Blame It on the Yellow Jackets

This landed me in the hospital for two days. Turns out I am dangerously allergic to yellow-jacket venom, so allergic my symptoms mimicked a heart attack. But tests on Monday morning showed my heart is in fine working order. All is well again, but the uncertainty about how the week would play out led us to postpone our “Writing Your South” seminar with Jacqueline Allen Trimble. Next week, we will announce a new date for that online event and put tickets to it back on sale.

Now, on to this weekend’s Salvation South lineup. Shawn Pitts is a wonderful writer whose work we have published several times. He is also a tremendous champion of the arts in Selmer, Tennessee, the small town where he and his family live about ninety miles from Memphis. In our lead story this week, Shawn applies his highly discerning eye to the work of a North Georgia visual artist named Ted Whisenhunt, whose work (based on Shawn’s descriptions and the images you’ll see in our story) is simply stunning. Whisenhunt has an odd but wonderful gift that allows him to express the “Southernness” of our region, no matter if he painting, sculpting, or creating art from other objects. Next week, a exhibition of Whisenhunt’s latest work, “Watermarks,” will open at Young Harris College’s Campus Gate Gallery in the North Georgia mountains.