Hunter Barnes’ ‘A Testimony of Serpent Handling‘ is *so* good. Photographs here.
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Hugh Acheson writes at Epicurious of Eugene Walter’s Southern Food book in the 70s Time-Life series. I bought my copy on eBay ten years ago and it is fantastic.
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Soul Food Junkies’ trailer — Independent Lens on PBS is picking it up and will run during the 2012-13 season.
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The Edgar Ray Killen drama keeps going. James Stern, who said that ERK gave him Power of Attorney, is planning to hand over the land to the Feds to search for bodies. Meanwhile, the AP reported regarding the validity of the PoA at all.
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The NYT reports on the new photography exhibit at the High, ‘Picturing the South‘.
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Artnet Magazine is no longer.
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Chris Lilly of Big Bob Gibson’s is depicted (sweetly) in cartoon at Memphis in May, in Saveur.
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Gee’s Bend quilters show Martha Stewart quilting techniques.
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From the NYT Magazine: How William Faulkner Tackled Race — and Freed the South From Itself.
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A Neshoba County fair cabin that’s been donated to the county’s historical museum is undergoing a $30k renovation to show the different aspects of life at the fair — ‘family, the racetrack and barns, the pavilion, carnival rides and cabins’. This fair cabin — remember, you only really live in these one week a year, when the fair is on — was listed for $99k.
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The James Castle art lawsuit has been decided: “ ‘Finders, keepers’ is a playground chant, not a legal doctrine,” 4th District Judge Deborah Bail said in ruling that Idaho folk artist James Castle’s family is the rightful owner of any art found in Castle’s former house.
“In Idaho, the person entitled to identifiable mislaid property is the owner and his or her heirs, not the finder,” Bail said in a ruling Friday.
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Events in Oxford for Faulkner’s 50th yahrzeit here.
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The NYT reports that the reason tomatoes don’t taste as good as they could is because they’re so beautifully red:
“The unexpected culprit is a gene mutation that occurred by chance and that was discovered by tomato breeders. It was deliberately bred into almost all tomatoes because it conferred an advantage: It made them a uniform luscious scarlet when ripe.
Now, in a paper published in the journal Science, researchers report that the very gene that was inactivated by that mutation plays an important role in producing the sugar and aromas that are the essence of a fragrant, flavorful tomato. And these findings provide a road map for plant breeders to make better-tasting, evenly red tomatoes.
The discovery “is one piece of the puzzle about why the modern tomato stinks,” said Harry Klee, a tomato researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville who was not involved in the research. “That mutation has been introduced into almost all modern tomatoes. Now we can say that in trying to make the fruit prettier, they reduced some of the important compounds that are linked to flavor.”
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…and Shug had his 5th birthday this week, with a big pool party on Sunday, then a smaller supper on the day of his actual birthday. Love my big boy!