Blog
Caroline Williams and Alberta Bontemps
Virginia Festival of Books
3/20/2010
Husband David and I are spending the weekend at the Virginia Festival of Books. Yesterday morning I used the work out room. It was the first time in my life I've worked out in a hotel. My new road food is chocolate almond kashi go lean bars and black coffee. I've lost 19 pounds! Friday noon I spoke at a talk hosted by the African-American Authors Reading Group( a magnificent book club) about Rebel Yell. Thursday night I was on a panel with John Casey Maud Casey and Liz Benedict entitled Muses, Mentors and Monsters. Benedict who conceived of, edited, and contributed an essay to the volume moderated. John talked, brilliantly, about Peter Taylor being his muse. Maud talked about her father being her muse. I talked about my daughter being mine--and Alberta Bontemps being my literary midwife. We each read a bit from our essays on the subject. You can read their essays in Benedict's book. I promised to post the whole of mine on my website. Here it is.
1/6/2010
It is January and I am on a diet. Like the rest of America. My new breakfast is a baked sweet potato. Or it is two teaspoons of peanut butter. Which is not my breakfast is my mid morning snack. My new cocktail is a sliced lemon boiled with cloves in spring water. It’s wonderful. Lunch yesterday was trout and brocolini. Dinner was chicken and kale soup and grilled romaine hearts with grilled onion drizzled with olive oil. One glass of red wine. I’m trying to keep it very simple, healthy and savory. And I’m trying to get on my treadmill every day for a minimum of fifteen minutes and a maximum of an hour. And I am committed to going to sleep before midnight. Phase one of the diet begins January 4 phase one of the diet officially ends May 4. Can’t wait to see what these four months bring. I almost called this post Sisyphus and me. I’ve pushed this rock up a lot of hills. I prefer to think I’m pushing this big weight to the top of a steep hill one last time. I’m going to be innovative and accountable and I think I can do this. We will see together.12/29/2009
We won’t forget our present-less Poinsettia Christmas. We stayed at the Westin Poinsett, spa-ed at the River Falls Spa, road Santa’s sleigh down one of the prettiest Main Streets in America, ate Christmas Eve dinner at High Cotton overlooking the river, opened no stockings, unwrapped no gifts, simply reveled in the gift of each other’s presence--- and it was the best Christmas ever. Which is not to say it was perfect. There was a moment Christmas Eve morning when unplugged from all our existing traditions: the hand sewn stockings, the holiday box, the invitations to the parties we always go to, the food we always cook, knowing just what to do, and feel including rushed and dutiful and joyful all at the same time that I feared I wasn’t prepared for the task less enjoyment of my husband and my daughter, felt challenged by an appointment with a masseuse instead of an appointment with a turkey—and then I kept my appointment.
12/22/2009
The first book I remember reading was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. It was a slim little volume with a hardboard cover and a gold colored spine from the series called Golden Book, probably purchased in a grocery store. I remember writing my name in crayon on Santa’s list and I remember crying when the other reindeer wouldn’t let Rudolph play in any reindeer games. And I remember feeling vindicated, I didn’t know the word, but I knew the feeling, by that foggy Christmas Eve in which Rudolph was allowed to shine literally and figuratively.
12/16/2009
John Rich and Bob Delevante both live in my neighborhood; both write amazing songs; and both are friends of mine. In one recent Saturday night to Friday night span—I got to hear John Rich sing at his house on Saturday, I heard Gretchen Wilson sing there to, and Bob Delevante sing just down the street from my house at a place called Brown’s Diner with some superb young musicians called the Coal Men. Music City is a troubadour’s town. There are three songs I love that tell all about it: "Troubadour" recently recorded by George Strait; "16th Avenue" recorded a long time ago by Lacy J. Dalton; and "The Pilgrim: Chapter 33" written and recorded by Kris Kristofferson.
12/3/2009
I like Thanksgiving. A lot. I like the way it’s about gratitude and feasting and friends, I like the way it’s about preparing a table. And for me Thanksgiving is about learning to be an un-hyphenated American. The first Thanksgiving I clearly remember was my fifth. I was in kindergarten. My black Lutheran school classmates and I made place mats by selecting bright-hued, Detroit-autumn leaves, placing them between sheets of wax paper--and ironing.
11/16/2009
It’s November and my mind is turning from novels and politics to sweet potatoes and pumpkins. I am starting to plan the Thanksgiving dinner. Every year it’s the same problem, I far prefer sweet potato pie to pumpkin pie but I can’t do without mashed sweet potatoes with my turkey--which leaves me looking for a way to include pumpkin in our November feast.
11/12/2009
I have just come back from the red clay of Alabama. Tuskegee University. Booker T. Washington, Tuskegee Airmen, and George Washington Carver Land. A haven of quiet black audacity and accomplishment.
Food and Music
Mother Maybelle and June Cash
11/3/2009
I spent this past weekend in Oxford, Mississipi. I ate roasted goat, and roasted peanuts, and I ate seafood gumbo over biscuits prepared by the City Bakery Café. I heard Robert O’Mealy talk about Ellison and sweet potatoes and I heard folk talk about work songs and safety. I met Hank Williams daughter born days after he died. And I got to talk about Mother Maybelle Carter’s cookbook. It was a very, very good time. If you ever get a chance to attend the Southern Foodways Alliance Fall Symposium, take it. It’s kind of like smart camp for grownups--if you ditch the home sickness and add American History presented the tastiest way possible.
10/27/2009
The good Lord was willing but the creek did rise. Last Tuesday no new blog post! The creek was a flood of words on the subject of “Birthing Cynara, Windsor, and Hope: a novel reader turned novel writer (at forty) reflects on: talking back, speaking up, well shaped silences; the scholars who played midwife to her fiction; and the novels her novels talk to from Epitaph of a Small Winner to the Coldest Winter ever.” Mainly I talked about ‘the baby plot.’ I am writing from the literal middle of Pennsylvania, from the Nittany Lion Inn in University Park which this weekend is the epicenter of Contemporary African American Novel studies. Lovalerie King, a scholar with roots in Arkansas but with a globe spanning reach, put on a powerful conference.