On Fox 6 in April

A timely family story, fiction from a familiar name, local literature and maybe the most useful cookbook ever! Here's what I'm talking about on Fox 6's Good Day Alabama on Tuesday, April 4 and Saturday, April 7. 

A Rare Titanic Family:  The Caldwells’ Story of Survival (NewSouth Books) by Julie Hedgepeth Williams

This book is as timely as it is fascinating. April 15 marks the 100^th anniversary of this tragic event that continues to capture our attention and our imaginations. Williams grew up hearing family stories about how her great uncle Albert Caldwell; his wife, Sylvia, and their young son escaped the Titanic. They were among the very small number of families that came out of that disaster alive and together. But there’s more to this story:  The Caldwells had been Presbyterian missionaries in Siam (now Thailand), but they left when Sylvia got sick. They ended up in England, via the Far East, the Middle East and Europe. But fellow missionaries believed the couple made up Sylvia’s illness and that they planned to renege on their contract with the church that had sponsored them. So, it turns out that being involved in the most famous shipwreck in history was only one of this family’s problems! Williams relied on Albert’s firsthand account of the disaster as well as family stories, newspaper articles, journals and church documents to tell her family’s extraordinary story.

 

A Wedding in Haiti (Algonquin, publication date April 24) by Julia Alvarez

Julia Alvarez’s books are internationally acclaimed. Many, like How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of Butterflies, are taught in high school and college curriculums. In A Wedding in Haiti, we follow Alvarez on her own journey into a new country and culture. It’s a narrative that spans both pre- and post-earthquake Haiti and includes Alvarez’s parents; her husband; and a young Haitian boy named Piti, whom Alvarez first met in 2001. The author, over the years, has come to view Piti as a son; she even promised to be at his wedding one day. As Alvarez explains, “… devastation happens around the world and at home. But those tragedies are too huge to absorb. We understand them best in the small, human-sized portion a story serves up. This is a journey of the heart to a Haiti that often gets missed. In a far-off hut, an hour’s hike from where a dirt road ends, Piti is getting married. I invite you to enter this story and see what happens when we keep a promise.”

 

PMS 11 Poem Memoir Story (University of Alabama at Birmingham) edited by Kerry Madden

This newest edition of PMS, a journal of women’s poetry, memoir and short fiction, opens with an interview by Lauren Slaughter with internationally esteemed poet Mary Jo Bang, and it’s followed immediately with Bang’s beautiful Canto XXVI. From there, the pages cover a variety of subjects (the isolation of a nursing home, the terrifying world of drug addiction, the angry teenage daughter of a racist, a revelation in a Hallmark store). “ … a theme of displacement can be seen in the fractured settings of so many of poems, memoirs, and stories,” writes editor Kerry Madden. “Displacement is in the air these days with families being uprooted and broken, often to the running soundtrack of our age of information overload.” Sit down with this spring issue; slow down with this spring issue. Understand something new.

 

Birmingham Poetry Review (University of Alabama at Birmingham) edited by Adam Vines

Award-winning poet David Bottoms, the poet laureate of Georgia, opens this Spring 2012 edition with My Old Man Loves Fried Okra, and his simple, straightforward, relevant poem paints a picture that is both lovely and heartbreaking and, quite possibly, very familiar. Other poems that stay with the reader include Michelle Penaloza’s Reverie:  Nightfishing

“The silver fish sidle inshore, opaque lines, nets

of the mind – words before they leave the tongue.

The torches their lures, the old men fall silent and watch

the clamor of fish climb the branches of their swaying nets.”

And Travis Wayne Denton’s Local Men

“They’re the ones you read about in the papers,

Never good news. For Example:  Local Man, Found Face Down

In His Teriyaki at Bill’s Lucky Buddha, Foul Play Suspected.

Look around, gaggles of local men,

Just waiting to be picked off – thrown in the back

Of a rusted-out Buick (said car last seen speeding

Away from the Circle K).”

 

How to Cook Everything:  The Basics (Wiley) by Mark Bittman

“Cooking, at its heart,” says Mark Bittman, “is simple and straightforward.” It’s also satisfying, economical, time well spent, and it results in truly nutritious food. It also leads to family meals. This book, with its 1,000 informative and encouraging photos, starts by showing you how to set up your pantry. Then there’s a visual guide to basic prep like rinsing and chopping and cooking techniques from boiling water (yes, really) to braising. The recipes here progress from easiest to most challenging, so you can build skills with each dish. Recipes include Quick Pickle Spears, Garlicky White Bean Soup, Paella with Chicken and Sausage and Chili from Scratch. How to Cook Everything:  The Basics is perfect for the novice cook (think wedding presents and graduation gifts here), but accomplished cooks will learn a thing or two, also.

