There are certain towns that are balmy, thick and filled with possibility--like summer as a young girl, when it seemed day and then nights would never interfere or intersect, long, wondrous and carefree--never interrupting the sweet pleasure of simplicity.
Natchez seems to capture the heart of a restless, extended season where one can feel below its placid surface excitement stirring in its murky belly. The people are kind and generous, a pedigree of gentility that does still exist in the deepest parts of the South's soul.
This city got the concept of downtown development long ago--and within its cornered streets rests Turning Pages, a darling bookstore with one of the best selections of literature I have seen. I wanted to buy ever classic alive, but instead enjoyed the company of mascot "Sugar" and a host of travelers on The First Friday of August. This is what an indie bookstore should be ya'll.
Of course, AD won hearts with his stories and his books on guns. I keep explaining to him the world is no longer filled with cowboys. Guns=bad in most minds. But he continues to exercise his Constitutional right as I cringe, explaining it really is just target shooting.
Les animeaux est sain et sauf.
Here below, Irmease, the Exec. Dir of DDA assures me it is the only place in MIssissippi one can take in a sunset. Imagine that--a book and a view. I'm lovin' it at
www.turningpagesbooks.com I began my relationship with the town of Laurel in a hurricane so it was ironic again a hurricane--The Broken Fall: A Katrina Collection-- led me back to the gem of a town in the piney belt of Mississippi where lumber barons reigned and built stately homes along a grid that compares only to New York in street planning. Numbers and straight lines. A novel idea for someone from the Crescent City. We love curves and names you cannot say or spell. Clio = CL ten. Really.
And if you follow those lines around their central park, one will stumble upon one of the finest private museums in the South. Lauren Rogers, as a young local visionary, began building his dream home there, and upon his untimely death, it was finished as a gallery and an extensive working art resource library. Their basket collection, made locally by Native Americans is unrivaled, and I look with great anticipation to this month when Welty in New York debuts, celebrating the writer's photographic journal of the Big Apple. But the grande dame of the landmark is the Reading Room, sophisticated and rich in legacy, including its free-standing coat of armor which always entices local children to spend a night at the museum. And they come and come. Adults come free! Please visit and ask for Liz. She's their lethal weapon! www.lrma.org
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