Month: May 2013

As always, all images here unless otherwise noted are copyright DeepFriedKudzu.

Tujague’s is staying Tujague’s — it’s staying in the family — and that whole t-shirt shop issue is history. Yay!

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Sounds like Hubig’s is coming back, and they have a spot to build in Marigny.

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This Sunday: ‘The Clarion-Ledger will print a never-before-published early version of the Eudora Welty short story on Evers’ assassination. It is — she once said — the only thing she ever wrote in anger.’

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The Peterborough Heritage Commission in New Hampshire, rather than let them deteriorate further, put a 1810 cottage, a 1890 farmhouse and a 1910 barn on Craigslist with the selling price of…free.

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Camp McDowell, near Jasper AL, hosts the Alabama Folk School (Jam Camp Weekend June 5-7) and other camps/conferences run by the Episcopal Diocese of Alabama — and its Bethany project is being worked on by Auburn’s Urban Studio.  It is going to be wonderful.

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(above: the Waffle House on the Strip in Tuscaloosa)
They’re a SEC town, and now College Station needs a Waffle House, badly.  Presentation here.

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Hmmm…what to do about the Threefoot Building in Meridian?…

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A man was just sentenced to 50 years in prison for stealing a rack of ribs from the H-E-B.  There was a knife involved and he had some priors, but let’s stick with the ribs.

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(above: not ATL, but still life with white bbq sauce at Greenbrier in N AL)
Atlanta’s not known as a barbecue town.  For the ten thousand times I’ve been there (plus living just off Jimmy Carter Boulevard in Norcross over one summer during college) I’ve never, never had barbecue there.  When Daniel Vaughn, the barbecue editor at Texas Monthly, was asked if any of the Atlanta bbq places could make the top 50 list had they been located in Texas, he mentioned three: Heirloom Market BBQ, Grand Champion BBQ, and Fox Brothers, where they’re putting Alabama white barbecue sauce on fried ribs.  The cover story for the May issue of Atlanta Magazine: barbecue.

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Molly Fischer writes for The New Yorker: Saving Zelda, an overview of the three novels that came out this spring on our Montgomery belle.

Age is the central issue for both Zelda and F. Scott. Not many people get to be young as hard as they did, or have to suffer the aftermath of youth quite so painfully. In a way, it’s like they’re doing it so we don’t have to—adventurously, experimentally, like the Curies handled radium. And they acquit themselves poorly as characters in novels, because the very explosiveness that makes them transfixing also makes them remote.

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KPBS on Leonard Knight’s return visit to Salvation Mountain:

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The USPS — their image above — is issuing a Johnny Cash Forever stamp available for purchase on June 5.
The Johnny Cash Museum in Nashville is now open.

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Your cicadas appreciated:
UGA entomologists are asking Georgians to collect any intact cicada bodies they find on the ground and send them to the museum.

The Georgia Museum of Natural History has an international collection of cicadas ranging in size from smaller than a pinkie fingernail to some Southeast Asian species that are the size of the palm of a hand, all in a rainbow of colors.

They also have representatives of several of the broods of 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas, including specimens dating back to the 1930s.

However, they don’t have any Brood II cicadas from Georgia. Having specimens from this brood “would help us document this emergence in Georgia,” Hoebeke said.

When people do find a cicada carcass, they should take note of where and when they found it. Whole specimens will be included in the museum’s collection of arthropods, which now spans hundreds of thousands of individual insects and spiders.

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The ‘With Signs Following‘ doc on people who worship, handling serpents, will be released later this year; the church the filmmaker followed is reportedly more wary of outsiders interested in their practices after the attention they got when former pastor Mack Wolford passed away last year when he was bitten by a timber rattler.

