FROZEN RED DIRT

Red clay hills near Brandon, Mississippi

A friend of mine recently told me that I have a migratory spirit, and I have to agree with him. ‘Seems like when I’m in Sewanee, Tennessee, I make at least six visits to sites in surrounding states during my six-month sojourn. When I’m in Louisiana, I search for places to explore in Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas. I know the old adage, “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” but the idea of becoming a mossback has no appeal for me either. Last week, I stopped in Meridian, Mississippi to visit the MAX Arts Center there and had an envee to stay awhile but continued on to Louisiana. Since that visit to the magnolia state, I’ve been yearning to return to the birth site of my maternal great-grandmother in Brandon, Mississippi.

This morning I was reading an old edition of Off the Beaten Path published by the Reader’s Digest, and I discovered a notation about Flora, Mississippi, site of a Mississippi petrified forest. A photograph of what I call “frozen red dirt” had been placed beside the article, and I developed pangs to explore the only petrified forest east of the Rockies created from remains of primeval forests — driftwood buried in and preserved by silt and sand. I looked at the picture “long and long” before putting it on a list that I’d made to satisfy my migratory spirit. The photo showed deeply-eroded cliffs studded with petrified logs. According to the article in Off the Beaten Path, the red sands that identify them to me as “frozen red dirt” were river deposits in which the petrified process had begun —the vivid red dirt fascinated me.

Brown Cotton and Red Dirt by Karen Bourque

In 2017 I asked my friend Karen Bourque, glass artist in Church Point, Louisiana, to create a glass piece that I could photograph for a book of poetry I’d written entitled Sifting Red Dirt, and she gifted me with her version of Mississippi hills around Brandon, Mississippi where my maternal great-grandmother was born. The book contained a collection of poems about my forebears (the red dirt side that balances out my Cajun side).

After seeing the photo of the petrified forest in Flora (near Jackson, Mississippi), I went out on the glass porch where I keep some of Karen’s art and stood before the glass piece she entitled “Brown Cotton and Red Dirt.”

“We have to make a trip to a petrified forest in Mississippi,” I told my traveling companion, Dr. Victoria Sullivan. “The spirits of my Mississippi ancestors must be hovering in that area. The petrified formations are 36 million years old.”

“Your ancestors’ spirits hover everywhere,” she said. “They’re ubiquitous. Where are we going now?”

“Flora, Mississippi. It’s near Jackson.”

“Population under 2000, I’m sure.”

“How did you guess? I know you like cities, but the most interesting places are those less frequented.”

“Your ancestors were country hicks on both sides. They must have been afraid of tall buildings,” she said.

“It’s important to visit places that carry the spirit of your cultural identity,” I retorted.

Dr. Sullivan sighed and went to the computer. As publisher of most of my poetry writings, she keeps a file of photos that appear on the covers of my books, so I knew why she had sought out her computer. 

Pandora C. Runnels Greenlaw

“It’s under Sifting Red Dirt,” I instructed, and before I could continue, she brought up the photo that had been the model for Karen’s glass piece. “Just think about how arresting that frozen red dirt will be on another cover.” I began to recite the first few verses of “Pandora’s Legacy” (That was great-grandmother’s name, but she shortened it to Dora. As far as my family knows, she was pure-dee redneck, but whence the name “Pandora”??)

PANDORA’S LEGACY

Great Grandmother Dora Runnels

planted her feet in red dirt,

her happiness, not of this earth;

in barren places among soughing pines

she rode a path to martyrdom,

her boots making snail tracks in dust,

the traveling feet of a missionary,

a pilgrim marching toward Calvary.

The night I was born

she disappeared into earth

leaving me faded photographs,

the promise of another light beckoning.

She was an old woman gone mute,

puffs of red dust sifting into a grave,

the past slipping between her fingers

passing on her love, a bidding to me.

Dora Runnels knew her way

through red clay hills,

remote light guiding her,

narrow rails through empty towns.

Her life, now a silent movie reel

out of focus, slowly unwinds

each time I pass red mounds

and fallen needles…”

There are five more verses to this elegy, and as I re-read it, I pencil in “Flora” on my wander list, knowing that I may not be lingering in New Iberia beyond November before taking a trip. As I quoted in the epigram of Sifting Red Dirt: “As though memory/were a large orchestra/without a repertoire/till it began.” Erratic Facts, Kay Ryan

INTO THE SILENCE

Border Press has produced many "first novels," and its latest, Into the Silence by John Gibson, is among the press's growing list of excellent fiction writers who base their work in southern locales. Gibson, a physician who spent over thirty years on the faculty of an academic medical center in Mississippi, sometimes speaks of his novel as a "medical novel," but I think that Into the Silence could be called a "metaphysical novel" and reveals that Gibson, an Episcopalian, has spent a lifetime of study about esoteric religions, including his own Anglican church roots.

Gibson gives the reader a substantive view of a state that has produced some of the finest writers in the U.S. One of his characters, a farmer, provides readers with well-crafted passages about "connecting with something that's bigger than the soil, bigger than the ground you're working on...Some people say it's people who make history. But I think it's the land — it's the land and the rivers that make all the difference...take the Mississippi Delta, for instance: just by being there the Delta enticed man to dig in its soil, to cut and shape the land to suit man's needs...by just choosing to live in the Delta instead of the hills, man was shaping himself, his culture, his politics, his ability to earn and spend money..."

Gibson knows his region, as well as the politics of hospital administration and swiftly propels the reader into a story set in the emergency room of a bustling hospital where readers meet Dr. Todd Sutherland and his patient, Anna Chadwick, who suffers from Ebstein's Anomaly, a ventricular dysfunction. It's Christmas Eve and Sutherland is standing in for another physician; the woman is beautiful and charming, and the scene seems primed for an unlikely romance. However, beneath the surface of Sutherland's obvious attraction to Chadwick, lie questions related to life and death that take the reader into issues far deeper than the introduction of a romance. Sutherland becomes a frequent visitor at the bedside of Chadwick, and ultimately she undergoes a surgery. When she enters into a coma, Sutherland begins sitting with her, and during the vigil at her bedside, he undergoes a dark night of the soul, pondering where her soul must be as it relates to the difference between life and death. As the story progresses, he is accused of shutting off her respirator and endures an ethics trial.

Sutherland, in a state of grief, wrecks his car in New Orleans and ends up in Ochsner's Hospital where he experiences a state of consciousness near death and begins to probe the condition of his soul: "I moved through the walls and out in the open air and even more quickly rushed through a kind of tunnel and out an opening at the other end. While I came out of the tunnel, I could see a bright light. When I moved toward the light, a figure came into view..." The man is identified as Parmenides, an ancient healer who heals by prophecy and informs Sutherland that since he is a healer, he needs to learn to go "into the silence." Sutherland begins a study of Parmenides with a New Orleans professor who suggests that the physician put himself in a trance called Orphic Shamanism to contact the Divine for the purpose of healing.

Gibson's knowledge of Greek literature, Christianity, shamanism, meditation practices, philosophy, and metaphysics is extensive, and he interweaves these subjects into a suspenseful storyline without becoming didactic. Characters emerge from his medical background showing his adeptness at creating authentic personalities, and his extensive knowledge of healing — ancient and contemporary forms — strongly suggest the quality of care this compassionate, well-intentioned professional practiced during his career as a physician and teacher.

Gibson also rendered the pen and ink cover image of Into the Silence that is one of many works of art he has created and exhibited in Jackson, Mississippi as part of his lifework. Several years ago, he provided the pen and ink pointillism drawings in Illuminate, a book of poetry by his daughter Margaret Simon that communicates the beauty and mystery of the manifestation of God in the world. He also received an award in the 2012 Annual Cedars Juried Art Exhibition.

A Renaissance man actively working in retirement, Gibson is another author who joins Mississippi's impressive gallery of writers and artists.

Order from Border Press, P. O. Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375 or amazon.com

WHILE "SIFTING RED DIRT"

Every Christmas, I receive a card from the Piney Woods School near Jackson, Mississippi, a country school to which I've been sending a small donation for fifteen or more years. I had never seen the school until this Fall when we made our return trip to New Iberia, Louisiana after spending spring and summer in Sewanee, Tennessee. Before veering off course to see the school, we visited the library in Brandon, Mississippi to research more about the birthplace of my great-grandmother, Dora Runnels Greenlaw, as I'm writing a book of poetry about the "redneck" side of my family entitled Sifting Red Dirt. I was surprised to learn that the Piney Woods Country School was less than an hour's drive from Brandon.

The Piney Woods School, the largest of only four historical African-American schools in the United States, encompasses 2,000 acres in the midst of piney woods south of Jackson and was established in 1909 for children of field hands, some of whom were former slaves. It has also been highly touted as a place for at-risk students who are trained to develop a work ethic by teachers who utilize the disciplines of a "boot camp." Piney Woods School was first used as an institution for blind African-American children, but the blind students were later moved to nearby Jackson, and since its inception as a school for African-American males, the school has become co-educational.

In addition to regular studies, the students work at least ten hours a week on campus with livestock and crops or as teaching assistants and office workers, and 98% of them graduate from the secondary school and pursue college studies. Many of them have degrees from Harvard, the University of the South, Princeton, Amherst College, Smith, University of Chicago, and other outstanding U.S. universities. The concept of work/study reminded me of Booker T. Washington's ideas for Tuskegee Institute (1881). During the early years of this institute in Alabama, students made bricks, built barns, grew their own crops, and learned trades. Of course, today, this university rivals other major U.S. universities in academics, but in its early life, Washington focused on teaching the students how to sustain themselves through agriculture and to develop trade skills that would lift them out of poverty.

When we drove through the Piney Woods campus, it was fall break and almost deserted of students, but we saw enough of the campus buildings, a lovely rock amphitheater, and one of the five lakes edging this instructional farm campus. I was disappointed that administrative offices were closed because I would have enjoyed a tour of the entire acreage. However, I later wrote a poem about Piney Woods School, the last verse of which is included here:

IV.

We made the circle,
passed the lake of once-turbulent water,
Mexicans, Caribbeans, Africans
now working a self-sufficient farm,
chores coupled with classes,
my modest check helping bury the past,
soil rich with the blood of slavery
and a shadow rising with the moon
above red mounds...
the darkness of Collective Conscience.

The image above is a photograph of a glass piece created by Karen Bourque, artist, Church Point, Louisiana, to be used as a cover for Sifting Red Dirt.

“THE PLACE WHERE THE RABBITS DANCE”

Wolf Creek

As a writer, one of my hobbies is seeking out and visiting famous authors’ homes. Last month I visited the national site of Eudora Welty’s home in Jackson, Mississippi and was so impressed during the visit, I scheduled another trip on the Southern Literary Trail last week. Since we live in Sewanee, Tennessee during the summer months, we’re only a few hours away from north Georgia, and I was delighted to discover that Choestoe, (Indian name for “where the rabbits dance”, pronounced cho-ee-sto-ee) is another mythic place in the North Georgia Mountains that was the home place of the poet Byron Herbert Reece (1917-1958). Reece, a farmer and creator of mountain ballads, won many literary honors, Guggenheim awards, and was eventually chosen poet laureate of Georgia.

A modest, “aw shucks” kind of man, Reece wrote ballads, verse, and sonnets based on nature and a reverence for the world and the Bible, putting an entire mountain landscape into books of poetry and novels. He claimed that he “grew books and potatoes,” and struggled between subsistence and writing until he took his own life at age 40.

Reese lived in the shadow of three mountains – Blood, Slaughter, and Brasstown Bald Mountains — on Wolf Creek near Blairsville, Georgia. His grandfather, John Reece, was one of the first settlers of that area and befriended native Americans whom Reece later spoke of as “good neighbors” and whom he felt the government had unjustly treated. Byron Reece’s parents suffered from tuberculosis, and the poet became their major caretaker, working the farm all day and composing verse and novels in the evenings and nights. Although he attended Young Harris College, he never achieved a degree, but he taught sporadically at Blairsville High School, Young Harris College, the Universities of Georgia, Emory, UCLA, and others.

We watched a video about the poet in a small welcome center, the

Winter Solstice, a poem by Reece

relocated Reece family home, which had been moved less than 100 yards from its original site. After seeing the award-winning video, a self-guided tour took us past a cluster of “poetry islands” – stone slabs with some of Reece’s poetry engraved on them and Mulberry Hall, a small shed where Reece often read or wrote poetry. The austere building contains a single iron cot and hundreds of books, a small table, an unloaded rifle, and a few photographs. Components of the 9.3 beautifully-groomed acres include buildings and exhibits that show a typical Appalachian farm: a smokehouse, springhouse, barns, corn crib, a vegetable garden and other sheds. The farm is touted as an educational experience and a popular site for school groups.

Reece was an autodidact and often spurned Academia. He, like Robert Frost and W.H. Auden, preferred rhyming verse, sonnets, Biblical and Elizabethan literary forms. His ballads have been set to music, a recording of which I purchased in the gift shop, along with a biography entitled Mountain Singer by Raymond Cook and which I managed to read while sojourning in nearby Blairsville. According to Cook, Reece (or “Hub” as he was called) grew up hearing daily Bible readings and was unusually aware of the cadences of the King James version, especially passages from Psalms and the Books of the Prophets. He was also impressed by mountain folk ballads sung around the family fireplace. These early experiences helped him develop an ear for the lyrical themes he later composed. E.P. Dutton Publishing Company published most of his books, and “little” magazines like American Weave regularly accepted single poems that he wrote.

Mulberry Hall, where Reece read and wrote 

Reece developed the family disease of tuberculosis and was depressed by his illness and his inability to make a living from the farm and his writing. In 1958 he shot himself while listening to Mozart in a room at Young Harris College where he had been teaching. He left behind a legacy of poetry that immortalized the Appalachian ethos and contained echoes of Irish, Scots, and Welsh ballads. Perhaps one of his remembered poems is one entitled “Lest the Lonesome Bird,” which ends with the verse: “Mother, hush and tend the fire/And lay the bed with a clean cover;/I sleep tonight with a new desire, /With a dread and faithful lover.”

Byron’s sister wrote about this talented mountain man: “Some of the things he (Byron) disliked were ostentation, monotony, and clutter.” Amen.

The Byron Herbert Reece Farm and Heritage Center is located on U.S. 129 two miles north of Vogel State Park, Georgia, and the U.S. Forest Service has designated 150 acres of forest land around the home place as a “seen area.”

THE EUDORA WELTY HOUSE AND GARDEN

Distributed by Eudora Welty
house and garden

For at least ten years, I’ve wanted to stop in Jackson, Mississippi en route to New Iberia, Louisiana from Sewanee, Tennessee just to tour the Eudora Welty House and Garden, and Monday we stopped at this National Historic Landmark on Pinehurst Street for a two-hour visit. We toured at a time when the Eudora Welty Foundation and the Welty House and Garden, a museum of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, honored Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1973.

I am re-reading The Optimist’s Daughter after touring the house and find references to the furnishings and mementoes in the Welty home, as well as allusions to the flowers in the beautiful three-level garden. A handsome brochure distributed by the Welty Education and Visitors Center contains descriptive lines from The Optimist’sDaughter that enhance the tour; e.g., Mrs. Welty’s bedroom: “…There was the Dickens all in a set, a shelf and a half full, old crimson bindings scorched and frayed and hanging in strips" (p. 118 in the Random House hardback edition of The Optimist’s Daughter). And In the sitting room: “She saw at once that nothing had happened to the books… “She dusted all of them and set them back in the same order.” You can almost hear Welty reading the passages in her soft Mississippi drawl, calling forth memories of family heirlooms and excerpts from the Welty family’s most prized possessions – books. Books occupy bookcases, are stacked on sofas and tables in all the rooms, 5,000 of them according to a total count made by archivists. An ambience of peace permeates the home, and the docent didn’t have to inform us that hospitality was the Welty family’s leitmotif.

Distributed by Eudora Welty
house and garden

Stories about Welty that impressed me included anecdotes about her humility, something not often seen in authors (except perhaps the notable ones who’re  more interested in the creative process than they are in awards). After Welty’s death, the Pulitzer Prize was found in a closet in the sitting room! Although she won many awards: four O.Henry Memorial Prizes, the Howells Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The American Book Award for Paperback Fiction, the PEN/Malamud Award, the Freedom Medal of Honor from presidents Carter and Reagan, and numerous lifetime achievement awards and honorary degrees from Tulane, Harvard, Yale, Emory, Smith College, etc., Welty did not display any of her numerous awards in her home, excepting the Raven Award for “Mystery Reader of the Year” from the Mystery Writers of America. She loved mysteries, and one of her closest friends was mystery writer Ross MacDonald, with whom she often corresponded.

Within the Welty Education and Visitors Center, we also viewed the “Eudora Welty Other Places” photography exhibit, photographs shot by Welty in New York and New Orleans that were displayed and published in a catalog by the Mississippi State Historical Museum in 1995. Welty often wandered the streets of the French Quarter looking for photographic opportunities and subjects for numerous short stories about the Crescent City. I had seen some of the photographs she shot while working for the WPA that were displayed in the Hunter Museum exhibit at Chattanooga, Tennessee last year and loved the images of rural Mississippi that she captured.

I discovered Welty in the 50’s while working at Louisiana State University and read Delta Wedding, The Golden Apples, The Ponder Heart, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, but when I read The Optimist’s Daughter in 1972,  I knew why she had been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. As the brochure from the Welty House and Garden reveals: “In The Optimist’s Daughter, Welty’s main character, Laurel, acknowledges that ‘the guilt of outliving those you love is justly to be borne,’ and Laurel discovers consolation in memory and is able to find that the ‘heart could empty and fill again.’” It was Welty’s fourth novel and contained a plethora of biographical detail. In 1984, she expanded this detail in a memoir entitled One Writer’s Beginnings. When we left Jackson, I carried a copy of Welty, Stories, Essays, and Memoir published by the Library of America and I’m still reading apace.

Tours of the Welty House and Garden are offered Tuesday-Friday and second Saturday mornings. The Eudora Welty Foundation is dedicated to ensuring the legacy of Eudora Welty through educational programs, recognition of reading and writing excellence, and support for the Welty House and Garden Collection at MDAH.

If you’re traveling through Mississippi, this National Historic Landmark is worth veering off course to see, especially if you’re a fan of one of the South’s finest writers.