I'm on the bread stuffin line; with walnuts and celery and apples and onions; sometimes oysters. (mouth watering) , and my kids hate it. My mother-in-law made giblet gravy to pour over everything, which they love to and I quietly avoid. I love gizzard and livers cooked by them selves but not the gravy. I've gotten old an peculiar, I guess.

You stated:
> (I hope that my dialect doesn't seem
> disrespectful. It's not any different from
> doing a southern drawl, imo. I guess it's
> the history and bitterness that makes it
> seem disrespectful to mimic a southern-black
> accent.

Well, true, but the fact that there are still so many whites that have not changed a whit, especially in the deep south. I had a neighbor that was a very nice man in every way. He helped me plant a garden. Taught my son to tie every knot in the book in scouts (he had been a Merchant Seaman), Just was the kinds and best neighbor. Then I went to visit his wife in the hospital and he and his adult son were watching a basketball game and and all this racist stuff just poured out of them both. It was "that N... this and N... That and God did good when he made them N...s to entertain us. "

I was shocked and he just wondered why. He seemed to think it was normal. I have discovered that a lot of what folks think is change has just gone underground. There is a lot of hate, bitterness and suspicion on both sides but the arrogance and power of white bigotry is still a viable force in the south. I doubt it is just in the south though. I found some of the worst of it in Chicago one summer when I worked there in college. It was buried in lies and innuendos and power plays. Well, sorry for the sideline.