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Georgia Green Stamper – Georgia On Her Mind

  • Georgia - On Her Mind: You may recreate the recipe but not the woman

    It rarely snows this early in the upper south, but it drizzles more days than it doesn’t. If you’re not careful you can vanish into the mist on a Kentucky back road like Heathcliff on the moors of England. My family was luckier than most. We had Aunt Helen and her recipe for cast-iron skillet spaghetti to keep us on course through the gray days of November. Through the tedious weeks of stripping tobacco. Through frigid mornings on a schoolbus as we made the 20-mile trip to school. Or trudging, as she did, day after day, to a typewriter in an office.

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  • Georgia on her mind: Fortunately, I didn’t raise any sociopaths

    After reading a parenting expert’s column in the newspaper that makes it sound so easy, followed by phone calls from my daughters who make it sound so hard, I realized, in retrospect, that I was a mess of a mother. I plucked tacky plastic Halloween costumes off the rack at Kmart for my children. Fed them un-organic anything. Dressed them in environmentally destructive polyester because it didn’t need ironing – well, it’s a miracle my kids didn’t turn out to be sociopaths.

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  • The girls who balanced Cleaver and Steinem

     “We’re steel magnolias,” Sondra said.
    That, I thought, pretty well summarized the spirit and character of the women around our table.  
    The girls of summer again, 12 of us met to eat Willy-Whoppers at The Smith House, the same little place where we discovered them when we were teenagers.

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  • Georgia on her mind - When fear runs wild, gas-station glasses can be ideal for defense

    When things go bump in the night and the house creaks, I lie in bed and worry that someone is living in our attic. My guess would be the mysterious Gerald Stamper whose mail has been delivered to our address for over a decade.  “White Pages” even lists him as a member of our household though we have no clue who he is.

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  • Georgia on her mind - Jerry Lee Lewis and hymns don’t mix well

    Though I’m a grandmother now, I can slide without warning through Alice’s looking glass, where I catch glimpses of the girl I used to be. When the near forgotten scents of a spring night in May sneak up behind me, when – well, it happened again on Sunday morning, about the time my large congregation of city Methodists hit the chorus of that old gospel hymn, “In the Garden.”

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  • Georgia: on her mind - Wisdom, clean closets, and a little heresy

    I got caught in the tailwind of my old friend, Birthday, as he raced through another April. I admit that I lost my balance for an hour or two. “You’re old,” Birthday taunted as he flew past me on his way to outrun next year before I can blink.
    “That’s not nice,” I shouted after him. “And besides, Old is the new New. Old, now that the Baby Boomers are on Medicare, is IN.”

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  • Georgia - on her mind: January is just a drama queen

    January in Kentucky reminds me of a difficult relative. You know the kind I mean, the eccentric ones you put up with because you’ve known them all your life, shared the good times and the bad, and so you love them.
    But why oh why can’t they have a better disposition? If she tried harder, couldn’t January learn a thing or two from a Bluegrass May or June?

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  • Georgia: On her mind - Always remember the lasting touch a gift can have

    This is a Christmas story. Sort of. Or maybe it’s about grumpy old men. Maybe it’s about the commercialism that we like to rant against at this time of year. I’m pretty sure, though, that it’s about love.

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  • Georgia: On her mind - Even ghosts get a seat at our Thanksgiving table

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  • Georgia – On her mind: Deciphering modern Morse

    I’m learning the Morse Code. I got the idea from a movie I saw this summer. In one of those light-bulb-flashing-over-my-head moments, I realized this could bridge the communication gap between my young adult children and me. They only communicate by texting now, and with my clumsy old thumbs and last century spelling, I’m left out of the conversation. Re-invent the telegraph, I say, with its finger friendly dashes and dots in plain old English!

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