Recent Columns
One of the longest-running female syndicated columnists in the nation, Rheta Grimsley Johnson writes a weekly essay for King Features Syndicate of New York that is distributed to about 50 newspapers nationwide.
January 16th 2017
GULFPORT, Miss.
A waxing moon. A chilly night in a brand-new year.
And on the edge of a Gulfport sidewalk, across Highway 90 from the Mississippi Sound, about 50 protestors chanted cumbersome slogans to one another and to a few representatives of the local media. It was a small but passionate crowd.
This is bona fide opposition. It may not look like much on the surface, but it is something, at least, that can be done as an administration led by climate change deniers takes over the country. A peaceful protest. Locally. Ordinary people.
"Climate change is not a hoax; Trump's cabinet is a joke."
Try saying that three times fast.
We were in front of the federal courthouse, opposing with awkward chanting and homemade signs the proposed cabinet posts set to go to Rex Tillerson, Scott Pruitt, Rick Perry and Ryan Zinke. Read that list and weep.
Lends itself to another slogan: Rex and Rick and Ryan and Scott. Makes you want to cry a lot.
Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran was not there, though his office is nearby. Probably in Washington working on repealing Obamacare. The hope was Cochran would read a newspaper story or see some snippet on the local television news about the protest and at least know there is some opposition to leaders who deny science. Leaders who will whistle as they feel the sea lapping up around their beds.
Most of the protestors at this modest protest already knew one another. There were hugs and warm greetings, sort of like a PTA meeting with the survival of the planet tops on the agenda. School lunches, class play and, oh, yes, rising tides.
They had been called together by the conscience and emails of one Jennifer Croslin of Steps Coalition, a consortium of nonprofits formed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to promote "a healthy, just and equitable Mississippi Gulf Coast."
The group gathered was mostly middle-age women and men, holding high clever signs: There is no Planet B! Earth is Calling; Answer. Love Your Mother.
"There are people in Mississippi who believe in climate change," a grateful Croslin said. That was the point. To show there is thinking opposition. In Mississippi. Imagine.
The hopelessness these days threatens to be overwhelming. Where do you begin to argue with an administration that calls climate change a hoax?
The environmental retardation is but one area of concern, of course. This is a mindset that opposes rights for women, gays, some religious groups. It has no problem with torture or Russian hacking of American elections.
Where to start?
Well, defending the planet we all live on is one obvious place. So this small protest on a cold Mississippi night was perhaps not as insignificant as it appeared. It mattered. Was bona fide. Fundamental.
Multiply it by a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, and you eventually will get the attention of those who claim to have won control, of our minds and hearts and ethics, by a landslide. Doesn't have to be true, only repeated a lot.
This protest was a simplicity pattern. Could be copied by anyone, anywhere. Yes, there are people in Mississippi who know that climate change is real, and, as one man said, "The only hoax is that the science is not real."
Listen, leaders. Ignore us at the planet's peril.
GULFPORT, Miss.
A waxing moon. A chilly night in a brand-new year.
And on the edge of a Gulfport sidewalk, across Highway 90 from the Mississippi Sound, about 50 protestors chanted cumbersome slogans to one another and to a few representatives of the local media. It was a small but passionate crowd.
This is bona fide opposition. It may not look like much on the surface, but it is something, at least, that can be done as an administration led by climate change deniers takes over the country. A peaceful protest. Locally. Ordinary people.
"Climate change is not a hoax; Trump's cabinet is a joke."
Try saying that three times fast.
We were in front of the federal courthouse, opposing with awkward chanting and homemade signs the proposed cabinet posts set to go to Rex Tillerson, Scott Pruitt, Rick Perry and Ryan Zinke. Read that list and weep.
Lends itself to another slogan: Rex and Rick and Ryan and Scott. Makes you want to cry a lot.
Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran was not there, though his office is nearby. Probably in Washington working on repealing Obamacare. The hope was Cochran would read a newspaper story or see some snippet on the local television news about the protest and at least know there is some opposition to leaders who deny science. Leaders who will whistle as they feel the sea lapping up around their beds.
Most of the protestors at this modest protest already knew one another. There were hugs and warm greetings, sort of like a PTA meeting with the survival of the planet tops on the agenda. School lunches, class play and, oh, yes, rising tides.
They had been called together by the conscience and emails of one Jennifer Croslin of Steps Coalition, a consortium of nonprofits formed in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to promote "a healthy, just and equitable Mississippi Gulf Coast."
The group gathered was mostly middle-age women and men, holding high clever signs: There is no Planet B! Earth is Calling; Answer. Love Your Mother.
"There are people in Mississippi who believe in climate change," a grateful Croslin said. That was the point. To show there is thinking opposition. In Mississippi. Imagine.
The hopelessness these days threatens to be overwhelming. Where do you begin to argue with an administration that calls climate change a hoax?
The environmental retardation is but one area of concern, of course. This is a mindset that opposes rights for women, gays, some religious groups. It has no problem with torture or Russian hacking of American elections.
Where to start?
Well, defending the planet we all live on is one obvious place. So this small protest on a cold Mississippi night was perhaps not as insignificant as it appeared. It mattered. Was bona fide. Fundamental.
Multiply it by a thousand, two thousand, three thousand, and you eventually will get the attention of those who claim to have won control, of our minds and hearts and ethics, by a landslide. Doesn't have to be true, only repeated a lot.
This protest was a simplicity pattern. Could be copied by anyone, anywhere. Yes, there are people in Mississippi who know that climate change is real, and, as one man said, "The only hoax is that the science is not real."
Listen, leaders. Ignore us at the planet's peril.
January 9th 2017
When my mother died, her house sold quickly and we didn't have the luxury of time to sort through her many possessions. I spent less than one week at the home place, deciding what to pack on the back of my old pickup truck.
That was tough but probably just as well. One could have made a second career of sorting my mother's keepsakes.
She collected things. She kept things. All things. There was a cabinet full of old florist vases. There were stacks high as Peruvian burial mounds of Christmas cards dating back 30 years, and letters much older than that.
One thing I claimed was a sewing machine drawer full of postcards she'd filed through the years. You couldn't have gotten a piece of dental floss between the cards.
Whenever I'd visit, I liked going through that drawer, seeing who had been where, when. Many were cards she bought herself on our Florida vacation trips when I was small.
Those brought back memories of an un-air-conditioned Buick that took us to exotic places: Cypress Gardens, where women waterskied without getting their hair wet. Citrus Tower, from which you could see miles of orange groves, and with a souvenir shop that sold perfume in tiny bottles shaped like perfect oranges and subject to spill. Bok Tower, which we called the Singing Tower, where carillon recitals reverberated through the woods of a Central Florida before Disney.
Mother loved calendars. I inherited that inability to throw away a beautiful calendar, though lately I've limited myself to the ones featuring French scenes. She kept them all.
She loved dishes. I also got the genetic disposition to be suckered in by a primrose pattern. At Mother's house, dishes were stored in cabinets, under beds, beneath the living-room sofa, which turned out to be a trove of breakables, including gargantuan ashtrays, clean for decades.
I'm the same way, except worse. I even like cracked dishes, sets missing the dinner plates, coffee cups without handles. My older sister wanted Mother's fine china, but I took the oddball pieces she kept on the high shelves. They were more interesting.
Mother kept careful mental inventory of everything she had. The older she got, the more it worried her not to see a certain something in its accustomed place. If you rearranged, it threw her into searching mode and made her sure someone had offed with a toothpick holder shaped like a skunk or a whiskey decanter like a duck.
It was best to dust and put things back in their usual places, even if there wasn't room for another single object on most tabletops, mantels and shelves. She knew where they belonged. And she knew their stories, which she shared.
I have resolved not to leave as many possessions for my niece to sort. Because I don't have what Mother had: four children. My poor niece will have to go it alone, and I envision her lean, athletic frame overcome by crazy objects that she does not even associate with a good story.
She won't know the doorstop rock came from Crazy Horse's eyeball in South Dakota, or that the ornate level was my late husband's carpenter grandfather's. She doesn't know I got the red coffeepot in France.
With any luck, she'll have a deadline to get rid of the weird contents of a old house packed with stories I've mostly told to myself.
When my mother died, her house sold quickly and we didn't have the luxury of time to sort through her many possessions. I spent less than one week at the home place, deciding what to pack on the back of my old pickup truck.
That was tough but probably just as well. One could have made a second career of sorting my mother's keepsakes.
She collected things. She kept things. All things. There was a cabinet full of old florist vases. There were stacks high as Peruvian burial mounds of Christmas cards dating back 30 years, and letters much older than that.
One thing I claimed was a sewing machine drawer full of postcards she'd filed through the years. You couldn't have gotten a piece of dental floss between the cards.
Whenever I'd visit, I liked going through that drawer, seeing who had been where, when. Many were cards she bought herself on our Florida vacation trips when I was small.
Those brought back memories of an un-air-conditioned Buick that took us to exotic places: Cypress Gardens, where women waterskied without getting their hair wet. Citrus Tower, from which you could see miles of orange groves, and with a souvenir shop that sold perfume in tiny bottles shaped like perfect oranges and subject to spill. Bok Tower, which we called the Singing Tower, where carillon recitals reverberated through the woods of a Central Florida before Disney.
Mother loved calendars. I inherited that inability to throw away a beautiful calendar, though lately I've limited myself to the ones featuring French scenes. She kept them all.
She loved dishes. I also got the genetic disposition to be suckered in by a primrose pattern. At Mother's house, dishes were stored in cabinets, under beds, beneath the living-room sofa, which turned out to be a trove of breakables, including gargantuan ashtrays, clean for decades.
I'm the same way, except worse. I even like cracked dishes, sets missing the dinner plates, coffee cups without handles. My older sister wanted Mother's fine china, but I took the oddball pieces she kept on the high shelves. They were more interesting.
Mother kept careful mental inventory of everything she had. The older she got, the more it worried her not to see a certain something in its accustomed place. If you rearranged, it threw her into searching mode and made her sure someone had offed with a toothpick holder shaped like a skunk or a whiskey decanter like a duck.
It was best to dust and put things back in their usual places, even if there wasn't room for another single object on most tabletops, mantels and shelves. She knew where they belonged. And she knew their stories, which she shared.
I have resolved not to leave as many possessions for my niece to sort. Because I don't have what Mother had: four children. My poor niece will have to go it alone, and I envision her lean, athletic frame overcome by crazy objects that she does not even associate with a good story.
She won't know the doorstop rock came from Crazy Horse's eyeball in South Dakota, or that the ornate level was my late husband's carpenter grandfather's. She doesn't know I got the red coffeepot in France.
With any luck, she'll have a deadline to get rid of the weird contents of a old house packed with stories I've mostly told to myself.
January 2nd 2017
A man died last year who epitomized the profession that Donald Trump says is full of "horrible people" and "scum."
Jack Simms was 90. He was 17 when he signed up to join the Marine Corps in World War II. He needed his parents' consent. He was a private in a machine gun squad with an infantry company during the bloody Battle of Iwo Jima in February and March of 1945. His division received a Presidential Unit Citation.
He survived war to return home to Auburn, Alabama, where he had grown up. Jack had promised his mother he'd go to college if she'd sign his consent form, and he kept his promises.
The first time I saw Jack Simms was in 1974. He looked pretty much the same as he'd looked in photos in his Marine Corps uniform, a dapper, John Garfield kind of handsome. He stood in the doorway of my office, the editor's cubbyhole at the Auburn University campus newspaper, The Plainsman. He, too, had been editor of The Plainsman after the war ended.
This time Jack was back to head the journalism department, summoned by Auburn after his long career with the Associated Press in Atlanta, Kentucky and New England. He eventually became the AP's deputy general sports editor in New York.
That first meeting was typical. Jack had stopped by with a minor criticism, which he delivered with a smile and I ignored. I had finished all my journalism classes and so never had him as an instructor, but we became fast friends.
I left Auburn and tried to start a weekly newspaper on a Georgia island. The venture failed. Jack helped me find a newspaper job when I came back to Alabama, dragging a U-Haul behind me. With his AP contacts around the nation, he helped many of us struggling young reporters find work.
Jack Simms taught what he called a "weed-out" course to get rid of students who could not spell and didn't know grammar. He'd put a ticking alarm clock at the front of the room to illustrate the pressure of deadlines. He knew about those.
He taught by example. I've always thought the main thing journalism students should be taught is the proper disposition for a reporter. Jack Simms was the intellectually curious, tough, fair-minded, witty reporter we all wanted to become.
Jack and his wife Lassie Jo -- he called her "The War Department," but with such tenderness it was not offensive -- came to see me in Mississippi nearly 30 years after we'd first met. He sat on my front porch drinking, gossiping, reminiscing, until past midnight. I finally had to beg off and go to bed.
Always the careful editor, Jack occasionally would write me a note about some column I'd written. He didn't critique the content or my position so much as he did the delivery. "I'm not clear what you're saying here," or "Good job with this." Nobody was off the hook entirely when Jack Simms read.
Mark Winne, a mutual friend, once Jack's student and now a veteran investigative television reporter in Atlanta, named his son "Jack." Jack Simms inspired that kind of devotion.
The current contempt for the media may wane in the next four years, but I doubt it. Jack Simms taught us that if you do your job right you might not be popular. You might even be despised. But you'll be respected.
A man died last year who epitomized the profession that Donald Trump says is full of "horrible people" and "scum."
Jack Simms was 90. He was 17 when he signed up to join the Marine Corps in World War II. He needed his parents' consent. He was a private in a machine gun squad with an infantry company during the bloody Battle of Iwo Jima in February and March of 1945. His division received a Presidential Unit Citation.
He survived war to return home to Auburn, Alabama, where he had grown up. Jack had promised his mother he'd go to college if she'd sign his consent form, and he kept his promises.
The first time I saw Jack Simms was in 1974. He looked pretty much the same as he'd looked in photos in his Marine Corps uniform, a dapper, John Garfield kind of handsome. He stood in the doorway of my office, the editor's cubbyhole at the Auburn University campus newspaper, The Plainsman. He, too, had been editor of The Plainsman after the war ended.
This time Jack was back to head the journalism department, summoned by Auburn after his long career with the Associated Press in Atlanta, Kentucky and New England. He eventually became the AP's deputy general sports editor in New York.
That first meeting was typical. Jack had stopped by with a minor criticism, which he delivered with a smile and I ignored. I had finished all my journalism classes and so never had him as an instructor, but we became fast friends.
I left Auburn and tried to start a weekly newspaper on a Georgia island. The venture failed. Jack helped me find a newspaper job when I came back to Alabama, dragging a U-Haul behind me. With his AP contacts around the nation, he helped many of us struggling young reporters find work.
Jack Simms taught what he called a "weed-out" course to get rid of students who could not spell and didn't know grammar. He'd put a ticking alarm clock at the front of the room to illustrate the pressure of deadlines. He knew about those.
He taught by example. I've always thought the main thing journalism students should be taught is the proper disposition for a reporter. Jack Simms was the intellectually curious, tough, fair-minded, witty reporter we all wanted to become.
Jack and his wife Lassie Jo -- he called her "The War Department," but with such tenderness it was not offensive -- came to see me in Mississippi nearly 30 years after we'd first met. He sat on my front porch drinking, gossiping, reminiscing, until past midnight. I finally had to beg off and go to bed.
Always the careful editor, Jack occasionally would write me a note about some column I'd written. He didn't critique the content or my position so much as he did the delivery. "I'm not clear what you're saying here," or "Good job with this." Nobody was off the hook entirely when Jack Simms read.
Mark Winne, a mutual friend, once Jack's student and now a veteran investigative television reporter in Atlanta, named his son "Jack." Jack Simms inspired that kind of devotion.
The current contempt for the media may wane in the next four years, but I doubt it. Jack Simms taught us that if you do your job right you might not be popular. You might even be despised. But you'll be respected.
December 26th 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss.
On a fall trip to Paris a million years ago, I was strolling down the Rue du Bac, trying to look nonchalant, as if I were back home going for milk at the Piggly Wiggly. I was searching for one of my favorite places, Deyrolle, a taxidermy shop that's been in business since 1831.
At Deyrolle, bears lie down with lambs, and everything is for sale, antelopes to zebras. If you have plenty of change in your pocket, you can take home a resin elephant that would fool your guests.
I almost walked right past -- the building from the outside is not particularly distinguished, not in a city with so much iconic architecture that you can't swing a Lonely Planet without hitting one -- when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed an old school desk with a map and a stuffed badger and duckling on top, a whimsical window display for the fall season. Deyrolle.
The French do the best window decorations in the world, at least the part of the world I've seen. They make it look easy, telling short stories in time with the season in shop windows. That's an art.
I've always thought that if I had another talent besides stringing together words, it might be dressing windows. My thoughts were baseless, but I fantasized about it.
So maybe that's why I recently spent my small family inheritance on an old building, presumably to rent out and supplement my Social Security. I don't understand the stock market and don't want to.
But the more I looked at the two front display windows, the more I yearned to try to dress them. That led to acting out yet another fantasy: starting a small gallery, a place where people could see art -- and maybe occasionally a foreign film.
I think when times are hard, most of us need such an oasis. We don't have the Memphis museums or the Atlanta theaters or the New Orleans music scene. Whenever two or more gather here, it's usually for a football game. That does not mean we do not have artistic yearnings.
So Faraway Places, gallery and shop, was born. I put brown paper in the two big panes facing the street to keep my inaugural window-dressing efforts under wraps. I wasn't sure just what might happen.
Using things I already had, one window slowly became a painter's atelier. I wanted it to look as if the artist had just left his studio, leaving an unsigned work on the easel, brushes and paints scattered about, blank canvases to the wall. Van Gogh gone out for a smoke.
I suspended empty frames from the ceiling, which later would cause confusion. Some thought I'd opened a framing business.
The second window was my pride, my first Christmas window ever, perhaps my last. The faraway place I love the most is France, and I wanted my inspiration front and center.
The white Christmas tree probably was made in another faraway place -- China -- but I decorated it with Eiffel Towers and French flags. Next to it, a bright-green bistro table sat, ready for lovers to inhabit, a lit Eiffel Tower swinging perilously close to two wine glasses. I hung a red beret on one chair.
Only trouble is, Christmas is over now, and the window needs dressing again. It's like climbing a glass hill, window-dressing. Would that I had a stable of stuffed animals to work with, a humble badger or two to create interest.
Rheta's new gallery/shop, Faraway Places, is located at 102 West Front Street, Iuka, Mississippi.
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss.
On a fall trip to Paris a million years ago, I was strolling down the Rue du Bac, trying to look nonchalant, as if I were back home going for milk at the Piggly Wiggly. I was searching for one of my favorite places, Deyrolle, a taxidermy shop that's been in business since 1831.
At Deyrolle, bears lie down with lambs, and everything is for sale, antelopes to zebras. If you have plenty of change in your pocket, you can take home a resin elephant that would fool your guests.
I almost walked right past -- the building from the outside is not particularly distinguished, not in a city with so much iconic architecture that you can't swing a Lonely Planet without hitting one -- when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed an old school desk with a map and a stuffed badger and duckling on top, a whimsical window display for the fall season. Deyrolle.
The French do the best window decorations in the world, at least the part of the world I've seen. They make it look easy, telling short stories in time with the season in shop windows. That's an art.
