Traveling and Musing

It was a funny time to be traveling around, talking about books. I think Ann Patchett said it best in her recent blogpost, which you can read HERE.

And talking about books like mine seemed like a relatively important way to help kids figure out their worlds. Just before my visit to SQUARE BOOKS JR. in Oxford, MS, the fabulous folks there tweeted this about my visit:

So I think I'll share a few photos from my week going "home" to Mississippi and let them speak for themselves.

The event at Square Books Jr. The table that greeted me!

My friend Frieda Quon stirred up the Chinese community and they came! 
And my family, they came!
We had some really great conversation afterwards at Boure on the Square in Oxford.
Thank you, Frieda. Thank you, Jane and George.

My sister donated a copy of MAKING FRIENDS WITH BILLY WONG to the Batesville library, where I met the very smart and enthusiastic new librarian, a recent transplant from New Jersey!

And of course, we ate.

The obligatory stop for fried chicken, turnip greens and the like, 

and boiled peanuts- at the local gas station.

Lunch with family after my event at the Friends of the Bolivar County library event.
(where nobody took a single photo?)
Thank you to all the people who came and asked great questions.
And to my friend Lonnye Sue for inviting me!

Airport grocery for barbecue. My past life is on the walls...

If you are ever in Cleveland, Mississippi, home of all sorts of attractions like a GRAMMY MUSEUM, be sure to stop in at the Train Museum (HERE's the link). 
My brother, sister and I donated our dad's "train doctor" certificate, and they have it on display!

The opening line in my new book, MAKING FRIENDS WITH BILLY WONG, mentions a 3-cent stamp.
I had to take this photo!

A beautiful drive to Memphis, through the Mississippi Delta. And all good things must end. 

Thank you to all the friends and family who hosted me, showed up for my signings, 

and helped with everything!

PS: Cotton used to be baled like this.

 I guess these are mostly decorative these days.
As a wise southerner once said, (I paraphrase and I think it was either Willie Morris or Dave Barry) Someday Soon all we ever knew about the South will be inside a big book on a coffee table in a Brooklyn brownstone...



If you haven't had enough of my trips home, CLICK HERE for a previous post, with photos.
And a little more about the train that once came through my hometown. You may have heard of it? (The City of New Orleans)  :)

Mississippi Delta Chinese Heritage Museum

What an amazing weekend!
From the lectures to the ribbon cutting, the friends who returned and the ones who live in Mississippi and worked so hard to make this weekend perfect- outstanding in every way.

(Don't you love that logo?)




Here's a link to some of the highlights from the blog of Dr. John Jung. 
Be sure to click on the link at the end of his post and scroll through the pictures. You'll feel like you were there!
http://mississippideltachinese.webs.com/apps/blog/show/42500939-ms-delta-chinese-heritage-reunion-oct-24-25-2014 

This is one of my favorite pictures from the weekend-- of my friend Bobby Joe Moon and my parents' friend, Mrs. Jane Dunlap.

She's been instrumental in beautifying our little town and personally oversees and tends the gorgeous roses near the Railroad Museum.

When I told Mrs. Dunlap how much I loved seeing her roses every time I come to visit, she said, "Go out there and talk to them and tell them you love them!"

So I did.

Bobby and one of the weekend's organizers, Frieda Quon, filled me in on the details and encouraged me to attend. And am I ever glad I did! Although I'd read Dr. Jung's book, I learned so much about the history of why we had many Chinese groceries in the Delta and about the significant contributions made by these hardworking families.

If you're in the Delta, plan a stop on the campus of Delta State University and take time to visit the museum. 

 (This one's for my many friends who've recently taken up MahJongg.

 I may have to learn. A beautiful display, don't you think?)

Sometimes research is so much more than that. It's uncovering stories and digging deeper, yes. But it's also about people. This Homecoming week was all about friends- old and new- and family. I loved it.

Football!

I don't love college football like some I know. And maybe I'll watch an NFL game occasionally. But I grew up on high school football.

Not to get sidetracked, but my absolute favorite TV show was Friday Night Lights.



So I can't wait to hear about the team's victories in my sister's hometown of Batesville, Mississippi. This year, the SOUTH PANOLA HIGH SCHOOL TIGERS took their division. Again.
State Champs!

Here's the link to the Jackson Clarion Ledger article with a ton of pictures. I plan to hang on to this for future reference. You never know when you'll need a good football story.






My brother-in-law, George Carlson, loves the Tigers so much he returns to each game as one of the radio announcers.
Judge by day! Color Commentator by Friday nights!

So a big shout-out to soon-to-be-retired George as the Tigers end another winning season.
Here he is doing what he loves next-to-the-best. Grilling. He and his brother Chris are highlights of my culinary tour when I return to Mississippi.
(If you care, you can read a little more about the FOOD here.)



