Auditorium
Union Hill School
Union Hill AL, 2018.
Threefoot Festival
One of my very dear friends has been working on organizing this year’s free Threefoot Festival this weekend in downtown Meridian: everything she does is beyond fab so we’re really looking forward to it.
There will be internationally- and nationally- recognized artists, those more locally known, and those who have never shown before. Art cars are coming in (think Orange Show-style art cars, but smaller since this is the first year, especially). There’s also a parade, and two stages with bands — and Thacker Mountain Radio Hour will happen at the Temple Theater. Also, races and a walk on Friday.
Randomness:
~150 vendors made up of the artists, merchants, and food.
The Budweiser Clydesdales will be there (I saw them once when I lived in Texas as a child, and kids *love* this — the way the horses are pampered is so sweet).
Oh! And among the artists, Stephanie Dwyer, who is so well-known for her bottle trees, will be showing again for the first time in several years and is making new items just for this show.
Meridian architecture is great — just running through some faves: the Art Deco Threefoot Building (built by the Threefoot family, whose surname Dreyfuss was changed to the English translation of Threefoot) and USPS building // the Meridian Museum of Art is in a former Carnegie Library // 1931 E.F. Young Hotel building // the Union Station has been rebuilt to original Mission Revival // City Hall is Beaux-Arts // St Patrick’s Catholic and First Presbyterian are both Gothic Revival // the Riley Center which I think will be open for guests is…I’m going with Romanesque // Merrehope is Greek Revival // Beth Israel is late 1960’s mod // the Temple Theater which is hosting silent films accompanied by live organ music is 1927 Moorish Revival // …and there are those great murals downtown.
The hotels in Meridian are the usual mix for that size city and I just checked: rooms still available (the HGI looks sold out but reservations open at the Hampton and others); there will be food vendors at the festival which will be fun, but if you’re away, Meridian has some nice choices (traditional Weidmann’s, *great* poboys at Seafood Express, a couple of Thai places, bbq places, tons of Mexican restaurants, a couple of fish camps, more — plus the usual chains if you’re in drive-thru mode.
Whilst ‘selling’ Meridian (seriously, I really do enjoy Meridian), also recommend:
MSU Riley Center
Simmons-Wright Store
The Dentzel Carousel
Rose Hill Cemetery, esp Queen Kelly and King Emil Mitchell monuments
Side trip to Philadelphia, including the Williams Brothers General Store
indie shopping: antique shops and clothes: Loeb’s, Harry Mayer
and on my to-do list:
Mississippi Arts + Entertainment Experience
Meridian Museum of Art
Jimmie Rodgers Museum
Mississippi Industrial Heritage Museum
…and the Mississippi Antique Alley event is this weekend
Bands playing at the festival include:
Hope to see you! xoxo!
Black and Gold.
New Orleans, 2018.
Alligator Gar = 1.
Fishing limits
Cooley’s Store
Guntersville AL, 2018.
Concessions Open at 5pm.
The Passion of the Christ
Come give thanks to the ONE who paid the ultimate price concessions open at 5pm. DRESS WARM
Cook Springs AL, 2007.
H2O
Mile End Deli
Nashville TN, 2018.
Screen Door Graveshelter
Documented this Blount County, Alabama graveshelter last month — it’s at Providence Primitive Baptist, which was founded in 1831 with 16 members, according to the monument at the corner of the church.
The friend that I went with here has family buried in this cemetery. It a nice setting, on a hill, maintained.
I didn’t know the specific name, but my plant identifier app says this is a French rose, rosa gallica.
Merrill family graveshelter:
A unique door:
Obviously, grass won’t grow inside the grave shelter, but there’s a broom kept, to sweep it clean of leaves and debris:
Also on this weekend, we visited Johnsons Chapel United Methodist Church Cemetery in Danville, Alabama. It used to have several graveshelters, but unfortunately, they’re all gone now.
Not too far away from there, also in Danville, Hopewell Baptist Church Cemetery
This Week’s Various
As always, all images unless otherwise noted copyright Deep Fried Kudzu. Like to use one elsewhere? Kindly contact me here.
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Through the PlexiGlass: The Last Days of the San José Trailer from Ariel Quintans on Vimeo.
above, Liz Lambert’s documentary on the Austin motel she ran before renovating it into, what is now, an icon
Steve Terlizze‘s ‘What Makes Her Tick’ at the 2008 Kentuck
Faulkner’s Red and Blue drawing, at The Graduate in Oxford. From a 2017 visit.