I've always thought that if I had another talent besides stringing together words, it might be dressing windows. My thoughts were baseless, but I fantasized about it.
So maybe that's why I recently spent my small family inheritance on an old building, presumably to rent out and supplement my Social Security. I don't understand the stock market and don't want to.
But the more I looked at the two front display windows, the more I yearned to try to dress them. That led to acting out yet another fantasy: starting a small gallery, a place where people could see art -- and maybe occasionally a foreign film.
I think when times are hard, most of us need such an oasis. We don't have the Memphis museums or the Atlanta theaters or the New Orleans music scene. Whenever two or more gather here, it's usually for a football game. That does not mean we do not have artistic yearnings.
So Faraway Places, gallery and shop, was born. I put brown paper in the two big panes facing the street to keep my inaugural window-dressing efforts under wraps. I wasn't sure just what might happen.
Using things I already had, one window slowly became a painter's atelier. I wanted it to look as if the artist had just left his studio, leaving an unsigned work on the easel, brushes and paints scattered about, blank canvases to the wall. Van Gogh gone out for a smoke.
I suspended empty frames from the ceiling, which later would cause confusion. Some thought I'd opened a framing business.
The second window was my pride, my first Christmas window ever, perhaps my last. The faraway place I love the most is France, and I wanted my inspiration front and center.
The white Christmas tree probably was made in another faraway place -- China -- but I decorated it with Eiffel Towers and French flags. Next to it, a bright-green bistro table sat, ready for lovers to inhabit, a lit Eiffel Tower swinging perilously close to two wine glasses. I hung a red beret on one chair.
Only trouble is, Christmas is over now, and the window needs dressing again. It's like climbing a glass hill, window-dressing. Would that I had a stable of stuffed animals to work with, a humble badger or two to create interest.
Rheta's new gallery/shop, Faraway Places, is located at 102 West Front Street, Iuka, Mississippi.
December 19th 2016, FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss.
If the house burns down, I have nobody to blame but myself.
A fancy peppermint candle is on the jam cabinet, painting an eerie shadow on Roosevelt's unfinished portrait that hangs above.
Those fat, hot, colored Christmas tree bulbs that nobody favors anymore are strung on my cedar from the pasture, a weakened survivor of summer's drought. Tannenbaum could torch at any moment.
The wood fire in the kitchen is, as always, seductive to my old dogs, who sometimes wander too close and afterward feel hot to the touch.
We are home for the holidays and all lit up like a Christmas tree.
Carla Bruni, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, is in CD rotation and singing a gorgeous rendition of "You Belong to Me" in her soft, French-y voice. I'm pretty content with my Christmas tableau.
Bring me the nog with its Lynchburg infusion.
I've seen the stylish holiday looks in the magazines that my friend and neighbor Barbara brings me when she's done. In those books, people with white sofas and clean dogs decorate in sea blue or flamingo pink. I have tried, in the past, to have a Christmas color scheme, but sentiment always gets in the way.
In what one magazine calls "a pink holiday dream," where would my flaking chalk Santa go? My father won it for me when I was 6 at a Florida fair by tossing nickels, an amazing accomplishment. I couldn't live with myself if I had to hide the garish and jolly old elf in a closet. Couldn't and wouldn't.
The poster-board portrait my niece Chelsey drew of her family at Christmas would have to go in a closet, too, if I went for stylish perfection. Chelsey's stick figures with finger-in-an-eye-socket hair delight me whenever I unroll the decades-old art and tack it to the wall.
I have snowmen made from plaster by artist Nina Bagley's boys when they were small. I can't imagine a Christmas without them on the table. I sure couldn't hide my plastic Eiffel Tower snow dome with half of its water evaporated. It was one of the first French souvenirs I ever purchased.
Then there's my mother's homemade candle made from the paraffin she poured into Foremost milk cartons with a No. 2 pencil stretched across the top to hold the wick. The glitter is sparse and the whipped wax ornamentation has yellowed, but onto the table it goes.
A cartoon angel drawn by my former cartoonist husband has to be on the tree. When he drew that funny flying figure on balsa wood a million years ago, I had no hint that I'd ever be old, waxing sentimental about a long-ago Christmas when we didn't have money for groceries -- not to mention ornaments or lights -- but went right out and bought a big and fantastic tree. Young couples can't live on dried beans alone.
You're allowed to be sentimental at Christmas. Some years, it hurts to wallow in sentiment more than others. Christmas isn't for sissies.
But for right now, before the Big Elf arrives and the post-holiday blues kick in, I'm handling Christmas in the new old-fashioned way -- with things I love, their colors and coordination be damned.
And among the things I'm most sentimental about: my readers. Thank you for your interest, your kindness and years of memorable Christmases.
If the house burns down, I have nobody to blame but myself.
A fancy peppermint candle is on the jam cabinet, painting an eerie shadow on Roosevelt's unfinished portrait that hangs above.
Those fat, hot, colored Christmas tree bulbs that nobody favors anymore are strung on my cedar from the pasture, a weakened survivor of summer's drought. Tannenbaum could torch at any moment.
The wood fire in the kitchen is, as always, seductive to my old dogs, who sometimes wander too close and afterward feel hot to the touch.
We are home for the holidays and all lit up like a Christmas tree.
Carla Bruni, wife of Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French president, is in CD rotation and singing a gorgeous rendition of "You Belong to Me" in her soft, French-y voice. I'm pretty content with my Christmas tableau.
Bring me the nog with its Lynchburg infusion.
I've seen the stylish holiday looks in the magazines that my friend and neighbor Barbara brings me when she's done. In those books, people with white sofas and clean dogs decorate in sea blue or flamingo pink. I have tried, in the past, to have a Christmas color scheme, but sentiment always gets in the way.
In what one magazine calls "a pink holiday dream," where would my flaking chalk Santa go? My father won it for me when I was 6 at a Florida fair by tossing nickels, an amazing accomplishment. I couldn't live with myself if I had to hide the garish and jolly old elf in a closet. Couldn't and wouldn't.
The poster-board portrait my niece Chelsey drew of her family at Christmas would have to go in a closet, too, if I went for stylish perfection. Chelsey's stick figures with finger-in-an-eye-socket hair delight me whenever I unroll the decades-old art and tack it to the wall.
I have snowmen made from plaster by artist Nina Bagley's boys when they were small. I can't imagine a Christmas without them on the table. I sure couldn't hide my plastic Eiffel Tower snow dome with half of its water evaporated. It was one of the first French souvenirs I ever purchased.
Then there's my mother's homemade candle made from the paraffin she poured into Foremost milk cartons with a No. 2 pencil stretched across the top to hold the wick. The glitter is sparse and the whipped wax ornamentation has yellowed, but onto the table it goes.
A cartoon angel drawn by my former cartoonist husband has to be on the tree. When he drew that funny flying figure on balsa wood a million years ago, I had no hint that I'd ever be old, waxing sentimental about a long-ago Christmas when we didn't have money for groceries -- not to mention ornaments or lights -- but went right out and bought a big and fantastic tree. Young couples can't live on dried beans alone.
You're allowed to be sentimental at Christmas. Some years, it hurts to wallow in sentiment more than others. Christmas isn't for sissies.
But for right now, before the Big Elf arrives and the post-holiday blues kick in, I'm handling Christmas in the new old-fashioned way -- with things I love, their colors and coordination be damned.
And among the things I'm most sentimental about: my readers. Thank you for your interest, your kindness and years of memorable Christmases.
December 12th 2016
The only Christmas that I can remember the smell of distinctly is about 1964, if memory serves, which it rarely does.
It's not that I remember the aroma of the cedar tottering in its stand, or the oranges on the hearth, or the cookies baking in Mother's old gas oven. None of those comes without some mental beckoning.
It is the smell of my new Barbie doll as I took her out of the small, narrow, cardboard coffin where she slept, eyes wide open in a black-and-white-striped, strapless bathing suit. The smell of that new, much-anticipated toy is stamped on my brain like a tattoo. A delicious smell, like freshly folded clothes off a clothesline, if the clothes had been made of vinyl.
She wore high-heeled sandals and a perfect ponytail, had no hips or bulges except in desirable places. Barbie was born to wear high fashion.
My grandmother made most of my Barbie-doll clothes, which were more modest than Mattel's bought-ready-made outfits that came with an almost-J. Peterman, evocative name: Enchanted Evening Barbie, for instance. What little girl wouldn't want that?
I don't think most children get the same visceral thrill these days from a new toy. For one thing, they receive toys so often that every day is a mini Christmas. I doubt if the smell of freshly molded plastic is as wonderfully exotic as it was in my day.
And, yes, I know that Barbie both reinforced stereotypes and heightened female expectations in unrealistic ways.
Most of us would never have that proportionately preposterous figure, or a dream house, or a dream car or a Ken who never cast a sideways look at Midge.
But, in honesty, that doll represented a rite of passage, from teddy bears and tricycles to a vicarious adulthood, one that promised hot dates and seductive makeup and shoes without anklet socks. Barbie told us we would change and grow up at least, if not to the exalted state in which she existed.
I thought about all of this on a day trip to Memphis the other day. I visited a store that smelled heavenly -- as many do this time of year -- with its candles and French soaps and essential oils that somehow seem more essential at Christmas. Smell is powerful, good or bad, remembered or fresh.
I bought a candle, a nightlight and several greeting cards before I got my nose and my wallet out of the place. Clever shopkeepers, those, courting our nostrils.
A real estate woman who sold a house for me in Georgia gave this sage advice: When you know a potential buyer is coming, put a sweet potato in the oven. She sold my house in one week. I don't have proof that a potato had much to do with it, but I like to think that it did.
Good smells, like good voices, are powerful. Think of Ben Johnson's voice in "The Last Picture Show," or Patricia Neal's in "Hud." They are right up there with baking sweet potatoes and yeast rolls.
All of which, of course, means that a bad smell or a bad voice has the inverse effect. We've all known people with chalk-on-a-blackboard voices, and who hasn't noticed when he's in the vicinity of a paper mill? For every chocolate-covered cherry in the refrigerator door, there's a rotten onion in the vegetable bin.
The only Christmas that I can remember the smell of distinctly is about 1964, if memory serves, which it rarely does.
It's not that I remember the aroma of the cedar tottering in its stand, or the oranges on the hearth, or the cookies baking in Mother's old gas oven. None of those comes without some mental beckoning.
It is the smell of my new Barbie doll as I took her out of the small, narrow, cardboard coffin where she slept, eyes wide open in a black-and-white-striped, strapless bathing suit. The smell of that new, much-anticipated toy is stamped on my brain like a tattoo. A delicious smell, like freshly folded clothes off a clothesline, if the clothes had been made of vinyl.
She wore high-heeled sandals and a perfect ponytail, had no hips or bulges except in desirable places. Barbie was born to wear high fashion.
My grandmother made most of my Barbie-doll clothes, which were more modest than Mattel's bought-ready-made outfits that came with an almost-J. Peterman, evocative name: Enchanted Evening Barbie, for instance. What little girl wouldn't want that?
I don't think most children get the same visceral thrill these days from a new toy. For one thing, they receive toys so often that every day is a mini Christmas. I doubt if the smell of freshly molded plastic is as wonderfully exotic as it was in my day.
And, yes, I know that Barbie both reinforced stereotypes and heightened female expectations in unrealistic ways.
Most of us would never have that proportionately preposterous figure, or a dream house, or a dream car or a Ken who never cast a sideways look at Midge.
But, in honesty, that doll represented a rite of passage, from teddy bears and tricycles to a vicarious adulthood, one that promised hot dates and seductive makeup and shoes without anklet socks. Barbie told us we would change and grow up at least, if not to the exalted state in which she existed.
I thought about all of this on a day trip to Memphis the other day. I visited a store that smelled heavenly -- as many do this time of year -- with its candles and French soaps and essential oils that somehow seem more essential at Christmas. Smell is powerful, good or bad, remembered or fresh.
I bought a candle, a nightlight and several greeting cards before I got my nose and my wallet out of the place. Clever shopkeepers, those, courting our nostrils.
A real estate woman who sold a house for me in Georgia gave this sage advice: When you know a potential buyer is coming, put a sweet potato in the oven. She sold my house in one week. I don't have proof that a potato had much to do with it, but I like to think that it did.
Good smells, like good voices, are powerful. Think of Ben Johnson's voice in "The Last Picture Show," or Patricia Neal's in "Hud." They are right up there with baking sweet potatoes and yeast rolls.
All of which, of course, means that a bad smell or a bad voice has the inverse effect. We've all known people with chalk-on-a-blackboard voices, and who hasn't noticed when he's in the vicinity of a paper mill? For every chocolate-covered cherry in the refrigerator door, there's a rotten onion in the vegetable bin.
December 5th 2016
The Emperor With No Clothes is lumbering at his full speed toward the highest office in the free world, pulling behind him to help guard the hens the largest collection of miscreants, misogynists and thieves since Alcatraz closed shop.
And all along the route, fools with their baseball caps on backward are cheering the swaggering parade, shouting hallelujahs and playing the occasional game of kick-the-can with liberty, justice and the messenger.
At a friend's birthday party recently, two well-meaning acquaintances who still read newspapers asked why I haven't been writing about politics. I've been thinking about the honest question since.
I am not writing about politics because there is nothing left to say. Not for me, anyhow. The voters -- or nearly half of them -- have spoken. At least they have brayed a response to a torturously long call for intolerance, injustice and insanity.
The news these days depresses me to the point that I can't follow it. For the first time in my adult life, I am not interested in current events. Not if it involves Jeff Sessions' face in high definition. Wake me when the nightmare's over.
Seven times more people in my home county voted for a crude, tweeting racist than for the other candidate, who was not perfect but at least did not base her campaign on hate. If I dwell on that, I'll go crazy. And, there's nowhere to move.
Many thinking people I know are hurting because they find it hard to believe that so many of their fellow Americans were harboring such grudges against minorities that they were carved like soft soap into a coalition of hate. A powerful coalition of hate that will rule our world.
The country is fundamentally changed.
The decent, world-saving country I was born into when Eisenhower was president and the middle class mattered is gone. The optimistic citizens who asked not what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country are beaten. The humble leaders who left office and built houses for the homeless are woefully out of style. The prospect of another minority or woman president has vanished, at least in my lifetime.
This is a new day, and not a bright one. The officers on this sinking ship already are singing "Nearer My God To Thee."
My profession, which I've diligently pursued in some form or fashion for 40 years, is, for practical purposes, gone, too. Trump and his ilk see no need for a free press, what's left of it. They have no need for facts that cannot be made up and fed to the gullible. They are making real plans to rule without the ultimate check and balance of the truth.
I was not as surprised as some about the outcome of the election. I had a preview. The mail I get from The Other Side had turned vicious. I've always heard with regularity from those who disagree with my politics, but never before had it been written in crayon and covered with drool.
I no longer read my mail. Save your stamps and your bile. You have elected a man with effective ways to stop any opposing views. Sit back and enjoy the ride on greased rails.
As for me, I'm sticking my head in the shifting sand and trying to focus on other things.
When the truth doesn't matter, little else does.
The Emperor With No Clothes is lumbering at his full speed toward the highest office in the free world, pulling behind him to help guard the hens the largest collection of miscreants, misogynists and thieves since Alcatraz closed shop.
And all along the route, fools with their baseball caps on backward are cheering the swaggering parade, shouting hallelujahs and playing the occasional game of kick-the-can with liberty, justice and the messenger.
At a friend's birthday party recently, two well-meaning acquaintances who still read newspapers asked why I haven't been writing about politics. I've been thinking about the honest question since.
I am not writing about politics because there is nothing left to say. Not for me, anyhow. The voters -- or nearly half of them -- have spoken. At least they have brayed a response to a torturously long call for intolerance, injustice and insanity.
The news these days depresses me to the point that I can't follow it. For the first time in my adult life, I am not interested in current events. Not if it involves Jeff Sessions' face in high definition. Wake me when the nightmare's over.
Seven times more people in my home county voted for a crude, tweeting racist than for the other candidate, who was not perfect but at least did not base her campaign on hate. If I dwell on that, I'll go crazy. And, there's nowhere to move.
Many thinking people I know are hurting because they find it hard to believe that so many of their fellow Americans were harboring such grudges against minorities that they were carved like soft soap into a coalition of hate. A powerful coalition of hate that will rule our world.
The country is fundamentally changed.
The decent, world-saving country I was born into when Eisenhower was president and the middle class mattered is gone. The optimistic citizens who asked not what their country could do for them but what they could do for their country are beaten. The humble leaders who left office and built houses for the homeless are woefully out of style. The prospect of another minority or woman president has vanished, at least in my lifetime.
This is a new day, and not a bright one. The officers on this sinking ship already are singing "Nearer My God To Thee."
My profession, which I've diligently pursued in some form or fashion for 40 years, is, for practical purposes, gone, too. Trump and his ilk see no need for a free press, what's left of it. They have no need for facts that cannot be made up and fed to the gullible. They are making real plans to rule without the ultimate check and balance of the truth.
I was not as surprised as some about the outcome of the election. I had a preview. The mail I get from The Other Side had turned vicious. I've always heard with regularity from those who disagree with my politics, but never before had it been written in crayon and covered with drool.
I no longer read my mail. Save your stamps and your bile. You have elected a man with effective ways to stop any opposing views. Sit back and enjoy the ride on greased rails.
As for me, I'm sticking my head in the shifting sand and trying to focus on other things.
When the truth doesn't matter, little else does.
November 28th 2016
Lucinda deserves an obituary. She was an unforgettable little dickens.
Not even 20 pounds, such a mix that no breed dominated, the dog that appeared last Thanksgiving and didn't make it quite a year, left an indelible mark on my soul. I think it was her athleticism, the ability to jump into bed beside me before anyone could stop her. She was a spooner.
In less than a year she demolished two sofas and started on a third. Once I came in from a short trip and it looked as if a Mardi Gras parade had marched through the living room. Beds, pillows, anything soft and pliable was at risk.
She often made her way to the middle of the dining table, cat-like, when nobody was around.
Instinctively Lucinda knew she needed to be up high, the better to protect herself.
At night she slept in a pink crate without protest but made up for that confinement by tearing about all day at warp speed.
She was not a beauty. Other than a perpetual puppy face that caused us to be surprised when, upon her arrival, the vet pronounced her already a year and a half old, she was put together of odd parts. She had short legs, long body, pop eyes, brindle and white and brown and black color, beautiful little teeth that sometimes refused to be hidden by her mouth.
And, yet, she charmed you. She licked and kissed and when exhausted curled up in a comma pose so tight you'd swear she couldn't weigh four pounds. All 19 pounds of her was alive and percolating. No catlike naps or slovenly dog ways. She was at it, about it, living flat-out.
I know everyone else is writing about the sad state of our union. Latest reports say "social media" -- don't you hate that term -- bogus news reports that shaped the presidential vote may have come from Russia.
Russia.
I imagined families all over America in Thanksgiving food fights, split as evenly about presidential choices as they were dark or white meat. I know in my family it's an even divide.
But I can't focus on the nation. It wouldn't do any good. As my old newspaper friend from Bogue Chitto, Mississippi, used to say, "You can't ruin a ruint."
