Deep Fried Kudzu

We've all seen images of 16th Street Baptist Church in daylight, but I really like the way it looks at twilight, when the neon sign comes on.  I took these pics in September:

The Huntsville Times ran an article on my friend Wade Wharton in today's edition, entitled Artist Wade Wharton, Considered by some a Huntsville Icon, Creates Tree of Wisdom and Learning, Aspires for Spot in a Museum (long title!).

I wish the tone of the article had been more positive, but am thankful for the publicity; Mr. Wharton certainly deserves praise and recognition for his work.  I'll be in Huntsville this coming week to visit him and will post more pictures then of his latest creations.  Love him.

Bon Appetit's February issue is devoted to the South.

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Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's is still not available as an eBook.  LA Times has an article about it (and a related BaT book) just last week.

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Red velvet cake martini?

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Sentenced: Robert Lucky Jr. of New Orleans, sentenced earlier this month for 25 months in federal prison for his part in selling paintings that were wrongly attributed to Clementine Hunter.

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You can raise chickens in Nashville now!  Yay!  And in other ordinance news, Shreveport may ban pajamas in public.

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(above: a slice of king cake we had last year)
Rouses is making what they are calling 'gourmet' king cakes: red velvet cream cheese, German chocolate, triple chocolate fudge, and black forest.

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In her NYT article late last month, Roberta Smith began, "By just about any measure, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which opened last month in this small town in northwest Arkansas, is off to a running start." but also pointed out, "There is one huge blind spot in the collection up to 1900, and it is a very serious one in my book: the almost complete lack of paintings by largely self-taught or folk artists. This country’s folk art is as great and as original as any other art it has produced; its uncanny fusion of abstraction and representation, and of primitive and modern makes it the American equivalent of Sienese painting in the early Italian Renaissance. Leaving it out is like looking at the story of American art with only one eye."

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Andrew Rice writes article, "Romney's Mustard Base: A Guide to South Carolina Barbecue and the Republican Primary"

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Fred Scruton's portraits of artists -- wonderful.

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Looking *so* forward to seeing George Lucas' Red Tails, about the Tuskegee Airmen, out this weekend.

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The Grammy Awards are telecast February 12th this year, with several fewer categories, including five fewer in the American Roots category.  Many changes.  The NYT: "The most controversial cuts took place in the field known as American roots. Traditional blues and contemporary blues were put together, as were traditional and contemporary folk music. The awards for best album in Hawaiian, American Indian, and zydeco or Cajun music were thrown together in a single category called “regional roots music.”"  


The Beaumont Enterprise writes about Grammy nominee C.J. Chenier as the prince of Zydeco, here.

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So cute: our 3-year-old Shugie happened to have lunch with Mike Slive (SEC Commissioner) today and when he was asked to tell Mike 'what does an elephant say?' Shugie told him 'Roll Tide!!'.

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Last week, Dr. Pepper pulled the plug on Dr. Pepper at Dublin Dr. Pepper (est. 1891 in Dublin, Texas), the world's oldest Dr. Pepper bottler, and the only one to have always made it with real sugar (Imperial Sugar!) instead of changing the recipe to nasty HFCS (corn syrup).

Dr. Pepper/Snapple sued Dublin this summer.

That's it for us buying Dr. Pepper.  We used to have Dublin Dr. Pepper ship to us for Passover (one of our six-packs, pictured above, more below.) since corn is forbidden during the observance and since Dublin made it with sugar, it was fine...  It was so fantastic to drink it out of those fantastic glass bottles too.


According to Reuters:
After more than 100 years, Dr Pepper Bottling Co. in Dublin, Texas stopped making its signature beverage last week as part of an agreement reached after Dr Pepper Snapple Group sued the 40-person bottling company over trademark and territory issues.


Nancy Wooldridge, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, said the town of 4,000 suffered a "heart attack" as production stopped and workers removed signs reading "Dublin Dr Pepper" from the bottling plant.


The secret to Dublin Dr Pepper's success was that the bottler made it using Imperial pure cane sugar. Dr Pepper made with the sugar — as opposed to corn syrup — will still be available, but Dublin-labeled bottles are no more, and Dr Pepper will not be bottled at that plant.


That has left many in this small town two hours west of Dallas — which designates itself "Dr Pepper, Texas" for an annual festival each year — bitter and disappointed.

     .....
But thousands of Dublin Dr Pepper supporters have signed online petitions or indicated support for a boycott of Dr Pepper Snapple Group. A petition at change.org had 14,517 signers by Friday afternoon, and 18,253 supporters "liked" the "I Support Dublin Dr Pepper" Facebook page.


Dubliners and other Texans have rallied around the beverages still to be produced there, including Triple XXX Root Beer.


Chef Jon Bonnell, owner of Bonnell's Fine Texas Cuisine in Fort Worth, is eliminating a signature dessert at his restaurant — the Dublin Dr Pepper Float — and replacing it with a Triple XXX Root Beer float.


"I'm always proud to support the little guys over there," Bonnell told Reuters. "When I saw what Dr Pepper as a company did to the little guy, I said, 'You know, life's too short.' "


     .....
The plant will stay open, although 14 of the 40 employees were laid off. Three have been hired by the group, and others are being interviewed, Barnes said.