 

Comments

[Seyed]

It is a shame that no one is concerned about this cotruny enough to rid us of the illegal aliens. The cost of these illegals is astronomical in comparison to what it would cost to send them all back to their countries. They come over here and receive all types of aid from our state and federal governments. They can go into any hospital or doctors office and not have to pay a dime. I DO NOT have health insurance, am a citizen of this cotruny and CANNOT go to any hospital or doctor unless I pay full price for the service If I need a doctor, I cannot afford to go to one or even have the surgery I need so badly. This is a crying shame that our own cotruny would treat their citizens this way. I am a nurse and worked for a family that (I did not know this info at the time)were illegals and were always going to the doctor for one or another reason. They had a anchor baby and that child got everything from the govt except for her diapers. Wow, it must be nice not to have to work and sit back and sleep all day like the mother did, while the nurse took care of her baby for 12 hours a day. When I found out this info I quit my homehealth job and refused to work in any home where the people were illegals. I just do not understand any of this!!! This woman's boyfriend (also an illegal) worked under the table) for an Italian restaurant while the woman just stayed home. I was in and out of quite a few of this family's relatives (in my job) and they were all illegals also. The men of the families all worked in under the table jobs at local restaurants and several of the women worked at motels/hotels in the Williamsburg area, as housekeepers, getting paid under the table . How long is this cotruny going to let this continue? If the USA wants to give away free health care, how about giving me some so that I can go and get my knee surgery that I so badly need????? Of course not!! The cotruny will not do this. They will only keep on giving to these illegals . I, for one, am sick of this. Something needs to be done about this problem now!!!!! They are not hiding in the shadows -because they KNOW that the cotruny is not going to do anything about their being here illegally. They just want everyone to hear about how rough their trip was here from south of the border -crossing with the coyote. Well, I for one, do not feel sorry for them. They need to be sent back to Mexico or whatever other cotruny from which they came. Let the Americans have some of these jobs and some of this FREE health care. I continue to work as a nurse, as I have for the past 22 years, and never have I been able to obtain free anything!!! Enough is ENOUGH!!!

[Sihen]

Perhaps the American Hispanic population doesn’t think they’re going to be ditpsoporrionately targeted . The Democrats, the left in general, the illegal immigrants who are already in the USA and the MSM will inflame the bejesus out of the issue. They'll literally beat hispanics over the head with lies and carefully edited sound bites telling them that they are being ditpsoporrionately targeted' (doublespeak for racially profiled) until they succum to the propoganda. Heck, some could hardly contain their glee at the left's gottcha incident' with the trucker yesterday. No need to get both sides of that story nosiree. Hispanic trucker claims he was asked for ID solely based on his race. There can be no other explanation. The police version? Who cares. No need. Case closed. Time to riot.VA:F [1.9.13_1145]please wait...VA:F [1.9.13_1145](from 0 votes)

[Grecu]

You are not the only one with this experience .. I hear it more and more the truth is that big bunesiss doesn't want legal workers, Americans or legal immigrants .. they want ILLEGALS, and preferably illegals from countries where a dollar goes a long way It isn't right, it isn't fair, and it's certainly not true that the illegals only take jobs that no American wants to do that's what big bunesiss wants you to think, that's what our President parrots off, and that's what the pro illegals on this site keep quoting it is as you are saying, the rich are getting richer, the tax payers are getting poorer and legal immigrants and citizens are scrounging for jobs in constructions and other fields where they used to be gainfully employed shameful, that's what it is!

[Yacine]

Hi Su, Gosh, Thanks for letting me know about Gunhild. I did not know she was reiitrng. She has given so much to the scrapping community, she will most definitely be missed. However, I realize she deserves more time to enjoy her family. Gosh, I wish the "driveway fairy" would come along and fix the mess at the end of my driveway. I'll just tack it at the bottom of the never-ending list of "to do's" that I have. lol.I'm starting to get into the December kit, and it's looking really nice!! You have a great night. I'm going to watch a bit of TV now with Miss Tootsie.Hugs, Edna B.