Robert McCammon, a master of suspense/thriller literature, is about to release Labyrinth, the final volume of his ten-volume Matthew Corbett series. Until that release, you might whet your appetite with the stories of the penultimate Corbett book, Seven Shades of Evil. I recently reviewed Seven Shades of Evil for Alabama Writers’ Forum. Read it here:
In October 2019, my friend Anne and I headed to Florence for the final Friends of the Café dinner of the 2019 season. The chef was Tandy Wilson of Nashville. As the diners gathered, we were treated to music by Single Lock Records musician Caleb Elliott, accompanied by violinist Kimi Sampson. It was, as always, a relaxing, magical evening at the former t-shirt factory – now the headquarters of Natalie Chanin and Project Threadways, the 501(c)(3) umbrella that guides the work of the Alabama Chanin fashion brand and The School of Making (Project Threadways | Alabama Chanin).
Nobody suspected that in five months the world would stop and that would be our final trip to Florence for several years.
Now, five years later, Anne and I are once again traveling to the Shoals on a beautiful fall evening toward the end of cotton season. Cotton fields are on each side of the highway, farm vehicles head home for the night, and cotton lint dusts the shoulder of the road like the aftermath of a winter flurry. When we received word that another Friends of the Café event was in the offing, it didn’t take long to text each other Let’s go. We also wondered if it would still be as magical an experience as some of the past dinners.
This most recent dinner was helmed by Vishwesh Bhatt, James Beard Award-winner at Oxford, Mississippi’s Snackbar (citygroceryonline.com). Born in Gujarat, India, Bhaat’s culinary training began in his mother’s kitchen and was further honed in the United States, where he moved as a teenager. Indian culinary influences mesh beautifully with his adaptation of dishes and ingredients of the Southern U.S. His 2022 cookbook, I Am from Here, illustrates Bhatt’s creativity and blend of unique but related styles.
Arriving at the Factory felt like a homecoming of sorts after five years and, after over two dozen of these events, I felt like we were Friends of the Cafe “O.G.s.” We didn’t know a lot of people there but were happy to see them. When we arrived, Natalie Chanin warmly greeted people at the door as the staff handed out glasses of brut rosé. Passed hors d’oeuvres included a lamb keema shepherd’s pie, royal red shrimp salad on a cornbread cracker, and Benedictine on rye topped with paddlefish roe. These preliminary bites were a tasty enticement for the meal to come. Entering the Factory, guests encounter the showroom featuring Alabama Chanin’s latest line and other items of interest, including books, art, and dinnerware. Farther back, and behind a curtain of lights, is the inviting café area with places casually set at expansive wooden tables. We briefly discussed with Natalie the changes wrought by the pandemic and agreed that so many things had been changed by that period that will never be the same.
The guests took their seats in the café and introductions were made. All proceeds from the dinner will benefit Project Threadways and, at Chef Bhatt’s request, his chef’s fee will be donated to Giving Kitchen (thegivingkitchen.org), a nonprofit that provides emergency assistance for food service workers, including financial support and other community resources. Chef Bhatt’s charming and insightful comments evoked the textile history of his childhood home in India and the textile history of the Shoals area of Alabama. The first platters began to arrive for a family-style course – an impressive platter of sprouted lady cream pea chaat with apples, onions, chilies, sweet and spicy chutneys, and corn tortilla “sev.” It was a delicious mix of tastes with a pleasing heat that came in with subtle notes at the end. The next dish was a bowl of crab and fregula in a refreshing tomato-chile broth, brightened by fresh herbs.
Everyone at our table seemed delighted. Which brings up another highlight of the Factory dinners: I am always impressed by the range and variety of guests in attendance. We have met and dined with people from all over the country and, indeed, around the world at these events. I have met people I have stayed in touch with and some who have become friends. At the Vishwesh Bhatt event, we lucked into sharing a table with a young couple named Kristy and Ben who own a record store / bodega in downtown Florence — an “elevated bodega,” according to one report. There are always intriguing and entertaining people “at table” at the Alabama Chanin Factory and Ben and Kristy filled us in on the events and artists forthcoming at fashion designer Billy Reid’s Shindig, which was taking over the town that weekend.
