia Road. I’m an Arkadelphian, and in the process — perhaps by definition — I’m the Arkadelphian.

Life Stories

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Oct. 27, 2011

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The Birth of a Knee, or: Learning on (and off) my feet

A journey through the pain of knee surgery and the trials of rehab.

Life Stories

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Oct. 19, 2011

Our seats at Bryant Denny Stadium are in SS-8, Row 30, which is very, very high up. As I’m looking out over the field on a perfect, breezy October day, the Million Dollar Band is warming up the stands from the field with the first round of the Alabama Crimson Tide’s Fight Song. My dad, born in Opp, Ala., is to my left. To my right, my husband, born at Fairfield’s Lloyd Noland Hospital. As the three of us excitedly wait from our perch for the game to begin, I’m filled with an inexplicable sense of love for my home. But — over the course of the last few years, my “home” has changed. I was born in Sandy Springs, Ga., now swallowed by the sprawl between Atlanta and Roswell. Growing up, it was ingrained in me that I was a Georgia girl. My mother was from Georgia, her father was from Georgia. Those who were born there and moved away came back, and all of the people on that side of my family who weren’t born in Georgia ended up there to stay. I was two when my mother, father and I moved from Smyrna to Rome, my mother’s hometown, tucked into the foothills of northwest Georgia. Only about 20 miles from the Alabama border, we had a disgustingly conceited view of our state, especially when compared with our western neighbor. We even lived in East Rome, so as to be as far as possible from the state line, believing that those who lived closer to the border were actually more redneck. When I was 19, I quit college and moved to Atlanta to start my new life as a musician. Soon after, my father lost his job and was out of work for over a year. After sending his resume to dozens of local companies, Dad reluctantly extended his reach. Finally, he was hired... by a company in Alabama. My mother cried for weeks. She cried at the closing when they sold our family home in Rome. She even considered divorce. She could not reconcile that she was having to move there. Her angst only fed my own. In my mind, my family was being forced to move to the most notoriously hostile state in the South. A little more than a year later, I found that my career as a musician was not so hot. My day job in the music industry was even worse. I was young, I needed to be near my parents, even if that meant moving to Alabama, and my desire to finish college was reinvigorated. Although my parents lived in Auburn at the time, for me, a move to Auburn would be a step too close to my mom and dad. After visiting several other Alabama schools, I found Montevallo, which, with its slow, country pace, promised a life quite the opposite of the one I was leaving in Atlanta. It took only a few weeks for me to settle into Montevallo. In fact, I loved it. Its green grassy parks and quads, its freaks, its timelessness and its middle-class academia bestowed on me the grace I’d been missing. To that grace, I owe the debt of great friendships, a brilliant education from a handful of devoted professors and a sense of self I’d lost in Atlanta. I found, once I moved to Montevallo, that not all of Alabama was hostile. Over time, I started two bands, graduated, found a job, floundered a little, broke up with my college boyfriend and finally, moved to Birmingham. Here, I started dating a new guy, married him and made new friends. In 2007, I began to feel I was in crisis. I was homesick. I missed Georgia so badly some nights, I actually felt physically sick. I ached inside for my hometown of Rome. I missed the urban life I’d had in Atlanta, with so much incredible culture and opportunity at arm’s reach. I missed public transit. I missed the mountains of North Georgia. I missed my family. I missed something so big I could not put my finger on it. It was around that time that my husband began to talk about moving — to Europe. Never in my life have I so suddenly and impulsively dug my heels in. No. I could not think of leaving the South and being so far from home. And it caught both of us by surprise. We wrestled with this new demon. In our imaginations, we basically had two options — we could move to Europe or we could stay here. I had to do something. And as a crazy person in crisis would do, I quit my job — my full time, steady, secure, loaded with benefits job. I decided to start a magazine, of all things, with a friend. She wanted it to be a women’s magazine, but I wasn’t sold on that topic. Without a 40+ hour per week job, I suddenly found I had time to see teh Birmingham that was around me. As I explored, I was converted from a Birmingham resident to a Birminghamian. Thus began Pavo, an online magazine whose mission was to uncover the greatness all around us. I was ready to convert others, to give them the same experience I’d had. With so much negative journalism on the streets about Birmingham, I realized I had not stopped to figure out why everyone was so passionate about their hometown. So I set out to turn our city’s residents into Birminghamians. It was the first step of me finally putting down my unearthed roots. Through my personal exploration of Birmingham, its landscapes, its citizens, its business and community leaders, my deep longing for my old home began to lose its grip on me. Eventually, Pavo dissolved and my business partner and I moved on to other ventures. Last summer, the subject of moving wound up on the table again. My husband and I traveled to several cities for job interviews and house-hunting. It seemed like every time we left, we were missing some brilliant show, party, festival or other Birmingham experience. Each time we returned home, we felt confused by the relief that we hadn’t been hired, that we didn’t have to move. Eventually, I took a job in town that would put me right in the midst of some of Birmingham’s most important business. I met unbelievable people who move mountains to make things in Birmingham work. I met folks who were born and raised here, who eat, sleep and breathe Birmingham in everything they do, who go all around the world with the message of love for this city, and who believe, with all their soul, that this city is the greatest in the nation, or at the very least, has the greatest potential of any city in the nation. And I got caught up in it, this fervor, this zeal for Birmingham. I lost sleep over municipal matters. When Railroad Park opened, as my coworkers, friends and acquaintances began to marvel at the interracial forum that was developing right there in the park, I felt as though the wounds of Birmingham’s past — of Alabama’s past — were really, visibly beginning to heal. I had become invested. It’s homecoming weekend in Tuscaloosa, and through the stands, opposing Vanderbilt has only a tiny dotting of yellow. When it comes time to sing the national anthem at the stadium, I stand and listen as it is played and the crowd around me, including my father, begin to sing. Erected in the stadium before me are the American flag on one side and Alabama’s flag, a revisionist, ghostly, image of the rebel flag is on the other. I feel acutely aware that I am experiencing the process of rooting. The Alabama flag, to me, has a way of reminding us of our past while also acknowledging the path we must take forward. Every state in the South has some remnant of that awful time, some marring edifice remains. Now, a renewed, nationwide wave of racism is taking the wind out of our sails. Though Alabama was not the first to create a xenophobic law targeting immigrant families, we were at the head of the line. Though immigration is not a new political issue, we live in a new day when the word immigrant is no longer synonymous with refugee. Instead, we’ve spun the word to mean terrorist, leach, job-thief, convict, drug lord, rapist, murderer. It’s this same indignant spirit that inspired the formation of the Ku Klux Klan, a domestic terrorist group that formed under the name of justice. In our country, one of the most glorious freedoms we enjoy is the ability to move from state to state without passing through customs. There are no border patrols, no one waiting at the state line to turn you back. I left my home in Georgia to seek refuge, to find a new life. Though I was reluctant to move to Alabama, I’ve found a home here. I’ve found the people of this state to be unexpectedly diverse, that the state is rich with open-mindedness, that its brokenness has its gifts. I try to imagine what would have happened if the borders of Alabama had been closed to me. What if, when my life got so unbearable in Atlanta, I could not get across the state line to be with my family? And what if my life had been more terrible than it was? What if I were being subjected to a nearly anarchic atmosphere in my day-to-day, where bodies were piling up in the streets, as in Veracruz these past weeks? If drug lords had more power than my own government? What if I felt my family was unsafe, but I knew that if I could just make it over the line, I could find refuge? Would I cross it illegally? If I thought it meant life and death, if I thought I finally had a chance, would I break the law, risk arrest and go? If my family was on the other side, would they help me do it? I am very fortunate that, as of right now, I have never been forced to make that choice. As our nation’s economy crumbles and its governing infrastructure loses more integrity with each administration, I wonder what choices I may one day be forced to make. Janet Simpson-Templin is a musician and a regular Weld contributor who writes about the urban and natural landscape of the metro area. Send your feedback to editor@weldbham.com. Weld publishes personal essays every week on our "Storyboard" page. Send submissions to editor@weldbham.com with the subject line "Storyboard."

