Around 40 years ago, I learned about Son Thomas from Bill Ferris’s research and work. Soon there after, at Patti Black’s Capitol Folk Series, I heard Son live in the restored senate chamber. These two folks have done so much to preserve and guide our education about Mississippi blues.

About five years ago, I heard Pat Thomas performing with his ever-slanted head gear in Clarksdale. Pat looks remarkably like his dad and patterns his musical style from his father, performing many of the same songs as he carries forth his dad’s legacy. Pat, like his father, molds out of clay–“heads” also patterned after his father’s art style. Pat loves to draw cats which he enjoys labeling with “Love Dad” as part of signing his artwork.

Around the same time I heard Pat, I bought from Roger Stolle’s fine Cathead Delta Blues and Art Store a very cool head done by Pat for my son Austin’s birthday present. He placed Pat’s fine head on his mantle in Charleston, South Carolina.

Over the years as my son churned his idea for a vodka distillery with his roommate Richard, it seems that Roger’s Cathead store and Pat’s Cathead sculpture weaved through their consciousness. As their vodka distillery–Mississippi’s first legal distillery–came about, Cathead was chosen for its name and a Pat Thomas cat influences their logo design.

It’s so strange the influence of Mississippi blues on our lives. Sometimes, it’s just hard to explain. However, thanks to Roger and Pat, Cathead Vodka is now launched.

It’s not really necessary to understand why things happen, it’s just fun to go for the ride and let the blues vibe work within your soul.

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Click here to see all of our blogs on Mississippi State of Blues.

Ken Murphy and Scott Barretta will be signing at Lemuria on Thursday, November 11th.

Reserve your copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

For a view of the beautiful photos, please visit the official State of Blues website.

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The 24-Hour Customer: New Rules for Winning in a Time-Starved Always Connected Economy by Adrian C. Ott (Harper Business, 2010)

The already in flux retail world  is changing even faster since the recession started. Customer values have changed. Ott sets the tone in her new book:

“Time isn’t money.

It’s more important than money.”

My industry seems to be in chaos. The future of the physical book is in jeopardy with the growth of electronic publishing. The box bookstore concept appears frail at best. And easy-to-click-and-buy Amazon seems more homogeneous and stereotyped with price being its defining focal point.

Ott’s book has helped me to think about my customers while analyzing the value added service of Lemuria. We hope not to waste our readers’ time by guiding them to books of low quality or poor choice for their reading tastes. We work to provide high-value books that satisfy the time available. We strive to make knowledge-based book suggestions fed by our own first-hand reading experiences. We want to engage our customers in the store and online. We want to guide you with our blog similar to in-store interaction. We even consider the added value of a book in terms of its collectibility.

Over the years, Lemuria has had many types of customers, and many have become friends and members of the Lemuria reading family. We have not always been perfect. Bookselling is harder than it seems and being a good bookseller is not just about personal reading taste. As we start our 36th year, I’m pleased to say that my young-gun booksellers are the overall best unit Lemuria has ever had. Combined with their online efforts, we are looking for the customers who want us and value our work. Let us know your reading desires and I know we will try to match them with good books.

We hope to save you time and money while enhancing your reading life.

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

[In the 1997 tobacco settlement] “. . . Big Tobacco would pay out $368 million to compensate for health costs related to smoking.” (page 65)

“The total amounts coming to Scruggs seemed incalculable. Some news accounts had him getting as much as $848 million . . . ” (Page 65)

“Looking back on the period a few years later, Scruggs would tell a friend, ‘The money was obscene. Nobody thought we’d make money like this. It was a frenzy.'” (page 65)

“. . . Scruggs had been given a title: King of Torts. It complimented his college nickname, Zeus, king of the gods.” (page 66)

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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I don’t when it happened, but a few years ago I noticed that the number of calories cited under the Nutrition Facts on food packaging had changed. I remembered it being this:

“Percentage Daily Values are based on a 1,500 [to 2,000] calorie diet. Your daily values may be higher or lower depending on your caloric needs.”

Now the calorie range is 2,000 to 2,500 calories per day. Who needs 2,500 calories? Knowing that a third of the American population is overweight, it seems that the 2,000-2,500 range covertly reinforces obesity. It makes it seem like eating 2,500 calories a day is normal.

In Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, Dr. Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health points out the educational opportunity the United States Department of Agriculture has missed regarding the redesign of the Food Pyramid found in the Nutrition Information required on all food packaging. When the Pyramid was redesigned in 2005, it became a multicolored pyramid which leaves the viewer confused as to what each color represents. If you were to research it at that time, the USDA pyramid was explained as such: “It included six food groups . . . At the foundation sat an admonition to load up on highly refined starches, while the top was was crowned with fats, oils, and sweets. In between were fruits, vegetables, protein and dairy.” (Willett)

Today, when I look on packaging, I don’t find any type of food pyramid but I do find the increased caloric guidelines.

Willett’s book was a match for me because it thoroughly explains nutrition and highlights many of the dietary myths circulating in our culture. He also presents his own food pyramid. Besides being a great instructional tool for children, it seems that seeing a pyramid like this on food packaging would be better than the 2005 USDA pyramid. Note that the foundation of a healthy eating pyramid is exercise. Wouldn’t exercise be much better to reinforce instead of a 2,500 daily calorie intake?

The Harvard Public School of Health website provides a wealth of solid nutritional information to help teach and reinforce a healthy lifestyle.

My first connection with Caroline Herring was spending several summers together at Camp DeSoto. I was a counselor, she a camper but I remember her sweet, shy smile and long blond hair. Several years later, I was visiting DeSoto and she was there, on staff, and was in charge of the singing!

I don’t recall hearing her sing alone until years later when she was in Oxford and doing Thacker Mountain Radio. She was still shy and sweet but she was developing a sense of strength and poise that comes with genuine talent. Her winsomeness was tempered with a fierce determination to be heard and people have been listening ever since. Caroline Herring has grown into being an acclaimed artist; an incredibly gifted songwriter and a southern voice that has a way of slipping into one’s mind and never leaving! To see her now, I am so proud and quite amazed at her progression. She is a treasure whose time has come. Caroline has worked to be where she is and I, for one, am thrilled to know an artist of her caliber–pure gold inside and out.

I will use her own words to convey my feelings:

From “Fair and Tender Ladies”:

You write about a place so dear
In all its good and evil
A loving cup, an aching scar
You need no thread and needle
To sew your name into your clothes
Or hem a ragged line
All muscular and luminous
Oh, heroine of mine

-Norma

Click here to see all of “Lemuria Reads Mississippians.”

Editor Neil White will be signing at Lemuria on  Thursday, October 28th.

Purchase a copy online or call the bookstore 601/800.366.7619.

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