Month: March 2014

One of my things every summer is to visit the National WWII Museum.  I have this real interest in it; my sweet PawPaw z”l served in the 102nd Infantry and received a Purple Heart.  My Uncle Monty landed on Normandy Beach on D-Day so that’s also really interesting to me.  I never thought us being a particularly military family, although I have PawPaws who fought in every major war from WWII to the Revolution.  I guess…this is just what American families have done all this time.

Now that I’m thinking of national war museums, besides the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, there’s the National WWI Museum in Kansas City MO, the National Civil War Museum in Harrisburg PA, and…is this right? The Museum of the American Revolution is only now being built in Philadelphia?

Funny thing is, since I love museums so much, you can imagine how tickled I was last summer to be walking to the WWII Museum and pass these banners for the ‘Museum of Trade, Finance, and The Fed’ in front of the Federal Reserve branch on St. Charles.  Never heard of it, and I think to myself that I know museums.  So I walked in — well, with a Fed branch you don’t exactly walk in, there is serious security there — declared, sweetly, via microphone to a security guard on the other side of everything-proof glass that I was there to see the museum they had banners up for, and lo and behold (you just have to imagine what a museum person I am for this to be anywhere as fabulous for me as it was) *I was their first, first, first museum visitor!*  Squee!

Guess what? They don’t allow pictures.  And the museum was in the foyer really, right there with the security guard, so it’s not large.  But it was nice.  And at the end you can email someone a picture of you on a fake piece of currency, so Av got this email from the Fed…of me looking all goofy and tickled in very harsh this-is-a-bank-for-banks lighting.  Ah.  Good times…good times…

So.  Got to the WWII Museum, did the film first as usual — it’s called ‘Beyond All Boundaries’ and the first part of it is done with Tom Hanks narrating.  It’s not just a movie — it’s what they call a 4-D experience.  It’s terrific!  Really terrific.  But our kids won’t be going to it until they’re late-teens and know that the world hasn’t always been a fabulous place (and the movie has graphic images of…well…us. Jewish people. So it’s especially hard.  It’s not for kids at all.).  But the movie is done so well that it really puts you in the right frame of mind to see the rest of the museum exhibits.  

I will say, though, that the newish USS Tang experience, which is at additional charge, is not as successful — it’s set so that participants have different jobs to do in a submarine setting and it’s so hard to understand a.) what you’re being asked to do because the acoustics are so weird and b.) if what you’re doing is making any difference (and that’s built-in, but still…why give me something to do if there’s no user feedback).

The museum itself is so worthwhile and put together really well.

Some of these images are from previous visits:
Rupert the dummy paratrooper — dropped en masse to give the illusion of a huge airborne drop, and they were dressed in uniform with recordings of gunfire and exploding mortar rounds for full effect:

These inflatable tanks were put in position to fool the Germans as to where the Allieds were actually located:

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There are two John Besh restaurants at the museum as well.  There’s the Soda Shop:

and the more substantial American Sector:

‘Crispy Hog’s Head Cheese, black-eyed peas, slow poached yard egg’:

Outside, American Sector’s own Victory Garden:

Av has been to a few fundraisers at the museum and it’s a great venue.  Right now, there are two expansions coming up: Campaigns of Courage, and the Liberation Pavilion, which is planned to open in 2017.

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Love this sign we found:

Couldn’t help myself; had to bump it up to near-garish (or perhaps past that…) in PS:

I found this last summer in the CBD on the sidewalk:

…turns out, the Blue Dog will ride again — there’s legislation to create a specialty tag with Blue Dog on it, and to rename a portion of Hwy 90 as ‘George Rodrigue Memorial Overpass’.

I had the great good fortune of living in Texas for a couple of years growing up.  And most especially the timing was perfect because one of those years was 4th grade which is the year students learn Texas history for their social studies requirement.

There were pages of bluebonnets to be colored in!  There were counties to memorize!  Tribes to know!  And Stephen F. Austin (and Sam Houston, among others) to idolize.

Social studies was my kind of subject, anyway, and I ate Texas history (and 4-H!) up.  So last summer when we were in Austin, we went through the Texas State Cemetery — which is right in the middle of town, practically — and I was back in 4th grade…

First, though, here is the 9-11 Memorial.  From the state’s website:
The 9/11 monument is dedicated to all Texans who died during the September 11 terrorist attacks and during Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and was commissioned by Governor Rick Perry in 2002 on the first anniversary of the attacks…  Included in the design are two steel columns from Ground Zero that the public are encouraged to touch and examine. The columns were not altered in any way and were recovered in the state in which they stand.

Darrell K. Royal monument:

Lubbock monument

Barbara Jordan monument:

Joanna Troutman monument:

Stephen F. Austin monument:

The cemetery’s site has a piece about maintenance on this monument here.

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Once when driving to Denver, Av and I went through the area of Texas that I had lived.  Because we wanted some memento, Av chased down a huge tumbleweed and we brought it all the way home (it hangs in our stairwell).  I really should put some fairy lights in it to make it a proper chandelier.

ScoutMob charges $3000 for someone to wire a tumbleweed with Edison bulbs.

We found this in Lockhart, Texas:

As always, all images copyright DeepFriedKudzu unless otherwise noted.

Morning Call is leaving Metairie.

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There’s tumult at Beauvoir over…the battle flag, and Jeff Davis’ great-great grandson (who was executive director there) has resigned along with the volunteer who organized the ‘Christmas at Beauvoir’ events.  More here.

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Meanwhile, I think there is an error in Michael Feinstein’s otherwise excellent article in The New Yorker last week on Stephen Foster’s music: Can’t Escape Stephen Foster as I believe this date below in reference to the Stars and Bars (altogether different from the flag mentioned above) should be 1861 rather than March 4, 1864:
“Beautiful Dreamer,” Stephen Foster’s last song, was published posthumously a hundred and fifty years ago this month. On March 4, 1864, the Confederacy adopted the Stars and Bars as its official flag, and Sherman began planning his March to the Sea.

above: the Nicola Marschall monument in Marion, Alabama

The Stars and Bars was the first CSA flag, designed by Nicola Marschall in Marion, Alabama.  Turns out, it was so close to design to the US flag (which was actually by design), that on the battlefield it caused confusion, thus, other flag designs were approved.

Further in the article, the man we knew for “Old Folks at Home” (1851); “My Old Kentucky Home” (1853); “Oh, Susanna” (1846) and others:
Foster never saw Kentucky or the Suwannee River or Alabama, and had been south of the Mason-Dixon Line only once, for his honeymoon, on a steamboat trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. Which is to say that Southern nostalgia was, in part, invented by a Yankee who spent almost no time in the South, long before the South was even something to be nostalgic about. Alabama and Florida were still very young states; slavery and plantations had replaced Native American territories only about forty years before the Civil War.

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Time Magazine on Nashville hot chicken.

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A critic goes to a concert and is…critical.  Next:
The subsequent posting of the review on February 4th by the Baltimore City Paper has caused a ripple that has shaken the environment of the Baltimore journalism community to its very core, upset huge, nationwide sponsorship companies, and resulted in the censoring of the Kitchens review and potentially subsequent postings by the paper against the will of Kitchens and the paper’s editorial staff. Since then, Baltimore City Paper has been in massive upheaval, with eight employees being laid off, and the rest of the staff being locked out of the paper’s online interface.

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Also terrific from The New Yorker this month: The Historian Who Unearthed ‘Twelve Years a Slave’ on the late LSU of Alexandria professor Sue Eakin:
Steve McQueen took a moment to thank “this amazing historian Sue Eakin,” who “gave her life’s work to preserving Solomon’s book.” It was an unusual shout-out: we’re used to seeing Harvey Weinstein or God get thanked, not historians from Louisiana. But it’s safe to say that without Eakin, who died in 2009, at the age of ninety, none of us would be talking about Solomon Northup, or Patsey, or the other once-forgotten souls portrayed in this year’s Best Picture.

Bless you, Sue Eakin.

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above: Old Monroe County Courthouse

Al.com reports that:
State Sen. Scott Beason, R-Gardendale, says that McCarthy was right in his efforts to flush out communists, and he thinks it’s inappropriate for Alabama high school students to read The Crucible because a sidebar in a textbook explains the parallels between the Arthur Miller play and the Red Scare.

In the same article, and this is just rich:
Talladega County Republican Party Chairman Danny Hubbard, also said McCarthy was right. While Hubbard objected to many texts offered as “exemplars” by Common Core, he did not take issue with one written by an Alabama native.

“I don’t think anybody’s opposed to ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,'” Hubbard said. “It’s a classic. I believe it’s written by a fellow from Montgomery.”

Somebody needs to find that fellow from Montgomery so he can be getting all the checks Nelle Harper Lee in Monroeville has been collecting all these years.

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Prada Marfa has been vandalized into TOMS Marfa, and by that I mean someone who doesn’t like the TOMS company, too.  He’s now been arrested.

