Fantasy + History + Disaster Fiction = Whoa.

Stormwitch by Susan Vaught

Hurricane Camille, fantasy, historical fiction, the Civil Rights movement, Dr. King, African history, Freedom Summer, Amiri Baraka, Jim Crow, Amazon warriors, the KKK, and voodoo. All in one book. Written for a YA audience. I read this book straight through in a two hour sitting, and then my head exploded out of sheer admiration.

Then I put my head back together again so I could tell y'all about it.

The year is 1969, and 16-year-old Ruba is forced to leave her beloved Haiti after her grandmother, Ba, dies. She moves to Pass Christian, MS to live with her paternal grandmother, who tells her not to wander too far from home and to keep her head down when she talks to white people. In Haiti, Ruba was a storm warrior alongside Ba; together, they conjured, danced, and drove back hurricanes and controlled the weather. Ruba is descended from Amazon warrior women - she doesn't keep her head down for anyone.

Ruba's confidence, pride, and power attract the attention of local Klansmen, who are determined to teach the "juju girl" a lesson. But Ruba scarcely has time to contend with them because there's a storm in the air, and her senses tell her it's an evil one that could kill them all unless she stays to fight it. You all know of it as Hurricane Camille.

Vaught does a good job of characterizing the differences in ideals between older and younger African-Americans, and in allowing the generations to learn from one another. At the beginning of the book, Ruba thinks Grandma Jones is a complacent fool, but as she learns more about the role Jones played during Freedom Summer, she begins to reconsider. Likewise, Grandma Jones's attitude towards Ruba and her firebrand friends also changes throughout the course of the book.

Crossing fantasy with historical fiction, Stormwitch is a truly inventive, ambitious, and impressive novel that can be enjoyed by adults and young adults alike.

Hancock County, MS

As any librarian will tell you...or the spouse of any librarian...libraries are much more than book despositories. Libraries are also public spaces, community resources, and storehouses of all sorts of valuable information, records, and professional know-how.

The Hancock County Library System sent us this note, and I'll shut up now, because they pretty much say it all:

Immediately after Katrina, many residents needed to contact family and friends by using the satellite telephones or the computers with wireless Internet access. Others needed copier and fax services or a table to spread out documents and fill out forms, or just a quiet, air conditioned building with clean restrooms. Some just needed a respite from the devastation outside and came in to read a newspaper, find out about friends, enjoy the air conditioning and the clean restrooms.

They came every week to get a copy of the daily disaster recovery news published by the Hancock County Emergency Operations Center. The Kiln Public Library became the Volunteer Registration Center for volunteers to register and residents to request assistance. The Bay St. Louis-Hancock County Library was used by the Department of Human Resources to distribute more than 6,500 disaster food cards.

Whatever their reason, they found a place where they could receive comfort and sometimes a listening ear from a courteous, professional, understanding staff. The library provided the calmness and connection in a world that was otherwise totally devastated.

A year after Hurricane Katrina, more than 3,000 people a month come into any of the three branches of the library system. And, both the Bay St. Louis-Hancock County Library and the Kiln Public Library provide free meeting space to community organizations, including the Hancock County Governor’s Commission on Recovery, Renewal and Rebuilding.

Congressman Gene Taylor and his wife, Margaret, are two residents of Bay St. Louis who lost their home and everything they owned to Katrina. Margaret Taylor, a long-time user of the library, said on a recent visit, “This library has become an oasis in the midst of devastation. Thank you for what you are doing for the community.”

To the staff and administration of the library, it is just part of their job and their mission of “providing the right information, at the right time, in the right format while acting as a conduit to and from other information sources and services.”

(You can see more photos and learn more about Hancock County libraries here.)

A Thin Line Between Brave and Ludicrous

So, the object of this here blogathon being the raising of money for hurricane-battered libraries, we thought it proper to share our own Katrina story, or more accurately, my folks' Katrina story.

Weird and creepy moment of foresight: A week before the storm formed, my faculty advisor and myself were walking over to grab some coffee, and talk somehow turned to New Orleans, and I said to him, "If you've never been, you really should go soon. It's one of the great cities of the world, but it's due to get hit by a big hurricane one of these days, and the levees aren't in the greatest shape, and given the local terrain, if they ever break it's gonna fill up like a bowl."

So the storm forms and it's on its way.

