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Transcript

"Many Souths" with John T. Edge · The Weight

• 0:00
  Eddie Rester: I'm Eddie Rester.
• 0:01
  Chris McAlilly: I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to the first episode of season five of The Weight.
• 0:06
  Eddie Rester: I thought I was gonna get to say...
• 0:07
  Chris McAlilly: No you didn't. I stole your thunder.
• 0:10
  Eddie Rester: Five seasons now, or four seasons behind us. If you're just finding us, go dig through some of the archives.
• 0:16
  Eddie Rester: We've had some great guests. And we've got great guests ahead of us in season five, including today's guest.
• 0:23
  Chris McAlilly: Today's guest is John T. Edge. He's a writer and the founding director of the Southern Foodways. Alliance.
• 0:28
  Chris McAlilly: He's a teacher at the University of Mississippi, working out of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. And he's one of the cohosts of a TV show called True South. We talk about all that on the podcast today.
• 0:41
  Chris McAlilly: We're talking about culture, really, and cultural renewal in the American South. Eddie, what struck you in this conversation today?
• 0:51
  Eddie Rester: Well, one of the things he works from, the idea that he works from is that the South and food are closely tied together, which we all know.
• 0:56
  Eddie Rester: Every small town in Mississippi has a catfish house. But he approaches this lens, this view of the South, from there. And so he's done a lot of writing, a lot of helping restaurants across the South. And he's helped tell the story of food in the South. And I think, for me, that's a great way to see not just the past, but also the present, and the future of the South as well.
• 1:26
  Chris McAlilly: We talk about not only food, we talk about art and photography, and we talk about writing, and one of the recent projects that he's working on through the university is a writer's residency, that will be out 50 miles east of Oxford on some of the land that William Faulkner grew up on. And it's going to be called the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency. We talk about why that's important to him, why it's important to invest in the building and the creation of culture moving forward as a power to create flourishing, you know, broadly across the American South. And, you know, I was just really grateful for some of the ways in which he described his work and some of the things that he hopes for, not only through this project, but through his work more broadly.
• 2:23
  Eddie Rester: It's been great to follow him through the years, but to have this conversation today, to hear his passion for what he works on. And I think for a lot of folks, that's if you could ever find something that you are that passionate about as he is about his work, about the South, about Southern culture, about writing and helping others find their place and their voice. It was just a great conversation today. I'm thankful for him.
• 2:50
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, food is sacramental and culture is one of the ways in which we can connect with one another in a deeper way and come to recognize and appreciate one another's humanity. And so we're grateful that you're with us here at the beginning of another season.
• 3:02
  Chris McAlilly: We've got a lot of awesome episodes ahead. And so listen to this one, but then also subscribe, and stay with us.
• 3:12
  Eddie Rester: And invite somebody else.
• 3:14
  Chris McAlilly: You should invite somebody else. Yes, send it to somebody else. Send it to your grandma or somebody else's grandma. You know, I'm not gonna send it to you.
• 3:24
  Eddie Rester: Well, I'm already a fan.
• 3:25
  Chris McAlilly: You're already a fan.
• 3:26
  Eddie Rester: So thank you for being with us today. Enjoy.
• 3:29
  Eddie Rester: Enjoy the episode.
• 3:30
  Chris McAlilly: [INTRO] The truth is, the world is growing more angry, more bitter, and more cynical. People don't trust one another. And we feel disconnected.
• 3:41
  Eddie Rester: The way forward is not more tribalism. It's more curiosity that challenges what we believe, how we live, and how we treat one another. It's more conversation that inspires wisdom, healing, and hope.
• 3:53
  Chris McAlilly: So we launched The Weight podcast as a space to cultivate sacred conversations with a wide range of voices at the intersection of culture and theology, art and technology, science, and mental health. And we want you to be a part of it.
• 4:08
  Chris McAlilly: Well, we're here today, everybody is together
• 4:08
  Eddie Rester: Join us each week for the next conversation on The Weight. [END INTRO] here in person, and we're with John T. Edge. John T., thanks for being with us.
• 4:23
  John T. Edge: It's my pleasure to be with y'all.
• 4:25
  Eddie Rester: We're glad to, actually glad to be in the room today. We don't get to do this very often. Usually our guests are far flung. You are someone, you work at the University of Mississippi, but originally you're from Georgia, is that right?
• 4:38
  John T. Edge: That's correct.
• 4:39
  Eddie Rester: Tell us a little bit about your background. I want to get into, we're gonna get into what you're up to these days, so.
• 4:44
  John T. Edge: I grew up in a tiny town in Georgia, Clinton, Georgia. It's near Gray, which means nothing to someone who doesn't live in middle Georgia.
• 4:50
  John T. Edge: I grew up just north of Macon, and I grew up in the home of a Confederate Brigadier General.
