Buzzards signal needed action for MIC

Mississippi Industrial College's Carnegie Hall and (left) Washington Hall. 

Ever since I lived in Holly Springs, Miss. In the 1970s I’ve been fascinated by the fading beauty of Mississippi Industrial College. When I passed by last week, near dark, two things immediately caught my eye.

Catherine Hall, one of the front campus residence halls, had been taken down. According to Rust College spokesman Adrienne Phillips, “It was unsafe, and we were afraid it would collapse.” Rust College purchased the property in 2008.

Buzzards look down from the roof of Washington Hall. 

The second attention getter was that the rooflines of the two remaining prominent buildings were lined with vultures!  Around here we call them buzzards. I kicked myself for not having a camera, so I returned about the same time of day this week, and there they were, looking down with arrogance as I walked quietly around the grounds of the vacant college.

A group of black vultures gather around Washington's chimney. 

In case you aren’t familiar with Mississippi Industrial College (MIC), it is located on the West side of Highway 7, across the road from Rust College. It was established in 1905 as a private college for African American students. It closed in 1982 after enrollment declined with the integration of local community colleges in the late 1960s.

The beauty of those original structures is magnificent. Carnegie Hall, the main auditorium and gathering place, was built in 1923 with funding from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation.  Carnegie, as well as Washington Hall which served as the administration building, were examples of Jacobean and Colonial Revival influence.

“We are trying to secure resources so we can shore up these structures until we can find the funding to restore them,” said Phillips.

We need to hurry. Maybe those buzzards are our warning. The buildings are full of decay, broken windows, boarded doors, a belfry that is open to the sky, trees growing from inside the structure and escaping through a window.  

Turkey vultures on their perch.

For more information on MIC, you can visit Preservation in Mississippi’s blog at misspreservation.com or the Rust College website at www.rustcollege.edu.

Cousin Talk

We have this girl cousin routine down to a fine art.  I'm so jealous.  My childhood was filled with older boy cousins. I wasn't a spec on their radar.  My older girl cousins, who I thought were so cool, lived too far away....New York and Virginia.

So now when I get the grandchildren girls who are "7 apiece" as my daddy would say, here is how it goes. When they get in the car, they talk non-stop and giggle all the way to my house. We stop for pizza or cook whatever they want and they eat and compare portion sizes and demand special drinks such as Sprite with orange or cranberry juice and "crunched up ice."

"Do you want to take a bath one at a time or together?"  A collective "TOGETHER!"  That will end soon.  More giggling ensues. They turn on the bubbles in the tub and wash each other's hair using about a cup of shampoo each and wonder why I have a hard time getting the shampoo out.

Then it's off to bed to watch a movie and giggle more. As different as daylight and dark, one goes to sleep easily, the other not so.

My favorite part of the routine is the early morning. I hear them wake up and stomp around a little and then they dive under the covers and talk softly.  Less giggling.  What do you talk about when you are 7? They count missing teeth and discuss whether they are "girly girls or tomboys" and decide they are a mixture of both. I can't hear much from downstairs.  I can only tell it is serious cousin talk.

I call them for breakfast and all gets quiet.  You see, they are still "asleep."

Two Community Reminders!

Just a little reminder to plan to come eat Soup & Spuds with us Sunday, Nov. 11 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Senatobia Community Center.  Proceeds benefit FOSA's Spay/Neuter program.  I can't say enough good things about our local Senatobia-Tate County Animal Shelter (http://stcpets.org).  They do a great job of placing animals in forever homes.  However, we need to educate the public about the need to be responsible pet owners and spay or neuter their pets to avoid unwanted animals.  I adopted Jilly almost three years ago. Someone had turned in two litters of 21 puppies!  Can you imagine. They were all beautiful.  She is such a joy.

Second item of interest:  Sycamore Arts is holding a juried exhibition at the Art Gallery on the Northwest campus. The show is absolutely beautiful! I enjoyed the reception last night with some of my favorite people.  Do yourself a favor and find a time to go.

Bill and Genell Clayton, Nancy Patterson, Terry and Joe Pegram. Genell's New York Beauty quilted wall hanging captured third place in the exhibition.

Three of my favorite people at last night's opening reception for the Sycamore Arts Exhibition on display at Northwest's Art Gallery. (L to R) Lane Tutor, Terry Pegram and Jo Ellen Logan. Tutor and Logan had works in the exhibition.

