Deep Fried Kudzu

In the Crystal Springs, Mississippi cemetery, a monument so endearing that Walker Evans photographed it in 1935. These images are from my visit in 2023.

Benson Mott Lockwood was a doctor who died early: he was born in 1870 and passed away in 1896. He’d attended the Beaumont Medical College of St. Louis and his father and grandfather were doctors as well. His great-grandfather had been a judge and was a soldier in the Revolutionary War.

It’s said that everywhere Benson went, so did his dog.

The 1891 here is for the date he married Eunice Miller. Their son, also named Benson, was born in 1894 and died in 1907 after he fell off or was kicked by a horse.

The summer of 2023, I got to finally visit the Eudora Welty House and Garden in Jackson, Mississippi.

Keeping things as Eudora had, there were stacks of books here and there, taking advantage of flat spaces.

Here, pieces of her typewritten works, which she’d…

arrange and re-arrange with sewing pins:

Many weeks I attend the Welty at-home bookclub, and you can register to read along and discuss with us here.

On our trip to Maine this summer, EF, Brent, and I drove past Holy Cross Catholic Church in South Portland, and the mural on the front was striking. It turns out parishioners didn’t love it at first and even had a tree planted to hide it; then in 2020, the tree was taken down.

Artist John Laberge was commissioned to create the piece, and the steel-and-ceramic mural was installed in 1980. This interview with him is helpful. In part:

Here he is, he’s on the verge of dying, on the verge of letting go — and he’s nailed on the cross. He’s in extreme pain. For people to think that should be a pretty Christ — they really [don’t get] the whole idea of crucifixion…

…The committee I worked with said they did not want a pretty aesthete. They wanted a working-class Christ, a regular Joe. The original [committee] and myself were satisfied with the final product but I didn’t give it an A+ — but as it stands, and lasts longer and longer, my admiration for it grows. 

Brent and I made a visit to The Broad in Los Angeles this summer — a big treat was getting to experience Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room, which they let you enter alone (or in very small groups if you prefer) for just one minute, with a purchased ticket. From The Broad:

Yayoi Kusama’s immersive installation Infinity Mirrored Room—The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away (2013) is a mirrored room with LED lights that you can physically enter for up to one minute.

“Infinity Mirrored Room + General Admission” tickets include access to Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirrored Room and our third floor galleries, which include:

Takashi Murakami Featured Installation
Jean-Michel Basquiat Expansive Presentation
Andy Warhol Expansive Presentation
Roy Lichtenstein Expansive Presentation

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Lots of Jeff Koons pieces in the collection

I’ve seen Koons’ Tulips twice now — the other time was at the Wynn Hotel in Las Vegas:

There are five Tulips installations total: the others are outside the Guggenheim Bilbao, at the Fondazione Prada in Milan, and one owned by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation (so in Kyiv, maybe).

The Bouquet of Tulips in Paris is larger than these and serves as a memorial.

Koons’ Balloon Dog (Blue)

Michael Jackson and Bubbles

and they had pieces that didn’t feel SO Jeff Koons, like this of Buster Keaton:

The museum’s description of this piece:

Jim Beam — J.B. Turner Train was the centerpiece of Jeff Koons’s gallery debut of the Luxury and Degradation series. The works focus on the discord between the marketing of alcohol as a luxury product associated with leisure, sex, and sophistication, and the often destructive, ugly, and unintended effects of drinking to excess. The outside appearance and promise of something are in opposition to its interior life and meaning. Cast in stainless steel, each of the seven train cars holds a fifth of bourbon. Koons takes Jim Beam’s collectible decanter train set and turns what the company promoted as a rare collectible object into a truly rare luxury object: an artwork. Inside, however, is the same common spirit available at every liquor store.

Lots of Warhol.

Single Elvis

Twenty Jackies

Ed Ruscha:

Ellsworth Kelly’s Green Blue Red:

A good amount of Basquiat too, including:

Some people were *loving* the Robert Therrien Under the Table, but for whatever reason it just felt like it should have been at the Ashley Furniture HQ. Just not the biggest Therrien fan (it’s me, I like minis better.) — but if you are, The Broad is having a special exhibit of his works going on right now.

Barbara Kruger

Cindy Sherman

Takashi Murakami, Clone X x Takashi Murakami – Astronaut

Jenny Holzer – Thorax

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BTW the Jeff Koons Porcelain Series exhibit at the Gagosian in NY closes February 28 and I’d love to see his Kissing Lovers piece — still thinking of how terrific the Chris Antemann: An Occasional Craving exhibit at Dixon Gallery and Gardens in Memphis was last year.

Praise be, we’re not losing slugburger restaurants, we’re gaining them.

 

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Catfish Springs (which started as a bbq restaurant a couple or so years ago) in Tuscumbia, Alabama is selling them — so they’d be maybe the newest restaurant in the region to include slugburgers.

Hugh Baby’s — pictured above — which started in Nashville and now has offers slugburgers on Fridays only.

And I just noticed that Emmymade has been making these on her videos for years and so many people in the comments jump to: “so these are just fried slices of meatloaf?” Which, absolutely not! But now that I think about it, kinda? Minus the egg and whatnot and stuff on top, I guess, if ground beef and a filler makes you think meatloaf…

Explanation of a slugburger on the menu at Borroum’s in Corinth MS

The 38th annual Slugburger Festival was held in July in Corinth MS.

Joey Chestnut won the eating contest in 2017 with 35 slugburgers in ten minutes.

Now my hometown place, The Busy Bee — I used to watch them take a scoop from a bucket on a barstool and put them in the oil — this is 2009 before a tornado forced them to rebuild. Not the most elegant way to make food, right? But this is how it was done there forever…

Brent says that in Arab, Alabama, his parents would have slugurgers — “Frank Green burgers” — at the Arab Sandwich Shop. Cullman used to have not only the Busy Bee for this these, but they were so popular we had our own C.F. Penn’s for a while too. The only Penn’s open now is the one in Decatur, Alabama.

He’s a believer in going heavy on the cayenne.

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…and of course there’s the map I’ve made of slugburger restaurants too. xoxo!

The NYT has a sweet article about the world’s largest (which they call tiny) museum of aprons, in Iuka, Mississippi.

Where Do Aprons Go to Retire? A Tiny Museum in Mississippi.
For nearly two decades, Carolyn and Henry Terry have amassed the world’s largest collection of domestic armor.

A few visitors have walked in and promptly left, or come reluctantly and stayed for hours. One man walked in, gazed up and burst into tears. “That apron looked like my mother’s,” he said.

If you can summon memories of your great- or grandmother sporting an apron those are likely some powerful recollections.

Maybe one of the most famous apron-wearers has to be Julia Child — though hers were so understated. She donated her Cambridge kitchen to the Smithsonian in 2001. Pics from my 2019 visit:

My friend Mary Abigail gave me this apron several years ago — different Jewish holidays on one side and Shabbat on the other. I’ve never seen or heard of one like it: