Month: October 2012

I’ve written about artist Dionicio Rodriguez before — among other works is the environment he did for Memorial Park in Memphis, the Crystal Shrine Grotto.  In Houston, we saw many pieces of his work at Woodlawn Cemetery (which is super-close to IKEA, if that helps):

He’s famous for his faux bois work, and here in the distance you can see a bench that in many ways resembles a fallen tree:

The site is on the National Register along with others that feature his work:
From Woodlawn’s own site:
Special areas were platted for flat markers in Woodlawn, and itinerant Mexican sculptor, Diomcio Rodriguez, who worked in a technique known as both faux bois (false wood) and irabajo rustico (rustic work), was commissioned to create inexpensively produced cement sculptures for embellishment of the cemetery. He made a 25’ high cross of what appears to be cross-sawn timbers, but is actually textured and colored cement. Benches made of “planks” appear throughout the cemetery, along with a 36’ long “fallen tree” bench. Additional work includes a large basket planter, a honeycomb rock fountain and planter, and the “Annie Laurie Wishing Chair.” The chair, made of imitation cut stone, is a copy of the original in the forecourt of a church in Scotland. A plaque on the chair reveals the legend that “if a couple sits in the chair on their wedding day, holds hands and makes a wish, it will come true.”

Much has been said about the service at Coop’s Place in the Quarter, and how much and if, the chicken has gotten better or worse in the last few years, but I can report:

Service was good, and chicken was even better than it looks in this picture I took.  Well-seasoned.  Delicious.

Congratulations to Bethanne Hill (one of her works above) for her award at last week’s Bluff Park Art Show!! Yay!

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The AP reports that artist Clint Martin has designed a commemorative license plate honoring the Tuskegee Airmen and Airmen of Mississippi; that if there are at least 300 orders for it (these specialty tags cost $31 extra), then the state of Mississippi will manufacture them.

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Ooooh all the Goo Goo goodness in Nashville in honor of the candy’s 100th anniversary, like…what they’re doing at the Biscuit Love Truck: The Howell Campbell — Goo Goo Cluster “bonuts,” fried biscuit dough filled with marshmallow cream, rolled in peanut butter dust, drizzled with caramel and served with chocolate gravy

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A few photos have been leaked from the filming of ‘As I Lay Dying’.

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The curator of Education and Community Development for the Centre For the Living Arts and Space 301 in Mobile, Wayne McNeil, was shot at his home (in a lovely part of the city); he’s in the hospital at USA. Prayers to him and his family. He’s expected to make a good recovery.

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The Tennessean had a feature on the growing Amish community in Tennessee; we’ve been and purchased things from the community in Ethridge and will be visiting the new one in Stantonville, in November.  Here’s part of the article:
About 1,500 Swartzentruber Amish live in Ethridge, which is about 75 miles southwest of Nashville, making it the largest Amish settlement in the South and one of the top 20 in the nation. so many Amish in Ethridge that they’re running out of room. Local Amish families have bought up most of the available farms in town and flooded the tourist market with products such as handmade baskets, food and furniture for sale.

“It’s getting harder and harder to find land and get a good start,” said a local Amish leader, who declined to give his name for religious reasons.

The population boom in Ethridge is part of a national trend. In 1989, there were about 100,000 Amish living in 179 settlements in the United States and Canada. By 2010, that number climbed to about 251,000 Amish in 456 settlements. A new settlement starts every 3½ months on average.

(oh, and you absolutely do not need to feel as though you need to pay to go on a ‘tour’ in Ethridge — each home that has something for sale has a sign out front and they welcome and expect visitors coming in their own cars, parking right in each home’s driveway)

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This was in my WPA book for Arkansas, so when we were on this road last, we found:

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The opening of the new Archaeology Museum at USA in Mobile is Sunday. The museum seeks to inform about our history going back to 14000 years ago. From the article in the P-R:
“We’ve dug so many French houses. That was our heritage in Mobile, French. I can’t believe the way the Alabama school textbooks still emphasize the English colonies on the Atlantic coast,” Waselkov said.
Bits of fine china, small glass vials, weapons, all manner of artifacts, can be found beneath the streets and homes of Mobile, material that dates to the 1700s.
“Quite a number of French homes that were dug up, one side of the building was a home, a living space, and the other was a tavern or public house where people would come to eat and drink,” Waslekov said. “Old Mobile was an overwhelmingly male town. That’s what we see in the historical record.”
One thing Waselkov said was revealed again and again in the old home sites that were excavated was the stunning amount of thievery in town. Numerous homes had items that had clearly been stolen from Fort Conti, he said.

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Softshell crab poboy from Julien’s in Lafayette (nice).

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NPR’s ‘All Things Considered’: Chinese writer Mo Yan is the 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The 57-year-old writer has been compared to — and was inspired by — William Faulkner because of the way Mo creates an imaginary place and characters out of his hometown. He is a state-approved writer but some say there are subtle layers of social commentary in his writing.  Interview here.

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“Folk Crafts of West Georgia” at Legacy Museum on Main, as “American Folk Hero: Outsider Art of Georgia and Alabama” opens at LaGrange Art Museum.

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Esquire interviews Richard Blais, in part:
ESQ: Do you think Southern food is having something of a moment?
RB: I think it’s been having a moment for a long time, quite honestly. Southern food is the only true American food. It’s got a deep history. It’s having a moment right now because it’s cool in Brooklyn. It’s cool in downtown L.A. Barbecue is almost bigger in New York than it is here. I think it took David Chang putting Tennessee ham on the menu. All of a sudden it’s like “What is this?” I wouldn’t call myself a Southern chef, but I love those ingredients.

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“Anthology: Drawing and Sculpture by Ann Norton” on exhibit thru October 21 at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens, 253 Barcelona Road, West Palm Beach — Ann Norton (1905-1982) grew up in Selma and exhibited three times at the Whitney and twice at MoMA.

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This is a little different — we found this in a cemetery in New Iberia — a monument with a family tree:

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Cicada shells = hat, and not in the US, either.

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What a terrific Art Deco theater we saw in New Iberia:

 

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The NYT includes Lions Park Playscape in Greensboro, built/designed by Auburn’s Rural Studio, in a slideshow on ‘Good, by Design‘ — that whole slideshow is amazing.

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Stephen Frankfurt passed away earlier this month; he “made a splash when given the chance to design the opening titles for “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1962), which was nominated for eight Academy Awards and won three. His opener, a tour of the contents of a cigar box, was the first “in which a camera lovingly pans across details” that “grow in significance later in the film,” Peter Hall wrote years later in I.D., the International Design Magazine.”

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Fire ants attacked my feet when I (uhhh…stood in some tall grass without checking for ant hills) took a pic of this ‘alien silo’ in west Alabama.  The only other time I’ve been stung similarly was in 2005 when I was taking a picture of this magnolia in a Greenville, Mississippi cemetery:

It was so bad I threw my shoes off under the tree and ran like a crazy person back to the car, stopping and hopping, rubbing them off my legs and feet.  So there’s a magnolia tree, not too far from LeRoy Percy:

…and the other Percys, that has my shoes.  But the pic of the magnolia was still completely worth it.

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(above, the chapel at Alcorn State)
Reena Evers-Everette is now executive director of her parents’ institute, the Medgar and Myrlie Evers Institute, at Alcorn State University.

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There will likely be an article in the February 2013 issue of Martha Stewart Living about Kitchen Witch cookbook shop in the Quarter.

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An altar in honor of Uncle Lionel Batiste will be built October 29, 10a-noon, at the Ogden for Dia de los Muertos.  If you haven’t seen it, this is how Uncle Lionel was on view at his funeral earlier this year.

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David Rae Morris, Willie Morris’ son, is looking to have a documentary called ‘Yazoo Revisited‘ funded right now on Indiegogo:
My current project, “Yazoo Revisited” re-examines a critical period in Mississippi history, the integration of the public schools in 1970. My father, the late writer Willie Morris, grew up in Yazoo City, Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s and wrote passionately about his youth. Using his first two books, “North Toward Home” (1967) and “Yazoo: Integration in a Deep Southern Town,” (1971), I revisit the racial and political history of this small Mississippi town, the integration of the public schools and its effect on the community and the state as a whole. I have been working on the project for more than a year and have already conducted extensive interviews with former students and faculty from Yazoo High School, as well as former elected officials and journalists who covered the story. With the help of a generous mini-grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council last winter, I was able to produce a trailer for the film and a working 30-minute edit.

Now I intend to expand the project to a feature-length documentary, conduct more interviews, gather archival material, and bring in specific humanities scholars to help put Yazoo City’s political and racial history in proper perspectives.

 

Av has a list of the world’s best fried chicken.  And one in the top five is Willie Mae’s Scotch House in New Orleans.

They are justly famous for the fried chicken here.  The prices are maybe a little bit higher than what you usually pay, but…

…it’s worth it.  And how to they make that particular crust, anyway? Is it batter-dipped, then placed in some lava-hot oil to make those big blisters? I’m not sure, but it is so crispy-crunchy and just right.  Different and so nice:

The last time we visited Greenwood Cemetery in Jackson, the wisteria was in full bloom.

There are many interesting monuments there; here are a few.

From the cemetery’s site: Legend has it that the dog’s little mistress was buried here, and the dog faithfully attended her grave until his own death.

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Metal monuments
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Hilzheim Plot: This unique structure, designed by a Memphis architect, is in the form of a church entrance.

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This monument features a sickle motif.

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And of course, Miss Eudora is there, alongside her brother, Christian, who died when he was just one year old.

Av loves Domilise’s.

Those sacks of Leidenheimer bread = fresh. One of us got the roast beef, dressed.  The other, shrimp, plain.  And yes, it was all crazy-good.

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Last month, the T in the New York Times’ travel issue magazine (amazing) was done by artist Mary Howard, who grew up in New Orleans but lives in Portland now.  When the Times asked her what to do in Portland, she wanted to talk instead about what to do in her hometown.  And what was the first thing to do?
I will give advice about New Orleans since I am still new to Portland. In New Orleans, get off your plane and walk outside, soak up the humidity but don’t be alarmed by it.

Breathe it all in and head straight to Domilise’s Po-Boy in Uptown New Orleans.