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A writer at The Atlantic takes the leap, however long or short, between Frank Ocean and Nelle Harper Lee in Frank Ocean, Harper Lee, and the Reclusive Artist
But what about that invisible rubric? That is, why can’t Channel Orange be enough in the way that Mockingbird is? Is it because rather than keeping us almost entirely out of the empty room, as Lee did, Ocean chose to let us in through hints and ephemera? And more broadly, what are we owed by an artist whom we profess to love? Why does the quiet deliberation of one soft-spoken Southern Gothic artist with a widely adored debut inspire awed respect and deference, while another inspires bitter disappointment? How do we maintain an earnest interest in and desire for art we love, while respecting the autonomy of the person who creates it and the fact that creating anything at all is the most excruciating of human endeavors?
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Howard Finster’s An Angel of the L-rd #10000 at the High
Smithsonian with These Letters Written by Famous Artists Reveal the Lost Intimacy of Putting Pen to Paper and the letter from Finster to a curator about an upcoming exhibit looks like one would expect.
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Butch Anthony’s roadside museum in Seale, Alabama is featured on NPR’s Morning Edition
http://www.npr.org/player/embed/487384516/489284084
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Fabulous Beth Ann Fennelly has been named Mississippi’s poet laureate. Her ‘Kudzu Chronicles’ here. Go to track seven below for Claire Holley’s ‘Kudzu’ song using words from Beth Ann’s poem:
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Yes a million times to Cantor Fine Art and their emojis:
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Bon Appetit has come out with their list of Best New Restaurants 2016, and in the South category, there are four, all of which are in Louisiana (three of those, NOLA): N7, Josephine Estelle, Pop’s Poboys, and Willa Jean (knew it was Willa Jean from the shot of the cookies with milk and beater!). Well deserved.
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…and of course we loved it!
…cookies that are crisp and caramelized around the edges, soft in the center, and studded with gooey pockets containing not one, not two, but three (very specific) varieties of Valrhona chocolate. The milk—cold and rich, infused with Tahitian vanilla bean—miraculously tastes as though one thousand cookies have already been dunked in it. And the kicker? The egg-beater whisk served alongside, onto which clings more raw cookie dough than any grandma, no matter how permissive, would ever let you sneak. Yeah: It’s like that.
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at Casamento’s in New Orleans
At NPR: The Oyster’s Mighty Comeback is Creating Cleaner US Waterways
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13 Obscure and Amazing Food Products We Buy on Amazon from Bon Appetit includes Talk o’ Texas pickled okra
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Excited about the Take Me I’m Yours exhibit at the Jewish Museum in NYC (at which visitors can bring home pieces of art from dozens of artists, incl Yoko Ono, even) and their Kickstarter campaign, at which for a $250 donation, you can skip the plane tickets and they’ll send you one of every piece of art
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Loved Stranger Things on Netflix so much. I’m going to be Eleven for Halloween and Av is going to be Dustin (I already have the Castroville Artichoke Festival tee for him). It was filmed in Jackson, Georgia, and one of the funniest things ever is it re-imagined as an ’80s sitcom:
.@Stranger_Things I re-imagined you as an 80s sitcom. #StrangerThings @DavidKHarbour @MatthewModine @Netflix pic.twitter.com/xNNtHKzXJP— Tim Bennett (@flashman) August 1, 2016
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At Bitter Southerner, The Godmother of Southern Cooking (with Gas) on Mrs. S.R. (Henrietta) Dull
Mary Frances, one of seven grandchildren, is now the keeper of the treasures of Henrietta’s life, from photos with Walt Disney to handwritten notes attached with straight pins to first-edition pages of “Southern Cooking.” Open a scrapbook and Mary Frances dials back time, telling stories of white gloves, tomato aspic and Atlanta debutante parties, of Sis Hennie’s Japanese Fruitcake on the sideboard at Christmas, of crisp corn pone at supper. And of war rationing, wringing a chicken’s neck, beating egg whites by hand for angel-food cake, and the knowledge that before Sis Hennie was famous, she sold food to the ladies at First Baptist Church to support her family.
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Peaches on Farish Street in Jackson
Also at Bitter Southerner, Up All Night on Farish Street:
“Mississippi is not a state,” he says. “It’s a club.”
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The Hattie B’s Hot Chicken supper at the James Beard house August 11:
Hors d’Oeuvre: Deviled Eggs with Pickled Ramps, Crispy Hot Chicken Skins with Tennessee Honey,
Beer-Boiled Peanuts, Benton’s B.L.T. Bites
Dinner: Tennessee Tomato Gazpacho with Fried Chicken Crunchies, Fresh Cheese, and Pickled Green Tomatoes; Poppers and Pickles – Nashville-Style Hot Chicken Rillettes with Three Bean Salad and Pickled Watermelon Rinds, Ramps, and Okra; Sweet Tea Sorbet with Lemonade and Mint; Family-Style Hattie B’s Hot Chicken with Tennessee Speckled Butter Beans, Southern Braised Greens, Raw Corn Salad, Housemade Chowchow, Skillet Cornbread, and Bourbon Barrel Sorghum Butter; Banana Pudding with Torched Meringue
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Gore Vidal and Eudora Welty talking religion
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A bottle tree made by my friend Stephanie Dwyer, in Port Gibson, Mississippi