What do we do with all this freedom?

Home means a lot of things — is freedom one of them?

Music

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Oct. 13, 2011

Hank told the unvarnished truth: We are sinners in the hands of an angry God, and I’m so lonesome I could cry.

Leafing through the lost notebooks of Hank Williams

Under the guidance of Bob Dylan, musicians come together to record and finish unfinished works by the late country music legend.

Life Stories

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Oct. 12, 2011

Canning requires washing, peeling, coring, chipping up, waiting for the sugar to melt, boiling, scalding the jars, watching the bubbles, filling the jars, tightening the tips and lids, the 20-minute boiling bath… but, oh, the tasty results.

Saving the season through canning

To can may be an anachronistic infinitive to someone under 40. What used to be a home necessity when there were no freezers has become a novelty.

Life Stories

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Oct. 05, 2011

Making the case to finish what you start

Did Jesus ask for permission before he walked on the water, or healed the sick? Stop seeking permission to finish what you start.

Bukketto

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Oct. 05, 2011

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Mr. Holbrook introduces you to Mr. Clemens

Harold Holbrook’s interpretation of Twain is a bold, modern take on one of America’s most celebrated intellects.

Bukketto

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Sep. 30, 2011

In Painting Dixie Red, provocative professor Glenn Feldman has compiled a history of how Republican conservatism took over the South.

How all those necks got red

In Painting Dixie Red, provocative professor Glenn Feldman has compiled a history of how Republican conservatism took over the South.

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