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THESouthern NEWSLETTER OF THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE •SRegisterUMMER 2004 g THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI The American South, Then and Now W

From the L. Q. C. Lamar Society McCar thy Laura by portrait ater color to the Endowment for the Future of the South November 18-20, 2004

Center for the Study of Southern Culture Law of School Mississippi of University courtesy , University of Mississippi

enter faculty and staff are busy planning for the Endowment for the Future of the South, a new initiative Cthat will bring together leaders of the American South for a series of conversations and resulting research that examine Southern culture for insights on contemporary public policy issues. The initiative aims to provide a meeting place for all those engaged in thinking about the problems and opportunities facing the region. The first activity of the Future of the South project is the American South, Then and Now Symposium, which will be held at the Center November 18-20, 2004. Leaders from academia, government, the media, business, and nonprofit organizations, along with others interested in the region’s issues, will gather to examine the South’s past and current Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar was born in 1825 in public policy concerns. The meeting will feature keynote Georgia and studied at Emory College before gaining admit- addresses from William Winter, former Mississippi governor, tance to the Georgia bar in 1847. In 1850, Lamar moved to and H. Brandt Ayers, former editor and publisher of the Oxford, where he held various teaching and administrative Anniston Star in Alabama. Panels will address such issues as posts with the University of Mississippi before going on to race relations, religion and public policy, philanthropy in the serve as U.S. senator, secretary of the interior, and supreme South, the media, and political parties. A separate session court justice (Lamar is the only Mississippian ever to sit on the will look at the continuities and changes in contemporary U.S Supreme Court). Southern culture. Although Lamar drafted Mississippi’s Ordinance of Secession Highlighting the symposium will be a reunion of the L. Q. C. as part of the state’s 1861 secession convention, his 1874 eulogy Lamar Society, which celebrates the 35th anniversary of its of Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner, who had been an founding this fall. The Lamar Society comprised a notable active abolitionist, called for reconciliation between North and group of Southerners who came together after the dramatic South. It was Lamar’s struggle for reconciliation—between changes of the 1960s to consider the future of the South. Their black and white as well as North and South—that led John F. manifesto, You Can’t Eat Magnolias, is a call to go beyond Kennedy to write about the statesman in Profiles in Courage,

(continued on page 3) (continued on page 29) The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 1 D IRECTOR’ S C OLUMN Southern Register HE UTURE OF THE OUTH project is the Center’s newest Published Quarterly by T F S The Center for the Study of Southern Culture initiative, and it will be launched with a stellar group of Southern leaders gathering in The University of Mississippi Oxford for the American South, Then and Now Symposium, November 18-20. This Telephone: 662-915-5993 meeting will send the Center in an exciting new direction. Fax: 662-915-5814 To be sure, we have a long tradition of convening meetings, as Faulkner famously said, to E-mail: [email protected] “tell about the South.” Our annual conferences and symposia gather literary critics to analyze Internet: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/south the work of authors and to hear writers read from their works. Historians come to talk about such topics as Southern manners and the region’s environment. Music critics and performers IN THIS ISSUE meet to “sing the blues”; food critics and others assemble to consider the cultural meanings Summer 2004 of Southern food—and to savor eating it. The November symposium summons journalists, business people, politicians, scholars, 1 L. Q. C. Lamar religious leaders, and representatives from nonprofit organizations to ponder current public 1 Lamar Society Reunion and American policy issues in light of Southern history and culture. We want to shine the light of South, Then and Now Symposium humanities values into the arena of public policy discussions. 2 Director’s Column The Phil Hardin Foundation has awarded the Center a $250,000 grant to establish the 3 John Shelton Reed Visiting Fall 2004 Endowment for the Future of the South, which will sponsor annual symposia, workshops, 3 Anderson Symposium Cancelled colloquia, visiting “seers and prophets,” and publications, all designed to focus attention on 4 American South Symposium Schedule issues of regional development. We are looking for partners to raise matching funds of 5 2004 Tennessee Williams Festival $500,000 to enable the endowment to reach its full potential. 5 History Symposium to Study Manners The Future of the South project is fundamentally a leadership project, designed each year 6 Brown Bag Schedule to engage a diverse group of the South’s leaders in a series of ongoing conversations and 7 Brad Watson to Be Grisham Writer research projects about specific problems and opportunities we face. 7 Oral History Conference In looking for our regional ancestors in such work, we realized that the L. Q. C. Lamar 8 Living Blues News Society had pioneered what we want to do. Formed in 1969, the group sponsored 8 Gammill Gallery Exhibition Schedule conferences and research to help the region plan for enormous adjustments after the 9 Blue Mountain Project dramatic social, political, and economic transformations of the 1960s. We are pleased to host 10 New Ventress Members a reunion of Lamar Society members as part of the November symposium, learning from 10 2005 Natchez Literary Celebration their experiences and accumulated wisdom. Hattiesburg businessman Stewart Gammill was a 11 Eudora Welty Newsletter member of the advisory board to the Lamar Society, and he has been a longtime friend of the 12 Black Tells about Programming Plans Center. He helped me think about a Lamar Society reunion, and he put me in touch with for Welty House Mike Cody, a Memphis attorney who was another key member of the Society and unusually 15 Reading the South: Reviews & Notes helpful about the reunion. 22 Thomas D. Clark: A Kentucky–and Another key player in planning the November event has been Curtis Wilkie, the retired Mississippi–Treasure correspondent for the Boston Globe who now holds the Kelly Gene Cook Chair of 23 Southern Foodways Alliance News Journalism at the University. His immediate understanding of the potential of the Future of 26 2004 F&Y Conference Report the South initiative has made for a fruitful collaboration and tied the Center closely to the 27 Faulkner Play Filmed in Oxford Department of Journalism on this project. 27 2005 Oxford Conference for the Book Former Mississippi Governor William Winter was an active member of the Lamar Society, 28 Faulkner’s Home Reopened and he is surely a patron saint of the Future of the South initiative. I have also relied on him in planning the symposium. He has helped me to see that the Future of the South initiative 28 2005 F&Y Call for Papers should extend a positive regional tradition, civility in discussion, as we consider contentious 29 Regional Roundup contemporary issues. We live in an age of polemical ideologies, and our political discussions 29 Building Craftsmanship Conference frequently degenerate into unproductive impasses. Civility itself can be a detriment to 30 Notes on Contributors engaging issues, of course, if our manners distract us from expressing our views, but civic 31 Southern Culture Catalog Items renewal in not only the South but the nation depends on getting past ideology to find our 32 Address Section/Mailing List Form/ shared values. The South may have something to offer the nation in this regard. Friends Information and Form The late Willie Morris would have enjoyed the reunion and the conversations at the REGISTER STAFF symposium. He was among the earliest participants in discussions that led to the Lamar Society, and he was a University professor in the 1980s, coming to Oxford in 1980, the year Editor: Ann J. Abadie before I arrived here. Willie’s passion for the South, his sensitivity to the best of Southern Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee traditions, his righteous condemnations of the region’s old racial ways, and his appreciation Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth for the South’s history and need for constructive social change give us a model of a creative Lithographer: RR Donnelley Magazine Group talent who used his talents to influence the public discussion of issues. He will be missed, but those who gather here in November will be at the foundation of a new effort to draw from The University complies with all applicable laws the South’s strengths in facing the future. regarding affirmative action and equal opportunity in all its activities and programs and does not discriminate against anyone protected by law because of age, CHARLES REAGAN WILSON color,disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, or status as a veteran or disabled veteran.

Page 2 Summer 2004 The Southern Register continued from page 1 Lamar Society

John Shelton Reed ideology in rethinking the South’s development, and their work led to the Visiting Professor Fall 2004 Southern Growth Policies Board, still a key regional development agency. This fall Ole Miss will be home to the We invite—and encourage—former scholar Center director Charles Reagan members and friends of the L. Q. C. Wilson calls “arguably the most Lamar Society to attend the American important interpreter of the South in South, Then and Now Symposium and the last generation.” John Shelton participate in the Lamar Society Reed, who recently returned to the Reunion. The symposium includes a United States from “the other” Oxford, special session on the society’s work will hold a joint appointment with the and a dinner that will honor former Center and the University’s sociology members. department. In addition to teaching a The Phil Hardin Foundation has course on the sociology of the South, provided a grant to begin the work of Reed will advise on the new edition of the Endowment for the Future of the the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and South, including the symposium and help organize and participate in the reunion. The Center is currently American South, Then and Now, a raising matching funds for the grant. symposium examining public policy Anyone who is interested in finding issues in the region set to take place out more about Future of the South November 18-21. projects, and contributing to the “I’ve often visited the Center, John Shelton Reed Endowment, should contact Center starting shortly after it was founded,” Dan Sears, UNC News Services Director Charles Reagan Wilson at said Reed, who has won numerous the journal Southern Cultures 662-915-5993. awards for his writing, teaching, and (www.southerncultures.org), Reed is Attendance at the symposium is research and is William R. Kenan Jr. also the author or editor of 13 books as free, but anyone interested should Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the well as several journal and magazine register. There are costs for attending University of North Carolina at Chapel articles. Reed grew up in Tennessee and the reception, lunch, and dinner. For Hill. “Dale [Reed’s wife] and I have a studied at the Massachusetts Institute of more information on registration and lot of friends in Oxford, and it has Technology and Columbia University. on staying in Oxford during the become one of our favorite places. “John Shelton Reed is an gathering, please contact Mary Beth When I retired from the University of entertaining as well as knowledgeable Lasseter at [email protected]. North Carolina four years ago, it was interpreter of the South and a Also check the Center’s Web site partly so I could spend more time in wonderful storyteller,” Wilson said. (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south). places I enjoy, and Oxford was near the “Having him here is the culmination of top of the list.” a long effort to get him here, and he At UNC, Reed helped found the will be a great addition to the Center for the Study of the American University community.” South and served as director of the JENNIFER SOUTHALL Howard Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. A past Guggenheim fellow, a fellow of the National Humanities Center, and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Reed has been a Anderson Symposium Canceled Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer and C most recently served as a visiting fellow A symposium culminating the yearlong celebration of the hundredth at Oxford University’s All Souls anniversary of the birth of Mississippi artist Walter Anderson has unfortunately College. Additionally, he was appointed been cancelled because of funding difficulties. The Walter Anderson by President Reagan to the council of Symposium was to be held September 23-25 at Millsaps College in Jackson. the National Endowment of the Charles Reagan Wilson, Center director and a primary planner for the event, Humanities and was president of the said that he and others on the Walter Anderson Centennial Committee very Southern Sociological Society and the much regret the meeting’s cancellation but are working to ensure an Anderson Southern Association for Public symposium will be held on the University of Mississippi campus in the future. Opinion Research. A founding editor of

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 3 The American South, Then and Now From the L. Q. C. Lamar Society to the Endowment for the Future of the South November 18-20, 2004 Center for the Study of Southern Culture • University of Mississippi Symposium Program

Sessions will be in the Rehearsal Hall, Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts.

Thursday, November 18 Saturday, November 20 5:00 p.m. Opening Address 9:00 a.m. Panel: Religion and Public Policy William Winter, Jackson, Mississippi William T. Greer Jr., Virginia Wesleyan College* Susan Pace Hamill, University of Alabama 7:00 p.m. Reception School of Law Isom Place Mark Silk, Greenberg Center for Religion and the Media Friday, November 19 Dolphus Weary, Mission Mississippi* 9:00 a.m. Welcome 10:30 a.m. Panel: The Urban South 9:30 a.m. Panel: The L. Q. C. Lamar Society Don H. Doyle, Vanderbilt University Mike Cody, Memphis John Fowlkes, Shelby County, Tennessee Patt Derian, Miami, Florida Leslie McLemore, Jackson State University* Joel Fleischman, Duke University* Richard Vinroot, Charlotte, North Carolina Jim Leutze, University of North Carolina Robert Walker, Vicksburg, Mississippi* at Wilmington Ricky Wilkins, Memphis, Tennessee Luther Munford, Jackson, Mississippi Tom Naylor, Vermont 2:00 p.m. Panel: The Media Ed Yoder, Washington, D.C. Paul Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat Hank Klibanoff, Atlanta Journal-Constitution 11:00 a.m. Panel: Race Relations Charles Overby, Freedom Forum Leroy Clemons Addy, Neshoba County NAACP* 3:00 p.m. Panel: Southern Culture Today Constance Curry, Atlanta, Georgia William Dunlap, Washington, D.C.* John Egerton, Nashville, Tennessee Ralph Eubanks, Library of Congress* Myrlie Evers-Williams, Evers Institute* David Goldfield, University of North Carolina Susan Glisson, William Winter Institute at Charlotte for Racial Reconciliation Randall Kenan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill* 12:30 p.m. Lunch Address John Peede, Washington, D.C. Brandt Ayers, Anniston Star John Shelton Reed, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2:00 p.m. Panel: Southern Philanthropy Julia Reed, New York Times and Vogue Hodding Carter III, Knight Foundation Lynn Huntley, Southern Education Foundation* 4:00 p.m. Panel: Addressing the South’s Problems George Penick, Foundation for the Mid-South David Dodson, MDC, Chapel Hill* C. Thompson Wacaster, Phil Hardin Foundation Leslie Dunbar* Hector Mendoza, La Prenza Latina, Memphis, 3:30 p.m. Panel: Democrats and Republicans Tennessee* Jack Bass, College of Charleston Ronnie Musgrove, University of Mississippi Thad Cochran, Washington, D.C. Mike Retzer, Washington, D.C.* Ferrel Guillory, University of North Carolina Steve Suitts, Southern Education Foundation at Chapel Hill Steve Holland, Plantersville, Mississippi 7:00 p.m. Dinner Honoring Lamar Society Members Curtis Wilkie, University of Mississippi *Pending

