Cher, Prince, Madonna, Oprah, Elvis, Angelina – for some people, a last name is just superfluous. I have another person to add to the list of one-namers: Vertamae.

And I have good news: Vertamae has come back home to the Lowcountry.

I first heard Vertamae Grosvenor on National Public Radio, which for many years was her main forum for cultural commentary. After listening to some of her stories I came to understand that she was from the Lowcountry, and for this I loved her. The basic storyline, in my imagination, was this: Local girl makes good and gives the world its comeuppance. With style.

Who was this infinitely creative, cosmopolitan woman with the soul of a poet and the fortitude of a soldier? In her use of language, she bridged the casual and the ceremonial. She was deadly serious about her writing, her people, her mission on earth – but at the same time she had a sense of play and pageantry that made it seem like the most logical thing in the world that she should perform with Sun Ra and his Arkestra in the professional capacity of Space Goddess.

Simply put, Vertamae embodied both the earthy and the ethereal. She could discuss the frying of pork skins and the streets of Paris’s left bank and the outer periphery of the universe with equal authority.

So over the past few years I’ve often wondered, whatever happened to Vertamae?

Turns out she’s living in Jasper County.

I met some people who, knowing my interest in local food and culture, mentioned that Vertamae was their neighbor and that she was settling in for a while. Would I be interested in meeting her?

OMG. That would be a yes.

So after some telephone tag and the harriedness of the holidays, we finally got together. Before I drove out there, I called and asked her if she needed any groceries from Beaufort, and it turns out she did. So on the way out of town I stopped at the grocery store.

And I tell you what: it was the most thrilling trip to Bi-Lo I have ever made. I was so excited I almost forgot to use my Bi-Lo Bonus Card. I was floating through the aisles thinking thoughts along these lines: Wow! I am grocery shopping for Vertamae Grosvenor! I am holding in my hands a shopping list for things that Vertamae is going to eat! She’s actually going to cook it and put it in her mouth! And maybe, just maybe, she’ll cook something for me!

Because you see, Vertamae’s biggest claim to fame is her cookbooks.

Her first, Vibration Cooking, came out in 1970. The full title was Vibration Cooking, Or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. The book was a big hit, and there have been two subsequent editions.

One might think something like, “Oh, how sweet, a nice little cookbook from down South, spiced up with some humorous anecdotes; let’s try a recipe for collards and see how it turns out.” You wouldn’t expect much more out of it. Because a cookbook can’t have an earthshaking impact, right?

Wrong.

Although at the time it might have seemed to be a perfectly harmless endeavor, it turns out that Vertamae wasn’t messin’ around. What she wrote was more than a cookbook. Her words were interpreted as a call to arms for Black women who had been trapped in a life of domestic service.

Back in the day Black women had a proper place, and that place was serving as cooks and maids to the white families who wanted to maintain a comfortable status quo. All that changed, however, during the Civil Rights movement, and later during the Black Power movement.

It was only then that Black women found their true proper place: serving as cooks and maids to the Black men who wanted more status and less quo.

At least that’s the storyline perpetuated by the various literary critics and critical theorists and theoretical metaphysicists who, over the past forty years, have squabbled with each other over Vertamae’s writings with a maniacal passion.

The critical consensus seems to be that Vibration Cooking smashed the Myth of Black Mammydom to smithereens. It was all right for Black women to cook as long as they were smart and sexy, and as long as they didn’t cross the thin line between heartfelt service to others and utter subjugation.

And also one more thing – white people had better stop pretending that Southern cooking had nothing to do with Africa.

Vertamae went on to work on a wide variety of projects – acting roles in the films Daughters of the Dust and Beloved, creative collaborations with other artists, her NPR work, and a PBS show, America's Family Kitchen With Vertamae Grosvenor.

The latter inspired two more cookbooks: Vertamae Cooks in the Americas' Family Kitchen, and Vertamae Cooks Again: More Recipes from the Americas' Family Kitchen. And despite all that emphasis on America, one of Vertamae’s gifts to us is that she thrust authentic an American cuisine onto the global culinary radar screen.

But now she’s come back full circle. Gracefully aging, her dancer’s limbs still liquid, she is at home in the Lowcountry, and she is finally at liberty to reflect on her busy and remarkable life. Right she is occupied by the monumental task of sorting through the 40 boxes of documents, tapes, CDs and mementos that were shipped to Jasper County from her NPR office.