The final family-style course of the dinner was a platter of ginger-peanut braised beef short ribs on a bed of Anson Mills pencil cob grits, served with a side dish of roasted okra. The fork-tender beef and the gravy from the various juices and herbs were succulent and perfect and the okra was a fresh and bright reminder of the season just past.
Chef Bhatt made some parting remarks and dessert was a chocolate-tahini tart with spiced honey. 
Need I say more? As we left, I commented to Natalie that Anne and I had worried that the experience might not be as magical as it had been in years past. “Was it?” she asked.
Oh yes. It was good to be back.
Hannah Durkin’s Survivors of the Clotilda is a recent entry in the many books about the Africans who are reputed to be the last enslaved people to be brought into U.S. waters. Through detailed research and first-hand narratives, Durkin brings life and distinct personalities to the kidnapped captives and their plight after leaving their homeland.
My mother shares a June birth date with her long-time friend Ruth in Tuscaloosa. In years past, when my parents were living in Tuscaloosa, Mom and Ruth would have a lunch to celebrate around birthday time. They renewed the tradition last year, with Ruth driving up from Tuscaloosa to meet Mother at Bessemer’s venerable Bright Star, a Birmingham-area institution since 1907 (History | Bright Star Restaurant (thebrightstar.com). They had to delay this year’s celebration, which was a landmark birthday for my mother, but they met at Bright Star not long ago.
It is my habit to drive Mother to the luncheon, send her and Ruth to a booth in the main dining room, and take a table away from them to have lunch on my own. I am not always the best company for my mother, I think, and she and Ruth always have a fine old time. So I stay away and let them celebrate as long as they like. 
As I sat in a small booth, enjoying one of Bright Star’s specialty seafood dishes, I was once again moved by the history and tradition of the place. Bessemer is a small city about fifteen minutes from downtown Birmingham and, when most of the heavy industrial plants, including a Pullman railroad car plant, left town, a good chunk of the economy left with it.
Through it all, the Bright Star has stayed strong since opening as a 12-seat bar in 1907. It is now a sprawling restaurant in the heart of downtown Bessemer which serves as a meat-and-three by day and shifts to a more fine-dining oriented menu in the evening. The Bright Star is the kind of place one goes to for special occasions – a birthday, before a wedding, after a funeral, an anniversary. It runs a brisk business before or after Alabama football games. Coach Bear Bryant’s favorite booth is in the back, close to the kitchen, and Coach Nick Saban’s booth in the 1907 Room has been added to the seating options. A friend and I were having dinner there on a Sunday night in the ’80s when it seemed like every priest in the metro was passing our table on the way to a private room in the back. Jimmy Koikos, one of the owners, on one of his passes, said, “They come most Sundays.” Actor Sandra Bullock brought her dad, who had Alabama roots, there for Father’s Day one time. 
Members of the same Greek-American family have owned the Bright Star since the beginning. It was honored with a James Beard American Classics Award in 2010. In my years going there it has mostly been run by brothers Jimmy and Nick Koikos. “Mr. Jimmy,” who greeted guests and is featured in many of the photos that line the lobby, passed away a few years ago and now the restaurant is owned by Nick, his niece manager Stacey Craig, and cousin Executive Chef Andreas Anastassakis. The Greek heritage is reflected on the menu, as are Southern staples. They serve great steaks but I usually have a Greek-style seafood entrée.
In the main dining room, landscape murals line the upper walls above the wainscotting. These were painted by itinerant German painters in 1915. I have never heard names for these painters but I have always wanted to know more about their story. For most of my life, the murals were glazed a deep golden brown. The restaurant did a restoration of the murals in the early-2000s and the transformation was startling. The brown tint was the result of decades of tobacco smoke in the earlier days before smoking restrictions were in force. The subtle shades of the restored murals cast a much lighter ambiance to the room.
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Sitting separately from my mom and Ruth, old friends with many stories to share, I would occasionally hear the pleasant sound of laughter from the back of the room. I have never been one for chitchat and don’t seem to have the ability to make my mother laugh that much, so it was good to hear her celebrating her birthday with someone who can always make her laugh.
My mother’s favorite Bright Star dessert is their decadent lemon icebox pie. I had two slices sent back to the table to top off an extended and celebratory lunch date. While they were visiting, a thunderstorm and windswept rain had come and gone and the city streets were glistening wet in sunlight when we emerged.
