The New Old

I’m an Alabama girl, and most people globally find that to be indicative of a person being, well, “country”.  Its fairly common to hear of people’s notions of Alabama residents to still use outhouses and withstand the pleasures of running water. However, it’s not that way much anymore, and frankly I grew up in the city. I don’t listen to Country music. I like Rock, Metal and Punk. I live in the suburbs of a culturally diverse city, I work on computers for a living and play classical music on the piano. I’m just not that typical “Alabama” country girl that folks outside of the Deep South would expect to find.  And in all honesty, for most of my life I have rejected all notions of anything that indicates the rural life. I did grow up visiting “the country” a lot from both my Mom and Dad’s family. My Mom was raised in the city, but her parents moved to a small town in their older age and lived on the land. My father was raised in the same small town, out on old dirt roads and long lazy rivers. I just didn’t appreciate it as a younger adult. I still reject the notion of being a red neck, however I’m learning that there is a lot to admire about country living, and most of all, is the way of life.

We live in a world now where we can’t trust the food we eat to be free of poison; we can’t buy clothes to wear without putting money in the hands of a communist nation; we can’t trust our government to make decisions based on the people’s wishes. We are inundated with advertisements to tell us what drugs to take for all of our ailments, and actors telling us that we need to get out and walk around and move every once in a while.  I’m getting sick of it.  I think we’re all tired of the way things are going. So without getting into the politics and religion of the ways of the world, its time to make our own changes for ourselves.

It’s a new year coming, which brings us all to a place to review where we’ve been and where we’re going. Let’s make a conscious effort to change some of our ways of life to the old ways. I’ll be posting different changes we can make to get back to those old ways in a new light. A lot of us are already doing that, and there are new options we can all learn. My hope is that in my process of this search I will better myself and my family, and learn from others what they are doing as well.

Here’s to a new year!