• 5:00
  John T. Edge: He was born in that house. His father led the secession of Georgia from the union with one of the most virulent speeches ever uttered on the floor of the Senate. And so I grew up in this world in which those two Iversons, Alfred Sr, and Jr., were memorialized by way of a marker in front of my house. I grew up with progressive parents, who still respected that Confederate south. So there was some kind of, you know, enduring conflict stuck in my head as I move forward in life and moved up and out of Georgia.
• 5:38
  John T. Edge: But, you know, I was an unfocused student. After high school, I went to the University of Georgia, at age 17 in 1980, which if you're a fan of music, you recognize that year is the year R.E.M. played its first show, and by that point B-52s are already in New York. But it was a great moment for bands and.
• 6:02
  Eddie Rester: Athens had its moment with dance.
• 6:05
  Chris McAlilly: It was an amazing moment.
• 6:07
  Eddie Rester: I listened to a podcast with Michael Stipe and his reflection on kind of that season and where he is now. And it really was an interesting moment.
• 6:16
  Chris McAlilly: My friend actually bought the house where a lot of the R.E.M. records were created. I can't remember the name of the producer. But in this house, and my buddy Joe owns that house and has renovated the house. Pretty amazing. You know, I do think, one of the things that I've found interesting about you and your work is just this idea and story of the South, as you know, both a heritage and also as this construction moving forward.
• 6:48
  Chris McAlilly: And, you know, a few years ago, a friend of ours in town put me on to a collection of the eulogies that were done at Willie Morris's funeral, and David Halberstam came down. It's an incredible collection. And one of the things that was said about Willie Morris is that he was both a representative of the old South, but also an ambassador of a new South. And I've always just seen you as occupying that space, as both being a representative in some ways of the heritage, and trying to make the story of the South more complex and nuanced and interesting and diverse, while also kind of being an advocate for a new South and an ambassador for that as well. And so I just wonder, kind of how you think about that, that space that you've tried to occupy through the years.
• 7:47
  John T. Edge: I learned to think about that, and that tension between that place I grew up and that place I live now, two very different small towns. And I learned to think about that here when I came here to get a master's degree in Southern Studies. I remember a moment, this was maybe 10 years ago, when I was giving a talk in Birmingham, Alabama, and I was talking about immigrant Southerners. And I was making this progressive point, that we should welcome immigrants with open arms, we should respect their work ethic, we should respect their commitment to families. And afterwards, a younger member of the Southern Foodways Alliance staff--at that point, I was director of the Southern Foodways Alliance--came up to me and she said, "Why don't you have to use the modifier immigrant? And why did you have to speak of them as if they were somehow differen?" And I realized in that moment that there was a better way to think about this. And so to your point of my role in the South, in some ways, I'm a passive Southerner. I was born to this place. And I've begun to think about people who choose to live here as active Southerners. And I think we all, though, can be active Southerners. We can take a role and take a responsibility for shaping this place, reshaping this place into, you know, the best possible South.
• 9:06
  John T. Edge: So I do think about those tensions of active and passive.
• 9:11
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, I think that's interesting. And I think the even passive Southerners can also be shaping, in active ways, what the South is and what it can be. You were talking about Birmingham. I went to college in Birmingham and Birmingham, you know, is not... I don't know.
• 9:26
  Chris McAlilly: It's not the South. That's...
• 9:29
  John T. Edge: Oh, come on.
• 9:30
  Chris McAlilly: It's not the South. It's not!
• 9:31
  John T. Edge: I'm taking my coat off now.
• 9:34
  Chris McAlilly: You know, there's this great book by Dennis Covington, this book called "Salvation on Sand Mountain," which is just like one of my favorite books. It's so great, because it's this guy that grew up in suburban Birmingham. And he, you know, gets caught up in... I mean, he loved drugs. He loved being a war correspondent in different parts of the world, just extreme experiences. And he got called to come back to Scottsboro, Alabama to do this reporting on the snake handling preacher who held a gun to his wife and was indicted for it. And so he comes about to cover the story. It's just the story between suburban Birmingham and backwoods Appalachia, snake handling religion. And it's like this participant observer story. It is amazing.
• 10:24
  Chris McAlilly: But you know, I think that's another lens that I think about with you. You're very much this participant observer in these various parts of the South that are not just suburban Americana, or suburban America, it just, there's something about the South, it's just weird. It's just a weird place.
• 10:43
  John T. Edge: It is, but all places look normal from 50,000 feet. When you get down on the ground, all places are weird, if you pay attention to what's going on. I want to come back to your observations about"Salvation on Sand Mountain." That, in part, is one of the books that brought me here. I read that book when I was living in Atlanta. I had a corporate job. This is in the lead up to the Olympics. And everybody was turning their attention toward the South. And I read "Salvation on Sand Mountain" and convinced my friends who lived in Atlanta--we all lived like in Little Five Points, Inman Park that part of Atlanta--convinced my friends to make a trek to North Georgia. We went to a snake handling church that I think Jim Auchmutey had written about when he was writing about Dennis Covington 's book.
