Expanded Hours at Andalusia

Thanks to our new staff member, Mark Jurgensen, the Foundation will soon be able to expand the hours of operation at Andalusia. Beginning in January 2010, Andalusia will be open Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. When it first opened for regular tours in 2004, Andalusia was only open on Tuesdays and Saturdays. There were approximately 2,500 visitors to the farm that year. The next year we began opening on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Saturdays and seven days a week by advanced appointment, primarily to accommodate group tours. Our visitation has increased every year, and the demand for more open days has become apparent. In 2009, our number of visitors will most likely top 3,700. This year Andalusia has welcomed 25 school classes, 23 college groups, and 17 organizational tour groups including civic clubs, book clubs, and churches. We look forward to welcoming even more visitors to Andalusia in 2010, and we hope that YOU will be among them.

Craig

And the Winner Is . . .

And the winner is...Flannery O'Connor. On Wednesday night the National Book Foundation announced that The Complete Stories, published in 1971, had been named Best of the National Book Award winners. Beating out such stiff competition as Faulkner, Welty, Ellison, and Cheever, O'Connor was the clear choice of the more than ten thousand readers that participated in the poll. To all those who voted for O'Connor, we say thank you. If you do not already own this splendid collection of short stories, we have copies for sale at the Andalusia gift shop. With Christmas just around the corner, wouldn't The Complete Stories make a great present for the reader on your gift list?

- Mark

Creative Writing at Andalusia

It is quite fortunate for all concerned that Andalusia is located in the town that is also the home of Georgia's public liberal arts university, Georgia College & State University (GCSU). It is also the institution, earlier called Georgia State College for Women, where Flannery O'Connor earned her undergraduate degree in June 1945. This university of 6,500 students offers several programs that provide wonderful opportunities for collaboration between Andalusia and GCSU. The most obvious of these is the Creative Writing Program, where graduate students are instructed in the craft of writing and are encouraged to publish in their respective genres. Professors who teach in that program routinely hold classes at Andalusia and bring visiting writers for tours. The students visit Andalusia to tour the house, to volunteer, to walk the nature trail, or to find a place simply to read and write. No one can deny that Andalusia is an ideal place to inspire writers. Students in the Environmental Sciences department use the property for algae sample studies and ecosystem monitoring. GCSU also offers an alternative to traditional middle school education through a program called Early College, which prepares students to complete high school, gives them an opportunity to earn up to 60 hours of college credit, and assists them in meeting requirements to earn the Georgia HOPE Scholarship. The Early College students take field trips to Andalusia and are given topic prompts to write creative papers, some of which will be posted on Andalusia's website. The Foundation partners with GCSU on a variety of programs including the February lecture series, The Big Read, the Southern Literary Trail, and more. Andalusia has the potential to expand this partnership with GCSU and other colleges, universities, and institutions as we seek to increase the appreciation and understanding of the life and work of Flannery O'Connor.

Craig

A Message From Our Newest Employee

As the recently hired Visitor Services Manager of the Flannery O'Connor-Andalusia Foundation I have been asked to write a short entry on this blog to introduce myself. To begin with let me say that it is indeed an honor and a privilege to work at Andalusia. While I cannot claim to be a long-time admirer of O'Connor - indeed I read her for the first time this spring - my discovery of her powerful fiction at the age of 52 consititutes the great literary find of my life. It is sometimes hard to believe that one of the giants of twentieth-century literature lived right here in middle Georgia and that I have the good fortune to be working at the place where she penned her novels and stories. How did this all happen?

On a bright day in early June, my wife, Judy, and I visited Andalusia for the first time. As we turned into the driveway off Highway 441 we left behind the strip malls, fast food restaurants, and chain motels cluttering the landscape and entered the cloistered serentity of another time. Crossing the peaceful fields and pasture land, the main house slowly came into view. I could almost picture Flannery standing on the front porch waiting to greet us. I will never forget walking through the front door and peering into Flannery's room. Athough I have been to the homes of a number of writers, never had I felt so close to an author as I did at that moment. Andalusia exerted almost a magnetic pull and it was very hard to leave, even after spending two hours at the farm. Not surprisingly, Judy and I returned the following week for another visit. I don't know what motivated me, but during that visit I asked Craig out of the blue if he could use any volunteers. To my delight, he said he could.

