A *fantastic* series of images from the Washington Post on the journey via where the Keystone Pipeline could/would go.
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Uncle Lionel’s Second Line map here — tonight.
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National Geographic wonders who will save Salvation Mountain.
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The Bolivar Commercial reported (and AP picked up) that there’s a plan in Mound Bayou to build:
“Cotton Pickers of America Monument and Sharecroppers Interpretive Center”…
“This project is a way to recognize the people who prospered from the early cotton industry and to honor the people who planted, chopped and picked cotton,” said Turnipseed.
Khafre, Inc. has secured two plots of land, or approximately 20 acres located on U.S. Highway 61 in Mound Bayou, for the statue and museum project and expects groundbreaking to begin sometime within the next year.
“The plan is to have a monument erected that will stand between 25-30 feet tall,” continued Turnipseed. “The statue’s purpose is to increase awareness, knowledge and appreciation of historic sites, structures and landscapes relating to the cotton industry and sharecroppers experience.”
Love this.
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Barbecue in Europe, from the WSJ:
Since March, Londoner John Labate has been on a culinary mission to cook the perfect ribs. On the weekends, the 38-year-old advertising executive dons his chef’s cap, fires up his £900 Green Mountain Grill “Daniel Boone” pellet smoker, sits back with a beer and then just waits and waits. His beef brisket and his pulled pork marinated in chipotle, paprika, garlic and onion rub is something of a hit with his friends. But the holy grail of proper American barbecue remains ribs, and he is still trying to get those just right.
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At Evans and Peel Detective Agency, a new speak-easy in Earl’s Court, entrance is gained via a secret bookcase and bar stools come in the form of antique tractor seats. One of the first things the bar installed in its small kitchen was a bespoke Cookshack smoker imported from the U.S., which also cold smokes—a process whereby smoke is cooled as it is piped from a fire chamber, infusing the food with a smoky flavor without cooking it. Virtually everything on its menu is smoked, from the pulled-pork sliders—for which the shoulder of pork is cooked with hickory wood for 14 hours—to the goats’ cheese for the salad, to the cheesecake.
…and the NYT reviews Hill Country Barbecue on W 26th, where they import 1500 lbs/week of post oak from Texas.
…and the Brisbane Times from Australia does 24 hours in Memphis, and can you believe, they don’t even mention barbecue.
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(this is a pic I took of it just a few days after Katrina)
The new director of Beauvoir? Jeff Davis’ great-great grandson.
“We’re going to make this a destination, not only for the Gulf Coast, but the South and maybe even national,” he said.
Two more replica cottages will be built to house a banquet hall and a catering kitchen and they have plans for a spectacular Christmas.
Beauvoir has a $500,000 grant to recreate Varina’s large rose garden and vegetable garden in the original spot behind the house beginning this fall. The Mississippi Department of Archives and History is overseeing the project.
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The Mississippi Craft Center now has a third gallery — the newest one in Biloxi.
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Four of the eight murals that some had considered controversial and had been removed from the Georgia Department of Agriculture’s building in Atlanta last year will be on display at the Georgia Museum of Art UGA from August 1 to January 7.
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Mr. Imagination’s memorial celebration in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
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In Vicksburg, the Cedar Grove Inn is on the market for $2.9MM.
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One of my great honors last year was being asked, and serving, to adjudicate individual artist applications including the folk art fellowship, apprenticeship, and roster for the Mississippi Arts Commission. In a lovely article by the Clarion-Ledger:
Arts funding to the tune of $1.5 million across the state through Mississippi Arts Commission grants signals a steady level of support, even in the face of government budget cuts and strains in private support, the state arts agency announced.
The funding for fiscal year 2013 will be granted to 183 organizations and schools and 39 artists in 45 Mississippi counties.
Grants range from hundreds of dollars for workshop attendance to tens of thousands for some operating grants.
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For those of us who grew up with, and loved, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood (we watch it via Amazon Prime on our Roku) — a sweet element of it is coming back — Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood is an animated series beginning on PBS this fall. Yay!! Nifty-galifty!
…based on the legacy of Fred Rogers. Its cast are the children of his original and much-loved Neighborhood of Make-Believe characters. A young Daniel Tiger is joined by his friends O the Owl, Katerina Kittycat, Prince Wednesday, and Miss Elaina. Together, through imagination, creativity and music they learn the key social skills necessary for school and for life.
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LA Times did a small piece on an Etsy shop of a gentleman who does illustrated posters with author quotes. Two of the ones they feature are Faulkner (“Civilization begins with distillation”) and Capote (“That’s not writing, that’s typing”).
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A great reason to go to the Atlanta airport, other than going somewhere else? Their plan “to spend nearly $4 million on a single art installation in an underground airport walkway.”
Hartsfield-Jackson officials plan to spend $4 million on an art project that has been on hold for nearly a decade and has more than tripled in cost since conception. The project — which needs approval from the city council — was first proposed in 2003, with a cost of $1.3 million, what would have been the airport’s most expensive art ever. But then the airport learned it would need another $2 million in electrical work for the project, and that the total cost would be about $4 million. Plenty of passengers wouldn’t even see the art unless they use the underground walkway between Concourses A and B. The work by Chicago artist Steven Waldeck would be a “living forest” with a canopy of trees, chirping birds and other sensory experiences.
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Archinect shows Gehry’s Make It Right home.
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Jack Lacy Jr, who successfully prosecuted a man in the 1966 killing of a sharecropper passed away in Brandon MS. The NYT ran this:
Prosecutors said Mr. Avants and two companions had offered Mr. White $2 and a soda to help them find a dog that was lost in the woods. Mr. White, who had no connection with the civil rights movement, was driven to a national forest, shot to death and dumped in a creek bed.
Prosecutors said Mr. White was killed to lure Dr. King to Mississippi so the men could assassinate him. Dr. King did not visit Mississippi after the killing. He was assassinated two years later in Memphis.
When Mr. Avants died in 2004, Mr. Lacy said the death “closes a chapter on one of the most horrific events” in Mississippi history.
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From NPR: Beyond the Music in St. Louis Cemetery No. 2. Ernie K-Doe said “only three songs would stand the test of time: “Amazing Grace,” “The Star-Spangled Banner” and “Mother-in-Law,” because, as he put it, “There’s gonna be mothers-in-law until the end of time.”
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Linda Green, the Yakamein Lady, won a New Orleans-centered episode of ‘Chopped’ on Food Network. NO’s Fireman Mike Gowland won the All-American themed episode, too!
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The famous-famous Lindy’s cheesecake recipe? It’s right here.
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I think my genealogy chart has some pretty terrific, famous, important, and interesting people in it — but the Telegraph reports on a Scottish man who, through genetic analysis, is related to ‘Eve’:
They told him his mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), passed through the female line, was 30,000 years old and only two genetic mutations removed from the first woman, while most men have a genome with around 200 mutations since the earliest humans.
Alistair Moffat, the historian and rector of St Andrews University, who was involved in setting up the DNA project, said: “It is an astonishing result and means he could have been in the ‘Garden of Eden’.
“It is further proof that even white Anglo-Saxon Protestants are descended from a black Eve.”
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From the Jackson Free Press:
The pastor, still dressed as Elvis, continued with the service, explaining that he would have to lift his sunglasses occasionally to read from the book as the lighting wasn’t that good. He delivered his homily and pronounced the vows. As I watched the ceremony, I found myself listening to the pastor/Elvis and it occurred to me that the pastor’s dignity and earnestness was carrying the day. Who would have thought that a middle-aged man wearing an Elvis costume could perform one of the most important rites of passage in a person’s life? This had not turned into a spectacle—it was a teaching moment for all of us. This man connected with these young people (and the congregation), making himself vulnerable to derision as he did so. No one in that church that night will ever forget it.
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NPR has done a big piece on the Highwaymen: Art, Race, and Murder: The Origins of Florida’s Highwaymen.
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Lifetime is remaking Steel Magnolias. I didn’t think that it needed to be remade either — but check out this cast — it may be fantastic (and the person that wrote the piece in the WP is one of my friends!):
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1