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Story connects us in ways we will never know. This just in: here is a letter passed on to me from a friend who gave REVOLUTION to her 72-year-old aunt in Texas. It now becomes a primary source document for future researchers. Just as important, it serves to show how a heart becomes awake and aware in the world. I was the storyteller for Mary, and now Mary is the storyteller for me. This is how it works. I am grateful. xo Debbie
============
January 23
Oh, Sally,
Thank you so much for making me aware of Revolution. It has unleashed a torrent of conflicting emotions and memories in me, none of which were completely forgotten, but largely dormant.
On one hand, it reads like a barn burner, and I do not want to put it down. I love the way she worked photographs, gospel and folk song lyrics, and headlines as page dividers creating a sense of the onslaught of information which occurred that summer. (It does remind me of your saying fiction can sometimes convey events better than dry history. But she does include a lot of what to me is not dry history.)
On the other hand, because of the flood of memories and the poignant strength of the emotions they evoke in me, I can only read it in segments, sometimes as much as a chapter, but usually less. Than I have to meditate on what is happening in me, in the story, and in our country now.
Since it was published by Scholastic Press, I guess it is geared to middle schoolers. My only sorrow is that many adults who would benefit from tumbling into its pages will not find out what they are missing....
For myself, I read the book on about five levels. Four come from memories: the first as a middle schooler, one in high school, one the summer after graduation from college (1963), and one in 1964 when I was at the Democratic Convention in Atlantic City. The fifth is that of an aging Democrat who worked the phones for Obama in 2008, delighted in our long-term success.
The student at Gilmer Junior High got in the car with your grandfather, heard the news about Brown vs Topeka on NBC news (and later CBS) and asked Grampy, "Does that mean I will be going to school with colored kids?"
In high school, I heard Larry Pittmon and others threaten to get baseball bats and beat up N----rs who tried to come to Gilmer High. An elderly Black had died, and the relatives who went to California and elsewhere had come to town in their finest to attend the funeral. This was at the same time that the Airborne and the National Guard were confronting each other at Central High School, Little Rock. In our ignorance of how groups like COFO would operate, rumor had it that the fancy dressed black people were members of the NAACP planning to integrate the school.
The summer of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I had attended a workshop by the National Conference of Christians and Jews and then stayed in Dallas to learn typing at a business school. Having no TV of my own, I went to the apartment complex recreation building to watch the march. That night I joined one of the Black members of my class with her boy friend in the Hall Street Ghetto in Dallas for supper. We talked for hours about what that huge crowd meant for the future of Blacks in America.
The next summer, after my rookie year as a Dallas public school teacher, I had a job with the State Department in July and August, 1964. Mother and Daddy honored my experiences in college in a sit-in on the SMU campus and in that workshop the year before by letting me write the editorial response of The Gilmer Mirror to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (the Public Accomodations Act).
Then I traveled to DC in late June, went to the White House as a guest of Lady Bird and Lyndon the night of my 23rd birthday, and went to work in the Personnel Department of the State Department.
The deputy director of the division I was in was a Black man. A fellow deacon of his church, the assistant superintendent of the DC schools, was shot down that summer as he drove back from his reserve duty at Ft. Bragg. He was a reserve Colonel in the US Army who was chased down after buying gas by hooligans in a pickup and shot. I can still see him that Monday morning when I came to work telling the Personnel Services Division chief, an older (55-60) white woman of the shooting.
Unlike the volunteers at Freedom Summer who sweltered in Mississippi, I got to go to the cool serenity of the Washington National Cathedral and hear a mixed choir of over 250 voices sing in thanksgiving of the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
I read the headlines in the Washington Post about their efforts as I went to Capitol Hill to see the War on Poverty legislation accepted in the US Senate after the House had approved their portion.
Then in August, I joined Nana in New York City, attended Hello Dolly with Carol Channing (my adventuresome summer like Sunny wonders about) and to the New York World's Fair. From there we took the train to Atlantic City.
Selling pennants and buttons to raise funds for the Democratic Party as a Young Person for LBJ, I met youths from Philadelphia, MS who were there with representatives of the Freedom Democratic Party of Mississippi. When they learned my mother was a delegate, they lobbied me to ask her to vote for their group to be seated.
I told Nana about them, but LBJ was trying to court Mississippi votes, and did not want to ruffle more feathers until after the election. She of course did what LBJ wanted.