We'll see who celebrates when Medicare vanishes and Florida is halfway underwater. You can deny truths only for a short while.
Right now I'm caught up in the visceral loss of Lucinda, who made me smile every day she was on this earth. I can't say that about any politician.
She brought energy into a household with two old dogs and two old people. To paraphrase the late Leonard Cohen, we ache in the places that we used to play. Lucinda was youth, well-represented.
Lucinda cut her paw about two weeks before she disappeared. When we took her to back to the vet to get the stitches removed, kind Doc Gina said Lucinda already had taken out her own stitches. Nothing slowed her down. Until it did.
Three dogs went out last week as they do every morning. Only two came back for breakfast. We searched, of course, but never found a sign of Lucinda.
We blame the coyotes, those sneaky, vicious, voracious and starving creatures that prey on the weak, the small, the injured. Sorta like some politicians.
Lucinda deserves an obituary. She was an unforgettable little dickens.
Not even 20 pounds, such a mix that no breed dominated, the dog that appeared last Thanksgiving and didn't make it quite a year, left an indelible mark on my soul. I think it was her athleticism, the ability to jump into bed beside me before anyone could stop her. She was a spooner.
In less than a year she demolished two sofas and started on a third. Once I came in from a short trip and it looked as if a Mardi Gras parade had marched through the living room. Beds, pillows, anything soft and pliable was at risk.
She often made her way to the middle of the dining table, cat-like, when nobody was around.
Instinctively Lucinda knew she needed to be up high, the better to protect herself.
At night she slept in a pink crate without protest but made up for that confinement by tearing about all day at warp speed.
She was not a beauty. Other than a perpetual puppy face that caused us to be surprised when, upon her arrival, the vet pronounced her already a year and a half old, she was put together of odd parts. She had short legs, long body, pop eyes, brindle and white and brown and black color, beautiful little teeth that sometimes refused to be hidden by her mouth.
And, yet, she charmed you. She licked and kissed and when exhausted curled up in a comma pose so tight you'd swear she couldn't weigh four pounds. All 19 pounds of her was alive and percolating. No catlike naps or slovenly dog ways. She was at it, about it, living flat-out.
I know everyone else is writing about the sad state of our union. Latest reports say "social media" -- don't you hate that term -- bogus news reports that shaped the presidential vote may have come from Russia.
Russia.
I imagined families all over America in Thanksgiving food fights, split as evenly about presidential choices as they were dark or white meat. I know in my family it's an even divide.
But I can't focus on the nation. It wouldn't do any good. As my old newspaper friend from Bogue Chitto, Mississippi, used to say, "You can't ruin a ruint."
We'll see who celebrates when Medicare vanishes and Florida is halfway underwater. You can deny truths only for a short while.
Right now I'm caught up in the visceral loss of Lucinda, who made me smile every day she was on this earth. I can't say that about any politician.
She brought energy into a household with two old dogs and two old people. To paraphrase the late Leonard Cohen, we ache in the places that we used to play. Lucinda was youth, well-represented.
Lucinda cut her paw about two weeks before she disappeared. When we took her to back to the vet to get the stitches removed, kind Doc Gina said Lucinda already had taken out her own stitches. Nothing slowed her down. Until it did.
Three dogs went out last week as they do every morning. Only two came back for breakfast. We searched, of course, but never found a sign of Lucinda.
We blame the coyotes, those sneaky, vicious, voracious and starving creatures that prey on the weak, the small, the injured. Sorta like some politicians.
A Village and Its People
Nov. 21, 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. – The fall woods are not brilliant this year, but dry and brittle and going from green to brown and the ground without anticipated and spectacular color in-between. The coyotes are relentless. The predicted rain did not amount to four drops.
I am as blue as a Lucinda Williams song.
It is other things, not politics, which made me sad. Politics is like a bad movie playing in the next room, a comedy that isn’t funny, droning on because I can’t find the energy to get up and turn off the set. Politics is like the coyotes’ howl; almost too surreal to matter till you are attacked.
And then I read my good friend Johnny Williams’ new book, Village People, Sketches of Auburn, and its wisdom and kind humor make me remember where I’ve always gone when times are sad. I seek refuge in a book. I find myself thankful for written words, which, if you choose well, never let you down.
Johnny quotes Yeats: “Who could have foretold that the heart grows old?” And though that quote is in an essay deep in the book, it might have been the introduction. This is a book about people and things he knew as a youth but now, somehow knows better.
Johnny grew up in Auburn. He went to Auburn University. He ran a print shop for a few years in Auburn after graduation.
So a town so many of us mostly missed while immersed in the university side of things, Johnny saw. And when Johnny Williams sees something, he searches for meaning.
It doesn’t matter, either, if Auburn is not your chosen football flavor, or if you’ve never passed through the town that would be typically small in characters and complexion but for its college core. Johnny hits the mother lode of richly distinct but universally understood personalities so that anybody can enjoy this book. Even folks from across the state and stadium, “the vile pompom-shaking roachnest…,” as he describes Alabama fans, would identify. If they read.
I most love the chapter called “My First Seven Teachers,” when Johnny decides: “I think the fact that women were entrusted, or rather, left with, the responsibility of instilling the dominant cultural vision into our young proves that we are a more matriarchal society than we recognize. We intuitively gave this vital underpaid job to the best people to do it, and made men overpaid bureaucrats to get them out of the way. The best way to nullify something is to make it Important.”
Of his first grade teacher, he writes: “Mrs. Umbach was soft and plump, like a human cumulus cloud, pillowy but capable of spits of lightning….”
There was a flamboyant dance instructor in Auburn for decades that even those of us oblivious to off-campus life knew about, or thought we knew about. He didn’t drive, so you’d often see him sashaying on the side of the road from here to there, graceful and exotic with black Roy Orbison hair.
When Johnny was a printer, he printed Lynn Curtis’ spring dance recital program. “…and one day a big car drove up, and what might have been Little Richard arriving at a show, but was Lynn Curtis arriving at Village Printers, emerged from the back seat in a white ensemble with a shoulder bag….”
Lynn Curtis was an integral part of Auburn, as accepted as the eagle, and makes you wonder, if you are inclined to thought, what has happened to acceptance of our differences, not to mention strong women, since.
Nov. 21, 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. – The fall woods are not brilliant this year, but dry and brittle and going from green to brown and the ground without anticipated and spectacular color in-between. The coyotes are relentless. The predicted rain did not amount to four drops.
I am as blue as a Lucinda Williams song.
It is other things, not politics, which made me sad. Politics is like a bad movie playing in the next room, a comedy that isn’t funny, droning on because I can’t find the energy to get up and turn off the set. Politics is like the coyotes’ howl; almost too surreal to matter till you are attacked.
And then I read my good friend Johnny Williams’ new book, Village People, Sketches of Auburn, and its wisdom and kind humor make me remember where I’ve always gone when times are sad. I seek refuge in a book. I find myself thankful for written words, which, if you choose well, never let you down.
Johnny quotes Yeats: “Who could have foretold that the heart grows old?” And though that quote is in an essay deep in the book, it might have been the introduction. This is a book about people and things he knew as a youth but now, somehow knows better.
Johnny grew up in Auburn. He went to Auburn University. He ran a print shop for a few years in Auburn after graduation.
So a town so many of us mostly missed while immersed in the university side of things, Johnny saw. And when Johnny Williams sees something, he searches for meaning.
It doesn’t matter, either, if Auburn is not your chosen football flavor, or if you’ve never passed through the town that would be typically small in characters and complexion but for its college core. Johnny hits the mother lode of richly distinct but universally understood personalities so that anybody can enjoy this book. Even folks from across the state and stadium, “the vile pompom-shaking roachnest…,” as he describes Alabama fans, would identify. If they read.
I most love the chapter called “My First Seven Teachers,” when Johnny decides: “I think the fact that women were entrusted, or rather, left with, the responsibility of instilling the dominant cultural vision into our young proves that we are a more matriarchal society than we recognize. We intuitively gave this vital underpaid job to the best people to do it, and made men overpaid bureaucrats to get them out of the way. The best way to nullify something is to make it Important.”
Of his first grade teacher, he writes: “Mrs. Umbach was soft and plump, like a human cumulus cloud, pillowy but capable of spits of lightning….”
There was a flamboyant dance instructor in Auburn for decades that even those of us oblivious to off-campus life knew about, or thought we knew about. He didn’t drive, so you’d often see him sashaying on the side of the road from here to there, graceful and exotic with black Roy Orbison hair.
When Johnny was a printer, he printed Lynn Curtis’ spring dance recital program. “…and one day a big car drove up, and what might have been Little Richard arriving at a show, but was Lynn Curtis arriving at Village Printers, emerged from the back seat in a white ensemble with a shoulder bag….”
Lynn Curtis was an integral part of Auburn, as accepted as the eagle, and makes you wonder, if you are inclined to thought, what has happened to acceptance of our differences, not to mention strong women, since.
November 15, 2016
I am home now, processing what has happened in our country. But my last week spent in France, I was in Paris, the cherry on the sundae, the crescendo of a wonderful visit.
One day I walked past the Bataclan on Boulevard Voltaire.
It was a year ago this week that 89 people were killed in the legendary theater and rock music venue. While I stood on the Paris street, pondering that unspeakable horror, a woman and her child stepped around me and quickly, matter-of-factly positioned flowers on the security fence that still surrounds the melon-colored site. Older bouquets drooped in the autumn sun.
The name “Bataclan” refers to an operetta by Jacques Offenbach, but it also is a pun on the French expression “tout le bataclan” or “all that jazz.” Everyone from Buffalo Bill in 1892 to Jerry Lee Lewis to Snoop Dogg has performed at the Bataclan.
Despite the bizarre and forlorn appearance of the circus-y crime scene of orange, yellow and blue, there is all around the closed theater typical and lively street life. Nearby bistros and restaurants were packed the day I visited. Just across the boulevard, a street sale, a French “brocante,” was drawing a big crowd, the impulse to clear out one’s closets and attics apparently being universal.
Paris friends who live a few blocks away reassured me later that the theater will reopen soon; a concert, they said, is scheduled this month, this week, one year and one day after the attack.
Parisians take great pride in the fact that terrorists are incapable of changing the delightful Parisian way of life. The best revenge is continuing to live well.
It is a lesson we should take from the French. Terrorists and madmen only win when we allow them to change our ways, when they send us scuttling to cover, or to vote for political rascals all too willing to trade on intolerance and fear. That’s when they really win.
Life goes on after the most horrendous and murderous acts, after wars, after disastrous elections. At times, we almost wish it would not, but life goes on. Always.
To limp to the sidelines is a temptation, but not the answer. Not as long as there is good music, good company, good books, beautiful sights and, well, a pulse. Did I mention good people? All that jazz.
So raise a glass to the Bataclan, a renovation that had to happen. The French knew that.
And while you’re toasting, tip one to the United States, a country that withstood a bloody civil war, not to mention any number of involvements elsewhere that drained our best and youngest. This country may be young, but it’s been around the block a few times. The good will rise again.
I am not ready to believe that most of us think all Muslims and Mexicans evil, women sex vessels, the disabled objects of ridicule, the Constitution a trifle, the highest office in the land a step up from “Survivor.” Are you?
And if you say that comparing lost lives to a lost election is a reach, I’d only remind you that history is full of examples of elections that portended deaths of any number of innocent citizens. Those are extreme examples, true, but at our mental fingertips none the less.
I’m proud that music will play soon at the Bataclan, where narrow minds tried to silence it. And here, election Tuesday was not the day the music died. Just another verse in a long song called “freedom.”
I am home now, processing what has happened in our country. But my last week spent in France, I was in Paris, the cherry on the sundae, the crescendo of a wonderful visit.
One day I walked past the Bataclan on Boulevard Voltaire.
It was a year ago this week that 89 people were killed in the legendary theater and rock music venue. While I stood on the Paris street, pondering that unspeakable horror, a woman and her child stepped around me and quickly, matter-of-factly positioned flowers on the security fence that still surrounds the melon-colored site. Older bouquets drooped in the autumn sun.
The name “Bataclan” refers to an operetta by Jacques Offenbach, but it also is a pun on the French expression “tout le bataclan” or “all that jazz.” Everyone from Buffalo Bill in 1892 to Jerry Lee Lewis to Snoop Dogg has performed at the Bataclan.
Despite the bizarre and forlorn appearance of the circus-y crime scene of orange, yellow and blue, there is all around the closed theater typical and lively street life. Nearby bistros and restaurants were packed the day I visited. Just across the boulevard, a street sale, a French “brocante,” was drawing a big crowd, the impulse to clear out one’s closets and attics apparently being universal.
Paris friends who live a few blocks away reassured me later that the theater will reopen soon; a concert, they said, is scheduled this month, this week, one year and one day after the attack.
Parisians take great pride in the fact that terrorists are incapable of changing the delightful Parisian way of life. The best revenge is continuing to live well.
It is a lesson we should take from the French. Terrorists and madmen only win when we allow them to change our ways, when they send us scuttling to cover, or to vote for political rascals all too willing to trade on intolerance and fear. That’s when they really win.
Life goes on after the most horrendous and murderous acts, after wars, after disastrous elections. At times, we almost wish it would not, but life goes on. Always.
To limp to the sidelines is a temptation, but not the answer. Not as long as there is good music, good company, good books, beautiful sights and, well, a pulse. Did I mention good people? All that jazz.
So raise a glass to the Bataclan, a renovation that had to happen. The French knew that.
And while you’re toasting, tip one to the United States, a country that withstood a bloody civil war, not to mention any number of involvements elsewhere that drained our best and youngest. This country may be young, but it’s been around the block a few times. The good will rise again.
I am not ready to believe that most of us think all Muslims and Mexicans evil, women sex vessels, the disabled objects of ridicule, the Constitution a trifle, the highest office in the land a step up from “Survivor.” Are you?
And if you say that comparing lost lives to a lost election is a reach, I’d only remind you that history is full of examples of elections that portended deaths of any number of innocent citizens. Those are extreme examples, true, but at our mental fingertips none the less.
I’m proud that music will play soon at the Bataclan, where narrow minds tried to silence it. And here, election Tuesday was not the day the music died. Just another verse in a long song called “freedom.”
November 7th 2016
BEAUMONT, France -- I'll never forget the first day I saw the little French millhouse. It had been my choice as a holiday rental, a blind decision, sight-unseen except for one blurred photograph, made because of the romantic description of its former role as a mill and the promise of a lagoon.
This was in the days before the internet, and you didn't take virtual tours.
Four of us arrived late one summer Sunday as the red roses climbed the stones and the sunflowers in fields all around rotated toward the Dordogne sun. I was ecstatic, and probably irksome in my self-congratulatory enthusiasm.
"It's perfect," I announced, daring anyone to disagree.
It had been 20 years and some months since I first saw the small stone storybook house in the Dordogne countryside. It has remained my all-time favorite house, anywhere, ever, and I have photographs and Christmas cards and all manner of sentimental scrapbooks to prove it. It was French perfection.
I lived in the fairytale rental for one month, with the others, and we spent much of our time convening out front on a wide patio. We raced baguette boats in the lagoon, watched the snazzy French farmers ride by on tractors and the grazing sheep across the way.
It wasn't a perfect time, but close. Travel always gets better in the rearview mirror.
I wanted to see if the house was still there. I wanted to see it in the fall. I wanted to see if it remained as enchanting as I remembered. I had tried to find it online to rent again but could not.
We drove about an hour, from another French rental that was somewhat less enchanting, but anything would have been. I had no problem locating the right turn down a dirt road in the middle of French Nowhere. I felt unreasonably anxious.
It was still there. At the end of the path, where the yard meets a farmer's field, the stone house sat empty and boarded up, more lonely-looking than any place I've seen in this part of France.
I jumped out of the car and took a couple of photos, but "No Trespassing" signs were everywhere, and I didn't linger. The rose bush was still there, but not blooming. The table where we'd solved the world's problems was gone. The ducks weren't in the lagoon.
The surroundings seemed different, not July profuse, not as inviting. It was depressing.
And I remembered something my mother had said countless times. When we vacationed in Florida, where we nearly always vacationed, and I begged for postcards, usually I got what I asked for. Mother loved them, too.
Every now and again, when our travel funds ran low, I guess, Mother would say, "No. Hold that memory in your heart."
And now I think that might be the best way to keep things from spoiling. Let memory do the work. There's no going back.
The husband who shared that house with me is dead. The friends who were with us are no longer part of my life. The little house that has stood there since the 13th century remains, but my short page of its story has turned.
A lot of water's been under the bridge and over the mill wheel. The trick is to work at creating new memories, then to hold them unmolested in your heart.
October 31st 2016
GROTTES DE ROUFFIGNAC, France -- For the third time, I'm bumping along in the dark through an ancient underground river channel in an electric train. You would think once would be enough.
I am here today because 20 years ago, this cave made such an impression that I want everyone I love who loves art to see it. That has taken two more trips. I'd come again, too.
The cave drawings at Rouffignac are not as famous as the ones at nearby Lascaux, but those are closed to the public, and only careful reproductions are on display. The drawings here are the real deal, though they weren't even identified as prehistoric until 1956.
You can see the dilemma: What everyone wants to see will be gone if everyone sees it. Here the prehistoric drawings compete with graffiti, though even the graffiti is old; it was done with smoke from 19th-century torches. Every visit diminishes the work. But, here I am.
Protruding fistlike rocks -- they look a little like giant doorknobs -- illustrate the anti-erosion qualities of this particular cave. Nobody wants his art disappearing quickly, love letters in the sand.
The tours are in French, so the soft voice of the guide is like a song with lyrics you don't quite understand, except for the recurring word "mammouth," which is pronounced to rhyme with "boot." Mammoths were what most inspired the artists of these caves.
But this day, I am lucky and get on a train with a British tour group, and our artist guide speaks English. When we get off the train momentarily to look up at a ceiling populated with an entire zoo of drawings, she praises "the perspective" and says, "These are drawn exactly as I would draw them today."
The horses, for instance, are beautifully proportioned, though this ceiling once was so close to the floor that the cave artists would have been on their backs, Sistine ceiling-style, and at no time during the process would have seen the entire figure they were drawing. That, the guide said, is impressive.
Not to mention that the prehistoric artists didn't arrive by electric train, had the most rudimentary tools and competed with bears for working space. The tour book says the cave's hard rock was "furrowed by prehistoric bears' claws," though I think I understood other explanations for repetitive scratches from the French tour guide.
So now I've heard the Rouffignac spiel twice in French and once in English, all a bit different, but the drawings, lit by penlight, in a way speak for themselves.
Humans have always wanted to do more than eat, sleep and reproduce. Art is not an extracurricular dimension in some lives; there are those who must create, not for money or fame but to satisfy a primal urge within. Thank goodness.
I think about the famous Mississippi Gulf Coast artist Walter Anderson. He spent the summer in France long ago and returned to Mississippi more impressed with the art he saw in caves than in great museums. Looking at his work, the influence is apparent.
I can't help but wonder if Rouffignac was one of the places Walter might have seen, though it would have been before official recognition of the cave's true value. Doesn't matter.
Anderson's art-appreciation course was from the source, the beginnings. And the lessons took.
GROTTES DE ROUFFIGNAC, France -- For the third time, I'm bumping along in the dark through an ancient underground river channel in an electric train. You would think once would be enough.