Page 4 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival The 12th annual Mississippi Delta Boston and Seth Barger of New York pages) or an abstract (250 words) to Tennessee Williams Festival is City will present Crossroads. The Colby H. Kullman, Department of scheduled to take place in Clarksdale performance was created in 2003 from English, The University of Mississippi, on October 15-16, 2004. Williams’s sights and sounds recorded in the Delta University, MS 38677. 1955 play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof will be and presented in New York City during The Tennessee Williams Festival a focus of this year’s festival, as will February 2004. Actress and director Acting Competition, hosted by Mississippi Delta influences on the Erma Duricko will perform as well as Coahoma Community College, is playwright and 21st-century artists. As conduct an acting workshop for high open to high school students in in the past, the program will include school students. Drama coach Jay Jensen Mississippi. The competition includes presentations by Williams authorities of Miami, whose career is the subject of a two acting categories: monologues and and friends, several performances, a documentary currently being filmed with scenes. All material must be drawn session with papers by scholars, and Andy Garcia to be screened at the from the plays of Tennessee Williams. tours of the house and neighborhood Sundance Film Festival, also will lead an Each monologue is to be two minutes where the playwright lived as a child. acting workshop for students. Larry or less, and each scene is to be between Also scheduled in conjunction with Turner of Turner’s Grill in Clarksdale five and ten minutes and involve any the festival are workshops for teachers will present “Talking about the Delta,” a number of characters. and student actors and a drama food demonstration and discussion of Cash prizes are given for winning competition, with prizes totaling specialty and ethnic foods. And monologues and scenes, which will be $2,500 for the winners. Williams’s brother, Dakin, will also make performed for the festival audience. Williams authorities confirmed to his annual appearance. Prize money will go to schools of the participate in the festival are W. Kenneth Scholars are invited to submit papers winners for use with drama activities or Holditch, Colby Kullman, and Jay for possible presentation at the festival. for library books related to theater and Jensen. New York actor Anthony Papers on any topic related to Williams literature. Students, with their teacher- Herrera and others will portray “Big and his work are eligible for sponsors, will be given the opportunity Daddy” Pollitt and English actress consideration. Presentations should be to decide how the prize money will be Frances O’Connor has been invited to no longer than 20 minutes. Authors spent. re-create her role as Maggie the Cat whose papers are selected for For information on the 2004 festival during staged readings from Cat on a Hot presentation will receive free lodging and drama competition, write Tin Roof. Showcasing performance art during the festival and a waiver of the Tennessee Williams Festival, P.O. Box and innovative 21st-century theatre registration fee. The deadline for 1565, Clarksdale, MS 38614-1565; focusing on today’s Mississippi Delta submissions is August 30, 2004. To telephone 662-627-7337. influences on artists, Ross Goldstein of enter, send a completed paper (7-8 History Symposium to Study Manners Manners, it is easy to agree, are rights-era Mississippi; Lisa L. Dorr, of the Carolina, author of such works as Rudeness important to understanding Southern University of Alabama and author of and Civility: Manners in 19th-Century history, whether one is studying family White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race Urban America and Houdini, Tarzan, and life, violence, definitions of race, in Virginia, 1900-1960; Anya Jabour, of the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and voting, speaking, eating, or drinking. the University of Montana, author of the Challenge of Modernity in America. But it is less clear how we should study Marriage in the Early Republic; Valinda Events will be held in the Yerby manners. Nine scholars will have that Littlefield, of the University of South Center and will begin at 7:00 p.m on opportunity when the Porter Fortune Carolina, author of works on Southern October 6 with Anya Jabour’s talk, Jr. History Symposium, cosponsored by education; Jennifer Ritterhouse, of Utah “Southern Ladies and ‘She-Rebels’; or, the History Department and the Center State University, author of works on Femininity in the Foxhole: Changing for the Study of Southern Culture, raising children in Southern history; and Definitions of Womanhood in the addresses Manners and Southern Charles F. Robinson II, of the University Confederate South.” The program will History, October 6-8, 2004. of Arkansas, author of Dangerous Liaisons: continue through Friday afternoon, with Speakers will include Catherine Sex and Love in the Segregated South. comments by Jane Dailey and John Clinton, author and editor of 16 books, Commenting will be Jane Dailey, of Johns Kasson. As in the past 28 symposia, including Harriet Tubman, The Plantation Hopkins University, author of Before Jim events will be free and open to the Mistress, and Tara Revisited; Joseph Crow: The Politics of Race in public. More details are available at Crespino, of Emory University; author of Postemancipation Virginia, and John olemiss.edu/depts/history/symposium/ works on social and political life in civil Kasson, of the University of North Events_Symposium.htm.

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 5 Center for the Study of Southern Culture

SEPTEMBER The University of Mississippi

8 “The Mississippi Delta, Holder of My Heart: Portraits Brown Bag from the Delta” NOVEMBER Jane Rule Burdine Lunch and Taylor, Mississippi Lecture 3“Game and Fish through the Lens:A Gammill Gallery 15 “Just a Little Talk with Jesus: Series Presentation” Elvis Presley, Gospel Music, Wiley Prewitt and Southern Spirituality” Fall 2004 Lido, Mississippi Charles Wilson, Director, Center for the Study of The Brown Bag Luncheon Series takes 10 “Do You Want the Good Southern Culture place each Wednesday at noon in the News or the Bad News First?: Professor of History and Barnard Observatory Lecture Hall during An Update on the Teacher the regular academic year. Southern Studies Shortage Crisis in Mississippi” 22 “Soda County Memories: Cecily McNair, Director of Growing Up in the South of Recruitment and the North” 13 “Community and Memory at Enhancement Matt Zuefle the Neshoba County Fair” Mississippi Teacher Center Assistant Professor of Park Trent Watts Mississippi Department of and Recreation Management Assistant Professor of Education American Studies 29 “Food, Race, and Southern University of Missouri-Rolla 17 “Freedom Riders: A Manners: A Preview of the Documentary” Southern Foodways 20 “Willie Morris: Ghosts of April Grayson, Documentary Symposium (October 7-10) Mississippi in His Private Filmmaker and the Porter L. Fortune Papers” Oxford, Mississippi Southern History Richard Caldwell, Southern Susan Glisson, Director, Symposium (October 6-8)” Studies Graduate Student Winter Institute for Racial John T. Edge, Director, Reconciliation Southern Foodways Alliance 27 “Phantoms of Mass Andy Harper, Associate Ted Ownby, Professor of Destruction: Rednecks, Director, Center for Media History and Southern White Trash, and Corporate Production Studies Cowboys in American Politics and Film” DECEMBER OCTOBER Allison Graham, Professor of Film and Media Studies 1“Encyclopedia of Southern 6 “The Nashville Lunch Department of Culture:A Second Time Counter Sit-Ins: Communications Around” Photographs from the University of Memphis Jimmy Thomas, Managing Tennessean” Memphis, Tennessee Editor John Egerton Nashville, Tennessee MARK YOUR CALENDARS The Twelfth Oxford Conference for the Book The University of Mississippi • Oxford, Mississippi April 7-9, 2005

Page 6 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Brad Watson to Be Grisham Oral History Writer in Residence Conference

ikyYanaura Rickey The Ole Miss Office of Outreach has Brad Watson, Mississippi native and joined with the Center to offer the author of an award-winning story teachers and any others who are collection and novel, becomes the interested a workshop on creating and University of Mississippi’s 12th John using oral histories. Telling the South’s and Renée Grisham Writer in Stories: A Conference on Oral Residence when he assumes the post Histories will be held on the Oxford this fall. As Grisham Writer, Watson campus in Barnard Observatory, will teach one fiction workshop this Saturday, September 25, from 8:00 fall and another in the spring while he a.m. until 5:15 p.m. continues working on a second novel Participants will hear from and more stories. In return, he’ll receive experienced oral historians and learn a stipend and housing from the how to conduct, present, and preserve University, funded by an endowment oral accounts as well as how to make from the Grishams. oral histories a part of the classroom “I’m really looking forward to getting experience. The one-day conference to know Oxford and the students, and will also feature a tour of the living and working in that wonderful Smithsonian Institution’s traveling house,” Watson said, referring to the Old exhibition Key Ingredients: America by Taylor Road house where Grisham Food, including an oral history writers have lived for the past decade. “I component on sorority- and fraternity- like the idea of the lingering presences of Brad Watson house cooks from Ole Miss. the fine writers who’ve worked there The registration fee for the before me. It’s a good augury.” conference is $50. Registrants who Born and raised in Meridian, Watson Watson is returning to Mississippi wish to apply for CEU credits may do won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First from Alabama, where he’s lived most of so for an additional $20 fee. Fiction from the American Academy his adult life. After receiving an MFA To register or to see a complete of Arts and Letters and the Great Lakes in creative writing from the University schedule of events, visit www. Colleges New Writers Award for his of Alabama, Watson worked as a outreach.olemiss.edu/culture/oral_ first book, the story collection Last reporter and editor for several of the history/. Days of the Dog Men (Norton, 1996). state’s newspapers before taking a For more information, call 662-816- His second book, The Heaven of teaching assignment in UA’s English 2055 or e- mail [email protected]. Mercury (Norton, 2002), received the Department. In 1997 he accepted a Southern Book Critics Circle Award in teaching position at Harvard Fiction and the Mississippi Institute of University, where he served as the The 12th Oxford Conference for Arts and Letters Award in Fiction. The Director of Creative Writing from 1999 the Book, set novel was also a finalist for the to 2001. Since moving back South for April 7-9, National Book Award. from Cambridge, Watson has served as 2005, will be Although Watson hasn’t lived in visiting writer in residence at the dedicated to Mississippi since graduating from University of West Florida and the author Mississippi State—except for a brief University of Alabama at Birmingham. Flannery stint working on a political campaign “We’re lucky to have someone of Brad OíConnor in the 1980s—he said he’s “curious and Watson’s caliber coming here this year,” (1925-1964) happy to be back, to get in touch with said David Galef, professor of English and in recognition the people and places of Mississippi administrator of the creative writing of her again. I’m grateful to John and Renée program at Ole Miss. “He’s a Southern contributions to American letters. Grisham for creating this position, not writer with two well-received books Detailed information about the just because I’m benefitting from it this under his belt, and the Grisham Writer the conference will soon be posted year, but because it’s good for writing in Residence post should enable him to on the Center’s Web site and the arts in Mississippi. It’s another do more fine work.” (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south). way to show the arts are still important to the people who live here.” JENNIFER SOUTHALL

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 7 Living Blues News

Living Blues: The Magazine of the African-American Blues Tradition continues to provide first- rate blues music journalism. Our current issue features New York-based bluesman Michael Hill, a conversation with soul blues artist Lou Pride, and the social and artistic commentary of Mighty Mo Rodgers. Record reviews, a remembrance about an encounter with bluesman Bo Carter, and an exclusive excerpt from James Segreat and Mark Hoffman’s new Howlin’ Wolf biography, Moanin’ at Midnight, round out the issue. In addition to the magazine, the staff at Living Blues has produced the 2005 Blues Directory, an essential resource for blues artists, professionals, and fans. Orders are being taken for the 2005 directory, and those submitting orders before September 1, 2004, will receive a free Chris Thomas King CD. To place an order, please visit our Web site (www.livingblues.com) or send us an e-mail ([email protected]). Finally, planning is underway for our 2005 Blues Today: A Living Blues Symposium, scheduled for February 18-20, 2005. Tentatively planned are discussions on the legacy of Robert Johnson, a panel of blues documentary filmmakers, and our annual Blues on the Square concerts. Web site registration will begin in September so please make your travel plans now!

MARK CAMARIGG

Exhibition Schedule September 13 - October 31, 2004 January 15 - March 11, 2005 The Civil Rights Photographs Mississippi: Take Time to Appreciate (1960-1964) of Harold Lowe Bruce J. West Nashville Public Library, Special Collections Division March 14 - May 27, 2005 Rachel Lawson, curator Documentary Fieldwork Photographs Southern Studies Students November 1 - January 14, 2005 Game and Fish through the Lens Wiley Prewitt

The Gammill Gallery, located in Barnard Observatory, is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., except for University holidays. Telephone: 662-915-5993.