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Robin Young of Here and Now visits Eudora Welty’s home in Jackson, and chats with her niece, Mary Alice.

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above, from our visit to the Montgomery Museum of Art to see Patrick Dougherty’s works there in 2009

Cheekwood Art and Gardens in Nashville invited Patrick Dougherty to be the 2014 Martin Shallenberger Artist-in-Residence, and what he’s created is on exhibit officially from March 22 – June 29.

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NPR does a piece on the Birmingham band St. Paul and the Broken Bones, and it, and their music are phenomenal.

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Photographer William Widmer for The New Yorker took part in a Courir de Mardi Gras and has these images.

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From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:
Columbia Pictures is suing the Houston company that owns Ricky Bobby Sports Saloon and Restaurant, accusing it of trademark infringement and illegal use of the name and other marks associated with the character played by Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby.

Filed this month in Houston federal court, the lawsuit says Rick’s Cabaret International, which owns the north Fort Worth sports bar, is using intellectual property that is “uniquely identifiable with the picture,” such as scantily clad waitresses referred to as “smokin’ hotties” and a sign that says, “If you ain’t first,” a reference to a line from the 2006 comedy.

Among the offerings: a ‘Redneck Martini’ of Southern Comfort and Mtn Dew.

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From Smithsonian: Why Carl Sagan is Truly Irreplaceable.

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So Tupelo Honey Cafe is a (real) chain now.  They’re opening their…seventh? outpost, this latest one in Atlanta, in fall of 2015.

From The Atlantic: The Engineering of the Chain Restaurant Menu.  A gem from the comment section: some people ‘flask’ their own maple syrup for use at IHOP.

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I drove to Huntsville this week to attend the preliminary hearing for the individual who confessed to his mother that he ended the beautiful life of our dear friend, the artist Wade Wharton.  It was so hard.

The article about the hearing is here, at al.com.

The Huntsville Botanical Garden is going to have an event honoring Wade later in April.  I’ll post more when I have more details.

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Going on right now: Tennessee Williams / New Orleans Literary Festival.

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Jonathan Demme is selling over 900 of his artworks at auction (think Slotin offerings. The catalog is here – start on page 2, really, for a feel of the lot) March 29 and 30.  From Philly.com:
The director traces his love of artists who taught themselves how to paint and sculpt to a childhood spent watching his mother sketch landscapes.

“Anybody can go to college and learn to paint academically,” Demme said. “I certainly love fine art; I don’t reject it. I love to go to museums. But there’s something about that sincere work, trying to capture a feeling in an image, that just turns me on.”

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Cornbread may become the official state bread of Alabama.

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Nashville’s Fox 17 does a ‘Waste Watch’ feature on subsidies to area museums.  The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum got $1MM from the state; there’s $500k for the Chattanooga History Center under construction; $500k for the Knoxville Botanical Gardens; $50k for the Alex Haley Museum and Interpretive Center.

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Art in Bloom is going on at the New Orleans Museum of Art through March — the Crystal Hot Sauce bottle is pretty great.

Country Captain is a dish said to have come to this country via worldly sea merchants in port at Savannah.  Indian curry, tomato, chicken, and rice…it’s fantastic (my recipe here).   Somehow, though, home-of-the-scramble-dog Columbus, Georgia adopted it.

Scramble Dog:

Well, since Av loves Country Captain so much, the last time we were in Columbus we tried to look it up.  I heard that they serve it at Minnie’s Uptown Restaurant:

Turns out, they weren’t serving it that day, so we and the boys shared:

It was served cafeteria style and not much of it appealed to me.  I had some little bites, and none of it was particularly good, even the fried chicken.  Meatloaf was tasteless.  I thought: maybe we just aren’t here on the right day.  They get lots of great ratings on Urbanspoon and Yelp.   However there was a review on Yelp from 11/30/13 that mentioned their bathrooms.  In that regard, I just and only want to say that while I did not have the experience (oh, thankfully!) of that person, I did unfortunately need to visit the ladies’ room, and any restaurant that puts such little attention and care into the upkeep and sanitation of their facilities frightens me about what else they might let go which is not in the public eye.  Left immediately with a disdain for the whole place for letting things go like that.  And let’s just keep moving on, because I don’t want to think about it again.

Many think that the recipe for Country Captain Chicken had nothing to do with Savannah but rather a certain local socialite, Mrs. W.L. Bullard, who made the whole recipe up herself and served it with pride to Franklin Delano Roosevelt who traveled to his ‘Little White House’ in nearby Warm Springs, Georgia to ease his polio symptoms.