I am here today because 20 years ago, this cave made such an impression that I want everyone I love who loves art to see it. That has taken two more trips. I'd come again, too.
The cave drawings at Rouffignac are not as famous as the ones at nearby Lascaux, but those are closed to the public, and only careful reproductions are on display. The drawings here are the real deal, though they weren't even identified as prehistoric until 1956.
You can see the dilemma: What everyone wants to see will be gone if everyone sees it. Here the prehistoric drawings compete with graffiti, though even the graffiti is old; it was done with smoke from 19th-century torches. Every visit diminishes the work. But, here I am.
Protruding fistlike rocks -- they look a little like giant doorknobs -- illustrate the anti-erosion qualities of this particular cave. Nobody wants his art disappearing quickly, love letters in the sand.
The tours are in French, so the soft voice of the guide is like a song with lyrics you don't quite understand, except for the recurring word "mammouth," which is pronounced to rhyme with "boot." Mammoths were what most inspired the artists of these caves.
But this day, I am lucky and get on a train with a British tour group, and our artist guide speaks English. When we get off the train momentarily to look up at a ceiling populated with an entire zoo of drawings, she praises "the perspective" and says, "These are drawn exactly as I would draw them today."
The horses, for instance, are beautifully proportioned, though this ceiling once was so close to the floor that the cave artists would have been on their backs, Sistine ceiling-style, and at no time during the process would have seen the entire figure they were drawing. That, the guide said, is impressive.
Not to mention that the prehistoric artists didn't arrive by electric train, had the most rudimentary tools and competed with bears for working space. The tour book says the cave's hard rock was "furrowed by prehistoric bears' claws," though I think I understood other explanations for repetitive scratches from the French tour guide.
So now I've heard the Rouffignac spiel twice in French and once in English, all a bit different, but the drawings, lit by penlight, in a way speak for themselves.
Humans have always wanted to do more than eat, sleep and reproduce. Art is not an extracurricular dimension in some lives; there are those who must create, not for money or fame but to satisfy a primal urge within. Thank goodness.
I think about the famous Mississippi Gulf Coast artist Walter Anderson. He spent the summer in France long ago and returned to Mississippi more impressed with the art he saw in caves than in great museums. Looking at his work, the influence is apparent.
I can't help but wonder if Rouffignac was one of the places Walter might have seen, though it would have been before official recognition of the cave's true value. Doesn't matter.
Anderson's art-appreciation course was from the source, the beginnings. And the lessons took.
October 24th 2016
VEZAC, France -- Anyone who knows me well knows I have no patience for groomed grounds and formal gardens, and much prefer what I once heard called "uncontrolled profusion." Yes, if something will grow and spread, that's what I plant.
I never, ever wanted a grownup yard.
But I went with friends to a French garden in the Dordogne called Marqueyssac, or The Hanging Gardens of Marqueyssac, and my hat is off to gardeners with this much control and sharp shears.
Look it up, and you'll see what I mean. To begin with, there are 150,000 boxwoods at Marqueyssac, none of them boxy or boring. They are planted in clumps, or clusters, and pruned by hand (twice a year) into geometric shapes, including one amazing area that looks like stones in a chateau. Another cluster resembles sheep, if the sheep were being herded and running side by side.
We're not talking typical topiary here, but more the look of a brain if it were huge and green. Almost the stuff of a sci-fi movie. The Blob, but green and made of boxwoods.
I love the holly at Callaway Gardens and the azaleas at Bellingrath and the wisteria at the Biltmore. Showy gardens usually have one thing that blows you away.
Here the vista is the best thing, with the Dordogne River and its tourist boats below, and in plain sight the houses built right into the cliffs at La Roque Gageac. You could plant one package of zinnia seeds and still have a remarkable garden with this view.
Even better, though, is the chateau that goes with the gardens, though the tail definitely wags the dog. It is simple but luxurious, and its most impressive feature is the roof. Made of limestone slabs, it weighs more than 500 tons.
Or that's what the tour brochure claims, and I don't know why you'd lie about the weight of your roof.
There are more than 4 miles of walkways at the gardens, and I might have made it 1 mile. I have an ailing foot, which means I must pace myself. But I did see the chapel and the pigeon pen and the astounding view before sitting to watch people thread through the boxwoods.
You can't help but notice the decorum in public places in France, the quiet voices that offer a "pardon" if you're bumped on a path. The children and dogs are better behaved than in our country, and neither runs wild through these gardens.
Nobody litters, either, and I could count on one hand the pieces of trash I've seen by the side of the road in miles of exploration. Southwest France is clean, and polite.
And the impressive flora isn't limited to formal gardens where you pay to walk around. I've seen banana trees, bamboo, magnolias, nandina and gardenia -- all things that remind me of home -- all around.
I always get eye-rolls when I return home with fancy French ideas for my sow's ear of a place in the hollow. This time it is a special way to prune the wisteria. My friend Robert Clay will be dismayed to hear about this. He always helps me with that annual chore.
On the side of a bistro, a mature wisteria was pruned to look like another tree, perhaps an oak, with its trunk supporting the green branches. Now, why wouldn't that work in Fishtrap Hollow?
VEZAC, France -- Anyone who knows me well knows I have no patience for groomed grounds and formal gardens, and much prefer what I once heard called "uncontrolled profusion." Yes, if something will grow and spread, that's what I plant.
I never, ever wanted a grownup yard.
But I went with friends to a French garden in the Dordogne called Marqueyssac, or The Hanging Gardens of Marqueyssac, and my hat is off to gardeners with this much control and sharp shears.
Look it up, and you'll see what I mean. To begin with, there are 150,000 boxwoods at Marqueyssac, none of them boxy or boring. They are planted in clumps, or clusters, and pruned by hand (twice a year) into geometric shapes, including one amazing area that looks like stones in a chateau. Another cluster resembles sheep, if the sheep were being herded and running side by side.
We're not talking typical topiary here, but more the look of a brain if it were huge and green. Almost the stuff of a sci-fi movie. The Blob, but green and made of boxwoods.
I love the holly at Callaway Gardens and the azaleas at Bellingrath and the wisteria at the Biltmore. Showy gardens usually have one thing that blows you away.
Here the vista is the best thing, with the Dordogne River and its tourist boats below, and in plain sight the houses built right into the cliffs at La Roque Gageac. You could plant one package of zinnia seeds and still have a remarkable garden with this view.
Even better, though, is the chateau that goes with the gardens, though the tail definitely wags the dog. It is simple but luxurious, and its most impressive feature is the roof. Made of limestone slabs, it weighs more than 500 tons.
Or that's what the tour brochure claims, and I don't know why you'd lie about the weight of your roof.
There are more than 4 miles of walkways at the gardens, and I might have made it 1 mile. I have an ailing foot, which means I must pace myself. But I did see the chapel and the pigeon pen and the astounding view before sitting to watch people thread through the boxwoods.
You can't help but notice the decorum in public places in France, the quiet voices that offer a "pardon" if you're bumped on a path. The children and dogs are better behaved than in our country, and neither runs wild through these gardens.
Nobody litters, either, and I could count on one hand the pieces of trash I've seen by the side of the road in miles of exploration. Southwest France is clean, and polite.
And the impressive flora isn't limited to formal gardens where you pay to walk around. I've seen banana trees, bamboo, magnolias, nandina and gardenia -- all things that remind me of home -- all around.
I always get eye-rolls when I return home with fancy French ideas for my sow's ear of a place in the hollow. This time it is a special way to prune the wisteria. My friend Robert Clay will be dismayed to hear about this. He always helps me with that annual chore.
On the side of a bistro, a mature wisteria was pruned to look like another tree, perhaps an oak, with its trunk supporting the green branches. Now, why wouldn't that work in Fishtrap Hollow?
More Than a Song and Dance Woman
Oct. 17, 2016
CHATEAU DES MILANDES, France – She called it her “Sleeping Beauty Castle,” and that name is apt. If you saw this storybook chateau in the U.S., you’d figure Disney built it. You’d drive a thousand miles to look at it.
From my French rental in the Dordogne, it is less than 10 miles. The problem is distinguishing it from all the other nearby castles.
It’s another tale you think of, however, when you tour the late Josephine Baker’s dream home. Her rags-to-riches and back-to-rags story is reminiscent of Cinderella, but without the glass slipper and happy ending. In the kitchen a black and white photograph shows a beleaguered Baker sitting on the chateau steps, locked out of her beloved property that was sold in 1968 to pay her debts.
But, I’m talking too fast. While the superstar Baker still had her fortune, she did a lot with it.
Born in a St. Louis ghetto to a laundress and a drummer who soon deserted the family, Josephine Baker was a determined black youth who left the U.S. for France before age 20 to sing and dance. Think equal parts Beyonce and Eleanor Roosevelt.
By age 24 Josephine Baker was a Folies Bergere superstar -- receiving ovations from Paris audiences, appearing in movies and countless revues. Baker was the first black woman to have a major movie role or to achieve worldwide fame. She started her own cabaret and dressed in high fashion that got noticed even in the fashion capital of the world.
She was hard to miss with a cheetah on a leash.
I knew little about Baker before touring the chateau, which she rented for 10 years before buying it in 1947. I knew, of course, about the famous banana belt made of cloth and sequins. There was more than one of those skimpy costumes.
I did not know the extent of Josephine Baker’s humanitarianism.
She was a French Resistance fighter, with arms hidden in her castle’s cellar and a radio installed to communicate with exiled General de Gaulle. She carried important information for the Counter-Intelligence Services written in invisible ink on her sheet music.
“It is France that has made me who I am. I will be forever grateful to this country,” she wrote.
Because she was an entertainer, Baker traveled about more freely than most French citizens, which she had become in 1937. She performed for free for the American troops in Morocco and toured all over spreading the idea of a Free France.
She risked her life.
In the U.S., she was an ally of Martin Luther King and refused to perform for segregated audiences. At one point her causes got her tailed by the FBI. Over the years, her reception in her birth country was mixed -- sometimes hostile, sometimes enthusiastic.
When she was refused admission to New York’s Stork Club, no less than Grace Kelly linked arms with Baker and walked out of the building. The two became lifelong friends.
Baker, who was married four times but never gave birth, adopted 12 children from different countries and religious and ethnic backgrounds and invited the public to tour her chateau and watch how well the siblings got along. She called it her “village du monde.”
She built parks and mini-golf courses in the shadow of the chateau and equipped it with art deco-designed bathrooms.
Baker died at age 68, still famous and performing. Her chateau is privately owned and a major tourist attraction. The French revere her.
A Traveler's Lullaby
Oct. 10, 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. – I’m getting ready for a holiday trip, and sleep is evasive.
At 1 a.m. I dream Canada builds a wall.
At 2 a.m. the coyotes start howling, sounding so close I suspect they are convening in my living room. I get up and blow a referee whistle that sometimes scares them away, or at least makes them play fair. This time it only excites, and murderous howls reach a crescendo of frenzy.
At 3 a.m. I awake worried that I’ve promised two different groups of friends they can use my small house while I am gone on the same week. I imagine the confusion as they play musical beds, an Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice kind of scene. Where did I put my calendar?
At 4 a.m. I wonder if the address on my passport has to match the one on my driver’s license. Suppose I get to the airport and the security person looks from one document to the other, notes my disheveled and sleep-deprived look and hauls me away to the super secret interrogation room? I toss. I turn. I get up.
At 4:30 a.m. I check and realize a passport only has your country, not a street address. But just so you’ll know, these days a passport not only has to be current, it has to be six months to the good or you’re going nowhere. At least that’s what I heard….
At 5 a.m. I feed the dogs and get all teary-eyed about leaving two old hounds and one relative newcomer defenseless amongst the coyotes. Suppose Lucinda, the newbie, wanders off without Hank to chaperone and runs into those loud and wily creatures? What if Boozoo, I don’t know, moves from his spot on the floor?
At 6 a.m. I start writing this, one of many columns I’ve written ahead, to be released after I am too far from home to care if it makes much sense. As impossible as it seems this moment, when you read this, I’ll be sitting on the porch of a Dordogne house with the name – a name! – Maison Bleu, sampling the local grapes and the labors of force-fed geese.
I won’t mind if you find this silly. Silly this.
But until then, I will be this way, fretful and deranged, until I am on that airplane and there’s nothing else I can do about anything, unless it’s something happening in France.
The one thing I haven’t lost sleep over is what clothes to take, the quandary that concerns most travelers. I know that at the end of the trip I’ll be tossing my old clothes and filling my suitcase with French oil cloth, grape vine corkscrews, signs that say Vicious Dog in French, that kind of thing: treasures.
You don’t worry much about old clothes you intend to throw away.
I have been worrying a lot about a sore heel that pestered me all summer long. In France you walk a lot. Would I be able to keep pace?
But one recent morning I woke up, put my feet on the floor and the ice picks that had been sticking in the contrary heel had disappeared, as if by magic. France may not be the curative for all that ails you, but it works for me.
Oct. 10, 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. – I’m getting ready for a holiday trip, and sleep is evasive.
At 1 a.m. I dream Canada builds a wall.
At 2 a.m. the coyotes start howling, sounding so close I suspect they are convening in my living room. I get up and blow a referee whistle that sometimes scares them away, or at least makes them play fair. This time it only excites, and murderous howls reach a crescendo of frenzy.
At 3 a.m. I awake worried that I’ve promised two different groups of friends they can use my small house while I am gone on the same week. I imagine the confusion as they play musical beds, an Bob and Carol, Ted and Alice kind of scene. Where did I put my calendar?
At 4 a.m. I wonder if the address on my passport has to match the one on my driver’s license. Suppose I get to the airport and the security person looks from one document to the other, notes my disheveled and sleep-deprived look and hauls me away to the super secret interrogation room? I toss. I turn. I get up.
At 4:30 a.m. I check and realize a passport only has your country, not a street address. But just so you’ll know, these days a passport not only has to be current, it has to be six months to the good or you’re going nowhere. At least that’s what I heard….
At 5 a.m. I feed the dogs and get all teary-eyed about leaving two old hounds and one relative newcomer defenseless amongst the coyotes. Suppose Lucinda, the newbie, wanders off without Hank to chaperone and runs into those loud and wily creatures? What if Boozoo, I don’t know, moves from his spot on the floor?
At 6 a.m. I start writing this, one of many columns I’ve written ahead, to be released after I am too far from home to care if it makes much sense. As impossible as it seems this moment, when you read this, I’ll be sitting on the porch of a Dordogne house with the name – a name! – Maison Bleu, sampling the local grapes and the labors of force-fed geese.
I won’t mind if you find this silly. Silly this.
But until then, I will be this way, fretful and deranged, until I am on that airplane and there’s nothing else I can do about anything, unless it’s something happening in France.
The one thing I haven’t lost sleep over is what clothes to take, the quandary that concerns most travelers. I know that at the end of the trip I’ll be tossing my old clothes and filling my suitcase with French oil cloth, grape vine corkscrews, signs that say Vicious Dog in French, that kind of thing: treasures.
You don’t worry much about old clothes you intend to throw away.
I have been worrying a lot about a sore heel that pestered me all summer long. In France you walk a lot. Would I be able to keep pace?
But one recent morning I woke up, put my feet on the floor and the ice picks that had been sticking in the contrary heel had disappeared, as if by magic. France may not be the curative for all that ails you, but it works for me.
Home is Where the Art Is
Sept. 26, 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. – Last week the temperatures dropped, the sedum in the front yard turned blush pink, SEC teams took the field, an owl hooted and it was safe to go on the porch again.
Fall is always worth the wait.
To celebrate cooler weather, I visited my friends Ric and Reed who have a house in the woods that is the spectacular combination of old lumber and fresh thought. The power company mows a trail through the trees that gives a visual walkway to sunset, and old buddies took advantage as we sat and talked and ate and laughed till we couldn’t do any of the above anymore.
I think of the wonderful homes I’ve been privileged to see, mostly because of my job. Once I got to tag along to Hickory Hill, Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s estate near Washington, when my former husband won an award. It was a great old place, dog-friendly, with hog wire stretched around a tree on the National Register for Historic Trees to hold the family’s pet turtle.
Then there was the home of the late cartoonist Charles Schulz in the gentle hills of Sonoma County. I got to spend the night there once while working on a book about the “Peanuts” creator. The small house was full of art by artists you’ve heard of, and books signed by authors you’ve read.
In Cross Creek, Fla., the home of the late, great writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was two board and batten sharecropper shacks cobbled together like a sentence being diagrammed. The rustic interior contrasted beautifully with the author’s elegant touches – flowers and nice china and paintings.
But most of the homes that inspire me don’t belong to famous people or rich people. They belong to creative sorts who have a knack for making their nests artistic and fun even if on a shoestring budget – perhaps because of shoestring budget.
There is a real talent to that. Else, everyone would have such homes. Everyone doesn’t.
Near Carrollton, Ga., I once wrote a column about a house built atop a decommissioned steel bridge, the creek rushing beneath it. I loved the look but wondered how you’d ever listen to music or conversation above the roaring water. That house burned. Oh, the irony.
Another unusual Georgia home was a tree house made from an old airplane fuselage, which allowed for beautiful views but wasn’t a place in which to grow old.
Ric and Reed, on the other hand, have such a comfortable layout you start scouting the rooms immediately for a place to roost. You could sit in any spot and have something to look at for hours – photographs, paintings, mementoes, books, wood-burning stoves, family furniture, the old walls themselves.
Theirs is a home that seems lit by memory, not light bulbs, with splashes of color against dark, time-worn walls, proving true what the art photographer Richard Sexton once wrote about old New Orleans houses: And when the plaster of those high ceilings has a few cracks, the crown moldings develop a crazed finish, the sash rattles wildly in the wind, and the shutters lose some of their louvers, we feel the inevitable effects of age and are enraptured by the gravity of human experience that all those telltale signs evoke.
In the best homes, time is the decorating scheme.
Sept. 26, 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. – Last week the temperatures dropped, the sedum in the front yard turned blush pink, SEC teams took the field, an owl hooted and it was safe to go on the porch again.
Fall is always worth the wait.
To celebrate cooler weather, I visited my friends Ric and Reed who have a house in the woods that is the spectacular combination of old lumber and fresh thought. The power company mows a trail through the trees that gives a visual walkway to sunset, and old buddies took advantage as we sat and talked and ate and laughed till we couldn’t do any of the above anymore.
I think of the wonderful homes I’ve been privileged to see, mostly because of my job. Once I got to tag along to Hickory Hill, Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s estate near Washington, when my former husband won an award. It was a great old place, dog-friendly, with hog wire stretched around a tree on the National Register for Historic Trees to hold the family’s pet turtle.
Then there was the home of the late cartoonist Charles Schulz in the gentle hills of Sonoma County. I got to spend the night there once while working on a book about the “Peanuts” creator. The small house was full of art by artists you’ve heard of, and books signed by authors you’ve read.
In Cross Creek, Fla., the home of the late, great writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was two board and batten sharecropper shacks cobbled together like a sentence being diagrammed. The rustic interior contrasted beautifully with the author’s elegant touches – flowers and nice china and paintings.
But most of the homes that inspire me don’t belong to famous people or rich people. They belong to creative sorts who have a knack for making their nests artistic and fun even if on a shoestring budget – perhaps because of shoestring budget.