Page 8 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Wharton Assisting with Blue Mountain Project David Wharton, director of documentary projects and assistant professor of Southern Studies at the Center, is creating a photography exhibition portraying the citizens of Blue Mountain, a small town in Tracy Hopkins fishing at pond on northeast Mississippi. The exhibition campus of Blue is part of the community’s effort to Mountain College revitalize itself after decades of economic decline. Home to Blue Mountain College, a Christian women’s college founded in 1873, the town has a rich history and is now seeking to draw on its heritage to facilitate economic growth and community revitalization. The unveiling of Wharton’s photography exhibition will coincide with a major community event September 23-24, 2004. Blue Mountain will host Your Town: The Citizens’ Institute on Rural Design, a workshop Krystal Mooney (left) and Jane funded through a $22,000 grant Sumrall singing, sponsored by the National Trust for Lowrey Memorial Historic Preservation and the National Baptist Church, Endowment for the Arts. The project is Blue Mountain, administered by the Mississippi Hills Mississippi Heritage Area Alliance and is one of four such workshops to be conducted nationally in 2004. The Blue Mountain workshop will focus on a range of rural

community design issues, using the town The Center for the Study of as a case study; examine the surrounding Southern Culture, a founding partner area, including Ripley and New Albany; of the Mississippi Hills Heritage Area and explore how local and area heritage Alliance, is assisting with Wharton’s resources can benefit by being part of exhibition and the Blue Mountain regional heritage-conservation and project. development initiatives. KENT BAIN

Volleyball game at July 4 picnic hosted by Blue Mountain’s Good News Church

Mae Belle Miller, age 94, on the porch of her home in Blue Mountain

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 9 New Ventress Members 2005 Natchez

The Center is happy to announce that donated their time and money to a Literary and Jamie and Ernest Joyner of Tupelo have number of cultural, artistic, and become the latest members of the philanthropic endeavors throughout Cinema Ventress Order, an organization that north Mississippi.“We think the state administers gifts to departments of Ole and the University are moving in the Miss’s College of Liberal Arts. The right direction, and an awful lot of Celebration Joyners, longtime supporters of the people have worked hard to see that “A riveting topic, speakers who are Center, join 11 other individuals or happen,” Jamie said. “We just want to major headliners, and a program with organizations to use their Ventress be a part of that.” a track record of success—all in Order gift to support the Center. Named in honor of James Alexander Mississippi’s Queen City!” So wrote “The Ventress Order really appealed Ventress, a founding father of the one scholar about the 16th annual to us,” said Jamie Joyner, who recently University, the Ventress Order Natchez Literary and Cinema joined the Center’s advisory encourages recognition of the College of Celebration, to take place February committee. “It’s great that the Liberal Arts as one of the country’s 23-27, 2005, in Natchez, Mississippi. University has a program that allows outstanding centers of learning. College The theme is “Between Two Worlds: people to designate gifts to a particular of Liberal Arts graduates, family Free Blacks in the Antebellum South.” department.” members, friends, or organizations may The conference will begin with a keynote address by Ira Berlin, The Joyners, who have lived in Tupelo join the order and designate their gifts University of Maryland, author of for more than 40 years and who have ties to particular departments or programs Slaves without Masters: The Free to north Mississippi dating back five within the college. Corporate and full Negro in the Antebellum South. The generations, say they’re proud of the individual memberships are available by conference will continue with work Ole Miss and the Center are doing pledging $10,000 and $5,000 programs, films, workshops, to promote Mississippi. “The Center has respectively. Gifts are payable in lump discussion groups, book signings, a positive, strong national presence, and sums or installments not to exceed 10 concerts, tours, meals, and we have a lot of pride in the positive years. Affiliate memberships are also receptions. programs it offers,” Jamie said. available through a pledge of $1,000, A highlight will be the dedication Besides supporting the Center, payable in a lump sum or installments and grand opening of the William Ernest, a Vanderbilt University not to exceed four years. Johnson House in downtown Natchez, once home of a free black graduate who works for BancorpSouth, and now part of the Natchez and Jamie, who is a homemaker, have JENNIFER SOUTHALL National Historical Park. The conference is sponsored by Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Natchez National Historical Park, Mississippi Department of Archives and History, and Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Founder and director is Carolyn Vance Smith of Natchez, longtime member of the advisory committee of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Information about the conference may be obtained by calling 601-446- 1289 or toll-free 866-296- 6522; by e- mailing [email protected]; or by visiting the Web site, www.colin.edu/nlcc. Most of the conference is free.

Jamie and Ernest Joyner

Page 10 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Eudora Welty Newsletter – Past, Present, and Future

The Eudora Welty Newsletter is the only The Eudora Welty Newsletter has scholarly publication devoted around 300 subscribers at present, exclusively to the Pulitzer Prize-winning including scholars and libraries from writer Eudora Welty. It was created in Italy, France, England, Spain, Norway, 1977 by William U. McDonald Jr. of the Japan, Brazil, Denmark, Israel, Greece, University of Toledo as “a relatively and much of the United States and informal medium of communication Canada. The editorial advisory board among Welty scholars and collectors.” of the EWN, established in 1997, McDonald, who participated in includes distinguished writer Reynolds numerous bibliographical and critical Price and the family-authorized Welty studies of Welty’s work and amassed a biographer Suzanne Marrs, as well as substantial Welty collection that he has leading scholars in the field. In addition since given to the Canaday Center at to publishing the newsletter, the EWN the University of Toledo, is considered editors have other responsibilities: they by Welty scholars—as Noel Polk stated participate in meetings with the in “W. U. McDonald, Jr., Appreciated” executive committees of the Eudora (Eudora Welty Newsletter 21.1)—as not Welty Society, which presents papers at just a pioneer in Welty studies, but the international, national, and regional inspiration and a sustaining presence as McDonald have continued into the conferences, and the Society for the the field has developed over the past present. The newsletter grew to include Study of Southern Literature. The three and a half decades.” longer critical analyses of her work. In Center for the Study of Southern When McDonald began the Eudora 2000, Welty’s garden, planned and Culture at the University of Mississippi, Welty Newsletter, it offered bibliographic planted by her mother, and the author’s the Center for the Study of the information (on works by Welty and references to gardens and plants in her American South at the University of works about Welty) and served as a record fiction gained interest, and since the North Carolina, the Eudora Welty of Welty’s public activities. “EWN is not Summer 2001 issue, “Roses in Welty’s Foundation, as well as weekly student intended,” stated McDonald, “as an outlet Garden” has been a recurring piece that and lay inquirers, confer with the EWN for explications, critical analyses, [or] details individual rose types that Welty editors regarding Welty studies. As more broadly scholarly studies.” has mentioned in stories and novels. In commentators on Welty and her works, Throughout the years, the newsletter the Summer 2004 issue, Welty’s the EWN editors also have been evolved to include reviews of Welty’s uncollected story “Magic” (Manuscript featured in the media, including an work; Welty’s blurbs written for book 1935) will be republished with a note on interview on National Public Radio, jackets; information about awards Welty its history. interviews in the national press received, adaptations of her stories, and In addition to content changes have following Welty’s death, and an foreign editions of her work; and been changes in layout and design. The interview by John Siegenthaler for a collations and discussions of the textual EWN began using a decorative title and Welty-focused episode of the PBS show variants in different versions of Welty’s borders around the pages and changed to A Word on Words. The Eudora Welty stories. McDonald retired as editor of the a two-column layout in printed magazine Newsletter has also served as an affiliate Eudora Welty Newsletter after 20 years and format. The EWN also began printing with the fiction readings at the 40 issues—“a very rewarding experience,” photographs and illustrations, and since Margaret Mitchell House, worked with he says—and the newsletter was still 1999, the newsletter has benefited from the Georgia Center for the Book on going strong. So, beginning with volume Howard and Pat McHenry’s generosity activities that promote reading and 21 in 1997, the newsletter changed hands: in support of the production costs of literacy in Georgia, and conferred with Pearl McHaney of Georgia State color printing and permission fees. The the Georgia Committee of the National University, who had compiled the annual EWN has also published two special Museum of Women in the Arts. checklist of Welty scholarship since 1986, supplements, a memorial section shortly Recently, the editors of the Eudora assumed editorship of the EWN. after Welty’s death (Summer 2001) and Welty Newsletter were instrumental in With the editorial change also came an index to Welty’s autobiography One bringing an archive of Welty first changes in the content of the newsletter. Writer’s Beginnings (Winter 2003). An editions and valuable secondary Pieces about Welty’s appearances, index to The Eye of the Story: Selected materials given by John Bayne, a awards, editions, and translations were Essays and Reviews is planned for collector of Southern literary works, to still included, and, of course, the annual Summer 2004, and the Winter 2005 Georgia State’s rare books collection. checklist of works by Welty and the issue will include an index to Michael The Bayne Collection, valued at over “annual bibliography of criticism and Kreyling’s Author and Agent, neither of scholarship on her work” initiated by which were indexed when published. (continued on page 14)

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 11 Black Tells about Programming Plans for Eudora Welty’s House hvsadHistor y and Ar chives of Depar tment Mississippi Courtesy Patti Carr Black, author, exhibitions curator, former museum director, and longtime friend of Eudora Welty, participated in a program the Center sponsored with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History as part of the opening of the garden at Welty’s home at 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson in April 2004. Black’s remarks, printed here, tell about programming plans for the home, which is expected to open in late 2006.

The Department of Archives and dearly regarded by me,” fed her stories, History wants to make the Eudora Welty characters, landscapes, and dialogue. House one of the foremost literary house When she gave the house to MDAH, museums in America, with a strong she emphasized that it was the house of intellectual focus and, in accordance her family, a family that honored books with Eudora’s wishes, a strong emphasis and reading. She did not want a “house on the place of literature in our culture about her,” but about literature and the and the writer in our society. Early on we arts in our culture. got good advice from Dan Jordan, Freeman Tilden, a prominent director of Monticello. It was simply and authority on museum interpretation, Patti Carr Black strongly stated: scholarship should drive wrote that historic sites offer an the mission. education “superior in some respects to forms, but it was our desire that it be as In 2000, before Eudora’s death, at the that of the classroom, for here [the insightful and intelligent as Welty was in request of the Eudora Welty Foundation, visitor] meets the Thing Itself.” The writing and conversation, and that the I visited several of the nation’s major Welty House will be one of the most initial groundwork be guided by a Welty literary houses and met with directors intact literary houses in America in scholar. We were extremely fortunate in and curators, asking questions, looking at terms of authenticity. Its exterior, securing for this important slot Suzanne the contents and houses and policies. interior, and furnishings will be as they Marrs, one of the leading Welty scholars These houses included Mark Twain’s and were: paintings and photographs, objets in the nation. Marrs assumed this Harriet Beecher Stowe’s in Hartford, d’art, linens, furniture, draperies, rugs, position part time beginning in FY2003, Connecticut; Mark Twain’s in Hannibal, and above all, hundreds of books will funded by the Eudora Welty Foundation. Missouri; Thomas Wolfe’s in Asheville, be in their original places—thanks to Eminently qualified to provide the North Carolina; Ernest Hemingway’s in Mary Alice Welty White and Elizabeth intellectual guidance that we are seeking, Key West, Florida; Carl Sandburg’s in Welty Thompson, the author’s nieces, she is the editor of Eudora Welty and Flat Rock, North Carolina; William who inherited the furnishings and Politics: Did the Writer Crusade? and Faulkner’s in Oxford, Mississippi; and donated them to the state. author of The Welty Collection, One Tennessee Williams’s in Clarksdale and The impression of the interior—with Writer’s Imagination, and the forthcoming Columbus, Mississippi. virtually every wall lined with books—is biography of Welty, to be published by The Eudora Welty House joins that of the house of a reader, a family of Harcourt. We are also fortunate that the approximately 65 other literary houses readers, who valued books and read Eudora Welty Chair of Southern Studies across the U.S.; these houses hold a widely in works by the best minds of the at Millsaps is currently occupied by special place in the historic fabric of our 20th century, as well as in the classics of Peggy Prenshaw, who will be available nation by preserving the literate past and world literature. Also in the House for Welty House programs. encouraging the future of our intellectual Collection are childhood memorabilia, and literary life. The challenge of these family photographs, and medals and Educational Mission houses is to use their evocative power as certificates of literary honors that Welty Our overall educational mission is to a catalyst for contemporary provocative received. We hope here the visitor will use Welty’s home and work to convey programming. The possibilities are far meet Eudora. Her life was committed to the potency of the written word in our ranging and almost limitless, and I feel the efficacy of the written word, so it is culture and the great themes of human prepared to say that the Welty House her keen sensitivity and intelligence that life in Welty’s writing. She has said, can be one of the most substantive informs the educational goals of our “Human life is fiction’s only theme.” Her experiences in the world of America’s programming. work focuses on a way to understand the literary houses. This programming will take many human experience as she profoundly The significance of the Eudora Welty House hardly needs telling: this is the The NEH challenge grant to support programming at the Eudora Welty House house where Eudora Welty lived for requires matching funds of $1,350,000. Contributions are tax exempt and may be over 75 years and where she wrote all of sent to the Eudora Welty Foundation, Inc., P.O. Box 55685, Jackson, MS 39205- her fiction and essays. Her memory, 5685. For more information, contact Mary Alice White, Eudora Welty House which she called “the treasure most Director, by e-mail ([email protected]) or visit www.eudorawelty.org/.

