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Amy Paige Condon: Falling in Love with Bill Baggs

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Amy Paige Condon: Falling in Love with Bill Baggs

 




Introduction to Amy Paige Condon.  0:39 sec.  Interview:  Raymond Elman.  Video Editing & Production:  Kali-Ray Skinner.  Recorded via Zoom, 10/29/2020.

 

Award-winning freelance writer AMY PAIGE CONDON is the founder of the Refinery Writing Studio, where she teaches creative writing. She serves as associate editor of Beacon, a quarterly magazine devoted to solutions journalism from the Savannah Morning News.

With Cheryl and Griffith Day, she co-wrote the New York Times-bestselling The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook (Artisan 2012). She followed it with the Wiley’s Championship BBQ Cookbook (Gibbs Smith), which was named the best cookbook of 2014 by the National Barbecue News, and she is now working with Che Farmer Matthew Raiford on his debut cookbook for Countryman Press.

Condon’s biography of MIAMI NEWS editor BILL BAGGS (1923-1969), A Nervous Man Shouldn’t Be Here in the First Place, the Life of Bill Baggs, was published by UGA Press in Fall 2020. Condon moved from Miami to Savannah, where she lives with her husband, three pups and a pig named Gus.

The videos below were recorded via Zoom,  are organized by topic, and run between 30 sec. and 20 minutes. Click on any video. You must be connected to the Internet to view the videos.

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION: 1:23 min.




Where did you grow up and what was your first awareness of art of any discipline?

 

VALUES FIRST-RATE EDUCATION:   2:36 min.




Where did you go to school, and what did you learn that still informs you today?

 

CRITICAL THINKING:  0:51 sec.




Give us an example of a trick you learned during your time as a reporter?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:  6:49 min.




What was your first awareness of Bill Baggs?

 

CREATES A UNIQUE PERSONAL BRAND:  3:18 min.




Bill Baggs story would make a great movie. Is that on your agenda?

 

CRITICAL THINKING:  3:45 min.




What are journalists’ responsibilities when they write the first draft of history?

 

EXPOSURE TO BROAD INFLUENCES: 7:38 min.




What were some of your favorite resources used to write “A Nervous Man Shouldn’t Be Here in The First Place”?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:   19:14 min.




Talk about the evolution of Bill Baggs from a boy in conservative Georgia to a liberal influencer on a national scale.

 

EMPATHY:  2:32 min.




To what degree do you feel journalists and authors must remain truthful in portraying esteemed historical figures, even if the truth is not pretty?

 

COMMUNITY VALUES:  1:40 min.




Did Bill Baggs hang out at the Hampton House before desegregation?

 

SEIZES OPPORTUNITIES:  5:33 min.




How did the relationship between Bill Baggs and President John F. Kennedy grow to the point where they regularly exchanged letters and phone calls?

 

EMPATHY:  3:56 min.




Have you seen video footage of Bill Baggs and heard his voice? I’m assuming that you fell in love with him.

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:  0:51 sec.




When I asked author Ben Mezrich who he would prefer to play Vladimir Putin in a movie version of his book, “Once Upon a Time in Russia,” he immediately replied, “Daniel Craig.” Who is your first choice to play Bill Baggs in a movie version of your book?

 

EMPATHY:  2:12 min.




How did Bill Baggs die?

 

INSIGHT & INSPIRATION:  3:55 min.




What was Baggs doing in North Vietnam in 1968?