This is why they call it the moonlight and magnolia school

I've got my internet connection back up, so....

On Sunday I came home, on the late side from a colleague's house--they live next to the famous Tuscaloosa Country Club (famous because it's the subject of an important vignette in Carl Carmer's Stars Fell on Alabama).

The magnolia tree in the front smelled oh so sweet and the moon cast such beautiful shadows. No wonder there's a whole genre built around them. (The so-called "moonlight and magnolia school" that flourished from the wake of Civil War through the early twentieth century, which focused on the beauty of the old south.) Of course, focus on that can cause us to lose sight of a lot else, which we should be paying attention to.

By the way, trees are great stand-ins in southern thought for the critical southern values of inheritance and family. So when I was looking for a question for my remedies exam, I thought one based on a case from Jacksonville about some homeowners who sought an injunction to prevent the Alabama Power Company from cutting down their trees was the makin's of a great question.