Page 12 Summer 2004 The Southern Register tour will describe the garden’s lively place Eudora Welty in the life of the family and its use in the works of Eudora Welty. Breathtaking descriptions of flowers, trees, sky, and earth abound throughout her fiction and correspondence. In her fiction Welty alludes to more than 150 plants. Even the briefest reading of her descriptions of flowers, trees, and shrubs introduces readers to the concept of metaphor, the brilliance of imagery, and the possibility of seeing things in a new way. The Visitors’ Center. There will be a separate structure as an adjunct educational facility. One room will be devoted to videos. An orientation film for the Eudora Welty House, of 12-15 minutes, will be produced by MDAH. Visual footage can be drawn from previously filmed segments of Welty, including several from Mississippi Public Broadcasting and several hours of footage donated by the British Broadcasting Company as outtakes of Courtesy Mississippi Depar tment of Ar chives and Histor y their documentary on Welty in 1984. The C. W. Welty Photographs and the Eudora Welty Photographs in the First let’s look at the basic programs. MDAH archives also provide a wealth Guided tours of the Eudora Welty of visual material. House. The Eudora Welty House will be Exhibits. There will be temporary presented as the home of a family that exhibits on such topics as the family honored books and words and produced photographs made by Welty’s father. one of America’s great writers. Her Displays concerning Welty’s books, parents’ deep belief in education and papers, photographs, and other Eudora Welty House reading are apparent in the thousands of creations will be rotated in the visitors’ books that line every room in the house. center. Exhibits on Welty’s fiction will explored the communal existence that So the basic tour will highlight Welty’s be theme-oriented. defines us and our culture. Her insights life with her family, work, and career; Sundays at the Eudora Welty House. were not limited to her own experience. her sense of community; her place in This series, perhaps four times a year in Toni Morrison wrote, “Eudora Welty American and international literature; tents, will feature readings of poetry, writes about black people in a way that her use of place as an element in fiction; drama, fiction, and nonfiction of few white men have ever been able to her influence on contemporary Southern writers, including Welty. write. It’s not patronizing, not American short stories. Special tours Children’s story hours. Special romanticizing—it’s the way they should and talks will be offered to groups that children’s events will be scheduled in the be written about.” On the publication in request them: on such topics as other summers. Books selected to help young the New Yorker of the story “The literary luminaries who have visited the Mississippians see widely the nature of the Demonstrators,” Jesse Jackson wrote to house (Elizabeth Bowen, Elizabeth state of Mississippi (as Welty famously the magazine: “Eudora Welty’s ‘The Spencer, Reynolds Price, Richard Ford, did) and understand the multiplicity of Demonstrators’ was so true and powerful Ellen Douglas, Ellen Gilchrist, Margaret cultures that feed the culture of that it makes me weep for my people.” Walker Alexander, Joan Didion, Ross Mississippi. Titles might include Choctaw And Welty’s body of fiction reflecting MacDonald, Willie Morris, Kaye folk tales, African and European folk woman’s experience in 20th-century Gibbons, and almost Henry Miller; her tales, contemporary children’s books on America is increasingly studied by mother had read one of his novels and subjects ranging from ecological feminist scholars. (Her work is had decreed that he would not step foot awareness to racial tolerance. prominently featured in Patricia Yaeger’s in her house). Other special topics will We have received a $450,000 study of Southern women writers, Dust be Welty’s photographic career and her challenge grant from the National and Desire, which won the 2001 Holman interest and contributions to the theatre. Endowment for the Humanities. And Award as best book in Southern Studies.) Guided tours of the Welty Garden. The the great news is that it is 100 percent for

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 13 educational programming. Our plans for Women, which has an annual Eudora film contest for Best New Adaptation of activities to be funded by income from Welty Day; the University of Southern Welty’s fiction. the NEH Welty Educational Mississippi, where Welty scholar Noel In short, the Eudora Welty House Endowment Fund are these: Polk holds forth. We want to involve programming will continue the legacy An International Welty Conference other local colleges: Tougaloo College, of Eudora Welty’s striking intellect and will be held in 2009, the 100th Jackson State University, and Hinds creative powers, her zest and curiosity, anniversary of Welty’s birth. This event Community College, in workshops and the place of literature in our lives, and will be held in conjunction with programs involving documentary the writer in our society. Eudora’s words Millsaps College, which will make photography and creative writing. of 1954 seem current a half century available meeting rooms for individual As the endowment grows more and later: “Mutual understanding in the sessions, an auditorium for general more—or if separate endowments can be world being nearly always, as now, at sessions, and lodging facilities. Since found—we would like to sponsor an low ebb, it is comforting to remember Welty’s work has been translated into annual short story contest, nationally, that it is through art that one country virtually every European language, as with a prestigious judge and a prize can nearly always speak reliably to well as many Asian languages, we will worthy of its name; an annual another. Art, though, is never the voice invite noted international Welty photography contest, perhaps limited to of a country; it is an even more precious scholars to participate. Then, Mississippi photographers to replicate thing, the voice of the individual, doing beginning in 2009, a national Welty Welty’s efforts “to see widely and at close its best to speak, not comfort of any conference will be held biennially, hand the nature of Mississippi”; and why sort, indeed, but truth.” She believed in alternately at Millsaps College and not, as long as we are wishing, a short her medium, so do we. Belhaven College. The conference will be patterned on the respected and long-lived William Faulkner continued from page 11 Welty Newsletter conference at the University of Mississippi and will include writers and $27,000, was showcased in April 2004 with a reception and illustrated catalogue to scholars as participants. inaugurate its exhibition in Special Collections. Other events will include Mississippi Aside from community activities, the EWN also maintains a presence on the Internet Writers’ Days, an event held every other with its Web site, www.gsu.edu/~wwwewn. This site offers a selected bibliography of year that will feature readings by Welty’s works; a brief biography, “Remembering Eudora Welty (1909-2001)” by Renée Mississippi-born writers from all over the Love; a sample article from a recent print issue of the newsletter; a complete list of all nation; research grants of up to $2,000 Table of Contents listings; an awards list for Welty; links to other Welty Web sites; given annually to an applicant wishing to information about upcoming Welty-related events; Welty-related calls for papers; and a work in the Welty collections of MDAH; frequently-asked-questions section. summer seminars for both college and Several years ago the editors entered the EWN in CELJ’s Phoenix Award high school teachers; and a series of panel competition for significantly improved or resurrected journals. The newsletter discussions or lectures by national scholars received very favorable comments but, since it is a “newsletter,” was not eligible to on topics in relation to Welty’s work: compete for the award. It was suggested that the editors entertain the idea of making philosophy, politics, race relations, humor, the publication more of a journal by soliciting or accepting longer critical articles as feminism, sense of place, the natural well as its standard short essays, news, notes, and biographical and textual pieces. In world, visual arts, theatre or film. We will the past several years, the editors have made great progress toward achieving this goal also explore the feasibility of annual and may again change the format of the EWN. Currently, subscription rates are $10 Elderhostel sessions on Welty, publish an domestic and $14 international for two issues per year (Winter and Summer), and electronic newsletter for high school and individual issues and back issues are $7 per issue. junior high school teachers throughout The EWN welcomes submissions from Welty scholars and collectors. Submissions the state on teaching Welty, distribute should be typed and double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and should follow the materials to schools in preparation for current MLA style guide with internal citations and a list of works cited. Endnotes field trips. should be reserved for explanatory comments and supplementary information. As the endowment grows and is Where applicable, quotations should be made to the Library of America volumes of added to, MDAH plans to enlarge its Welty’s works as the standard in the field. (The Library of America uses Welty’s first outreach to involve colleges and editions of all her story collections, novels, and memoir, and includes “Where Is the universities across the state in the Voice Coming From?” and “The Demonstrators” from Collected Stories, plus selected presentation of Eudora Welty House essays.) Submissions may be submitted by e-mail to Pearl McHaney programs. These institutions will ([email protected]) as Microsoft Word attachments or mailed to the attention of include the Center for the Study of the editor at Eudora Welty Newsletter, English Department, Georgia State Southern Culture at the University of University, P.O. Box 3970, Atlanta, GA, 30302-3970. Suggestions for illustrative Mississippi in Oxford, which had a materials should be sent by e-mail as .tif files. number of Welty programs during her lifetime; Mississippi University for CINDY SHEFFIELD MICHAELS

Page 14 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Reading the South

Queen of the Turtle Derby Halar d François now only as a place of and Other Southern interchangeable Julia Reed Phenomena. suburbs, Home Depots, By Julia Reed. and Blockbusters. As New York: Random House, 2004. the book shows, the 180 pages. $22.95. South is more com- plicated than either Julia Reed would be a great caricature would companion for a road trip. Her eye suggest. for the quirky and downright Reed makes good interesting tidbit is sharp, and her use of newspapers for new book is a journey of sorts material. She recounts through the American South. Some one story in a of her topics are riffs on familiar Mississippi paper themes about the region—violence, about a man who religion, politics, drinking, the killed his longtime weather—but she brings her buddy because he “would not keep her first solid food as a child was distinctive angle of vision to it all. his hands away from the grill.” probably hot tamales from Doe’s Eat Essays on beauty and food are among Another story tells about a wife who Place in Greenville and a barbecue the best, perhaps not surprising from stabbed her husband on sandwich from Sherman’s Grocery a senior writer for Vogue and a food Thanksgiving Day, after they argued Store there. Deltans do like to lay columnist for the New York Times about who would get the last piece of down a good base for the Southern Magazine.We should note up front turkey—and he grabbed it. As she identity. that Reed is a wonderful storyteller, notes, such stories “speak for “Whiskey Weather” may be my and with this book she assumes her themselves,” without need for what favorite chapter of the book, wherein place among the region’s wittiest Keats described as “irritable reaching she tells about living in New commentators. after fact and reason.” Orleans, “a place that has almost as Reed takes her stand firmly on the Reed also enjoys telling anecdotes, many murders as days of the year and belief that distinctive Southern ways such as the one from a friend who a humidity level so high that it’s endure. Academics spend too much went to a wedding in Mississippi hard to tell the air from the water.” mental energy worrying about where she talked with a man who Her extended analysis of Southern whether the South still exists, when told her he was in the “used grease” attitudes toward “pestilence,” seen Southerners themselves continue business. Reed admires this response, most clearly in New Orleans, is adapting their older ways to new noting it was succinct and “pretty hilarious. After relating stories of realities, and Reed understands this much tells you all you need to know.” “flying Formosan termites who are state of the region’s development. She As with most folks who write literally eating up the city,” sets about to counter two prevailing about “the South,” Reed is at her “caterpillars with toxic spines,” and caricatures of the South. One is the best in talking about her “unique “packs of feral hogs” that are “Scratchin’ and Spittin’” school of part of the country,” as she puts it, destroying the levees that keep the observers, who see the region which is the Deep South, especially city from flooding, she concludes: hopelessly trapped in a benighted past the Mississippi Delta, where she “Living here is not unlike living in of Jim Crow segregation and ignorant grew up, and New Orleans, where the Old Testament.” backwardness. The other prevailing she lives now when not working in Read this book and you will learn stereotype she wants to dispel is that New York. One of her earliest the distinction between a redneck of the “SUV and Soccer Mom” memories is learning to make and a peckerwood, why in the South commentators, who see the region martinis, and she thinks that among “to simply lose one’s mind is not

Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, For these and other books call 800-648-4001 or fax 601-234-9630. Students, and Friends of the Center for the 160 Courthouse Square • Oxford, Mississippi 38655 Study of Southern Culture

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 15 Reading the South continued

considered all that much of a big admonition to “never let American story of a daughter who tries to deal,” how beauty in Memphis is perfume touch your skin.” But discover her identity. The symptom of verifiably distinctive from beauty in underneath this genteel comfortable Elizabeth’s struggle to accept her roots non-Southern places, and why life the family is battling increasing is her eating disorder, which stems Southern women always know how prejudice and persecution first by the from the trauma effect of the to “rise to the occasion.” We meet in Austrian socialists and then by the Holocaust that still radiates into her these pages Tammy Wynette, George Nazi regime, and despite their American life. Jones, a former beauty queen who conversion to Catholicism the family The novel touches on the complex carries a crown just in case she ends eventually has to flee to America. In psychological processes that up suddenly in another pageant, and many ways, Genevieve’s narrative is intertwine the home of origin with Neil Cargile Jr., the member of a a tribute to her own mother, Rosette, the present home in America in a prestigious Nashville country club whose courage and resourcefulness variety of ways that impact the who nonetheless liked to wear tennis save their lives; and it is a gift of the identities of both mother and dresses. past to her daughter Elizabeth. daughter. In this narrative of female One agrees with Julia Reed that her For Elizabeth, born in Mississippi identity formation, two generations of attempt to understand her distinct and living in suburban Chicago, her women struggle with the ghost of part of the nation, with “its quirkiness, mother’s European past is a mystery, patriarchy in the figure of the violence, and grace,” can help unaccessible not only because her grandfather. For Elizabeth in particular illuminate the nation’s ways as well. mother rarely speaks of the past but there are many mysteries: Why did She notes also that, besides, the South also because she is the last survivor of her grandfather return to Vienna after is “funny as hell,” and one might say her family. As Elizabeth is growing up, the war, leaving his daughter behind the same thing about this book. she attempts to piece together the in America? Why did he remarry CHARLES REAGAN WILSON remaining fragments of family history immediately after his courageous wife, in the form of the sketchy stories of Rosette, died? And why did he exclude relatives and the few heirlooms that from his memoirs his own daughter were safely brought to America. A and granddaughter? Who was he as a In My Mother’s House. major point of confusion for Elizabeth historian and family man? By Margaret McMullan. New York: is the Nazi persecution of her In writing the story of this family— St. Martin’s Press, 2003. 262 pages. apparently Catholic family, a a story with autobiographical $23.95. confusion that is only gradually overtones—Margaret McMullan resolved with her discovery of her muses on the gendered histories that In My Mother’s House is a novel Jewish heritage. Elizabeth’s story is a men and women write. She opposes about family presented in interlacing classic coming of age narrative, a the patriarchal history of the and alternating perspectives of a grandfather, a professor of world mother and a daughter. The novel history concerned with facts and revolves around the women’s coming objectivity, with the histories that to terms with memories of the the women tell. The women’s

family’s past and their present Patrick O’Connor histories are marked by a longing for identities. The mother, Genevieve, “home,” the desire to know their was born in Vienna before the roots, their “mother’s house.” Yet the outbreak of World War II. Her story mother’s house is ultimately is largely composed of her memories unknowable. Destroyed in World of her childhood in Austria and their War II, the family’s home is only grand home in Vienna, the Hofzeile, available in memory and history and which was lost in the ravages of the thus simultaneously symbolizes the war. As the daughter of a father who desire for knowing the mother’s past was a factory owner, a monarchist, and its ever receding possibility to do and a professor of history, Genevieve so. describes her upbringing in a bourgeois household that evokes ANNETTE TREVZER memories of polished silver, treasured heirlooms, classical home concerts, kitchen help, and her mother’s Margaret McMullan

