Month: July 2013

I have a friend with a home on Sullivan’s Island near Charleston who invited two of us to her beach home this past spring (Av encouraged me to go especially since he was going away for the leadership class retreats he was a part of this year). It was magnificent, and although I was there a little less than three days, we got to see and do so much.

Well, first of all, we walked to the beach every day.  Sea urchin:

Sand dollar (a live one):

…and lots of jellyfish of all shapes and sizes:

We toured the historic KKBE synagogue, which was founded as Sephardic Orthodox in 1749 and since 1841 has been Reform. It’s the second-oldest synagogue building in the country and the oldest continually used:

Know Before Whom Thou Standest:

…and we toured their cemetery on Coming Street:

Into Thy Hand I Commit My Spirit:

…and we went to Magnolia Cemetery on Cunnington Avenue where one of the stones is pretty well known — sweet Rosalie Raymond White, whose monument is a cradle with her death mask:

…where the crews of the Hunley are buried:

We also did a lot of looking at the beautiful historic homes, doing jewelry shopping, and Charleston sweetgrass basket shopping — although somehow I didn’t buy anything during the entire visit:

There was lunch at Hominy Grill one day, with she-crab soup:

I had the ‘picnic sampler’ which is an appetizer, for my entree — pimento cheese, okra pickles, garlic toasts, shaved country ham, and pickled eggs:

and Charleston red rice:

One evening we had dessert at Village Bakery in Mount Pleasant, and I got this sweet tea creme brulee:

Lunch another day was at SNOB Slightly North of Broad, with another picnic plate of pimento cheese on toast, pate, pickled vegetables, and a little salad:

…and our last lunch was at Magnolia’s where we shared an appetizer of potato chips with bleu cheese and scallions, a little pimento cheese, and I had a crabcake sandwich (that I just ate as crabcake only):

It was so terrific being in Charleston, and Sullivan’s Island — lying in the hammock every day, being steps away from the beach — the lighthouse:

My friend was a terrific host…but I missed my boys terribly especially as this was only my second overnight away from them, and was so, so, so happy to be home again.  Can’t wait to bring them here!

One of the largest collections of Wedgwood in the world is at the Birmingham Museum of Art:

There are the ‘typical’ Wedgwood pieces, then there are others:

This particular mantelpiece was produced in 1882:

Currently, the company is highlighting their collections with Jasper Conran and Vera Wang, but wouldn’t it be ever so much more interesting if they were to collaborate with — if they’re going with names people are more familiar with — Gerhard Richter or Jeff Koons?  

“Hanging Heart” needs to be introduced to Wedgwood White.

Sliced, toasted baguette + jam (blackberry, blueberry…) + pimento cheese made with chopped pecans and finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes = perfect crostini

The awfulness, just awfulness, of what’s happened with Nelle Harper Lee and the copyright for TKAM in regards to the court case was the subject of a piece in the August issue of Vanity Fair.  There’s also this:

“I used to take Harper Lee down here until she got too old to play,” her close friend and Methodist minister Thomas Lane Butts tells Seal about the Wind Creek Casino and Hotel, the Vegas-style gambling establishment where she used to feed quarters into slot machines for hours, reveling in the anonymity. Seal reports that Lee used to roll up and down the rows of jangling machines in her wheelchair and nobody seemed to recognize her.

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I was interviewed this week by Yahoo! for their Yahoo! Shine article on slugburgers — the annual Slugburger Festival is this weekend and Joey Chestnut (so nice he tweeted me back!) will be competing in the eating competition.

@deepfriedkudzu never had one. I’m really looking forward to this weekend.
— Joey Chestnut (@joeyjaws) July 10, 2013

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From the Houston Chronicle:
Where might you find a manuscript by the late Pearl S. Buck — the prolific author who won a Pulitzer for “The Good Earth” in 1932 and a Nobel in 1938?

If you answered, “a storage locker in Texas,” you’d be right.

It will be published in October.

Also: Woody Guthrie’s book ‘House of Earth‘ about his experiences during the Great Depression in the Texas Panhandle was found by Douglas Brinkley and was published earlier this year.

In Forkland, Alabama, there’s one of the prettiest churches anywhere: St. John’s in the Prairie (that was actually moved here in 1878 from south of Greensboro).

The church was built in 1859 and is on the National Register.  The bell out front is from a steamship.

And…wow:

The gentleman in the pew above? A mannequin.

Something Av and I are researching: the stained glass window of the Ten Mitzvot (Ten Commandments) in Hebrew, presented by Simon Levy:

The building was designed by those of Richard Upjohn from his 1852 Upjohn’s Rural Architecture: Designs, Working Drawings, and Specifications for a Wooden Church, and Other Rural Structures book.  Another church in Alabama that was done from that book is St. Andrew’s in Prairieville:

Also: St. John’s in Tuscumbia:

Permission for image used, courtesy Library of Congress, LC-DIG-highsm-0868

St. Luke’s that’s been moved back to Old Cahawba:

St. Luke’s in Jacksonville

St. Paul’s of Lowndesboro:

…and when I was thinking of small churches with this style, I thought of Mt. Olivet Chapel in Pineville LA, which also came from Upjohn’s book:

One building in Alabama that Richard Upjohn and his firm *did* design is St. Paul’s Episcopal in Selma:

Upjohn’s only surviving Italian villa design for the South, Kenworthy Hall, is on the market right now, in Marion, Alabama — this pic taken in 2011:

Permission for image used, courtesy RuralSWAlabama. Thanks!