There have been other challenges. Her Emmy award statue arrived bent, with one of its wings missing – how does one fix something like that? There are priceless audio and video recordings on obsolete media that are in desperate need of transfer -- where to start? There is a long-distance collaboration on a play with the son of a Broadway legend. And most of all, there is the forthcoming re-issue of Vibration Cooking.

Vertamae has to work hard at this because each new edition of the book gets a revised ending, a sort of updated account of what has happened to the people and places in Vertamae’s stories. But for this particular new edition there is a different type of ending: it’s about Vertamae.

Just as Vibration Cooking changed the nature of academic scholarship regarding women, race and food, Vibration Cooking changed the nature of Vertamae’s life. It created a fortuitous chain of circumstances that made her who she is today, and I am delighted that she has chosen to share the story of this journey with the rest of us.

And maybe, when she is ready to take a break, Vertamae can make time to do some guest lectures, or writing workshops, or cooking demonstrations.

Vertamae, we welcome you home.

Read more My Lowcountry

I walked my beagle and my mom’s Bichon Frise this afternoon, delighting in the warmth of winter sunshine, and breathing in the clean air washed by the previous night’s rain.  Toby, the beagle, pulled me in one direction, while Cokie, the walking white fluff ball, tugged at my left arm in the opposite direction of the stubborn hound.  To neighborhood traffic, I must have appeared to be the victim of canine torture, or just another schmuck dog owner with little control over the four-legged species commonly referred to as our “best friends.”  When I finally persuaded Toby to move in the same direction as the more obstinate Miss Cokie, I made a mental comparison between the dogs and their owners.

Cokie is white, her coat matching the sugary color of my mom’s hair.  She is in her early eighties, my mom in her late seventies.  Both have their aches and pains, both like ice cream, and they both have dark eyes inset on chalky faces.  Toby is loud and in his fifties, like me.  He is bullheaded, like me, and he has been lucky in love, like me.  I wonder who starts to resemble whom first.  Do the dogs take on our personalities, or do we adjust, assimilating their characteristics?  Why am I even having these thoughts?

I am making these observations because I am attempting to slow down and really look at things, let my imagination run, and live in the moment.  Already a month ago on New Year’s weekend, I listened to the Sunday morning NPR broadcast of To The Best of Our Knowledge. Whether it was coincidence or providence, the theme of the show was the culture of slowing down, a counter response to our fast-paced lifestyle of cyber communications and drive-thru dining.  The show’s topic was timely, and almost surreal, because of my aspirations toward my goal of slowing down.

On the program, Carl Honore, author of In Praise of Slowness, was interviewed.  I bought his book on Amazon, and although I am reading it at turtle speed (reading is one activity that could use some speeding up), Honore’s thoughts on patience, especially as it relates to the process of healing, help me understand that some things cannot be rushed, no matter how badly we want them to occur.

The fact is I am receiving some of the things I wished for in this new year.  My resolution to slow down was answered by my mother’s twelve-day stay at Beaufort Memorial Hospital in January.  My desire to remain in Beaufort and at home for a while, instead of being on the road, a slave to the harried travel schedule I maintained the previous month, was satiated by the aftercare I need to provide for my mom.  And yet, I am someone whose neck hairs bristle when someone tells me to be careful what I wish for.  Even the counsel that prayers are answered in the best ways, and not necessarily in the exact response I anticipate from my Higher Power, rubs my consciousness like sandpaper against the grain, smoothing my edges and the splinters of my expectations.

And so, I am in the throes of care giving – my mom, her dog, our dog and to a much lesser degree, my husband.  Of course, what falls by the wayside is the care of self.  There is always a constant tugging – a pull by my parent, a nudge from my husband, and work yanks my attention to the realities of productivity in an effort to earn a living.  Taking the time to write these random thoughts are a real gift to me, possibly selfish, but certainly healthy.

