Universal loves: Bama, Moon Winx, Kentuck, and words| MARK HUGHES COBB

It's tough to imagine universals among the 7.98 billion stories on this planet. Mr. Rogers? Anarchists may find his "let's be friends and talk this out" approach maudlin and ineffectual. It's probable Freddie Mercury has been disregarded or disliked, when his four-octave range voice made someone feel inadequate. Or perhaps, as with me, there's a timbre of male voice − Sting, Jack White, Robert Plant before he dropped it an octave and learned to sing − that rips at your ears like a cheese grater across the soles of your feet.

Bacon? Fried fat razor-edged enough to carve out your tonsils? Pass. Doughnuts? Despite having written a fairly successful rock and/or roll ditty called "Hot Now," I can live without 'em, so love, right out. Even if you count agape (selfless love, enough for the world), storge (deep and familial, as with besties), philia (affectionate love, as with pals), pragma (enduring love), ludus (playful and flirtatious), closer, but still nope. As for eros (romantic love), philautia (self compassion), and mania (obsessive love), yes, I can write a song encompassing those, but an actual romantic obsessive self-obsession with sugary fat warrants at least 30 days' stay somewhere quiet where scissors are rounded.

Ella Fitzgerald? Hard to believe anyone could not love that voice, but again, we must account for the ignorant and the indifferent. To be universally loved, you must be universally known. And sad to say, some of These Kids Today barely know Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings, or that he was in a band, or that he was Paul McCartney.

Dolly Parton?

Even there you'd find folks who swear they don't like twang, spangle, and country music, though I'd bet dollars to doughnuts I eat maybe once a year because someone brings 'em for a special occasion they've crooned along to "Jolene" a time or three, and launched into a duet of "Islands in the Stream" with their finest silver-faced bestie, given enough booze, darkness of night and lateness of hour.

Superman? Too many Batman/Marvel/heroes-are-a-fascist-fantasy folks. Dreamland? Believe it or don't, some believe Archibald's is better, to the point they actually eschew, rather than simply chew, Dreamland. I'm agnostic about this so-called debate, as barbecue's kinda like pizza, hard to screw up unless you add anchovies, pineapple or nuts, and will gladly ingest either of Tuscaloosa/Northport's finest.

Football? Nope. Anti-game folks exist, as do those who enjoy games, but dislike hype and mania, as in me. You can't even say We all love the Tide in Tuscaloosa, because of those above, and yes, actual Auburn and other fans do exist. Crazy, right? Almost like being a thinking person choosing to remain in a state where "leaders" yee-haw into office waving guns, quotations utterly out of context, and bitter hatred.

The predictive text on my phone suggested "We all love ... you too much baby." Could be I've been crooning R&B songs to textees. Ain't that peculiar?

Let's dump the other 7,979,900,000, and just narrow to universal Druid City. I say "We all love the Bama Theatre, the Kentuck Festival, and the Moon Winx sign." Tell me you don't, and I'll point your way to 82 exit.

Maybe "We all love words"? Hope that's true, as the lineup of writers for the Kathryn Tucker Windham Stage this weekend, at the 51st Annual Kentuck Festival of the Arts, is nothing short of spectacular. And it'll be up against an equally lovely music lineup at the Brother Ben Stage, and football Saturday afternoon. Still, I expect there are enough word-weirdos, wordos, logophiles, around here that we can create a communal good time.

Some will be more familiar, such as Mark Childress. His novel "Crazy in Alabama" was adapted into the 1999 movie directed by Antonio Banderas, starring Melanie Griffith, Lucas Black, David Morse, Fannie Flagg, Noah Emmerich, Elizabeth Perkins, Cathy Moriarity, Paul Mazursky, Rod Steiger and freaking Meat Loaf. Mark, who wrote the screenplay, was welcome on set, something of a rarity, so he might have tales to tell Sunday afternoon, should you Q him to A.

He's got best-seller and best-of-list novels to read from including "Tender," imagining a young Elvis Presley-like nova; "One Mississippi," about societal upheaval in the '70s, and accidents that whirl out of control; and the aforementioned "Crazy in Alabama," a dark comedy about Peejoe, an orphan coming of age in a time when it mattered who swam in what pools, and his dreamy and unhinged aunt Lucille, who ends her marriage in bizarre fashion, then road-trips west to Hollywood, where she's determined to shine.

The insanities translated overseas, as "Crazy in Alabama" was published in 11 languages: It was chosen as The London Spectator's Book of the Year for 1993, and remained on Der Spiegel (Hamburg, Germany)'s bestseller list for 10 months. The movie was chosen for festivals in Italy and Spain, and played in at least 14 countries.

Mark collaborated with Gregory Vajda on the libretto of "Georgia Bottoms: A Comic Opera of the Modern South," based on his novel "Georgia Bottoms," another NYTimes bestseller, about a Southern belle living in Six Points, Alabama, struggling to survive off a discreet and societally unacceptable means of income. The opera premiered in Huntsville in 2015, and was performed again in 2017 at the Cafe Budapest Arts Festival in Hungary.

No less than Stephen King, Pat Conroy and Harper Lee have raved about him, joining accolades from The New York Times, People, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and others, dating back to his 1984 debut novel, "A World Made of Fire." King on Childress: "A writer of almost uncanny stylistic ability and clear vision. His eye for detail is extraordinary. It makes you want to holler 'Oh Yeah!' "

I knew of Mark, a University of Alabama graduate born in Monroeville, long before I met him. When I finally got the chance to sit down, I believe after "Tender" and before "Crazy in Alabama," he offered sage advice about re-writing. He'd reworked each book six or seven times. So how'd he know when he was done?

"When I'm sick of it," he said.

His books are worlds to fall into, and while the prose is, as that King guy said, a joy, I was having trouble finding a representative passage that wouldn't feel raw, out of context. But I found this from "Gone for Good," about Ben "Superman" Willis, a 34-year-old pop-poet who longs to chuck the trappings and escape. He gets his wish after a violent storm − Don't pop stars know NEVER to fly in a private plane, apres-fame? − when he lands on an island full of those who've taken the mystical route: Marilyn Monroe, Amelia Earhart, Jimmy Hoffa: “The things we think we know are just stories we have been told. They are not necessarily true.”

Kentuck's not necessarily true tales will also be delivered by the state's poet laureate, Ashley M. Jones, who graced the Kathryn Tucker Windham Stage last year. Her vivid, earthy prose, especially in one work about her recently departed father, brought tears to my eyes. Michael Martone, recently retired from the UA creative writing department, remains as hard to pin down as any artist I've known, while at the same time being utterly salt of the earth hilarious. He writes a kind of meta-fiction, futuristic but not necessarily science-fiction-ic, except when it is; he compiles things that aren't true and passes them as if they are, and if you could always spot the difference, you're a better reader than I.

Nana Nkweti first came to my attention through a press release, which proves both that I need to read ALL my emails, and also that I should pay more attention to who's here. She's on faculty at UA, though this Cameroonian-American isn't what I'd call a typical Southern writer, any more than Mark, Michael, or Ashley tuck neatly into any such folds. Her work spans from the African diaspora to mystery, myth, and graphic novels. And she's a big old nerd. Self-confessed.

Marlin Barton has won prizes and acclaim for novels and short stories, and like many at the Kathryn Tucker Windham Stage, including the string of Pure Products series folks, also works as an educator, someone who helps bring others' words out into the world.

If you love words − we all do, yes? − you should settle in, bask, enjoy, learn, listen, and live within this stage.

Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com, or call 205-722-0201.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Universal loves: Bama, Moon Winx, Kentuck, and words| MARK HUGHES COBB