There is a real talent to that. Else, everyone would have such homes. Everyone doesn’t.
Near Carrollton, Ga., I once wrote a column about a house built atop a decommissioned steel bridge, the creek rushing beneath it. I loved the look but wondered how you’d ever listen to music or conversation above the roaring water. That house burned. Oh, the irony.
Another unusual Georgia home was a tree house made from an old airplane fuselage, which allowed for beautiful views but wasn’t a place in which to grow old.
Ric and Reed, on the other hand, have such a comfortable layout you start scouting the rooms immediately for a place to roost. You could sit in any spot and have something to look at for hours – photographs, paintings, mementoes, books, wood-burning stoves, family furniture, the old walls themselves.
Theirs is a home that seems lit by memory, not light bulbs, with splashes of color against dark, time-worn walls, proving true what the art photographer Richard Sexton once wrote about old New Orleans houses: And when the plaster of those high ceilings has a few cracks, the crown moldings develop a crazed finish, the sash rattles wildly in the wind, and the shutters lose some of their louvers, we feel the inevitable effects of age and are enraptured by the gravity of human experience that all those telltale signs evoke.
In the best homes, time is the decorating scheme.
Faulkner, 2LiveCrew and Chainsaws
Sept. 19, 2016
The apex of my 40-year journalism career was a telephone interview, strange to say. I combed my curls and dressed up in my best corduroy skirt and blue sweater for that phone chat, wanting to look pretty because of the person on the other end of the line.
At the appointed hour, Willie Nelson, no less, said, “This is Willie,” and I thought but did not say, “Take me now, Lord.” Willie couldn’t have been nicer and was as unhurried and mellow as I get on the summer porch along around tea time.
I was happy with my Willie exchange until I read a new book by Oxford, Miss., writer and entertainer Jim Dees called The Statue & the Fury, A Year of Art, Race, Music and Cocktails. I bought an advance copy at the recent and humongous Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson.
I soon would learn that Jim Dees also interviewed Willie, but in person, on Willie’s bus. I won’t spoil Dees’ story by telling you why his experience ranked, on a scale of 1 to 10, much higher than my own. You’ll just have to buy the book, soon available through Nautilus Publishing.
And you’ll be glad you swapped, say, one fancy lunch for a book you’ll keep forever. It is effortlessly funny, which you’d expect from the hilarious host of Thacker Mountain Radio Show, which Dees calls the “Grand Ole Opry of Literature.” And it is more.
This book may be the best thing I’ve read out of Mississippi in a long while, and, yes, that includes the mega-seller Dispatches from Pluto by the British writer Richard Grant who dropped into the Delta for a season.
Dees grew up in the Delta and has lived in Mississippi all of his life and I would bet the farm isn’t leaving. He knows where the bodies are buried and takes great glee in exhuming them.
Throw in Dees’ deadpan humor and you have a rollicking, informed and erudite read about everything from James Brown to the Hale-Bopp comet.
At age 40, when most of us are hiding from editors and burning out, Dees became a cub reporter for the local Oxford newspaper. If ever anyone were born to be a reporter, to take that glass bottom boat ride through a sewer, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, it was Dees.
The job put him in the catbird seat for 1997, the year a controversy that could only happen in Oxford erupted. A magnolia was cut to make room for a statue of native son William Faulkner. If that sounds benign, a dull night at the council, you’ve never eaten an asparagus finger sandwich in Oxford.
Like most of Oxford’s intelligentsia, Dees knows his Faulkner, but he, mercifully, doesn’t hit you over the head with a copy of “Intruder in the Dust.”
Dees quotes Sartoris before telling of his ride with sculptor Bill Beckwith to fetch Faulkner from the foundry. “His head was lifted a little in that gesture of haughty pride which repeated itself generation after generation with a fateful fidelity….”
The controversial statue rode uncovered in the back of artist’s truck, all the way home to the Oxford square.
“Funny how no one, not a single vehicle, honked the horn to ask about the statue,” Dees writes.
“We got a few waves of the hand…. I kept looking back at the statue nervously, trying not to make Bill nervous…”
And so the bronze man that had divided a town made it to Oxford square, where it remains, a silent observer of any passing silliness.
Sept. 19, 2016
The apex of my 40-year journalism career was a telephone interview, strange to say. I combed my curls and dressed up in my best corduroy skirt and blue sweater for that phone chat, wanting to look pretty because of the person on the other end of the line.
At the appointed hour, Willie Nelson, no less, said, “This is Willie,” and I thought but did not say, “Take me now, Lord.” Willie couldn’t have been nicer and was as unhurried and mellow as I get on the summer porch along around tea time.
I was happy with my Willie exchange until I read a new book by Oxford, Miss., writer and entertainer Jim Dees called The Statue & the Fury, A Year of Art, Race, Music and Cocktails. I bought an advance copy at the recent and humongous Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson.
I soon would learn that Jim Dees also interviewed Willie, but in person, on Willie’s bus. I won’t spoil Dees’ story by telling you why his experience ranked, on a scale of 1 to 10, much higher than my own. You’ll just have to buy the book, soon available through Nautilus Publishing.
And you’ll be glad you swapped, say, one fancy lunch for a book you’ll keep forever. It is effortlessly funny, which you’d expect from the hilarious host of Thacker Mountain Radio Show, which Dees calls the “Grand Ole Opry of Literature.” And it is more.
This book may be the best thing I’ve read out of Mississippi in a long while, and, yes, that includes the mega-seller Dispatches from Pluto by the British writer Richard Grant who dropped into the Delta for a season.
Dees grew up in the Delta and has lived in Mississippi all of his life and I would bet the farm isn’t leaving. He knows where the bodies are buried and takes great glee in exhuming them.
Throw in Dees’ deadpan humor and you have a rollicking, informed and erudite read about everything from James Brown to the Hale-Bopp comet.
At age 40, when most of us are hiding from editors and burning out, Dees became a cub reporter for the local Oxford newspaper. If ever anyone were born to be a reporter, to take that glass bottom boat ride through a sewer, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler, it was Dees.
The job put him in the catbird seat for 1997, the year a controversy that could only happen in Oxford erupted. A magnolia was cut to make room for a statue of native son William Faulkner. If that sounds benign, a dull night at the council, you’ve never eaten an asparagus finger sandwich in Oxford.
Like most of Oxford’s intelligentsia, Dees knows his Faulkner, but he, mercifully, doesn’t hit you over the head with a copy of “Intruder in the Dust.”
Dees quotes Sartoris before telling of his ride with sculptor Bill Beckwith to fetch Faulkner from the foundry. “His head was lifted a little in that gesture of haughty pride which repeated itself generation after generation with a fateful fidelity….”
The controversial statue rode uncovered in the back of artist’s truck, all the way home to the Oxford square.
“Funny how no one, not a single vehicle, honked the horn to ask about the statue,” Dees writes.
“We got a few waves of the hand…. I kept looking back at the statue nervously, trying not to make Bill nervous…”
And so the bronze man that had divided a town made it to Oxford square, where it remains, a silent observer of any passing silliness.
Build That Wall
Sept. 12, 2016
I’ve been three times to the Ernest Hemingway house in Key West, hoping with each visit to find some secret to writing short, declarative sentences that resonate with the reading public and sell millions of books.
It was dusk when the priest came. Lines like that.
The beautiful French Colonial-style home is always crowded with tourists, and despite Hemingway’s poor marital history, it is the second most popular wedding venue on Key West. The only place more popular is the beach.
The guides are good at their jobs but in a necessary hurry. They welcome you, rush you through the living quarters, tell you the movie star names of a few polydactyl cats and too soon you’re done.
I linger. That is allowed. The secret to powerful and unadorned writing is here, somewhere.
If a good porch that rings a big and glamorous house is the answer, Hemingway certainly had one. He and his second wife Pauline lived in the largest house on the island, bought for $8,000 at a 1931 tax sale by Pauline’s Uncle Gus. A rich patron, maybe that’s the solution.
From the gallery you can see the Key West lighthouse right across the street. Legend has it the lighthouse made it easier for Hemingway to find his home in the dark after long drinking bouts. Every writer needs one.
I’ve known a lot of people who marry into wealth, however, who aren’t necessarily good writers. Having an exotic house with a swimming pool – the first one on the island -- would seem more like a distraction than an inspiration.
Pauline built the $20,000 pool while Ernest was away covering the Spanish Civil War – and carrying on with another war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn. He wasn’t happy when he returned and got the bill.
The pool took up the space Papa once had used for his boxing ring. Boxing, like fishing and wars, was a Hemingway hobby, and maybe that physical release was part of what made his prose sing. “Don’t be sentimental.”/”You make me ill.”
Nothing like punching something to feel inspired. And if some biographies are to be believed, Hemingway punched at a lot, including wives.
When he wrote in Key West, Hemingway used an office above the carriage house, connected by a catwalk to the big house. It helps to have a place apart to concentrate on writing.
It’s said he stood up to write, and each day, before resuming work, read from Page One whatever book he was working on. Maybe there’s something to that, the standing up part. I’ll have to admit I haven’t tried it.
The drinking might have figured into Hemingway’s distinctive style. Every bar on the island boasts some Hemingway connection. In his yard is a urinal from a Sloppy Joe’s renovation.
I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless.
I was about to give up on figuring out how Hemingway wrote like Hemingway when something the guide had said earlier struck me. It was the wall.
Around the property was a high brick wall, built in 1937 after Hemingway’s popularity drew gawkers, which meant constant interruptions. So the Hemingways built a wall.
We had a fine life.
Maybe the secret to writing well, living well, is to build a wall. I know some who think so.
Sept. 12, 2016
I’ve been three times to the Ernest Hemingway house in Key West, hoping with each visit to find some secret to writing short, declarative sentences that resonate with the reading public and sell millions of books.
It was dusk when the priest came. Lines like that.
The beautiful French Colonial-style home is always crowded with tourists, and despite Hemingway’s poor marital history, it is the second most popular wedding venue on Key West. The only place more popular is the beach.
The guides are good at their jobs but in a necessary hurry. They welcome you, rush you through the living quarters, tell you the movie star names of a few polydactyl cats and too soon you’re done.
I linger. That is allowed. The secret to powerful and unadorned writing is here, somewhere.
If a good porch that rings a big and glamorous house is the answer, Hemingway certainly had one. He and his second wife Pauline lived in the largest house on the island, bought for $8,000 at a 1931 tax sale by Pauline’s Uncle Gus. A rich patron, maybe that’s the solution.
From the gallery you can see the Key West lighthouse right across the street. Legend has it the lighthouse made it easier for Hemingway to find his home in the dark after long drinking bouts. Every writer needs one.
I’ve known a lot of people who marry into wealth, however, who aren’t necessarily good writers. Having an exotic house with a swimming pool – the first one on the island -- would seem more like a distraction than an inspiration.
Pauline built the $20,000 pool while Ernest was away covering the Spanish Civil War – and carrying on with another war correspondent, Martha Gellhorn. He wasn’t happy when he returned and got the bill.
The pool took up the space Papa once had used for his boxing ring. Boxing, like fishing and wars, was a Hemingway hobby, and maybe that physical release was part of what made his prose sing. “Don’t be sentimental.”/”You make me ill.”
Nothing like punching something to feel inspired. And if some biographies are to be believed, Hemingway punched at a lot, including wives.
When he wrote in Key West, Hemingway used an office above the carriage house, connected by a catwalk to the big house. It helps to have a place apart to concentrate on writing.
It’s said he stood up to write, and each day, before resuming work, read from Page One whatever book he was working on. Maybe there’s something to that, the standing up part. I’ll have to admit I haven’t tried it.
The drinking might have figured into Hemingway’s distinctive style. Every bar on the island boasts some Hemingway connection. In his yard is a urinal from a Sloppy Joe’s renovation.
I was a little drunk. Not drunk in any positive sense but just enough to be careless.
I was about to give up on figuring out how Hemingway wrote like Hemingway when something the guide had said earlier struck me. It was the wall.
Around the property was a high brick wall, built in 1937 after Hemingway’s popularity drew gawkers, which meant constant interruptions. So the Hemingways built a wall.
We had a fine life.
Maybe the secret to writing well, living well, is to build a wall. I know some who think so.
September 5th 2016
It was a story in USA Today with a big, inky headline that caught my eye: "OVERSEAS WARNINGS ABOUT TRAVEL TO USA COULD HURT TOURISM."
The shoe was on the other foot, the worm had turned. "A growing number of countries," the story said, were warning their citizens about taking trips to the United States. Those countries included fairly civilized ones -- the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, the Bahamas and the United Arab Emirates.
Concerns those countries have, it said, include "mass shootings, police violence, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT attitudes and the Zika virus." An international tourism consultancy in Scotland was quoted about the potential erosion of "the positive image of the U.S."
It would seem the negatives do add up.
I can't help but think back to childhood and the rare occasions when somebody from our Baptist church would take a trip "overseas." Nobody said "abroad" back then. People occasionally, and on purpose, went "overseas," which is a lot better word, more evocative.
When the traveler returned, the curious churchwomen -- always the women -- would plan a meeting around teetotaler punch, cookies and a slide show, and the "experienced" tourist would proceed to tell stories that always had the same theme: "The trinkets were nice, but I'm glad to be home and to be an American."
Ours was a provincial and smug society.
There was an obsession with foreign bathrooms -- location, unisex-accessibility and quality of toilet paper. Especially when the person had been to France, you also heard about rude waiters and pickpockets. When the traveler had been to England, there was much discussion of bad food. If they'd been elsewhere, well, we just didn't talk about it.
In the pre-terrorism days of yore, never once did the adventuresome pilgrim bring home tales of mass shootings, of course. We were warned not to go because of inferior toilets and rough paper. And having the stereotypes reinforced, we'd all feel lucky in unison that we were safe at home with no plans to go anywhere.
I'm planning a trip to France next month -- it's been five years -- and already several friends have expressed concerns because of recent terrorist killings. I appreciate those concerns, truly, but have to say I continue to feel safer in France than I do in almost any U.S. city. I will take my chances.
I'm not wild about what the tourist books describe as the "fierce French drivers," many of them behind the wheels of taxis, but otherwise I feel relatively safe, as safe as you can feel anywhere in these turbulent times.
This will be my ninth trip to France, and I hope not my last. On my third trip in 1996 I asked a Frenchman if he'd ever been to the U.S. and, if not, would he like to visit.
"Non, non," he said with conviction, then used his index fingers to make pretend pistols. "Bang, bang," he said, "John Wayne!"
Guess in recent years his fears have been reinforced, and today come government-issued.
Now I'm on the side of the seas with more dangers than you can shake a stick at, the kind other governments warn their innocents abroad about.
And, I hate to mention it, but I've been to more horrible restrooms in one trip along Interstate 40 across Arkansas than I've seen in eight visits to France.
It was a story in USA Today with a big, inky headline that caught my eye: "OVERSEAS WARNINGS ABOUT TRAVEL TO USA COULD HURT TOURISM."
The shoe was on the other foot, the worm had turned. "A growing number of countries," the story said, were warning their citizens about taking trips to the United States. Those countries included fairly civilized ones -- the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, New Zealand, the Bahamas and the United Arab Emirates.
Concerns those countries have, it said, include "mass shootings, police violence, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT attitudes and the Zika virus." An international tourism consultancy in Scotland was quoted about the potential erosion of "the positive image of the U.S."
It would seem the negatives do add up.
I can't help but think back to childhood and the rare occasions when somebody from our Baptist church would take a trip "overseas." Nobody said "abroad" back then. People occasionally, and on purpose, went "overseas," which is a lot better word, more evocative.
When the traveler returned, the curious churchwomen -- always the women -- would plan a meeting around teetotaler punch, cookies and a slide show, and the "experienced" tourist would proceed to tell stories that always had the same theme: "The trinkets were nice, but I'm glad to be home and to be an American."
Ours was a provincial and smug society.
There was an obsession with foreign bathrooms -- location, unisex-accessibility and quality of toilet paper. Especially when the person had been to France, you also heard about rude waiters and pickpockets. When the traveler had been to England, there was much discussion of bad food. If they'd been elsewhere, well, we just didn't talk about it.
In the pre-terrorism days of yore, never once did the adventuresome pilgrim bring home tales of mass shootings, of course. We were warned not to go because of inferior toilets and rough paper. And having the stereotypes reinforced, we'd all feel lucky in unison that we were safe at home with no plans to go anywhere.
I'm planning a trip to France next month -- it's been five years -- and already several friends have expressed concerns because of recent terrorist killings. I appreciate those concerns, truly, but have to say I continue to feel safer in France than I do in almost any U.S. city. I will take my chances.
I'm not wild about what the tourist books describe as the "fierce French drivers," many of them behind the wheels of taxis, but otherwise I feel relatively safe, as safe as you can feel anywhere in these turbulent times.
This will be my ninth trip to France, and I hope not my last. On my third trip in 1996 I asked a Frenchman if he'd ever been to the U.S. and, if not, would he like to visit.
"Non, non," he said with conviction, then used his index fingers to make pretend pistols. "Bang, bang," he said, "John Wayne!"
Guess in recent years his fears have been reinforced, and today come government-issued.
Now I'm on the side of the seas with more dangers than you can shake a stick at, the kind other governments warn their innocents abroad about.
And, I hate to mention it, but I've been to more horrible restrooms in one trip along Interstate 40 across Arkansas than I've seen in eight visits to France.
August 29th 2016 MONTGOMERY, Ala.
Docent Wanda Howard Battle has a lilting voice, and snatches of songs keep erupting, poetry from prose, as she leads her small tour group around Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Her enthusiasm matches her knowledge about the historic red-brick church a block from the Alabama statehouse.
As a tour finale, she demands that her pilgrims go one by one to the lectern that Martin Luther King Jr. used when he spoke from a trailer bed on the street in front of the capitol after the Selma to Montgomery March. He wasn't allowed to speak from the building. Thousands of weary marchers waited for his wisdom.
Wanda Battle asks us to say the four words that were the famous foundation of that speech.
"Speak in your best preacher's voice!" she commands, and each in his turn tries to channel King.
"How long? Not long." One man thunders a nice approximation. The rest of us are intimidated by the challenge. Not easy to match one of the best orators in history.
Dr. King might have revised that 1965 speech if he could have seen 50 years into the future, an America he would not be a part of.
"How long? Too long. How long? Too long." With a crystal ball, that's what he might have said.
As everywhere clashes erupt over police brutality within the black community, "not long" seems wrong. As a presidential nominee fuels racism as part of his political shtick, "not long" is a bad joke. You wish for a Martin Luther King to lead us out of this hate-filled wilderness.
We are in the church basement, where King and others launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott on Dec. 2, 1955. The reception to its inception makes reaction to Black Lives Matter look redundant. King's nearby parsonage was hit with a dynamite blast while his wife and new baby were inside. Boycotters were fired and mocked.
The church we are touring began its life holding meetings at a hall on Market Street once used as a slave trader's pen. According to Battle, the building might have been razed by the city but for its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
When she shows us King's former office, the relative simplicity of his early career is evident. This could be any preacher's office, with books on the shelf about other religions and black-and-white photographs of important church events, including a baptism. His life grew complex, but not his goals.
