States of Wonder

LITERATURE

Alabama

MOCKINGBIRD, THEN AND TODAY

Since its publication on July 11, 1960, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has won a Pulitzer Prize, inspired an Academy Award–winning movie and a box-office-smash Broadway play, and built a permanent nest in the Southern literary canon. “I think it’s more important to read it today than ever before,” says Tonja Carter, Lee’s former attorney and president of Harper Lee LLC, which preserves the late writer’s estate. “The world is so polarized, but this story tells us how to talk to and live with people you disagree with.” In Monroeville, Lee’s hometown and the inspiration for fictional Maycomb, the courthouse turned museum is dedicated to the author, and murals of scenes from the book adorn buildings along the town square. Honor the book’s sixtieth birthday this summer by rereading the classic novel or its 2015-released follow-up, Go Set a Watchman, or do something even simpler, as Harper Lee, who went by “Nelle,” would have done: “Celebrate by checking in on each other,” Carter says. “During her life, if Nelle heard of a need somewhere and she could help, she would. After all, Mockingbird is meant to make us stop thinking about our own pain and start thinking about others.” monroevilleal.gov

DRINK

Arkansas

CYNTHIANA IN THE SUMMER

He might be a bit biased, but of Arkansas’s Cynthiana wine, winemaker Dennis Wiederkehr says: “You can pair it with fresh air, it’s so good.” Wiederkehr’s Swiss American family opened Wiederkehr Wine Cellars in 1880 near the little town of Altus, which has since earned a reputation as Arkansas’s viticultural capital. The Cynthiana grape, the state fruit, is a dark purple cluster variety and the oldest native North American grape cultivated today. The resulting wine is “full-bodied with a hint of sweetness, and notes of rich black cherry and toasted almond from the barrel,” Wiederkehr says, “with a color so deep you could use it as ink.” The family will