My rating: 5 of 5 stars
There’s so much I don’t want to say about this book, since it would give away not just the ending but the surprise at every page turn. You don’t keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. You keep wondering, how many shoes can there possibly be? This book puts Imelda Marcos to shame, yet each new revelation is surprising and rewarding in its own way. More than a thriller, yet thrilling, Kardos examines human nature in a tale that is both chilling and hilarious.
This post will not include recipes; it’s more about coping. However, awhile back, I posted a recipe for vegetarian dressing (not stuffing) that is the heart of our vegetarian Thanksgiving tradition. Kim and I have been veggie since before we met. In the beginning, we sometimes made an exception for a slice of turkey at Thanksgiving, but once Aidan came along, we got serious. Back then, we broke down for a little fish now and then, esp. if we went out to eat in the South. Nowadays, most restaurants have something we can eat, and we know enough good places to go where we actually have options. So we can afford to be strict vegetarian (ova-lacto, though, not vegan) and we actually prefer it that way. Holidays can be a challenge, but fortunately our families have learned to cope. No one bats an eye anymore when we pass up the platter of factory-fed poultry. And we have more than enough good food, believe me!
In the South, turkey on Thanksgiving may be traditional, but it’s only one of many dishes. What we don’t want to do with out completely is the traditional feel, so we usually make our veggie dressing for ourselves. Everyone else eats the normal kind, but occasionally they’ve tried ours and been surprised. There’s always sweet potatoes, field peas (similar to black-eyed peas, if you’re not from the South), lima beans, corn (creamed or steamed), mac and cheese, collards or mustard or both, and maybe green beans.
We pass on the congealed salad, since Jello contains gelatin, and we have plenty of bread: corn bread or rolls to choose from. We do make cranberries, and there are other salads we can eat. And then there are the desserts! Pecan pie is a must, though there’s usually a cake or two, and one or two other desserts. It’s a good thing there’s a big family to help take care of it all (and take home leftovers)!
The trick to sharing Thanksgiving with family if you’re vegetarian is to take charge of a few things for yourself. We tend to make the dressing and the cranberries at least. Long ago we convinced Kim’s mother not to use fatback in the greens or bacon in the green beans. So all of the vegetables are fair game for us. Once the family gets used to the fact that you skip one platter, they’re no longer offended, and there’ll be plenty of food. If you’re worried about protein (and why bother), then contribute a plate of deviled eggs. Or add a slice or two of cheese. If you’re vegan and/or you want to go for a tofu turkey instead, that’s up to you, but we’ve never seen the need to get that elaborate.
If this is your first Vegetarian Thanksgiving, be good to yourself. If you want to stand up for your principles it will be easy enough to do, and you won’t go away hungry. But if you want to be polite and take a small slice of the bird (or if you just can’t resist), don’t sweat it. You can chalk it up to easing your family into your new veggie lifestyle. And I bet it won’t be long before they don’t bat an eye or you won’t be tempted.
I know, a lot of people would prefer to use meat hotdogs. But a veggie dog is pretty darned good if you dress it up a bit. Since tonight is a soccer game when we need a quick dinner, and since we’ve got veggie dogs and buns in the freezer, we’re planning to cook the dogs (following the directions on the package, of course. We don’t even own a microwave, so we use the stove top method. That’s a conscious choice.) Get a good bun if you can. It makes a world of difference. But the main thing is condiments. We usually start with an onion (or half of one, if it’s big). Cut it into rings, and fry in olive oil until it starts to brown. Then we add sauerkraut and fry a little longer. Of course jalapeños on the side are great, if you’re into that. Or pickles if you’ve got ’em. Mustard is a must, and half the family loves ketchup. Serve with oven fried potatoes (cut like french fries with the skins on, lightly oil, salt, and bake, stirring occasionally). It’s not a difficult meal, but does qualify as comfort food, even if the hot dog stuffing is healthy!
featuring the Starkville/MSU Symphony Orchestra
In a new partnership, the Starkville/MSU Symphony and the Columbus Arts Council present “A Space Symphony”, 7:30 PM, Thursday, October 25, 2012 in Rent Auditorium on the Mississippi University for Women campus in Columbus. The concert is free and and open to the public.
