Letter from the Executive Director

The Southern Foodways Alliance has been generating a great deal of positive press coverage in the weeks and months following our 1999 Southern Foodways Symposium in Oxford, including articles in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Charlotte Observer, and the St. Petersburg Times, the Dallas Morning News, Gourmet, and Spirit, the in-flight magazine of Southwest Airlines. The membership committee plans to leverage this media attention in an effort to garner more members. As of February, rolls stand at approximately 125 individuals and institutions, with 300 members projected by August 2000.

The program committee met recently in New Orleans to begin exploring topics for this year's symposium, tentatively slated for the weekend of October 21. Among the topics being considered is “Travelin’ On: Routes and Influences of Southern Food Beyond the Region.” In other words, what happens when Southerners--and by extension Southern foodways--move west, north, even across the Atlantic? Many of you--aware that the first two gatherings sold out quickly--have already contacted me about registration procedures for this year's symposium. Rest assured that SFA members will be offered an opportunity for early registration.

In a related matter, the fundraising committee is working with potential sponsors in an effort to expand the symposium's impact. Among the ideas being considered are adding a postsymposium event in Memphis, Tennessee, and hosting a summer Southern Foodways Alliance event in another Southern city.

Last, and certainly not least, the SFA is pleased to announce that our program of oral history collection is now under way. In concert with the American Center for Wine Food and the Arts of Napa, California, we have more than 30 life stories on videotape. Under the direction of Daphne Derven, curator of the American Center, we captured interviews with, among many others, New Orleans restauranteur Leah Chase, Baton Rouge filé maker Lionel Key, catfish farmer Ed Scott of Drew, Mississippi, and cookbook author and culinary historian John Martin Taylor of Charleston, South Carolina.

Soon, the tapes will be available to visiting researchers here at the University of Mississippi. And, when the American Center opens in 2001, they will be incorporated in a series of exhibits on regional food habits. If you don’t already know about the American Center, you should. They plan to foster traditional and experimental programs in viticulture, enology, agriculture, cuisine, artistic and literary expression, the study of the history, science, and politics of food, nutrition, and health, and such emerging issues as sustainable agriculture and world food supply.

Complete with auditorium, concert terraces, demonstration kitchen, classrooms, restaurant, gift shop, exhibition galleries, resource center and gardens, the American Center will present a lively array of public programs, including films, classes, readings, lectures, demonstrations, tastings, and workshops. The American Center will be situated on 12 acres fronting the banks of the Napa River and will celebrate its grand opening in the fall of 2001.

In a recent conversation with Derven, she stressed the importance of working with the SFA: “Our mission as a cultural museum and education center is to explore wine and food by means of the arts and humanities. And we plan to rely upon the Southern Foodways Alliance for expertise in the South.” For further information, point your web browser to www.theamericancenter.org.

To my mind, this is just the type of relationship that the SFA should seek out. If any of you have suggestions for similar partnerships, please contact me via email at johnt@dixie-net.com or by phone at 662-915-5993.

John T. Edge