NancyKay Wessman

Reader

So many books and too little time—that’s my story. My cookbook collecting started in 1970, and now I have more than 200 distinct titles. Would you like to read a book about all my cookbooks—the ones I have and why? Their authors and recipes? My favorite recipes from all those pages?

BB Queens Book Club originated in 2009, and I started buying a new book every month. Affiliated with The Pulpwood Queens, we read many books, discussed them over hors d'oeuvres and wine, visited with many of the authors, and participated in several Pulpwood Queen Girlfriend Weekends in Texas. All so much fun!

The Pandemic pretty much put us out of business, as it did so many other organizations. But I am fortunate: from the time we married in 1996, Huzband and I bought books; so, our home overflows with many volumes. When we traveled, we discovered new independent booksellers beyond our famous hometown favorite, Lemuria, and we purchased fiction and nonfiction books, many.

By author, title, subject, recommendation, interesting cover … why does one person select a particular book? Hard back or paper? For a collection or as a stand-alone? IngramSpark self-publishing book company lists four reasons people buy books: They know the author, someone they know recommended, to meet a particular need, and/or as a gift. I know no good reason to not buy a book!

As we go along, I challenge myself to write some about the really good books I read. Good fodder for a blog, yes?

For many years after she slammed into Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, Katrina held all the “most horrible, most expensive” titles for U.S. hurricanes. Public health physician Robert Travnicek, MD, MPH, firmly faced the disaster. In Katrina, Mississippi: Voices from Ground Zero, Doctor Travnicek and other first responders reveal what really happened during Katrina: what they did to get ready, how they managed from inside the emergency operations centers in Hancock and Harrison Counties, the catastrophic destruction they dealt with for several years to come. Lessons they learned now help prepare current and future first responders to strengthen emergency management planning and response, to best handle any potential disaster, from extreme heat and ice storms to terrorism and tornadoes.

Katrina was not my hurricane, not my job. I had retired from state service, no longer responsible for getting the word out before the storm and communicating important public health messages afterwards. But two and three years later, when I saw the void Katrina left on the land and heard stories from the shell-shocked responders and other survivors, I was compelled to write about the public health impact of both the natural disaster and the unnatural consequences that emerged through human efforts. Those “champions of the storm” and I believed then and now that their perspective and actions could bridge to whatever might become the United States’ and the Gulf Coast’s next Katrina. So far as I could discover in 2015 and now, my book is the only story told from inside the emergency operations centers of a major natural disaster.

Kirkus Reviews featured the work in its “Books Worth Discovering” list: “Wessman marshals a colossal amount of data, combining it with interview material to present portraits of heroism and dedication in the face of horror. A scholarly landmark in the history of a major storm.”

From Ralph Eubanks, fellow Mississippi author, writer, and essayist: “Katrina, Mississippi serves as a reminder of why we must not forget the men and women who rode out the storm and worked for recovery. This book tells the stories of the first responders to Hurricane Katrina with depth, detail, and sensitivity.”

This book focuses on fatness as one of the most important risk factors for heart disease, revealed through 40+ years of studying children as they aged, grew fatter over time, and developed risk factors leading to such chronic conditions as hypertension, high blood cholesterol, and diabetes. Along with smoking and physical inactivity, those “risk factors” lead to chronic diseases that kill or disable seven of every ten people in the United States, adversely affecting the quality of life of some ninety million Americans. Risk factors and poor lifestyles that cause these ills begin in childhood.

Gerald A. Berenson, MD, opened authorship to me when he agreed to allow me to help write and publish his book for parents of children, to emphasize the early childhood beginnings of heart disease. We met at a Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine event, worked together on his manuscript, and developed a solid friendship for which I shall be forever grateful.

A Second Blooming: Becoming the Women We Are Meant to Be is a collection of essays by twenty-one authors who are emerging from the chrysalis they built for their younger selves and transforming into the women they are meant to be. These women of all ages have made it over a wall to find their true selves. This transformation—this blooming—doesn’t happen organically, without the application of a tremendous amount of creative energy and action on our part. As E.E. Cummings said, “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” Wessman writes about her “fifteen-year love affair,” a time when “every day was Christmas.”

With gratitude to inclusion by Susan Cushman, I wrote as The Widow Wessman about having married “three men and a dog,” perfectly mated, experiencing too-soon loss, and acknowledging the truth from a church friend and valued psychotherapist: “What you and Dick had was a fifteen-year love affair. For you, every day was Christmas.” I revealed that during those years with Wessman, I fully possessed what some believe to be the deepest desire of every human heart, the opportunity to unconditionally love and be loved. Having fully experienced the magic of Wessman, I knew even then that I can, and I choose to channel his spirit with my strengthened will to live, create, and publish my own magic.