• 11:30
  John T. Edge: And a preacher met us the parking lot with a rattling box of snakes. We brought little spy cameras because we thought we'd be able to take a picture.
• 11:38
  John T. Edge: Nobody took a picture. We were too caught up in the moment.
• 11:42
  John T. Edge: There were two drum kits. People were drinking the deadly thing.
• 11:46
  John T. Edge: People were twirling in place.
• 11:50
  John T. Edge: People were handling snakes. And I came away with a profound respect for whatever happened in that room that was profoundly religious. It helped me think about the South, because there are many Souths, like that Appalachian South was far different than the urban Georgia South I knew, or the small town South I now live in Mississippi.
• 12:12
  Chris McAlilly: Eddie, when you were growing up in Ackerman, which is truly the South. How did you guys handle snakes in church?
• 12:18
  Eddie Rester: Well, as a little Methodist church, we had really tiny snakes that we handled.
• 12:23
  Chris McAlilly: [LAUGHTER]
• 12:24
  Eddie Rester: You know, there was a great movie about snake handlers. Gosh, I watched it in seminary... "The Jolo Snake Handlers."
• 12:33
  John T. Edge: I haven't seen it.
• 12:34
  Eddie Rester: It's an old movie.
• 12:34
  Eddie Rester: But at the very end of this little movie, independent movie, an old lady says, "We handle snakes so that others don't have to."
• 12:48
  John T. Edge: It was an advertising campaign.
• 12:50
  Eddie Rester: It was this sense, this sense that this was their part of the body of Christ, that that's what they did. And for me I've carried, that's the only line of the whole thing I remember all these years later.
• 13:00
  Chris McAlilly: That's so weird, man. That's just for those of you out there that maybe, let me say this, wondering what kind of pastors Chris and Eddie are. We are not snake handling preachers. But I do think there's something about that.
• 13:13
  Chris McAlilly: There's something about the South, that does put you in touch with life and death. You know what I mean? And just like the hardscrabble realities of things, and the real extremes.
• 13:26
  Chris McAlilly: And so I don't know. I wonder how you think about that.
• 13:30
  John T. Edge: The South as a place of extremes?
• 13:32
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah. Yeah.
• 13:34
  John T. Edge: I mean, I think this is the region of the country that has hung on to agriculture the longest. And thus, this is the region of the country that has worked the hardest, for the least.
• 13:47
  Eddie Rester: Right.
• 13:48
  John T. Edge: And this is the region of the country, you know, not in absolutes, but that has had to face down a change in the way our economy runs and how people afford to live. And we've suffered under that. And those extremes have defined us--the change in our economy from agricultural to now service. I think that makes for great tension and great hardship.
• 14:14
  Eddie Rester: One of the things that you really write in lean into about the South is food.
• 14:18
  Eddie Rester: And it's this thread, I think, that you recognize, and in your writings, it's helped me recognize, that that's the thing that I think helps us. One of the places, you wrote, that"food is as important to understand the culture of the South, as is literature, as is music." Say a little bit more about that. Why is food so important? I want to get into some of the places that you
• 14:45
  John T. Edge: Sure. I mean, I think about food is a kind of explore food.
• 14:48
  John T. Edge: totem of people and of place.
• 14:48
  John T. Edge: "This is where I'm from. This is the food we eat in this place where I'm from." You know, it is certainly sacrament. Here we are in a church and I need not lead y'all to that conclusion. You're already there. I think it is this reminder of family and community bind. Bounds? Binds?
• 15:12
  John T. Edge: What am I trying to say?
• 15:14
  Chris McAlilly: Binded?
• 15:16
  Eddie Rester: Community...
• 15:16
  Eddie Rester: Family...
• 15:17
  John T. Edge: Bonds!
• 15:18
  Eddie Rester: Bonds!
• 15:19
  John T. Edge: Stocks and bonds.
• 15:19
  John T. Edge: Yes.
• 15:20
  Eddie Rester: It's the end of the day.
• 15:22
  John T. Edge: Yeah, it is. I did have a cup of coffee this afternoon in anticipation trying to speak with some facility but it didn't work. But it is reminder of all those things. So to sit and eat in the South is to recognize all those bonds that tie us together. But it's also in the South to recognize the divisive and rancorous and ugly history that got us here, too. So if you're going to think and talk about food, or if you're going to think and talk about public eating, you think about restaurant life. You know, here we are in Oxford, we can regale each other with stories of the beauties of Snackbar, and Wednesday night Vish has brought back butter chicken and Oxford rejoices. But if you're sitting in a restaurant in the South, some part of me, and I would argue that some part of some of us, flashes back deep in our cerebellum to Jackson and the Woolworth's department store, and the sit ins, and mustard being dumped on the heads of protesters, and cigarette butts being put out on the arms of protesters. We understand that deep in our love of food is a recognition that those things that tear us apart are deep within that, too.
