The extreme south Georgia city of Valdosta celebrated a step toward community healing today, the renaming of a road widely believed to bear the name of the founder of the KKK.
The new name: Barack Obama Boulevard.
The change was not without opposition, and a violent attack in the dark of night on the very dirt at the site of the celebration seemed too well-timed to be coincidental.
The land, however, will heal… and the work will continue until LOVE heals our community, and our planet.
Colson Whitehead is best known for two Pulitzer prize winning novels, The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys.
His first book, The Intuitionist, delighted me with its quirky writing and I wanted to celebrate with the cocktail ordered by main character Lila Mae Watson, a Violet Mary.
Alas, the Violet Mary is as fictional as Watson herself.
Scrolling down through my search results unearthed a notice from some obscure book club whose members substituted an obscure cocktail called an Aviation.
Only one bar in my small town stocked the required Creme de Violette for the gin-based concoction.
My opinion?
The book was better.
Hibiscus mutabilis produces frilly flowers that bloom pure white, age into darkening pink, and end up deep crimson as they shrivel away.
The Southern vernacular name of the plant is Confederate Rose, at least since the post-civil war era when an idea took root that the bloom changed color as it soaked up Confederate blood from the battlefields.
Such a horrific legend for such a lovely flower!
I prefer the name cotton rose, which predates the Confederacy. The foliage and buds do resemble cotton plants so the name is apt.
But the plant itself is not indigenous to the American south; it is native to southeast Asia.
Wonder what they call it there?