The orchestra, under the direction of Dr. Michael Brown, will perform The”March” from Star Wars, “Jupiter” from Gustav Holst’s The Planets, Tchaikovsky’s “Pezzo Capriccioso for Cello and Orchestra” with principal cellist Griffin Browne, and “The Romantic Symphony” by American composer Howard Hanson. The concert also features guest conductors Nadezda Potemkina and Richard Human.
Although based in Starkville, Mississippi, the 75 member orchestra is comprised of musicians from all over the state and beyond. Joining in this performance are several students from the Suzuki Programs in Columbus– led by Diane Ford and Trudy Gildea-and in Starkville-led by Shandy Phillips. These soloists include Aidan Dunkelberg, Lillian Fulgham, Cassie James, Daniel Jones, Helen Peng, Laura Sandifer, Lucy Sandifer, Stephanie Smith, Abbey Swartzendruber, and Grace Swartzendruber, all of whom will be featured on J.S. Bach’s “Double Concerto in D minor for Two Violins and Orchestra”.
Along with the Columbus Arts Council and the Starkville/MSU Symphony the event is sponsored by Mississippi University for Woman, Clark Beverage Group, Commercial Dispatch, Starkville Area Arts Council, Greater Starkville Development Partnership, City of Starkville, National Endowment for the Arts, Renasant Bank, Prudential Starkville Properties, Cadence Bank and Mississippi Arts Commission.
All partners celebrate this new collaborative effort and invite the regional community to this very special evening of music.
Looking for an orange alternative to pumpkin in the fall? Look no further than persimmons. These small autumn fruit start out firm at the beginning of the season. By now, the ones we bought a few week ago were turning soft and mushy, but that’s when they’re at their sweetest best, if a little messy. When not so over-ripe, we like to cut them in slices and eat them with or without the peel, which is fairly hard. Now that they’re soft, I decided to experiment with a frozen yogurt.
I sliced the persimmons in half and used a spoon to scoop out the soft pulp into the blender. Four persimmons seemed about right, and I added about half a cup of yogurt, a little lemon juice and a little honey to taste. In the end, I also added about 1/4 cup of milk to the blender after putting the mix in our one quart ice cream freezer. That helped me to get the last of the good mix out.
The resulting frozen yogurt was bright orange, very creamy, and delicious: sweet with a little tang and a hint of cinnamon (though I hadn’t added any spice). That was the musty persimmon flavor coming out. So if you can find persimmons, as I did at our local farmer’s market, give this recipe a try.
Well, another Welty Symposium has come and gone. We had a great time with a dozen authors and a great audience that included students from two local high schools and the Mississippi School for Math and Science, as well as MUW students and alums and members of the community. Rather than running down the highlights, I will post an excerpt from my introduction to the keynote reader.
For a while now I’ve been interested in Eudora Welty’s first novel, The Robber Bridegroom. It was published in 1943, after she had published two collections of stories, and it was dedicated to Katherine Ann Porter. It takes a Brothers Grimm fairy tale and transports it to the Old Natchez Trace. Welty adds a few historical characters, such as the tough riverboat keel man, Mike Fink, and two of America’s earliest serial killers, Little Harp and Big Harp, who now is just a head that Little Harp keeps locked in a box, but that keeps calling to get out.
The story begins as the tobacco planter Clement Musgrove returns from a trip to New Orleans to sell his crop. Our theme comes from the second paragraph, which starts off, “As his foot touched shore, the sun sank into the river the color of blood, and at once a wind sprang up and covered the sky with black, yellow, and green clouds the size of whales, which moved across the face of the moon.” Clement goes in search of lodging for the night, but the first two innkeepers he meets are both missing an ear, the sign of their punishment for crimes committed elsewhere. When he reaches the third, honest inn, he still must share a bed with two fellow travellers. In the night, he is nearly killed by Mike Fink, yet is saved by Jamie Lockhart. At home, Clement rejoins his daughter and her stepmother, and as every bridegroom must have a potential bride, you might guess whom that will be. But not before there is plenty of robbery, murder, abduction, mistaken identity, jealousy, and yes even love.
