Of course, there's Miss Eudora Welty.
On this trip, I visited her garden and a new, temporary exhibit inside her house.
The special exhibit featured her high school and colleges, one of which we share.
The flowers are still blooming. Beautiful.
We also said hello to her Night-Blooming Cereus, on the front porch. Not blooming.
I read this in her garden, a favorite quote, always has been:
But this time, my friend Ivy and I also popped into
the new-to-me WILLIE MORRIS LIBRARY.
Check out the chairs! I love the way the shade and the sun play against these benches.
Here's my own Willie Morris story.
I was a librarian-in-training at Simmons College in Boston. My first adventure outside the South. It snowed on November 19, hard, and again on Easter Sunday, not so deep. I loved Boston. I loved Simmons. I did not love the weather, but the people were fascinating and I loved living there.
I was always running into Yankees who knew little about my homeland.
While studying at Simmons, I worked a couple of days a week at the Harvard Medical School Library. The director was smart and well-read. And completely puzzled by me.
One day he called me into his office and held up a book. "I'm reading a good story," he said. "Willie Morris wrote it. It's about a fictional town called Yazoo."
Well, of course, as most of us know, it's Yazoo City.
It's real.
And it's still there.
While I'm remembering Mississippi and its writers, I can't resist re-sharing this.
Ivy's table decorations way back when Glory Be was new.
And soon I'll have another book, The Way to Stay in Destiny, to add to her table.
Some days it feels like a miracle.
