Category: Almanac 2024

Many thanks to Simmons Buntin and everyone at Terrain.org for Stutter-Step: Poetry, Prose + Window Views, an excerpt from Glass Cabin. The excerpt includes artwork by Dan Shafer from the book as well as readings by Tina and me of the poems.

We had no rain in October. It was a quiet month here, good writing weather and working outside weather. We got down to Sally Branch several times with friends. And Rachel and Nigel came over to help us put in gutters for a rain catchment system in need of rain. We traveled to Cades Cove, had a picnic on the knoll we always go to off Hyatt. Then up to Cincy. Back home for over a week now we’ve been sick, slow movers, ratioing the last few gallons of water in our cisterns. Then this morning a juvenile bald eagle came out of the mist from Sally Branch to light in the crown … Continue ReadingFlash-Drought

UAB Magazine features Glass Cabin in its newest issue. Many thanks to the folks at UAB’s Central Communications for writing the story and for coming out to the cabin to take photos in the hot summer. You can read it here.   *   photograph by Andrea Mabry  

Bham Now has included Glass Cabin as one of their books this fall you don’t want to miss. Much thanks to Jordyn Davis for including us.   *   photograph by Jennifer Alsabrook-Turner

The Caroline Marshall Draughon for the Arts & Humanities at Auburn University and Alabama Writers’ Forum hosted Tina and me back in September for a week. We visited high school and college classrooms and OLLI, gave a workshop at Opelika Public Library, a reading and conversation at Auburn Oil Co. Booksellers, and a workshop at Standard Deluxe. The 280 Boogie at Standard Deluxe is where Tina and I first kissed. It was great to be back there. Everyone at Auburn welcomed us. Thank you!  

Tina and I enjoyed our time getting to talk with participants at the AWC Conference and lead a workshop at Orange Beach Waterfront Park. Much thanks to Jennifer Horne for inviting us to the conference.

Tina and I spent Thursday at Harding University. We had the opportunity to talk with a classroom of thoughtful creative writing students about building a writing life. That evening we read to welcoming faculty and students. Thanks, Paulette, for bringing us to Harding! We’re back home at Hydrangea Ridge now where we spent the day getting honey from our bees. It’s night, and still the honey is dripping.    

Went out today to get honey. Roo, at one time our smallest hive, is now the only producer we have. The bees made it through the dearth. The dearth is late summer when little is blooming, but that will change with the coming fall wildflowers. We took six frames from the top super, left them four. It was good to see the hive healthy, thriving, full of bees. As Pop says, “Nothing like fresh honey.”  

The Sentinel-Record wrote this article about our Glass Cabin book tour in Hot Springs. You can read it here.

Tina and I enjoyed out time in Arkansas, visiting friends in Hot Springs and reading at Wednesday Night Poetry. WNP has held a poetry reading every week since February 1, 1989. It is “the longest-running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country, perhaps the world!” Tina and I were the featured readers for week number 1856. Kai Coggin (WNP host), you’re doing wonderful work. Truly, Hot Springs is a wonderful community, a place that always feels like coming home for us.  

At page and palette, we saw family and old friends, while also meeting new folks. We got to dance to a band playing one of Dail’s favorite songs, “One Way Out.” We saw a live oak over 400 years old. And Rita took us around, showing us Fairhope, telling us how much it’s changed from the Fairhope she knew growing up. Tina even got to swim in the cold water of Fish River. One of the gifts of our book tour is getting to know the people and places we visit.

Thanks to everyone at the Alabama Rivers Alliance for interviewing Tina and me for their Summer Reading Zoom Talk Series, Water Is Life. You can watch it here.

Much thanks to Alabama Writers’ Forum for their review of Glass Cabin. You can read the full review here.

Tina and I had a wonderful time at The NewSouth Bookstore in Montgomery! Thanks to everyone who came out to here us read.

Here’s a link to Tina talking about cornbread – the making of it and her family’s history of making it. Tina also reads her poem “Nothing Else” from Glass Cabin. All of this is part of Rural Remix’s podcast series Rural Food Traditions. And here’s a YouTube video about the podcast and a link to the page that includes Tina’s recipe. Much thanks to all the folks at Rural Assembly (who are partnered with the Daily Yonder) for putting this together.

My neighbor called to say Tina and I are famous after he saw our picture on the front page of The Blount Countian. Famous or not, we’re grateful to Irene and the editors for the article about our book, Glass Cabin.

Much thanks to author Erin Pringle for reading Tina’s poem, “Making Church Glass Ours” on Sunday for Wake to Words and Brew Some Coffee. You can watch the video here.

This morning, a storm came through and filled our rain buckets full. Then this evening another storm passed by, but just the tail end of it, clouds leaving a pocket of sky for the sun to sink into before setting over Cherty Ridge.

Southern Literary Review has posted a review of Glass Cabin. Above is an excerpt. You can read the full review here.

Thanks Dawn and Mary for having us out to read and sign books at Pink Porch Market! We were asked to put together a playlist, which took me back to my high school cassette-making days, and led to a proper hoedown before the evening was done.  

Tina and I enjoyed our time reading and taking questions in Cookeville, Tennessee at Plenty Downtown Bookshop as part of the Sawmill Poetry Series. Thanks, Erin, and everyone who came out to see us.

Thanks Kai Coggin for including us in Wednesday Nigh Poetry’s virtual reading. You can watch a video of Tina and me reading two poems from Glass Cabin here.