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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2073593275/the-outcast-of-beauregard-parish-a-documentary-fil
If you read the NYT piece last year, ‘From Bible-Belt Pastor to Atheist Leader‘ then it’s probably not much of a surprise that there’s a documentary being made on the subject:
Jerry DeWitt had been preaching in and around Beauregard Parish, Louisiana since he was 17 years old. Full of warmth and gifted with electric Pentecostal oratory, he was a popular figure around town. He even planned to run for mayor. But when his 85-year old aunt discovered he was an atheist, the news spread quickly. Within a year he had lost his job, the bank had foreclosed on his house and his wife had left him.

But Jerry’s story only begins there. Thrust into the limelight by a New York Times profile, he unexpectedly finds himself at the center of a growing but dis-unified secular movement. He quickly learns to navigate the intricate politics of organized atheism and sets an audacious goal: to create a sustainable human-centered ministry in the heart of the Bible Belt. It may be an idea whose time has come. But can it happen in time to save his home and his family?

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Hotter Than Hades half-marathon in Leland, Mississippi registration open…

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A Chinese company, Shuanghui, is looking to purchase Virginia ham — Smithfield — for $4.7 billion, cash.  If the deal goes through it will be the largest purchase of an American company to a Chinese concern.

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Clemson’s Vanishing Firefly Project asks people to report a count of the lightning bugs they see June 1.

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(above: a pig ear sandwich from the Big Apple Inn. It was…chewy.)
36 Hours in Jackson from the NYT, and they do pretty well: Farish Street and the Big Apple Inn, the farmer’s market at the fairgrounds, Brent’s, Lemuria, Walker’s…

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The Roosevelt Hotel donated a night’s stay in a suite along with supper, cake, pool cabana, and limo ride for Ka’Nard Allen and his family to celebrate his birthday.  Ka’Nard was the boy was grazed by a bullet at the Mother’s Day second line shooting.

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Chris Hastings (Hot and Hot in B’ham) will be guest-chef at Seersucker in Brooklyn on June 6.  Seersucker has on their website a quote from the NYT about itself:
“It’s urbane, soft spoken and modern, the kind of place where actual residents of Chapel Hill, Nashville or Birmingham might go on a Saturday night.”

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Reading this week:
Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation’s Treasures from the Naz by Robert M. Edsel
Try This at Home: Recipes from My Head to Your Plate by Richard Blais
It Wasn’t All Dancing and Other Stories by Mary Ward Brown

There are horseshoes, and there are horseshoes.  This one is at Project Horseshoe in Greensboro, Alabama, across and down the street from Pie Lab.

It’s more than a Pinterest-worthy pretty facade.  Pretty heartwarming.  From their site:
Located in the former Western Auto Building on Main Street, the Community Clubhouse serves as the hub of Project Horseshoe Farm and many of its activities. During the day, the Clubhouse provides a safe and welcoming place with programs and activities for elderly and mentally disabled members of our community. Clubhouse members, including ladies in the Horseshoe Farm supported housing program enjoy day programs, lunches, games, volunteer opportunities, and sometimes just stopping by to visit. Project Horseshoe Farm also provides outreach support to some of our Community Clubhouse members by providing transportation, home visits, and other support as needed. The Clubhouse programs are intended to help overcome the significant isolation and lack of purpose and meaning that often faces elderly and mentally disabled members of our community, to help support successful community living and avoid unnecessary hospital stays, and to provide a place where community members can come together to support one another in helping these members of our community.

…And down from that is HERObike, which is making bicycles out of bamboo.  And that’s probably a really smart idea because if you’re thinking of making a vehicle from renewable materials that grow with zero effort like crazy in Alabama, you can either braid yourself some kudzu together to make a frame, or you can find yourself a bamboo stand (ideas of wisteria and mimosa get points, too).  

I mean, bamboo is so plentiful here in Alabama, it was one of Shug’s first words (seriously).  And bamboo was even the roof to our sukkah last year.  It’s so plentiful you don’t even think about it, unless you have too much which is another thing altogether.

The bamboo that HERObike uses is bamboo that they *walk* to from the shop to harvest.  They cure it, dry it, build the frame. 