The two friends looked out at the wet street in surprise. “It rained?” they asked. The Bright Star had worked its magic one more time. 
“The earnest and sometimes deadpan narrative voices Garrett Ashley so ably creates make the impossible plausible, and the bizarre becomes something to be blithely accepted … The collection is a spectacular debut.”
Sometimes I open a book without any idea what I am about to read. Garrett Ashley’s Periphylla, and Other Deep Ocean Attractions, a collection of short stories, was completely new to me. Here’s my review for Alabama Writers’ Forum:
Each year, on the final August weekend before the start of college football season, Birmingham’s Sidewalk Film Festival fills the north side of downtown with screenings, workshops, panels, and events focused on what’s happening in the world of independent filmmaking. Sidewalk has garnered many designations from film media over the years, including nonspecific adjectives like “coolest” and “fabulous.” It was also, more specifically, designated as one of the “Great Film Festivals for First-Time MovieMakers.” I’ve been present for the majority of the twenty-six iterations of Sidewalk and am delighted and proud that it became what it has become. Sidewalk Film Center + Cinema, in the basement of the Pizitz building, houses two cinemas showing movies year-round in intimate state-of-the art theaters that have become my favorite places to catch a movie in the city. The Festival even went on in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, in a drive-in theatre format at an outlet mall just outside the city. “Cool,” right?
It is my habit to book a room at the Elyton Hotel, on the southern edge of the festival, at the proverbial “Heaviest Corner on Earth,” ditch the car, and walk and walk … and walk among ten downtown venues showing about 250 titles from morning to late-night. A filmmaker friend who showed his film at Sidewalk years ago quipped that “now I understand why they call it ‘Sidewalk’.”
The 26th Annual Sidewalk opened at the Alabama Theatre on Friday night with Exhibiting Forgiveness, the debut film by visual artist Titus Kaphar starring Alabama native Andre Holland.
Easing in to a full day of movie watching on Saturday, I decided to watch “Saturday Morning Cartoons” at the Sidewalk Cinemas where sugary cereals and milk, coffee, cold pizza, Bloody Marys, and mimosas were on hand. Cleansed by cartoons and breakfast food, I walked over to the next block to catch a live organ performance by Nathan Avakian at the Alabama Theatre, Birmingham’s 1927 vintage “Showplace of the South.” Avakian provided accompaniment for a classic Harold Lloyd short and several three-minute contemporary films from the International Youth Silent Film Festival (IYSFF), all of which were directed by talented youth between the ages of thirteen and twenty.
Refreshed and awake, it was time to dive into the real business of the day and start watching movies. I am not keeping up with cinema like I used to so my selections were based largely on instinct. I am relieved to say that my instincts were good. My first full-length screening, Family Portrait (2023) at Sidewalk Cinema, was my best choice, but more about that later.
At the Birmingham Museum of Art, Chaperone (2024), directed by Zoe Eisenberg, features a compelling, sometimes painful, performance by Mitzi Akaha as an almost-thirty slacker who, despite pressures to accept responsibility, is content in her life until she accidentally gets romantically involved with a much younger guy.
Rushing back down to the Lyric Theatre, the night was closed out with My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock (2022), a high-concept documentary caper by Mark Cousins. The film is narrated in a voice, purported to be Hitchcock’s, about the various elements of Hitch’s filmography. It’s an entertaining ruse and a relaxing opportunity to revisit snippets of Hitchcock’s films and reexamine his mastery of suspense.
Sunday morning was the time for Sleep (South Korea, 2024), directed by Jason Yu. Yu’s suspenseful film, about a young couple suddenly beset with sleepwalking that quickly becomes a nightmare, is a deftly handled debut by Yu with strong and affecting performances by Jung Yu-mi and Lee Sun-kyun as the besieged couple.
My Sunday schedule is often heavy with documentaries and Resynator, directed by Alison Tavel, explores Tavel’s search for information about a father she never knew. Her father, Don Tavel, invented a synthesizer in the 1970s. In discovering the history of the Resynator synthesizer, Alison also forges a connection with her father.