Shelby Foote on Faulkner, from a 2002 episode of C-SPAN’s American Writers, talks about his riding with Walker Percy ~1937 from the Delta and whether to knock on the door at Rowan Oak; Foote going with Faulkner to Shiloh and securing some Old Taylor from a bootlegger; whether Faulkner’s drinking affected his writing; Faulkner’s affectations; Faulkner’s legacy, and how he would think the South has fared; many many other remembrances.
In this C-SPAN episode filmed from Rowan Oak, one caller mentions character Benjy from The Sound and the Fury and asks if he was based on a family member or some other inspiration. Donald Kartiganer answers, “there were no idiots in the Faulkner family, so far as I know.”
Eudora Welty’s garden has an audio tour available now, and it’s narrated by Susan Haltom, who led the garden’s restoration, and Mary Alice Welty White (Eudora’s niece), who reads some passages.
“magnolia fuscata, magnolia fuscata, magnolia fuscata”
Wade Wharton’s VW Man, from a 2010 visit
Was working with SPACES Archive / Kohler Foundation last week on adjusting a bio, supplying new images for some locations and some other things, and noticed this page on the Kohler site dedicated to art environments that have been relocated
Memphis’ Pink Palace, from a 2016 visit
At Memphis’ Pink Palace Museum, through August 11: Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, photographs by Jeanine Michna-Bales of the sites/cities/places of that system.
The oldest-known bottle of whiskey is up for auction at Skinner, starting June 22. The Old Ingledew Whiskey is in a brown embossed bottle stating it’s from Evans & Ragland in La Grange, Georgia, and through testing is believed to have been made some time between 1763-1803.
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Jae Jung, who worked for Leah Chase (whom she called her ‘Creole Grandmother’) in New Orleans and at NYC’s Cafe Boulud, has started a Korean-Cajun delivery- and takeout- only there, called KJUN. According to Eater, for the fried chicken, the pieces are marinated in buttermilk and gochujang, before being dusted with a homemade Cajun spice mix and deep-fried twice. It’s finished with gochujang – honey atop. The gumbo has a side of okra kimchi. Mmmmm there’s also Shrimp Ravigote and Green Tomato Kimchi Sando with Honey Brown Butter Chips // Soft Shell Crab marinated in buttermilk, Korean sweet potato noodle sautéed in squid ink, soy pickled mirliton, sauce remoulade and green onion confit // kimchi jambalaya // and look how pretty, the shrimp & Anson Mills grits
Ava Dixon writes Holler, Y’all and Appalachian Drawls: My Childhood of Code Switching in Appalachia at 100 Days In Appalachia and references this tweet from Silas House. Next week, I plan to read his Clay’s Quilt (here at Bookshop / at Amazon)
Note to Appalachian young people: you don’t have to lose your accent. Flower can be flare. Oil can be one syllable. You don’t have to take it when people make fun of how you talk. If you choose to change it, that’s okay, but know you don’t have to give up that part of yourself.
— Silas House (@silasdhouse) January 5, 2020
An interview with him:
Super random.
The Houston Art Car Experience is May 14-16 at the Orange Show
This coming week, might make jalapeno popper gougeres from Bon Appetit // Souffle Suissesse from London’s La Gavroche // challah breakfast bread pudding from D’artagnan // braided cheddar loaf from W-S // herby spring chicken pot pie from BBC Good Food // baked salmon in creamy spinach sauce from delicious mag UK
So maybe Shiner, Texas is (still) the birthplace of the hamburger
Starbucks order atrocities, and the puppaccino is maybe my fave
A Canton OH concert poster, for the show Hank Williams was en route to when he passed away, was up for auction and fetched $150k
L&N Seafood Grill biscuits are still made — in Boca, at The Grill on Congress
The word groceteria is obsolete in the US, but it’s worthy of a comeback
This map hasn’t been updated since 2018 but can we take a moment for the concentration of Waffle Houses in Atlanta
Lodge Bakeware is new, and exclusive at Williams-Sonoma
“She’s a Southern woman and she ain’t no joke” says Ms Dot’s son, Doug Williams, to a reporter with Spokane, Washington’s KXLY on the white barbecue sauce he makes and sells there. His mother owns Dot’s Soul Food in Hillsboro, Alabama. Wondering what’s in it additionally, though, that makes it appear so yellow in the video clip and in the product website pics (traditional white bbq sauce is bright white).
