Riddle me this…

Holy broken yoke batman, I don’t get it, do you?

What’s up with our money. If ya listen to the t.v. lately, and I’m keeping mine off more and more these days, you would think we are about to have a repeat of the great depression. I’m having a hard time buying it, pun intended.

We are told of all the failures of huge businesses, of banks going under, of foreclosures on homes and how tuff times are all round. But, I look around and I see my banks is still standing, I have no problem finding a store selling what I need and the foreclosures in my hood are the folks who bit off more then they could chew, they are just letting the house and note go and moving on.

Last year I sold 53 paintings and filled orders for 37 pieces of custom furniture. This years numbers are better then last and that’s been the trend with my business for the last 12 years. Growing every year. Airplanes are full, I know this for a fact. Everyone I know has a cell phone, as do their kids. Computers and t.v.’s in every room, in every house. Cable t.v. and video games everywhere. Cars, every family has two, hell my next door neighbor purchased a second, brand new truck, a ski boat. a big ass motorcycle and all kinds of electronic gadgets this year, so far, the years not over.

So what am I missing here? Why the scare tactics? Must be some reason the media wants us to think we’re in such bad shape, but I don’t buy it. And I’m bout to party like it 1969. Join me won’t you?

Oh, did mention that every dog has a bone?

Fried Turkey- BIG WILLIE Style

My good buddy Big Willie likes to cook and he plans on frying a bunch of 10 pound turkeys this holiday season. Big Willie knows I have all the equipment to deep fry turkeys, so he ask me if he could practice at our house last night. NO, NO, NO. Don’t worry this is not a tragic story of how we burned the house down. No, Big Willie and I have big brains and know better. All went well, we did it far away from the house and turned the fire off while dunking the turkey in the 400 degree oil. Once it’s settled and frying away you just relight the burner and let her go for about 30 minutes. Everyone down south knows how to fry a turkey, right?

What blew me away was the dry rub Big Willie came up with. First of all I did not think a dry rub would work with a deep fry. I thought it would all wash off when submerged. Wrong, if you get the rub inside and under the skin real well it will work fine. This was the cool part, Big Willies Rub.

Take 40 bay leaves, lucky my Mom gave me a laurel plant years ago and it is thriving today. You also use a few tablespoons of a Cajun rub. some oregano, thyme and black peppercorns. So Big Willie put all this into my coffee grinder and pulsed it into a course rub. It smelled great, I love bay leaf and use it often, but it’s always a mild additive to the recipe. Not this time, it was the main ingredient and it worked great. The turkey was juicy and definitely took on the flavor of the rub. Try it sometime or meet me in Mobile for Thanksgiving, I plan on frying a few.

talk of the town

Sunday we enjoyed “A Day in the Country” with the ladies culinary group Les Dames Escoffier. That’s the name given to the 8th annual event held in South Fulton county at Serenbe. This fundraiser brings together foodies from all over the metro area for an afternoon of food, music, wine, beer and fellowship. The money raised is used to send a young lady to culinary school. This is how the day went.

At one o’clock the fun begins. You are handed a wine glass upon entering the first tent, there are three, and a wine distributor will be near by ready to pour you a glass of champagne. At which point you look up and see all your friends, seems like we knew everyone. There are thirtyfive or so chefs, about ten wine distributors and two or three breweries. They are all set up under two of the tents and they are each serving a taste of a dish they prepared especially for today. You were able to taste thirty or forty wines, ports or sparkling wines. Sweetwater, 5 seasons and one other brewery were pouring beers.

The third tent held the items for the silent auction and the twenty cakes for the cake raffle. The cake raffle is cool. There are twenty cakes and they are made by local restaurants, bakers or a Dame. Each cake is truly a work of art and to win one is awesome. Raffle tickets are $5 each or $20 for a arms length. For $20 the young lady stretches the tickets down your arm and tears the tickets at your wrist, we usually get about twenty tickets this way. The items for the the auction were things like art, wine, dinners etc. This is the piece of art I donated for the auction. It is the third year I have donated a piece of art for this fundraiser.