Glass Cabin is out in the world today! Just want to thank Pulley Press and all the wonderful people there who helped make this book. The poems in Glass Cabin chronicle the thirteen years Tina and I have spent building our home and living on Hydrangea Ridge.

and everyone who came to the book release for Glass Cabin this past Sunday, April 21. We had so much fun reading, taking questions about the poems, about our Glass Cabin, and just getting to talk to everyone. And, we sold out of books!  

Finally had time this week to hang two photographs by Richard Bickel — J.R. and Ebony at Turner Landing, and Mileena, Logger’s Daughter. Richard very generously allowed us to make these photographs the covers for our books. Mileena is the cover of Tina’s collection of poems, Known by Salt. J.R. and Ebony is the cover of my collection of stories, This Ditch-Walking Love. We are grateful to him for that. His work connects with what we write. We first came across these photographs in Richard’s book, Apalachicola River: An American Treasure, Faces Along the River. We came across that book in Ada and Dail’s house on St. George Island when we visited them. … Continue ReadingRichard Bickel

who invited Tina and me to read our poems about tornadoes, their devastation, and discuss the connection between tornadoes, religion, and politics in Alabama for an upcoming film. You can find those poems in Tina’s book, Known by Salt, and in our book, Glass Cabin. * In addition to the poems, I read the postcard op-ed I wrote for the New York Times after the tornadoes came through in April 2011. Below is a link to that Times essay. Underneath is the essay I wrote a year later on the anniversary published by the Birmingham News. “What the Wind Carried Away” — New York times “Living with the Reality of Tornadoes” — Birmingham … Continue ReadingAnd Thanks to the Filmmakers

Rural Assembly visited our home this past week to film Tina making cornbread and reading poems. The podcast will be released this summer. Just wanted to say thanks to the folks at Rural Assembly (who are partnered with the Daily Yonder) for driving down and spending what was a gorgeous spring afternoon on Hydrangea Ridge.

Backstory — Late fall every year, I drive over to my neighbor Nick’s house and we go into his yard searching for blueberry sprigs small enough to grip at the base of the stem and tug loose from the earth. We set the bent roots down in a bucket of water, and I carry that bucket home sloshing in the bed of Ruby, our ’98 Dodge truck. As many have told me, and it’s true, “You can’t kill a Dodge.” Usually, I plant the sprigs right away, but one time I waited four months before taking them out of the bucket — had too much else going on and couldn’t get to the … Continue ReadingBlueberry Sprig Fence

That’s what our friend (also named Jim) calls the new 550 gallon cistern Tina and I got for the rain catchment system we’re building. After years of hauling water, I’m trying to shape water’s path now through hoses and filters and pumps.

It was a week of getting over being sick, of catching water for the cistern, and building a blueberry sprig fence for me. It was a week of planting asparagus, milkweed, hollyhocks, gladiolas, four-o’clocks, and one dandelion in the old garden for Tina. That dandelion we found blooming in a ditch. Tina has tadpoles now to feed cucumber slices. The bluebirds have come back to the cedar house our neighbor Nick gave us.  The hawks have been all around, looking for a place to build a nest. Sunday is the day we listen to WWOZ out of New Orleans and make mimosas and waffles and dance to celebrate the week’s work. This Sunday, … Continue ReadingWWOZ Sunday

Woke up this morning to a fog over Cherty Ridge. Soon the sun will break up the fog and the mist will come up to the house, then fall back to Sally Branch that lies between us and Cherty, become a dense bank we can’t see through. All morning this will happen until the fog vanishes completely.

Just got the ARC of Glass Cabin. Book is beautiful. Thanks, Pulley!

Unfortunately, Tina and I were sick and unable to make it to the Monroeville Literary Festival. Hopefully, we’ll get over there some time in the future.

Tina and I gave a reading and workshop on Friday, February 23 in Triana as part of the Smithsonian’s Crossroads: Change in Rural America. We just wanted to thank Laura Anderson and the Alabama Humanities Alliance for sponsoring what was a wonderful event.

Pulley Press interviewed Tina and me about our upcoming book, Glass Cabin. You can read it here.

We can hear the frogs now. They have laid the first eggs of the new year in the puddle up the road from us—it’s one of the first signs of spring we look for. But the rains have stopped and the puddle is drying out. So Tina scooped up some of the eggs and brought them home to place in casserole dishes of water. Soon those dishes will be full of swimming tadpoles.

Just wanted to share the cover for our upcoming collection of poems, Glass Cabin! It will be released in March.

I want to thank the editors at High Horse for publishing two poems–“Turkey Vultures” and “September Prayer”–from our upcoming book, Glass Cabin.

I want to thank Alabama Writers’ Forum for this review of This Ditch-Walking Love, winner of the Tartt Fiction Award in 2020. Ditch-Walking was published by Livingston Press in 2021, and I’m working on an audiobook of these rural Alabama stories. You can read the full review here.

Turkey vultures, six-seven of them, came to visit the day after rain. Sally Branch to the sky was all mist. Mist was all we could see. And the turkey vultures took refuge in the leafless branches just northwest of the cabin. First time they’ve come this close and stayed. Usually they’re wheeling the sky into place.

We got a dusting of snow and a cold spell. Had to fill up as many blue jugs of water as we could and bring them inside. The outside tanks are frozen. Had to cut wood to feed vestal, so she can keep us warm.