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.
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.