So we ate and drank, we visited with all our friends and ate and drank.

The Souths gonna do it Again

A comment on a previous post read like this, it was in response to the post “Have YA Heard the News”.

“Yes we can, and yes we DID!
Hope beats fear every time.
Here’s to the new horizons for America.”

Well I wish that was the case. Maybe some of the larger, more forward thinking cities in the south are part of the “new horizons for America”, but the south in general voted out of fear. Fear of a man with a strange name and a skin tone that didn’t match their skin tone. Fear was sold all through out this election, from both sides. On one side you had a guy telling you that you should fear four more years of the same stupid, criminal, lying, cheating, stealing son of a bitches running this country. Fear was in order after the display of abuse of power the current administration showed us. Bush, Cheny, all their lawyers and the heads of their staff should be prosecuted for the way they stomped on the constitution. It was out of control and they did nothing to help this nation, they were working for the betterment of themselves and the huge private companies with the money behind them.

From the other side you heard about all the questionable connections Obama had with terrorist. And how dare him say he would talk to any head of any nation anytime. WHAT? He’s gonna talk to other leaders instead of blowing their people and their country to pieces? Now that’s a man to fear. And that name, how can you trust a man named Barack Hussein Obama.

But the south did it again, southern counties that voted more heavily Republican this year than in 2004 tended to be poorer, less educated and whiter, I found this fact in The New York Times. We let fear dictate. We are more worried about a mans name and skin color then we are about staying stupid and poor, I don’t get it. Maybe I’m stupid.

This all kind of goes to the post from yesterday. I hope the black community I live in will not fear me, or hate me just because I’m white. Stacey was very upset the day the fellow dancing in the street singing “Obama, Obama” blatantly said, your white, you’re not supposed to be in my neighborhood and if you don’t buy my pie get the hell out of here. She was also quite shaken when the man in the Kroger parking lot ran into her car and then asked her “you must have forgot where you are”. It happens all the time, but these displays were really mean and in her face.

So I want all the southern people to vote smart, vote for the right person and not just the white person. And I want the black folks to be nice to us white folks living in your community. We are there because we want to be there. We want to get to know you, we want you to know us. I personally want you to invite me over for dinner and share all you old family recipes with me.

what the fuck?

This is some of the bullshit Stacey experienced in the last couple weeks.

She went to the Kroger grocery store next to Greenbriar Mall, on the south side of Atlanta. This is the part of town we have lived in for about ten years. She was in the parking lot, in her car, in front of the front doors of the store. A fellow in a pickup truck stopped in front of her and proceeded to get into a conversation with someone on the sidewalk. Stacey decided to go around the truck and when she did and was just about around the guy he accelerated into the back end of her car. Stacey stopped, got out of her car and looked at the guy and turned hers hands up as if to say “what the fuck?”. Well the guy driving the truck jumped out and the first thing out of his mouth was “you must have forgot where you are”, as if she was far from home in a place few white folks choose to go.

Then a couple days later she was just a block away from the same Kroger, near the Greenbriar Mall, stopped at red light when one of the Rev. Farrakhan’s disciples approached her and ask if she would like to buy a bean pie. No thanks Stacey told the guy and he asked her “are you serious?” She told him she didn’t want a pie. The guy got mad with Stacey and started to tell her how the black folks had suffered for years, had been oppressed. Wanted to know why she didn’t want to buy a bean pie. Stacey said she just didn’t want a bean pie, thank you very much. So the fella went to the cars on either side of Stacey and was turned down by each one. He told each person, thanks have a nice day. So as he walked towards Stacey’s car again he started a little dance and chanted Obama, Obama, Obama, Obama. When he got back near Stacey she asked him why he gave her such grief but told the two ladies who also didn’t want his pie, “thanks and have a nice day”? She said maybe she was for Obama as well, how did he know? He just danced off chanting Obama, oba……..

