Southern Bookman

Nashville, Atlanta's sister city to the north, scores victory over Austin

Nashville's up and Austin down.

Cloud software giant Oracle is moving its headquarters to the booming Tennessee capital from the cooling Texas capital.

The home of the Grand Ole Opry rises as a high-tech powerhouse.

Nashville's surge is pushing out longtime residents as housing prices soar, according to a Wall Street Journal article Tuesday. Others welcome the population crunch.

Nashville over the years has added medical technology, insurance and other industries to its famed country music brand.

As traffic and an influx of tourists choke the city, Nashville voters reject mass transit. New development projects rise along the Cumberland River, most prominently a new stadium for the Tennesee Titans, the NFL team Nashville stole from Houston in 1996.

Nashville, which seeks a major league baseball team, also is home to the NHL Predators and Major League Soccer's Nashville Soccer Club. It seems a perfect spot for the NBA as well.

Austin and Nashville are both liberal islands in states run by extreme right-wing GOP governments. After years wandering in the political wilderness, Democrats perpetually hope that the burgeoning metro areas turn Texas and Tennessee blue. 

Atlanta keeps adding population too, raising Democratic Party hopes to take over state government, building on recent statewide wins by U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock and President Joe Biden.

Only four hours apart, Atlanta and Nashville look like the Southern version of New York and Boston.

Atlanta boasts of its high-tech appeal, with an educated work force, Hartsfield-Jackson Airport and business-friendly state government. Yet Oracle chose Nashville.

Perhaps Atlanta will land the Sundance Film Festival, which might leave its longtime home in Park City, Utah. Sundance would boost Atlanta's movie industry stature, as GOP legislators grow suspicious of Hollywood leftists moving here.

Yet landing a company like Oracle would give Atlanta more substantial economic benefits.

Denver is another booming capital city, attracting businesses leaving California.

Nashville, Austin, Atlanta and Denver are the four dynamos projected to lead America into the 22nd century.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gainesville, Ga., square shows contrasts between tradition, new economy

A Confederate monument rises in the center of Gainesville's tree-shaded town square, surviving efforts in recent years to remove the gray-tinged remnant of the Lost Cause.

Erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1909, the 28-foot-tall statue of a Confederate soldier called Old Joe stares with weary eyes at a lively restaurant, shopping and entertainment scene.

Hall County, which owns the plot of land where Old Joe stands, a few years ago entered negotiations with the UDC to remove the statue to a "more suitable location." The Confederate daughters hold a lease on the spot for a few more years, and Ole Joe remains.

Near Old Joe, a plaque remembers Franklin D. Roosevelt's visit to the city in 1936 following two devastating tornadoes. Roosevelt often stayed at nearby Warm Springs, Ga., seeking relief from his crippling polio in its healing waters.

On a visit to Gainesville for a couple of days last week, I explored a traditional Southern small town undergoing rapid change and population growth, revealing striking contrasts between the past and future. Everyone I encountered was very friendly, a welcome Southern tradition.

Gainesville's square pulses with the city's thriving economy, based on the poultry industry and a few high-tech ventures, law firms carrying out legal work at the Hall and federal courthouses, and shops catering to homeowners on nearby Lake Lanier.

Along with high-ticket interior-design stores, the square is home to gritty retail businesses like Moe's Records, loaded with bins of used vinyl albums. I was tempted at a live album of the jazz pianist and vocalist Mose Allison, a favorite of my wild youth in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

While the restaurants were packed, the expensive home-furnishing stores had few customers. At one store whose merchandise included pillows with biblical messages, a hymn praising Jesus played. 

Brenau University, with three locations in the city, is a major economic generator. The university's students fill the streets surrounding the square, swarming the bars and pizza restaurants. Local residents, the men wearing beards and baseball caps and the women summer dresses, join the crowd.

Ninth District Congressman Andrew Clyde, an ultra-right wing ally of Marjorie Taylor Green who voted against legislation authorizing aid for Ukraine, Taiwan and Israel, runs an office on Washington Street adjoining the square. A few blocks away is the headquarters of the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, closed on Friday afternoon.