Page 16 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Reading the South continued University Press of Mississippi A member of the Association of American University Presses Genesis of an American Playwright. By Horton Foote. Edited by Marion Castleberry. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2004. 287 pages. Great Houses of $29.95. Mississippi Text by Mary Carol Miller The author of more than 100 plays, teleplays, and Photographs by Mary Rose Carter screenplays, Horton Foote has received an abundance Superb text and stunning of awards for his work in drama: two Academy Awards photographs that capture the antebellum grandeur of thirty-five (Best Adaptation for To Kill a Mockingbird and Best showcase homes Original Screenplay for Tender Mercies), an Emmy (Old $45 hardback Man), a Pulitzer Prize in Drama (The Young Man from Atlanta), the National Medal of Arts, and many other honors. But in addition to his dramatic work, Foote has Witnessing produced two novels (The Chase, 1956; Days of Violence, By Ellen Douglas unpublished), two memoirs (Farewell,1999; Beginnings, Essays that affirm the writer’s lifelong 2001), and some 25 essays, lectures, and commentaries role as witness to humanity and history dating from 1944 to the present. These reveal the $28 hardback private man, the prolific artist, and the creative process. Editor Marion Castleberry has made a major contribution to the history of American theater in collecting Foote’s commentaries on writing, film, theater, and television. Castleberry has done an Coming Home! excellent job of selecting, arranging, and editing these Self-Taught Artists, the Bible, essays. He has included a full chronology of Foote’s and the American South personal and professional life as well as an appendix Edited by Carol Crown, that includes stage plays, teleplays, and screenplays, foreword by Lee Kogan followed by cast lists and production details for each A fascinating examination of the Bible’s play. He has also written a good introduction placing influence on seventy- three self-taught Foote in context. Divided into five chapters— “Genesis artists and 122 works of art of a Playwright,” “On Being a Southern Writer,” $65 hardback, $30 paperback “Writing for the Stage,” “Writing for the Screen,” and “Thoughts on American Theater”—the collection provides a look back to Foote’s childhood during the Elvis and Gladys Depression in Wharton, Texas, as well as an account of By Elaine Dundy American drama, film, and television over the last half The thoughtful and informative of the 20th century. biography that The Boston Globe Foote says his plays began “when as a child I asked called “nothing less than the best questions of my family about their past. I heard variations Elvis book yet” when the stories were told by different people. . . . I don’t $20 paperback think I chose what I write about so much as it chose me.”

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Find in bookstores, or order from the publisher online at www.upress.state.ms.us or by phone at 1-800-737-7788.

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 17 Reading the South continued

Foote goes on to comment on his people carry on. . . . And yet many influences—both personal and something about them retains a literary. “I write all of my plays out of dignity. They face life, and they my own experience and observations,” don’t ask for quarters.” Foote affirms, he says. “As a writer, a playwright, and “I suppose you’d have to say I’m screenwriter, my goal is always to attracted to survivors. I guess in spite establish a true sense of place.” Place of the chaos around us, there’s a lot and time are major influences along to celebrate about humanity.” And with the people he grew up with, both Foote continues to celebrate hearing them and observing them. He humanity and courage. credits Katherine Ann Porter with helping him find a way “to use the JOANNE BRANNON ALDRIDGE particulars of time and place without being trapped in the quaintness of regionalism.” Place comes from the town where The Tennessee Williams he grew up–Harrison in his plays. “I Encyclopedia. have tried to make Harrison true to Edited by Philip C. Kolin. Westport, itself, true to the towns I have known. Connecticut: Greenwood, 2004. It has its tragedies and its comedies, 350 pages. $89.95. performance history, symbolism, and its rich and its poor, its great virtues biographical-cultural contexts in nine and its terrible injustices.” And Foote Marlon Brando died at 80 this past July, lively pages for this valuable new has much to say about coming from a but the face pictured in many news reference work. In a separate two-page Southern place: “We Southerners I stories was that of a vibrant Stanley entry, Leonard J. Leff chronicles “A think are very blessed in that we are Kowalski. As the male lead in Streetcar Named Desire as Opera,” a surrounded by people who love to Tennessee Williams’s 1947 hit,A fascinating look at “the most talk, who love to remember, and who Streetcar Named Desire, Brando prominent—and easily promoted— love to share their remembrances. swaggered to fame in Stanley’s tight T- contribution to the late 1990s rebirth There is still an oral tradition in the shirts and blue jeans. Jacqueline of American opera” (253). South and I surely think it is one of O’Connor, who wrote the Marlon With Kolin as director, a talented the continuing strengths of our Brando entry for The Tennessee Williams cast of more than 50 scholars produced writers.” Foote holds, “There is a Encyclopedia, explains that the jeans close to 160 additional articles for The continuing vitality in Southern were adjusted for a close fit by costume Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia. Kolin writing. Every few years some critic designer Lucinda Ballard. “In Stanley,” estimates that it would take a five- or will write an essay on the demise of says O’Connor, “Tennessee Williams six-volume encyclopedia to treat both the region as a source for writers—yet created a complicated figure of postwar the whole of Williams’s canon (about Southern writing continues. No other energy and masculinity—sensual, 70 plays, together with novels, stories, region of the country has given us so boyish, and violent—whom Brando memoirs, poems, paintings, letters, many talented writers black and white brought to life” (18). Alphabetically and journals) and the writer’s “endless for such a sustained period.” arranged, from “A” (the dramatist friendships and associations” (xi). In addition to a sense of time Edward Albee) to “Y” (the comedy You Consequently, the TWE’s modest goal and place, great art carries a vision, Touched Me!), the Williams is to present “the most essential Foote believes. Foote has said, encyclopedia abounds in such information on Williams and his “Courage is my theme.” He has intriguing facts and interpretive work.” An “Alphabetical List of perceived the roots of courage in the insights. Entries” at the beginning of the face of devastating loss and Editor Philip C. Kolin, of the volume reveals that these essentials misfortune. He has examined the University of Southern Mississippi, is extend to William Faulkner, Madness, human condition through characters probably the world authority on St. Louis, the Tennessee who embody his vision. He says, Streetcar Named Desire and has Williams/New Orleans Literary “Life is a mystery isn’t it? . . . I published many books and essays Festival, and Gore Vidal. Another believe very deeply in the human about its author. In collaboration with instructive list is Kolin’s “Guide to spirit, and I have a sense of awe Maureen Curley, he discusses Related Topics,” which groups about it. Because I don’t know how Streetcar’s themes, characters, encyclopedia entries into eight areas:

Page 18 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Reading the South continued

“Awards, Collections, and Festivals”; “potent factors in Southern literature” point” (xi) for anyone who wants to “Culture, Politics, Religion, and as “deep religious fervor, a love of the learn more about the writer. Social Issues”; “Family and Early land, and family traditions” (232). Williams’s maternal grandfather, History”; “People”; “Places”; “Theater While most readers know that the Walter Edwin Dakin, who appears and Films”; “Works”; and “Writers Mississippi Delta and New Orleans are briefly in Londré’s account, is the and Publishers.” thematically crucial settings in Cat on topic of an entry by Colby H. In the Preface, Kolin explains that a Hot Tin Roof and Streetcar Named Kullman, who teaches a popular most of the entries fall into four Desire, Kimball King points out that course on Tennessee Williams at the general categories. These include “Battle of Angels/Orpheus Descending University of Mississippi and Individuals, from the influential may embody most clearly the frequently gives tours of Williams’s playwright Anton Chekhov to Southernness of Williams’s dramatic Delta. Kullman emphasizes the Williams’s agent Audrey Wood; universe with its portraits of life in Two impact of the Reverend Dakin’s Places, such as Key West, Florida, the River County, Mississippi, the library and the impact of his love on “most fantastic” spot in the United Williams equivalent of Faulkner’s young Tom, who— decades later— States (112), according to Williams, Yoknapatawpha County” (232). “always had a room waiting for him who was attracted to the the town’s Conceptual entries like King’s at his various residences” (54). gay nightlife and the literary culture; supply important contexts for Details like that make for deep and Works, from his 1930s socialist students, teachers, and fans of understanding and pleasurable dramas to the late absurdist plays and Tennessee Williams; most of these browsing. An indispensable reference self-revelatory 1975 Memoirs. Like A compact essays end with a list of work, The Tennessee Williams Streetcar Named Desire, such famous related topics treated in the Encyclopedia is also an absorbing dramas as Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The encyclopedia. For further discussions narrative because, along with their Glass Menagerie, and The Night of the of Southern culture, the reader is great knowledge, the contributors Iguana receive extensive treatment, invited to “See also Clarksdale, share poignant, vivid, and even wry including photos of performances and Mississippi; Film Adaptations; Gender reflections. In the book’s “Chronology,” up-to-date bibliographies. In fact, and Sexuality; Race; Twenty-seven for example, editor Kolin even the briefest discussions in the Wagons Full of Cotton and Other One- parenthetically exclaims,“(Elysian Tennessee Williams Encyclopedia are Act Plays” (234). Another form of Fields!),” after recording that Williams followed by at least one or two sources cross-referencing is the use of bold- choked to death at New York’s Hotel of further information–Web sites and face type. Thus, when King mentions Elysee (xxviii). This wonderful aside library archives among them. Kingdom of Earth and Sweet Bird of evokes Stanley Kowalski’s old stomping Kolin describes the fourth type of Youth, the type- font indicates that ground, which was familiar turf to entry—Concepts—as “perhaps the these plays have their own entries. Williams. heart” of the encyclopedia. Exploring Many Williams dramas, including In the encyclopedia’s long “New “key ideas, themes, ideologies, and Sweet Bird of Youth and Kingdom of Orleans” entry, Jürgen C. Wolter Williams’s techniques/dramaturgy” Earth (as Last of the Mobile Hot Shots), remarks that the city was Williams’s (xiii), the several conceptual essays were made into movies; and the six- “sure refuge in a lifelong flight from range from Allean Hale’s “Art” and page essay “Film Adaptations,” by the familial restraints of his youth Mark Edward Clark’s “Mythology” to Gene D. Phillips, S.J., is a and, later, from loneliness and Thomas P. Adler’s “Religion” and noteworthy source for material on himself” (164). Alluding to paradise, Kimball King’s “Southern Culture and actors, screenplays, directors, the Elysian Fields neighborhood Literature.” A Southern literature censorship, prizes, and teleplays. where Stanley and Stella will raise specialist, King explains just how Williams’s most important director, their new baby in Streetcar Named firmly Tennessee Williams was Elia Kazan, is the subject of a separate Desire is “symbolic of an energetic “culturally and spiritually rooted in the entry by Richard E. Kramer, who is vivacity that springs up amid decay,” South” (231). Not only is he the himself a director and actor. Of the says Wolter (167). The curtain has region’s major playwright, but King scores of biographies in the closed on Williams, and on Marlon compares him to Faulkner and Eudora encyclopedia, Felicia Hardison Brando too, but the energetic, Welty for his examination of “the Londré’s essay on Tennessee vivacious Tennessee Williams psychological and familial burdens of Williams, born Thomas Lanier Encyclopedia is a grand encore. the past, both those of the Old and the Williams III, is obviously the most New South” (232). The critic further significant. As Kolin recommends, JOAN WYLIE HALL suggests that Williams reflects such this is “an especially good starting

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 19 Reading the South continued