• 16:37
  Chris McAlilly: One of the episodes that you've done in the not too distant past was around Jackson and the water crisis and some of the chefs that have chosen to return to the city.
• 16:52
  Eddie Rester: And let me--it's an episode of True South. So for the listeners who haven't found True South, it's on the SEC Network.
• 17:00
  John T. Edge: And ESPN and Hulu.
• 17:01
  Eddie Rester: And Hulu, so.
• 17:03
  Chris McAlilly: I skipped right over that. Yeah, sorry, the plug. I forgot the plug.
• 17:06
  John T. Edge: I'll slip you a five later.
• 17:07
  Eddie Rester: Thank you.
• 17:08
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, sorry. So yeah, I wonder, that episode, specifically...
• 17:12
  Eddie Rester: Powerful.
• 17:12
  Chris McAlilly: I think, just really powerful. And I think it is a good example of some of the dynamics and tensions that you're talking about. I wonder, for those that maybe haven't seen it, if you could maybe talk a little bit about kind of what you were trying to do in that episode.
• 17:23
  John T. Edge: This is a great way to illustrate the point.
• 17:25
  John T. Edge: Thanks for the question, because we made a show, a True South show about Jackson, Mississippi, and we set out to make that show about excellence in Jackson, that was the MO, the kind of top line story we went in to showcase, because we'd fallen in love with two restaurants in Jackson. And that worked. One restaurant, Southern Soigne, second restaurant, Elvie's. I still came away from that episode thinking these are great examples of excellence. We also worked with Jackson State and their marching band. And that's maybe the best example of excellence in marching bands in this nation.
• 18:09
  John T. Edge: But in the middle of making that show, the water crisis intruded.
• 18:13
  John T. Edge: So we had to face down the truth about Jackson that yes, it's a place of excellence. If you see that episode, and you listen to Ebony Lumumba talk about her work at Jackson State, and you see the poise in that brilliant woman. And you listen to Bobby Rush talk about his work as a bluesman... I mean, you get it all. Excellence abounds in that city. But that city also had to face down a water crisis that made it those excellent restauranteurs, you know, the first ingredient in a restaurant is water to boil, to boil to make stocks to make tea, whatever it is. The most essential ingredient for life form is water. And we stepped into that city in a moment with this idea of the show we'd make.
• 18:58
  John T. Edge: And then comes the water crisis.
• 19:02
  John T. Edge: So we had to confront that. We changed the show completely. We kind of rejiggered the whole thing brought, in people like Anna Wolfe who gave this really moving account of kind of her work in Jackson trying to figure things out. You know, a few months later, she won a Pulitzer. Another example of excellence in Jackson.
• 19:27
  Eddie Rester: She's brilliant.
• 19:28
  Chris McAlilly: Eddie, you were living in Jackson at that time.
• 19:28
  John T. Edge: She is.
• 19:30
  John T. Edge: I mean, I wonder, I haven't heard. I haven't actually even asked you the question. What was it like to be a pastor in Jackson during that time. and a citizen?
• 19:38
  Eddie Rester: I mean, it was surreal to think that I could go home and not have water coming out my faucet, to know that the world was focused in on Jackson, Mississippi at that moment for not excellence, for the failure of generations of politicians in Jackson, Mississippi and in our state. And one of the things that some of us realized very quickly was that if we didn't start going out to eat during the crisis, we wouldn't be able to go out to eat after the crisis. And so, you know, I made a post during it, hey, we're going out once a week, and people went out to eat. But it was one of those things that the city had to... And we lost restaurants.
• 20:24
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, no doubt.
• 20:25
  Eddie Rester: We lost restaurants, we lost businesses, who decided they'd had enough as well. And so the long term has been another it's one of those additional blows to the city, that it has to step back into.
• 20:41
  Chris McAlilly: But isn't it, it's not just that we need good public policy that leads to good and reliable sources of water, right? It's like, because what happens, if you get down to the point where you don't have reliable systems of water, is that you get bitter, you get cynical, and you lose hope. And I do think that, you know, one of the lenses that I read your work, John T., is, it's just through the lens of cultural renewal. And I wonder if you can maybe tie those things together.
• 21:14
  Chris McAlilly: Like, if you're, if you... A good society is not just one in which we have good public policy, it's one in which there is a kind of cultural vibrancy, that really inspires people, not only to excellence, but to hope.
• 21:28
  Chris McAlilly: And, you know, I wonder if you could just speak to that. I think that's one of the things that I find most attractive about your work.
• 21:36
  John T. Edge: Thank you for saying that. I think about my life here in Oxford. You know, I didn't come here as a writer. I became a writer here. And I think that's because I got, in daily interactions, I met people who were writers and were flourishing. And I understood a town, I came to understand a town wherein more people showed up for a book signing than for a rock and roll show. You know, this town says to you, it is possible to be a creative soul here and flourish. And this town values it. I think the Arts Council, Yoknapatawpha Arts Council, does a beautiful job of that. But not everybody lives in a town such as that.
