The tables, chairs, peanut machine, and door handle in the Bottletree came from the Bon Ton Cafe, open in Yazoo City from 1932 until 1971. The older furnishings lend to the Bottletree's eclectic mix of history, art, and West Coast coffee shop manner. One of the best reasons to visit the Bottletree is its excellent coffee, shipped in weekly from Portland, Oregon. In this way Cynthia blends some of the best aspects of two regions, the South and the Northwest, to create a delicious, innovative cafe experience.

Those who reject the caffeine jolt of coffee have many other options such as Tazo tea, Chai tea, hot chocolate, Italian soda, and fresh Odwalla. Breakfast choices include pastries, traditional bagels, croissants, and granola. For lunch there are varied sandwiches, salads, and soup. All the sandwiches are served on freshly baked breads, including baguettes, garlic sourdough, multigrain, whole wheat, and rosemary sourdough. The sandwiches range from a traditional club to an inventive vegetarian to old-fashioned peanut butter and jelly. Cynthia also provides catering for parties and tailgating, making mini-versions of Bottletree goods as hors d'oeuvres.

The Bottletree's namesake is a good luck charm, a tree with bottles hooked on its branches; the bottles rattle in the wind, keeping evil spirits away. The atmosphere and overall feeling of the Bottletree Bakery are also like its namesake. Usually a lively and busy place in the mornings and during lunch, people populate the counter and tables like the bottles themselves, greeting each other, rattling with early morning coffee and conversation. There is a feeling in the place that elicits the promise of keeping evil spirits away.

After a long career teaching on various levels, living in California and New Mexico, Charlene Dye came to Ole Miss to get her master's degree in Southern Studies. She currently teaches high school in Marks, Mississippi. Originally from Macon, Georgia, Charlene moved to California in 1966 at the age of 28. She returned to college in 1973 to get her B.A. As an undergraduate, she worked as a tutor supervisor in Santa Barbara City College's Development Studies Program, helping adult students with weak reading, writing, and math skills prepare for college. Discovering that she loved the work and was good at it, Charlene decided to get her secondary teaching credential after she finished her B.A. in English at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Charlene moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1977, where she began putting together a developmental studies program. She taught reading and writing both at the Northern New Mexico Community College and at the New Mexico State Prison. Charlene eventually earned an M.A. in English from Sonoma State University in Northern California's wine country.

Charlene began teaching high school in 1991 at Santa Fe Preparatory School. She came to Oxford in 1992 for the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. While on the Delta tour led by Mary Hartwell Howorth, Charlene said, "something about the Delta" pulled at her heart. When she returned to Oxford to work on an M.A. in Southern Studies in 1995, she explored the Delta and its music through her course work and thesis.

After receiving her degree in 1998, Charlene went to the Delta town of Marks to teach at Mississippi Palmer, a public school with a student population that is 97 percent African American. She teaches a total of 138 students and finds the work rewarding but also very difficult.

Charlene believes in using innovative methods of teaching, finding that these methods produce good results. She had her students make out a family tree in preparation for looking at a language tree. In the process she heard many fascinating family stories that came from the students' grandparents. She hopes at some point to record these stories and encourages current Southern Studies students interested in the project to assist her. In Marks, Charlene has been able to combine her interests in teaching, in the Delta, and in Southern Studies.

Matthew Brothers, who received his Southern Studies M.A. in 1998, is the building director of Appalshop Center Programs at Appalshop Inc. in Whitesburg, Kentucky. He is in charge of programming the theater, the gallery, Images from the Mountains: A Traveling Exhibit of Appalachian Artists, Seedtime on the Cumberland Festival of Traditional Mountain Arts, and other various programs produced by Appalshop. His first duty was to help coordinate the annual Seedtime on the Cumberland Festival, which offers a schedule of old-time musicians plus demonstrations, theater performances by Appalshop's renowned Roadside Theater, and film showings.

While Seedtime is a large responsibility, other projects occupy the majority of Matthew's time. Charged with planning a stimulating and challenging program of events for Appalshop's art gallery and 150-seat theater, he also works closely with area schools to develop a strong presence for the arts in an effort to encourage students to think critically about their environment and the artistic influences within Appalachian culture. This presence includes artist residences, oral history projects, and student-led performances. In addition, Matthew organizes several other annual events besides Seedtime and is in charge of fundraising to pay for this schedule of events.

Appalshop was founded as the Appalachian Film Workshop in 1969 as part of President Johnson's War on Poverty. It was originally intended to train Appalachian youth in film production. Rather than leave for the nation's urban centers, the young people created their own nonprofit media company and began making films about the culture and social issues of Appalachia. Over the years, Appalshop has grown to include a radio station (88.7 WMMT), a recording label (JuneAppal), the Appalachian Media Institute, the Community Media Initiative, and Appalshop Center. For details, contact Appalshop at center@appalshop.org or on the web at http://www.appalshop.org.

Southern Studies alumnus Angel Ysaguirre (1996) currently works for the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation in Chicago, Illinois. The Foundation has four programs: Journalism and Free Speech, Early Childhood Education, Citizenship, and Communities. Angel works in the Communities program and is in charge of all the areas involving and affecting youth. As part of his work for the Foundation, Angel and another employee recently wrote a guide to funding youth development programs. The guide focuses on youth development as an approach to programming and policy concentrating on the needs, strengths, resources, and development of youth and their communities. The guide provides questions that are intended to help funders better assess proposals from a wide range of organizations.

In his spare time, Angel puts to use his Southern Studies degree, teaching classes at the Newberry Library. The Newberry provides a series of seminars for the general public. This year Angel is teaching a course called "What's Sex Got to Do with It?" The class explores how 20th-century writers have used sex as a means of investigating issues of violence, rebellion, control, gender, and race. Through readings ranging from William Faulkner's Sanctuary to Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, the class focuses on discussing characters in fiction who experience sex as escape, oppression, or liberation. Angel explored these issues in papers he wrote for literature classes in Southern Studies as well as in his thesis, which investigated the connection between sex/violence and spirituality/sensuality in Harry Crews's novels. Most of Angel's students are professionals who miss reading and having meaningful conversations about books. In both his work for disadvantaged youth and his extracurricular teaching for professionals, Angel creates forums to help enrich the lives of others.

Allison Finch, a graduate of the master's program in 1998, is currently an assistant for the Walker Percy Project, an Internet Literary Center in Austin, Texas. In addition to generating publicity materials for the project, she works with raising funds and developing proposals. Allison brings to her position many of the skills she gained while earning her M.A. at Ole Miss. "I am using the editing and writing skills I learned as assistant editor to the Southern Register, public relations skills I gained as a Southern Studies intern with Southside Gallery, and project coordination skills that I've used as the coordinator of the Red Tops CD produced by the Center," she says.

The Walker Percy Educational Project Inc., a nonprofit organization, maintains the Walker Percy Project, currently the most comprehensive resource on Percy available. Its many materials and programs combine to foster a dynamic learning community where scholars, students, and general readers of Percy can all interact. Materials include critical essays on Percy's work; a gateway of information on Percy organizations, festivals, and symposia; video and sound clips of Percy; photographs of Percy and "Percy places"; a comprehensive bibliography of Percy scholarship; and Percy book excerpts and book ordering services. The project also offers Percy educational modules for teachers of Percy; an online e-mail discussion forum; an archival service for scholars wishing to post their Percy essays; and an annotations project on Percy scholarship for graduate students. Future project plans include a multimedia CD-ROM of Percy's nonfiction, his speeches and his television appearances, as well as an online Percy conference. You may visit the Walker Percy Project at http://sunsite.unc.edu/wpercy.