Turning to more locally-focused fare – which is a Sidewalk standard, A Symphony Celebration: The Blind Boys of Alabama with Dr. Henry Panion III (2024), directed by Michael Edwards and Henry Panion, played at the recently-renovated Carver Theatre. My fandom of the Blind Boys took hold in the ‘80s when I was fortunate enough to attend The Gospel at Colonus, Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s brilliant stage adaptation of the ancient Greek play, Oedipus at Colonus by Sophocles. The production featured Morgan Freeman as the Messenger and the Blind Boys of Alabama, collectively, as Oedipus. A Symphony Celebration chronicles a Birmingham performance by the Blind Boys with full orchestra and chorus. A centerpiece of the performance is the Blind Boys’ signature rendition of “Amazing Grace” to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun,” a controversial choice that has become the Blind Boys’ most enduring hit.
The Almost Lost Story of Tuxedo Junction (2024), directed by Katie Rogers, is about a spot in the Ensley neighborhood of west Birmingham that is both mythologized and forgotten. My dad grew up on Avenue D in Ensley and I have known the humble building that stands at what was once a streetcar junction for as long as I can remember. Also, I cannot help tapping my toes whenever I hear the Erskine Hawkins-composed jazz standard, “Tuxedo Junction,” a piece inspired by that now-neglected place. It was heartening to see the large crowd that filled the Carver to watch the documentary; maybe more people remember than we realize.
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Now, if I’m lucky, I will see at least one movie each year at Sidewalk that I won’t forget. Most of what I saw in this 2024 edition was of fine quality and merit. However, the film that I can’t stop pondering is Family Portrait (2023), directed by Lucy Kerr.
A large family is gathered at an idyllic riverside home on a warm summery day. It is the appointed day to take the annual family photo for the Christmas card before the gathered begin to disperse. The news of the mysterious death of a distant relative begins to spread through the house. The family matriarch, who meticulously plans the annual card, walks away and seems to disappear. As the rest of the family goes blithely through their carefree day, daughter Katy (Deragh Campbell) becomes increasingly anxious – to take the picture, to find her mother. The mood of this quiet film becomes increasingly frantic, desperate, foreboding.
Family Portrait is a beautiful film – beautiful cinematography by Lidia Nikonova, beautifully edited by Karlis Bergs, brilliant sound design by Nikolay Antonov and Andrew Siedenburg. In a dreamlike prologue, the family aimlessly gathers at the river and the camera follows first one and then another, moving carefully back and forth and among the family members. Santa Claus hats are being handed out on a bright warm day; a man is given a hat, places it on a passing child’s head, and, when the child discards it, the man reluctantly picks it up and walks toward the others as the camera glides to another point of interest. Sound begins to bleed in, subconsciously at first – faint childish chatter, adult banter, nature sounds … and then the opening titles appear.
Exposition is casual and dialogue overlaps. We learn that the family are Texan. Katy is not married to her Polish partner, Oleg (Chris Galust); he has been designated the photographer for the portrait since he’s not “family.” A relative’s iconic World War II photograph was appropriated for Vietnam War propaganda of some sort. There is a brief sequence in which Katy and Oleg read an excerpt from a Barbara Bush memoir they have pulled from a shelf (I recognized the book cover from my mother’s bookshelves). A couple of hired workers go about their business inside and outside the house. Something is amiss and the specter of Covid is clearly looming here, but has not yet become a conscious issue for the family. A lyrical underwater swim late in the movie raises many questions as Katy emerges, soaking wet, and walks back toward the house. A slice of life story becomes surreal, off-balance. It seems that nobody remembers that Katy and Oleg are late for a ride to the airport.
Movies like Family Portrait are the reason I go to film festivals.
Pete Candler’s A Deeper South is an intriguing deep dive into the American South — its history, legacy, attractions, and complexities. In his search, Candler also discovers things he never knew about his prominent Georgia family. It’s a wild read. Here’s my review for Alabama Writers’ Forum:
During the years that I have reviewed books for Alabama Writers’ Forum, I occasionally run across a mention of somebody I know, especially in those books with Alabama roots. I was recently asked to review Accidental Activist: Changing the World One Small Step at a Time (Livingston Press, 2024). Accidental Activist is the memoir by Alabama-born progressive activist Mary Allen Jolley, who passed away in 2023. Jolley, who worked for years in Washington, D.C., was instrumental in programs and legislation that were beneficial nationally and to Alabama.
