If you have the opportunity to attend any Dia de los Muertos gatherings, don’t miss it. These pics are from previous years’ Bare Hands Birmingham displays.
The Crossroad
On Nelson Street in Greenville, Mississippi
Sukkot 2016, A Grammy-Winning Neighbor, And Empty Bowls
We had a great time at this year’s sukkah party. We had friend-friends, community friends, the boys’ friends as we were also celebrating Shugie’s birthday, and some neighborhood friends. It was crowded but never crazy thanks to it being one of those casual 2-1/2 hour parties where you can drop in / drop out whenever. It worked out so nicely.
We set up the side yard for badmitton, the front yard turned into a football space, and cornhole along the long stretch in the backyard. On two tables, I had artists’ canvases, foam stickers, and pipe cleaners, but the kids were more interested in physical games. Growing up!
For extra seating, we put out haybales I covered with burlap.
Thanks to our friend Sherrie for taking these pics of the setup! At the far end along one table, we did a mimosa bar and galvenized tubs of cokes, beer, water, and juice boxes, and some platters of treats (I did pistachio and cherry Mexican wedding cookies, boiled cookies, and pralines; other friends brought things like crazy-great brownies and rice krispie treats which the kids devoured!).
On this table, I got to use my new Villeroy and Boch three-tiered Artesano server along with Earthborn pottery for the croissants and bagels (what needed to stay cold like the lox and cream cheese was kept in Earthborn nestled in a galvenized tray filled with crushed ice)…
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
…and those two great round servers with legs displaying the cheeses/olives/fruit/dried fruit/nuts/crackers are actually the Skogsta trays from IKEA.
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
On the back porch, I did a popcorn and potato chip bar with mix-ins like granola, m and m, and marshmallows in my Mackenzie-Childs. I’m putting this here to remind myself for next year — the popcorn was the G.H. Cretors Chicago Mix (caramel and cheese) that I got in a huge bag from Sam’s and that was the best popcorn I have ever-ever had.
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Inside on the kitchen island was a huge tureen of Israeli salad and a tray of hummus/pita/cherry tomatoes on Anthropologie Old Havana.
Shugie’s birthday was close, so ta-da! Happy birthday, sweetness!
One of our neighbors who came by is a Thrasher Brother (who I initially remembered from their tour bus Trailways business) who was very modest but of course I had to look him up and he’s played at the Opry, did one of the theme songs for ‘Simon and Simon‘, recorded ‘Still the One‘, and ‘One Day at a Time‘ — and the group has won four Grammy awards. Small world: he knew my great grand uncle, V.O. Fossett who was also in the business. Pretty cool to have a Grammy winner for a neighbor!
Here are some pics of previous years’ sukkah setups:
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
This was a year in which we had a bunch of kids over to play, and besides the arts and crafts things I had for them, they had a huge time with the chalkboard that was simply a piece of board I painted with a couple of coats of chalkboard paint and big foam letters:
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Our scarecrow man from another year:
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
Another year, we hung a bottle tree chandelier from the center of the sukkah and used more Spanish moss in the schach:
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
—
Earthborn Pottery in Leeds, Alabama is once again hosting the Blue Light Special Art Show, this year December 10-11.
The show is inside a 24K sq. ft. building (we bought the old watch factory) so folks can shop, have lunch, stay out of the weather and give back to the community all in one visit. Join with us to support ‘Empty Bowls’ a hunger-prevention endeavor pairing local potters and local Chefs (Chef Rob Kamm of Brock’s restaurant at Renaissance Ross Bridge Resort), Rusty’s BBQ and Alecia’s Specialty Foods who will be providing lunch. For a nominal donation ($25) you’ll get hot soup and bread served in handmade Earthborn bowls, which you keep as a reminder of all the empty bowls in the world. Proceeds go to First Light Women’s Shelter. There is a modest $2 entry fee we share with First Light also.
Old-Fashioned Groceries, Raw Milk, And Counseling by T-Model Ford
Food and Wine did a feature on ‘America’s Best Little Food Towns‘ a few years ago, and of the six included, one was Water Valley, Mississippi. The piece featured four different places, one being the Fiddler’s Loft where local musicians would play — and where Little Red Hen Bakery provided their “Grammaw’s five layer chocolate cake 5.0” but while we were in town, we visited The B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery, which they described this way:
This market in a renovated 140-year-old building sells ice cream made from lemon pound cake, freshly baked buttermilk chess pies and impeccable local produce for prices that owner Alexe van Beuren calls “cheaper than Wal-Mart.”
