I thought the name of the magazine was a joke. It's not. Nor is the content. Garden & Gun bills itself as "a Southern lifestyle magazine that's all about the magic of the new South - sporting culture, food, music, art, literature, people, and ideas." Published by none other than Rebecca Darwin, the former publisher of The New Yorker Magazine, the G&G name isn't so cool in today's climate, but the editorial is Pat Conroy and Thomas Wolfe; wine meets whiskey and Martha Foose's Milk Punch; and gardeners and sportsmen meet farmers and environmentalists. The rag also features Jimmy Buffet quotes alongside lush photography of sailboats and southern soy.
My point? G&G captures the magic of the South, where there's a ton of history, tradition and roots, not to mention current culture and progress to experience now.
Take Alabama. People like Helen Keller, Jesse Owens, Nat King Cole, and Hank Aaron call this Southern State home. Oh sure, the Boll Weevil Monument in Enterprise is the world's only monument to a pest (yes, that's a bug she's holding over her head), and Coon Dog Cemetery is a resting place for man's best friend, but the 
South has way of rising above, and Alabama is no exception. In fact, according to G&G, Birmingham, AL is now "one of the most livable and lovable cities." It has "taken the best of the old life here (the inexorable friendliness, the lack of stress, the easy access to outdoor recreation, the quiet, leafy neighborhoods) and transformed it into something au courant, piquant, uncopyably delicious. The metropolitan area is now over one million people, but in many salubrious ways Birmingham still feels like a small city."
Sure, the new South requires that you set aside some preconceived notions, especially if most of them come from Jeff Foxworthy redneck jokes. For instance, if you think architecture in Alabama is a mobile home park (or an antebellum plantation, for that matter), think again. Florence, AL is the site of a Frank Lloyd Wright structure - The Rosenbaum House Museum - and it was created using only cypress, glass and brick. Also, Mardi Gras was actually introduced to the U.S. by Alabama, not New Orleans, y'all.
As a Yankee myself (though I did spend a lovely two years living in Atlanta), many of my thoughts of the South used to be of bloody civil rights battles or, at the very least, struggles - like Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat and igniting the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Yet, it also propelled her status as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement. I stumbled upon an interesting Year of Alabama History website you might find interesting, not to mention helpful, as you prepare for a locum stint in the new South. Consider an assignment here a nod to your own yearning to be free.