No Shoes/No Shirt: No Service; No Pics/No Fluff: No Readers???

Everyone’s read or heard, sometime in their lifetime, about the No Shoes/No Shirt/No Service, right? To those in New York City or other bustling metropolitan areas, that might seem preposterously unnecessary, except for perhaps a very small, very sad contingent of homeless people.

I hate to cave in to the cliché, even demeaning, picture of those of us in the rural South having this slogan be truly applicable to us, but I have seen this scenario in action more than once my lifetime.

It’s not because we’re all poor and stupid…some of it is pragmatism and living in such an agrarian environment means there are lots of folks associated with that real-world-hard-working-farm is first-and-to-hell-with-the-rest thinking…and sometimes that means taking off shirts and boots and “coming as you are” for a quick bite to eat.

I won’t judge. Nosireebob….even if my kin were never guilty of such a (what others might perceive as a) crude behavioral crime, I have witnessed the disdainful looks given when some young fella, having just finished actual back-breaking (farm hands really do back-breaking work—that is never a hyperbolic descriptive with them) work in the tobacco fields, shucked his sweaty shirt and dusty boots as he jumped out of his truck to run in for some quick victuals be thrown stiletto stares.

And then the point.

The waitress or manager will point to the No Shoes/No Shirt: No Service sign.

I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Well, if he’s redneck enough to try to go into a restaurant of any kind, even of the humble sort, without his shoes and shirt, then maybe he can’t read.”

For the sake of brevity, let’s just assume he can read.

Let’s just assume that he’s walked right past the sign a gazillion times before when he was fully clothed and never paid it a bit of attention. Let’s assume the sign is a surprise. Of course he hangs his head in shame and walks back to the truck. Or, he throws a hissy fit, or whatever the male version of that is…gets in a rage I suppose and tries to buck the system.

No can do.

No Shoes/No Shirt: No Service.

So, why this long anecdote about my hometown-that-was-so-small-it-didn’t-have-a-stoplight-and-folks-wore-no-shoes-and-got-turned-away-from-restaurants?

I’m not saying I side with the farmer. I’m not saying I’m siding with the waitress.

It’s just a fact.

No Shoes/No Shirt: No Service.

And that fact occurred to me when I was thinking of blogging.

Stay with me now. I’m gonna make a connection. I promise.

I have so many photos left from my living in Italy. I have photos of my kids. I have tablescapes. Ancient ruins. Beautiful architecture. Gorgeous children.

Pics and pics and pics.

But editing photos and uploading them and then narrating them for a blog post takes a long time.

And while I’ve come to love photography, I’m still a writer at heart. I simply view photos as another way to tell a story.

I miss words.

But the blog world is perpetuated, for the most part, by amazing, magazine-worthy photos.

We love being voyeurs into other people’s real lives.

We want to SEE their homes/families/LIVES.

So, what would happen if I posted with no photos?

What happens if, because I’ve been sick, my kids have been sick, Tom’s deployed to Afghanistan AND I’m preparing to direct another musical that I just haven’t been able to edit photos and put together a full post?

What if I’m just feeling particularly verbose today?

Are you going to read this?

Are you going to read it all the way down to this part?

Are you still with me?

Do you want the musings, perhaps even mindless rants, of someone in Huntsville, Alabama in a post with no pics, no fluff, no visual aesthetics whatsoever???

I honestly have faith that the friends I’ve made in blogland, at least some of them, are what I call CORE SOUL PEOPLE.

That means, at their core, I believe these people have fabulous souls.

Yes, they are aesthetic geniuses….my blog friends have gorgeous blogs/tablescapes/homes/families/LIVES.

But what is truly beautiful about them is that they have beautiful SOULS and that the core part of their blogs, even when they post about tablescapes, is their amazing souls.

And folks with amazing souls will read.

No Pics/No Fluff: No Readers???

NO WAY!!!

Love/Hugs/Blessings,

Lana