No words needed from me

Front pasture in Barr

Fall chevron quilt

Soup & Spuds coming Nov. 11

Dogs like this beautiful boxer have a second chance at life, thanks to the efforts of the Senatobia-Tate County Animal Shelter.  Sunday, Nov. 11, interested persons can do their part by enjoying fall meal of Soup & Spuds at the Senatobia Community Center.  Proceeds will go to the Spay and Neuter program sponsored by FOSA, Friends of the Shelter. Plates are $10.

“We have been so successful with our spaghetti or Pasta for Pets lunch in the spring, we thought we’d add a fall event,” said Lynn Resneck, FOSA president. “What would be better on a fall afternoon than loaded baked potatoes and homemade soups?”

The Senatobia Community Center is located on Southern Street.  The lunch Soup & Spuds will be held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. The lunch can be eat-in or take-out. Guests can also pick up a copy of the new FOSA 2013 calendar.

Certified quilt appraiser, historian visits Cotton Treasures

One of Connie Brown's circle quilts

I think I've been watching too many TV shows like "American Pickers" and "Antiques Roadshow."  When I found out that a certified quilt appraiser was coming to Cotton Treasures, I snatched one of my treasures off the wall and unloaded another from a trunk and headed down to see exactly what I had. 

Cotton Treasures in Senatobia hosted a Meet and Greet with American Quilter’s Society Certified Appraiser of Quilted Textiles and professional quilt artist Connie Brown of Asheville, N.C., on Oct. 11.

“Connie showed quilts in her own collection ranging from antique quilts to a few of her recently-made quilts,” said Chantay Rhone, Cotton Treasures owner.

Guests brought antique or vintage quilts to have evaluated. Brown looked at each quilt brought by the guests and answered questions and discussed fabric selection, block name and repair if needed.

Connie inspects my orange Aster quilt.

She looked at mine, one a Grandmother's fan pattern that was a family friendship quilt dated 1939.  It is losing the signatures. Connie told me that if I didn't want to sell or auction it and keep it in the family, I could restore the signatures. What's the quilt worth to me without the signatures?  It is still beautiful, but I want to hand it down bearing the names of those women (including my grandmother, great aunt and cousin who made the quilt) in this small community of Barr.

The other quilt was purchased at an estate sale. I knew nothing about it except that I liked it. The background is orange with what I thought was a Dresden Plate pattern hand appliquéd to the background. She told me it was also from the 1930s and that the pattern was actually Aster.  When I told her what I paid for it, she said I "did good."  I knew I did because I love it. 

Connie shows off one of her art quilts.

Brown, originally from Memphis, lived in Whitehaven and graduated from SBEC (Southern Baptist Educational Center) in 1979.

“My family has always had a place on Sardis Lake, near the Holiday Lodge. I even waited tables there during my high school years,” said Connie.  She attended the University of Mississippi for two years, and her parents—Sam and Pat Griggs—retired to Harmontown in 1985.  Following the death of her father, Brown’s mother remarried, and she and her husband Paul Sherwood live in the same spot on Harmontown Road.

Connie and her husband Ted Brown of Germantown and son Dusty moved to Asheville in 1989.

“In 1990 I took my first quilt class and was hooked,” she said. “I’ve been making quilts ever since.”

Connie became an AQS Certified Appraiser of Quilted Textiles in 2009. Her quilt, Color Cascade can be found in the September 2012 issue of American Quilter magazine.

She is a juried member of Southern Highlands Craft Guild and her quilts have been offered for sale and for viewing at the Folk Art Center in Asheville, N.C.

“If I am known for anything, it is for my circle quilts. I have made variations of the same pattern in many different colors.” She has also done art quilts and other patterns.

Since Brown has family in this area, she returns frequently to Mississippi.

Southern Gold

Tiny Lady Peas with a few baby butter beans mixed in.

Am I the only one who loves Lady Peas?  Have you ever eaten them?  When I was a little girl, my grandmama Dandridge, Ollie May Dupuy Dandridge, would plant them for me every summer. She would say, "Sugar, I planted you some Lady Finger Peas," as she called them. I knew this was an effort for her. She was in her mid-sixties when I was born—the last of the grandchildren.

She still kept her garden, picked it, and sat and shelled those tiny peas until she had a "mess."  My grandmama—that's her there with my grandaddy Dandridge—was barely five feet tall. They were famous in these parts....Barr, Looxahoma, Thyatira.  The entertained guests on Sunday afternoons on the big front porch of their farmhouse. She never learned to drive, but Grandaddy would make the rounds each Sunday morning and gather up area children to go to church.

