chattanooga – …Theresa Kishkan

Meacham Writers’ Workshop

April 3, 2013April 3, 2013 theresakishkan2 Comments

John and I were recently guests of the Meacham Writers’ Workshop in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This inspiring event happens twice a year and combines readings, consultations, workshops, and some terrific parties. The webmaster Bill Stifler recently sent me links to the podcast of the reading John and I did on March 20th in the beautiful Flag Room at Guerry Hall, University of Tennessee, Chattanooga.

http://www.meachamwriters.org/audio/Pass-Kishkan13S.mp3

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/meacham-writers-workshop/id358741556

Five pounds of possum

March 25, 2013March 25, 2013 theresakishkan2 Comments

We arrived in New York late afternoon, a kind of wild dream. Organized ourselves and went out for dinner at Buceo 95 around the corner from our hotel here on the Upper West Side. Lovely tapas — bacon-wrapped dates, little goat’s milk cheese fritters with a honey and hazelnut glaze, a dish of paella with wild boar. Pique Poule wine from the Languedoc (which made one forget the airports — Chattanooga, Atlanta, JFK — and attendant fuss of getting to gates, waiting, waiting, waiting, then spending short times in the actual air).

The other night we took Chris and Susie to Terramae, a new Appalachian bistro in Chattanooga. We had a wonderful dinner — duck leg and egg being a highlight (a leg of duck confit over baby greens with sweet potato hash and a duck egg over top which made a natural sauce). Then we drove up Signal Mountain to a civic hall where the Mountain Opry has performances every Friday night. It was magic. People playing music for the love of it — mandolins, banjos, guitars, basses, a piano, singers with that high lonesome sound to their voices. We all loved hearing a group sing “Five pounds of Possum”:

Five pounds of possum in my headlights tonight,

If I run ‘im over, everything’ll be alright.

Possum grits, possum gravy —

what a beautiful sight!

Five pounds of possum in my headlights tonight.

Chattanooga is an amazing place. We wandered the streets, explored the ridges and drove with Chris up Lookout Mountain, signs every half-mile alerting us to key locations of battles or skirmishes of the Civil War, and we loved being part of the Meacham Writers Workshops.

I had the best chocolate croissant of my life at Niedlov’e Bakery on the funky Main Street, around the corner from our hotel, and we had an afternoon looking at galleries and eating lunch near the Hunter Museum of American Art, a place that deserves many visits. Imagine coming face to face with Ansel Adam’s “Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico, 1941”, an image familiar from books, and reading that in fact Adams thought of the negative as a kind of musical score; as the photographer/printer/conductor, he’d interpret the image slightly differently each time he printed so that the light and dark (those crosses in the foreground, the horizon in the background, and that moon…) would vary slightly each time.

Tonight there was a smudgy moon on our walk back along Amsterdam Avenue. And I know it will be a different moon tomorrow night!

Wayfaring strangers, two

March 21, 2013 theresakishkanLeave a comment

Here is John, smiling for Katka on the Walnut Street Bridge, over the Tennessee River.

And here is Deborah Butterfield’s bronze horse (it looks like driftwood, doesn’t it?) outside the Hunter Museum of American Art.

Poor wayfaring strangers…(not)

March 21, 2013March 21, 2013 theresakishkanLeave a comment

We’re just back from breakfast at the Bluegrass Grill on Main Street in Chattanooga. What a wonderful city! We arrived the night before last, met at the airport by Chris and Susie, and whisked off to our hotel.

Last night we gave a reading at the University of Tennessee Chattanooga, the audience as warm and generous as one could wish for, and then had drinks afterward in yet another beautiful brick building. Later today there’s a reception for the Meacham Writers Workshop (we’ll each do a workshop on Saturday) at the home of Richard Jackson. We’ve seen the famous (or infamous) Bradford pear trees, so beautifully in bloom (but smelly), and we heard mockingbirds.

For the rest of the day, we’ll explore. It’s a city that strikes me as being built on a human scale. I walked around yesterday while John met with one of Chris’s classes and I saw the Tennessee River with its lattice of bridges. We’re going there shortly. In the meantime, this is one of the little things I noticed on yesterday’s walk.