Southern Sundays

I love it when Sunday morning last til about 8:30 or 9 p.m. I like to start those days with a large plate of grits and eggs, bacon, toast, jelly and juice. Read the New York Times and maybe something else. Watch t.v. or a movie and end the day with a large plate of eggs Benedict. I haven’t had a day like that in a while. I am due. Been working way to many hours.

I finished the tailgate cocktail table. I built the undercarriage and painted it black. I distressed that and put a protective clear coat on next. I sanded and cleaned the part of the tailgate to be the surface. I painted the word FORD on it and distressed that once it dried. I then clear coated the top a few times. Here’s a photo. Remember you can click on photo and enlarge it. Then you will see the licences plate is Alabama and from 1959.

I am also working on a large order for a bakery/deli. I am building a bread unit, about 23′ of counter top made from antique pine and 17 table tops 24 ” square. These are for the lunch and coffee area and will also be made from antique pine. Finished with paste wax. The counter top will have to be finished with something more durable. This is a fun job. Big stuff, the bread unit is about 10′ wide and 8′ tall. A metalsmith will finish the unit out with steel. I will take photos.

JK

I’m not sure where I ran across a copy of Talk Stories, I think it was in the airport. I am sure that I noticed the authors name as someone who had written for the New Yorker Magazine. By the the time I was getting the New Yorker in the mail Jamaica Kincaid wrote full length pieces and not very often. But I remembered her name. She had written a piece about gardening. I think it was about a seed catalog that she used.

Anyway I found this book and found a beautiful voice. Talk Stories is a book of 77 short pieces that Jamaica Kincaid wrote for the New Yorker column, “Talk Of The Town”. She wrote the column from 1974 til ‘83. I love the way she wrote these columns. It was almost as if you were reading a list, a list written by a very good writer. At the time she began writing Talk of the Town, I think she was just starting to write. So this is how she cut her teeth, learned her chops if you will.

I had been reading the New Yorker and the Talk column for years before I found her book. Looking back, not one other Talk writer was able to do what she did for that column. She made the most mundane events, political rallies and such, sound like a fun day in the city. She always wrote in the “we” voice, I don’t know why, maybe she was told to.

I quit taking the New Yorker about a year after the war. I am so tired of hearing about how we botched that effort to hell and back. I guess that is the same reason I don’t listen to NPR’s show Fresh Air as much as I used to. Both of these vehicles were once a great source for information into the arts, science and current events. Not so much these days. I look at it as another casualty of the war.

Anyway if you get the chance check out this book Talk Stories. It’s good stuff.