• 22:20
  John T. Edge: I think Jackson is a really interesting town, because Jackson, to me, is a place where people can take a chance. There are just as many creative people in Jackson working with far less resources. But I see people there being able to take a chance, start a storefront business, begin a pop up ,things that are economically now impossible to do at Oxford, because cost of living here, cost of entry into a business is far higher. So I actually see more dynamism and more of that cultural renewal in Jackson now than I do in Oxford.
• 22:55
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, for sure.
• 22:55
  Chris McAlilly: And I think that that's a good word. Because I think what ends up happening, and this happens over and over and over again.
• 23:01
  Chris McAlilly: You see it in cities. You see it in... Yeah, I mean, you see it in the way in which New York or Nashville or Atlanta, you know...
• 23:14
  John T. Edge: Water Valley.
• 23:14
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, Water Valley. You have these places that are like, man, this is a place where you begin to see an influx of creative, social, cultural, and then economic capital. People are kind of attracted to a place because that appears to be a place where things are happening. And then it becomes economically unfeasible for the folks that are young and creative and are in a place that really pushes forward from a creative perspective. They have to go find different places to be.
• 23:44
  Eddie Rester: Talk a little bit more about Greenfield Farms.
• 23:44
  John T. Edge: And the question is, where are we on that continuum now at Oxford? I mean, one of the reasons that I'm working on Greenfield Farm Writers Residency is because I I set myself up.
• 23:54
  John T. Edge: see the need for infrastructure, investment at this part of our kind of evolution as a creative capital for Mississippi and the nation.
• 24:05
  Eddie Rester: You served it up, so I'm serving it back to you, so.
• 24:07
  John T. Edge: You know, really, I mean, that's the way I'm thinking about it. There are multiple ways to think about it, but somebody smarter than me said, think about this. Oxford's changing. So, you know, there was a recent study that came out that you know, the fastest growing rent prices in America.
• 24:21
  John T. Edge: Do you remember this?
• 24:22
  Chris McAlilly: I don't even want to talk about it. I don't like this part of the story.
• 24:26
  John T. Edge: So CNN published it, I don't remember what the original source was, but the fastest growing rent prices in America--the fastest growing was someplace in the Hamptons.
• 24:35
  John T. Edge: Second fastest was Oxford.
• 24:36
  Eddie Rester: Oxford. Wow. I can believe that.
• 24:38
  John T. Edge: So, you know, people who are attracted to our town, wish to live in our town are attracted to the cultural and creative economy of our town. There's quite high a barrier now. Just as there is in Austin, just as there are in lots of college towns, to be honest. Real estate investment trusts and others are driving up rent prices, serving students but also serving the bottom line. So how do we, as a university and a town, how do we build what amounts to a humanities laboratory? If we've got, you know, a new STEM building going up at the university, beautiful building to serve the STEM fields, how do we serve the humanities with our own kind of laboratory?
• 25:26
  Chris McAlilly: And, you know, humanities is one of those subjects that, you know, gets disparaged, I think in terms of public investment. So make the case for somebody who's skeptical. You know, and I speak as an English major. I speak as someone who very much values the humanities, in my own personal formation. But I wonder, why is that an important dimension of a flourishing, both economic and cultural and social world?
• 25:57
  John T. Edge: So I'll speak to what we're attempting at Greenfield Farm in that way. And I'll say that, five years ago, I would have said, I don't want to measure this. I don't think we should measure this. And on a grumpy day, I still say that, that the humanities are the lifeblood of human beings and of our shared existence, and that we should fund those because we should fund those. Because I'm raising a lot of money now, I've come to think of it in a new way. Maybe not in a new way, but in a more expansive way. What I have come to realize is that good work requires focus. Good work requires isolation. Good work requires a kind of respect for the place where you do that work and the person doing the work in the place.
• 26:55
  John T. Edge: And what we're attempting to build at Greenfield Farm uses that humanities laboratory where people retreat to gain focus.
• 27:04
  John T. Edge: We're going to serve writers predominantly. And in the American South, the average pay for a writer, according to the US labor department, is 50%, less than it is the North, in the West. Wow. All writers, no matter where they live in the United States of America, almost all writers have a second job.
• 27:27
  John T. Edge: Here at the university, they teach, and they steal time to write. The letter carrier on our street until recently, Shawn Wilson, drove the streets of Oxford with his novel on which he was working underneath the seat of his truck. He's working as a postal carrier, and then writing at night. You know, those are the stories of writers. You have to, in most cases, find another meaningful employment to afford to do your work. So how can we build an asset that can serve a new generation of writers who will be an incubator, who will incubate new ideas about Mississippi?