Also in 2012, the NYT ran ‘They Made Main Street Their Own,’ the grocery’s owner is featured, talking about how the 140-year-old, 10k sq ft brick building was purchased for $110k.
Ms. van Beuren, who had no plans to include a kitchen and prepared foods among her offerings, now has both. The initials of her store stand for the Gandhi quote, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
Not everyone gets the shorthand, she said. “Beans, tomatoes and corn” was one resident’s guess; another was “better than country.” In a nice piece of serendipity, Dixie Grimes, a talented chef who had been working at a high-end restaurant in Oxford and who showed up one day and asked if Ms. van Beuren needed a cook, has the quote on her key chain.
That’s Brown Family Dairy milk, pasteurized but not homogenized (the best way for milk to be).
There’s also a BTC Cookbook available at Square Books (where you can get a signed first edition) or on Amazon.
Meats and cheeses along with salads marked that they’re made by Dixie, including marinated mushrooms, pickled radish, curried rice, and her Copper Penny “old-school Southern chilled salad – perfect with barbecue”.
—
Several years ago, we used to drive all the way out to Alexandria, Alabama to buy milk from Wright Dairy (which was also pasteurized but not homogenized). They did have their dairy store closed for a while, but beginning November 5, will open it on Saturdays from 9a-1p to sell their butter, cheese and raw milk labeled as ‘for your pet’ as required by Alabama state law.
—
Earlier this month at The Guardian:
Heartbreak specialists: how Mississippi bluesmen got me through my divorce
After splitting with my wife I spent the summer with real-life blues musicians. Getting advice from heartache experts seemed ideal but I found it hard to use (though the content isn’t quite as PG as you might wish — here’s part from Water Valley):
But I also needed a place to hole up and lick my wounds. My friend Bruce from Fat Possum Records offered me a trailer in the small town of Water Valley, Mississippi…
James “T-Model” Ford, who was in his early 80s, and his drummer Spam, were the most frequent guests. They would pull up outside in T-Model’s 1979 powder-blue Lincoln Continental, and unload guitar equipment, bottles of whiskey, boxes of fried chicken.
…T-Model had been through more heartache and horror than I could possibly imagine. His father beat him so brutally as a child that he lost a testicle. Later on, his father stole T-Model’s first wife, and what really hurt was how willingly she went. T-Model watched another wife die on the kitchen floor after drinking poison to induce a miscarriage. He had been shot, stabbed, pinned under a fallen tree, beaten senseless with a chair by one of his sons, poisoned by the woman he had loved the most.
I was a sorry, heartbroken wreck that summer, and the bluesmen hated to see a man brought down so low by a woman. They would open the whiskey bottle, and give me their best advice. I liked the idea of this – getting divorce counseling from heartbreak specialists – but I found their recommendations hard to use.
—
T-Model left us about three years ago, but his music lives forever. Here’s Pee Wee Get My Gun on Amazon.
Mr. Imagination in Las Vegas
The House of Blues in Las Vegas has a magnificent array of art by the late Mr. Imagination (Gregory Warmack) that Leslie and I got to see. I met Mr. I at Kentuck (next Kentuck this weekend!), and he was a close friend of my friend Larry Harris, and even lived with Larry for a while in Houston.
His work is also exhibited at the House of Blues in Chicago and Orlando.
From the Knight Foundation for his previous exhibit at the Tubman Museum:
Gregory Warmack was born into a family of nine children in a poor Chicago neighborhood in the late 1940s. At 30, he was robbed at gunpoint, shot and left for dead. Hospitalized and in a coma, Warmack had what is described as a near-death experience. He saw a vision that altered his perception of himself and his purpose in life. He began to see himself as a successor to a long line of kings and artisans stretching back for centuries to ancient Egypt. He came to understand this vision as an inheritance of power and purpose directing him to become an artist. His mission in life became making art that would have a positive impact on the world.
After a year of recovery, Warmack soon reinvented himself as “Mr. Imagination.” He lived and worked in Chicago for the next 22 years. The Hammer Gallery in Chicago gave the artist his first formal exhibition and represented him for many years.
100 in Baton Rouge
Another mural we found in Baton Rouge
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
You must be logged in to post a comment.