What King wanted -- what we still need today -- is recognition that all men and women are created equal, not just in a lofty document but in reality. He was killed for trying to make his point.
Battle describes the day in 1979 that a repentant George C. Wallace was wheeled into Dexter Avenue Church and asked for forgiveness. He had felt pain, he said, and it changed his heart.
Forgiveness was forthcoming. Wallace ran for governor again, and won with the help of the black vote.
So if there's a moral to this story, it's our need to be reminded today, every day, of the spirit that once was abroad. King taught followers to turn the other cheek, to fight violence with passivity and to forgive. If we can't do that, all is lost.
Docent Wanda Howard Battle has a lilting voice, and snatches of songs keep erupting, poetry from prose, as she leads her small tour group around Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church. Her enthusiasm matches her knowledge about the historic red-brick church a block from the Alabama statehouse.
As a tour finale, she demands that her pilgrims go one by one to the lectern that Martin Luther King Jr. used when he spoke from a trailer bed on the street in front of the capitol after the Selma to Montgomery March. He wasn't allowed to speak from the building. Thousands of weary marchers waited for his wisdom.
Wanda Battle asks us to say the four words that were the famous foundation of that speech.
"Speak in your best preacher's voice!" she commands, and each in his turn tries to channel King.
"How long? Not long." One man thunders a nice approximation. The rest of us are intimidated by the challenge. Not easy to match one of the best orators in history.
Dr. King might have revised that 1965 speech if he could have seen 50 years into the future, an America he would not be a part of.
"How long? Too long. How long? Too long." With a crystal ball, that's what he might have said.
As everywhere clashes erupt over police brutality within the black community, "not long" seems wrong. As a presidential nominee fuels racism as part of his political shtick, "not long" is a bad joke. You wish for a Martin Luther King to lead us out of this hate-filled wilderness.
We are in the church basement, where King and others launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott on Dec. 2, 1955. The reception to its inception makes reaction to Black Lives Matter look redundant. King's nearby parsonage was hit with a dynamite blast while his wife and new baby were inside. Boycotters were fired and mocked.
The church we are touring began its life holding meetings at a hall on Market Street once used as a slave trader's pen. According to Battle, the building might have been razed by the city but for its designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1974.
When she shows us King's former office, the relative simplicity of his early career is evident. This could be any preacher's office, with books on the shelf about other religions and black-and-white photographs of important church events, including a baptism. His life grew complex, but not his goals.
What King wanted -- what we still need today -- is recognition that all men and women are created equal, not just in a lofty document but in reality. He was killed for trying to make his point.
Battle describes the day in 1979 that a repentant George C. Wallace was wheeled into Dexter Avenue Church and asked for forgiveness. He had felt pain, he said, and it changed his heart.
Forgiveness was forthcoming. Wallace ran for governor again, and won with the help of the black vote.
So if there's a moral to this story, it's our need to be reminded today, every day, of the spirit that once was abroad. King taught followers to turn the other cheek, to fight violence with passivity and to forgive. If we can't do that, all is lost.
August 22nd 2016
It's almost like one of those "Where's Waldo?" books, when you find the man in the funny cap on every page in every location in every situation.
The subtitle of Whisperin' Bill Anderson's new book, "An Unprecedented Life in Country Music," is not hyperbole. You find Whisperin' Bill grooming country legend Connie Smith, singing to the disco beat, acting on the set of "One Life to Live," co-writing Anna Nicole Smith's favorite song and giving Taylor Swift her first opportunity to sing in public. Did I mention he once was a good if cautious baseball pitcher and has a college degree in journalism?
None of these things is what he's best known for, of course, because Bill Anderson was at the top of the country charts in 1958, when he was 20 years old, with "City Lights" and -- except for a few off years -- has been writing hits ever since. For 58 years. He's a songwriter's songwriter.
I like this book, written with Peter Cooper, music historian. I especially like the part when Bill Anderson describes his personal song-writing process, always a mystery to me. Which came first, I wondered, the lyrics or the tune, or was it different with each artist, or perhaps each song? Anderson is a lyrics man.
He wrote one of my all-time favorite country songs, made famous by Porter Wagoner in the late 1960s, called "The Cold Hard Facts of Life." It's an industrial-strength classic, with a husband coming home early from a trip, stopping at a corner wine store, buying a bottle of champagne to celebrate with his wife only to find her "entertaining" someone else.
"The story was gripping and spine-tingling as I was writing it, until I suddenly realized I didn't have the foggiest idea how my little soap opera was going to end," Anderson writes. "I had exactly 16 bars of music, about four lines of lyrics, and possibly a tag line with which to wrap the whole thing up ..."
Writing a song can be like a painter painting himself into a corner and wondering how to get out of the room, he says. Well, he leapt out of the "Cold Hard Facts" corner with an agile, three-word phrase that you can find on YouTube if you've made it this far in life without hearing that wonderful song. I won't spoil it.
He describes hearing song ideas buried in idle chatter or baseball lingo or other unlikely places. And that's just the start of the jigsaw. He's mastered the art.
It's a funny book, a story told without excess ego or exaggeration like some I've read in this genre. Despite great success, he's kept his humility and remains accessible to fans.
"Oh, Bill Anderson," one fan said to him, "it's such a thrill to meet you. I've liked you ever since back when you used to be popular."
When he thought his career was dead, he collaborated with younger songwriters and wrote another round of country hits. It was his hairstylist who insisted he call her friend Vince Gill, and that was the beginning of a beautiful collaborative friendship.
This book won't be in the inspirational section of your local book store, but it probably should be. The main message is to follow your passion, never give up and be nice to people.
It's almost like one of those "Where's Waldo?" books, when you find the man in the funny cap on every page in every location in every situation.
The subtitle of Whisperin' Bill Anderson's new book, "An Unprecedented Life in Country Music," is not hyperbole. You find Whisperin' Bill grooming country legend Connie Smith, singing to the disco beat, acting on the set of "One Life to Live," co-writing Anna Nicole Smith's favorite song and giving Taylor Swift her first opportunity to sing in public. Did I mention he once was a good if cautious baseball pitcher and has a college degree in journalism?
None of these things is what he's best known for, of course, because Bill Anderson was at the top of the country charts in 1958, when he was 20 years old, with "City Lights" and -- except for a few off years -- has been writing hits ever since. For 58 years. He's a songwriter's songwriter.
I like this book, written with Peter Cooper, music historian. I especially like the part when Bill Anderson describes his personal song-writing process, always a mystery to me. Which came first, I wondered, the lyrics or the tune, or was it different with each artist, or perhaps each song? Anderson is a lyrics man.
He wrote one of my all-time favorite country songs, made famous by Porter Wagoner in the late 1960s, called "The Cold Hard Facts of Life." It's an industrial-strength classic, with a husband coming home early from a trip, stopping at a corner wine store, buying a bottle of champagne to celebrate with his wife only to find her "entertaining" someone else.
"The story was gripping and spine-tingling as I was writing it, until I suddenly realized I didn't have the foggiest idea how my little soap opera was going to end," Anderson writes. "I had exactly 16 bars of music, about four lines of lyrics, and possibly a tag line with which to wrap the whole thing up ..."
Writing a song can be like a painter painting himself into a corner and wondering how to get out of the room, he says. Well, he leapt out of the "Cold Hard Facts" corner with an agile, three-word phrase that you can find on YouTube if you've made it this far in life without hearing that wonderful song. I won't spoil it.
He describes hearing song ideas buried in idle chatter or baseball lingo or other unlikely places. And that's just the start of the jigsaw. He's mastered the art.
It's a funny book, a story told without excess ego or exaggeration like some I've read in this genre. Despite great success, he's kept his humility and remains accessible to fans.
"Oh, Bill Anderson," one fan said to him, "it's such a thrill to meet you. I've liked you ever since back when you used to be popular."
When he thought his career was dead, he collaborated with younger songwriters and wrote another round of country hits. It was his hairstylist who insisted he call her friend Vince Gill, and that was the beginning of a beautiful collaborative friendship.
This book won't be in the inspirational section of your local book store, but it probably should be. The main message is to follow your passion, never give up and be nice to people.
July 25, 2016
Another heartfelt and original speech from the Republican National Convention, this one delivered by Donald J. Trump himself.
Fourscore and seven weeks ago, our followers brought forth on this continent, a new candidate, conceived in casinos, and dedicated to the proposition that a sucker is born every minute. There was resistance, but he prevailed. How many fools must a man talk down, before you call him The Man?
I have a dream that someday Little Rubio supporters will be walking hand in hand with that slug Jeb Bush's supporters, all to elect me, Donald J. Trump, as president of these United States, indivisible, with liberty and justice for natural-born citizens and my wives.
The real job is ahead of us. Win just one for the Gipper. And remember, nice guys finish last.
Read my lips! I have a dream. This land is your land, this land is my land. Happy days are here again. What is good for our country is good for Trump Enterprises, and vice versa.
Remember. You heard it first here: God looks after fools, drunkards, and the United States of Donald Trump.
Winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing. So damn the party elite. Full speed ahead! From the sublime to slime is but a step. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror.
Who am I? What am I doing here? Never mind. Ask not what Donald Trump can do for you; ask what you can do for Donald Trump! Being Trump means not ever having to say you're sorry.
What, me worry? I don't think so. Come on in to the Trumpisphere, where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all my children are above average. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color of money somewhere and don't notice it.
The buck stops here. Right here in my pocket. Bottoms up on Trump wine. All we have to fear is Hillary herself! So walk softly and carry a big shtick. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
We the people shall overcome. Yes, we can. I will accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.
I am the decider! And I'm a Trump, not a chump. Our long national nightmare is just beginning. And ketchup is still a vegetable.
This will no longer be a country run by the likes of Hubert Horatio Hornblower. No. It's a New Frontier, a New Deal and a New Beginning. I came, I saw, I conquered! The Eagle has landed.
I will govern with my gut, not my mind, or one of those places.
We will build a wall. We will build a wall. Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
When you steal from one speaker, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
Tempt not a desperate man. And remember the Alamo!
Another heartfelt and original speech from the Republican National Convention, this one delivered by Donald J. Trump himself.
Fourscore and seven weeks ago, our followers brought forth on this continent, a new candidate, conceived in casinos, and dedicated to the proposition that a sucker is born every minute. There was resistance, but he prevailed. How many fools must a man talk down, before you call him The Man?
I have a dream that someday Little Rubio supporters will be walking hand in hand with that slug Jeb Bush's supporters, all to elect me, Donald J. Trump, as president of these United States, indivisible, with liberty and justice for natural-born citizens and my wives.
The real job is ahead of us. Win just one for the Gipper. And remember, nice guys finish last.
Read my lips! I have a dream. This land is your land, this land is my land. Happy days are here again. What is good for our country is good for Trump Enterprises, and vice versa.
Remember. You heard it first here: God looks after fools, drunkards, and the United States of Donald Trump.
Winning isn't everything -- it's the only thing. So damn the party elite. Full speed ahead! From the sublime to slime is but a step. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror.
Who am I? What am I doing here? Never mind. Ask not what Donald Trump can do for you; ask what you can do for Donald Trump! Being Trump means not ever having to say you're sorry.
What, me worry? I don't think so. Come on in to the Trumpisphere, where all the women are strong, the men are good-looking and all my children are above average. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color of money somewhere and don't notice it.
The buck stops here. Right here in my pocket. Bottoms up on Trump wine. All we have to fear is Hillary herself! So walk softly and carry a big shtick. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
We the people shall overcome. Yes, we can. I will accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.
I am the decider! And I'm a Trump, not a chump. Our long national nightmare is just beginning. And ketchup is still a vegetable.
This will no longer be a country run by the likes of Hubert Horatio Hornblower. No. It's a New Frontier, a New Deal and a New Beginning. I came, I saw, I conquered! The Eagle has landed.
I will govern with my gut, not my mind, or one of those places.
We will build a wall. We will build a wall. Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
When you steal from one speaker, it's plagiarism; if you steal from many, it's research.
Tempt not a desperate man. And remember the Alamo!
Attack on a Personal Magic Kingdom
July 18, 2016
Most of us, if we are lucky, have one place in our lives we have seen that exceeds all expectations, that we keep in our minds like an escape hatch from the dreary routine of daily existence or failed dreams.
France is mine, a personal Magic Kingdom. I know, I know. It’s not perfect, never has been. But where else do you find a bakery every few paces and books sold in vending machines? Where else are meringues the size of catcher’s mitts and city streets washed three times a day?
I was nearly 40 before I made a real visit to France. Once before, I had boarded the Hovercraft in Dover and crossed the Channel to Calais, but that experience lasted only hours. I count as the first real time a three-day solo adventure in 1989. I was on assignment in Holland but took the train to Paris for Bastille Day.
I made every mistake a rookie traveler can make in a place where you don’t know a soul and don’t speak the language. I used what little I remembered of textbook French from Auburn 20 years earlier, butchering my host country’s language. But I found the French helpful and tolerant of my timid attempts at communication, contrary to what I’d always heard they would be. I was smitten.
I watched the Bastille Day parade on the Champs Elysees, looking skyward as French military planes stitched the sky with red, white and blue contrails, and at my feet as children threw cherry bombs. The famous French joie de vivre was on display, ambitious teens improving their vantage by climbing into trees, adults kissing one another on public streets.
I had read somewhere it was best to arrive early for the fireworks. I was told to watch out for pickpockets, the only potential danger anyone ever mentioned.
I was at the Eiffel Tower by 3 p.m., carrying no money and with hours to wait before dark. It made for a long, dry afternoon, but it was worth it.
Never before or since had I witnessed such a spectacle. The grounds at the base of the tower slowly filled with people, and the fireworks were orchestrated with music that seemed to have a heavenly source. The grand finale lit the sky in time to “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.”
The crowd went wild. Then the crowd went home.
I’ve been back to France since, but something about that first dreamy trip tattooed me. I’ve celebrated Bastille Day, July 14, in some small way ever since, no matter where I happened to be. Good friends often laugh, but indulge me as I throw parties in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, all in the name of France and fun. Pale imitations, true, but a salute to my favorite of our allies.
It breaks my heart that terror has struck again in France, that people gathered to celebrate freedom and life have been butchered by fanatical madness. No longer is a pickpocket the only danger and French fear.
I grieve, of course, when terrorism strikes our own country, killing innocent citizens and eroding the confidence we used to feel. Safety in numbers, remember that belief? So many shootings so many times have inured us to domestic violence.
Today I grieve with my French friends who so warmly welcome me to a country adept at cultivating good and beautiful things in this tough, ugly life. Viva la France, always.
July 18, 2016
Most of us, if we are lucky, have one place in our lives we have seen that exceeds all expectations, that we keep in our minds like an escape hatch from the dreary routine of daily existence or failed dreams.
France is mine, a personal Magic Kingdom. I know, I know. It’s not perfect, never has been. But where else do you find a bakery every few paces and books sold in vending machines? Where else are meringues the size of catcher’s mitts and city streets washed three times a day?
I was nearly 40 before I made a real visit to France. Once before, I had boarded the Hovercraft in Dover and crossed the Channel to Calais, but that experience lasted only hours. I count as the first real time a three-day solo adventure in 1989. I was on assignment in Holland but took the train to Paris for Bastille Day.
I made every mistake a rookie traveler can make in a place where you don’t know a soul and don’t speak the language. I used what little I remembered of textbook French from Auburn 20 years earlier, butchering my host country’s language. But I found the French helpful and tolerant of my timid attempts at communication, contrary to what I’d always heard they would be. I was smitten.
I watched the Bastille Day parade on the Champs Elysees, looking skyward as French military planes stitched the sky with red, white and blue contrails, and at my feet as children threw cherry bombs. The famous French joie de vivre was on display, ambitious teens improving their vantage by climbing into trees, adults kissing one another on public streets.
I had read somewhere it was best to arrive early for the fireworks. I was told to watch out for pickpockets, the only potential danger anyone ever mentioned.
I was at the Eiffel Tower by 3 p.m., carrying no money and with hours to wait before dark. It made for a long, dry afternoon, but it was worth it.
Never before or since had I witnessed such a spectacle. The grounds at the base of the tower slowly filled with people, and the fireworks were orchestrated with music that seemed to have a heavenly source. The grand finale lit the sky in time to “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.”
The crowd went wild. Then the crowd went home.
I’ve been back to France since, but something about that first dreamy trip tattooed me. I’ve celebrated Bastille Day, July 14, in some small way ever since, no matter where I happened to be. Good friends often laugh, but indulge me as I throw parties in Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, all in the name of France and fun. Pale imitations, true, but a salute to my favorite of our allies.
It breaks my heart that terror has struck again in France, that people gathered to celebrate freedom and life have been butchered by fanatical madness. No longer is a pickpocket the only danger and French fear.
I grieve, of course, when terrorism strikes our own country, killing innocent citizens and eroding the confidence we used to feel. Safety in numbers, remember that belief? So many shootings so many times have inured us to domestic violence.
Today I grieve with my French friends who so warmly welcome me to a country adept at cultivating good and beautiful things in this tough, ugly life. Viva la France, always.
Squeezing Out Memories
July 11th 2016
My friend Betty Douglass made a lamp for me out of an old accordion, an unusual objet d'art to say the least. Betty is clever. And one of the things we have in common is we both played accordions in our youth. Check out "Cool Accordion Girls" on YouTube, and you won't see us.
The old M. Carli box in ivory and brown has been around, you can tell. Betty found it in a vintage shop on the coast and painstakingly repaired loose bits of dry wood. Its bellows are cracked, and the keys squeak as if in pain when pushed. But something about the accordion remains graceful and lovely, the way things look when they have a history.
The accordion lamp is mounted on a piece of cypress reclaimed from the bottom of the Atchafalaya Swamp. The lampshade is brown with French writing and lists slightly starboard on a stem of wine corks.
While Betty worked on my one-of-a-kind gift, people who happened by had varying reactions, some laughing and one saying it was the ugliest thing she'd ever seen.
Accordions are like that, the Rodney Dangerfield of musical instruments. They get no respect.
I love the lamp, and it has a place of honor. And I can't help but think that another Betty, my mother, would have admired it, too.
The Christmas I was 6, my Mother bought me my first accordion, a toy that emitted strange squeals that only approximated music. When I was 12 and wanted to quit piano, she ordered a real one.
My father and I had made a deal. I could ditch piano if I took up the accordion or steel guitar. At least I knew what an accordion was.
Mother found an accordion teacher and ferried me to lessons. She suggested I practice in the bathroom, which spared the rest of the family in one way and, in our bath-and-a-half house, inconvenienced them in another. But the tile walls made for good acoustics.
With a music book that had everything from "Grand Old Flag" to "Twelfth Street Rag," I spent hours on a chair in front of the lavatory where the notes were propped against the faucets. I slowly became proficient, only to emerge from the bathroom to discover that accordions had become as uncool as any instrument in the history of the world.
It was the era of guitar-strumming, not box-squeezing.
My mother had no sympathy at all for my junior-high predicament. She sat in the audience while I performed at a talent show, won a ribbon and fell into adolescent hell. She begged me to play for Sunday visitors -- whose lack of enthusiasm sometimes matched mine.