Killing Ground: Photographs of the Civil War and the Changing American Landscape. Nineteenth century images by various artists. Present-day photographs and text by John Huddleston. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. 185 pages. 86 halftones, 77 color photographs. $35.00. Killing Ground is not an easy book to like. This is due less to its somber subject matter and sometimes gruesome imagery than to John Huddleston’s expectation that readers put more thought into looking at the book’s pictures than most of us normally devote to visual The book’s power derives from Other pairings are not so obvious. material. As a photographer who Huddleston’s pairing of images. Some Many of these rely more on formal hopes his own pictures communicate of the pairs are obvious. A block of similarities between the older more than just the obvious, I found peak-roofed modern apartment pictures and those made by the challenges presented by the buildings at Rappahannock Station, Huddleston than on literal content. images in Killing Ground worth the Virginia, echoes the shape of the One of the 19th-century effort required to decipher them, and tents at a Union army encampment photographs is of a middle-aged I liked the book very much. But I can after the battle there. Timothy Lorenzo Dickey, an amputee who, understand how others might not. O’Sullivan’s famous photograph of a the caption tells, was wounded at Most of the pictures in Killing Gettysburg field strewn with dead is Chantilly, Virginia, when he was 21. Ground are presented in pairs. paired with a view of a Gettysburg He wears a suit, waistcoat, and tie Typically, a black-and-white Civil College athletic field dotted with and sits on an upholstered stool. The War-era image (in most cases a tackling dummies and blocking sleds. right leg of his pants is cut away to photograph, though occasionally a Battlefield markers are visible in the reveal a stump at mid-thigh that map, print, or drawing) appears on far background. But there’s more to ends with a broad, smile-shaped scar. one side of a two-page spread with most of the pairings than a simple On the facing page is a recent one of the author’s modern-day color then-and- now look at the same photograph of an office park under photographs facing it across the place. Huddleston’s photograph of a construction on the site of the gutter. Nearly all of Huddleston’s modest ranch house in Gaines’ Mill, Chantilly battle. In the foreground is pictures are from sites of Civil War Virginia, is all right angles and flat an oval-shaped flowerbed set off battles, some of them well known planes with the exception of an off- from the asphalt around it by a and some not. A few of his images kilter child’s bicycle abandoned on curbstone painted “no-parking” are from battlefields now preserved the front lawn. On the facing page, yellow. The lop-sided curve of this as parks (and interpreted as the bodies of dead from the 1862 curbstone is exactly the shape of Mr. “history”), though most of the places battle at Gaines’ Mill lie in an open Dickey’s scar, a fact that connects he photographs reveal no visible field, having been unearthed from the two photographs on a level connection with their violent past. their shallow battlefield graves and entirely beyond the purely factual. Each picture has a caption providing left scattered about by hungry Other pairings derive from location, date, and a brief bit of animals. They too seem abandoned metaphorical associations— historical information. Captions to and, like the bicycle, forgotten— perceived, imagined, or created by the modern images include casualty their presence disruptive to the Huddleston—between the two figures for the battle fought at the prevailing order but noticed and images. One of these shows two site. recorded only by the photographer. 19th-century medical photographs

Page 20 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Reading the South continued

of amputated feet on the left hand to the actual event—and who was page and pairs them with a present- really at fault. Some even believe day picture of the lush, inviting, that Glenn’s wife had cooked up a deep-green grass carpeting the Mt. complicated plot to frame her Zion Church battlefield in husband because she had “gone back Richmond, Kentucky— grass that on God” and was tired of living the feet such as these will never walk on. straight life of a preacher’s wife. Most Another pairs a photograph of of the folks involved, including inmates at the infamous Confederate Summerford, have chiaroscuro prison at Andersonville, Georgia, backgrounds and a variety of motives with a picture of a diffuse gray and for their perceptions, including the white cloud surrounded by blue sky. agents of the Jackson County legal The latter image is captioned “The system who some think trumped the Sky above the Prison,” alluding no whole thing up to rid the community doubt to the wish of every man in of the “snake handlers.” the older photograph that he could The story has it all: treacherous sprout wings and fly away from that relationships, violence, marital terrible place. infidelity, families in chaos, political I have to admit that some of the skullduggery, drug and alcohol abuse, pairings remain a mystery to me. I’ve and what is seen by many as a enjoyed trying to puzzle them out but uniquely Southern phenomenon— don’t seem able to. In the process, 1993), but a companion work that belief among some Christians that though, I looked really hard at the details the sometimes bizarre, much- serpent handling is an acceptable, pictures involved and got to know publicized trial of Glenn even necessary, manifestation of them better than I would have Summerford in Scottsboro, their relationship with God. otherwise. And that’s what I like Alabama. He has excised the Burton advises readers that the about Killing Ground—the way it journalistic hype surrounding the narrative technique was partly uses visual imagery to elicit thought events of 1992 and tried to re-create inspired by Robert Browning’s in those looking at the images. After the “reality” of the situation—if that Renaissance murder mystery The all, it doesn’t matter if you “solve” can be done at all. The tale unravels Ring and the Book. The black and the reasons behind John beginning with a series of documents white photos throughout are perhaps Huddleston’s pairs. What does abstracted from court records and an ironic choice to embellish a tale matter is that you look at this set of continues using interviews that the that is anything but black and white. serious, thoughtful pictures about a author taped and then transcribed There is a utilitarian, though not pivotal event in America’s past and carefully in the north Alabama exhaustive, index that assists the present, and, if you are so inclined, dialect spoken by Summerford’s book as a text or research tool. think about them. friends, acquaintances, and family Nobody will ever know what really who were involved more or less happened or what the “whole truth” DAVID WHARTON directly in the drama. of the matter was, but maybe that is Summerford, a “Holiness serpent- the point. The Serpent and the Spirit handling preacher,” was accused by masterfully reveals the infinite his wife, Darlene, in 1991 of trying complexities of the author’s Jackson The Serpent and the Spirit: to kill her at home by forcing her subjects, and it succeeds in an Glenn Summerford’s Story. hand into a box of poisonous snakes. objective, highly readable format. By Thomas Burton. She was bitten and hospitalized. The old shaman in Steven Vincent Knoxville: University of Tennessee Subsequently he was charged with Benet’s story “By the Waters of Press, 2004. 262 pages. $1995 paper. attempted murder and sentenced to Babylon” warns his son: “The truth 99 years in prison. The mystery is a hard deer to hunt.” Thomas Burton has masterfully deepens, as the monologues reveal, created not exactly a follow-up to his when it turns out that there were MICHAEL DAVENPORT authoritative, scholarly history, serious discrepancies in the versions Serpent-Handling Believers of what did or could have (University of Tennessee Press, happened—there were no witnesses

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 21 A Kentucky–and Mississippi–Treasure: What a life!

Thomas Dionysius Clark, Kentucky’s He combined these trips with edition of the Encyclopedia of Southern first Historian Laureate, turned 100 last lectures about history. A born Culture, now in progress. year. In a 1990 ceremony to recognize storyteller, he can turn a lectern into a Kentucky was America’s first frontier, the General Assembly’s creation of the cracker barrel, and makes good use of and this whetted a broader interest in the position, then-Governor Brereton C. humor. He was always in great demand West, resulting in Rampaging Frontier in Jones said “Tom Clark is a Kentucky as a speaker, and maintained a 1939 and, 36 years later, The Great treasure. He probably has more whirlwind pace even after he “retired” American Frontier. Clark is the most credibility than any other Kentuckian from UK in 1968. His curiosity prompts productive historian Kentucky has had: in the field of history, public affairs, and him to pick the brains of everyone he 32 books, hundreds of monographs, and political reform.” meets. He talks with state game officials many introductions to books by others. Clark was born July 14, 1903, in a about hunting and with locals about Clark’s love affair with his adopted state two-room log cabin in the “mud-flat farming and crop prices. He is warm allowed him to use history for constructive Mississippi” town of Louisville. His and engaging, with a chuckle, a story, a criticism. A constant theme was the father was a cotton farmer, his mother a twinkle in the eye, innate courtesy, and necessity of more resources for education. public school teacher. Following unfailing good manners. He decried “the shameful waste of seventh grade, young Tom worked two His drive sparked the creation of the precious human creative talent.” He is years on a farm, then at a sawmill, and Kentucky Department of Libraries and still reminding Kentucky that it can, and then as cabin boy and deckhand on a Archives. He was also the inspiration must, do better for itself if it truly wants a dredge boat. At age 18, he entered and driving force (along with Libby more promising future. He is, for example, Choctaw County Agricultural High Jones, then the state’s first lady) of the appalled at the filth and coal silt that still School. By 1925, he had his high school $29 million Kentucky History Center pollute the Kentucky River basin. He says diploma and, with money earned by and Museum in Frankfort. that we “have mowed down the forests, growing 10 acres of cotton, enrolled at His 1937 book, A History of Kentucky, spewed poisonous chemicals into streams, the University of Mississippi. is a classic. Clark’s work combines discharged cesspools and sewers over its In 1928, he took a train to Lexington prodigious research and splendid writing: banks, and festooned its shores with to pursue graduate studies at the the result is a clear, simple narrative, told plastic jugs.” University of Kentucky. Since then, he with grace. About the book he says, “I He is equally aghast at the mindless has devoted his indefatigable energy to determined that what I wrote was going devastation of hardwood forests. his adopted state, as a teacher, writer, to have some style.” He believes history Kentucky land companies ravaged the and civic leader. Returning to UK in is so important it simply must be hills, leaving little but stumps. “Mills 1931, he was soon one of the most presented in a way that makes it stood idle and abandoned, railroad popular lecturers. “I became interested interesting and accessible. Other books trackage fell into disrepair and decay, in Kentucky’s history right off, and I include histories of Clark County and logging equipment rusted at the spot have never lost that interest,” he has Laurel County, The Kentucky in the where it loaded the last logs.” said. “There are historians who say Rivers of America series, Kentucky: Land Thomas D. Clark of Kentucky is a state history has no significance and is of Contrast, Agrarian Kentucky, and festschrift marking Clark’s unsurpassed a local, anecdotal thing. This is wrong, Historic Maps of Kentucky. He was “only achievements as scholar, educator, wrong, wrong. That is where the people 74” when he wrote the four-volume preservationist, agrarian, advocate and live. Local history gives readers a sense Indiana University: Midwestern Pioneer. mentor. of time and place. Students need to At age 99, he coauthored People’s House: His authority is based on academic know how their communities evolved.” Governors’ Mansions of Kentucky. study, but unlike more cloistered At UK, he influenced the lives of He was chief editor of two massive colleagues, he used his authority for thousands of students. Some claimed multivolume publications: Travels in the impassioned advocacy. Thomas D. Clark you really hadn’t been to UK if you Old South and Travels in the New South. has recorded Kentucky’s past; he also hadn’t taken Clark’s course. He was Other Southern-focus works include is helping shape Kentucky’s future. central in the establishment of the The Beginnings of the L&N: A Pioneer At 101, he is still going strong. He University of Kentucky Press and, later, Southern Railroad, The Rural Papers and was recently Grand Marshal of the of the University Press of Kentucky. the New South, and The Southern Kentucky Mountain Laurel Festival in Clark was appalled that Kentucky’s Country Editor. For Pills, Petticoats, and Pineville (formerly Cumberland Ford) archives were in total disarray and that Plows, his magisterial account of the Kentucky, and is the sparkplug of irreplaceable records were sold as scrap. Southern country store, Clark drew on the effort to create a historic site at this He traveled to every county, persuading huge stacks of old ledgers that he had critical point in the Wilderness Road. officials to preserve as much as possible. cajoled from store keepers. He is He personally rescued many documents presently serving as consulting editor of DAVID M. BURNS headed for the incinerator. the agriculture volume of the second

Page 22 Summer 2004 The Southern Register SOUTHERN FOODWAYS REGISTER The Newsletter of the Southern Foodways Alliance

SFA Symposium Focuses Birmingham Field Trip upon Race Relations Makes Financial Impact The seventh annual Southern Foodways Symposium will be For this year’s SFA Field Trip, held June 4-6 in and around held October 7-10, 2004. This year we explore race through Birmingham, SFA pledged to make donations to Alabama the lens of foodways. We will study, debate, and celebrate organizations that further the cause of racial justice. With the South’s shared food culture by way of events that focus the support of members and attendees—not to mention some upon race relations. SFA believes that racial chasms can be speakers who waived remuneration—we are proud to bridged when we recognize our common humanity across a announce the following donations: $2,450 to bluesman table piled high with bowls of collard greens and platters of Willie King’s Rural Members Foundation, $750 to Sixteenth cornbread. We believe that food is our region’s greatest Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, and $250 to West End shared creation. And we see food as a unifier in a diverse Camp Fire USA (a division of the Birmingham Second region, as a means by which we may address the issues that Harvest/United Way). have long vexed our homeland. Deviled Egg Invitational The Southern Foodways Alliance seeks a free pass to the Southern Foodways Symposium, to be deviled egg recipes and recollections. Let held October 7-10 in Oxford, Mississippi. That Friday, the world know about how your family the King or Queen of Deviled Eggs will be crowned reunions revolve around eating deviled at a tasting of deviled eggs and champagne, yard eggs. Tell us about how your aunt staged on the Oxford Square. piped her filling with a pastry bag. Tell us All qualifying entries will be included in an a story of 100 or so words about what online deviled egg diary that we’ll share with deviled eggs have meant to you and your the world by way of our Web site, people. Include a recipe and please detail the www.southernfoodways.com. (By the way, recipe’s provenance. when you send your deviled egg tale our way, E-mail submissions to [email protected] you grant us the right to publish it free of are preferred. Entries may also be mailed to the charge, both online and as printed text.) Southern Foodways Alliance, P.O. Box 1848, University, Questions should be directed to Melissa Hall, MS 38677. Deadline for entries is August 31. Three finalists Mistress of Deviled Eggs, at [email protected]. will be announced on September 15. The winner will receive

SFA Contributors

THOMAS HEAD is the Washingtonian magazine’s executive JEFF SIEGEL, a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism wine and food editor and one of its restaurant reviewers. He at Northwestern University, has authored six books, and his writes regularly for the Washingtonian and other writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, Gourmet, and publications on food, drink, and travel. Travel & Leisure. First in War, First in Peace, First in Whiskey George Washington as Distiller