It would be four years later when I had promised Nana I would take the first job I was offered that I went to work for the Dallas OIC. You know what an impact that had on me. I was tempted by the Peace Corps, but Nana would never have let me go to an undeveloped country. I always think the Lord had a hand in the fact that OIC gave me my first job offer after grad school.
Well, enough meditation for now. I still have half the book to read, and I am mentally compiling a list of people to make aware of it. I definitely will see to it our Intermediate and Junior High Schools as well as the Upshur County Library have copies.
If you with to share these reflections with your friend, the author, you are welcome to do so. I am so proud you made me aware of it. Thank you so very much.
Love, Mary
One week in the life, and what a week. Monday I started out for North Carolina, with REVOLUTION, and Sunday night, last night, I sat in the tutti-fruitti chair at home in Atlanta, with Masterpiece Theater and my phone, watching and texting along with my Mississippi cousin, Carol, a long-standing tradition. Some of the life between those two moments is captured below in phone photos -- I miss my camera! But I did not miss my friends. They were right there, all along, right beside me, as you will see, accompanying me and championing me and coaxing me forward, in person and online, and certainly in my heart. I kept up my travel-marathon training on the road (for a trip I'm taking in Feb/March, which we'll get to). More to say on the other end of this string of photos, including a little about next week in NYC. Thanks for coming along with me!
WHEW. It fills my heart right up. Thanks so much to the fine folks at the
Carolina Friends School, Cary Academy, A.B. Combs Elementary School,
Quail Ridge Books and Music,
McIntyre's Fine Books, the
Fearrington House Inn,
Scuppernong Books, and the Chatham County Community Library. Y'all were so gracious and generous. Thanks to Charlie Young for accompanying me for a good leg of the tour -- you are the best.
Jandy Nelson: THREE booksellers hand-sold me your book on this tour. I got two photographs. Booksellers loved
I'll Give You the Sun. I love
you! And your wonderful new book. Busting my buttons over my former student's success!
That's
Jennifer E. Smith,
David Levithan, and
Stephanie Perkins, reading from their new books and signing at my local indie,
Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, GA, yesterday. I came home
to walk a 5K as part of my travel-marathon training, and to see my editor, David, do his thang at Little Shop. Then Jim and I walked the old
Decatur Cemetery, a soothing end to a busy week, and had a little supper at
EATS, one of our favorite Atlanta eateries.
This will be a quiet (hahahaha) week of getting ready for the National Book Award events in New York City next week. We leave in six days. I have a fabulous black dress. I bought some bling for my dress. I am returning it. I called the shop and said, "I forgot! I'm going to be wearing a medal!" Because I am.
REVOLUTION is a National Book Award Finalist. I am so proud of my book. I love my book. I love my publisher, Scholastic, for publishing the book I wanted to write. I love the NBA judges for recognizing my book. I love the process. I love the books REVOLUTION is keeping company with this season. I love the lofty ideal of writing from the heart the story that is asking to be written. I love having the opportunity to share that story with as wide an audience as possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you... that's what I want to say, over and over again. It has been such a rush, such a trip, such an excitement, such a delight, such a surprise, and such an honor. I am forever grateful. See you all in New York next week.
Love, Debbie
Friends, I am Mississippi as I write this. I have an essay at the Nerdy Book Club blog today, about birthing Revolution in Mississippi. I wrote it on the eve of my trip. I am still in Mississippi, with family, until tomorrow, when I come home and write about my adventures in schools, in bookstores, and in my own heart.Â
In the meantime, you can read the Nerdy post and then catch up visually with
And so it begins again, a new book to shepherd into the world. Here are some catch-up shots from ALA Midwinter in January, in Philadelphia, PA. Here are some of the inside pages of REVOLUTION that my editor David L. and I were working with up to the last second, trying to get just-right, sitting at rehearsal the morning of the Scholastic brunch. We'd done this at NCTE, too, the previous November,
Just like the nesting that comes before birthing a baby, I hunkered in this past fall and into winter, and got ready for the big push. I worked steadily on book two of the sixties trilogy until I flew off to Singapore, mid-January, to work with 7th-graders and their teachers at Singapore American School, and to speak at a children's lit conference there.
The novel flew with me. I did a final
I am at the point where I have voluminous piles of links, photos, songs, and orders of operation slopping everywhere, as I work with book two of the sixties trilogy. How to organize my research so it is at-hand when I want it, and of-a-piece?