There are currently Le Cirques in Las Vegas, New Delhi, Mumbai, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi — and a New York City comeback is on the way. For now, 300 lots of O.G. NY Le Cirque / Maccioni family pieces are up for auction through May 12
The Discovery+ show, Restaurant Recovery, has Todd Graves, the founder of Louisiana-based Raising Cane’s, giving each of ten struggling businesses in different cities about $100k of his own money. One of those helped is Poor Boy Lloyd’s in Baton Rouge, another is Crown Candy Kitchen in St Louis
This gentleman’s story most definitely needs to be made into a movie
A bust of Elie Wiesel is added to Washington National Cathedral (and joins several other likenesses there, including Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt)
Turning Quonset huts into apartments
Downtown Bentonville, from a 2014 visit
In the NYT: Bentonville, Arkansas’ incentives to move there to remote workers includes $10k and a bicycle
University Art Galleries at Texas A&M has a collection of cast resin masks on exhibit through May 21, “Cast of Blues,” by artist Sharon McConnell-Dickerson, who is blind. The works are casts of the faces of several musicians, including Bo Diddley and Ruth Brown. Visitors may wear provided gloves and touch the casts.
Louisiana Insider does an episode on how Huey Long shaped Louisiana politics and if, like me, you’re thinking that podcast is going to take years, this one clocks in at less than an hour
Tupelo Hardware, 2006.
Connections: Tupelo Hardware (where Gladys bought Elvis’ first guitar) is owned by writer Catherine Lacey‘s (think Who is She at Harper’s, and Certain American States: Stories (Bookshop / Amazon), among others) father.
Patrick Daugherty’s Down where Paradise Lays, on display now at the Jule Collins Smith Museum at Auburn, from a 2021 visit
A Patrick Dougherty sculpture is now on display at Biltmore Estate
Eagle’s, from a 2008 visit
The Story Behind this Essential Alabama Soul Food Restaurant, on Eagle’s in Birmingham
“In the beginning, I knew nothing about cooking soul food,” Delores adds. “Oxtails — never cooked ‘em before. Pig feet, pig ears, neck bones, food like that — I never really cooked it. I don’t think I had even eaten it.
“So, I watched her. I asked her to show me how to clean neck bones. She showed me how to clean neck bones. She showed me how to clean chitlins.”
(after, in a pinch, she was left alone to do it) …That day, she says, it hit her that she was finally ready to do this on her own.
“That’s when I realized that I was the cook that I had been looking for,” Delores says. “I had been looking high and low, and I didn’t know it was me.”
From a visit to the Huntsville Botanical Garden, where the exhibit was hosted in 2018
Sean Kenney’s Nature POP! Made with LEGO® Bricks opened at Cheekwood in Nashville this weekend, and runs through September 5. It includes 38 sculptures made from 800k+ LEGOs.
The Louvin Brothers Museum at Jim Oliver’s Smokehouse in Monteagle, Tennessee, from a 2013 visit
Really sad to share that that the one-of-a-kind Jim Oliver’s Smoke House in Monteagle, Tennessee was destroyed by fire last week. Among all destroyed, the Louvin Brothers Museum that was housed there. The Louvin Brothers were very, very popular Grand Ole Opry members who grew up in Henagar, Alabama.
Mosaic at AVAM, from a 2006 visit
American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore has an exhibit, A Visionary Spirit for Invention that’s off-limits to the public (it’s at the residence of the EU Ambassador to the US). Images of it are at the link above, but I didn’t see information for that really great suspended piece featured at the top of the page. I wrote to the museum, and they were kind enough to let me know that it’s Julian Harr‘s “Orville Wright’s American Flyer” 2003, made of carved pine, in the museum’s permanent collection as a gift of Paula Swanson
Would love to see the AVAM’s Secret Life of Earth exhibit, which is on through September 5 this year.
Seven Magic Mountains, from a 2017 visit
Fabulous fabulous fabulous: the Seven Magic Mountains installation by Ugo Rondinone south of Las Vegas will have another restoration meaning it may stay up an additional five years. Went to it a few years ago and it is not to be missed.
Very much appreciated this video on Rothko’s art, especially the explanation of those dark pieces that are intended to be viewed up close, to be almost engulfed.
Looking forward to seeing the Rothko Chapel again this summer in Houston.
Had a super busy week. Spent some glorious time outdoors, including at Mardis Mill Falls in Blount County, Alabama. I’m two weeks post second vaxx, so I’m going to celebrate soon by masking up and do my own grocery shopping in over a year. Haaaa! I missed it. We’re super proud: an interview with Shug was published at a kids’ website where he coded something with 250k+ views. Everybody happy and working hard and enjoying springtime. Hope you are too. xoxo!
Pretty Ugly.
Maynard Monrow, Self Portrait
on view at Nashville 21C, 2018
Roadside Religion.
Christians Boycott Walmart sign
Montgomery AL, 2003.