Dixie Chicken
There’s an unanchored reverie, Dixie Chicken was a fried chicken place in? South Texas? Central Texas? On the road to Amarillo? Only in my imagination?
I was living in Austin when the Dixie Chicks had their moment, and the-then essential country fan base dumped them, as an example of “cancel culture,” presaging our current climate, and served as warning for me. I stay far away from politics. I’m registered, and I vote.
Old joke: my Leftist Liberal friends think I’m jack-booted thug (in shorts and sandals) while my Ultra Conservative Right Wing friends think I’m a commie. I skew towards the middle, but then, I also refuse to discuss political matters. Like other issues, I act, and I act locally to support the causes. As noted before, I’ve voted in every presidential election I’ve been eligible to vote in. Interesting sidebar about that, ask my Sister.
Doesn’t matter what I say, someone is offended.
Lesson learned. I have one Shakespeare quote that offended someone. I learned to be a bit more circumspect. It was from one of the Henry plays, an epithet, which was before the whole “Shakespeare Insults” was an independent business silo. Amusing, now, painful at the time for my tender writer’s skin.
Dixie Chicken
I’m glad to see the Dixie Chicks making a comeback, or re-inventing themselves. I enjoyed much of their music — talented and definitively Texan. The commentary from way back when?
“Their music is good but they dress like 20-something kids.”
Because, at the time, they were in their 20s?
Now, even the name, with the term “Dixie” in it makes it toxic. 20 years ago, it didn’t matter. Maybe we weren’t “woke.” I never claimed to be “woke,” but, and my canon bears this out, I’ve been fighting against sexism for the whole of this career. Previously? Maybe not so much.
“Youth. Pity it’s wasted on the young.”
(cf., Pink Cake, Oscar Wilde et al)
What I leaned, and I was working in Austin, what I learned was that at any level of public exposure, I should be judicious in my choices and phrasing. Then too, like I tend to admonish when asked, test it yourself.
Partially, I think of this in terms of the weather. I cut out most of my weather apps, and weather material opting for a single ticker on the back of the webpage, a little java-scripted scroll to tell “time and temp,” and then? Phone has a built-in app, works good as a guideline — plus, the one I mentioned before — Apple’s now-native Dark Sky.
Like my horoscopes, which deal with astrological weather, local weather is iffy at best. The surest way to see what it is like outside? Go outside.
While I’ll look at an app to see if it’s shorts, occasional long pants and coat, but usually shorts, maybe with a long-sleeve shirt as a back-up, I have to step outside to know for sure.
Last time that backfired was an ill-fated trip to Northern Cal., for, as it turned out, a funeral (pyre).
Dixie Chicken
I like the Dixie Chicks and their music, at times, a little raw, and times, a little minimal, lacking the Nashville “over-produced” sound. That they might be from some of the same environs as myself? That helps. Never actually crossed paths, but I know a guy who dated one — apocryphal claims.
What I learned, and I’d almost forgotten until the recent notices about new music? I used to term it “Being Dixie Chicked,” wherein a single comment from the stage can seem to sink a whole career.
Not unlike The Leo Horoscope.