Then a few days later Stacey was working out with the Boot Camp class at her local gym. It’s early in the morning and it’s chilly. They are all outside running when Stacey hears someone shout “hey white girl ain’t you cold”. This was probably no big deal to Stacey, she has been going to this gym a long time and knows everyone and knew this lady intended no harm. But some of the other ladies quickly jumped up and said you can’t say that. They didn’t care if she was kidding, ya can’t say it, no way, no how. That was cool, and like I said the lady didn’t mean no harm, she just forgot Stacey’s name.

So everyone involved in each of these moments of, of, of what? I don’t even know how to phrase it. What is it? I just don’t know. But it’s a big ugly white elephant in the room and we gotta find a way to discuss it and not come off as racist. Everyone involved, except Stacey, was a black person.

Have Ya Heard the News?

I ask, HAVE YA HEARD THE NEWS?

People said it would never happen, people said I’ll never live to see this day. They said we couldn’t make it. But, they were all wrong and now all across America folks are celebrating this day. Hell the whole world is celebrating this day.

Now I just want to say, “I told ya so”. And I did, I’ve always known we would make it one day. It hasn’t been easy, but on the other hand it hasn’t been that difficult either. It’s been a long time coming, we waited, we hoped, we worked together to make it happened because we believed. We believed in each other and we believed our love would carry us through. To the other side, to a better place. But now that we here, now that it’s all clear, we see we have been “here” the whole time. We look back and we see the “getting there” is what it’s all about. What we have grown into is what we are, what we have always been. Which is Stacey and Tracy so in love with each other that life is like a walk in the park. A very nice park!

Happy 20th Anniversary to us!

Frank Stanford

Frank Stanford shot himself in the heart three times with a .22 caliber hand gun. It was June 3rd, 1978 and he was only 29 years old. I learned of Stanford a couple weeks ago on a trip to Fayetteville, Ar. There was a weekend long festival to be held in his honor and I read about it, and him for the first time in the local paper.

Why a festival for him you ask ? Because the man was a wordsmith and he wrote with a mighty pen. Poetry mostly. Not your typical poems of rhymes and stanzas. His best known work is a one line poem that is 549 pages long. It is believed he started this poem when he was a teenager in the 60’s, working on it til completion in 1975. He wrote the entire piece by hand and it was originally 1000 pages long. THE BATTLEFIELD WHERE THE MOON SAYS I LOVE YOU is the title.

I read the newspaper article about the festival, about the man, and I was very interested. Frank Stanford, and his poem, The Battlefield where the Moon says I Love You, sounded right up my alley. I ordered the book and upon receiving it I knew I was gonna enjoy it, for many years to come. One of the first things that struck me was the way he use the dialect, the voice of the African Americans who worked for his father on the levees in Mississippi and Arkansas. Some writers are very good at getting the voice of the characters of a book just right, Stanford nailed it with this poem. The poem is told in the voice of a 12 year old kid. It’s obvious Stanford is the kid and that as a kid he spent a lot of time with the crew that worked for his Dad. It’s a fascinating read and full of imagery that is easy to grasp. I wish I could have stayed for the week and checked out the festival.

I have read a lot about Stanford and the Battlefield poem since learning of him. Everything I have read seems evident when you start reading the poem. It’s all true, you can pick the book up, open it to any page and just “get it” right away. It also seems, as I read somewhere, that the poem was in line with the civil rights movement of the time. It goes on and on about what he witnessed as a young man and what he knows to be right and wrong about all he witnessed. And the dialect, the beautiful way he captured the voice of the down and out, of the old black ladies that took care of him when he was a small child, the angry black man and his attitude towards the white man who was trying to hold him back. I’m sure some of it was fiction, but I know a lot was first hand knowledge. The names of the people in the poem are the names of the men he grew up with. There is a short film about Stanford, it’s called IT WASN’T A DREAM, IT WAS A FLOOD. In the film you meet some of these men, same names as in the poem. Baby Gauge, O.Z., Charlie B. Lemon, they all worked for Stanford’s dad and had a huge impact on the young Stanford’s writing.

I feel like I really discovered something here. A real jewel if you will. The south has plenty of great writers, but it’s not often you come across something like this. Something that’s there for the taking, a nice neat package of a mans life and his work, ready to be consumed by anyone interested.