Little did I imagine when I started volunteering on July 6th that my work at Andalusia would turn into a job that is such a labor of love. It is a pleasure to work for Craig, and I want to thank him and the members of the Andalusia board for this opportunity. I look forward to sharing my enthusiasm for Flannery O'Connor with our visitors and to promoting an increased appreciation and understanding of her great literary achievements.

- Mark Jurgensen

Andalusia's Website Activity

If you are reading this blog you are probably already aware of the Foundation's website, which may have brought you here in the first place. You may be interested to know that our website is getting over a million hits a year, with the number of unique visitors (individual visits to the website) reaching over 32,000 over the last twelve months. A search on Google using either the term "Andalusia" or the name "Flannery O'Connor" consistently brings up the Foundation's website in the top five hits. The top five countries of origin for the website's visitors outside the U.S. this year make quite an intriguing list: Russian Federation, Canada, China, Romania, and Great Britain. In addition to biographical details on O'Connor and the history of Andalusia, the website offers information about the Foundation, the gift shop, related news, events, environmental education, and teaching resources. There are plenty of photographs too. If you haven't explored the website, please make a point to do so at www.andalusiafarm.org.

Craig

Latest Addition to O'Connor's Bedroom

Regina O'Connor left a good portion of the furniture and furnishings of her daughter's bedroom/study in place after Flannery O'Connor died in 1964. Mrs. O'Connor returned to the Cline family home in downtown Milledgeville to live the rest of her life, dying in 1995 at the age of 99. Visitors to Andalusia are informed that O'Connor's desk, chair, and typewriter on display in the room are not original because her mother donated those, along with a few other pieces from the house, to Georgia College back in the early 1970s. Some family members and friends received original artifacts as gifts from Mrs. O'Connor after her daughter's death, and some of those generous individuals have given these objects to the Foundation to be placed back in Flannery O'Connor's bedroom. The latest of these gifts is a bronze crucifix, engraved on one side as follows: "FLANNERY FROM THE SISTERS CHRISTMAS 1962" and on the other side: "PER IPSUM ET CUM IPSO ET IN IPSO" (translated: Through Him, and with Him, and in Him). We assume it was a gift from the sisters of Our Lady of Perpetual Care hospice center in Atlanta, for whom O'Connor wrote the introduction to A Memoir of Mary Ann (1961). We are very grateful for this valuable artifact, along with the others that have found their way back to Andalusia, thanks to the generosity of our Friends.

Craig

Vote for O'Connor for best NBA winner

No, Flannery O'Connor did not play professional basketball. In this case, NBA stands for National Book Award, and she did win one of those. The Complete Stories by O'Connor and edited by Robert Giroux won the NBA for fiction in 1972, the first time that particular award had been given to a deceased writer. Now, the National Book Foundation is sponsoring a contest on its website to decide who wrote the Best of the National Book Awards Fiction. The six finalists are O'Connor, Faulkner, Welty, Ellison, Cheever, and Pynchon. I am proud to report that, last time I checked, O'Connor had a substantial lead. Please visit the National Book Foundation's website and cast your vote for O'Connor.

http://www.nationalbook.org/nbafictionpoll.html


Craig

Student Workday at Andalusia

Andalusia is very fortunate to be located in a town with a university that stresses the importance of community involvement to its students. Today, Andalusia is seeing direct benefits from these fine young scholars. Professor Gregg Kaufman brought more than twenty students today from Georgia College & State University to do some landscaping work on the front lawn of the main house. They hauled soil, developed beds, and planted shrubs. Some of the students worked on the nature trail also. We have had the pleasure of working with student volunteers for over six years, and I believe the experience has been great for Andalusia and the students. Are you interested in volunteering at Andalusia? We'd be happy to have your help.

