Posts Tagged ‘John Lemley’

International Museum Day — 90.1 WABE’s City Cafe Interviews Lain Shakespeare

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John Lemley, the famed voice of WABE’s City Cafe, stopped by the Wren’s Nest the other day to talk about memory in museums.

Because, as we surely all know by now, “memory” is the theme of this year’s International Museum Day. City Cafe is doing it up right — all this week they’ll interview plenty of other folks about memory in Atlanta’s museums.

John and I talked about my favorite artifact in the Wren’s Nest, pictured above and below. Brer Fox escorts Brer Rabbit to jail for stealing vegetables, and Brer Rabbit drops the evidence along the way. It’s an intricate Bavarian wood carving from the early 1880s. Plus, their heads pop off to better use as a humidor for tobacco.

The piece illustrates just how revolutionary these African American folktales really were. It was the first time animals walked, talked, dressed, and sassed like humans in American literature. Uncle Remus was like Aesop 2.0.

These stories were also the first serialized narrative in children’s fiction, where the animals exist in a kind of alternate universe. There’s no beginning, middle or end to the story. Brer Rabbit was like jumping from Turner and Hooch to The Wire overnight. It’s no wonder Harris had received this gift from Bavaria about 18 months after Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings debuted.

I’ll spare you more. That’s where City Cafe’s “A Visit to the Wren’s Nest” comes in.

Song of the South Anniversary on WABE’s City Cafe

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Our local NPR affiliate WABE invited me to stutter speak on City Cafe the other day in light of the recent anniversary of Song of the South.

I sat down to speak with the indefatigable John Lemley about the controversy surrounding the film and its relationship with Joel Chandler Harris’s Uncle Remus stories.  Listen to the podcast here.

Unfortunately, while at WABE I did not see Lois Reitzes and thus could not challenge her to a rap battle.