Spring 2013 Salon Brochure

P.O. Box 13358 Macon, GA 31208

Macon Memories Sidney’s Salon Series March–May 2013

Salon Times 5:30 p.m. Refreshments 6:00 p.m. Programs Begin Admission Free for Historic Macon members $5 Non-members $3 Students

Macon

Memories

March 12: May Lamar April 15: Dr. Iain Whyte May 14: Mike Kitchens Location Sidney Lanier Cottage 935 High Street Macon, GA 31201 (478) 743-3851 Parking at First Baptist Church

Lanier Center for Literary Arts Sidney’s Salon Series March–May 2013

March 12

April 15*

May 14

May Lamar

Dr. Iain Whyte

Mike Kitchens

A native of Montgomery, May Lamar landed her first newspaper job in 1980 when she was hired as a cub reporter for the Gastonia (North Carolina) Gazette. She later worked as a reporter for the Summit County (Colorado) Sentinel, the Fairhope (Alabama) Courier and the Montgomery Advertiser. She left journalism for advertising copywriting and ran a small communications agency for 20 years.

Brother Sid, Lamar’s first published novel, is a fictional account of how the hard luck poet Sidney Lanier handles failed love, consumption, debt, regret and the Lost Cause with unshakable faith.

Lamar also co-authored the poplar non-fiction coffee table book, Hunting: The Southern Tradition.

Rev. Dr. Iain Whyte is a retired minister of the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) who has been Chaplain to the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh. His first book was Scotland and the Abolition of Black Slavery, 1756-1838, and his newly published book is Send Back the Money! The Free Church and American Slavery. He is making a brief research trip to the South assisted by the Carnegie Fund for the Universities of Scotland.

His lecture, entitled From Macon to Montrose: Scotland, Slavery, and the Crafts’ Tour of 1851, will focus on the role that Scotland played in slavery and in its abolition, the curious episode of the ‘Send Back the Money’ campaign in 1845-1847, Dr. Thomas Smyth of Charleston and Frederick Douglass, and the arrival of William and Ellen Craft in Scotland after their escape from Macon. It will raise some of the ethical issues surrounding the abolition of slavery and the clash between commerce and humanity. *Special date! Salons are normally held on Tuesdays, but please note that Dr. Whyte’s Salon will take place on Monday, April 15.

Michael W. “Mike” Kitchens was born a raised in Valdosta, and is a graduate of the University of Georgia and the Mississippi College School of Law. Since 1984, he has combined his interests in traveling, photography and history by taking to the back roads of the South to locate and photograph as many antebellum dwellings as he could find. He has focused his research on houses that were built in the South before 1865 but that since have been lost due to fires, tornados, neglect or destruction.

Mike’s research and writing have culminated in Ghosts of Grandeur: Georgia’s Lost Antebellum Homes and Plantations. This book features stories on 94 historic antebellum homes that were built anywhere from the 1780s to the 1860s. Through this book, and hopefully others to follow, Mike hopes to share some of the enormous stores of information he has developed on the subject of the South’s lost antebellum architecture.