• 28:11
  John T. Edge: So the act of writing does not have to be fiction, doesn't have to be poetry. The act of writing is the act of putting big ideas on a piece of paper, on a screen. Ideas that can drive the economics of our state, ideas that can drive certainly the cultural gravitas of our state.
• 28:31
  John T. Edge: But how can we build an asset that will serve all of the state and do it in a way that's equitable, so that people like Shawn Wilson, our letter carry can afford to take advantage of it?
• 28:45
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah. I've been thinking a lot about generosity.
• 28:50
  Chris McAlilly: Two things. I've been thinking a lot about generosity and within the context of kind of a biblical vision of what are money--at the end of the day, what are money and possessions and what are they for? And, you know, the base level of kind of a biblical vision is just that they're gifts. You know, they come from the Creator. They're gifts. They ultimately belong to God, and they're to be held in trust. And they're to be held in trust and used according to the will of the Creator. And they can be used certainly as sources of injustice, social injustice, but when they're used well, and rightly, they're used for the common good, so that not just a few people flourish, but also that every people, everybody flourishes.
• 29:32
  Chris McAlilly: I do think that that's like the swan song of a public university, is that it is the people's university. It's a public institution, that when it's flourishing, when it's thriving, the state flourishes.
• 29:43
  Chris McAlilly: There are a lot of people that flourish and within that, you know, for a town like Oxford that has this cultural heritage of William Faulkner and all these great writers, you know, having a public institution that would institutionalize some of these deep desires and longings.
• 30:02
  Chris McAlilly: And really, you know, I think that's kind of the, to me, kind of the awesome dimension of what you're offering is giving people an opportunity to invest in something that they really care about, which is like, if people want the state of Mississippi to flourish long term, we have to have some of these cultural institutions that institutionalize that hope, you know, and if we don't have that, people, young people, people younger, 10, 20, 30 years younger than me, aren't gonna stick around. They're gonna go elsewhere. They're gonna go find other places to be.
• 30:39
  Eddie Rester: Well, and part of what Mississippi has always offered the world is that art and the writing, and that has been part of our gift to the rest of the world. And I think about people who have had the ability to do that, have had space and have had time. And the opportunity now to do that is is much reduced by, whether it's, you want to talk about cost of living, speed of life, technology, whatever you want to say.
• 31:10
  Chris McAlilly: The fragmentation of our attention in all these different directions.
• 31:12
  Eddie Rester: Exactly. You know, during this season of my life, I'm spending a lot more time writing, but having to force myself into a space to say, this is the time I'm going to do it.
• 31:24
  John T. Edge: Right.
• 31:25
  Eddie Rester: It has been a great challenge for me. And so how do you hope people will find Greenfield Farms? How do you how, what do you... I mean, you don't want metrics on it. You don't want seven bestsellers.
• 31:36
  Eddie Rester: What do you hope people... How will they find it? What do you hope they will gain as they spend their time there and beyond?
• 31:44
  John T. Edge: So this will be a retreat style residency. So that means that there'll be four overnight studios out there, there'll be two day commute studios so that people within driving distance can use those spaces. And those will serve...
• 32:01
  John T. Edge: The overnight studios will be a place to retreat. So you are not required to do any performance in exchange for your time out there. You have that time to however you wish.
• 32:14
  John T. Edge: There will also be stipend supported residences. I mentioned earlier, people in residence will get $1,000 a week in income replacement. We've already gotten a grant that underwrites the first five years of those stipends. So we will open out the door with people playing $1,000 a month for overnight studios. And then there's also no one who stays there and no one who uses those facilities will ever pay a fee.
• 32:44
  John T. Edge: So the idea is to take all of the income impediments away and say to people you apply, you get a week to a month. And we expect that when you exit, you've made good progress on your project.
• 32:59
  John T. Edge: But we're not there to evaluate what that progress was.
• 33:04
  John T. Edge: We only ask people who are in residence and do work that they credit us when they publish, so that we do accumulate that record of what the work people have done. But we purposefully do not aim to manage them or moderate them. And this is based on a good bit of research and an input from our advisory board that said, Natasha Trethewey and Ralph Eubanks, Beth Ann Fennelley, Kiese Laymon and Ebony Lumumba, people who've taken advantage of writing residencies, but also people who are very invested in that next generation of Mississippi writers, which is the whole cant here.
• 33:47
  Chris McAlilly: I wonder what are some of the models that you've seen that are successful that you're looking to kind of build this off of?
• 33:55
  John T. Edge: I mean, there's a grouping of residencies in the Northeast and the Northwest. You know, some of them like MacDowell and Yaddo. And places like that do really great work.
• 34:05
  John T. Edge: The best model I've found is, Beth Ann Fennelley here in Oxford recommended it to me, it's a Loghaven and it's just outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, underwritten by family foundation there. And Loghaven models some of these things I'm
• 34:21
  talking about: stipends for writers, no performance requirements. Loghaven's beautiful restored property just on the edge of town. They serve more broadly. We will only serve writers. They serve writers and artists. They were so generous to me. They gave me their pro forma. They gave me everything that I needed to kind of turn key, though we're modifying things, of course, a little bit.