I'm going to experiment with using the blog as a holding tool, a repository of links. I keep it mostly for myself (the blog), as a kind of scrapbook to
From the Travelers Insurance Pavilion at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, New York. What does this have to do with book two of the sixties trilogy? Everything.
The Triumph of Man.
I looked up from work this morning and decided to grab my camera. This is what it's like to be deeply-dug-in with book two of the sixties trilogy this week. 1964. Freedom Summer.
Back to it.
I have learned, in writing my novels, that I need an actual, physical house in which to put my characters, so I can think of them there, and bring them to life. The right house makes all the difference. I inhabit it while I'm writing, right along with my characters.
In the Aurora County novels, I used my grandmother's house in Mississippi. In Countdown, Franny's house was the one I'd grown up
I managed to post using the updated blogger, and I also found umpteen comments "awaiting moderation." Who knew there was such a thing? So I moderated. Thanks for the kind words, all. I've published most of them with their appropriate posts now. It's good to hear your voices.
It was good to return to Mississippi last month to do research for book two of the sixties trilogy. I've been to the Delta
A girl steps away from the world and into her story for a few minutes and what happens? Blogger updates. gaaaaaaaa. Let's see if I can figure it out.
May was a pushing-forward month for writing and traveling. And for reading, which you'll see in the sidebar. I want to talk about what I'm reading, but first I want to say thank you.
Thanks to everyone, especially librarian Cathy Farrell and the
What have I done with the first three months of this year off? So much. And now it is April and book two is once again under my fingertips. So is a little girl named Cambria Bold. She is seven. She loves to cook. She makes me laugh. She has a little sister named Miss Moss and a dog named Old Dreadful No. 7. Her best friend is Queen Esther Washington who does not love squash.
April is shaping up
January was for putting systems into place. I organized and tossed, in my pantry and fridge. I bought fresh and organic. I scoured vegetarian and vegan cookbooks. I tried so many new recipes I got cross-eyed, but found some keepers. Still want to write a book with lots of food in it. Made notes.
Routine has been my friend in January. Oh, how I have missed it. I decided very quickly that I still hate schedules, but I could embrace a routine. Just establishing these routines has taken most of my energy, it seems. But now I've got it down.
I rise every weekday and head for the page while I'm fresh. I break at some point to begin(or join in making) the midday meal. I cook slowly and mindfully. We eat together. I go back to work. We walk the park. Evenings are for reading and knitting and being with friends and family. Who knew how soothing this could be?
I did. I've always known it. Lived it for a long time, then didn't for a long time, and now I have that chance again.
I've been thinking about how to measure success, or what that even means, when we look at our days and our work. How do YOU measure success? I would like to know.
I didn't make much headway on book two, if you measure success by numbers of new words or chapters or breakthroughs. If I measure by the yardstick of creating a safe, comfortable place to write, researching, going down blind alleys with a new chapter, and sticking with it no matter what... well, that's a big success. I think. My undermind is at work. I can't push the river. I can show up. Something like that.
Nevertheless, I feel vaguely like a failure. Maybe that's why I bought this old flour sack quilt from
Kudzu this week. It has been my only indulgence this year, although the year is young. How lucky is it that Kudzu is practically next door to
Your DeKalb Farmer's Market?
I found this quilt at the back of a booth at Kudzu, and I spent some time extracting it from its half-hidden corner. As soon as I touched it, I knew I had to have it. Its softness, suppleness, colors and patterns
Where I've drifted this week, deliberately and by chance:
This ten-minute video about the life of street photographer Vivian Maier. I've been following this project for about a year now, right here, and am fascinated by Maier's largely unknown life, and by the amazing shots she captured.
I was captured by E.M. Forster this week. I watched A Passage to India years ago and hated it, tried to read the book instead, hated it, and thought there must be something wrong with me. I was just too young, I think. I needed context. Context is something I work with all the time, with this '60s trilogy -- trying to give young readers context and framework and foundation. It matters.
This week I was led to a quote (you'll see it in the sidebar) from A Room With A View (a movie (lovely montage here) I loved and watched over and over again), which led me to thinking about trying to read Forster again. So I watched Howard's End this week (which made me want to re-watch Educating Rita!), then downloaded the novel from Project Gutenberg. It's great. It's more than great.