The other day, my neighbor made the comment that no one really writes about aging, the truth about it, how it slowly diminishes one’s physical capabilities, and changes the face looking back in the mirror. I was silent.  I do not believe that is true, the part about no one writing about the realities of aging.  Just this evening, I read a short story by Frederick Buechner, from a book that I received as a birthday gift.  In the story entitled Our Last Drive Together, Buechner writes about his mother, her ninety-year-old idiosyncrasies, her frailties, and her eventual passing away.  The story reminded me that we all slow down, whether it is by choice or circumstance.  People around us confirm the aging process, theirs and ours.  We just don’t pay attention. We are not gentle.  We lack a degree of compassion for one another’s journey. At twenty, it is difficult to empathize with fifty, and at age fifty, it is a challenge to relate to the eighty year-old.

Until, that is, on bright and sunny afternoons, we take the opportunity to walk behind our dogs, watching their rear-ends sway, stopping to let them sniff the odors surrounding mailbox posts and tree stumps.  We may recognize ourselves in our animals because we cannot see ourselves in those we love.  We are too busy wondering what we will become, disappointed by who we are, and dwelling on what is lost.  But every now and then, we get glimpses of what we prayed for, or wished for, coming true in ways and in people that we could not have imagined.  We only truly see ourselves, no matter how old or young we are, when we slow down to look, and how we look at ourselves is really a matter of choice.

My aunt gave me a small wooden plaque this past Christmas with the prayer, “Lord, make me the person my dog thinks I am.”  I do not know what Toby thinks, but if I can just be a bit more like my beagle – curious, playful, and unconditional in the way I love – I will successfully meet the demands of this new year, one day at a time, slowly.

Read more Whatever

A new Beaufort-based website aims to bring the short story back to the forefront of American culture.

Do your remember the first short story that really knocked your socks off? For me, it was ‘The Lottery,’ by Shirley Jackson. I think I was in middle school – maybe 7^th grade? – and I still get a shiver up my spine when I recall that mysterious black box (a ‘symbol’, or was it a ‘metaphor’?), and that shocker of an ending that sneaks up on you… despite the author’s masterful use of “character’ and ‘foreshadowing’. Later, I would discover the creepy pleasures of Edgar Allen Poe… the gentle irony of O. Henry… the beautiful freaks of Flannery O’Connor… There was something so elegant – so intensely immediate – about this art form. If a novel was a big, tasty layer cake to be savored over time, the short story was a square of rich, bittersweet chocolate. The perfect literary snack.

But then I stopped eating – er, reading – them. After grad school, my English Major days behind me, I turned in my tattered Norton anthologies and the short story became a thing of my past. According to publishing industry statistics, I was not alone.  Over the last few decades, the short story has seen a major decline in popularity.

Enter Beaufort’s Tim Johnston, who has just launched Short Story America, a website that hopes to rescue this neglected literary form, bringing it back into the mainstream of American culture. The former headmaster of Beaufort Academy, a talented short story writer himself, recently talked to me about his new venture.

ME:  Tim, when was the ‘golden age’ of the short story… and what’s changed since then?

TJ: The heyday of the short story started in the 19^th century with Washington Irving (‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’) and ran through the first three quarters of the 20th century. Throughout those generations, short story writers were like rock stars! They were such a prime source of entertainment before the complete dominance of television.”

ME: Okay, but now that we’ve got television, and so many other entertainment forms – not to mention actual rock stars – why bring back the short story? What’s the point?

TJ: Television, computers, and hand-held gadgets have made it very easy to access passive entertainment. But reading stories is active, participative entertainment. Readers are challenged to use their imagination – and their souls – in applying a story to their own situation or their society.

The short story didn’t lose popularity because authors forgot how to write stories that entertain, move and matter.  Rather, modern technology, over time, has made it seem like harder work to read a short story than, say, to follow gossip entertainment or trade text messages in shorthand.  So the short story has been shoved to the cultural sidewalk while, in the words of a long-time literary editor, a dumbed-down culture of faddism “goose steps down Main Street.” That's quite a scary analogy, but it truly is a threat to our society when people don't engage in meaningful reading from adolescence all the way through old age.

ME: Now you’re speaking my language, Tim. I’ve written extensively in this column about our dumbed-down, faddish culture, the instant gratification generation, and other contemporary bogeymen. In this light, it occurs to me that your project is about more than just reviving a fading art form… it’s about cultural renewal. How do you draw scattered, distracted young people – with miniscule attention spans – away from twittering, text messaging and superficial celebrity gossip, toward more meaningful engagement with the world of ideas? It seems to me that you start “small,” right? You challenge them, but you don’t ask them to bite off more than they can chew. As I mentioned earlier, a good short story is the perfect literary snack (albeit a “nutritious” one).

