1:00
Not Without My Father: One Woman’s 444-Mile Walk of the Natchez Trace
Andra Watkins, author and nominee for the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction for her memoir Not Without My Father… joins us to talk about the events that led to the writing of this, her third book.  Her first book, a novel, was set along the Natchez Trace. To launch the book’s debut, Andra walked the entire Trace, all the way from Natchez, Mississippi to Nashville, Tennessee.  Her second book was a documentation of the journey in photographs and observations.  In the process, however, she ended up having a life-changing adventure with her 80 year-old father.  Not Without My Father chronicles that experience.

2:30
A Lifetime on the Bridge of a Ship:  27 Years in the Merchant Marines
William J. Dutour, Captain of the M/V Maersk Memphis, will join us to give us a sense of what a career in the Merchant Marine looks like.  He’ll tell about surviving over eight years in nuclear submarines without a scratch and then ending up in a lifeboat in the Persian Gulf.  He’ll tell about working on a tanker in Kuwait in August of 1990 when Saddam Hussein came calling.  These and other vignettes will describe his lifetime at sea.