The woman on the cover of the Courier dated September 22-28, 1977 is me. Sometimes home isn’t where you’re born, but somewhere in a memory of a place you’ve never visited. If you’re lucky, you’ll make your way there. Thus it was with me. I grew up in the deep South --  Friday night football and the Baptist church and AM radio, a Stranger in a Strange Land.  I also lived deep in the pages of books that took me to far off places, other worlds, other ideas, other possibilities. But it wasn’t a book that packed my bags for New Orleans – It was a phrase in a Randy Newman song: “Born in Tuscaloosa, died right here in Birmingham.”  Within a month I had packed my two-seater, found an apartment in the Quarter, and began working for the Courier. Surrounded by writers and artists and the daily Carnivalesque of this disturbing, difficult, magical place, I was home. 

– Connie A.

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant