Month: December 2012

If you’d like to transform your own or a neighbor’s Christmas tree into a bottle tree, now’s the time to grab one and upcycle it before they all disappear to the chipper or elsewhere!

So busy this week! Next week’s various and daily postings will be back next week.  xoxo!

Alabama Public Radio put out a new piece, ‘30 Years of Dining with Frank‘ last week, about Frank Stitt and his restaurants/cookbooks/influence.  In honor, pics of one of my favorite dishes at his Chez FonFon, the shrimp and avocado salad with remoulade:

…and on my last visit, a slice of opera cake to celebrate my sweet friend Linda’s birthday:

(One day, I’ll try making this cake — there’s one recipe for it at Epicurious, here.)

Sony Pictures Classic has asked that the lawsuit against it for using a Faulkner quote in ‘Midnight in Paris’ be dismissed (dismissed, moved):
“Plaintiff’s purported copyright infringement claim does not survive a motion to dismiss because: (a) the use of a nine-word quotation from a full-length novel is a de minimis use and is not actionable under the Copyright Act; and (b) the Film’s use is a fair use expressly allowed by Section 107 of the Copyright Act.”

In the same motion, Sony Pictures Classics’ lawyers ask that the case be reassigned to a New York court. Not only would that be more convenient for its witnesses, as the filing says, but one has to think a New York court might not be as charitable to the Faulkner group than a Mississippi court.

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Brennan’s was on the auction block (saved, thank goodness) and is $4.1MM in debt.  Good grief, that’s a fine breakfast but wow…

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The Southeastern Quilt Museum has a home in Carrollton, Georgia, and on exhibit now is ‘Not Your Grandmother’s Quilts’.

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Disappointed! NPR reports the Brontosaurus never existed, it was a hoax from a paleontologist from the 1800s.

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Jake Adam York, poet extraordinaire, missed. Left us much too soon. He grew up in Gadsden, son of a steel worker and a history teacher. Funeral service was at Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter (if he went to their day school, we were classmates).  Joe York who many of us know as filmmaker is his brother.  Jake’s wife, Sarah, asks that donations be made in his memory to the Southern Poverty Law Center.  His beautiful poem, Grace, here.

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Very nice: The Civic, New Orleans’ oldest theatre, set to reopen soon.  Yes a thousand times just to the sign.

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WWOZ has a new cookbook.

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Artist Minnie Adkins has contributed art to a new children’s book, Sonny the Monkey.

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Been planning on featuring the Indiegogo campaign for What the Sleepy Animals Do at the Audubon Zoo this week, and just a couple or three days after beginning, already met its goal! Yay!  So in love with these images.

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MSY is getting newer/better food options, among those being a Dooky Chase, Ye Olde College Inn, Zatarain’s, and a couple of Copeland’s concepts — and they’re all to be open by mid-January.

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The FLW home in Phoenix that was under threat of demolition will be saved thanks to a new owner.  From USA Today:
Experts say the house is one of Wright’s most personal works, which included his input on every aspect, from its design and completion, down to the home’s furnishings and interior finishes.

Wright built the home for his son David, who died in 1997, and David’s wife, Gladys, who lived there until her death in 2008.

The 60-year-old house is a complete circle around a central courtyard with a broad, curved ramp leading up to the living quarters, built entirely on raised concrete piers.

Many experts consider the house, with its spiral form, a precursor to Wright’s design of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, one of his most famous works.

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What do you say when the American Spectator publishes a piece on Dean Faulkner Wells’ book, Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi (read it last year, pretty good) and the American Spectator writer mentions:
A recent visit to Oxford, home to the University of Mississippi, fulfilled expectations of a gentile courthouse town full of ghostly, Faulknerian memories.

A gentile courthouse town? That autocorrect does the strangest things.

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The Decatur Daily reports:
State Sen. Arthur Orr said he will sponsor a bill next year that will give Gov. Robert Bentley the authority to pardon eight of the nine Scottsboro Boys defendants.

In a separate move, state representatives John Robinson, a Democrat, and Wayne Johnson, a Republican, both of Jackson County, said they plan to ask lawmakers to pass a resolution declaring the defendants innocent.

The Legislature goes into session in February.

“It’s just time to make this right and remove this stain from the state,” Orr, R-Decatur, said about the Depression-era convictions that sent several of the defendants to death row.

All of the defendants are dead. The state constitution does not permit the governor or Board of Pardons to grant posthumous pardons because of certain legal requirements for the person seeking the pardon.

“My bill will amend the constitution,” Orr said.

Bentley was not available for comment, but press secretary Jennifer Ardis said the governor’s opinion has not changed since August when the Morgan County Republican Party passed a resolution asking for the pardons.

At the time, the governor said he supported pardoning the Scottsboro Boys and would do so if he had the authority.

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Scott, Zelda, and Scottie’s Christmas in Paris, 1925.  We had a wonderful Chanukah, and hope if you celebrate Christmas that it is a wonderful, happy day for you and your family!

A couple of weeks ago, I had lunch at a restaurant I’ve been wanting to go to since it opened in 2008 — Cotton Row in Huntsville on the Square, a James Boyce restaurant.

It is white-tablecloth, understated and lovely on the inside, and the food was delectable.  Fish = perfect.

…and this I love — recipes provided (he’s been everywhere from the Today Show to Food and Wine to Southern Living) here.  Will definitely try making the skillet-baked pear and apple crisp.

I grew up in Cullman, so when I go home, every now and then I like to run into Southern Accents, which is a very large architectural antiques shop.

Ohmygosh the things I have passed up there and still dream about…copper bathtubs…a marble-topped chocolate factory table from Memphis…and what I miss most, a bank of antique post office boxes from Selma (can you imagine the messages that have passed through those?).  Those are all gone, but I wish I had at the time (which was during college, which means basically penniless of course), found a way to take them home!

Maybe I’m a little nostalgic, but the past hundred times I’ve been in, I haven’t found really-really interesting dreamy things to consider like I think there used to be.  And the things I’ve thought about bringing home (like, since we were talking about antique locks and keys for jewelry yesterday, a la Rault’s in New Orleans) have been more expensive than I’ve imagined they should really cost.

No matter, if you’re in town, it’s a fun place to spend an hour.  And they do still have very, very nice items.

I actually did ask about buying this broken neon sign (how perfect would this be in our stairwell??? Av would have loved.) home but they weren’t sure they wanted to sell it and never called me back.

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Back in October, the NYT had a story about neon signs and the reopening of the Neon Museum in Las Vegas.

Some of my favorite neon signs here, and of course my favorite is my pic of Glenn House’s Moon Winx sign in Alberta, Alabama: