Musings Of A New Southern Man

This wasn't supposed to happen this soon. Yes, my brother Steve had health problems for years. Nothing indicated that he was so close to the time of his passing. There were no messages or warnings. We were caught off-guard. I have spent considerable time weighing the impact. There is so much information and emotional baggage to weigh. I have found few answers, only more questions. I won't detail those here. The only certainty I have reached is this: Steve's death affects me most because he was of my generation, the first family member of the younger set to pass away. That brings the reality of mortality that much closer. I wrote in one of my novels of a man explaining why he made death such a major factor in his writing. (There is nothing autobiographical in this, by the way.) His point was that most death doesn't affect us much. We read or hear about deaths of many people by many means, but those deaths don't hurt us because we don't know.these people. The

Goodbye literary angle. Hello commentaries on daily life. Welcome to this son of eastern Oregon becoming a transplanted son of the Deep South, with intervening times in northern California wine country and the Front Range of Colorado. It's not as tough a transition as one might believe. I was getting a haircut a few weeks ago in my new hometown of Anderson, South Carolina, and I was wearing a T-shirt with a big yellow O on it. A young man in the chair as I waited my turn said, "Oh, you must be a fan of the Oregon Ducks." I hurried My  to correct him. "No, I am a Duck, an official graduate of the University of Oregon." He smiled and continued the conversation. "Being here must be a culture shock, this being the South and all." I had to correct him again. "I was raised in eastern Oregon, in an area where many people work in cherry orchards or on wheat ranches. It's not the Portlandia view of the state. People tend to be conservative, and they