I call home: "Y'all leavin' or stayin'?"
Home: "We're staying."
Me: "A'ight."

Then the storm gets bigger. My phone rings.

Dad: "Here's the info on our will, and this is what you should do if a tree falls on us."

Mobile, as we all know, got relatively lucky. Dauphin Island, not so much. I found the webcast and watched the Mobile news feed and commenced to pacing back and forth. I called home during the storm and got through.

Dad: (sounds of wind) "Hello?"

I recall stories of my dad spending most of Frederick sitting on the upstairs porch.

Me: "Are you outside?"
Dad: "Yeah. I had to get some important stuff out of the car."
Me: "Don't you think you should be inside?"
Dad: "Ow!"
Me: "What?"
Dad: "Oh, nothing...shingle just hit me in the arm."
Me: "GO BACK INSIDE."

Pacing resumes. The next day I get up, look at the web, and see that Dauphin Island has a new channel through it and several bridges are out, and Mobile has been (relatively speaking) not as bad as it could have been. I call home.

Me: "How's things?"
Dad: "The house is alright, but there's a little roof damage. I'm at the office."
Me: "What are you doing at the office?"
Dad: "Sitting at my desk, looking up at the sky."
Me: "Oh. How's your computer?"
Dad: "Full of water. I just poured it out."

Long story short, we lucked out, the next issue of Mobile Bay Monthly made it to press, and I figured out where I got my sense of gallows humor from.

And, last but not least, special thanks to MBM for their donation to the Blogathon.

This Wheel's Highly Readable

"Hey, I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but I'm certainly not the dumbest. I mean, I've read books like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Love in the Time of Cholera, and I think I've understood them. They're about girls, right? Just kidding. But I have to say my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography Cash by Johnny Cash." -- Rob Gordon, High Fidelity

Books about music are funny beasts. Writing a book and writing a song are two radically different undertakings, and just because you can compose a perfect three and a half minute ode to, I dunno, cars or girls or something, doesn't make you Joseph Conrad. (Don't believe me? Read DeeDee Ramones's memoir. I hate to speak ill of the dead, but whooooboy. I think his ghostwriter was Peeves.)

This is why Levon Helm's autobiography, This Wheel's On Fire, was such a pleasant surprise. (At this point I'd like to give a shout-out to my good friend Bob Koch, who gave me a copy when I was in Madison a couple weeks ago. Bob has also introduced me to Ross MacDonald, Joe R. Landsdale, and numerous excellent but forgotten garage bands. Hey Bob!)

Helms's memoir, which begins with his childhood in Arkansas and finishes up around the time he started acting in films like Coalminer's Daughter, is primarily concerned with his time in the Hawks and the Band. Surprisingly, it's the Hawks chapters that may be the most interesting: full of tall tales, brushes with the law, irresponsible driving, Canadian roadhouses, the mob, and the irrepressible Ronnie Hawkins, these chapters capture the tiny victories and lunatic behavior that rock and roll bands get up to on the road.

I laughed aloud in several places, and bugged Mary incessantly with "And one time? Levon and Robbie parked the car on the train tracks and left the bass player inside, and then they waited for a train, and when the train whistle blew, they started screaming that they couldn't get the car to start, which gave the bass player a nasty start, and why are you walking away from me when I'm in the middle of a story?"

When the book moves on into the Band years, it gets pretty sad in places. Richard Manuel, in particular, is tragic. And Robbie Robertson certainly doesn't come off well, though he disputes some of what Helm wrote, allegedly downplaying the role of the rest of the group in crafting "Big Pink" and "The Band" and making a ton of money off what Helms feels should have simply been split five ways. (I'm inclined to side with Levon on this one.) Watching a group as great as the Band fall prey to the usual rock and roll demons - booze, drugs, money - is about as much fun, at times, as watching Superman tie one on and moon the Pope.

That said, Helms' book is now my all time, top five, favorite music memoir ever. I highly, highly recommend it if you are at all a fan of the Rock and/or Roll.

Biting Off More Than I Can Chew

Good music is, of course, essential to a blogathon. In this, we are particularly lucky, as the Gulf Coast is full of good musicians. We've got a steady diet of Professor Longhair, the Meters, the Twilight Singers*, and a variety of other great jazz, blues, dixieland, and southern rock stacked up by the turntable, and as soon as the downstairs neighbors are up and about, I'm cranking up the new Jason Isbell record.