The class struggles Forster writes about in 1910 England are the same class struggles I am trying to delineate in book two of the '60s trilogy, which takes place in 1964 Mississippi. Who knew. Kismet. Synchronicity. I'm expecting it now, looking for it everywhere. I know it will come.
Onward. I loved this link from the kitch'n: Nourish Short Films: 54 Bite-Sized Videos about the Story of Your Food. Here's one, from Michael Pollan.
I'm in the midst of making another tiramisu blanket for our family's newest babe (I am now a great-aunt! hooray!). I want to make this next. Remember those chevron blankets from the '70s? I haven't made one in decades. Thanks to this reminder from the purl bee, it's time. I have lots of that blue sky cotton sitting around, waiting to take me back to the '60s.
It's cool this morning. I'm having trouble putting away the stuff of summer, the beach paraphernalia, the memories of a wonderful week away. Instead, my thoughts turn toward firewood and pumpkins. Funny how fall just *arrives* here in Atlanta. Time for some recipes with pumpkin, especially that pumpkin soup with bacon, which I will savor in front of the season's first crackling fire. Avec Howard's End. With my book two manuscript close by.
Hello, happy autumn.
xoxoxoxo, Debbie
PeeEss: If you are at SIBA this weekend in Charleston, come say hello! I'm there on Sunday, as SIBA has named Countdown its YA book of the year. Thank you, Southern Independent Booksellers! xoxo
You'll remember I decided to delete the blog, and then I didn't. le sigh. I felt a little like Tom Sawyer, faking his funeral. I have such a love/hate relationship with social networking. It's not you. It's me.I'm working on it.
To that end, I've made some changes. Tomorrow I get back into book 2 of the '60s trilogy, just in time for a family gathering over the weekend and all next week in Charleston. You'll remember we go to Charleston every September, in time for hurricane season. Maybe you'll do the photo challenge with me this year -- more to come about that.
So I'll catch you up with book two tomorrow. In the meantime, click through (if you're not there already) to the blog to see the new look! New title: Field Notes. New design. New sidebar material, including a list of current reading and listening, as well as books/music/dvds I'm using or have used for research -- I wanted to collect them in one place, so I created an amazon store so you could see them, too.
Full disclosure: As an affiliate, I receive a tiny portion of sales that click through from my blog or amazon store. I'm not looking for sales, though; I got most of these books from my local library, through inter-library loan, or from abebooks. (I *love* abebooks.) And I wanted to collect these resources in a readily available place and share them with you.
I was going to switch the blog to WordPress -- my Web Goddess Allison had me all set up. But I've decided to stay here on blogger for now. It's easier for me and I like the openness of the look for now -- what do you think? At some point I want to integrate the old 2007 tour blog with this one. When I started a new blog, I didn't understand I didn't have to. Live and learn.
If you visit my website (which is a WordPress site) you'll also see it's had a little refresh, too. I do like it, although at times, when I think about it too much, it also feels too loud to me, compared to the very understated look I had before. What do you think? I really want to know. Again.
We're just back from Hayesville, N.C. where Jim played a gig with some musician friends over the weekend. Great good fun. I have no brain cells left with which to be scintillating or even make sense. So here ya go. Some housekeeping, and some photos and (always) a little music when one can't think straight. Thanks, y'all. More anon!
An epiphany about one of my star characters in book two of the sixties trilogy! A good early-morning writing session. Then I turned to the leftover beans and rice, and here's what came of that.
 Just slipped 'em in the oven. I used the recipe from here, but adapted it.
 Already dealt with the blackberries:
Now to do something about the peaches. And that watermelon.
And chapter three.
I like
Got home from Tennessee travels late Friday night -- shout outs to my good friend Scot Smith, his colleagues, and all 7th graders who are working on a truly amazing Countdown project at Robertsville Middle School in Oak Ridge.
You'll be hearing more about this as we catalogue and archive and write up this project. How do we teach Countdown in the classroom? How does it reach into every corner of the new, national, Common Core standards? Stay tuned.
Thank yous as well to Jo Wilson and her team at Eaton Elementary in Lenoir City for an amazing hour with 3rd and 4th graders who have read the Aurora County trilogy and Freedom Summer, and to all teachers and students at Grandview School in Jonesborough, Tennessee, for a memorable teacher workshop day and another day with students in grades PRE-K through EIGHT. Whatta stretch. And it was good.