• 34:46
  Chris McAlilly: One of the, you know... So coming back to just the act of writing. I mean, you've written a lot and you've, you know, I think one of the things about that group of people, you know, Ralph Eubanks and Beth Ann Fennelley and Kiese and others, is you need to step away from the world to really think deeply. You know, one of the books that I've read recently that's helping me think about this, is this book written by this German philosopher named, he's a Jesuit named Josef Pieper. I don't, I'm probably not pronouncing his name correctly, but it's leisure is the basis of culture is kind of the idea. It's the sense that in the 20th century, we've, yeah, we're in an ideology of totalized work.
• 35:36
  Chris McAlilly: Total work.
• 35:36
  Chris McAlilly: Total work.
• 35:37
  Eddie Rester: Total work is what he said.
• 35:39
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, we're constantly working. We have to... We've got to create this sense of return on investment of the time spent, etc. And it just totalizes everything. And what's needed to create culture that's a vibrant and ultimately is worth kind of engaging if we want to flourish, both individually and collectively, is leisure. It's the cultivation of leisure.
• 36:03
  Eddie Rester: And leisure for him is not just vacation, getting away, going to the beach. For him it's an attitude towards life where you allow yourself to receive instead of produce. And for me it's been a beautiful, Chris suggested that read, and it just a great way to think about how do we put ourselves in a position to receive so that we can actually offer something else up?
• 36:29
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, the culmination in this book of leisure that creates culture is ultimately festival. It's just, and ultimately he moves...
• 36:37
  John T. Edge: That as a verb?
• 36:37
  John T. Edge: Festival as a verb?
• 36:40
  Chris McAlilly: I don't know if he uses it as a verb, but "to festival." But, he, you know, ultimately, he moves in the direction of Sabbath and worship and sacrament. But I think the tie in for me, kind of back to your work, is that like good writing, you know, and good music, that which is created from a posture of leisure, ultimately lead to--food, you know...
• 37:05
  John T. Edge: I was going to say cooking.
• 37:06
  John T. Edge: It's interesting, because I think about that a lot
• 37:06
  Chris McAlilly: Cooking, all of these things are the activities that are cultivated at a time of leisure. And ultimately, when in both a small way and in the larger way. In the small way, I that happens well, it's when we sit across the table with one another. And there is this kind of sacramental dimension where we bind together with our friends. But, you know, we find unlikely friends along the way to eat with and to drink with and to celebrate with and to festival with.
• 37:36
  Chris McAlilly: tell my writing students, like, move yourself, as you're writing. Like, move and change the medium in which you write.
• 37:45
  Chris McAlilly: So I'll begin writing something by taking notes in my notebook.
• 37:50
  Chris McAlilly: Then I'll move to Evernote, which is a program I use to keep track of all my notes. Then I print that out, scribble on those notes in a pin. Then I reenter everything into Word.
• 38:01
  Chris McAlilly: And each time I change the medium, I change how I think. I see in new ways. I'll also move from my desk to sit outside with that piece of paper that was just, you know, in my laptop, and I print it out, I go sit outside. Every movement changes the way I see the thing.
• 38:20
  Chris McAlilly: In the larger sense, though, I think about a writer's residency. You know, I mentioned before, we'll have four overnight studios, and those are the primary places, but just as important is a network of trails that will circle the residencies. Because we all need release from that concentration.
• 38:39
  Chris McAlilly: We all need that leisure to step away, to walk in the woods, and to free ourselves from the work and just wonder and wander.
• 38:49
  Eddie Rester: As I think about, I'm going to go back to food a little bit. It's near the end of the day. So that's probably why I'm thinking more about food.
• 38:53
  Eddie Rester: One of the the gift episodes of True South is the episode that you and Wright Thompson did about Oxford. And it really wasn't about Oxford. You kind of tricked us there. It was really about, because it was right on the edge of COVID. And you were talking to all of the owners, the chefs and the owners of restaurants. And what that did for me is a memorable episode was that... It really saw... You get to see the humanity that goes into these beautiful humans who are giving their heart and soul to a craft that's been worked on over this long series of time.
• 39:45
  Eddie Rester: And the restaurants that y'all choose aren't always the bright shiny restaurants but the places that mean something in a community. So how, why is it that restaurants have become so central? I think about my hometown, Pap's Place. You know, if you like fried fish, it's the place.
• 40:06
  John T. Edge: I've been to Pap's.
• 40:07
  Eddie Rester: You've been to Pap's. There you go. We'll talk more about the commercials.
• 40:09
  John T. Edge: The commercials.
• 40:10
  Eddie Rester: Yeah. Why is that significant? How did that take significance? I mean...
