Southern Muse

Southern Muse features art, genealogy, history, poetry, literature, and the South. There are stories of the Southern Appalachian mountains and links to Southern sites. Art by D.K. Pritchett includes acrylic and watercolor landscape and still life paintings. There are essays on classic southern literature, and poetry.

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Selected Links

Fat Shirley's: A Trailer Park Opera
Southern Muse Journal (blog)
Whitfield-Murray Historical Society
Families of North Georgia & Alabama
Peacock Alley: A Cottage Industry

The bird would cease
and be as other birds

But that he knows in singing
not to sing.

The question that he frames
in all but words

Is what to make
of a diminished thing.

~ Robert Frost
from "The Oven Bird"

"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

~ Miss Maudie Atkinson
from "To Kill a Mockingbird"
by Harper Lee

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,
When turtles tread, and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men, for thus sings he: "Cuckoo!
Cuckoo, cuckoo!" O word of fear,
Unpleasing to a married ear.

from "Love's Labor Lost"
by William Shakespeare

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
O beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

~ from "Ode to a Nightingale"
by John Keats

Desolate yet all undaunted,
on this desert land enchanted ~
On this home by horror haunted ~
tell me truly, I implore ~
Is there ~ is there balm in Gilead?
~ tell me ~ tell me, I implore!

Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

~ from "The Raven"
by Edgar Allan Poe

Sumer is icumen in,
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweth seed and bloweth meadowe
And springs the wood anew,
Sing cuccu!

Ewe bleateth after lamb,
Loweth after calve cow.
bullocke stirreth, bucke ferteth,
Merrily sing cuccu!

Cuccu, cuccu, well singest thou, cuccu;
Nor quit thou, never now!

Sing cuckoo now. Sing, cuccu.
Now singest thou, cuccu!

~ a traditional English round
from a manuscript
in Middle English
(translation)

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

~ "Hope"
by Emily Dickinson

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
from "The Darkling Thrush"
~ by Thomas Hardy

Appalachian Memories (memoir)

Moonlit Water Garden (poem)

Essay: One Little Snowflake and Southern Schools Close...

Nefertiti (poem)

Southern Muse is the home page of the North Georgia artist, Deborah Pritchett, of Murray County, Georgia. (Check out another favorite site, Murray County Museum). Pritchett is a painter, writer and webmaster. This site serves as a platform for her voice and vision. Here, you'll find links to her artwork, essays and poems.

Dollhouse miniatures are another venture of the artist. The miniature toys are tiny, made to 1/12 scale or even 1/24 scale, also called halfscale. The first set of miniatures completed is a wonderful vintage looking miniature toy chest full of toys! The set is tiny, with the toybox being only 2 inches wide. It has been carefully stained, rubbed, varnished and buffed to look like a real, homemade, hand-hewn vintage toy chest. It is full of hand-sculptured toys, mostly made of polymer clay, but some carved from wood and hand painted. The highlight of the piece is a tiny, posable, hand-sculptured court jester doll. See Miniatures...

Pritchett's favorite painting genre or motif is landscape. Her landscapes and still-lifes have brilliant, jewel-like color. The landscapes include scenes of the beautiful, blue Cohutta mountains of North Georgia. Pritchett also enjoys portraiture. Her portraits are almost narrative in nature and sometimes humorous. For instance, Sisters: Ina and Esther, is a wonderful, humorous depiction of two Southern women, sisters. Ina, the one on the left, appears exuberant and uninhibited. She hugs her sister with more enthusiasm, perhaps, than Esther enjoys. You can imagine the two in their relationship as sisters. Three People on a Sofa is an interesting depiction of three blue-jean clad individuals who, perhaps, seem slightly out of place in the fussy, middle-class American sitting room, which would be more suited to a couple of ladies at tea. The still-life paintings show an influence of Cezanne. There are acrylic, oil, watercolor and gouache (opaque watercolor) paintings.

D.K. Pritchett also enjoys creative writing. Her range includes essays, narrative poetry and poems that feature strong, rich imagery. She has written several essays, including an essay on Eudora Welty's "Why I Live At The P.O." and an essay on two war poems, Emerson's "Concord Hymn" and Owens' "Dulce Et Decorum Est." One essay was written as a practice test for the Georgia Praxis exam's essay section.

The American South is another of D.K. Pritchett's interests. She grew up in the South and is fascinated by the legend, humor and myth that pervade the image of the South, particularly the South of the Appalachian Mountains. Pritchett has searched the web for documentation on Appalachia. She has also provided a genealogy of selected families of Alabama, North Georgia, and East Tennessee. The main family lines are the Pritchetts of Murray County, Georgia (who came from Gilmer County, Georgia, and before that, from Buncombe County, North Carolina). She has also researched the Headricks of Blount County, Tennessee, focussing on the branches which moved into Murray County, Georgia.

The history of North Georgia is another interest. Southern Muse provides selected links to North Georgia sites. The site also provides, as a public service, an information page for the Whitfield-Murray Historical Society, a not-for-profit agency covering Murray County, Georgia, and Whitfield County, Georgia. Pritchett is a volunteer and former publicity officer for the historical society.

The Southern Muse postcards (e-cards) are just for fun. There are valentine postcards, Saint Patrick's Day postcards and postcards for other occasions. More postcards will be added as time goes on.

This site might be of interest to anyone researching southern artists, Murray County artists, or artists of Georgia, particularly of the North Georgia mountains. It is also pertinent to: anyone who attended Chattanooga Valley Elementary School (Chattanooga Valley, Walker County, Georgia) 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969 and 1970; anyone who attended Murray County Junior High or Murray County High School (Chatsworth, Murray County, Georgia) in 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1976 and 1977; anyone who attended Young Harris College (Young Harris, Towns County, Georgia) in 1977, 1978 or 1979; and anyone who attended LaGrange College (LaGrange, Troup County, Georgia) in 1979, 1980 and 1981. Pritchett has previously worked at the Chattahoochee Valley Art Association (now called the Chattahoochee Valley Art Museum) in LaGrange, Georgia. She has exhibited works of art at the Chattahoochee Valley Art Association (at the LaGrange National (LaGrange, Georgia). Anyone researching or documenting the LaGrange National Art Exhibit might find this page useful. Pritchett has entered Dalton Georgia's Creative Arts Guild Festival Patron's Purchase Exhibit and Competition several times. Exhibits, awards and biographical mentions in Marquis Who's Who publications are documented in Deborah Pritchett's Curriculum Vitae.

Southern Muse: copyright (2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 to present day) by D.K. Pritchett. All rights reserved.
The URI of the Southern Muse domain is http://www.southernmuse.com.