TJ:  Exactly. Edgar Allan Poe described the short story as having a "singular effect" on the reader, one that can be profound and lasting.  The best short stories do three things, in my view, and they do them in one sitting: They entertain, move and matter to the thinking individual who reads them and incorporates them into his character, even subconsciously.  Good short stories have no waste, no fluff, no filler.  I love that.  Such can be said very rarely about novels, and I love novels!

ME:  And who knows? A kid who starts out reading at Short Story America might like what he sees and be inspired to check out longer literary forms. And shorter forms, too, like poetry.

So how does it “work”? You have twin daughters at home and you have to make a living. What’s your business plan?

TJ:  Our plan is that the company's revenue will come from tasteful advertising, the sale of audio short stories, and Kindle downloads.  (We plan to help the local economy by producing our audio stories here in the Beaufort area.)  Another source of revenue will be institutional memberships. Schools will pay membership dues of just $100 per year, which will enable their faculty to access lesson plans, sample essay questions, etc. at the site Educators section.  School memberships will also enable the students at member schools to enter the annual Short Story America national short story writing contests, which will be held at the Middle School, High School, College and Graduate School levels.  Each school's champion will move to the national finals, and will be published in our Student Short Story Library for the rest of the world to discover the young emerging talent at our nation's schools.  This will be really exciting in every school community.

ME:  So then, as a former headmaster, Short Story America is kind of a natural progression for you, career-wise, right?

TJ:  This progression feels as natural to me as the connection between teaching and writing.  I love the fact that a teacher can simply direct students to go to the website, read an assigned story, write in their journals, and (if the teacher wishes) print the story for use in class discussion, highlighting, margin notes, etc., without having to mark up an expensive book.  Short stories are the perfect literature about which to write analytical essays, because students can read them in one sitting, and teachers can move directly into discussion and then on into the nitty-gritty of student writing: the analytical essay.  Colleges complain (and rightly so) that today's freshmen are not arriving on campus with the ability to write meaningful, persuasive and mechanically correct analytical essays.  Increasing the use of short stories in the classroom is an ideal way of increasing both the frequency of essay-writing and the enjoyment of literature on the part of students.  As Aristotle wrote, "We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."  Every student can become a good writer, if he/she reads every day, and is led to enjoyable, meaningful reading by teachers and parents from early ages forward.

ME: Your former teaching colleague Sarah Turocy is your co-editor at Short Story America. She no longer lives in Beaufort. How did she get involved?

TJ: I've held Sarah in the highest regard ever since hiring her back in 2004 to teach English and be the founding director of the theater program at BA.  I guess you could say we're both dreamers and optimists, and as career English teachers, we both embraced the vision of a much-needed addition to our culture: a worldwide publishing project which would aid in returning the short story to mainstream culture as reading entertainment for everyone, and to assist teachers with resources for students as readers, thinkers and writers.

ME:  You gained readers from 13 countries and 37 US states in your first week online. You’re drawing lots of comments on your discussion boards – people talking about stories from your “Classics Library” as well as the “Story of the Week,” which is always something new, chosen by the editors from a quickly growing pile of submissions.

I’m still thinking about your haunting story “Friday Afternoon,” which was featured as the first Story of the Week. One reader called it a “short story masterpiece… right up there with ‘The Lottery’ and ‘The Most Dangerous Game.’” Another reader was “completely blown away,” and compared you to her favorite writer, Stephen King. I’m curious about your literary influences, Tim. What are some of your favorite short stories?

TJ:  ‘Winter Dreams’ by F. Scott Fitzgerald… ‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver… ‘The Short Life of Francis Macomber’ by Ernest Hemmingway… ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’… by Flannery O’Connor, just to name a few. If you had the space, I could name at least 50 short stories that are absolutely indispensable, and I would still only be scratching the surface of this valuable part of living well by reading well.

ME: Thanks so much, Tim. I know all my readers join me in wishing you great luck in this new endeavor. A good website is hard to find

Become a member of Short Story America by visiting www.shortstoryamerica.com

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