>>RiverVueDispatches
Rebecca Meredith, Author of The Last of the Pascagoula, Has Alabama Roots
(Jan 21st, 12:03)
I discovered Rebecca Woods Meredith when I received a copy of her read more...
Alabama Born, Auburn Educated Octavia Spencer Wins Golden Globe
(Jan 16th, 13:50)
The 2011 fall issue of the Auburn University alumni magazine featured a stunning photo of Octavia Spencer on the cover, not as Minny, read more...
A Conversation with Jerry Masters: "Hanging From A Tree By My Knees"
(Jan 11th, 09:47)
Jerry Masters, musician and sound engineer for nearly every hit record cut in the Shoals from the late 60s through the early 70s, and read more...
Shakin' in Alabama with the Alabama Shakes--Souful Music Near the Shoals
(Dec 8th 2011, 11:04)
The small town of Athens, Alabama (not Athens, Georgia) has madenational music news thanks to the hot new group
The South has many voices--mine is but one--as well as many worlds. My world is part academe (and somewhat urbane) and part rural south where kudzu competes with cotton for supremacy
and where we in the Tennessee River Valley struggle for peaceful coexistence with the prolific and persistent wildlife.
In RiverVue, my aim is to capture a slice of this life, viewed through the lens of one "bred and bawn in a brier-patch" and refracted by many years of teaching and traveling.
RiverVue may be about attending a festival in Florence, Alabama, or a wedding in Florence, Italy. It can be about be about kayaking on Bear Creek or hiking up a mud soaked mountain
in the rain forest of Costa Rica.
RiverVue is about celebration, diversity, adventure, friends, family, fellowship, and food. There will always be food.
So mix up a mint julep and climb on for the ride.
As M.F.K. Fisher wrote in Serve It Forth: "When shall we live, if not now?"
-Penne J Laubenthal
Picture of the Day
>>RiverVue reviews
Review of: Jerri Chaplin
Vertically Coastal by Jerri Chaplin---A Review
I met Jerri Chaplin read more...
Review of: The Civil Wars
Barton Hollow
Last night as I sat with friends on my porch overlooking ElkRiver, Iput
>>RiverVue Fiction
There are no RiverVue fiction writings at this time
>>RiverVue Features
Making Merry in the Marigny: FMIA Tour of Homes, New Orleans
Visitors to New Orleans who think the city is defined by the French Quarter and the Garden District are in for a delightful surprise when they wander past Esplanade and across Elysian Fields into the fabulous Faubourg Marigny. Popularly known as the location read more...
HOMEGROWN: An Exhibit of Regionally Influenced Designs in Nashville, TN
HOMEGROWN is a special exhibition of regionally influenced, culturally significant, contemporary design, bringing the designs to an underexposed market outside of the major design centers. The exhibit will take place from place from June 1 through June
>>RiverVue Conversations
Alabamian Lilly Ledbetter and the Fair Pay Restoration Act
by Penne J. Laubenthal Six months ago today President Obama signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act. The signing of this bill was the culmination of a decade long campaignby
Conversations with Alabama Filmmaker Max Shores
by Penne J. Laubenthal Max Shores, a native of Winfield, Alabama, is a thirty-year veteran of documentary production. His documentaries tell compelling stories about life in the southeastern read more...
Read All RiverVue Conversations
>>RiverVue Poetry
Four Poems by Matthew Nolan: A New Orleans Poet
Caterpillar Girls (from Crumpled Paper Dolls, 2004) Should have known! Should have known! Between a phony butterfly and a never evolving caterpillar— Her pleasant sincerity is a funny hat that droops over her face, a blind dunce, a cartoon caterpillar; a squirming, eyeless caterpillar, on its read more...
Why GP Cries
by Harry Moore Beneath the seething August heat bolls of cotton crack, then burst in fluffy locks, green leaves twist, turn brown and fall. Black faces glisten as workers bend to knee-high stalks, plucking the soft fiber from prickly burrs, packing handfuls into the canvas sack they drag till it’s strutted, then read more...