Along with pizza places and Avocados, a popular spot serving tacos, sandwiches and brunch dishes, the square offers fancy dining at the excellent Italian restaurant Cotto and old-style steaks and seafood at The Stag - Chophouse.

On a walk down a desolate street outside of the square, I discovered the ultramodern Hall County Library, with a huge collection of books, a well-stocked children's section and computers and printers. An impressive local history room provides archives for family genealogists and other researchers. I read the informative Gainesville Times, glad to see the local paper still putting out a daily print edition.

Leaving, I was amused at a communal jig saw puzzle sitting unfinished on a table. Library patrons can pause and help complete the puzzle.

Hall County's politics and economy are also challenging to piece together.

In the 2020 election, Donald Trump received 70 percent of the vote in Hall County. Yet the country's poultry-based economy depends on immigration.

While disapproval of President Biden and inflation runs deep, every restaurant on the square had waiting lists of up to 40 minutes Friday night.

 

Farewell, Helen Vendler, Harvard professor and influential poetry critic

The eminent poetry critic Helen Vendler stood in a soft glow of light, her face radiant.

Vendler's Boston-flavored voice enraptured her audience gathered at Emory University, where she delivered the annual Richard Ellmann Lectures, named for the former Emory professor and acclaimed biographer of James Joyce, William Butler Yeats and Oscar Wilde.

Looking back at her 1994 lectures, titled "The Breaking of Style," I remember the warmth of her personality, how she made her listeners feel part of a larger community of poetry.

Vendler, professor of Harvard from 1985 through 2018 and the author of 23 books, died Tuesday at age 90 at her home in Laguna Niguel, Calif., after suffering from cancer.

The Ellmann lectures displayed the amazing breadth of Vendler's criticism, comparing the careers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Seamus Heaney and Jorie Graham, three poets of divergent eras and techniques. She found that each of them reached new heights in their work by changing styles in midcareer.

Vendler, the poetry critic at the New Yorker from 1978-1996 and frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, the New Republic and the New York Review of Books, championed the careers of contemporary poets like Graham and Rita Dove. 

She also re-evaluated the work of 20th century American poet Wallace Stevens and the 17th century British poet George Herbert, concluding that Herbert's achievements excelled that of his contemporary, John Donne.

Vendler's "Wallace Stevens: Words Chosen Out of Desire" promoted his longer poems as major accomplishments, countering the prevailing judgment that they were pretentious and monotonous.

Her book, "The Odes of John Keats," set the standard for modern criticism of the Romantic poet's astounding outpouring of major poetry in the spring and summer of 1819.

Vendler edited "The Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry," one of my favorite books. The anthology gives an expansive, canon-defining offering of 20th century American poetry.

In Vendler's eyes, poetry from different eras shared a common seeking for emotional truth through memorable language.

 

 

 

William Shakespeare's plays still excite us

William Shakespeare's plays still enthrall audiences, 460 years after his birth.

Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564, in Stratford on Avon and died on the same date 52 years later in his hometown.

Sometimes I imagine Shakespeare's amazement at our technology, transportation, buildings, mass media and hygienic and health improvements if he were to come back to life today.

Although the English language has changed immensely since Shakespeare's Elizabethan era, and science and commerce have transformed the world, his characters remain relevant. His insights into the human heart, with its passions and foibles, are unsurpassed.

His sonnets also express universal emotions that remain true for us.

Artificial intelligence will never match his poetry and understanding of humanity. 

Generations to come will no longer understand his language, critic Amit Majmudar laments in the April New Criterion.

I believe "Hamlet," "King Lear," "The Tempest," "Othello," "Romeo and Juliet," "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "As You Like It" will keep astonishing those yet unborn.

 

 

 

 

 

LSU historian Gaines M. Foster's "The Limits of the Lost Cause" explores Confederate symbols' place in U.S. political turmoil

LSU history professor emeritus Gaines M. Foster's "The Limits of the Lost Cause: Essays on Civil War Memory" examines how the Confederate battle flag and other symbols have been appropriated by national white supremacist movements. 