When my father died a few years ago my mother insisted his dying wish had been for me to play the accordion at his funeral. So I took the dusty instrument from its hiding place and bungled through a medley of hymns he liked, only because I couldn't play a single one of them in its entirety. But something about that day made me realize I liked playing the accordion, and I've kept at it.
My mother has been dead for a year this week. I often think of things I'd like to tell her or show her. She wouldn't find the accordion lamp ugly or weird. She'd clap her hands in delight.
July 11th 2016
My friend Betty Douglass made a lamp for me out of an old accordion, an unusual objet d'art to say the least. Betty is clever. And one of the things we have in common is we both played accordions in our youth. Check out "Cool Accordion Girls" on YouTube, and you won't see us.
The old M. Carli box in ivory and brown has been around, you can tell. Betty found it in a vintage shop on the coast and painstakingly repaired loose bits of dry wood. Its bellows are cracked, and the keys squeak as if in pain when pushed. But something about the accordion remains graceful and lovely, the way things look when they have a history.
The accordion lamp is mounted on a piece of cypress reclaimed from the bottom of the Atchafalaya Swamp. The lampshade is brown with French writing and lists slightly starboard on a stem of wine corks.
While Betty worked on my one-of-a-kind gift, people who happened by had varying reactions, some laughing and one saying it was the ugliest thing she'd ever seen.
Accordions are like that, the Rodney Dangerfield of musical instruments. They get no respect.
I love the lamp, and it has a place of honor. And I can't help but think that another Betty, my mother, would have admired it, too.
The Christmas I was 6, my Mother bought me my first accordion, a toy that emitted strange squeals that only approximated music. When I was 12 and wanted to quit piano, she ordered a real one.
My father and I had made a deal. I could ditch piano if I took up the accordion or steel guitar. At least I knew what an accordion was.
Mother found an accordion teacher and ferried me to lessons. She suggested I practice in the bathroom, which spared the rest of the family in one way and, in our bath-and-a-half house, inconvenienced them in another. But the tile walls made for good acoustics.
With a music book that had everything from "Grand Old Flag" to "Twelfth Street Rag," I spent hours on a chair in front of the lavatory where the notes were propped against the faucets. I slowly became proficient, only to emerge from the bathroom to discover that accordions had become as uncool as any instrument in the history of the world.
It was the era of guitar-strumming, not box-squeezing.
My mother had no sympathy at all for my junior-high predicament. She sat in the audience while I performed at a talent show, won a ribbon and fell into adolescent hell. She begged me to play for Sunday visitors -- whose lack of enthusiasm sometimes matched mine.
When my father died a few years ago my mother insisted his dying wish had been for me to play the accordion at his funeral. So I took the dusty instrument from its hiding place and bungled through a medley of hymns he liked, only because I couldn't play a single one of them in its entirety. But something about that day made me realize I liked playing the accordion, and I've kept at it.
My mother has been dead for a year this week. I often think of things I'd like to tell her or show her. She wouldn't find the accordion lamp ugly or weird. She'd clap her hands in delight.
America The Beautiful
July 3, 2016
A Wellesley College English professor, Katharine Lee Bates, made a journey by train to Colorado Springs in 1893 and was so inspired by the sights that she wrote a poem.
She saw the wheat fields of Kansas and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. When she took the narrow gauge train to the top of Pike’s Peak, the temptation to rhapsodize must have been overwhelming. Back at the hotel, she took pen in hand.
In 1895, her “America” was published in a church periodical’s July Fourth edition.
The poem was a hit and later music added by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward. “America the Beautiful” became arguably this nation’s favorite patriotic song.
Ray Charles, for my money, did it the ultimate justice with his 1976 Bicentennial version.
I can understand why the view from Pike’s Peak would spur you to poetry if that is your bent. Twice I have taken the same train ride up that Ms. Bates did so long ago.
At the tiptop, the air is thin and cold, but the vantage is such you don’t mind your own temporary discomfort. You stagger around to get your bearings and appreciate the physical beauty below.
This country looks mighty good from a distance.
In a political season like the one in which we find ourselves, however, close inspection hurts. The poet’s lines begin to sound more like warnings than praise:
Confirm thy soul in self control. Thy liberty in law.
A buffoon that Hollywood would find too absurd to chronicle has emerged as a “leader” of a major political party. His proclamations range from silly to racist, from daft to dangerous. His rallies have provoked protest and violence. He waggles and weaves and reinvents his rhetoric to suit his mood. He draws great crowds and much applause.
A gun lobby only strengthens with each massacre of innocent citizens. Citizens react but Congress does nothing.
May God thy gold refine. Till all success be nobleness, and ev’ry gain divine.
Corporate money rules. The political process is such that whoever is elected is compromised from Day One. With football game dynamics, the campaigns are defined by war chests and personal net worth.
And crown thy good with brotherhood.
States pass legislation targeting their own citizens for no apparent reason but to pander to hate-mongers who operate in the name of religion. Having not learned the hard lessons of civil rights for all, America once again tolerates the same bigotry that fueled Jim Crow.
Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.
Our “alabaster cities” are dangerous and flooded with tears. From sea to shining sea there are infrastructure needs not addressed, children with inferior schools, old people with inadequate health care and other real problems always obscured by political red herrings.
The pure poetry of America’s natural beauty is mocked by greed, hate, violence, nationalism and the demagoguery that passes for leadership.
July 3, 2016
A Wellesley College English professor, Katharine Lee Bates, made a journey by train to Colorado Springs in 1893 and was so inspired by the sights that she wrote a poem.
She saw the wheat fields of Kansas and the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. When she took the narrow gauge train to the top of Pike’s Peak, the temptation to rhapsodize must have been overwhelming. Back at the hotel, she took pen in hand.
In 1895, her “America” was published in a church periodical’s July Fourth edition.
The poem was a hit and later music added by church organist and choirmaster Samuel A. Ward. “America the Beautiful” became arguably this nation’s favorite patriotic song.
Ray Charles, for my money, did it the ultimate justice with his 1976 Bicentennial version.
I can understand why the view from Pike’s Peak would spur you to poetry if that is your bent. Twice I have taken the same train ride up that Ms. Bates did so long ago.
At the tiptop, the air is thin and cold, but the vantage is such you don’t mind your own temporary discomfort. You stagger around to get your bearings and appreciate the physical beauty below.
This country looks mighty good from a distance.
In a political season like the one in which we find ourselves, however, close inspection hurts. The poet’s lines begin to sound more like warnings than praise:
Confirm thy soul in self control. Thy liberty in law.
A buffoon that Hollywood would find too absurd to chronicle has emerged as a “leader” of a major political party. His proclamations range from silly to racist, from daft to dangerous. His rallies have provoked protest and violence. He waggles and weaves and reinvents his rhetoric to suit his mood. He draws great crowds and much applause.
A gun lobby only strengthens with each massacre of innocent citizens. Citizens react but Congress does nothing.
May God thy gold refine. Till all success be nobleness, and ev’ry gain divine.
Corporate money rules. The political process is such that whoever is elected is compromised from Day One. With football game dynamics, the campaigns are defined by war chests and personal net worth.
And crown thy good with brotherhood.
States pass legislation targeting their own citizens for no apparent reason but to pander to hate-mongers who operate in the name of religion. Having not learned the hard lessons of civil rights for all, America once again tolerates the same bigotry that fueled Jim Crow.
Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.
Our “alabaster cities” are dangerous and flooded with tears. From sea to shining sea there are infrastructure needs not addressed, children with inferior schools, old people with inadequate health care and other real problems always obscured by political red herrings.
The pure poetry of America’s natural beauty is mocked by greed, hate, violence, nationalism and the demagoguery that passes for leadership.
Kris' Birthday Coming Down
June 27th 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. -- As soon as the heat dropped below 90 degrees one recent late afternoon -- about 7 o'clock, really -- I moved the CD player to the front porch, adjusted the fan just so and put my feet up on a coffee table. I played "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and "The Pilgrim" and "The Captive."
My Georgia friend Sharon Thomason, author of an intimate book about country music, had reminded me that a shared musical hero, Kris Kristofferson, turned 80 in June, same month as the iconic author Larry McMurtry. It was hard to believe.
Kris is the Paul Newman of songwriters, getting better as he ages and never quitting doing what he does. He has a new album out and continues to perform.
I think country musicians may have an advantage over rock musicians in that they don't look ridiculous singing their songs after they reach age 60. Their songs are more sedate and involve less swivel. I have nothing against the Rolling Stones, for instance, but I no longer want to watch the sausage being made.
It's different with Kris.
For one thing, Kris was born old and wise. The first time I heard him sing was "Why Me, Lord?" over an eight-track player. His voice was so slow and quivery I thought the tape was dragging.
That introduction began a love affair that has lasted over 40 years. And Kris did that unfair thing that certain males do. He managed to get better and better looking as the years passed by. His baby face finally matured enough to match his wise voice.
When I hear what passes for country lyrics these days, I wonder if any of the new stars have ever listened to a Kris song. Or a Hank song. Not that just anybody could write like the masters, but one could aspire. One could try to learn.
Kris never used gimmicky language that seems to be so in vogue these days. He told stories. Love stories full of pathos and hurt. He reached into his closet and found his cleanest dirty shirt. We could see him doing it. We could taste that beer he had for breakfast.
Love, after all, is not bouncy and bright. It doesn't always come in pretty packages tied up with ribbons. It's tepid beer, not champagne. And it hurts. How could a teenager plucked from the Mickey Mouse Club and packaged as a superstar know that? No dues, no blues.
I heard Kris live in concert twice. Once when he was young and I was younger. It was in the huge coliseum venue at Auburn University, and Kris and his wife Rita Coolidge were together. She was more stylish at the time and got top billing.
"Rita, Rita, Rita!" the crowd demanded when Kris took the stage as the warm-up act.
I remember feeling bad for Kris, who had written many of the songs Rita Coolidge sang. But it didn't seem to bother Kris, who took a swig of whiskey in front of God and everybody, and kept singing.
I heard him at the Ryman six years ago, just Kris and his harmonica and guitar, singing parts or all of every song he ever knew. It was a brilliant performance, much appreciated by the audience of boomers who knew all the words.
I figured it was some sort of farewell tour, but it wasn't. He's kept right on turning, for the better or the worse, still searching for a shrine he's never found. Happy birthday, Kris.
June 27th 2016
FISHTRAP HOLLOW, Miss. -- As soon as the heat dropped below 90 degrees one recent late afternoon -- about 7 o'clock, really -- I moved the CD player to the front porch, adjusted the fan just so and put my feet up on a coffee table. I played "Sunday Morning Coming Down" and "The Pilgrim" and "The Captive."
My Georgia friend Sharon Thomason, author of an intimate book about country music, had reminded me that a shared musical hero, Kris Kristofferson, turned 80 in June, same month as the iconic author Larry McMurtry. It was hard to believe.
Kris is the Paul Newman of songwriters, getting better as he ages and never quitting doing what he does. He has a new album out and continues to perform.
I think country musicians may have an advantage over rock musicians in that they don't look ridiculous singing their songs after they reach age 60. Their songs are more sedate and involve less swivel. I have nothing against the Rolling Stones, for instance, but I no longer want to watch the sausage being made.
It's different with Kris.
For one thing, Kris was born old and wise. The first time I heard him sing was "Why Me, Lord?" over an eight-track player. His voice was so slow and quivery I thought the tape was dragging.
That introduction began a love affair that has lasted over 40 years. And Kris did that unfair thing that certain males do. He managed to get better and better looking as the years passed by. His baby face finally matured enough to match his wise voice.
When I hear what passes for country lyrics these days, I wonder if any of the new stars have ever listened to a Kris song. Or a Hank song. Not that just anybody could write like the masters, but one could aspire. One could try to learn.
Kris never used gimmicky language that seems to be so in vogue these days. He told stories. Love stories full of pathos and hurt. He reached into his closet and found his cleanest dirty shirt. We could see him doing it. We could taste that beer he had for breakfast.
Love, after all, is not bouncy and bright. It doesn't always come in pretty packages tied up with ribbons. It's tepid beer, not champagne. And it hurts. How could a teenager plucked from the Mickey Mouse Club and packaged as a superstar know that? No dues, no blues.
I heard Kris live in concert twice. Once when he was young and I was younger. It was in the huge coliseum venue at Auburn University, and Kris and his wife Rita Coolidge were together. She was more stylish at the time and got top billing.
"Rita, Rita, Rita!" the crowd demanded when Kris took the stage as the warm-up act.
I remember feeling bad for Kris, who had written many of the songs Rita Coolidge sang. But it didn't seem to bother Kris, who took a swig of whiskey in front of God and everybody, and kept singing.
I heard him at the Ryman six years ago, just Kris and his harmonica and guitar, singing parts or all of every song he ever knew. It was a brilliant performance, much appreciated by the audience of boomers who knew all the words.
I figured it was some sort of farewell tour, but it wasn't. He's kept right on turning, for the better or the worse, still searching for a shrine he's never found. Happy birthday, Kris.
Sitting Atop a Magic Qall
June 20th 2016
FLORENCE, Ala. -- Rosanne Cash mentions The Wall in her song "A Feather's Not a Bird," declaring she'll wear a pretty dress to go down to Florence and "sit atop the magic wall."
That's how it feels, this place just off the Natchez Trace near the Alabama-Tennessee line. Magic. You feel as if you should dress up to see it.
It is the Wichahpi Commemorative Stone Wall. People in the area simply call it "The Wall."
Tennessee River rocks are stacked 4 and 6 feet high without mortar and with artistic flair. They outline a path that meanders a mile through the hardwoods. One man built it. His name is Tom Hendrix.
The New York Times devoted a full page to its wonder. Tourist guidebooks include it. Tibetan monks visit. Artists swoon. The Library of Congress registered it. Visitors come bearing rocks.
Since it appeared in the musical documentary "Muscle Shoals," pilgrims arrive from all over to see the rock memorial that Hendrix built to honor his great-great-grandmother, Te-lah-nay of the Yuchi Indian tribe. It took him a quarter of a century to complete. He's still working 8 till 4, greeting visitors and telling the story.
The day I visit, visitors are here from Minnesota and California. Some are walking the path. One man sits in a prayer position studying "the faces of your own grandmothers," as Hendrix describes a section of the wall with pocked rocks that look like eyes.
Most are sitting, rapt, as Hendrix tells for the thousandth time how building the wall "wore out three trucks, 22 wheelbarrows, 3,700 pairs of gloves and one old man."
He knows there are eight million pounds of rocks in his wall because, at his wife's suggestion, he weighed his empty truck at the cotton gin scales, then weighed it full of rocks on his return from the nearby river. He's done the math.
Hendrix says the rocks represent the number of steps his great-great-grandmother took on a five-year walk home from Oklahoma to Alabama. She was displaced by the Trail of Tears, the forced evacuation of Southeast Native Americans after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Te-lah-nay wanted to come home.
Hendrix keeps in a vault in town a copy of a book that an educated man wrote about his relative upon her return, a document chronicling her amazing life and blueprinting Hendrix' inspiration. He also inherited the numbered tag she wore when the federal government herded the first Americans from their homelands and marched them westward.
At 87, Hendrix is a handsome, silver-haired man, a tad the worse for wear today because "I fell off a boulder." He uses only herbal Native American remedies for remarkably few ailments. He claims never to tire of telling and retelling "Grandmother's story" because it is fraught with relevance.
I get the feeling every day is remarkably different for this retiree from the former Ford Motor Company aluminum plant. "One day this beautiful woman came, and she said she was going to write a song about it." The woman was Rosanne Cash. "Later she called and said, 'We won a Grammy.'"
One visitor Hendrix did not like was Martha Stewart, whom he says he asked to leave when she disparaged the local airport and used crude language.
Being gatekeeper for The Wall is a demanding job. Building it was an honor.
June 20th 2016
FLORENCE, Ala. -- Rosanne Cash mentions The Wall in her song "A Feather's Not a Bird," declaring she'll wear a pretty dress to go down to Florence and "sit atop the magic wall."
That's how it feels, this place just off the Natchez Trace near the Alabama-Tennessee line. Magic. You feel as if you should dress up to see it.
It is the Wichahpi Commemorative Stone Wall. People in the area simply call it "The Wall."
Tennessee River rocks are stacked 4 and 6 feet high without mortar and with artistic flair. They outline a path that meanders a mile through the hardwoods. One man built it. His name is Tom Hendrix.
The New York Times devoted a full page to its wonder. Tourist guidebooks include it. Tibetan monks visit. Artists swoon. The Library of Congress registered it. Visitors come bearing rocks.
Since it appeared in the musical documentary "Muscle Shoals," pilgrims arrive from all over to see the rock memorial that Hendrix built to honor his great-great-grandmother, Te-lah-nay of the Yuchi Indian tribe. It took him a quarter of a century to complete. He's still working 8 till 4, greeting visitors and telling the story.
The day I visit, visitors are here from Minnesota and California. Some are walking the path. One man sits in a prayer position studying "the faces of your own grandmothers," as Hendrix describes a section of the wall with pocked rocks that look like eyes.
Most are sitting, rapt, as Hendrix tells for the thousandth time how building the wall "wore out three trucks, 22 wheelbarrows, 3,700 pairs of gloves and one old man."
He knows there are eight million pounds of rocks in his wall because, at his wife's suggestion, he weighed his empty truck at the cotton gin scales, then weighed it full of rocks on his return from the nearby river. He's done the math.
Hendrix says the rocks represent the number of steps his great-great-grandmother took on a five-year walk home from Oklahoma to Alabama. She was displaced by the Trail of Tears, the forced evacuation of Southeast Native Americans after the Indian Removal Act of 1830. Te-lah-nay wanted to come home.
Hendrix keeps in a vault in town a copy of a book that an educated man wrote about his relative upon her return, a document chronicling her amazing life and blueprinting Hendrix' inspiration. He also inherited the numbered tag she wore when the federal government herded the first Americans from their homelands and marched them westward.
At 87, Hendrix is a handsome, silver-haired man, a tad the worse for wear today because "I fell off a boulder." He uses only herbal Native American remedies for remarkably few ailments. He claims never to tire of telling and retelling "Grandmother's story" because it is fraught with relevance.
I get the feeling every day is remarkably different for this retiree from the former Ford Motor Company aluminum plant. "One day this beautiful woman came, and she said she was going to write a song about it." The woman was Rosanne Cash. "Later she called and said, 'We won a Grammy.'"
One visitor Hendrix did not like was Martha Stewart, whom he says he asked to leave when she disparaged the local airport and used crude language.
Being gatekeeper for The Wall is a demanding job. Building it was an honor.
Grits, religion, bush-hogging and coming out
June 13th 2016
I wonder if the governors of Mississippi and North Carolina and other states where gay, lesbian and transgender citizens have been targeted, usually in the name of religion, have any idea that the taxpayers they are maligning have been through many other battles. And survived.
Coming out in the South is no walk in the park. Once you've told grandmothers, elderly neighbors, sorority sisters, conservative co-workers and preachers your sexual orientation, pandering politicians are just another hurdle.
The book "Crooked Letter i -- Coming Out in the South" was at the Alabama Book Fair recently. Alabama, by the way, so far hasn't drafted anti-gay legislation like North Carolina and Mississippi and others. It has been busy dealing with a Supreme Court chief justice who forbade probate judges to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a former speaker of the house convicted of ethics charges and a governor who's in a marriage predicament all his own. Who has the time to draft a hate bill?
