The Books Along the Teche Literary Festival 2019: Making my Schedule

Shadows on the Teche

Somehow in my past I had neglected reading The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. I remember when the book came out and I remember everyone reading it and talking about it. My daughter even read it (I think) because I had it on my shelf here for years; I never picked it up.

When I found out that author Rebecca Wells will be the featured author at the Books Along the Teche Literary Festival this year, I decided it was time to read the book. My librarian friend and fellow book-nerd insisted that I also read Little Altars Everywhere, which I did. Then I read Ya-Ya's in Bloom.  I now know the Ya-Ya's like my own family.

Now that I've read these, I'm excited to see Rebecca Wells next weekend at the literary festival! This is a woman that can tell a story! My favorite of the three books is Little Altars Everywhere but they are all wonderful; I have not read The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder yet, I've been so caught up in the Ya-Ya's. They remind me of my mother and her friends in a lot of ways and oh they are so Southern! 

So now I'm looking at the events schedule for the festival and trying to plan my events. This is more difficult than it sounds; there is so much I want to do!

We attended this festival last year and had a wonderful time, made new friends, and fell in love with Iberia Parish. That we would return this year was never in question. 

Do I want to do the same events I did last year?  (Yes!) Do I want to add new events? (Yes!) The festival organizers have spread things out a bit from last year and there are more opportunities to do things; for example, last year I missed most of the authors fair on Main Street because we were doing the Dave's Haunts and Jaunts tour. During the afternoon a nasty cold front blew in and by the time the bus tour was over most of the authors had closed up. 

Last year I didn't do the Bouree lessons and I think that would be sort of fun! 

This is my tentative schedule this year:

Friday

Louisiana Seafood Great Southern Chefs Foods Demo  9:30 - 11:00: this was great last year and

we got to sample delicious food!

Dave's Haunts and Jaunts Tour   12:30 - 3:00  We did this one last year but two things make me want to repeat this: James Lee Burke has released New Iberia Blues since then, and Danny Bonaventure. Danny is the tour guide and he's terrific, tons of fun, and excellent at his job.  This was a blast and I'm all in for doing this again.

Live Oak Walk  3:00 - 5:00  Main Street is lined with beautiful live oaks and I think this would be fun.  The walk is hosted by a local arborist and I would probably learn some things. We did not do this last year.  

The Jazz it Up Opening Reception  6:00 - 8:00  There is no way on God's green planet that I would miss this.  Hosted at the beautiful Shadows on the Teche plantation home of Weeks Hall, this was a fabulous event last year. The Bunk Johnson Brazz Band provides the music and there is a cochon de lait on the grounds under large white tents. If that's not your thing, you have the option of other seafood specialties. Tables are scattered on the grounds along the bayou and you can eat, visit, listen to music, and at the end of the evening there is a really fun second-line around the grounds! We met so many wonderful people last year at this event; it was one of my favorite things we did.  I'm all in

for this one.

So Friday looks to be a pretty busy day!  So far I've only picked up one new event.

Saturday

The Dave's Haunts and Jaunts Tour runs again at 8:00; it is a possibility we might do it Saturday instead of Friday.  

Books Into Movies Panel Discussion  10:30 - 12:00.  I'm maybe interested in this event.  The panel will discuss what authors should know about making a film of their books. A lot of people tell me Cane River Bohemia ought to be a movie; I'm not so sure about that, but maybe I'll learn something or get some networking in via this panel. 

Allons Manger Food Truck and Music Event begins at 10:30 and runs until 1:30 while the Authors Book Fair runs from 9:30 - 3:00. I think I want to participate in both of these and have a fairly unscheduled day on Main Street, eating, looking at books, listening to music, and watching Bayou Teche.  This might give me time to visit the Bayou Teche Museum which we did last year and loved. 

Bouree Lessons are from 11:00 - 12:00 and I could fit that in, too.

University of Lafayette Academic Symposium 12:30 - 2:30.  We attended this last year and it was great; I definitely want to do this again.  The topic is James Lee Burke and Louisiana Politics: right up my alley. 

Now this is my problem: if I do the Symposium, I can't do the Reader's Theater which runs from 1:00 - 2:00, and I missed this last year, too. The actors are reading from Divine Secrets and this will be awesome!  Ugh!

From 3:00 - 5:00 Rebecca Wells will speak and I'm definitely doing this. I wouldn't miss a chance to meet this storyteller/author!  I bet this is going to be awesome!