Craig

Recording Visits to Andalusia

Andalusia has been open to the public since 2003, and through the years, some of the guests have documented their visits on the web using personal websites, blogs, Facebook, photo galleries, and YouTube. It is obvious that coming to see the place where O'Connor wrote her stories has a profound impact on some of these individuals. Having so much of the original furniture and furnishings in the main house provides visitors with an authentic experience, perhaps making it seem as if Flannery O'Connor just left Andalusia for the last time. Some visitors ask us the inevitable question, "Do you ever sense O'Connor's spirit in the house?" Sometimes they aren't so direct and will ask if O'Connor died in the house. In fact, she did not. She died in the Baldwin County hospital in Milledgeville. I have never experienced any paranormal activity at Andalusia. I don't believe O'Connor, or any other former occupant, haunts the halls of Andalusia. However, the spirit of her personality and creativity are very much present at this place, and I believe it is that atmosphere that compells some of our visitors to document their pilgrimage in hopes of capturing and offering the experience to others.

Craig

Decatur Book Festival

If you happen to be in the Atlanta area this Saturday or Sunday over Labor Day weekend, don't miss the AJC Decatur Book Festival in downtown Decatur, Georgia (just east of Atlanta). Andalusia will be sharing a booth with the Flannery O'Connor Review. If you do make it to the festival, please visit us at booth #524 on East Ponce de Leon Avenue. We will be selling books, journals, posters, and other O'Connor-related souvenirs from the Andalusia gift shop and Special Collections at the GCSU Library. This is an incredible festival that features an impressive line-up of writers along with booksellers, rare-book dealers, entertainers, storytellers, and literary landmarks like Andalusia. Best of all, virtually every session and event is free and open to the public. Check out the website at www.decaturbookfestival.com for all the details. We hope to see you there!

Craig

Novel Destinations

If visiting literary landmarks like Andalusia is your idea of rounding out a great vacation, then you may be interested in a book called Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks from Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West. This 2008 publication from the National Geographic Society is now available in paperback (in our gift shop - $13.95). Shannon McKenna and Joni Rendon give summaries and highlights of the homes and haunts of famous writers at over 500 locations, with in depth reviews of ten locations in the U.S. and abroad. Andalusia hasn't made it to this book's top ten list just yet; however, Flannery O'Connor gets three pages featuring the Childhood Home in Savannah, the O'Connor Collection at Georgia College in Milledgeville, and Andalusia. The book also lists literary festivals, tours, libraries, lodging, and other related places to visit. The Denver Post hails Novel Destinations as "a dream come true for reading enthusiasts who also travel." It is a fine guide book and companion to larger, and more photographic works such as American Writers at Home by J. D. McClatchy and Erica Lennard and Writers of the American South by Hugh Howard and Roger Straus III, both of which feature Andalusia. Of course, for O'Connor enthusiasts, the best guide book available is Sarah Gordon's The Literary Guide to Flannery O'Connor's Georgia published by UGA Press in 2008.

Craig

New presence on Facebook

Andalusia now has a new "address" in the Facebook neighborhood. If you aren't familiar with Facebook, it is probably the fastest growing online community in the country. It provides its users with an easy way to post interests, photos, events, discussions, and other information, which they can share with a limited audience of "friends" or with anybody who logs on to the site. Facebook almost serves as a personal website generator for individuals, organizations, and businesses. We started out with a MySpace Page a few years back, then migrated to a Facebook profile last year. Due to restrictions of Facebook, Andalusia had to change from a "profile" to a "page." Please visit Andalusia on Facebook and consider becoming one of our fans. Here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/Milledgeville-GA/Andalusia-Home-of-Flannery-OConnor/155972759656?ref=nf

Craig

Tokens at Flannery O'Connor's grave

A good portion of O'Connor fans who visit Andalusia also take the time to see other sites in Milledgeville associated with the writer, including Georgia College, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and Memory Hill Cemetery, where O'Connor is buried. As is the case with the graves of famous people all over the world, visitors often leave behind something on or around O'Connor's tombstone. The most common objects are coins, usually pennies. The motivations behind this gesture are varied, from demonstrating affection and respect for the deceased to paying for one's passage to the afterlife. There are even voodoo practices associated with leaving coins at grave sites! In addition to the traditional flowers, some visitors to O'Connor's grave leave behind other tokens such as peacock feathers, pebbles, stones, poems, small books, and figurines. I once found a small plastic gorilla figure at the foot of her tombstone (a big fan of Wise Blood, obviously). On a recent visit, a Frenchman named Jacques Colin took some photographs of the tombstone adorned with several tokens. He was amazed that, over the course of just three days, the collection of the items on the tombstone expanded and was rearranged several different times. We encourage all our visitors to see Memory Hill Cemetery and the grave site. O'Connor's deep convictions and her fixed gaze on the eternal make such a pilgrimage most appropriate.

Craig

Andalooshya

Because Flannery O'Connor has such a wide following, both here in the U.S. and around the world, we often welcome visitors to Andalusia who are venturing through the South for the first time. Some of these individuals are familiar with the region in southern Spain, the place the property was apparently named after by some of the nineteenth-century owners. In fact, a few years back we welcomed several professors to the farm who were teaching in that specific region. If our visitors are well acquainted with that Spanish community, they may assume that O'Connor and her family pronounced the farm's name as the Spanish would, Andalucia (sounds like AndalooSEEya). However, as well-established American Southerners by the twentieth century, the Clines and O'Connors spelled the name with an "s" instead of a "c" and pronounced it, AndaLOOshya. We still hear several different pronunciations of the name, from AndaLOOsa to AndaLOOseea. Frankly, it makes no difference to me how you pronounce the name as long as you make sure to come see it for yourself. I think you will agree, Andalusia es muy bonito!

How Many Acres Are There?

The 1947 entry in Sally Fitzgerald's chronology in the Library of America volume, Flannery O'Connor Collected Works, explains that upon his death, Dr. Bernard Cline left the Andalusia property to his sister, Regina Cline O'Connor (Flannery's mother), and another brother, Louis Cline. The text states that the Andalusia Farm included "500 acres of fields and 1,000 acres of woods." That particular description is not exactly accurate. Bernard Cline actually acquired two tracts of land equaling 550-acres in the early 1930s that were the core of a 1700-acre plantation in the 19th century. It is out of this original property that Dr. Cline and his immediate heirs carved a farm complex, hayfields, and livestock ponds. It was some time after this initial purchase that Dr. Cline began to acquire wooded sections north of the farm, totalling 1,000 acres in size, which remained undeveloped during his lifetime and were never part of the Andalusia Farm. This section was later divided and tracts were distributed to some of Dr. Cline's relatives. Developers eventually purchased some of these tracts and created the Northwoods subdivision, which includes O'Connor Drive and Regina Drive. Today, Andalusia is 544 acres in size (six acres were lost to the highway expansion several decades ago), and the Flannery O'Connor - Andalusia Foundation owns approximately 524 of those acres, including the main house, the outbuildings, pastures, hayfields, several ponds, and forests. In two separate transactions in 2003, the Foundation acquired this property from Mrs. O'Connor's Estate and from the private owners of the twenty-acre farm complex . The remaining twenty-acre tract is located just north of the farm complex and is held by the Executor of Mrs. O'Connor's Estate.

Craig

The King of the Birds Returns to Andalusia

Almost twenty years have passed since the screams of peafowl pierced the solitude of Andalusia. Thanks to the generosity of some close friends to the Foundation, the King of the Birds will soon return. A few peafowl (not the dozens that O'Connor once raised) will take up residence at the farm in August, settling into a very impressive aviary built by local contractor Billy Allen and his fine crew of craftsmen. And, just for the record, the term "peafowl" refers to the two species of the Pavo genus of pheasants. Only the males, with the very beautiful tail feathers, are called peacocks; the females are called peahens. In other words, technically there is no such thing as a female peacock. Building an aviary adequate to house such large birds is quite an undertaking and was not included in this year's budget. We could really use your help! If you would like to make a donation to help us "bring back the peafowl" to Andalusia, please give us a call at 478-454-4029. Thank you.

