Hotlanta

Last weekend we took a quick car ride over to Atlanta to visit some friends. We were only there for a day, but had a blast. Stops included 3 restaurants with really good food, the amazing Dekalb farmer's market (a gigantic, international wholesale market with everything), and the Atlanta art museum. That's kind of all we had time for.

Some highlights from the Museum:

The Folk Art collection was great. This was Sam's favorite piece, called A Friend in Need Is a Friend Indeed, by Henry Church, 1888: dog defending man protecting lamb. Made out of sandstone.

Three Ways to Send a Message: Telephone, Telegram, Tell-a-Woman. Elijah Pierce, 1941.

Let me introduce you to Horse. He is made mostly of bottle caps. Mr. Imagination, 2009.

Howard Finster, Shakespeare, and Satan.

The special exhibit was on Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. This was my favorite in the exhibition, done by Kahlo:

And some other highlights:

This one I like to call Little Sam:

finney's sandwich shop, tupelo

We made a quick trip yesterday to Tupelo, about an hour north of here. Though Tupelo's claim to fame is that it's the birthplace of Elvis, we didn't really get to see any Elvis stuff, except for the hardware store where Elvis' mom bought him a guitar. We did, however, stop at Finney's Sandwich shop on the way out of town, which was a treat. Their motto is 'Not Fancy, Just Plain Good.' The mashed potato salad and strawberry shake were particularly noteworthy.

my home

I found this at an estate sale last weekend here in Starkville. It's a loose-leaf notebook full of magazine cuttings and notes about the future home of a girl named Maxine, all done as part of a school project -- I'm sure for a Home Ec class or something similar. There are some other school papers inside that date it to around 1938.

The magazine cuttings are all great, but I really love all of Maxine's notes. It's interesting that she refers to particular rooms and features of the house as her own ('My house'; 'My kitchen'). And I like how she really knows what she wants, as well as what she doesn't want: 'A sunny breakfast room. The linoleum spoils the effect.' We've been actively looking for a home since we got here, so all of the planning and daydreaming involved in this resonates. I do not have my own home binder, but this might get me to start one.

"Kitchen storage space is desirable." Tell me about it. I can't fit half our plates into the cupboards of our current kitchen.

"I like the arrangement and the breakfast nook. Could be very attractive with a different color scheme." and "A sunny breakfast room. The linoleum spoils the effect."

"Arrangement and furniture of a bedroom in my house" (presumably for her sub-deb daughter). "However I wouldn't use quite so much red." I would have to agree.

"My dining room" and "Arrangement of windows, fireplace, and furniture in my living room"

"I like the bathroom and would like to have it in my house with modifications" and "Too elaborate for a bathroom."

The ads on back of the cuttings are pretty amazing, too. Of COURSE she wants to clean house!

"Audrey did not like Tim's habit of pinching her ear. She did not want to be one of her husband's habits. She wanted to be loved." Poor Audrey. You can just barely see Tim's hand on her ear in the picture. Creepy.

Though, alas, the house where the estate sale was didn't really resemble any of the pictures in here, there is one happy note: Maxine got an A+ on the project. Her teacher wrote that it was 'neat' and 'well copied.'

winter at noxubee

'Winter' is relative here. It was a glorious 60 degrees outside today, and with the sun shining, all I needed was a light sweater.

There were a ridiculously large number of birds this morning at Noxubee, and they were creating a very great ruckus. I need to study up on my bird identification, but I think I saw mostly herons, egrets, wood ducks, cormorants, ibises, and a couple of bald eagles. I don't have a telephoto lens, so I couldn't get very good close-ups, but I did manage to catch a couple of guys who ventured towards me. The cardinal was a very curious little fellow -- he followed me along the trail for a while before flying off.

oxford american

I recently ordered a subscription to the Oxford American, and I absolutely love it. The magazine was born in 1989 in Oxford, Miss, and runs stories about Southern literature, music, news, and all sorts of other random stuff. Every year they come out with a Southern music issue; this year's focused on music in Louisiana and came with a mix tape (actually, CD) with 21 songs, including Cajun accordion music from the early 80s (Octa Clark), an amazing zydeco song from the 50s called 'Bon Ton Roula' (Clarence Garlow), and 'Look What You're Doin' to Me (ooh-wee, baby)' by Professor Longhair (that's him on the cover). What a name.