So here are lengths of bamboo getting ready for assembly.  This material works so great for bicycles because it’s strong, but flexible in that it gives enough to not have a jarring ride.  They’ve been testing it out with NYC bicycle messengers who apparently really like how smooth the ride is along with how light the bikes are.

There’s a youth program that goes along with all this too, teaching kids job skills.

They make different models, from coaster to 20-speeds, and you can even attend a workshop to have a hand in making your own. 

I’m fond of this one.

Alabamboo.

There are two meat-and-threes over by the big farmer’s market on Finley in B’ham Av and I like to go to — one’s Niki’s West, and this is Smoke House.  That gentleman serving in the pic above-left is always there, always smiling and happy, always fun.  He’s just the best.

While Av really does get a meat-and-three, usually I get a vegetable plate.  Here: dressing, fried green tomatoes, broccoli, butter beans, and a yeast roll.  Yum.

(Most of these pics are from our latest visit, but a couple have floated in from previous…)

Make any list of restaurants that make your heart happy, that makes your little light shine, and Pie Lab either already is, or should be on it.  That’s because Pie Lab is a good place, devised as a Project M start-up as a place that people could have good pie and good conversation.  And it’s not easy to be confrontational over a piece of lemon meringue.

Project M’s founder, John Bielenberg, “has won more than 250 design awards in his career, and became an AIGA Fellow in 2008. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has acquired six of his design projects, and staged a solo exhibition of his work in 2000. In 2009, John was awarded the Washington University Skandalaris Award for Design Entrepreneurship in St. Louis. He went on to receive an honorary doctorate degree from Maryland Institute College of Art. John was also awarded the 2011 NASAD Citation for outstanding work and overall impact in the fields of art and design, as an author, educator, social activist, and designer. He has been featured in the ID 50 and teaches at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.”

In regards to Project M, it’s “an immersive program designed to inspire and educate young designers, writers, photographers, and filmmakers by proving that their work—especially their “wrongest” thinking—can have significant impact on communities.”

BTW, if you remember that there were some early issues with Project M here — with a poster design that came across as lacking taste, and especially in regards to the Buy-A-Meter project which brought about shame for some because they ‘outed’ that one-in-four households in Hale County weren’t hooked up to municipal water — it’s all seemed to work out.  Buy-A-Meter was successful and raised over $55k.  Pie Lab prints cute posters and t-shirts that are shipped out everywhere, they’re supported by the community, and hosted a bake-off and printed a little cookbook.  It’s been written up everywhere from the NYT to Fast Company.

So there’s that. It’s easier to love something that tries and stumbles a little and redeems than something that’s always been perfection, and Pie Lab is easy to love.  It’s teaching people working skills, it’s getting people downtown, and it’s getting people talking face-to-face.

And John Bielenberg was in part inspired by Sambo Mockbee and the Rural Studio.  So planting it here was kismet.

It’s a great reason to drive to Greensboro, Alabama, in our this-place-IS-Southern-Gothic Black Belt, on a Saturday morning.  Any morning, really.

Well, I’ve written all this about it and haven’t even mentioned the obvious — savory pies, sweet pies — crazy-delicious:

Flaky crust love:

It makes people happy.

Another big plus: artist showcase. In this example, baskets by Mary Jane Everett who’s originally from Mississippi and learned to basketweave at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.  For a time, she worked in a studio in York and now lives in Newbern, here in Hale County.

Yes, yes, yes:

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Last month, Pie Lab’s logo made Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of ‘20 Logos We Love‘.

A short ‘various’ this week…

The first menu at Husk Nashville includes crispy bbq pig ear, grilled and marinated Alabama squid, chicken wings with comeback sauce, pokeweed fritters with pimento cheese, killed lettuce, and Mennonite asparagus.

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Atlanta is getting a giant ferris wheel.