The Boogie on Down Evening Party is from 6:00 - 9:00 and we will definitely do this again. It was great fun last year. Terry Huval and his group will play fabulous Cajun music, the food will be abundant and delicious, and the friendship and fellowship will be heartwarming!  

On Sunday, Steve and I will be heading back home so we will miss the Swamp Tours and the

Symphony in the Park. The trip home for us will include lunch in St. Martinville and a stop in Arnaudville to stock up on Bayou Teche Brewing beers and Cajun Saucer Pizza.  

It sounds like an exhausting weekend and I can't wait!  And even still there is not enough time to do it all. I did not even list the Art Guild Exhibit, the movie screenings, the Poetry and Music event, or the Sir Speedy Run.  

And my gosh, you're in Iberia Parish! When is there time to visit Avery Island? Rip Van Winkle Gardens? Konriko Rice Mill?  I'm dying to go to Cypremort Point!  I've never been to Jeanerette or Loreauville! The docks at Delcambre are cool to see!  There is so much to see and do.  This is why after we attended the literary festival last year, we have made at least four more trips to the area since then, and I still haven't seen and done everything there is to do.

Guess that means I'll keep on coming back to Iberia Parish!

If you go:

Here is the Schedule of Events

Places to Stay

My trip report from last year, Part 1 and Part 2

Our July trip to Rip Van Winkle Gardens

Life Lessons from Ernest Gaines and A Lesson Before Dying

In anticipation of my upcoming trip to New Iberia to attend the Books Along the Teche Literary Festival, I have spent the past week reading A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines.

Mr. Gaines will be the featured guest at the festival and I want to read his works before I potentially meet him. The book was published in 1993 and for some reason I've never read it.  As much as I love Southern Literature and Southern writers, I can't fathom how this book slipped by me.  Now that I've read this book I am afraid I will be totally speechless in this man's presence.

I sobbed through the last twenty pages.  It took me three days to finish them.

In my twenty-two year career as an educator, I've known many, many kids like Jefferson.  I've know lots of Grants, too.

The setting of the novel is the Jim Crow south. Jefferson is twenty-one years old and sentenced to death for his presence at the murder of a local store keeper. The public defender calls Jefferson a mere "hog" during the trial and it becomes Grant's role to encourage Jefferson to die like a man, not like a hog.  Grant is reluctant to take this assignment on but his aunt won't take no for an answer.

Grant is a teacher; he teaches the plantation children who live in the quarter. 

As I read, I kept thinking about education. Grant went to college, got a degree, and returned to the quarter to live with his aunt and teach the children, yet he dreams of running away and starting a new life. Jefferson, on the other hand, is semi-literate and spent his life working in the fields.  Would education have saved him? Did it save Grant?

As I approached those last twenty pages all I could think of was "I teach this kid.  I have Jefferson in my classroom every year.  At least one of him, sometimes more," and by that I mean simply kids that sometimes end up in places they never intended and sometimes through no fault of their own. Life happens. What's going to happen to them?  Are we ensuring that all of our kids, every one of them, are equipped with the life skills they need to survive?  Are we doing our best by them?

In my long career in public education I can honestly say that it's not the same profession now that it used to be.  That's good in some ways and in other ways not so much.  While raising expectations for our students is great, I have real concerns about our "test and assess" culture that has come to define education and I have had kids tell me more and more often that all they feel like they are learning is how to test.  That breaks my heart.

So I try harder to engage and to make our scripted curriculum relevant and meaningful to them. Through the years, with more and more test prep added into the curriculum, it becomes harder and harder.

Kids like Jefferson sit in every classroom across the country.  Are we helping them by endlessly asking them to explain why they picked C over A and to justify that answer?  It frustrates me.  Is this a life skill they need or are we just lining the pockets of test makers?

As educators, we've been told that the shift from novels and books in ELA classes is permanent and that we will likely never return to teaching entire novels in class any longer.  (Kids can read them on their own, we are told.)  That makes me sad because that means that we lose Grant Wiggins, Atticus Finch, Huckleberry Finn, and thousands of other characters who inspire and through whom we vicariously can live and learn.  Are we doing these kids any favors by this?  I'm no longer sure.

As I read the last twenty pages of A Lesson Before Dying, through my tears I picked up my phone and sent a message to an educator friend who is equally passionate about kids and literature.  "I will never understand people who don't read," I said.  "The places they'll never go, people they'll never meet, and things they'll never feel is stunning."  Deep in my heart I believe this.

Through reading we learn empathy and compassion. That printed words on a page can touch a person so deeply they are moved to tears is amazing to me.  Equally important, words on a page can make us angry enough to fight for change, can take us to places we will perhaps never visit, can introduce us to role models, anti-heroes, innocence of spirit, purity of heart, and can teach us new ways of looking at the world.

I lived almost fifty-nine years having never met Grant Wiggins or Jefferson, but now my life is richer and forever changed because I did.

If you like this post, share it!  If you love this post, hit the tip jar on the sidebar! xoxoxo

Lyle Saxon, Weeks Hall, and Shadows on the Teche

Shadows on the Teche, 1938

Fantastic news!  The good people at the Books Along the Teche Literary Festival have offered me a media pass to cover the festival this year and I could not be more excited!

The festival will be April 6 - 8 in New Iberia's historic district but their website promises events all throughout the parish. Their agenda is jam-packed with events I don't want to miss and one of the highlights for me will be the opening reception:  a Cajun Cochon de Lait (pig roast) with music by the Bunk Johnson Brazz Band, hors d’oeuvres and adult beverages at Shadows-on-the-Teche, a National Trust for Historic Preservation site.

Shadows-on-the-Teche was the home of the Weeks family and was built in 1831 and completed 1834 for David Weeks and his wife, Mary Clara Conrad Weeks.  According to Richard Lewis, curator of visual arts at the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, the land was granted to Weeks's father, William,  in 1792 through a Spanish land grant.  William continued to purchase property throughout the area and eventually accumulated over 2,000 acres.

David Weeks and his father grew some cotton but focused primarily on sugar cane in the early 1820s. William retained carpenter James Bedell and mason Jeremiah Clark to build the Shadows but he died before the house was completed. When his widow remarried, she kept her property separate from that of her second husband. When she died the plantation passed to her son, William F. Weeks who died in 1895; then it passed to his daughters, one of whom was Lily Weeks Hall.  She died in 1918 and her son, William Weeks Hall returned to the plantation from Paris.  He acquired all family shares and at the age of 25 became the sole owner of the plantation.

Weeks Hall spent the rest of his life restoring the plantation to its original grandeur.  He used family papers and a complete set of construction records to achieve this, according to Richard Lewis in his book, Robert W. Tebbs: Photographer to Architects.  Architects Richard Koch (1889-1971) and Charles R. Armstrong (d. 1947) were retained to restore the home "to its 1830s appearance."  When Weeks Hall died in 1959 he bequeathed the home to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.  Koch and Samuel Wilson, Jr. did restoration work for the National Trust in 1961 and since then the gardens have also been restored.

Like Cammie Henry, Weeks Hall spent his life preserving and restoring a plantation home and buffering it against the encroaching modernism that he saw around him.  Both Cammie and Weeks Hall used their plantation homes to paint a picture of the past in which they both lived, while also keeping one foot in the present.  Complicit in this for both of them was their common friend, writer Lyle Saxon.

Lyle Saxon and Weeks Hall, a fine artist and painter, were lifelong friends and when Lyle Saxon had an appendectomy that turned out to be much more complicated than initially believed, Weeks Hall stepped up as a blood donor for Lyle.  Chance Harvey, in her biography of Saxon, says that after this they referred to each other as "cousins."  Lyle even joked, "If you think this is going to make me paint any better, you're crazy."

In The Friends of Joe Gilmore, Saxon devotes an entire chapter to Weeks Hall and chronicles a literal "moonlight and magnolias" visit to the plantation with his servant, Joe Gilmore:

"And so we sat there on the broad gallery sipping [mint]juleps while Joe and Mose brought in the bags...After dinner we strolled out to the summer house overlooking the bayou and some of Weeks' friends came to call.  The moon was nearly full and the bayou was filled with shining ripples.  Great trees arched over our heads where we sat in the shadow."

Lyle's friend and illustrator Edward Suydam was also present that night and Lyle calls the evening "nearly perfect" as ladies in white linen dresses and men in summer suits drifted across the lawn while servants mingled among them balancing trays of drinks.

I'm fully expecting to "see" Lyle Saxon and Weeks Hall when I visit The Shadows in April!

There is so much history and so many truly cool things to see in New Iberia and the surrounding area that I'm certain one weekend will in no way be enough.  Now that the book is finished I plan to make several trips south to more fully explore the stomping grounds of Lyle Saxon and Cammie Henry.

Cammie was born in Assumption parish (she sometimes says that she was born in Ascension parish) and taught school in Donaldsonville after her graduation from the Normal School in Natchitoches.  There are plenty of places around that area to explore as well.  Another trip!

Once again, The Books Along the Teche Literary Festival will be April 6-8; get your tickets here and make plans to go!


For Further Reading:
Robert W. Tebbs: Photographer to Architects (LSU Press, 2011)
Shadows on the Teche Plantation (Karen Kingsley, Knowla)
The Shadows on the Teche: History 
Lyle Saxon and the WPA Guide to New Orleans (Lawrence N. Powell, 2009)




If you like this post, please share it!  If you love this post, hit the tip jar in the right sidebar!

Weekly Instagram Feature: New Iberia Travel and Tourism

Crepe Myrtles in the Louisiana sun

One of the great driving forces in marketing these days is, believe it or not, Instagram.  We've always known what a powerhouse social media can be but take note: Instagram has over 700 million monthly users as of April 2017.  Sure, some of those users are teenagers but the research shows that most teenagers prefer Snapchat over Instagram.  More and more, Instagram is becoming the place to market your brand or to launch your entrepreneurship.

There are some powerhouse players who are using Instagram to great advantage: some are big brands you've already heard of like Nike and National Geographic, but smaller, independent sellers are seeing fantastic results from a carefully curated Instagram feed.  New York stylist and former Radio City Rockette Hilary Rushford decided a day job cubicle wasn't for her and formed the Dean Street Society which is a motivational company helping people develop the best of themselves, whether it's personal style, entrepreneurship, defining a business model, or marketing.

Instagram works best if you define your brand, determine your niche, and do your research on your intended market. To that end, I'm going to use this space once every week or so to run a series of great Instagram feeds that I have discovered: people who are doing it right. These are just feeds that I follow and find entertaining, educational, or helpful: nobody has asked me to put them here.

The first page I'd like to give a high-five nod to is the Iberia Parish Travel and Tourism page.

Currently these are the top photos on their home page:

Iberia_Travel

Their posts caught my eye because it just defines Louisiana for me.  The first photo of a Tabasco pepper and a King cake is pure Louisiana love!  In these twelve photos we see Louisiana food, a plantation, entertainment and nightlife, trees draped with Spanish moss, and the featuring of local businesses which is all any travel and tourism page should be.

If you scroll through the rest of their feed, you'll see bayous, churches, community theater, and of course Mardi Gras!

The reason this feed works is because it's consistent: everything comes back to the brand which is "come visit New Iberia!"  Their photos exude Louisiana atmosphere and flavor.

Their homepage also includes a link to their Facebook feed which successfully integrates their social media presence.

Your Instagram bio is limited to 150 characters so it's important to be creative in order to capture the interest of your intended market.  The bio for Iberia Tourism reads:

Iberia Tourism Official profile for Iberia Parish Travel. Adventure Louisiana's HOT side and get ready to ditch the beignets for the hot sauce!

One of Louisiana's iconic brands comes from Iberia Parish: Tabasco Hot Sauce.  In New Iberia you can tour the Tabasco factory and museum.  Tabasco tour not for you?  There's also golf, garden tours, an historic district, shopping, museums, and plantations.  What's not to love?!

It was through this page that I learned about the Bayou Teche Literary Festival, thus achieving their goal of education and tourism.  I'm dying to go to this festival April 6-8, 2018.   Author James Lee Burke is featured this year and I've been a Dave Robicheaux fan for years. The festival events will feature food demonstrations, Dave Robicheaux tours, a 5K run, an Academic Symposium, authors and artisans fair, and Bourre lessons, just to name a few.  I'm in!

The bottom line is that this page does great job marketing its brand.  Their photos are consistently brand related and beautiful to look at which is critical because Instagram is such a visual medium. 

The page currently has 637 followers.  If you want a little taste of Louisiana in your Insta-feed, go on over and follow Iberia Tourism!

On Mysterious Flowers and Monuments

A friend of mine has a night -blooming cereus that she named Eudora, in honor of course of the famous Southern author Eudora Welty who had one in her own garden and was known for celebrating its buds with all night parties. When my friend's cereus produced buds last week, rather than throw an all night party she sent a group text with a photo. Her message was filled with as much glee as Miss Eudora must have felt at her own blooms.

Miss Eudora has been much on my mind in past weeks as I picked up a volume of her collected stories recently. I have not read any of them in quite some time - since college, perhaps.  One exception would be "A Worn Path" which I use when I teach a creative writing class; other than that, the treasures of "The Wide Net" and "Clytie" have been long forgotten.  I spent several weeks this summer sitting outside under the shade of my magnolia rediscovering Miss Welty's lovely southern prose and relishing the rich atmosphere she creates with her words.

There's nothing more rewarding to me than picking up a book and rediscovering an old, favorite author.  While I read widely, both fiction and non-fiction, my preferences tend to Southern writers. Give me a Rick Bragg memoir, Flannery O'Connor, or even Faulkner and I am consumed with the words.

In the course of writing my biography of Cammie Henry I discovered the short stories of Ada Jack Carver, a bright light in the 1920s but who never produced anything of note after that.  Carver's stories are rich in atmosphere and many have memorable characters such as old Baptiste in "Redbone" who initially seems to be celebrating the birth of a son by going into town to get drunk but there is more to the story...

What is it that makes Southern writers so unique?  Some critics contend that the Southern literary renaissance that began in the 1920s is still ongoing and I tend to agree with that.  When H. L. Mencken declared the south "The Land of the Bozart" and insisted that southern writers had produced nothing of substance, he fired up the pens and typewriters of every warm-blooded southerner who had a desire to prove him wrong.

The literature of the South is as unique and beautiful as its climate and its people.

How long before it is targeted for criticism and banning as the Confederate monuments are?  Is that too much of a stretch?  Look at it this way: critics of the Confederate monuments say that the South lost the war, that the war was treasonous, that the Confederacy held slaves (as if the Union did not), and that the monuments were erected in the Jim Crow period; apparently their point with that last one is that these monuments are intended as some sort of subliminal white supremacy symbol.

This is all fallacious reasoning it seems to me.  These monuments were commissioned to honor the family that fought to protect their homes and their way of life.  And no, "way of life" is not code for slavery.  The way they lived was agrarian, it was slow and peaceful, it was with a work ethic and independent spirit that did not want help from outsiders.  Of course there were bad people who did bad things, but that has been the case throughout history.  Never has an entire culture been targeted because of that as is the case now.

One of our most beloved Southern writers was Harper Lee whose To Kill a Mockingbird is nothing if not a message on equality, tolerance, and dignity.  In Scout Finch we see the innocence of a child who has never been taught to see color in a person and who has never learned hatred or prejudice.  Those things are learned from adults and Atticus Finch's lesson to his children was "put yourself in their skin and walk around in it."  What are we teaching our kids now?

How many of us are living that way now?  How much of our hatred is learned and passed along to others?  How much of this monument mess is just mob mentality?

And where does it end?  People ask that question often, but think about it.  For years overly sensitive lemmings have tried to ban books often citing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Animal Farm, and of course To Kill a Mockingbird among many, many others as offensive in one way or another.

How is that different than monuments?  These books are in public libraries just as monuments are in public places.  What's the difference?

To me, both books and the monuments are works of art and should not be subject to censorship.  I disagreed when the Ten Commandments were removed from courthouses and schools but at least I understood the reasoning behind it ("separation of church and state").  You could point me to a legal position that made that clear.

Perhaps I'm oversimplifying things because of course books don't equate to monuments in literal sense but censorship is censorship wherever it lies.

If our society does not stop with this over sensitive offended culture we are perpetuating there is literally no end to it.  Everything is a target.  If you are traumatized by a monument how could you possibly read Delta Wedding?  When will the book burning start?

Miss Welty abhorred the Civil War: she had one parent from the North and one from the South and she saw what the war did to Mississippi where she grew up (long after the war, of course).  "Ravaged" was the word she used. But she also knew that there are two sides to everything; her parents taught her that.

As we consider the modern debate of monuments, we need to remember that there are two sides to everything and that the men we see carved in these granite and bronze monuments were men - they were not without flaw and they were not perfect but they were human, just like we are, and we can learn from them still and we can admire their dedication to home and family.

The night-blooming cereus blooms only one night of the year. Their blooms are fragile and temporary and draw people to it in admiration and awe, but then it is gone until next year. Welty called them “a naked, luminous, complicated flower,” and maybe that's what our monuments are. Perhaps we all just need to spend more time looking at the beauty of a thing.