Foster looks at the battle flag's presence in violent events such as Dylan Roof's slaying of nine people at the Emanuel African American Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. on June 17, 2015, and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

The flag now represents nationwide white resentment over gains of blacks rather than symbolizing Southern nostalgia for the Civil War, Gaines concludes.

In his groundbreaking book "Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause and the Emergence of the New South, 1865 to 1913," Gaines explored the rise of the Lost Cause mythology and construction of Confederate monuments in the post-Reconstruction South.

Gaines in his new collection of essays shows how those developments also reflected the South's move toward national reconciliation.

The book's eight essays are "a contrarian's take on the white South's memory of the Civil War, commonly called the Lost Cause," Gaines says. "Although the Lost Cause played an important role in creating the modern South, it did not preclude white southerners from accepting reunion and embracing sectional reconciliation; indeed, it facilitated it."

In three essays first published in 1985 and 1990, Foster challenges noted historian C. Vann Woodward's view expressed in "The Burden of Southern History" that the South's defeat in the Civil War gave it a different perspective from the rest of the country's belief in national righteousness and progress.

In a thorough analysis of Woodward's work, Foster points out that Southerners after the Civil War turned into the most fervid supporters of American wars and patriotic values.

The essays written for the book provide a strong framework of Southern history leading to an extensive discussion of the Confederate battle flag's central place in today's white supremacist rebellions.

"The Fiery Cross and the Confederate Flag" gives a deeply researched analysis of D.W. Griffith's divisive film "The Birth of a Nation" and the book from which it derived, Thomas Dixon's "The Clansman." Foster concludes that despite Griffith's use of Confederate symbols, he sought to promote national unity.

Foster in "The Marble Man, Robert E. Lee and the Context of Southern History" traces how the famed Confederate general's legacy has changed over the years from beloved national icon to traitorous criminal. Even Lee's reputation as a military master has declined.

In his wide-ranging summary of historical views about Lee, Foster presents him as a white supremacist of ingrained racist beliefs. He also cites Lee's post-war promotion of national unity.

"The Solid South and the Nation-State" shows that although the South follows current conservative opposition to the federal government's "deep state," Southern members of Congress played a major role in creating it by strongly supporting Franklin  D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs.

The final essay concludes that the prevalence of the Confederate battle flag in current American politics doesn't represent a Southern effort to re-fight the Civil War. Rather, white supremacists have appropriated the flag as a national symbol to express their grievances and desire for a traditional white-ruled America.

"The long and continuing battles over Confederate symbolism reveals a serious and troubling divide within American society today," Foster says. "Framing it as a continuation of the Civil War or the persistence of the Lost Cause emphasizes the failings of the white South and thereby obscures the racist heritage and racial problems of the country of the whole."

Foster makes a convincing case that that Confederate symbols now represent deeper political passions than Southern nostalgia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Dickey Betts, Allman Brothers' guitar master

Dickey Betts shaped the Allman Brothers as much as Gregg and Duane Allman.

Betts and Duane's dueling guitars gave the Allmans a signature sound, their long melodic reveries shifting from perfect harmonic convergence to call and response flights. 

After Duane's death in a motorcycle accident, Betts took the Allmans on a new direction with his 1972 hit "Rambling Man," a vibrant echo of country traditions from Hank Williams to Robert Johnson. His mellow voice and imaginative guitar work on his song "Blue Sky" showcased his star talent on the band's post-Duane album "Eat a Peach."

Betts, who emerged from the Allmans' shadow to receive recognition as a major progenitor of Southern rock, died Thursday morning at age 80 at his home in Osprey, Fla. He'd suffered from cancer and pulmonary disease.

His music with the Allmans rang from dorm rooms, college bars and local bands' garages. His songs were instantly recognizable anthems inviting listeners to sing along.

Often feuding with Gregg Allman, Betts persevered with the band, and embarked upon a successful solo career.

His soaring guitar solos and country-resonant singing expressed a distinctive joy, evoking the open road, Southern roadhouses and stories told on summer nights.

Ancient frescoes showing Trojan War characters discovered in Pompeii

Ancient frescoes recently discovered at Pompeii depict mythological characters from the Trojan War.

The artwork adorns the walls of a dining hall recently excavated at the site of the Roman city covered by volcanic ash following the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D.

First discovered in the late 16th century, the ruins of Pompeii and adjoining archaeological sites near Naples in Italy's Campania region capture the moment when ash and pumice engulfed the homes of ancient Romans.

The bodies of families seeking to escape are preserved beneath the ash. Their home furnishings, dining areas and sexually explicit artwork also remain as they left them.

Along with the frescoes, the space features a mosaic floor of more than a million tiny white tiles, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park, which continues excavations begun in the 18th century.

One fresco shows the first meeting of the Trojan prince Paris and Helen of Troy, another the Greek god Apollo encountering Cassandra, the daughter of the Trojan king Priam.

Paris's capture of Helen from her husband, the Spartan king Menelaus, started the 10-year war between the Greeks and Trojans in the 12th or 13th century BCE. Helen left willingly in some myths, and was kidnapped in others.

Apollo, who favored the Trojans in the war but was unable to prevent their defeat, gave Cassandra the gift of prophecy. But when she spurned his advances, he punished her by proclaiming that she wouldn't be believed. Her warnings to the Trojans not to trust the Greeks were ignored, leading to the Greek victory.

The frescoes have a black background, unusual for Roman art, which protected them from soot emitted by burning oil lamps in the dining hall, which measures 50 feet long and 20 feet wide and opens into a courtyard.

“People would meet to dine after sunset,” said Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the Pompeii Archaelogical Park. “The flickering light of the lamps had the effect of making the images appear to move, especially after a few glasses of good Campanian wine.”

Zuchriegel said the frescoes depict themes of personal decisions determining fate that Romans inherited from the Greek world.

Homer's "The Illiad" and "The Odyssey" and other epics about the Trojan War were already ancient when the Roman empire flourished. That fascination with the murderous conflict between Greek and Roman heroes continues today, as new translations of Homer's work keep appearing.

The Roman poet Virgil, later valorized by Dante in "The Divine Comedy," revisited the Trojan War in "The Aeneid," his epic about the founding of Rome by the Trojan prince Aeneas.

Pompeii's sudden, tragic end made real the inevitability of fate, the dominant theme of ancient literature.

 

Howell Raines talk at Atlanta History Center a journalistic homecoming

Former New York Times Executive Editor Howell Raines' appearance at the Atlanta History Center Sunday afternoon turned into a mini-reunion for Atlanta Journal-Constitution alums.

Raines discussed his recent book "Silent Cavalry: How Union Soldiers From Alabama Helped Sherman Burn Atlanta and Then Got Written Out of History," drawing a large crowd to the AHC's McElreath Hall on a beautiful Masters Sunday afternoon.

Former AJC journalists who warmly greeted each other at the event included former AJC Managing Editor Hank Klibanoff, now a non-fiction writing professor at Emory engaged in uncovering unsolved crimes against blacks in the Civil Rights Era.

Popular AJC film critic Eleanor Ringel, now writing reviews for the Saporta Report, stood in a long line as Raines signed copies of his book after the talk. Former AJC local reporter and editor Joe Earle also gave his regards to Raines, a Birmingham native who worked at The Atlanta Constitution before his career at The New York Times. 

AJC attorney Peter Canfield, who rigorously defended the AJC in the Richard Jewel case and other successful lawsuits, also attended, as did former Washington Post Atlanta correspondent and CNN reporter Art Harris.

"Silent Cavalry" tells how Winston County in the North Alabama mountains opposed the state's joining the Confederacy in the Civil War. As Raines discloses, a regiment of Alabama soldiers from the area fought for the Union, eventually serving as Union Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's guard and the spear point of his army.

