Feb/March 09 | 

Below the Line, February and March 2009

Goings-on in the South and beyond

Alabama Ursa Major
Who plays God? Well, best of all, George Burns with his godly cigar. Burns’s God had a blindingly cool sense of humor and was the kind of fella you felt you could ring up with a serious question after a couple of bourbons on a Wednesday night. But in Alabama, God would be the football icon in the black-and-white houndstooth short brim, Paul W. “Bear” Bryant. The Bear was a martial deity, as befits the state. He led the wars every fall for a couple of hundred years, seems like, racking up six national championships and thirteen SEC titles as coach at the University of Alabama. Now through February 15, Montgomery’s Alabama Shakespeare Festival will be staging Bear Country, a full-length bio-play on the gridiron legend by Michael Vigilant, at the Carolyn Blount Theatre. As the ursine god himself once said, “Tough times don’t last, but tough people do.” Watch an interview with the playwright.

Arkansas Bugging Out
The sow bug is hardly one of the more attractive creatures in the world. Technically a crustacean, it looks pretty much like a leggier aquatic version of a roly-poly. But to Arkansas fly fishermen, it’s sacred, as it provides one of the predominant food sources (and fly patterns) for trout in the state’s tailwaters. And trout in Arkansas are no joke. In fact, the current world-record brown trout—a 40-lb., 4-oz. behemoth—came from the Little Red River near Heber Springs. The North Arkansas Fly Fishers, a local nonprofit, gives the sow bug its due each spring with the Sowbug Roundup, a three-day get-together for fly tyers of all stripes. Taking place March 19–21 in Mountain Home, the event draws upwards of one hundred fly-tying experts from around the country, plus a few European tyers, and in this casual setting, you’re welcome to pull up a seat right across the table from them for an impromptu lesson.
northarkansasflyfisher.org

Florida Eco-Soothsayer
Marjory Stoneman Douglas staved off the flood. Or more accurately, she allowed the nourishing tidal flood in the Everglades to continue as it should, a remarkable gift to us all. What she staved off was the flood of early South Florida development in the mid-twentieth century. Her 1947 book, The Everglades: River of Grass, spawned a large part of the twentieth century’s environmental movement, and if we read her closely, we understand the various water-flow sins that the Army Corps of Engineers is now trying to undo. In February, Jack E. Davis puts forth the first comprehensive biography of Stoneman Douglas, An Everglades Providence (University of Georgia Press). For any fan of the preservation of any wilderness, the book explores how Stoneman Douglas recognized the aquatic one right under our noses.
ugapress.uga.edu

Georgia The Other Ulysses
Atlanta’s High Museum of Art is one of the South’s cultural lodestones, drawing masterpieces from the world’s best museums, as it did with the recent exhibition from the Louvre. A most rare exhibit that the High curators have painstakingly negotiated is the retrospective of wood carvings from the late self-taught Savannah master sculptor Ulysses Davis, the reclusive folk genius and barber who preferred not to sell his pieces. The phantasmagoric and brightly colored carvings include African flora and fauna, busts of forty presidents, and what the High calls his “fantasy” work, two series of sculptures titled Created Beasts and Creatures from Another Planet. Just pack up and go. The show runs until April 5. high.org

Kentucky Something in the Water
Nowhere on Earth—except perhaps in Tennessee or Scotland—do the people care quite as much about their spirits as in the noble state of Kentucky. They say it’s in the mineralogy of the water. In 2006, three passionate, craftsmanly Lexingtonians—Frank Marino, Jeff Wiseman, and Pete Wright—came up with the idea of renting part of the old Pepper Distillery to do some serious micro distilling. More than two years later—just in time for Lent, when we’re supposed to give this kind of stuff up—the first of four products from the newly christened Barrel House Distillery will hit the market: Pure Blue Vodka. Part of the proceeds of each bottle of Barrel House’s products goes to the building of Town Branch Trail, the trail through the famous springs and creeks that supplied the magical water for Lexington’s first distilleries. barrelhousedistillery.com

Louisiana Party Krewe
Mardi Gras is ubiquitous. It’s held in some form from Venice to São Paulo to Mobile, Alabama, where it was first run in the States. But nowhere is it more present or more meaningful in its place than in New Orleans. In New Orleans, of course, you can do a lot in the weeks leading up to it, and you can get into a bag load of trouble on the day, as thousands do. But we suggest that this year you get your ya-yas out on Lundi Gras, or Fat Monday, February 23, for the parade of Harry Connick Jr.’s superkrewe, Orpheus, dedicated to Greek mythology’s most celebrated poet and musician. Connick founded the krewe in 1993 with his father, Harry Sr., and musician Sonny Borey. Connick envisioned Orpheus as open to everybody—it was the first krewe to admit women—so people literally joined by the hundreds. By the second year, they had seven hundred riders, establishing themselves as a superkrewe. The parade traditionally runs down St. Charles and Canal, ending at the infamous Convention Center, where the krewe’s eponymous public ball, Orpheuscapade, goes until the wee hours. Tons of musicians, local and not, show up to jam with Connick, and the music lives up to the krewe’s name: It’s celestial.
kreweoforpheus.net