Article from the Dallas Observer here.


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Virginia Willis cooks with Frank Stitt at Bottega in Birmingham this coming Thursday 1/26; limited to 40 guests.  Menu:

Sounds like date-night with Av!

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The Southern Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans has just announced its purchase of a building to house its culinary library.

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The NYT writes, 'Two Fairs, Not Homogenized' about the New York Ceramics Fair and the Metro Show. Bloomberg reports that the American Folk Art Museum is now 'reasonably secure'.

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(and of all things, she likes the chips at Central in Memphis -- my pic from our lunch there, above:)

This week on NPR - All Things Considered: '4258 Miles of Meat: Chef, Dad on a Quest for BBQ': "Until this fall, chef Molly Baz was working at an upscale Michelin-starred restaurant in New York City. But she decided to give that up to go on a road trip.

Molly wanted to learn everything she could about variations in American barbecue, so she planned a tour of the country's most renowned barbecue regions and invited her father, photographer Doug Baz, along for the ride. The pair documented their travels on their blog, Adventures in BBQ."

and


""I think that we pretty much hit the jackpot in Texas," Molly says. "Truly, Texas blew our minds. I've never tasted a more delicious piece of unadulterated meat in my life.""

...and from their Tumblr: Things We’ll Miss: -the Southern Hospitality attitude: nowhere have I encountered such friendly, open and generous people. We’ve gotten more free food, desserts, barbecue sauces and snacks for the road than we deserved. The abundance of biscuits: I told you and I’ll say it again, no one makes biscuits this well up north...


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On Kickstarter: Lucky Town Brewing Company in Mississippi.

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Will Holman has a nice editorial at Design Observer that includes his time at the Rural Studio, Lessons from the Front Lines of Social Design.

How very interesting, in Memphis -- what people call 'voodoo village' is actually intended to be based on NT scripture and Masonic teachings:

Voodoo Village - The Temple from eric wilson on Vimeo.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Councilman Alvin Tillman in Houma, Louisiana bringing forth a proposal to outlaw all colors other than white in three of Terrebonne Parish's cemeteries in a post entitled, Eternally Vanilla in Houma.  On our vacation, we again went through Houma to get to Chauvin (more about that later), so we stopped at one of the cemeteries in question, Southdown Cemetery:



Those tombs painted yellow, blue, terracotta, lilac...weren't the least bit offensive or distracting.  They added beautiful character:


(top center: this family wanted their family member to be with their loved plush animals, so they put them in waterproof containers.  Another thing here was that on some of the monuments, rather than birth/death dates, they used 'Alpha' and 'Omega')


This councilman feels the need to legislate hue at a public cemetery.  Again, I'll say: Maybe Alvin Tillman should invest in founding cemeteries with 'home-owners associations' full of ordinances and self-important governing boards which restrict...everything that is at odds with uniformity.

Alas, the the Terrebonne Parish Council decided last week that all new tombstones at Southdown, Bisland, and Halfway cemteries would have to be painted white.  Existing monuments will not have to be repainted.

From the Houma Today article:

Prior to the vote, Amedee, who said she once worked as a minister for her church and often comforted those who were grieving, said the ordinance is “an infringement on personal rights.”

My first-ever pig ear sandwich from the Big Apple Inn (and this is what it looks like inside):

March 1, 2012: The Big Apple Inn from Farish Street in Jackson will open an outpost in Atlanta.  Atlanta!

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This bakery in California makes a gorgeous cheesecake decorated with magnolia; when I went to their site this week I found this: "Why should a tasting flight only be for wine? If you’re having a hard time choosing between our delicious selections of flavors, choose them all! Our latest and greatest is the flight of cake– a variety of flavors in one slice for everyone to enjoy! We carefully stack them so each filling compliments the next layer of cake; it’s the perfect way to give everyone the chance to taste all we have to offer." Agreed.

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Wild hogs are on the loose and doing damage at the Vicksburg National Military Park.

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What an odd, odd, odd story in the NYT this week: "Now, in a quirk of fate laced with lawsuits, religious conversions and a small-town Southern narrative Harper Lee might deliver, a black pastor will eventually control what just might be the most famous..."

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Turn a Mason jar into a sippy cup, seriously.  Cuppow makes a BPA-free lid for canning jars.

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The last real Daughter of the Confederacy in Alabama died this month; her brother is the last living Son.

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If no other restoration delays arise, the restaurant at the historic (and wonderful) Hotel Talisi in Tallassee, AL will open this year.

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Alcorn State has started a campaign to raise money for a Medgar Evers statue to be placed on campus, in time for the 50th anniversary of his assassination.

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Intuit: the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art is putting together a tour of art environments in France for May of this year.

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Gothamist asks if readers are offended by this special menu at St. Luke's Hospital in NYC, in honor of MLK's birthday.  Um, no.   You could honor most anyone from the South with dishes like these.  Feel free to honor my people with fried chicken, collards, cornbread, and pecan pie any day.  Extra points for pralines.