From these elements we take our theme of “Crime and Passion in a Gothic South” to explore what has become of the Southern Gothic. We will look at crime, especially in Carolyn Haine’s mystery Bonefire of the Vanities, Michael Kardos’ thriller The Three-Day Affair, and Olympia Vernon’s A Killing in This Town, though there are other crimes than purely legal ones. Josh Russell brings us abduction in A True History of the Captivation, Transport to Strange Lands, & Deliverance of Hannah Guttentag. Ghosts appear in Jessica Maria Tuccelli’s Glow and Chris Lowe’s Those Like Us with a story titled a “Ghost Tour.” Poets Frank X Walker, Anthony Abbott, Catherine Pierce, and Kelly Norman Ellis give us passions of all kinds with a few crimes and fears mixed in, and passion for gardening informs our Welty-Prize-Winning One Writers’ Garden, as you’ve just heard.
When I first saw the cover of Sonny Brewer’s novel The Widow and the Tree, I knew it would be a perfect fit for our theme. I was struck by its similarity to the illustrations in my copy of The Robber Bridegroom, and when I opened the book I found out why. Both were done by Barry Moser, though over twenty years apart. As I read the book, I realized this was more than just coincidence. The Widow and the Tree.combines virtually all of the elements I found in The Robber Bridegroom. There is plenty of mystery about who is after the Ghosthead Oak, a five-hundred-year old live oak tree that has witnessed war and murder in its not so distant past, as well as drug deals and amours in its present life. The widow was passionate for her husband, and the veteran, a recluse from the Vietnam War, is passionate for the tree, the widow, and his privacy. Then there are those who seek to control and tame the tree, claiming it for the public good, though possibly with personal interests that make this act a kind of abduction. There are child abuse and threats of retribution. And much like Eudora Welty, Brewer considers the place of the wild and whether we have any right to own it, kill it, keep it alive, or tame it. His book raises many pressing questions and leaves us to sort out the answers, and he weaves this all into a spell-binding tale that will keep you turning its pages.
For Sonny Brewer is a consummate story-teller, and so it is no surprise that The Widow and the Tree has received accolades and awards, including most recently the 2012 Alabama Library Association Book award for fiction. Orion magazine called it “a marvelous and confusing little book.” And this was a positive review that notes this is the way with “serious literature” and that concludes: “The Widow and the Tree is spare, mean, loving, pungent. Sonny Brewer knows the Alabama coast, a culture threatened sure as the Ghosthead Oak.”
And Sonny does know the coast, having lived in Fairhope, Alabama, for many years. There he founded Over the Transom Bookstore and established the Fairhope Writers Colony that has fostered dozens of great Southern writers. He has collected their writings in five volumes of Stories from the Blue Moon Café and collected their reminiscences in Don’t Quit Your Day Job: Acclaimed Authors and the Day Jobs They Quit. He has published three previous novels: Cormac: The Tale of a Dog Gone Missing, A Sound Like Thunder, and The Poet of Tolstoy Park.And for the past year and a half, he has served as Editor-in-Chief at MacAdam Cage publishing. Yet more important than all his publishing credentials, Sonny Brewer is one of the most genuine people you are likely to meet. He cares for literature, and he cares for people, and this shows in his writing and in his life.
Of course when you think Gothic, one thing that comes to mind are old mansions full of ghosts. This year’s Welty Symposium has a few literary ghosts of its own. Of course, Sonny Brewer’s novel The Widow and the Tree is about the Ghosthead Oak, a 500-year-old live oak tree, and there are many memories and legends associated with the tree. And Carolyn Haines Bonefire of the Vanities (and other Sarah Booth Delaney mysteries) feature a a ghost or two, most notably the ghost of Sarah’s grandmother’s maid, who gives her advice (sometimes unwanted). But did you know we have some other ghosts in the symposium?
Several characters in Jessica Maria Tuccelli’s debut novel Glow see ghosts, and at least one is seen as a ghost. One of the main characters has a ghostly friend, Lovelady, who appears in an earlier time before her death. Another couple of characters are intimate with many ghosts and help the youngest protagonist deal with her own. There are other forms of conjuring in this novel as well, filled as it is with African American and Native American lore from North Georgia.
Christopher Lowe’s debut collection of short stories, Those Like Us, includes a story “Ghost Tour” that may not have actual ghosts, but tells of a character who makes up ghost stories, some of which may be more real than she’d like to admit, or may become real to her in the telling. Other characters in these linked stories struggle with death and loss. As with most ghost stories, there is an element of reality or normality that the paranormal brings to light.