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From Ball:
“2013 marks the 100th anniversary of the first series of jars designed by the Ball brothers, each jar intended to be better than the one before. 1913 saw the launch of the first true “Perfect Mason” jar. These limited edition blue Ball jars are a celebration of the heritage featuring period-correct blue color and embossed logos on the front and back. These vintage-inspired blue jars maintain all of our modern standards for quality and reliability. Perfect for all of your home canning needs… or as a collectible item!”
…and I found them, at Target:

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A man from Birmingham is getting love — from GoodFood (huge) no less — for opening a restaurant called SoulFood Kitchen in Australia:
Mac and cheese is cool. Buffalo wings? Tres chic. Barbecued ribs? Oh please. American food is so on-trend right now and every trendy pub and bar in Canberra knows it. Whether it’s Ox in the slick East Hotel in Kingston, or Elk and Pea in hipster Braddon, we all love pulled pork and ribs these days.

But if anyone has a claim to be king of the capital’s sudden southern food scene, it’s Victor Kimble. The Alabama native with a colourful past and a love of soul food is known for his cooking demonstrations at the markets in Belconnen and Fyshwick and an online empire of spices and seasonings. Now he’s opened a restaurant – and not a moment too soon.

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The LA Review of Books interviews James Franco on ‘As I Lay Dying’ as a movie:
MB: One of the critiques often made of “As I Lay Dying“ is that the writing is too “literary” and doesn’t accurately reflect the vernacular of Mississippi or the South. Did Faulkner’s use of language and style create any particular challenges for you?

JF: We used that whole monologue in the film. So, Faulkner’s language speaks for itself.

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Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington bestowed honorary degrees on Michael Kimmelman (sr critic, NYT) and William Christenberry who is professor emeritus there. Of Christenberry, the associate provost remarked:
You were called to Washington in 1968 to teach at the Corcoran as a promising young painter from Alabama, the place whose characteristic red dirt still grounds your heart and colors your soul. Already under the influence of Walker Evans, the photographer of Depression-era tenant farmers in Hale County, Alabama, you found yourself returning again and again to that essential heartland, making your own photographs of what for you was the fertile source of your creativity.

In incomparable paintings, drawings, photographs, sculpture and your own collection of signs of the South, you have created a world that not only reinvigorates and sustains your personal life experience but also opens to all of us a window through which past and present interpenetrate. From satin Klan dolls to graphite gourd trees, from time-lapse color photographs of the demise of Coleman’s Café to a scaled-down sculpture of a timeless country church in Sprott, you find the means to remind us that memory lives in the imagination, and imagination in memory…

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Albany, Georgia is working on a museum dedicated to their native daughter, Paula Deen. The house she grew up in has been acquired, and Paula still has the original furnishings in storage.  For whatever reason, she mentions:
“I still have mama’s living room set and daddy’s — they had separate rooms later on because daddy had to sleep with a night light on and mama couldn’t.”

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A story on Thrive in Helena, Arkansas at the HuffPo.
Thrive’s Helena Entrepreneur Center (HEC) was their first major development project, which began after receiving a seed-funding grant from the Walton Family Foundation by way of the Delta Bridge Project (a community development initiative that created a 10 year county-wide strategic plan). Through the HEC, Thrive has worked aggressively to launch new businesses in Helena, and the results have been remarkable. To date, nearly 50 community members have attended an eight-week class to gain an understanding on feasibility, of which 10 have moved on to the process of starting their business.

Strategic partnerships at home and across the country are at the heart of Thrive’s work. Its newest partnership as a Trustee for Kiva allows Thrive to expand its offerings to HEC participants, and makes Helena an environment that is friendly to entrepreneurs and innovators. Its potential impact on the Delta can’t be overstated.

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Reading this week:
Groundwaters: A Century of Art by Self-Taught And Outsider Artists by Charles Russell
Homeward Bound: Why Women Are Embracing the New Domesticity by Emily Matchar
Down on Parchman Farm: The Great Prison in the Mississippi Delta by William Banks Taylor