Notice I do not live on the Gulf Coast at the moment, and am thus making no claims as to "goodness".

Undaunted, as Mary mentioned below, I've dared myself to write (mostly) and record a quick little ditty today between posts. For this I have assembled:

2 guitars (electric)
1 dobro
1 lap steel
1 bass (electric)
1 snare drum
3 harmonicas (none in the correct key for this tune...dangit)
1 tape four track
1 microphone
a jumble of cords
a washboard
a mouth harp
a kazoo
a bunch of percussive stuff (hammers, boxes, etc)
a chintzy 80s keyboard

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got lyrics to write.

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* The Twilight Singers were in the middle of recording their most recent full length when the hurricane hit New Orleans. Undaunted, they fired up the generators and kept going. That, friends, is rock and roll.

It's Contest Time! The Rickey and G-Man Soul Food Cook-off

In Poppy Brite's Soul Kitchen, Rickey gets a consulting job designing the menu at an ill-fated casino restaurant with a menu featuring soul food from around the world. Spring rolls, borscht, and pirogues, alongside cornbread and collard greens.

As Rickey sees it, the American South doesn't have a stranglehold on soul food because all "soul food" means is food that tastes like home.

Where Brady's from, that means grits grillades and gumbo. Where I'm from, soul food is a big chicken pot pie with a vinegar crust and a side of mashed potatoes with gravy. And it's pretty hard to argue with the "meat and three"* we used to get at the Barksdale in Memphis.

And with that, I introduce our first of five contests: the G-Man and Rickey Soul Food Cook-Off!

Submit your best soul food, comfort food, food that tastes like home recipe, from wherever in the world you hail in the comments section of this post.

Prizes: The winner will receive copies of the top three recipes on the funky recipe cards I ordered from Etsy last week, and a copy of the Glamour Magazine After Five Cookbook, a guide to good living and entertaining for the working girl, published in 1952. It's both awesome and terrifying.

Submit your soul food recipe by 5am Pacific Time. Winners will be announced in the next to last post of the Blogathon.
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* To those in the dark, the "meat and three" is a southern plate lunch that involves a meat main course like fried chicken or chicken fried steak, and three side dishes, which may include sweet potatoes, potato salad, greens, green beans, or mac & cheese. Cornbread is mandatory. Sweet tea is suggested.

If You Can't Stand the Heat

Soul Kitchen by Poppy Z. Brite

When I read Poppy Z. Brite's excellent Liquor back in November, I had one small criticism, which was that chefs, restaurant owners, and long-time lovers Rickey and G-Man had no romantic spark between them. I finished my review saying that I hoped I'd pick up later books in the series to find that Rickey and G-Man's liquor-themed restaurant had succeeded, and that the two had run off to Cabo for a week or two to rediscover their love.

In Soul Kitchen, the third book in the series, I got my wish, and a whole lot more. Brite continues to write engaging, fun prose about kitchen culture and everyday life in a pre-Katrina New Orleans, and her descriptions of restaurant menus - the brilliant, the gimmicky, the touristy, and the downright disasterous - are written with a true passion and instinct for the subject. However, in addition to the light-hearted food writing, Brite turns her attention to more serious issues and delivers a thoughtful meditation on race relations, class, and homophobia in New Orleans.

In the book's prologue, Milford Goodman, a brilliant black chef, is convicted for the murder of his boss, a white woman. Ten years later, DNA evidence exonerates Goodman; however, he still can't get a kitchen job anywhere in New Orleans until Rickey and G-Man hire him at Liquor. Goodman adapts immediately, and things are going well at the restaurant until pastry chef Tanker (the inventor of Liquor's mousse-filled chocolate death mask) has a falling out with the volatile Rickey and jumps ship for adventures in molecular gastronomy at a weird, trendy restaurant.

Shortly thereafter, things fall apart in a big way. Rickey signs on for a consulting job at a casino restaurant with two of the city's dirtier movers and shakers. The bright side is that they're willing to hire Goodman as the chef de cuisine. The down side is much darker and uglier than anything Rickey could have anticipated. Throughout the book, the relationship between Rickey and G-Man faces some serious tests, but in this book, I believed in them as a couple. And because their love rang true in this book, the stakes in their fights and problems were much higher.

Brite finished writing this book the night before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, and this book is a love letter to a "simpler" time in a city that couldn't be simple if its life depended on it.