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King cake vodka.

Av went to a party a month or two ago and met...I can't remember his position, but it was someone with CatHead Vodka which is made in Mississippi (the state's first legal distillery), so of course Av later made his way to the bottle shop and brought home some.  CatHead's logo is from bluesman Pat Thomas' famous drawings, whose son makes similar drawings.

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USA Today ran an article about museums trying to stay relevant, with a focus on Louisiana's Civil War Museum, and touched on its relationship with the Smithsonian.

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2012 is the Year of Alabama Food from the state tourism office.  They asked me to contribute a pic...so of course...

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Such a pretty, pretty king cake from Sucre.

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The Snake Man of Appalachia "follows the lives of Verlin and Reva Short, an Appalachian family deeply involved in religious snake handling."  Tivo-ed it last night; was really good.  It's a six-episode series on Animal Planet.  Above is a pic I took of the Old Rock House Holiness Church in Macedonia AL that similarly follows Mark 16:17-18 in a literal fashion.

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Even the Eisenhower family doesn't like Gehry's design for the new monument in Washington.  The National Civic Art Society puts out a webpage about it that looks like an email you write in the heat of the moment to make yourself feel better, but they forgot the part where you walk away and then come back to heavily edit before pressing 'send'.

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Florida Folklife from the WPA Collection at the Library of Congress.

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From the Tennessean: "Like a nervous couple at the altar, America’s newest art museum and one of the nation’s oldest historically black colleges are hoping a third party doesn’t disrupt their proposed union — again.


An appeals court upheld Fisk University’s right to sell a $30 million share in its famed Stieglitz art collection to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark. But Tennessee Attorney General Bob Cooper, who opposes the collection leaving Tennessee, has a Jan. 28 deadline to challenge that ruling."

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Best (Rube Goldberg) way yet to turn pages, article in the NYT:


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You can listen to Faulkner reading 'As I Lay Dying' here.

Coretta Scott King reads from her, 'My Life with Martin Luther King, Jr.' here.

Av and I have stayed at most of the casino hotels on the Mississippi gulf coast -- Beau Rivage, Isle, Magic (which is gone now), Grand, Palace...but last week we had our first stay at a Hard Rock.  We like staying at casino hotels because the nicer casinos have really nice rooms, and if you stay during the week, they are steeply discounted.   For instance, we got this room for weeeellll below $100 when it books for over $200 on the weekends.

You never have to go on the casino floor, either.  Another nice thing about this hotel was -- because this is a Hard Rock, after all -- the costumes and other instruments and props from performers.  Furthest left are some teensy jeans from Elton John, then the red suit is from Steven Tyler, and the wedding dress from Madonna.  The quilt at the bottom was commissioned by Frank Zappa in the 80s, to be made from...lingerie that was thrown to him at concerts!

I've been taking pics of the Kelly Mitchell (who was queen of the Romas here) monument in Meridian MS for several years now.  The offerings that people leave here are an interesting mix.



Queen Kelly Mitchell died in 1915 while giving birth at a camp in Coatopa, Alabama, and her family brought her to Rose Hill Cemetery in Meridian to be buried. A recollection of that event is in the February 7, 1915 issue of the Meridian Dispatch:

“At one side of the parlors, with candelabra at the head and foot stands the magnificent silver-trimmed metallic casket. Hermetically sealed within, in all the barbaric splendor of a medieval Queen lays Mrs. Callie (Kelly) Mitchell, Queen of the Gypsies of America. Her swarthy face with its high cheekbones is typical of Romany tribes and the head, the upper portion of which is covered with bright silken drapery pinned at the back with pins, rests upon a cushion of filmy silk and satin. The hair is braided Gypsy fashion and the dark tresses shine. The body is attired in a Royal robe of Gypsy Green and other bright colors contrasting vividly with the somber hues usual under such circumstances. Two necklaces are around the neck, one of shells, an heirloom that was descended through generations. The lower part of the body is draped with “Sacred Linen” treasured by Gypsy bands for the use only when death overtakes one of their numbers. When the children arrive, each will put a memento of some kind in the casket and it will devolve upon the youngest child to place her mother’s earrings in the ear.”

The story goes on about the burial customs and that the grave was reinforced with steel bars and concrete so as to discourage thieves (since so many fine things were buried along with her body for use on the other side of the Styx).



This photograph below looked like this in 2005:

At my synagogue, we use a small chapel for services that are less well-attended (minyan, some Shabbats), and on the reader's table, there are a series of interchangeable plaques for the phrases to do in certain prayers, based on what season it is, or additions for holidays or the new moon.  I took this pic a few weeks ago, but 'tis the season...it stays up during football season...at the bottom of the line of plaques, it says in Hebrew "Roll Tide"!

Oh I had the most fantastic vacation this week with my sweet family!  We went *everywhere* -- beach, art environment, some ruins -- and I got to take pictures with my Chanukah present from Mimi and Papa...a new Canon Digital Rebel (I was so surprised!!).  We had the best, best time.  All of that beginning tomorrow (Monday).  Can't wait to show!

Hope you are enjoying a fabulous 2012!

xoxo!
Ginger