Remembering When the Local Stores were the Center of the Community

A recent addition to our collection is Country Stores of Mississippi by June Davis Davidson, a resident of Mississippi for over 50 years.

Inside is a collection of images, stories and, in some cases, addresses to the country stores that are still open.  Some have become antique stores, restaurants, and even museums but still show signs of their past lives from when they were the cornerstones of their communities.  The stores are grouped by county.  Both entries for Warren County are located in Bovina : Buck's General Store and The Old Store.

Looking through the book, the photographs and stories of the local stores  that have been gathered by Davidson are enjoyable reading as well as an interesting lesson in local history.

Two Beautiful Photography Collections

We don't get a great many photography collections here at the library, but two new collections we have just received are Abandoned America: The Age of Consequences by Matthew Christopher and American Ballads: The Photographs of Marty Stuart edited by Katherine E. Delmez for the First Center for the Visual Arts Vanderbilt University Press. Both of these books contain beautiful photos and brief explanations of the history of the pictures.

In, Abandoned America, the author gives us a glimpse of what happens when man-made structures are left to weather the ravages of time without humans to keep them in top shape. These beautiful and eerie photographs include old schools, hospitals, theaters, factories, and churches. Slowly, everything returns to the Earth. Plaster walls crumble and tumble to the floor. Ceilings cave in and allow the wind and rain to wear down the interior of buildings. Machinery, too, rusts and falls victim to the ravages of weather and time. All manner of creatures come in and make themselves at home in the ruins of once-splendid architecture. As you can see below, these haunted photos give a a glimpse at what a post-human world would look like.

The other book of photographs, American Ballads, is a collection from country music legend, Marty Stuart.

This collection is introduced by Stuart himself. After a brief history of Stuart, his career in music and his love of photography, readers are given three distinct sections of photographs to ogle. The first section is entitled "The Masters" and includes photographs and portraits of some of the most famous names in music; especially Country Music. There are portraits of Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Bill Monroe, George Jones, and Jerry Lee Lewis to name a few.

The next section is called "Blue Line Hotshots" and includes photos of every day folks from all over small-town America. These are the unsung heroes of the truck stops, county fairs, and everyday life in what some call the "fly-over states."

The final section is named "Badlands" and it contains photographs from the native peoples of South Dakota. These photos were taken over many years and many trips to visit the Pine Ridge Reservation and the Lakota.

These photos are sometimes whimsical, sometimes pensive, but all of them evoke the emotion of the subjects being photographed.

A love letter to public libraries told in photographs

New to our Adult Non-Fiction collection, The Public Library : A Photographic Essay by Robert Dawson, is a loving tribute to the many forms that public libraries take all across the United States.

With a foreword by Bill Moyers and an afterword by Ann Patchett along with reflections by Isaac Asimov, Barbara Kingsolver, Anne Lamott, Philip Levine, Dr. Seuss, Charles Simic, Amy Tan, E.B. White and others, the book shows how strongly the presence of libraries has affected not only themselves but also those that they've known and how important they continue to be in this 'information age' where there is an ever-larger amount of information that needs to be sifted through to find the information needed.

Bill Moyer perhaps expressed it best in his foreword when he said, "when a library is open, no matter its size or shape, democracy is open, too."

A view of the Delta and the dogs that live there.

An interesting book we've added to our collection recently is Delta Dogs - a series of photographs by Maude Schuyler Clay, which includes an introduction by Brad Watson and an essay by Beth Ann Fennelly.

But the stars are the combination of the dogs and their surroundings. All the photographs are in sepia tones, showing dogs of nearly every size and shape in fields, by the side of the road, playing in the water and various other doggie activities.  Each of the photographs has a small notation about where the image came from, some very general like 'Field Dogs, Mississippi Delta' and some very specific as 'Dog under the Burrus House, near Benoit'.

The photographer was born in Greenwood, Mississippi and her works are part of the collections of several museums including the Museum of Modern Art.

     Eat Drink Delta by Susan Puckett is a hungry traveler’s journey through the soul of the South.  According to Matt Lee and Ted Lee, authors of The Lee Bros. Simple Fresh Southern Cookbook,  “Finally!  A book devoted entirely to the foodways of Mississippi’s Delta—cradle of the civil rights movement, birthplace of the blues, and a confounding culinary region where stuffed grape leaves cozy up to barbecue, tamales to fried green tomatoes, and kibbeh to lemon ice box pie.  Puckett makes sense of it all—town, by town, kitchen by kitchen, dish by dish—in an engaging travelogue that takes the reader to family-run roadhouses, seasonal tea rooms, postmodern bistros, and out-of-the-way juke joints.  In her sojourns, Puckett charmed the best recipes out of the region’s cooks, making this not only the best insider’s guide to the area but a superb Delta cookbook as well.”

     With colorful photos and interesting writing, this is a great book for an armchair traveler.  And since some of the places mentioned are relatively close, I’d have paper and pen handy to make a list so I can get out of that armchair and give them a try.  There is a chapter on Vicksburg covering the city’s favorites along with some recipes.  Alas, the recipe for the glazed carrots they make at Walnut Hills is not included.   Is your favorite listed?  Check it out and see.