Got my hair cut yesterday. Talked with Vincent about working with our hands. I talk about this a lot lately. It's part of what I'm trying to put into words in my new novel, book two of the sixties trilogy, and into a new project I'm cooking up. Again, stay tuned. :>
I made a commitment this year to work more with my hands. I talk about it all the time in schools. I preach about it, actually, about how we have to use our notebooks (Totally paperless classrooms? Aiiieeeee! At our peril!), and keep teaching handwriting and cursive and drawing and doodling and pasting and cutting and taping and knitting and cooking and gardening and sweeping and painting...
I finished Abby's Tiramisu late yesterday afternoon. (Ravelry notes
here.) As I wove the ribbon through the border spaces and watched the whole thing come together, finally, I was filled with the delight of "I made this! With my own two hands! And it's beautiful!" I love that feeling. The beauty lies in the process, in the effort, and also in the finishing.
It's like that with writing as well. I've been teaching lots of teachers this spring, and that's what we've been working with -- process, effort, finishing. This is the investment.
It's hard to choose just a few photos that encapsulate our last full day in Greenwood. But these will have to do. They ask questions and tell stories, so I will just be quiet, and let them speak.
Just finished a late breakfast in bed and took this photo. Not that I usually eat breakfast in bed, mind you, but Jim Williams is cheerily drilling into a wall in my house and I want to be out of the way. (If you follow that link, you can see a photo of my kitchen, front and center, opening his webpage. He does great work.). I need to pack and get on the road to Mississippi. I'm meeting Marianne at The Varsity. Ha!
But no lunch there. Instead, I'm having my ritual oatmeal and thinking about what lies behind and underneath. Underneath those cooked oats are blueberries and raspberries. Underneath the top bedcovers are many other winter bedcovers -- can you see the layers? That's how we do it around here, layers upon layers, and the heat stays way down at night.
And look at all those drawers and doors -- what's behind them, inside them? These are the sorts of questions on my mind as I turn my thoughts toward Mississippi and this weekend.
I wish I could convey the complexity of writing about 1964 Mississippi. So many folks who know about book two of the Sixties Trilogy ask me, "Have you read
The Help?" and I haven't. I won't, not while I'm working on a story that also takes place in the sixties in Mississippi. My story is for young readers, and they deserve no less than adults do. They deserve a story with as much clarity and truth -- and heart -- as I can muster.
And therein lies the challenge.
Chapter One of Bruce Watson's fine new book
Freedom Summer gives a good overall look at what Freedom Summer was. It's good reading for you, if you want to follow me along on the journey to book two's publication. It's good reading anyway.
I was eleven years old in 1964. I spent time in Mississippi that summer with my kinfolks. I had no idea of the revolution going on around us. I only knew that the pool had closed, and so had the roller skating rink, the Cool Dip, the movie theater, the Pine View Restaurant... and no one could explain to me why.
Thirty-five years later I published a picture book I called
Freedom Summer, about the summer I was eleven. Now, I'm writing a novel about (as Bruce Watson puts it) "The Savage Season that made Mississippi Burn and made America a Democracy."
There is so much nuance. There are so many layers, just like you see on my winter-made bed. There is so much love, anger, truth, ugliness, beauty, differing opinion, behind every obvious doorway. Just what WAS Freedom Summer?
The stories are not simple. Mindsets are misunderstood. Motivations were not always pure... or evil. And my heroine, Sunny, is plopped right down into the middle of the mess, in Greenwood, the headquarters of SNCC in 1964, where she must make decisions that will change her life and forever alter her history. Will she do it?
I can't write her story without understanding, from as many valid angles as possible, the mamy layers of Freedom Summer. So off I go again,
to Gre
24 little hours... ha. And wowee at the response to where should my new office space be and what should I do with it. Thanks so much. I heard the gamut of responses, too, which was heartening. Not everyone said: "Girl! Schedule an intervention! Do the Right Thing! Hire a professional organizer!" hahahaha. (Actually, this post was very helpful!)
So many of you remarked on my "treasures" that "tell a story." I had never thought about them that way, but you're right. I am conscious that I create "little altars everywhere," and that they comfort me. And I'm not sure I'll be able to create them in the same way, with this bedroom.
