A Publication of Humanities Tennessee

Being There

In It. Goes. So. Fast., NPR correspondent Mary Louise Kelly describes the challenges of being both a mother and a journalist, determined to do right by both roles. Kelly will appear at Parnassus Books in Nashville on April 20.

On Account of Sex

FROM THE CHAPTER 16 ARCHIVE: Elaine Weiss’s The Woman’s Hour: The Great Fight to Win the Vote is a riveting history of the battle to secure voting rights for American women. 

Trumpeter Swan

According to the notes in my old National Geographic bird guide, on November 8, 1980, I saw a trumpeter swan at the Crabtree Nature Center in Barrington Hills, Illinois. A life bird. My mother had been in the hospital in downtown Chicago for nearly two months.

Winnowing

The challenge wasn’t just the spice drawer with the unopened 30-year-old jar of coriander and the multitude of little packets of red pepper delivered with more than a decade of pizzas. Not just the UCLA T-shirt I bought in 2007 on my son’s college tour. Not the second-best stew pot. No, when I got right down to the bone, it was the last tangible relics of my father I had trouble letting go.

American Crow to Great White Shark

Rob Simbeck takes a close look at 36 creatures in The Southern Wildlife Watcher: Notes of a Naturalist, offering readers glimpses of the mundane and the miraculous. Simbeck will discuss the book at a virtual event hosted by Parnassus Books in Nashville on August 31 and at the 2020 Southern Festival of Books, held online October 1-11.

Dog in the Bottoms

Each time I regain consciousness, I look for Zo’s white tail. Usually, I spot it flicking back and forth — ahead of me, to the left, to the right, sometimes behind. If I don’t see that waving beacon, I call. Soon I hear, then see her racing toward me at full speed, 45 pounds of solid enthusiasm.

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