Cathey Spotswood Dandridge
and Ollie May Dupuy Dandridge

He was quite the country gentleman, always tall and dignified, never wearing a cap or hat.  Mr. Cathey was health conscious in a time when most people ate whatever they grew.  He took afternoon naps in a bathtub of cold water to get his blood circulating.  Probably felt good in that hot old house in a Mississippi summer.  If plumbing or electrical work was to be done it was probably done by Miss Ollie.

Grandmama and Grandaddy left Tate County with their three sons after my grandaddy came back from WWI and was told he had TB and should move to a drier climate. She drove, remember I said she didn't drive, all the way out West with their three boys where they settled in West Texas and later New Mexico.  Daddy said when one of the boys would pop up from the back of the old car, she would swat them back down.  It was a long trip.

When my grandaddy's mother got sick, they returned some 11 years later to run the Dandridge farm here in Barr.  Everyday she fed countless men for lunch—grandaddy, her sons, grandsons and little girl me in the summer.

I never recall her sitting down to eat a meal, but standing at the edge of the table waiting to refill a glass or bring another dish from the kitchen. When they were finished eating, she fed the farm workers and the dogs.

But back to the Lady Peas.  Howard and I had planted them once before.  Last year he tried to get seeds for me and there were none to be found. Olivia gave me a pea cousin for Christmas—Zipper Cream Peas.  They are good, much rounder and much larger.

So this summer, the credit has gone to Howard for putting up with these tiny peas.  You do have to shell for what seems like hours to have a little pot for supper.  To me, those peas are the ultimate Southern delicacy, and Miss Ollie was a true Southern treasure.

Hello little ghost

I'm celebrating the first day of fall.  And no, this is not a snowman, it's a little ghost.  Something about beautiful fall weather, coolness inspires cleaning. I did a major cleaning this morning.  Seems like a waste of good time, but good music made it go faster. I love the way the sun comes in the kitchen window at a little different angle. After washing floors, I washed Silky Terriers and everything else I could find.

Out came the fall decorations.  I know it's a little early for Halloween, but we really don't have many trick or treaters out here in Barr, so I have to create a festive mood for the grandkids, and me. Then celebration continued with more good music, candles in a fall scent and the grand finale,
one of my favorite movies, "You've Got Mail."  I know, I know, a chic flick. But it may be the closest I'll get to New York in the fall.

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth
seeking the successive autumns." -   George Eliot

There's a clock in the trunk

About 1988 or so, Howard gave me a Howard Miller mantle clock.  It was beautiful and chimed on the quarter hours. After we moved to the country, it never really worked well. Maybe the move was too much for it. I put it in a safe place in the back of the closet.

This clock has contributed to one of those family sayings. I think I have told you a snippet of this story before, but I'm telling you again. The day we got the clock, Howard and the little girls dropped me off at the hospital to visit with a dear friend and her mother who was recovering from surgery. After they let me out, they went on down to Poplar Avenue to the clock shop to get my Christmas present.

Hayley must have been about 7, making Olivia 4.  It was raining that day. After they came to get me at the hospital and I climbed in the car, dried myself off and put up my umbrella. Off we went. I didn't know where they had been while I was with my friend.

We stopped at the first red light. I heard Olivia say from the back seat, with all seriousness, "There is a clock in the trunk."  I didn't say a word. Howard smiled.

So anytime we are keeping a Christmas or birthday secret, we say, "There is a clock in the trunk."

Last week when I found it under the closed underneath the stairs, I got it out and looked it over. Still beautiful, but the hands were bent and were missing the little screw that held them in place. After I put it on the mantle it chimed!  It didn't know what time it was, but it chimed.

I called my friend Katie Powers of Katie's Antiques in Independence and asked if her husband could take a look at it.  He did. And today I brought it home and placed it in its rightful place, and it is chiming up a storm.

I was afraid my nervous little Silky Terrier might bark at its lovely sound, but so far so good.
So glad I found my clock in the closet.

Quilter's Trash

I usually put scraps in ziplock bags to use later, but these tiny scraps are just too little. They are so pretty in my white wicker trash basket, that I'm going to have a hard time dumping them.  A coincidence, since the quilt we at Loose Threads are working on is a pineapple quilt from the Trash to Treasures book. We are all looking forward to getting things going in our new location next Thursday, Sept. 6, in our new location at Cotton Treasures in Senatobia. Want to learn more?  Come to this information sharing meeting and see if we are the right quilting group for you.  We are all so excited!