From the National Park Service:
At Warm Springs, Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd president of the United States found the strength to resume his political career and a positive outlet for his own personal struggle with polio through creation of the Warm Springs Foundation. Roosevelt returned to use the therapeutic waters at Warm Springs every year, except 1942, from his first visit in 1924 until his death there in 1945. Influenced by his experiences in this rural area, President Roosevelt developed New Deal programs, such as the Rural Electrification Administration. He also carried on important official duties when he was there…

…Roosevelt arrived at the resort on October 3, 1924 hoping to find a cure. The next day, he began swimming and immediately felt an improvement. For the first time in three years, he was able to move his right leg. Because Roosevelt was nationally prominent, his visit assured publicity for Warm Springs. A syndicated Sunday newspaper supplement featured his experience. By his return in 1925, other patients were coming in the hope of a cure. In 1926, he bought the resort property and 1,200 acres from George Peabody for some $200,000. Seeking medical advice and contributions from his friends, he organized the nonprofit Warms Springs Foundation in 1927 turning property over to the foundation.

The Warm Springs Foundation created what became the first and for many years, the only hospital devoted solely to the treatment of poliomyelitis victims in the world. The organization became the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, the sponsor of the “March of Dimes,” and was instrumental in promoting the development of a cure for polio… 

Country Captain was a favorite dish, too, of George S. Patton, and was developed into a MRE in his honor in 2000, and a press release went out in January 2006 that it was discontinued.  Apparently, it didn’t translate well in, you know, pouch form.

It’s what my Le Creuset tagine was made for cooking.

Saveur ran the recipe from Watershed in Atlanta for the dish, and the March 2010 Bon Appetit did a recipe for it with cauliflower and peas.  American Food Roots simply calls it ‘America’s Curry Dish‘.

Oh, and just to make the whole provenance even more in question, an AP food editor named Cecily Brownstone traced the dish north to Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book, published in Philadelphia in 1857.  Who knows?

I’ve seen framed state outlines in different shops and they’re just…a.) completely cute and b.) completely doable in less than fifteen minutes.  I have a small area in our master bedroom (which is decorated in magenta and kelly green, it’s the dream bedroom I always wanted from high school, really) between two doors that needed something sweet and happy, and this was perfect:

Here I wanted to do the two states I’ve lived in primarily, Alabama and Texas.  I had two shadow box frames — because I wanted this to be dimensional for more interest — so I got nice background scrapbook paper, glitter paper, and one puffy letter from the craft store (to cut, to raise the glittered state off the background) for each state.

Online, I printed the shape of each state.  Here, top-left, I’m making certain that I like the idea against this sweet pink and green argyle but of course you could use *anything*, then, bottom-left, cut the state out of glitter paper.  For the depth of my shadow box frame, I cut two pieces of the foam letter and stacked them (ensuring that I was getting a good depth for the frame) and hot-glued them together, between the glitter-paper state cutout and the argyle background paper.  Put it all together…

and love:

Two ichthys (many people refer to them as ‘Jesus fish’) at the top of the giant Jasper Food Mart sign in Jasper, Alabama:

This year for Purim, Shugie wanted to be a king (King Ahashverosh) and Shug wanted to be a Krispy Kreme doughnut.  This of course would work as a Halloween costume too — love happy costumes!

Thankfully for me, there was no sewing involved!  It only took two sheets of foam core (there are three things I get at the dollar store: actually cute gift bags (why on earth did I spend $5+ for gift bags all this time?!?), gift bag tissue paper packs (lots of sheets for little $), and foam core board which is worlds less than anywhere else and I have many purposes for it), gold spray paint, white tempera paint, hot glue, and colorful straws:

1.) I cut the foam core into circles, cut out an inner hole, then spray painted both pieces with gold spray paint
2.) Once dry, I painted two coats of white tempera paint with a foam brush on in a freehand manner so as to make them look like the doughnuts had icing
3.) Colorful straws were cut, then hot-glued on to appear as sprinkles:

I had Shug hold a doughnut in front of him and I cut burlap straps to make a good length between the front side of the doughnut and the one that would be on his back.  Make sure when marking on the foam core that there’s enough allowance to easily slip it on/off.  Just take it off, hot glue the burlap straps (or you could use ribbon) according to the marks, and it’s ready!

It turned out nice! Our local Krispy Kreme even gave us extra bags so that we could package our shalach manot (snacks and small gifts) in theme for the holiday.  Shug has a tradition for the last couple of years that he donates groceries to a local food closet in honor of his friends on this holiday, too.  Yay!  Proud of my favorite KK!