There’s plenty of mystery in this year’s Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium keynote novel, The Widow and the Tree, and there is crime, both contemplated and perpetrated, though I wouldn’t classify the novel as a mystery exactly. It blends some elements of that genre, along with the gothic modern fairy tale that Welty uses in her Robber Bridegroom. Both books serve as the inspiration for our theme this year, and consequently, we have a few mysteries in the group.
Carolyn Haines’ Bonefire of the Vanities may have the greatest claim to that fame, coming as the 12th in the Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series. Her intrepid detective is aided and abbetted by her sidekick and two dogs, as well as a relatively friendly ghost. Together they solve mysteries in the Mississippi Delta, bones of all kinds providing the common theme. Carolyn Haines will read on Friday 10/19 at 1:30 p.m.
Olympia Vernon also explores crime in her novel, A Killing in This Town, though the tone is a bit more sober, as she delves into the motives and the ramifications of a fictional civil-rights era slaying in rural Mississippi.
Finally, Michael Kardos brings his debut novel to the symposium. The Three-Day Affair has been called a mystery thriller involving a somewhat unintentional kidnapping and the college buddies who have to weigh their allegiance to each other against their conscience and better judgement. Both Michael Kardos and Olympia Vernon read on Saturday 10/20 from about 10:30-12:00.
Every October, the week I look forward to most is this one. Each year Mississippi University for Women brings a dozen writers to campus to read from their fiction, poetry, and essays at the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium. It’s an intense three days (and intense preparation beforehand). Everything is lining up fairly well. So far, no crises, and only a few last-minute details to wrap up (have to save a few of those!). On Wednesday, the first couple of authors will arrive, and Thursday, everyone will descend. I’ve been doing interviews to try to encourage folks to come out to the W to hear free readings. And of course, we sell books.
For the past 5 years, I’ve been the director. Before that, I helped out any way I could, including running the book table for a couple of years. It’s a great chance to meet new writers and connect with people I’ve known for awhile. I’m always amazed at how gracious everyone is, and what a great time we all have.
If you’re anywhere near Columbus, Mississippi, you should stop by and check it out.
Have you noticed it’s that time of the semester again? It’s been a month since my last blog post, and that’s because I’ve been busy! It happens every semester that school takes over, but this time it seems to have happened earlier than most. I’ll blame it on SACS. For those not in education (in the South), that’s the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, and it’s time they evaluate Mississippi University for Women for accreditation. That means lots of people on campus have to scramble to tell them who we are and what we do (and to get our ducks in a row before we have to do that!), and I’m one of those scrambling, since I head one subcommittee and serve on another. A few more committees have cropped up, and then there are the usual classes — it’s midterm time and grading is in full swing.
But there are brighter moments, even if they’ve added to the stress. For one, the family all gathered in Albuquerque last month to celebrate my niece’s wedding with a lovely ceremony out in the desert with a view of the Sandia Mountains behind. Great food and even dancing were enjoyed by all. Aidan proved he has rhythm, and his parents even took a step or two on the dance floor. And we got to spend a few days with Rudy, Michael, Elizabeth and the whole Lucero clan, which is always great fun. Aidan, Rudy, and I took a hike one day up a trail into the mountains a ways. On that hike we even saw a tarantula cross our path. That weekend was a much appreciated break from the daily routine of school.
Another Bright Spot in the fall is always the Eudora Welty Writers’ Symposium. It keeps me hopping, organizing authors (every plane ticket has been reserved and I have al their other travel plans), buying books (making my last orders for the book table this week), planning food and beverages for our lunches, dinners, and receptions (have met with food services once, more meetings to follow, I’m sure), writing publicity (our press release is out, the poster is printed, and the program is almost ready to go press). Things are looking pretty good, though there’s always the nagging feeling that I’m forgetting something (usually true, though usually I remember in time). It’ll be a great group and a wonderful weekend when it arrives in just over two weeks. I hope to make a few posts on this year’s authors before the time comes!
So my apologies to my blog readers that my attention has been elsewhere. It’s part of the cycle, maybe a bit more intense this time around, but I hope to be able to post more frequently again soon!
Kendall Dunkelberg