The 16 essays in this thoughtful book are all over the place, because, face it, everyone's different. You can't assume too much about any group of people, including LGBTs. But some are fearful.
"I feel like we are quite literally dancing with danger," contributor B. Andrew Plant said. His words proved prescient as the horrendous mass shootings in Orlando, Florida, made news as I was writing this.
"Hate-driven legislation, especially when cloaked in religion, has fostered a climate in which it is acceptable and even popular to be intolerant. This puts anyone who is disenfranchised dangerously in the cross hairs."
Plant's advice to the "disenfranchised" is to become financially independent. "In our culture," he says, "you can literally buy your freedom in some ways. If you pay your own way, you get to make some of the rules."
A successful public-relations strategist in the competitive Atlanta market, Plant has followed his own advice, interviewing and writing about everyone from Dolly Parton to Coretta Scott King, including two White House AIDS czars.
The true stories in "Crooked Letter i" have one thing in common: They all are heart-rending. Edited by Connie Griffin, they deal with the moment -- or, in some cases, moments -- these Southern members of the LGBT community first told kin, friends or the world the truth about themselves.
One Florida native shocked her Brownie leader when, at age 8, she pledged her undying love and proposed marriage to another girl. Another female adolescent was sent to a series of psychiatrists until her parents found one who agreed with their position. One father, when told, patted his son's hand and went right back to bush-hogging.
Some left home, some returned home yearning for approval. Each case is different -- sometimes merely awkward, others tragic or slowly evolving.
Plant thinks recent legislative developments are part of a "continual game of political whack-a-mole, in which we seem to hate one group and then another, which tends to steal focus from very real issues. ... What we really need to see is what they're making us look away from."
The hate-mongers should know this. Once your grandmother is in the loop, has pulled you to her accepting bosom, then winning the approval of backward, hypocritical, ignorant and often crooked politicians doesn't much matter.
Those guilty lawmakers will have to live with themselves.
Coming out in the South is no walk in the park. Once you've told grandmothers, elderly neighbors, sorority sisters, conservative co-workers and preachers your sexual orientation, pandering politicians are just another hurdle.
The book "Crooked Letter i -- Coming Out in the South" was at the Alabama Book Fair recently. Alabama, by the way, so far hasn't drafted anti-gay legislation like North Carolina and Mississippi and others. It has been busy dealing with a Supreme Court chief justice who forbade probate judges to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a former speaker of the house convicted of ethics charges and a governor who's in a marriage predicament all his own. Who has the time to draft a hate bill?
The 16 essays in this thoughtful book are all over the place, because, face it, everyone's different. You can't assume too much about any group of people, including LGBTs. But some are fearful.
"I feel like we are quite literally dancing with danger," contributor B. Andrew Plant said. His words proved prescient as the horrendous mass shootings in Orlando, Florida, made news as I was writing this.
"Hate-driven legislation, especially when cloaked in religion, has fostered a climate in which it is acceptable and even popular to be intolerant. This puts anyone who is disenfranchised dangerously in the cross hairs."
Plant's advice to the "disenfranchised" is to become financially independent. "In our culture," he says, "you can literally buy your freedom in some ways. If you pay your own way, you get to make some of the rules."
A successful public-relations strategist in the competitive Atlanta market, Plant has followed his own advice, interviewing and writing about everyone from Dolly Parton to Coretta Scott King, including two White House AIDS czars.
The true stories in "Crooked Letter i" have one thing in common: They all are heart-rending. Edited by Connie Griffin, they deal with the moment -- or, in some cases, moments -- these Southern members of the LGBT community first told kin, friends or the world the truth about themselves.
One Florida native shocked her Brownie leader when, at age 8, she pledged her undying love and proposed marriage to another girl. Another female adolescent was sent to a series of psychiatrists until her parents found one who agreed with their position. One father, when told, patted his son's hand and went right back to bush-hogging.
Some left home, some returned home yearning for approval. Each case is different -- sometimes merely awkward, others tragic or slowly evolving.
Plant thinks recent legislative developments are part of a "continual game of political whack-a-mole, in which we seem to hate one group and then another, which tends to steal focus from very real issues. ... What we really need to see is what they're making us look away from."
The hate-mongers should know this. Once your grandmother is in the loop, has pulled you to her accepting bosom, then winning the approval of backward, hypocritical, ignorant and often crooked politicians doesn't much matter.
Those guilty lawmakers will have to live with themselves.
Mister Sam at the KOA
June 6th 2016
DENHAM SPRINGS, La. -- If I reach age 99, I hope to have the health, pluck, luck and smooth skin of Sam Bacot, who has every intention of celebrating 100 in November.
"I asked my cardiologist how long I could expect to live," Mister Sam says in his Gatling gun delivery.
"He said, 'Till you cut your own throat.'"
Mister Sam likes me, for some reason. It's not my politics. A few weeks ago, his right-hand helper Melissa Williams drove him to the Baton Rouge library on a rainy night to hear my book talk, but a fall cut his head and cut short our visit.
So here I am in his neat red-brick home behind the giant Bass Pro store and directly across from the KOA campground he started here nearly 50 years ago. He's proud of its paved roads and 105 campsites. He's also proud of the icons for motels, restaurants and, yes, campgrounds, on the interstate signs that he helped lobby into Louisiana.
With his South Mississippi roots and newspaper background -- Mister Sam worked all over as a linotype operator -- we find plenty to talk about.
Well, he talks. I mostly listen. Every now and then Mister Sam yanks the hearing aid from his left ear and throws it to the table. "This thing is useless. I'd like to take a hatchet to it."
Are all proverbs Chinese? Doesn't matter. But the Chinese proverb that says when an old person dies it's as if a library burns is true. Mister Sam knows things. And, what's more, he remembers them.
He knows enough baseball lore to make George Will hide his head in shame. He knows about the filthiest public restroom in Louisiana -- "Wouldn't have been no use for Kilroy to visit that one; there was no room on the walls for him to write."
He lays out a smorgasbord of colorful people: Billy Hall, a man from Pike County, Mississippi, who for years drove a school bus barefoot. Infamous Will Purvis, wrongly accused of murder in 1894 but who survived his own hanging when the knot slipped.
And Mister Sam talks a lot and lovingly about his late wife, Louise, who wanted a chicken pie in Indianola, Mississippi, for her honeymoon meal. The place they stopped wasn't clean, so they left. Louise made his life so good for 64 years it's almost impossible for him to understand the concept of divorce.
Some days are better than others, but Mister Sam wants to keep going. "I've still got a lot I want to do." Most everything he mentions has to do with improving the campground, his main goal for the last 47 years. It's a beauty, too, with lush flora, miniature golf, swimming pool and a pavilion for music.
Now and then Mister Sam bursts into song, everything from antique show tunes to Delta blues, and despite his protestations -- "For me, a key is something that opens a door." -- he's quite the singer.
In his bright mustard-yellow KOA shirt and with a smile the width of the Mississippi River Bridge, Mister Sam receives guests the way you imagine the Pope would if he could mingle freely. Life still holds Mister Sam's interest, from Donald Trump to land purchases.
If all of us could be as engaged and entertaining at 99 as Mister Sam, well, the world would be a place.
"I asked my cardiologist how long I could expect to live," Mister Sam says in his Gatling gun delivery.
"He said, 'Till you cut your own throat.'"
Mister Sam likes me, for some reason. It's not my politics. A few weeks ago, his right-hand helper Melissa Williams drove him to the Baton Rouge library on a rainy night to hear my book talk, but a fall cut his head and cut short our visit.
So here I am in his neat red-brick home behind the giant Bass Pro store and directly across from the KOA campground he started here nearly 50 years ago. He's proud of its paved roads and 105 campsites. He's also proud of the icons for motels, restaurants and, yes, campgrounds, on the interstate signs that he helped lobby into Louisiana.
With his South Mississippi roots and newspaper background -- Mister Sam worked all over as a linotype operator -- we find plenty to talk about.
Well, he talks. I mostly listen. Every now and then Mister Sam yanks the hearing aid from his left ear and throws it to the table. "This thing is useless. I'd like to take a hatchet to it."
Are all proverbs Chinese? Doesn't matter. But the Chinese proverb that says when an old person dies it's as if a library burns is true. Mister Sam knows things. And, what's more, he remembers them.
He knows enough baseball lore to make George Will hide his head in shame. He knows about the filthiest public restroom in Louisiana -- "Wouldn't have been no use for Kilroy to visit that one; there was no room on the walls for him to write."
He lays out a smorgasbord of colorful people: Billy Hall, a man from Pike County, Mississippi, who for years drove a school bus barefoot. Infamous Will Purvis, wrongly accused of murder in 1894 but who survived his own hanging when the knot slipped.
And Mister Sam talks a lot and lovingly about his late wife, Louise, who wanted a chicken pie in Indianola, Mississippi, for her honeymoon meal. The place they stopped wasn't clean, so they left. Louise made his life so good for 64 years it's almost impossible for him to understand the concept of divorce.
Some days are better than others, but Mister Sam wants to keep going. "I've still got a lot I want to do." Most everything he mentions has to do with improving the campground, his main goal for the last 47 years. It's a beauty, too, with lush flora, miniature golf, swimming pool and a pavilion for music.
Now and then Mister Sam bursts into song, everything from antique show tunes to Delta blues, and despite his protestations -- "For me, a key is something that opens a door." -- he's quite the singer.
In his bright mustard-yellow KOA shirt and with a smile the width of the Mississippi River Bridge, Mister Sam receives guests the way you imagine the Pope would if he could mingle freely. Life still holds Mister Sam's interest, from Donald Trump to land purchases.
If all of us could be as engaged and entertaining at 99 as Mister Sam, well, the world would be a place.
Rent to Own or Get a Loan
May 30th 2016
President and Mrs. Obama reportedly are about to join a club in which I'm glad to no longer hold membership: They are about to become renters.
If the recent report is to be believed, the Obamas will ramble about a $5 million mansion, located in a swell Washington, D.C., neighborhood. It has 8,000 square feet in which to celebrate their freedom.
There are nine bedrooms and nine baths in the Tudor-style mansion, which means there better be a plumber on the presidential Rolodex, and much of the Free World could drop by at the same time and never have to wait for a free potty.
I rented until I was 33. It was a pain. No matter how hard you tried to maintain or even improve a property, the moment you wrote the initial check, you kissed your damage deposit goodbye. Landlords never had any intention of returning that.
A certain freedom came with knowing damage deposits were simply an additional tax on lowly renters. That knowledge freed you up to live.
There usually were prohibitions against pets, which, of course, I ignored. You couldn't hang pictures on the wall, another rule to ignore.
Everything, including your address, was temporary, which alters your mindset. The flowers you planted in the yard immediately became someone else's. It was dumb to plant a tree or paint a wall.
Renting was what you did if you couldn't afford to buy. You were a renter, in italics, a subspecies of human, one step above homeless but definitely below homeowner.
You had no power. Once my former husband and I were evicted for keeping an old sailboat in the backyard of an apartment complex. Now, a sailboat is the most beautiful manmade thing that there is. If anything, the silhouette of that old boat at sunset improved the looks of the predictably ugly dwellings.
We dismantled that boat and moved it piece by piece into the attic of another rental house, one that the landlord cared so little about we did pretty much what we wanted. So long as we paid the rent on time, we could, and did, sublet rooms to friends. That house was the best rental of my life, despite an ugly green carpet that looked like felt on a pool table and appliances left over from Ethel and Fred.
Lately, rentals have gained cachet, especially if you're talking $5 million mansions and such. People of a certain age with investment advisors -- which tells you something, right there -- are being counseled that it's better to rent than own in some situations.
There's the theory that leaks and busted heat pumps and overall maintenance are someone else's problems if you rent instead of own. People who believe that never had the same landlords as I did. You hear a lot about irresponsible renters, but never much about lousy, elusive landlords. Talk about your subspecies.
I wish good luck to the Obamas if they do become the most famous renters in the land. I hope they plant petunias only in pots, the better to move later, and figure a way to cool and heat only a few of those many bedrooms and bathrooms.
Most of all, I hope their damage deposit is returned.
If the recent report is to be believed, the Obamas will ramble about a $5 million mansion, located in a swell Washington, D.C., neighborhood. It has 8,000 square feet in which to celebrate their freedom.
There are nine bedrooms and nine baths in the Tudor-style mansion, which means there better be a plumber on the presidential Rolodex, and much of the Free World could drop by at the same time and never have to wait for a free potty.
I rented until I was 33. It was a pain. No matter how hard you tried to maintain or even improve a property, the moment you wrote the initial check, you kissed your damage deposit goodbye. Landlords never had any intention of returning that.
A certain freedom came with knowing damage deposits were simply an additional tax on lowly renters. That knowledge freed you up to live.
There usually were prohibitions against pets, which, of course, I ignored. You couldn't hang pictures on the wall, another rule to ignore.
Everything, including your address, was temporary, which alters your mindset. The flowers you planted in the yard immediately became someone else's. It was dumb to plant a tree or paint a wall.
Renting was what you did if you couldn't afford to buy. You were a renter, in italics, a subspecies of human, one step above homeless but definitely below homeowner.
You had no power. Once my former husband and I were evicted for keeping an old sailboat in the backyard of an apartment complex. Now, a sailboat is the most beautiful manmade thing that there is. If anything, the silhouette of that old boat at sunset improved the looks of the predictably ugly dwellings.
We dismantled that boat and moved it piece by piece into the attic of another rental house, one that the landlord cared so little about we did pretty much what we wanted. So long as we paid the rent on time, we could, and did, sublet rooms to friends. That house was the best rental of my life, despite an ugly green carpet that looked like felt on a pool table and appliances left over from Ethel and Fred.
Lately, rentals have gained cachet, especially if you're talking $5 million mansions and such. People of a certain age with investment advisors -- which tells you something, right there -- are being counseled that it's better to rent than own in some situations.
There's the theory that leaks and busted heat pumps and overall maintenance are someone else's problems if you rent instead of own. People who believe that never had the same landlords as I did. You hear a lot about irresponsible renters, but never much about lousy, elusive landlords. Talk about your subspecies.
I wish good luck to the Obamas if they do become the most famous renters in the land. I hope they plant petunias only in pots, the better to move later, and figure a way to cool and heat only a few of those many bedrooms and bathrooms.
Most of all, I hope their damage deposit is returned.
Why some people live like they do
May 23rd 2016
WOODSTOCK, Ga. -- I like to go back to Metro Atlanta often enough to remember why I left. Atlanta, of course, is now one hellishly dense suburb that stretches from Chattanooga to Columbus with a tightly stitched tapestry of chain crap and traffic snarls in between. I creep along and remember. In rush hour, it isn't easy to find the motel where I'll pay out the nose to stay one night for the reminder.
They have hidden it behind branch banks and tony coffee shops, playing fast and loose with the Internet description of a location just off the interstate. When I do find my room and a beer, it's tough to make myself leave again to try to sell a book.
But I do. I always do.
The group at the store is small but sweet, except for one miffed man who has waited 20 years to upbraid me for missing a lunch appointment. Afterward I have supper with two good friends who have each braved the traffic and driven an hour from their respective towns, doubling the "crowd" in the process. Thank goodness for friends.
It's fair, really. I didn't leave my heart in Atlanta, and readers know that and remember. Of the 1,456 columns I wrote while living here -- who's counting? -- about half rhapsodized about rural things, something most Atlanta residents don't want to hear.
Early the next day I drive out of Georgia, slowly, another rush hour. It's swimming upstream with a child on my back. It is easier to maneuver in Birmingham, and I locate the bookstore quickly.
When I push the door to arrive early for a noon signing, I see a flyer with my book and an announcement of a 6 to 8 p.m. event. The confusion is corrected, but at a late date, and business is slow.
Selling a book these days is like pushing a wheelbarrow of fire wood into a burning building. Boomers, the last generation to read actual books, are downsizing, donating their personal libraries to anyone who'll take them away. And folks who daily will drop $30 for a mediocre lunch are appalled when a book costs about the same.
But the tour has its bright spots. Last week I spent quality time with young people who know things, mostly because they read. It's impossible to give up on 30somethings when Jake Mabe of Knoxville, my columnist friend, knows about baseball, the Louvin Brothers and the writer Jean Shepherd. Or, when reporter and author Carla Jean Whitley wants to talk about disappearing newspapers and the importance of words. She volunteers with literacy groups and teaches journalism.
By the time I make it home, Jake has emailed me some old Jimmy Buffett lyrics eerily appropriate to my recent travels: "That's why it's still a mystery to me, why some people live like they do. So many nice things happenin' out there, they never even have a clue."
And I read more great lyrics in the book Carla Jean wrote about the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, including this one from Boz Scaggs: "Another day another letter, Would bring me closer to your side, Another walk along the river, Another need be satisfied."
Remember letters? Walks along the river?
Terrific young people. Old souls. Blessed with inquisitive minds and a hunch that the world didn't begin in 1978, or 1958 for that matter. They fan the flame that keeps me going.
They have hidden it behind branch banks and tony coffee shops, playing fast and loose with the Internet description of a location just off the interstate. When I do find my room and a beer, it's tough to make myself leave again to try to sell a book.
But I do. I always do.
The group at the store is small but sweet, except for one miffed man who has waited 20 years to upbraid me for missing a lunch appointment. Afterward I have supper with two good friends who have each braved the traffic and driven an hour from their respective towns, doubling the "crowd" in the process. Thank goodness for friends.
It's fair, really. I didn't leave my heart in Atlanta, and readers know that and remember. Of the 1,456 columns I wrote while living here -- who's counting? -- about half rhapsodized about rural things, something most Atlanta residents don't want to hear.
Early the next day I drive out of Georgia, slowly, another rush hour. It's swimming upstream with a child on my back. It is easier to maneuver in Birmingham, and I locate the bookstore quickly.
When I push the door to arrive early for a noon signing, I see a flyer with my book and an announcement of a 6 to 8 p.m. event. The confusion is corrected, but at a late date, and business is slow.
Selling a book these days is like pushing a wheelbarrow of fire wood into a burning building. Boomers, the last generation to read actual books, are downsizing, donating their personal libraries to anyone who'll take them away. And folks who daily will drop $30 for a mediocre lunch are appalled when a book costs about the same.
But the tour has its bright spots. Last week I spent quality time with young people who know things, mostly because they read. It's impossible to give up on 30somethings when Jake Mabe of Knoxville, my columnist friend, knows about baseball, the Louvin Brothers and the writer Jean Shepherd. Or, when reporter and author Carla Jean Whitley wants to talk about disappearing newspapers and the importance of words. She volunteers with literacy groups and teaches journalism.
By the time I make it home, Jake has emailed me some old Jimmy Buffett lyrics eerily appropriate to my recent travels: "That's why it's still a mystery to me, why some people live like they do. So many nice things happenin' out there, they never even have a clue."
And I read more great lyrics in the book Carla Jean wrote about the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, including this one from Boz Scaggs: "Another day another letter, Would bring me closer to your side, Another walk along the river, Another need be satisfied."
Remember letters? Walks along the river?
Terrific young people. Old souls. Blessed with inquisitive minds and a hunch that the world didn't begin in 1978, or 1958 for that matter. They fan the flame that keeps me going.