Barbara Herman in Nashville

Last week, Barbara Herman (author of the blog Yesterday's Perfume and the book Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of provocative Perfume) was in town on her way to a reading in Nashville. When she asked if I might like to head that way with her I said yes, and even though I ended up attending a funeral the morning we were leaving and we plowed carefully and slowly through buckets of rain on the highway to get there, it turned out to be a fantastic trip.

Barbara had a list of things to see in Nashville, but with her reading on the agenda we didn't have much more than a day to tool around. When we walked out of the place we were staying the first morning, the lawn was so green, and the red and white stripes of her shirt looked so good against it, that I asked her to risk grass stains and a morning ritual redo for a picture. She was game and silly about it and that was basically the tone of the trip as a whole.

If you haven't read Barbara's work on the blog or gotten your hands on her book yet, I encourage you to. I'd enjoyed her voice for several years before we met last year at a Scent Bar event in LA, and was surprised at how down to earth she was for a writer, let alone an active blogger. It turns out her actual physical presence is essentially like her writing - good natured, sharp and smart.

Highlights: a rose water-infused iced coffee at a place called Fido; Princess Hot Chicken (where the woman at the counter asked me how hot and I said VERY MILD, Baby steps please, to which she answered, Okay, and come on back when you're ready for the real stuff; smelling selections from Barbara's stash of vintage perfume with Maria Browning (whom I'd met and adore) and Ron Slomowicz (whom I hadn't met, and whose blissful M. Micallef Rose Extreme I smelled before he fully arrived); and staying up late with Barbara to mis-pronounce passages of text in snooty fake accents.

(Photo of Barbara taken by me last Friday morning)