Early in the memoir, Jolley mentions an early teaching position at Cold Springs School in Cullman County. My mother attended Cold Springs School and I realized she might have been a student there when Mary Allen was a teacher. I asked, “Do you happen to recall a teacher at Cold Springs named Mary Allen?”
Mother’s face brightened. “Mary Allen was one of my favorite teachers!” she responded and began to recount memories of Mary Allen and classmates at the time.
The Cold Springs experience is a very small part of Jolley’s memoir, but knowing that Mary Allen of Sumter County was known and remembered fondly by my mom gave the story and the life a more vivid resonance.
Whether or not you have a personal connection to Mary Allen Jolley, her story is an inspiring one, recounting a remarkable life. Here’s my review:
Harry Moore’s new poetry exhibits a contemporary social consciousness in a series of poems about history and conscience. Here’s the Alabama Writers’ Forum review.
Joni Mitchell
When I started attending the University of Alabama in the mid-70s, Paul “Bear” Bryant’s Crimson Tide dynasty was at its peak. Family moves had meant that I attended six junior and senior high schools in three states and I was determined to stay at one university for the full four years and dive into everything college life had to offer. Everything, that is, except Greek life – it was the post-60s Seventies and Greek participation was at a historic low, even at Alabama. That was fine with me. In the summer before I started, I received a recruitment letter from the Interfraternity Council. I was a scrappy guy back then and took out a red pen, marked the grammar and spelling errors, and sent the letter back with a note to get back to me when they found somebody who could proofread their correspondence; I never heard back.
But I did go to the Supe Store, bought one of those crimson felt “A” hats, and attended every home football game in the days when half the home games were still played at Birmingham’s Legion Field and Tuscaloosa’s Denny Stadium held a mere 60,000.
Tuscaloosa was a great college town in those years. The Strip had not been gentrified and was lined with indie businesses – laundromats, book stores, barber shop, movie theater, clothes shops, head shops, deli, waterbed store, Sneaky Pete’s, Kwik Snak, Krystal, Morrison’s Cafeteria, and a Greek-oriented men’s clothing store (where I bought button-downs to be ironic). Legislation at that time did not allow bars within a certain distance of the campus, so there were none. When the law changed, the Strip began to change drastically.
I continued to follow Alabama football, but ditched the felt hat and immersed myself in all the other things a university has to offer. The music scene, readings, concerts, art shows, lectures, movies, plays – I enhanced my education through extracurricular activities.
Leon Redbone
The University Program Council at Alabama was a truly stand-out organization. It was student-run and was the most productive producer of a wide range of high-quality entertainment in the region with large concerts at the Coliseum, and smaller concerts, speakers, and events at venues including Morgan Hall, Foster Auditorium, the theater at Ferguson Center, and the Bama Theatre downtown. I hesitate to try to list acts that played on the campus because I will inevitably leave out something amazing.
Allman Brothers Band
I soon became a UPC volunteer and began to get more responsibilities as I worked within the organization. I often worked “Security” and over time I began to get assigned to backstage “Artist Relations” duties. I have often remarked that it’s amazing what we’d do for a free tee-shirt back then, but we also had the opportunity to see a lot of the top acts and influential people of that era. I still have a few of those tee-shirts, wrinkled and way too small to wear. My favorite design, for Traffic / Little Feat, was worn so much that it has become see-through.
Here are a few memories:
Traffic / Little Feat
These memories are ignited by a new website launched by David Muscari and others who were involved in the University Program Council back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. I heard from David for the first time since college not long ago, asking for my input and support on a new website to chronicle the history of a unique and significant period in the history of the University of Alabama. While I was communicating with David, I also reconnected with Barry Bukstein, who was the brainchild behind UPC’s “Laughter under the Stars” series which gave me that opportunity to hang for a few minutes with Lily Tomlin.
UPC was a life-changing volunteer opportunity for so many people as well as a way to expose a large audience to diverse voices, world-class artists and entertainment, and cultural enrichment. The new website is a snapshot of an integral period of the University and the nation.
UPC logo
Whether you are an Alabama student or alum or have never set foot on the campus, the website is a great way to brush up on what was going on at a very specific time in our cultural history. It was a lot of work by a lot of people. And it was a lot of fun. It was key to my education and beyond. Check it out: https://www.upcalabama.com
Professional Southerner 