Deep South

Decked out like the Marlboro man in a black hat and cowboy garb a few days ago in Arizona, Patrick J. Buchanan has a new image in the Deep South, both in style and substance sounding like the good ol' boy of the Grand Old Party. Trolling for votes in today's South Carolina primary, Buchanan has adopted the argot of the region, dropping his "g's" and stretching his syllables.

I was one of the first two reporters to arrive in Philadelphia, Miss., in 1964, on the day Mickey Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman went missing. I was there as Newsweek's main reporter on the Southern civil rights beat, and I went directly to the courthouse with Claude Sitton of the New York Times to question Sheriff Lawrence Rainey and Deputy Cecil Price.

"Cornbread? Or tortillas?" The question comes with every lunch order at Family Soul Food-Mexican. Maybe it was inevitable. Traditionally black South Los Angeles is now, in most parts, at least half Latino, so the two cuisines seemed destined to collide. But it's been slow in coming. Black and Latino culture sometimes appears to dwell apart. Carnicerias and pupuserias are advertised in Spanish, and serve a Latino-immigrant clientele.

Novelist Ernest J. Gaines grew up picking cotton in Louisiana and went on to win a MacArthur "genius" grant, so he knows a little something about extraordinary journeys. "A Lesson Before Dying," adapted by Romulus Linney from Gaines' novel, and now playing at the Actors Group Theatre, follows a poor, nearly illiterate young African American's trip from an ill-timed visit to a corner store to the electric chair. It's rural Louisiana, 1948.

Hours from learning whether Alabama Republicans will reinvigorate his political fortunes, Newt Gingrich made a midday stop to speak to a suburban chamber of commerce, mentioning just a few times that he was running for president and not mentioning his opponents at all. Gingrich, who spoke after an expert on cyber crime, lapsed into a short discourse of the marvels of technology, extolling ATMs and the composite technology in the 787 Dreamliner....

First it was grits. Now it's catfish. On the eve of the Mississippi and Alabama primaries, Mitt Romney showed how far he would go to bond with Southerners who might feel something less than a natural kinship with the famously stiff New England investment titan. “That's a fine Alabama good mornin',” Romney said with a twang to a few dozen supporters who braved a drenching downpour to sing him “Happy Birthday” outside the Whistle Stop diner on the Gulf Coast. The former Massachusetts governor, who turns 65 on Tuesday, could have left it at that.

With the Mississippi and Alabama primaries now two days away, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich tussled on Sunday over which Republican presidential hopeful would adhere most faithfully to conservative orthodoxy on fiscal restraint, healthcare and oil drilling. Both also took swipes at GOP presidential rival Mitt Romney, whose heavy advertising has made the pivotal Deep South contests fiercely competitive despite both states' cultural dissonance with the former Massachusetts governor.

Researchers hoping to create a new migratory flight of whooping cranes are leading a group of sandhill cranes on a cross-country trip. Thirteen juvenile sandhills took off from Necedah National Wildlife Refuge Oct. 3 and flew after a bright yellow ultralight piloted by a man in a crane costume. Plans call for the planes of Operation Migration to fly 1,250 miles over 15 to 30 days, with rest stops at 36 carefully chosen sites along the way.