George Washington’s fame as a soldier A model of the still was fired up last and president has tended to fall at the site, and the master distillers overshadow his considerable from a dozen modern distilleries, all accomplishments as farmer, architect, dressed in 18th-century costumes for livestock breeder, and entrepreneur. the occasion, made the first whiskey He worked tirelessly to improve the made on the site in 200 years. The profitability and efficiency of his mash recipe, reconstructed from the 8,000-acre Mount Vernon estate. In distillery’s accounts, consisted of 60 his late 20s, he made the decision to percent rye, 35 percent corn, and 5 turn from tobacco as his main crop to percent barley, a formula that would wheat. In 1771, he built a gristmill, a make it closer in composition to profitable venture that enabled him to today’s rye whiskey than to bourbon. market his flour both locally and The initial batch of whiskey will be abroad. In 1797, at the urging of his aged for several years in Port casks and Scottish plantation manager James then sold to benefit Mount Vernon’s Anderson, who had experience in educational programs. distilling, Washington built a distillery The reconstruction of Washington’s adjacent to the mill. The distillery, distillery is a fascinating project for one of the largest on the East Coast, many reasons. It gives us insight into made 11,000 gallons of whiskey the the economics of plantation first year and produced a profit of management in the post-Colonial $7,500, an enormous sum at the time. South. It gives us a fascinating glimpse The gristmill was restored and of our first president as entrepreneur. opened to the public in 2002. Now, And it gives us a way of looking at the with the assistance of the Distilled place of alcohol in colonial society. Spirits Council of the United States, a Did Washington drink the whiskey trade association of distillers and mash tubs and five pot stills. A second he made? Probably not much. He wholesalers, Washington’s distillery is floor, which originally was used for certainly felt it necessary to the being reconstructed and will open to grain storage and living quarters for running of an army. “The benefits the public in 2006 as the only the distillery manager, will be arising from the moderate use of liquor operating 18th-century-style distillery transformed into a museum and have been experienced in all armies,” in the country. auditorium. he wrote to the president of Congress, The first step in the restoration has The Vendome Copper and Brass “and are not to be disputed.” Records been an extensive archeological Works of Louisville, Kentucky, will confirm that in addition to whiskey, excavation of the site. The dig, which fabricate the distillery’s five copper pot also distilled here were apple, peach, began in 1999, is now in its final stills. They are replicas of an 18th- and persimmon brandy, and these fruit stages. The excavation and research century still, now in the collection of brandies are probably the spirits that into contemporary documents have the Smithsonian Institution, Washington and his guests drank. revealed that Washington’s distillery confiscated by the Treasury was a large sandstone building, about Department in Fairfax County, THOMAS HEAD 30 by 75 feet, which held about 50 Virginia, in the 1940s.

SMITHSONIAN Lafayette County & Oxford www.keyingredients.org www.oxfordarts.com Public Library INSTITUTION’S www.southernfoodways.com 401 Bramlett Blvd. Sponsored by the Smithsonian Key Ingredients: Institution, Mississippi Humanities America by Food 9:30 a.m. - 8:00 p.m. Council, Southern Foodways Alliance, Lafayette County and Oxford Public EXHIBITION August 15 - October 10, 2004 Library,Yoknapatawpha Arts Council Grocery Shopping in the Big Easy

The news in the spring that one of the Many stores not only stock local country’s biggest grocery store chains products, such as Louisiana-grown was leaving the New Orleans market Zatarain’s rice and Camellia beans would ordinarily cause all sorts of (including everything from lentils to hand wringing and teeth gnashing. black beans), but regional specialties After all, it’s not good news when yet such as locally grown Creole tomatoes, another grocer abandons yet another Creole cream cheese (a farmer-style American city. cheese that is a cross between cottage But New Orleans is not just another cheese and sour cream), and tarte a` la city, and Albertson’s failure there says bouille, a Cajun-style egg custard. as much about New Orleanians’ good Rouse’s, for instance, lets local taste as it does about the politics and shrimpers sell their product in its economics of the grocery store parking lots at some stores one business. In an industry where local weekend a month. and regional chains, let alone and It’s probably also significant that mom-and-pop stores, have almost going to the grocery store remains, for vanished, New Orleans still has plenty many New Orleanians, a social outing. of both. In fact, according to Census It’s not unusual, especially in some of Bureau figures, Louisiana has 2 percent They want to sell to the big middle, and the older neighborhoods, for the same of the grocery stores in the United that’s just not New Orleans.” people to be there at the same time, States, but only 1.5 percent of the Hence New Orleans has not just visiting with the same people they have population. several of the biggest national chains, seen for decades. Some of this “What you have in New Orleans is a but local chains like Rouse’s and attraction may well be due to the plate unique situation,” says Dan Graham, Dorignac’s, plus independents like lunch, a fixture in local grocery stores. who works for the Dechert-Hampe Langenstein’s, Zuppardo’s, Breaux Stop by and pick up white beans and consultancy in Los Angeles. “You have a Mart, and Robért Fresh Markets. These rice or barbecued chicken, say hello to culture that takes food and cooking and stores are much more than 60,000 some pals, and buy a gallon of milk. cooking at home much more seriously square feet of microwavable meals, Sure beats driving to the mall. than elsewhere in the country. Plus, you photo finishing, and a floral have an ethnic population, which the department. After all, what does Wal- JEFF SIEGEL big chains don’t know how to deal with. Mart know about boiling crawfish?

Southern Foodways Alliance

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Please make checks payable to the J $25 student J $50 individual J $75 families Southern Foodways Alliance $200 nonprofit institutions $500 corporations and mail them to the J J Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, VISIT US AT OUR WEB SITE: www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/foodways or call John T. Edge, SFA Director, at 662.915.5993 or via email at [email protected] 2004 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference Report

Material culture is at once the most solid Carothers Beverly of our cultures and the most silent–the one whose expressiveness as a cultural voice is the easiest to miss, precisely because we are so deeply embedded in it as scarcely to recognize it as a created construct reflecting desires, choices, social attitudes, and moral values. The 31st Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference— “Faulkner and Material Culture”—focused on the materiality of Faulkner’s fiction, its objects, ranging from the furniture of Light in August to the varieties of smoking material his characters use, from the Courthouse in Jefferson and the Confederate Soldier Monument that stands in front of it to Flem Snopes’s hat in The Mansion. From left: Charles A. Peek, Theresa Towner, L. D. Brodsky, James B. Carothers, Terrell Much of the drama of Faulkner’s L. Tebbetts fiction consists of the transformations of material objects from their pure functionality to a significance Ramsey; returning speakers included In addition to the formal independent of their practical use. Kevin Railey, Jay Watson, and Patricia presentations, John Maxwell performed Lucas Beauchamp’s divining machine Yaeger. Also appearing—all for the first his acclaimed monologue “Oh, Mr. in “The Fire and the Hearth” achieves time—were nine panelists: Ted Faulkner, Do You Write?,” and the a value beyond its aim of recovering Atkinson, Jeffrey Carroll, Brannon singer/songwriter group Reckon Crew buried wealth; a table in Light in August Costello, Barbara Ensrud, Brandon performed its adaptation of Faulkner’s becomes a vehicle of violence; the odor Kempner, Jennifer Middlesworth, Eileen As I Lay Dying. David Sheffield read his of an old man in The Reivers symbolizes O’Brien, Sharon Desmond Paradiso, winning entry in the Faux Faulkner the ethos of an entire culture; detritus and Caleb Smith. An anonymous gift in Contest, “As I Lay Kvetching,” Seth becomes treasure. honor of Joseph Blotner, Faulkner Berner, a book dealer from Portland, Speakers appearing for the first time biographer and longtime friend of Ole Maine, conducted a session titled at the conference were Charles Aiken, Miss and the conference, provided “Collecting Faulkner,”and Colby Katherine R. Henninger,T. J. Jackson support for the panelists who Kullman moderated “Faulkner on the Lears, Miles Orvell, and Matthew participated in the 2004 program. Fringe” at the Southside Gallery. A highlight of the conference continued to be the “Teaching Faulkner” sessions, conducted this year by James B. Carothers, Terrell L. Tebbetts, Theresa

Beverly Carothers Towner, and Charles A. Peek. Other events included a presentation of “The William Faulkner Exhibition and Museum Design Proposal”; two photography exhibitions, one by Bruce Newman, and another by Jane Rule Burdine; guided tours of North Mississippi; an opening buffet at historic Memory House; and a closing party at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Beckett Howorth.

DONALD M. KARTIGANER

From left: James B. Carothers, Sharon Desmond Paradiso, Jennifer Middlesworth, Barbara Ensrud, Donald M. Kartiganer

Page 26 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Acclaimed Faulkner Play Filmed during Oxford Performances The critically acclaimed one-man show Don Kartiganer, holder of the based on the life of Oxford’s most University’s Howry Chair in Faulkner famous resident came to Ole Miss July Studies and professor of English. “The 26-28 for three rare free performances. play is both moving and informative Mississippi native and University because it lets you get a sense of how this alumnus John Maxwell performed “Oh, particular man living where and when Mr. Faulkner, Do You Write?” to he did came to write this particular capacity crowds in the Ford Center for corpus of work.” the Performing Arts Rehearsal Hall. Set in the 1950s, soon after Faulkner The production coincided with the won the Nobel Prize, the play uses the 2004 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha writer’s own words, flashing back as far as Conference, on campus July 25-29. the 1920s, to “give us William Faulkner Maxwell, who conceived of and the man in a rewarding evening of cowrote the play, first performed the role theater,” as Eudora Welty, Faulkner’s of William Faulkner in 1981 at Jackson’s friend—and one of the first people to New Stage Theater. Since then, the actor read a draft of the play—put it. has delivered hundreds of performances of “It’s like having Faulkner walking “Oh, Mr. Faulkner” to colleges, market the film to colleges, universities, around stage and talking,” Kartiganer universities, arts councils, and theaters high school libraries, PBS, and such said. “Faulkner was a great role player all across the United States, including New commercial TV networks as A&E. his life—he played the role of dandy, York’s the Bottom Line and the Alabama “We hope to have it done by the fall of farmer, bohemian, veteran fighter pilot. I Shakespeare Festival. He has also taken 2004,” Maxwell said. “Several people are seriously doubt he would have imagined his show to a dozen foreign countries. interested in distribution, and it’s amazing someone playing the role of him.” In bringing the play to Oxford, Maxwell how many people’s ears perk up when you But most likely William Faulkner is a is accomplishing a goal of allowing even mention Faulkner. It’s also amazing how role Maxwell had little choice in playing; more Faulkner-philes, students, and many famous people love Faulkner, which the actor has said he “became obsessed” theater lovers access into the Nobel works to our advantage.” with the writer after reading his first laureate’s psyche. Maxwell and business If the play itself is any indication, a Faulkner novel, a gift given to him during partner Jimbo Burnett filmed the Oxford film version will no doubt be well his 20s. Maxwell has said, too, that he performances to create a movie version of received. “John Maxwell’s done a hopes that through his performances, and the play, which they plan to market marvelous job of culling prose from now through the film, he’s creating some through their company, Maxbo Faulkner’s work, letters, and interviews new Faulkner obsessions. Productions. Maxwell said he hopes to into a single, unified expression,” said JENNIFER SOUTHALL Spring Literary Events Mississippi Delta Literary Tour program activities, eight meals, and local others in the trade as well as educators, April 4-7 transportation. The fee does not include literacy advocates, readers, and book lovers Experience the place, the people, the lodging. Accommodations are offered at will gather for a program of readings, food, and the music that inspired Viking’s new hotel, the Alluvian, in lectures, and discussions during the 12th Mississippi writers. Greenwood [www.theallluvian.com]. Oxford Conference for the Book, set for Offered by the Center and Viking Range Rooms are priced at a discounted rate of April 7-9, 2005. The 2005 conference will Corporation, this program is based in $135 and may be reserved by dialing 866- be dedicated to author Flannery O’Connor Greenwood and includes a day in 600-5201 and asking for the special (1925-1964) in recognition of her Greenville, known for having “more writers “Literary Tour” rate. In the event that the contributions to American letters. per square foot than any other city of its Alluvian sells out, we have also reserved a The conference is open to the public size”; a day is in Clarksdale, the place that block at the Greenwood Best Western, without charge. Reservations and advance inspired the plays of Tennessee Williams 662-455- 5777. payment are required for two optional (1911-1983); and a day in Yazoo City, events: a cocktail buffet at Isom Place whose most famous and beloved son is 2005 Oxford Conference for the Book ($50) and a country dinner at Taylor author Willie Morris (1934-1999). April 7-9 Catfish ($25). The Delta tour is $450 per person for all Notable authors, editors, publishers, and

Detailed information about these programs and registration instructions will soon be posted on the Center’s Web site (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south). Center for the Study of Southern Culture, The University of Mississippi , P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677), telephone 662-915-5993, fax 662-915-5814, e-mail [email protected]