But I have bought some second-hand furniture for the living/dining room, you see. A buffet, a hutch, a chest of drawers for linens (no table yet). And so I am going to give it a try, here in this bedroom with my office, and see what happens.
Christmas is now totally put away. I only need worry about the papers still in boxes, as you can see, but that will entail a frosty afternoon in front of the fire or watching a movie, going through boxes. The room needs painting... any suggestions? I've already started collecting paint chips. I've got my friend
Jim Williams coming this morning to look at lighting (that opening photo on his website is my kitchen!)-- I need a pretty ceiling light in that closet, and an outlet for a lamp, maybe. I need my bulletin board hung. I need to get rid of the wall ducks the previous owners left me. hee.
I've read about writers who are building their writing cottages on their property (and my friend Toni Buzzeo
just posted a YouTube video about the construction of hers). I think they are lovely, and yet I think they are not for me. I want to be connected to the place where (as E.B. White put it) the household tides run the strongest. I want to be surrounded by stories, little altars that hold the memories, moments, and meanings that have shaped my life and my writing. If I need to get away from home with my writing, there are cafes that suit me --
Zen Tea is one. So I'll chronicle my progress in this new room and we'll see if it sticks.
Savannah-born Johnny Mercer wrote these lyrics:
When an irresistible force such as you
Meets an old immovable object like me
You can bet just as sure as you live
Somethin's gotta give
Somethin's gotta give
Somethin's gotta give!
I like Sinatra's version here. And Sammy Davis Jr.'s, here. They're different arrangements, and both terrific.
This gem from the Great American Songbook played in my head this fall, as I thought about all that was on my plate, and about how my intentions were good, but I wasn't going to accomplish all I set out to do.
Maybe the new novel, brewing and asking for attention, was the irresistible force. Maybe it was the immovable object. At any rate, I traveled like a crazy person, to conferences, schools, and gatherings of all kinds, and used any inch of time leftover to be with the novel. That left no time for many things, including blogging.
I use the blog as a scrapbook, but I don't even have photos of most of November and December, that's how fiercely I kept my head down, trying to stay the course, trying to plow ahead.
So I'll settle for sharing some photos of the past two weeks. I came off the road on December 15 after spending a day working with teachers at Columbia University Teacher's College in NYC -- what a fabulous day that was! (How COLD it was in NYC!).
I got up out of my own good bed the next morning and found that I just could not face the page, not one more day. I couldn't do one more work-related thing. I couldn't. So... I put on an apron and gave myself a break.
Hey, y'all. I'm heading into a time of being away more than home, and trying to write a novel at the same time. Hmmmm.....
I fly this morning to D.C., to work at The Langley School for three days. Personal narrative writing with grades 3 through 8. Can't wait. My bags are packed... etc.
I fly home on Wed. night and fly out again on Thursday to Daytona Beach, where I'll speak and sign at SIBA -- Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance. I love SIBA, and am so looking forward to seeing my bookselling friends again.
Home and then out again to Birmingham and Scottsboro, Alabama, for some work with my southern region Scholastic Book Fairs friends.
Then it's October. And October is more packed than September. That's saying something.
Countdown will be front-and-center this fall with SBFs, and I'm proud to be essentially on tour with Fairs this fall. I'm looking forward to the good work and good friends along the way.
It has been a packed summer. Hard to find writing time. I've given in to the need for rest between travels and events and have slept in most early-mornings, mornings that used to be set-aside for writing. Maybe I can get that rhythm going again this fall as I travel. Maybe not. In any case, book two is coming with me today, and throughout the fall. Here's to getting a messy draft to Scholastic by the end of the year. More about that soon.
Thanks for coming with me this summer, and for keeping me company on the road this fall. It's good to travel with friends.
I spent yesterday with a new friend, Mary Carol Miller, born and bred in Greenwood, and knowledgeable about its history and buildings -- we walked around town, and were stopped every few minutes by Greenwood people who wanted to chat with Mary Carol -- she's a treasure. And I didn't get one photo of her! I was overwhelmed with the research angles -- more on this later, but let us just say that Mary Carol is a treasure in more ways than one. I'll be going back to Greenwood for further research, but I only had a few hours yesterday, before my signing at Turnrow.
This is the neighborhood that housed the COFO office in 1964 during Freedom Summer. I have the address, but there is no building there now -- it's a park. I'm not sure if this is because the building was bombed or burned in the sixties -- I'm still researching this.
