“Just make stuff.  Just quit your job or whatever you hate doing, and make stuff, damnit.” Amos Kennedy

A Q&A with photographer Magdalena Sole.

I wrote a post in 2008 likening the Mexican Day of the Dead celebration to the southern tradition of Decoration Day (now known as Memorial Day). My friend Bobbye was the first person to tell me about Decoration Day and she shared the history of the tradition  from the cleaning of the graves to the church services and dinner of the ground:

“The families arrived early Sunday morning to place the flowers on the graves before Church services began. The Mother was a walking ‘oral Historian’ and she could identify every grave. Many of the Mothers would bring baskets of flowers from their gardens. She and the children would place flowers on forgotten graves .Then the whole family would file into the church building and fill up a whole row. Sometimes, there would be as many as five generations on a given row. Flowers would be given to the oldest mother and the youngest mother in attendance. Also, there were flowers for the mother that had the most children and for the mother that had the most children in attendance with her.”

So much of this has changed but Bobbye remains my personal oral historian for her own family history, the state of Alabama and the entire south.

Thank you.

I went to the Mississippi Delta once with my cousin Jessica. We drove from St. Louis to New Orleans on the Great River Road. In Clarksdale we went to visit with Rat who runs the Riverside Hotel – the place where Bessie Smith is rumored to have died after a car crash and being denied access to a white hospital for treatment. This story has been a matter of dispute, but when we were there in 2001 Rat still had the room done up as a tribute to Bessie. I don’t know if Rat is still around but he told us: “If you want to find Rat, he’s down by the river.” That’s where I’d start.

The Devil’s Music: The Life and Blues of Bessie Smith is playing now at St. Luke’s Theater. Click here for tickets.

Last night, the James Beard Foundation held its annual awards ceremony in New York City. This morning, I woke up to a wonderful piece about one of the winners, Jones Bar-B-Q Diner, on the CBS This Morning. I also logged onto Facebook to find many of my southern friends (mainly the Alabamians) bragging on the winners from their region.

Traditionally Slow Design has these six components (defined by the slow lab project) 

1. Reveal:  Slow design reveals spaces and experiences in everyday life that are often missed or forgotten, including the materials and processes that can easily be overlooked in an artifact’s existence or creation.

2. Expand: Slow design considers the real and potential “expressions” of artifacts and environments beyond their perceived functionality, physical attributes and lifespans.

3. Reflect: Slowly-designed artifacts and environments induce contemplation and ‘reflective consumption.’ 

4. Engage: Slow design processes are “open source” and collaborative, relying on sharing, co-operation and transparency of information so that designs may continue to evolve into the future.

5. Participate: Slow design encourages people to become active participants in the design process, embracing ideas of conviviality and exchange to foster social accountability and enhance communities.

6. Evolve: Slow design recognizes that richer experiences can emerge from the dynamic maturation of artifacts and environments over time. Looking beyond the needs and circumstances of the present day, Slow Design processes and outcomes become agents of both preservation and transformation.

He works out of a magnificently converted historic building in downtown Tuscumbia and he lives on a small farm with his wife and four children.

I’ve been in conversation for the past few weeks with a friend who grew up in the Mississippi Delta about the fallout from everything that occurred there during the 60s and 70s and where the Delta is now. I don’t know that there will ever come a day when race is not a hot button topic in America. It’s either the pink elephant in the room or a snarling divisive pit bull. We don’t often get a chance to engage in productive conversation about what happened then, what’s happening now and how to move forward together.

With his film, Booker’s Place, Raymond DeFelitta gives us that chance.

On the Tribeca Film site, William Goldberg writes: “In 1965, documentary filmmaker Frank DeFelitta traveled to Mississippi to shoot a film on the subject of racism in the American South. As he went about observing life in Mississippi and interviewing the locals, Frank was introduced to an African-American waiter named Booker Wright. With utter candor and a brazen lack of concern for his own well-being, Booker appeared on tape in the documentary and spoke openly and honestly about the realities of living in a racist society. This brief interview forever changed the lives of Booker and his family, and more than 40 years later, Frank’s son Raymond DeFelitta (director of City Island) returns to the site of his father’s film to examine the repercussions of this fateful interview.” (source)

Mr. DeFelitta answered some poignant questions for Southernist about his trip to Mississippi, what he found there, and the experience of making this film:

Booker’s Place is now available on-demand and is playing at Noho 7 in Los Angeles, CA and opens at Quad Cinema in New York, NY tomorrow.

 5 Tips for Living the Doo-Life:

1. creative-financing/ FAITH- the doo -dream, work hard at everything, expect nothing . gifts come to you …. not money . but shared moments . some spare bucks thrown in… ,

birds find seeds . so do we. jesus by c.m.l.

2. doing -the doo – is kinda like the hillbilly way of the doo it yourself repair kit for life. …barn raising … people pitch in . lead by example.

3.creative-resources- well, this is a curse and a blessing . live off the waste . and turn back the clock at the same time. we find our materials in junk piles , yard sales and gifts from people who see us drive an art car …and think. they might need this , and we doo.