09/05/2026
Over the past two days, a string of mostly elderly men has swarmed two of my Facebook posts with all the hospitality of a recently disturbed European hornets’ nest.
The first post clearly and very seriously addressed Cornelia’s haunted landmarks, including our annual offering of the Big Red Apple to the giant arugula who controls the weather and looms like a specter over our otherwise innocuous Northeast Georgia town.
Several people somehow misinterpreted my extremely sincere warning about this horrifying entity as satire.
Then I shared a photograph I saw while scrolling Facebook of what I believed was an unusual vehicle parked at Dairy Queen. With my old-woman eyes and apparent lack of agricultural imagination, I did not recognize it as farming equipment until I was instructed to zoom in.
Some people corrected me kindly. Others joined in with a bonny spirit and made the whole thing fun. But an aggressive few treated my mistake as an opportunity to attack a stranger, call me an out-of-towner and elevate themselves through the sacred and ancient art of tractor identification.
For the record, I fully acknowledge that I failed my 4-H quiz yesterday. I will ask the teacher for a retake tomorrow.
I’m not writing this to complain about a handful of village scolds eager to place someone in the virtual stockades. Their insults do not trouble me nearly as much as what they represent.
As a lifelong Southerner and a good old-fashioned Southern girl, I want to talk about the lost art of Southern hospitality.
The vitriol I see from too many of my own kind, including lifelong or nearly lifelong North Georgia natives, appalls me because it erodes one of the loveliest parts of Southern culture: our kindness toward others, especially strangers.
Years ago, I walked through Dahlonega in the freezing cold when an elderly gentleman stopped his truck and gave me a coat. He saw someone who needed protection from their own poor choice to not dress adequately for the weather, so he offered what he had. He did not interrogate my lineage, demand proof of residency or announce that a true local would have checked the February forecast.
If that happened today, I half expect someone to stop his truck long enough to tell me to get out of town because anyone with roots here would have brought a coat.
I remember another story from my time at UNG in Dahlonega. One of my professors, who was born in Japan, told us about walking through the rain to teach. He had previously lived in California, where, he said, drivers sometimes passed him and shouted profanities from their windows. In North Georgia, people stopped and offered him a ride. I took pride in that story and tucked it away in my heart as an example of what it means to be Southern.
I do not take offense because a few internet strangers attacked me. I take offense because I can see people ripping a hallmark of this beautiful culture out by the root.
Southern hospitality means more than sweet tea, front porches and stopping for the funeral procession in respect for the dead. It means extending grace before judgment. It means correcting someone without humiliating them. It means treating strangers like neighbors and neighbors like family. It means remembering that knowledge of local roads, family names, farming equipment or regional history does not make anyone more worthy of kindness.
You can protect your hometown without making it hostile. You can take pride in your roots without using them to trip someone else. You can correct a mistake without trying to make another person feel small.
If we want to preserve the South we claim to love, we cannot cling to its superficial trappings while allowing the beating heart and soul of our communities to disappear.
Matthew 7:12 (ESV):
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
And as the Bible Belt, I hope we also abide by this
Matthew 5:14–16 (ESV):
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”
Galatians 5:22–23 (ESV):
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
Below are only a few samples of the online harassment from neighbors. You can see that I respond with humor - the best sauce besides hunger.
Be blessed, y'all 🙏