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 27 Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Faulkner’s Home Reopened July 24-28, 2005 after Extensive Restoration “Faulkner’s Inheritance” William Faulkner’s Rowan Oak, closed to visitors since As much as the fictional character closest to him–Quentin December 2001, reopened July 25 after a nearly $1 million Compson–William Faulkner was “an empty hall echoing with restoration. The noon reopening of the Greek Revival house sonorous defeated names . . . a commonwealth . . . a barracks and grounds was appropriately timed to kick off the 31st filled with stubborn back-looking ghosts.” The names and ghosts, annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. of course, were not just those of the Old South and the war The reopening fought on its behalf, but the world that grew up in the wake of marks the end of their passing: a New South still harboring some of the values of the second phase the Old, a Falkner family history fostering comparably divided in a three-phase loyalties, a Modernist revolution in thought and art prepared to restoration project. challenge all loyalties, North and South. The completed The 32nd annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference work includes new will attempt to take the measure of Faulkner’s “inheritance”: the electrical wiring varied elements that went into his making and the making of his and plumbing, a work. Obviously the range is great. What events of Southern and museum-grade North Mississippi history, what aspects of the personal life, what climate control William Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak ideas in the intellectual ferment of Modernism figure most system, foundation strikingly in the fiction he wrote? What do we as readers most support, wall need to know of the world Faulkner inhabited—political, social, repairs, painting, and reproduction wallpaper. The work was cultural–in order to best understand that fiction? How does funded with $500,000 from the state and a $363,000 grant “inheritance,” as a theme, function in his fiction? from the U.S. Department of Interior. The final phase, In commenting once on his work, he spoke, landscaping and restoration of outbuildings, begins this fall. uncharacteristically, of “the amazing gift I had,” and The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is wondered “where it came from . . . why God or gods or providing a $479,000 grant for the work. whoever it was, selected me to be the vessel.” The aim of this “The home is going to be in good shape for years to come,” conference will be to explore, in somewhat more mundane said William Griffith, Rowan Oak curator. “The restoration terms, “where it came from” and what–given that “amazing ensures visitors from around the world the opportunity to gift”–Faulkner made out of what he was given. experience Faulkner’s life at Rowan Oak.” We are inviting both 50-minute plenary addresses and 20- Built by a pioneer settler in the 1840s, the house was minute papers for this conference. Plenary papers consist of purchased by Faulkner in 1930, and it was his home until his approximately 6,000 words and will be published by the death in 1962. The author’s daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers, University Press of Mississippi. Conference papers consist of sold the house and the surrounding 31 acres to Ole Miss in approximately 2,500 words and will be delivered at panel 1972. The house was last restored in 1980. sessions. Originally known as the Bailey Place, the estate was renamed For plenary papers the 15th edition of the University of Rowan Oak by the Nobel Prize-winning author for the legend Chicago Manual of Style should be used as a guide in of the Rowan tree, which is recorded in Sir James Frazer’s The preparing manuscripts. Three copies of manuscripts must be Golden Bough. According to the story, Scottish peasants placed submitted by January 15, 2005. Notification of selection will a cross of Rowan wood over their thresholds to ward off evil be made by March 1, 2005. Authors whose papers are spirits and give the occupants a place of refuge, privacy, and selected for presentation at the conference and publication peace. Just as Faulkner experienced these qualities while will receive (1) a waiver of the conference registration fee writing and living on the estate, these features continue today and (2) lodging at the University Alumni House from under the cedars and hardwoods, Griffith said. Saturday, July 23, through Thursday, July 28. In 1952, Faulkner added a small office to the house and For short papers, three copies of two-page abstracts must be inscribed on the wall the outline for the Pultizer Prize- submitted by January 15, 2005. Notification will be made by winning novel A Fable. The office remains as it was at the March 1, 2005. Authors whose papers are selected for panel time of his death. Besides adding the office, Faulkner erected presentation will receive a waiver of the $275 conference a brick wall on the east side of the house to ward off staring registration fee. strangers, constructed a stable, and added brick terraces. All manuscripts and inquiries should be addressed to The grounds of Rowan Oak are open to visitors during Donald Kartiganer, Department of English, The University daylight hours, and the home is open 10:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. of Mississippi, University, MS 38677. Telephone: 662-915- Tuesdays through Saturdays and 1:00-4:00 p.m. on Sundays. 5793, e-mail: [email protected]. Panel abstracts may be For guided tours, including assistance related to a disability, sent by e-mail attachment; plenary manuscripts should only call 662-234-3284. be sent by conventional mail. TOBIE BAKER

Page 28 Summer 2004 The Southern Register Building Craftsmanship Educating a New Generation

International Preservation Trades Workshop Alabama Preservation Conference October 21-24, 2004 Mobile, Alabama Contact: Tara Lanier, 334-230-2680 Alabama Historical Commission

Building Craftsmanship Brings the Preservation Trades to Penland School’s contribution to the evolution of American Alabama’s Azalea City craft during the past 75 years is being celebrated through an exhibition on display through January 30, 2005, at the Mint Mobile is a classic colonial city full of elegant historic Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, North Carolina. The architecture shaped by 300 years of civic culture. Some Nature of Craft and the Penland Experience features 137 works things never change: the climate, the termites, and the made by artists affiliated with the school as instructors or homeowners’ need for improvement projects. For residents resident artists. The exhibition is organized around three of Mobile’s historic homes, that often means searching themes—Skill: Mastery and Transmission; Source: Where high and low for a craftsman with the skill and knowledge Ideas Are Found; and Expression: No Boundaries. For details, of early building techniques to clean and repair century-old call 704-337-200 or visit www.mintmuseum.org. decorative iron work, replace deteriorated wood siding with like materials, re-plaster an interior wall, or replace crumbling mortar in a historic brick wall. On October 21-24, 2004, Mobile is host to a group of people who can do all of the above, and more. A coalition The 23rd annual Internationalc Country Music Conference of Alabama’s preservation organizations partners with the (ICMC) will be held May 26-28, 2005, at Belmont University Preservation Trades Network to sponsor a conference in Nashville, Tennessee. Please note that this date coincides focusing on historic preservation trades. Building with Memorial Day weekend. ICMC solicits proposals in all Craftsmanship: Educating a New Generation combines the disciplines related to all aspects of the history and International Preservation Trades Workshop and the contemporary status of country music. ICMC broadly defines Alabama Preservation Conference. country music to include variants from precommercial and The world’s best preservation craftspeople demonstrate old time country to bluegrass, honky tonk, and alternative their trades from replacing slate roof tiles to forging iron country. Proposals on the educational applications of country implements. Clem Labine, founder of Old House Journal music from kindergarten through the collegiate curriculum and Traditional Building, is the keynote speaker. Other are also welcome. For details, check ICMC’s Web site activities include educational sessions, tours, and (http://plato.ess.tntech.edu/www/ci/icmc.thml). receptions. All presenters will be expected to pay the $80.00 (U.S.) Full scholarships are available to trades students, registration fee. Proposals should include title of paper, a 75- apprentices, instructors, and practicing craftsmen. Visit the 100 word abstract, name of presenter(s), institutional following Web site to download an application: affiliation(s), complete address(es), phone and fax numbers, http://www.cityofmobile.org/html/departments/historic/ e-mail address(es). Proposals may be submitted by e-mail to tradeworkshop.php. [email protected] or sent by conventional mail to James For information, contact the Alabama Historical E. Akenson. Box 5042, Tennessee Technological University, Commission at 334-242-3184, www.preserveala.org, or the Cookeville, TN 38505. U.S.A. Deadline for receipt of Preservation Trades Network at www.ptn.org. proposals is Friday, October 29, 2004.

continued from page 1 Lamar Peter’s gravesite, the public will eventually be able to visit the Oxford house where Lamar lived from 1868 until 1888. The national historical landmark, located on North 14th Street, which in turn led Southern leaders in the late 1960s to attach was purchased last December by the Oxford-Lafayette County Lamar’s name to a newly formed group dedicated to finding Heritage Foundation and is currently undergoing restoration, practical solutions to the South’s major problems. made possible through grants from the National Park Service Lamar died in 1893, while still serving on the Supreme and Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Court, and his body was re-interred in Oxford’s St. Peter’s Cemetery after initial burial in Macon, Georgia. Besides the St. JENNIFER SOUTHALL

The Southern Register Summer 2004 Page 29 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

JOANNE BRANNON ALDRIDGE is a writer and editor director of the Faulkner Conference. He is the author of The from Boone, North Carolina. She has taught English, Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner’s Novels and public speaking, classics, and comparative literature at is near completion of a book-length study, “Repetition the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, at Forward: A Theory of Modernist Reading.” Appalachian State University, and the University of KATHRYN MCKEE is McMullan associate professor of Georgia. Southern Studies and associate professor of English at KENT BAIN is the coordinator for the Mississippi Hills the University of Mississippi. She has published essays Heritage Area Alliance. He is a former graphic designer for and lectured about writers of the 19th- and 20 th- Living Blues magazine and former art director for the Oxford century South, including William Faulkner, Ellen American, Philanthropy, and Weekly Standard magazines. Glasgow, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Sherwood Bonner.

TOBIE BAKER is a communications specialist for the CINDY SHEFFIELD MICHAELS, a native Mississippian, Office of Media and Public Relations at the University received a BA in Spanish from Hendrix College. She is of Mississippi. Formerly a newspaper reporter in currently working on an MA in English at Georgia State Grenada, he received his BS in journalism from the University, where she serves as associate editor of the University of Mississippi in 1996. Eudora Welty Newsletter and the editorial and production assistant for Studies in the Literary Imagination. PATTI CARR BLACK, founding director of the Old Capitol Museum, has curated numerous exhibitions, JENNIFER SOUTHALL is a communications specialist for including Remembering Welty in 2002. Among her the Office of Media and Public Relations at the publications are The Southern Writers Quiz Book, Art in University of Mississippi. She taught high school Mississippi, 1720-1980, and Touring Literary Mississippi. English and worked as a magazine editor before returning to the University, where she received a BA in English. DAVID M. BURNS is the author of Gateway: Dr. Thomas Walker and the Opening of Kentucky, which has an JIMMY THOMAS is managing editor of a new edition of introduction by Thomas D. Clark. Burns lives in the Center’s Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. He Washington, D.C. received BA degrees in English and philosophy at the University of Mississippi and has worked for publications MARK CAMARIGG practiced law in California for several in Oxford and New York. years before moving to Mississippi in 2002 to study Southern history, work for Living Blues magazine as a ANNETTE TREFZER is assistant professor of English at graduate assistant, visit jook joints, and soak up Southern the University of Mississippi. She recently completed culture. In the spring of 2004, he became publications her book manuscript “Native Americans and National manager of Living Blues. Anxieties in Literature of the Southern Renaissance.” She is coeditor of Reclaiming Native American Identities MICHAEL DAVENPORT, a retired teacher who lives near and author of several essays on Zora Neale Hurston, Greenville, Tennessee, taught Advanced Placement Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and other authors. English and Great Books courses for 30 years. He was a Saks Fellow at the 2001 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha DAVID WHARTON is assistant professor and director of Conference and is currently writing fiction and working documentary projects at the Center, where he teaches on some editing projects. courses in Southern Studies, fieldwork, and photography. He is the author of The Soul of a Small Texas Town: JOAN WYLIE HALL teaches in the English Department Photographs, Memories, and History from McDade. at the University of Mississippi. She edited the recent interview collection Conversations with Audre Lorde and CHARLES REAGAN WILSON is director of the Center and has published articles on Tennessee Williams, William professor of history and Southern Studies. Among his Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Ann Patchett, and other publications are Baptized in Blood: the Religion of the Lost Southern authors. Cause and Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis. DONALD M. KARTIGANER holds the William Howry Chair in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi and is

Page 30 Summer 2004 The Southern Register For a complete list of posters, cds, videos, and other items, see the Southern Culture Southern Culture Catalog Catalog on our Web Site The University of Mississippi International Orders Barnard Observatory • University, MS 38677 Other video formats Phone 800-390-3527 • Fax 662-915-5814 may be available. POSTER Please call for information. The Sixth Oxford Conference for the Book Sold To: Poster (1999) Poster features Name Eudora Welty portrait by Address Mildred Nungester Wolfe City State Zip from the National Portrait Gallery, Country Smithsonian Institution, Daytime Phone Washington, D.C. J Payment enclosed (check, money order, international money order in U.S. currency or international check drawn on a US bank; made payable to The Southern Culture Catalog) J Charge my: J Visa J MasterCard Account # Full color, 17.5 x 23.5” M9901 ...... $10.00 Exp. Date Signature Friends...... $9.00 How To Order Delivery By mail: Southern Culture Catalog Orders for delivery in the continental United 29th Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Barnard Observatory • The University of States are shipped by US Postal Service unless Conference Poster (2002) Mississippi • University, MS 38677 other means of delivery are requested. Orders for delivery outside the continental United “Faulkner and His Contemporaries” By e-mail: Credit Card orders only: States are shipped by Parcel Post. Poster is illustrated with Sidney J. Waintrob’s [email protected] image of Eudora Shipping and Handling Costs By telephone: Credit Card orders only: Welty and United States: $3.50 for first video or other item, 800-390-3527 (Monday-Friday, 8:15 William Faulkner $1.00 each additional item sent to the same a.m.-4:45 p.m. CST) in the US. on the occasion address. Foreign: $5.00 for each item. Outside the US call 662-915-5993 of Faulkner’s Posters. United States: $3.50 for any number of receiving the By fax: Credit Card orders only: posters sent to the same address. Foreign: National Institute 662-915-5814 (Daily, 24 hours a day) $10.00 for any number of posters sent to the of Arts and same address. Letters Gold Medal for Fiction All sales are final. No refunds will be made. If an order in May 1962. Return Policy contains faulty or damaged goods, replacements will be made when such items Black & white are returned with problem(s) noted. photograph, mauve background M1107 ...... $10.00 Item # Title/Description Qty. Price Total Friends...... $9.00 CD “The Memory Is a Living Thing” Songs based on the writings of Eudora Welty Lester Senter, mezzo-soprano 1996 ROS Production. SR2001 ...... $16.00 Friends...... $14.40 Songs of Faith: African American Shape Note Order Total Singing from the Deep South, Volume One This form may be Mississippi residents add 7% sales tax Selections from shape note singing conventions photocopied. throughout Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana. Shipping and Handling SR2002 ...... $16.00 Faxed orders Friends...... $14.40 accepted. TOTAL

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