Raines uncovers how the First Alabama's history was suppressed by historians who pushed the "Lost Cause" myth of how the South lost the war.

Thanks to Raines, the First Alabama has joined the Civil War pantheon.

 

 

Wall Street Journal values books with daily reviews

The Wall Street Journal in its surprisingly strong coverage of art and culture publishes a book review each day.

Appearing on the front page of the WSJ's Opinion section along with newspaper columnists, the daily reviews give attention to books outside of the mainstream as well as those receiving widespread notice elsewhere.

The newspaper known for its international, national and economic reporting also gives readers insightful, authoritative book reviews in its Saturday Review section.

As The New York Times cuts back on its daily book reviews, the WSJ's commitment to publishing stands out. Rupert Murdoch's paper, in striking contrast to the Times, also still runs traditional editorials, from a staunchly conservative perspective. The WSJ's editorials on economic issues display deep knowledge in making complex problems understandable.

Dominic Greene's review in Tuesday's WSJ of historian Eric H. Cline's "After 1177 B.C." shows the value of the newspaper's daily books column.

A fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Greene gives an informed essay on Cline's examination of the collapse of Mediterranean Bronze Age civilizations and the slow recovery leading to the Iron Age glories of the Phoenicians, Greeks and Israel.

Greene presents Cline's book as the kind of gem that WSJ reviewers often uncover.

 

 

 

 

 

CBS legend Verne Lundquist calls his last Masters

Verne Lundquist on Sunday afternoon gave his last narration of a Masters champion's winning birdie. 

"Why not? Why not get in the hole?" Lundquist said with his bourbon-smooth voice as Scottie Scheffler drained the short putt on the 16th hole to increase his lead to four strokes.

Lundquist, who called Jack Nicklaus' Masters-winning putt on the 17th hole in 1986 and Tiger Woods' dramatic 16th hole chip-in for his fourth title in 2005, said farewell to the Masters after 40 Aprils at Augusta National. 

In a brilliant career that began as a radio DJ and the voice of the Cowboys in his hometown of Dallas, Lundquist ranged from SEC football to NASCAR, college basketball, golf and figure skating at the Winter Olympics.

Along with his resonant baritone, Lundquist displayed a gift for capturing the drama of a big moment in simple yet memorable language.

Lundquist spent most of his career at CBS, beloved as the Saturday afternoon voice of SEC football as the conference rose to national supremacy.

Known as "Uncle Verne" from Baton Rouge to Gainesville, Auburn, Tuscaloosa, Athens, Nashville, Columbia and Knoxville, Lundquist described big plays like Auburn's "Kick Six" touchdown that shocked Alabama in 2013.

Paired with the folksy Bill Rafferty, Lundsquist also expressed the excitement of college basketball, such as describing Christian Laettner's half-court shot that gave Duke a last-second March Madness win over Kentucky in 1992.

After Scheffler and playing partner Collin Morikawa hit their shots Sunday to the pond-guarded par-three 16th, one of golf's greatest stages, Lundquist said "now Scottie and Collin will begin that majestic walk and the applause will grow."

"Verne, that crowd could just as well be standing for you," said CBS lead announcer Jim Nantz, who first met Lundquist when Nantz was a young sideline reporter for the old Blue-Gray college all-star game.

Before Lundquist climbed for the last time into his broadcast tower overlooking the 16th green, he said farewell to Woods, who earlier in the week expressed his admiration for Lundquist and his famous "did you ever in your life" narration of Woods' 2005 chip-in.

Lundquist sat beneath a tree as Woods finished the 16h hole.Woods saw Lundquist and walked over to shake hands with the man forever connected to his memorable shot. The Masters legends exchanged warm words, and Lundquist waved goodbye as Woods walked away.

In his final tribute to Lundquist, Nance said, "Thanks, to borrow a phrase, thanks for the memories. Your voice has been a beautiful instrument. Thank you for a wonderful soundtrack for all of our lives."

That was true for fans of Southern football and the Masters.