And just in case you read this blog to learn more about BOOKS and WRITING? Here's my writing advice for you. Everybody needs an expert. George was just that when it came to my character, Robbie, in Glory Be.
No, George was probably not anybody's Bad Boy Boyfriend. (Though I can't promise that's true.)
But he was always at the other end of my emails when I needed to know the technicalities of football practice in the heat of the summer in 1964 Mississippi. Talk about color commentating. George provided details. Thanks, Judge!

If you're still reading--and yes, this is a longer than average blogpost-- here's your reward for sticking with this entire Football treatise.
In case you ever doubted my authenticity about the high school football scenes in GLORY BE?
Besides George? I also had a college roommate was a majorette who twirled a Fire Baton.
More proof? Here's my Cleveland (MS) high school Pep Squad. We marched in every single Friday afternoon parade before our home games and on the field under the lights at each game.
Promise not to laugh.
And feel free to share your high school football stories. I'm keeping a file.

Checking in from the road

This will be a quick post. I hope to share more later when I have the tons of pictures I've been promised!

But what a great week this has been. Can you even imagine going back to your hometown library and talking about a book that is set in a similar place? It gets better! Four of my former teachers were in the audience: my high school Latin teacher, two librarians, and my pre-school teacher. Also, many classmates and friends and family. People I don't know who'd heard about the book. Folks in the audience with memories of my daddy. It just doesn't get much better.

The weekend started with a night spent on the Mississippi River at a friend's new house. The drive over the levee took me back to driving our old Jeep to our fishing cabin.

This is the view from my window. Yes, it was that fantastic.

My sister/ companion/ tour guide and I took a few pictures of scenes from GLORY BE.
This is the new mural painted near the ball field at Fireman's Park. Not there when I was a kid, but we sure spent many hours making lanyards, swinging, even wading in the Park Pee Pool.

On the way out of town, headed toward Jackson, I visited a very innovative, interesting school, Bell Academy in Boyle, Mississippi. They'd just had a Scholastic Book Fair. I signed their books. I discussed my brief career as my school's spelling bee champ with a precious boy who'd just won the district spelling bee and was headed for Washington DC. He easily spelled the word I'd missed in 4th grade and have never forgotten:   nickle Nickel.

The Ellis Theater

Did everybody grow up in a town like Cleveland, Mississippi? My hometown was big enough to have two movie theaters (plus the Big Chief Drive-in), a college, more churches than anything else, and all the other things that made it a special place to grow up in. Like people who showed up on your front doorstep with Funeral Casseroles, New Baby Brownies and the like. Yes, everybody knew your business, but mostly they let you alone if you pretty much behaved yourself.

On Saturdays we'd walk downtown to the matinee at the Ellis. Then the theater shut down.

Unlike a lot of little towns in the South, Cleveland is a thriving place, filled with restaurants and shops and now a terrific Railroad Museum right along the beautiful walking path, created when they pulled up the train tracks, overlooking rose gardens.

And recently, the Ellis has become a fantastic center for the arts. Right now they've applied for an arts grant. It's easy to help out here, folks. Just go to this website and click the link for Delta Arts Alliance:
http://www.fndmidsouth.org/do-gooders/vote-mississippi/?entry_id=633

I love the quote in the description of the Delta Arts Alliance on the voting site:

Delta Arts Alliance's mission can be best explained in the words of Mississippi artist Eudora Welty,

"When asked what kind of art would be for 'everybody' there can only be one answer: the best."

Well said, Miss Eudora.
Now click on over there and vote.

Circus Trains (and others)

Today's New York Times published an interesting article about the circus train, byline Secaucus NJ. Circuses and trains have always fascinated me. OK, no comments needed about cruelty to animals and the like. Circuses and kids just go together.

As a child, the "train they call the City of New Orleans" ran right through the middle of my hometown. But no trains run through Cleveland, MS, these days and the tracks have been planted with roses and turned into a walking trail. Quite beautiful but I'm glad they turned the depot into a Train Museum.

There's a marker on the site now, and the text is a story I never knew:

Four railroad depots have operated here since Cleveland was incorporated in 1886. The first depot - two Yazoo & Mississippi Valley RR cars tied together and parked on a side track - disappeared when a prankster hooked it to an outgoing train. A temporary depot was used until 1896 when a larger, wooden building was constructed. This depot burned in 1914 but was replaced the following year by the Illinois Central Railroad. The present structure, renovated in 2003 incorporates a portion of the 1915 depot.

Our dad, Dr. Jack Russel, was the "train doctor" for our little town. All that meant to us kids was that we could ride the train for free. And all he told us was that if someone on the train got sick, near Cleveland, the train folks would call him. Since everybody in town called him, night and day, this made sense. He never told us he might also get called in for a train wreck and the thought that a train would crash just never occurred to me, as a child.

THE FLOATING CIRCUS is a great kids' book about a circus boat. A circus, a riverboat. Excitement, sickness, the orphan train. Quite a good read. I wonder if there's a book that's as much fun to read, written for kids, about the circus train. Suggestions? Research needed!