Greenwood has such a distinct feel -- two sides of town, and a definite, literal "other side of the tracks" look. The Yazoo River and the railroad divided Greenwood in the sixties-- black on one side, white on the other.
Freedom Summer volunteers -- mostly white, middle class college students -- came to Greenwood in 1964 and stayed with black families, working with SNCC, under COFO's umbrella, and registering blacks to vote, opening a Freedom School, and a community center.
Below is the Greenwood courthouse, where people went to register to vote -- and be turned away, over and over, as they couldn't pass literacy tests or move around other barriers set up for them because of the color of their skin. Blacks were arrested here and jailed for attempting to register to vote.
Above is the Greenwood pool that was closed in 1964 after the passage of the civil rights act, so it wouldn't be open to people of all colors. Today it's a parking lot. The changing house/showers is a locked building now, maybe storage:
Hey, y'all. I am not a good self-promoter! I've already been to Square Books, Jr. (thanks ever to my good friends Jill and Leita and everyone at Square Jr. -- is that Kenneth in front of the non-fiction section? Why yes, it is!) -- we had a great time this afternoon.
I'll be at Turnrow Books in Greenwood, Mississippi tomorrow, August 24, signing Countdown at 3:30pm, and at Lemuria in Jackson, Mississippi at 5pm on Wed., August 25, and then I'm scooting home for some exciting news. Do please come see me at Turnrow or Lemuria, if you can. Would love to see you.
I'm combining a week of Mississippi book signings with some family time (you can see, below, how these folks are related to Miss Eula and Ruby Lavender, can you not?? :> They are certainly as wacky as Miss Eula -- I love them)...... and some heavy-duty research for book two of the Sixties Trilogy. I'll spend a good part of tomorrow with a guide in Greenwood. Today, I drove all over the state, in service of my story. I spoke with Curtis Wilkie in Oxford, where he teaches journalism at Ole Miss. In the sixties, he was a reporter and editor at the Clarksdale Press. I was grateful for the time. His book DIXIE is one of my research books, and he is a marvelous storyteller. I took these photos in Lexington, Mississippi:I went to Lexington to get a feel for the town from which Hazel Brannon Smith wrote her fiery and courageous editorials during the sixties. She was simply amazing. I'm in search of stories like these. They will become part of book two.Mississippi is such a land of paradoxes and contradictions. I love it so, and yet I still try to make sens
So I haven't told you about our Mad Men dinner last Sunday (photos, too!), or the trip to Orlando for Scholastic Book Fairs (fabulous! and more photos!), and here I am, ten days later, bumping up against a trip to Norfolk, Virginia tomorrow, to work with teachers, so I don't know when I'll catch you up. But you'll be proud of me. I've spent the entire week in this pink chair (covered with an old quilt for summer comfort), next to the cold fireplace, STEEPED, I tell you, STEEPED in 1964 Freedom Summer and Book Two of the Sixties Trilogy.
I have barely come up for air. These are the days when I must remember to eat, bathe, converse, those days of long, long hours with a story, trying to keep it together, of-a-piece, when it seems so unwieldy, and when so much is unknown.
Let me say that again: so much is unknown. oy vey.
And, as much as this place is frustrating, it is also thrilling -- thrilling. I'm making connections left and right, up and down, over and under. I'm scrambling to keep up with them, I'm shouting
A-HA! and grinning with delight. I'm groaning and tearing my hair out. I'm moving forward, back, stalled, forward again. I go to bed thinking about the story, and I wake up with inklings, phrases, full sentences waiting for me. I leap out of bed to capture them.
This morning's sentence: "I am in love with Thor Heyedahl and I want to set sail on Kon-Tiki."
What?BUT. I have learned to be ever-faithful to these gifts that float up from the subconscious. I wrote that sentence down. Let's see what happens.
In the meantime, I suit up and show up. Here I am, at the page. I am beginning to understand my story. I take notes and put them right into the manuscript, at this stage. It's similar to how I work with notebooks and is perhaps the evolution or next stage of that.
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Don't know if you are familiar with Scrivener, but it's PERFECT for organizing everything with your manuscript. I love it.<br /><br />http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php
Thanks, Barbara. No, I'm not familiar with Scrivener, though I've heard people talk about it. Maybe I should check it out. Hope you're well! Thanks again.