• 40:16
  John T. Edge: I mean, I'll give you an example. You mentioned the show, and one of the people on that show was Kuan Lim, who owns a restaurant, owned a restaurant. He's since passed.
• 40:27
  John T. Edge: Owned a restaurant in Shreveport, Louisiana. And that restaurant, Lucky Palace, was in the no-tellest of no-tell motels, off an interstate on-ramp, just outside of Shreveport, actually, in Bossier City. There were vienna sausage cans in the vending machine in the lobby. I've never seen that before.
• 40:59
  Chris McAlilly: [LAUGHTER] Oh, man, that's amazing.
• 41:00
  John T. Edge: And, you know, there were people working...
• 41:04
  John T. Edge: There were sex workers, you know, in the bathroom, cleaning up. It was a... It was a tough place for many people. And then you opened the door to that restaurant in the middle of that really tough motel, five paces from the vending machine I just described, and you were in this beautifully lit, candles on the table, deep profoundly deep wine list, with that wine list and also with T-bones wok fried with garlic and jalapenos and deep fried prawns with long beans, run by a man who was fighting cancer and was limping through the dining room and beamed with joy. Because he gave so much to the people who came in that room. They saw it in his face.
• 42:00
  John T. Edge: They saw it the pride he took.
• 42:04
  John T. Edge: They saw it in the the power it took to move through that dining And everybody who went in that place was renewed by the food, room.
• 42:12
  John T. Edge: yes, by the drink, yes, but even more about an audience with Kuan Lim. And so that episode you're describing, you know, I check in on Lim and he's dying at that point. We don't say that on the show, but he's dying. And it meant the world to our crew to reconnect with him. Because when we make a show, you spend a lot of time with people and you can tell some of the interviews, like this past season. Two women talk to me about their addiction and fighting their addiction, entrusted me with that. Like, people have to trust you on the other side of the camera. And when they do you learn a lot about them. And then when you return to them, it's like you never stepped away from the conversation.
• 42:54
  John T. Edge: And I loved Lim. When when he passed, Wright and I were eulogists at his funeral, his memorial service. Making the show, I get to connect with people who are different from me. I get to connect with people who I come to love. I get to learn about these many Souths in which I live. There's not one South. There are many Souths, Chris.
• 43:18
  Chris McAlilly: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Thank you.
• 43:21
  Eddie Rester: Thank you for helping Chris along. We all try to do that.
• 43:24
  Chris McAlilly: I need all the help I can get.
• 43:24
  John T. Edge: The "Birmingham isn't the South thing," like...
• 43:27
  Eddie Rester: We'll talk about that.
• 43:29
  Chris McAlilly: I was just trying to poke the bear.
• 43:31
  John T. Edge: You poked it. You successfully poked. But it is you know... I feel uncomfortable using this language, but it is really to bear witness to a community. It's to bear witness to people. And to watch someone like Lim work a room when he was in his prime was to watch someone gracefully care for his people.
• 43:51
  Eddie Rester: Cafe 212.
• 43:51
  Chris McAlilly: Yeah, that's it man. And I do you think that Yeah, over in Tupelo, that place is essential that's the power. That's the power of culture is that in a place that sometimes can be very despairing and where, you know, I mean, from the outside world, it looks like perhaps there's nothing worth paying attention to, nothing worth going on. In those places, there are people that are making things. And it can be scratching out a story.
• 44:13
  Chris McAlilly: You know, it can be creating a new song. It can be making a beautiful meal for their family and friends or for their town.
• 44:21
  Chris McAlilly: And for those people that are creating restaurants, actually cultivating institutions where people can... I think of our friends over in Tupelo. I'll give a shout out to Jason and Amanda.
• 44:40
  Chris McAlilly: to the flourishing of Tupelo, you know. And there's so many people that are doing that. And it's a beautiful thing. And I appreciate the ways in which you're both telling those stories and lifting them up and also trying to create and cultivate some new cultural assets and institutions where others can have an opportunity to do that. Because I just think it's a crucial part of what it would look like for us to flourish as a people. I really do.
• 45:06
  John T. Edge: I like what you said about, you know, seeing new value that others might not see.
• 45:09
  John T. Edge: I'm paraphrasing you. But it makes me think about William Eggleston in the Democratic forest. Eggleston, the great Memphis photographer, great color photographer for which he's known. He said, "I have a democratic way of looking.
• 45:23
  John T. Edge: Nothing matters more than anything else." You know, and I think that's the way to go through the world. Both in terms of people and place. Like, it all matters.
• 45:36
  Eddie Rester: Well, thank you for sharing. It's been a joy. I want to talk to you about South Louisiana food sometime. Pap's Place some more. And yeah, but thank you for telling stories.
• 45:51
  John T. Edge: Thank y'all.
• 45:51
  Eddie Rester: And helping others do that as well.
• 45:53
  Eddie Rester: [OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
• 46:02
  Chris McAlilly: If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]