Craig

New Souvenirs in the Andalusia Gift Shop

Some of the visitors to Andalusia arrive prepared to spend a week's wages on the interesting assortment of merchandise in our gift shop. They walk away with a bag full of books, note cards, a Stan Strickland print, and a few other treasures. However, some of our visitors may not have so much money to spend, especially in this challenging economy, but they still want to take something home that will remind them of their experience at O'Connor's home. We have recently added yet another line of inexpensive souvenirs to fit just about any budget -- full-color Lucite refrigerator magnets! Now wait, before you groan, please understand that these are VERY attractive magnets with four different photo styles: the main house, the pond, a peacock, and a single peacock feather. They are reasonably priced at $4 each. Call and order your magnet(s) today at 478-454-4029.

Craig

New Bibliographic Work on O'Connor

Cambridge University Press has just published Volume 16 in the American Critical Archives Series, and the title is Flannery O'Connor: The Contemporary Reviews. The editors are R. Neil Scott from Middle Tennessee State University and Irwin H. Streigh from the Royal Military College of Canada. The title is a bit misleading, as the editors admit, because the reviews are not limited to those published only during O'Connor's lifetime. In their words, "Given the remarkable posthumous acclaim for O'Connor's art and thought, and the special honor accorded her in the seven years following her death in 1964, in selecting and editing reviews for this volume we have taken what we feel are legitimate liberties within the rubric of contemporary critical responses to American authors with which the series is concerned." And, it should be noted that O'Connor is in very good company in this series with writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Faulkner, Twain, T. S. Eliot, and Eudora Welty. This volume offers critical book reviews on O'Connor's published fiction and essays, including more than 400 reviews from more than 200 publications. With a total of 482 pages, including a strong introduction and a respectable index, this monograph will be a valuable addition to O'Connor scholarship.

Craig

Restoring the Milk-Processing Shed

A grant from the Milledgeville chapter of the Watson-Brown Junior Board made it possible for the Foundation to begin work last week on restoring the milk-processing shed at Andalusia. Funding for the project also came from gifts given in memory of Robert W. Mann (former Chair of the Board) and his sister-in-law, Catherine Florencourt Firth. The general contractor for the project is Allen Contruction Company of Milledgeville, the same firm that completed the restoration of the pump house in 2008. The milk-processing shed is located in front of the main cow barn a few hundred feet behind the main house. It is a one-story structure with two small interior rooms and is constructed of structural clay tile and covered with a wood-frame hipped roof and tin roofing. The north room is accessible by doors from the west and north and houses an existing pump along with cooling and storage equipment. The south room has a built-in "basin" constructed of concrete on the east wall. There is a small addition on the south side of the building with its own entrance, and this room houses an electric water heater. The old chimney above this addition is still in place, implying that the heat source at one time was wood or coal. As was the case with the restoration of the water tower and pump house, we hope to recreate the semblance of an operational farm for the purposes of education and historic preservation. Although these structures are no longer functional on the property, they are predominant pieces of the agricultural landscape at Andalusia and represent significant artifacts of twentieth-century farm life in central Georgia. They are also integral elements of the setting which provided inspiration for so many of Flannery O'Connor's stories. An interesting sidenote about the milk-processing shed: it was slightly modified during the summer of 1976 for the filming at Andalusia of O'Connor's short story, "The Displaced Person." Wood siding was placed over the tile of the shed to make it look like the tenant shack for the Polish immigrant family in the story. The siding was removed after filming was complete. The PBS production of "The Displaced Person" is now on DVD and available in the gift shop at Andalusia.

Craig

Wise Blood on DVD

The Criterion Collection has issued John Huston's Wise Blood on DVD, which was just released in May, 2009. The movie originally appeared in theaters in 1979 and stars Brad Dourif as Hazel Motes. This special edition DVD features interviews with Brad Dourif, writer Benedict Fitzgerald, and writer-producer Michael Fitzgerald. There is a 26-minute episode of the television program Creativity with Bill Moyers from 1982, featuring director John Huston discussing his life and work. But the real treasured addition to the DVD is a rare archival audio recording of Flannery O'Connor reading her short story, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." This DVD is an absolute must-have for O'Connor fans and literary collectors. The cost of the DVD is $39.95. You can order your copy from the Andalusia gift shop at 478-454-4029.

Craig