Folk School

I’m not sure where I heard about the Folk School last week, but I wrote it on a note and looked it up today. It’s called the John C. Campbell Folk School, and it’s located in Brasstown, North Carolina.

The really neat thing is that they give week-long classes in several different folk crafts – like making dolls and bears, gardening, glass, jewelry, leather, quilting, spinning, lace, etc.

I’m not huge on lace, but Av’s maternal grandfather owned a schiffli factory from the 1930s until the 1950s or 1960s, and I’d like to learn more about and that sort of fabric art more.

It seems like it would be so much fun to go for a week with a friend or two in that kind of setting and come back home knowing how to do a traditional craft.

Kennedy Prints

I mentioned Kennedy Prints last year when we went to the Kentuck Festival and Amos was showing some of his posters and allowing people to come make their own. I was instantly in love with them, and bought two posters.

His website is up now, and it’s great. Any of the posters that are in stock are $15/ea plus shipping and handling, and of course they offer their services to make custom posters for any event, with a minimum run of 100.

Under the ‘printing specs’ section of the site:

Printing
is what we do. You send the text and a check, and go home and pray. We do not know what will happen until we are at the press. The design of your poster is determined in real time. Sometimes we produce beautiful posters and at other times we produce BEAUTIFUL posters.

White Barbecue Sauce Potato Salad

My great-grandmother was a wonderful cook, and ‘wonderful’ doesn’t even do it justice. I was really young when she died, but I do remember many of the things she made, one especially being her potato salad. Oh! It was so good. It was a traditional style, with white potatoes and celery and onion and hard-boiled eggs. There’s not a written recipe for it, but I always think of her whenever I make a bowl.

In the summertime especially, it just seems right to keep a bowl of potato salad (and coleslaw, to me they always go together) around to enjoy. I love it when Av gets outside with the grill and makes us some nice snapper or steak or lamb chops. He makes the hot food, and I make the cold food.

I noticed the other day that the website for Big Bob Gibson’s in Decatur, AL has their recipe (just click on ‘recipes’ after the cute flash animation) for potato salad – theirs is nice and really different, because they add their white chicken sauce to it – it’s probably my favorite restaurant-served potato salad. I had all the ingredients for it already, so I made a big bowl of it this week with just some very small changes.

BTW, you can buy white sauce online at their site if it’s not carried at your grocery store.

Ingredients:
3lb. red potatoes (this recipe makes enough for eight or ten servings)
4 hard-boiled eggs, diced as large or small as you like
3/4 c. Mayonnaise
1/3 c. Sweet Pickle Relish (I use Wickles – it’s sweet and hot)
White Onion (I used a nice sweet Vidalia) – dice the whole onion, add as much as you like
1/4 c. Big Bob Gibson White BBQ Sauce
1 tbsp seasoning and dry rub (I used a creole seasoning – Tony Chacheres)
1/8 tsp celery seed
salt and pepper

Directions:
First, wash the potatoes thoroughly and dice into bite-size pieces (which, for the size potatoes I bought, was about four pieces/potato). Add the potato pieces to salted, boiling water. Let boil for about 15 minutes until tender but not mushy. Drain and let cool some (you can speed this up by running cold water over the potatoes in the colander).

Add the potatoes to a large mixing bowl. To this bowl, add the diced hard-boiled eggs and the onion. I added about half the onion at this point, reserving the rest to see if I needed to add any more of them later.

Add dry seasoning and celery seed. Mix well.
Once it’s mixed well, you can get an idea of how much mayonnaise and white sauce you’ll need. Add about half of each and mix, then continue to add more until you have the right consistency.
Add salt and pepper to taste, and add any more onion if you like.

Refrigerate so it’s nice and cold for when you want to serve it. It turned out really great!

Sheraton Tel Aviv Hotel and Towers, Tel Aviv, Israel

I think the last time we were in Tel Aviv, we stayed at the Renaissance, but this time we tried the Sheraton. Both are on the beach – actually, I think all the hotels that say they are ‘on the beach’ are actually across the street from the beach. This hotel was fine, and we were upgraded to the club level. See how the beds are singles? This is very, very common in Israel (I won’t go into why just now) but the beds are always on wheels so you can just move them together.

Here’s the view from our balcony:


The hotel was nice, but isn’t one of my favorites. I think next time we’re in Tel Aviv we’ll try the Dan.

Wingate Inn, Atlanta (Buckhead)

Our trip to Atlanta was with a group of other people, and so all our reservations were made for the Wingate Inn in Buckhead. I don’t think we’ve ever stayed at a Wingate before.

It wasn’t bad. In fact, the room was pretty large, and I liked the floors especially. The bed was very comfortable.
Wingate Inn, Atlanta GA

The hotel is right on Piedmont Road, so the location is good. It wouldn’t be my pick for another stay in Atlanta because there are some really great hotels there (we stayed at the Westin Buckhead a couple of years ago that was nice…and I really want to try the R-C and the Four Seasons there), but it wasn’t bad at all.

Kinetic Art, and our 1864 Flying Spy Automata

One of Av’s professors from high school opened a rare and first edition bookstore a few years ago, and inside amongst all the books, he featured a couple of kinetic sculptures on the walls. They really fascinated me, because I’d never seen anything like them – they were beautiful and calming and….just one of those things to just hang around to watch for a while.

The artist – David C. Roy – who made those pieces, has his website here.

(updated with a new video:)

I also really like Tom Haney’s artwork – he makes these really original pieces that move or dance with pushes of a simple lever. I’ve seen him at a few shows, and he’s always really good about showing everyone how everything works, etc. Very nice. He’s going to be at Kentuck later this year.

A company in the UK sells these very simple kits to make animated pieces from paper – some of them are *so* cute!

About four years ago, Av and I purchased this piece from Bud and Suzi Richards (from Springville, AL) at the Bluff Park Art Show. It represents a 1864 report that Bud found about a spying soldier during the War who was wearing a flying contraption. It was the first automata piece they’d made, and we didn’t waste any time getting it.
1864 Flying Spy Automata