Month: September 2014

I am so thankful to have been asked to join a group of women who go out every week and do something adventurous! We just started for the year, and our first week was hiking, then the following week was horseback riding, and this week, I got on a paddleboard for the first time (it was fun and I only fell off once!).

The farm we went to for horseback riding had this pair of ‘gypsy horses’ — developed by the Roma in Europe to pull the vardoes:

Over the weekend, we were treated by friends to an Alabama game!  Av and I have been to games since the boys have been born, but this was their first and they *loved* it!  Shug even made his own sign!

And these two very cute about-to-go-swimming brothers wish their niece B a happy first birthday!!

Paper cranes at the Birmingham Museum of Art children’s section:

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We found this interesting monument at Rose Hill Cemetery in Fayetteville, Tennessee, for George Jones Goodrich (1848-1902) and Sallie H. Goodrich.

Earlier this year, I visited the Rosa Parks Library and Museum in Montgomery:

Which is at the bus stop that Rosa Parks refused to move (not the one at which she originally got on the bus).  

No photography is allowed in the museum, which was disappointing.  The tour — there’s a film, followed by a docent-led tour — lasts about 45 minutes.

Only in the lobby could I take pictures; there was this small, excellent art quilt by Riché Deianne Richardson

An interview with Riché:

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In August, a collection of more than a thousand Rosa Parks items, which had previously been warehoused due to legal dispute with heirs and an educational institution she had set up, was purchased by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation (Howard is Warren Buffett’s son), and the Foundation announced this month that they will be on loan for a decade to the Library of Congress.  From the NYT:
Mr. Buffett, who acquired the collection through his foundation, told The Detroit Free Press that the purchase had been prompted by a television news report about how the items had been in storage since 2006, unavailable to scholars.

“I’m only trying to do one thing: preserve what’s there for the public’s benefit,” he said. “I thought about doing what Rosa Parks would want. I doubt that she would want to have her stuff sitting in a box with people fighting over them.”

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Copper thieves broke into Rosa Parks’ former Montgomery home in Cleveland Court (now Parks Place) last month.   There have been plans to improve the way visitors can see her former apartment, but now with the damage, that project is temporarily on hold.  The AP article here.

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The bus Rosa Parks was arrested on is at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

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This pic from our visit in 2011 — one of the homes Rosa Parks grew up in, in Henry County, Alabama just outside Abbeville.

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One of my favorite quotes of hers (and so true); letterpress by Amos Paul Kennedy Jr.:

My friend Suzanne, who was a director at a college here, took a position at Harvard.  Harvard!!  Suzanne and I have been friends over ten years.  Her house was always ready for Southern Living to come over and do a photoshoot.  Her garden was always lush and beautiful and fragrant.  Her taste was incredible.

We did too many girlfriend lunches and suppers to count, we’d talk about where to get the world’s best rutabagas and collards, and we’d sup at white tablecloth establishments with tiny-trendy dishes.  She knew where to get the best antiques and shared my love of the handmade, of wabi-sabi.

But best of all, my perfect-perfect Suzanne was always there.  Laughs, hugs, tears.  She always had, and will always have, my heart.

Now she’s a blessing to everyone in Cambridge.

I’ll be up there soon and often, maybe we’ll find a way to get a little summer in at Martha’s Vineyard, then lighthouse-hop in Maine.  Rather than chasing rutabagas and collards, we’ll find the best places for lobster rolls and clam strips.

Got to be with Suzanne and soak up her magic.

For our last repast for a while, we decided to toast everlasting friendship no matter the distance over fried pies.  It just felt right.

Here’s to the family we’re lucky enough to make for ourselves.  What a gift it is.  xoxo!

We were able to get in for lunch at Miss Mary Bobo’s in Lynchburg, Tennessee earlier this year.  It seems that reservations are requested days or weeks in advance, as the setup is family-style dining, with each table having its own host.  We called about a week before our visit, left a message preferring the earlier of the day’s two seatings, and they confirmed our reservation.  Lunch is $20.

We’ve been wanting to come here for so long.  We love revolving table restaurants (like Walnut Hills in Vicksburg and Dinner Bell) and family-style (like Monell’s in Nashville and Mrs. Wilkes’ in Savannah) because it’s so much fun to sit down with strangers and once the meal is over, we’re friends.  Miss Mary Bobo’s is unique in that each table sits with a host, whose job it is to get things rolling with introductions and stories, etc.

You can mill around the home beforehand or afterwards to view the furnishings, and of course there’s a giftshop.

We were in one of these outer rooms in the back.

I wish I had taken more pictures inside.  We were seated with probably a dozen people at the table, and the food was waiting on us.  The food was passed, but after the initial introductions began by our host, there wasn’t very much talking going on.  Here I was, thinking I was going to see what a great conversationalist could do with a nice group of people, but there wasn’t much chatter at all.  I decided to get things going and so I asked her a few questions that maybe we would all enjoy (“what’s the funniest thing you’ve seen as a host here?” etc.).  We decided that if the host wasn’t going to get everyone talking, we were.  We all had a good time, but it was a little mystifying.

Here’s the other thing: the food wasn’t very good in general.  It wasn’t bad, it’s just that none of it was delicious.  It was utilitarian food.  The mashed potatoes were mashed potatoes and the beans were beans, even the fried chicken was just fried chicken.  From my plate, I tried to get a bite or two of most things served.  There wasn’t anything I wanted more of.  A shame, because I really just wanted to love this place.

So the best part of the meal food-wise was the dessert, pecan pie with Jack Daniel’s.

From al.com:
Mary and Jack Bobo opened the Bobo Hotel in September, 1908, in a white Federal-style house on Lynchburg’s Main Street. Miss Mary quickly built a successful business that was popular with single school teachers, traveling salesmen and federal revenuers stopping by to check on the local distillery.

The tax man didn’t have to go far – Mr. Jack Daniel himself often took his noonday meal at the boarding house.

“Dinner at Miss Mary Bobo’s may have been the early 20th century version of a power lunch,” Lynne Tolley, current proprietress of Miss Mary Bobo’s and great-grandniece of Jack Daniel said. “Jack Daniel and Lem Motlow were both frequent guests, and the local bank president, Tom Motlow, lived here.”