“I just love summer!” insists The Old Lady, “Southern summertimes mean real red-ripe home-grown tomatoes and you know what that means (dramatic pause)… BLTs!”

For the uninitiated BLTs are Bacon Lettuce and Tomato sandwiches.

We’ve talked Tomato, now let’s talk Bacon. Three things: thick sliced, cooked crispy, and save the bacon grease! The Old Lady is a progressive Southern cook; she does not strain her bacon grease but pours it bits and all in an old jelly jar. “Just like the health benefits of eating a whole apple versus drinking the juice, when I add bacon grease to my cornbread I want all the nutrition of these crunchy bits,” she says.

“Lettuce? Anything but iceberg.

“Mayo? Nothing but Hellman’s.

“Bread? Whole grains please.

“I sing the praises of the BLT,” hummed The Old Lady happily. “It is the song of my people.”

The groove and grub club loves downtown Valdosta’s Food Truck Thursdays.

The most recent event drew an enthusiastic crowd to the vacant lot at Central and Lee Streets where the grubbers enjoyed everything from BBQ to tacos to sausage dogs, and the groovers bopped to the beat of Alphonso Johnson’s Goodtimes Jr. Music Shed.

Goodtimes will play at all of this season’s Food Truck Thursdays. The next is scheduled for July 18.

If outdoor events are not your bag you can catch Goodtimes every first and third Friday in the space at Central and Patterson formerly known as Hildegard’s but now better known as The Music Shed.

“Third Friday? That’s TONIGHT!” squealed The Old Lady, digging out her dancing shoes.

The Old Lady met this longtime Valdosta resident as a teacher of free yoga classes… but thanks to the Georgia Writers Association she now knows Roberta George as the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year!

George’s latest novel, The Day’s Heat, won the judge’s heart as well as the hearts of readers.  George has won her readers’ hearts before with a previous book Baptizing the Cat, short stories, poems, and op-ed pieces.

She is the founding editor-publisher of the Snake Nation Press and facilitates a weekly writer’s workshop at Valdosta’s Turner Center for the Arts where she served as Executive Director for 12 years.

You can buy The Day’s Heat at Amazon.com … or just ask Roberta, she’s got lots of copies!

!

The Old Lady enjoys soccer played at World Championship level.

Which means that she is keeping up with the US Women’s National Soccer Team as they play for the 2019 World Cup in France, a Cup the USWNST has held for three straight years.

Which means that the US Women’s National Soccer Team, along with the US Women’s National Hockey Team, are the ONLY World Championship teams in the US at the time of this writing.

The ONLY.

“And yet,” grumbled The Old Lady, “all I’m hearing are complaints about how hard those soccer Women celebrate. Maybe they celebrate each other to make up for the fact that even though their world-class skills may win World Cups and gold medals, they are STILL not being paid as much money as the Men on the US Men’s National [Soccer] Team who were not even invited to their federation’s World Cup party last year.”

LISTEN to The Old Lady!

Sometimes The Old Lady is sadly disappointed by the English language, usually when she cannot find a word for a very specific thing.

For example: there should be a word for buildings that are shaped to look like what is sold inside, like the Twistee Treat stand in Crystal River, Florida pictured above or the filling station shaped like a dinosaur in Spring Hill, Florida.

Such dilemmas throw The Old Lady into her imagination to make up her own terms:

Picto-tecture?

Sculptural construction?

Faux façade?

“New words enter the English language all the time,” complained The Old Lady; “I just want those Linguistics Departments to work a little harder.” 

The Old Lady was fortunate to take a yoga class with Marisa Wolfe, a teacher who helps students explore “…ways to profoundly develop and embody gentleness, love, respect, and compassion on the mat.”

                Lovingkindness yoga?

                Right up The Old Lady’s alley!

Marisa led the group through exercises that helped the students physically embody lovingkindness toward themselves… then toward someone they love… and then toward someone they really did not like.

Wait, what?

Yes, it is possible to exercise and mindfully develop lovingkindness toward EVERYone including people we don’t like, just like exercising a muscle.

“And well worth the effort,” puffed The Old Lady on her yoga mat, “especially for the ones you really don’t like. Isn’t that what Jesus meant by ‘Love your enemies’?”