Written, Recorded, and performed by Dr. Steve Smith 

The Jackson Rag from Steve Smith on Vimeo.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. 

Written by Elizabeth Upchurch, owner of Fresh Ink; a stationary and gift store located in Banner Hall in Jackson, Mississippi.

Growing up in a small town in north Mississippi, visiting Jackson was always a special occasion. Granted, this was before you could www your way to having anything you needed (and didn’t) delivered to your doorstep within 2 days. Before all this convenience, visiting a big city like Jackson was a highlight because there were so many things readily accessible. Shopping, restaurants, recreation – there was so much more of it in Jackson than where I was from.  For lack of a better word, everything in Jackson just seemed a little bit “fancier.”

Fancier parties,

fancier dining,

fancier cars,

fancier houses,

fancier neighborhoods,

fancier purses,
fancies shoes…

I suppose I have lived here long enough to now call myself a Jacksonian, but something about the small town girl inside me still feels the need to step up my “fanciness” whenever showcasing our city to locals or visitors. The lovely photographs in the book that is debuting this moth at Lemuria capture perfectly images that made Jackson seem so fancy to me as an outsider.  So when we opened up Banner Hall and Fresh Ink for the book signing party last week, we had to serve one of my favorite fancy party treats – red velvet cake truffles!

Keep in mind as a mother of two school-age children, and business owner, this culinary endeavor is short on time but very long on fanciness.  Enjoy the recipe!

Red Velvet Cake Truffles

1 box of red velvet cake mix, cooked, crumbled, and best dried out and processessed to crumbs.

1 package of cream cheese

1/2 can of vanilla frosting

1 package of white chocolate chips

2 packages of white candy coating (in disposable tray – from Kroger)

I continually over-cook cakes when baking, so this is one of my favorite recipes.  After over-cooking a red-velvet cake, I crumbled the un-usable un-iced layers and threw them in a zip lock in my freezer for several months until they were needed for this recipe. Took the pieces out of the freezer and threw them in my kitchen aid mixer.  Add cream cheese and frosting, and mix until dough-like.

Using a small cookie dough scooper (like a mini-ice cream scoop) make uniform size balls and freeze them on a cookie sheet on wax paper.

Spread out 2 pieces of wax paper when ready to candy-coat.

Melt candy coating in microwave according to package directions.

Your instinct will be to roll the balls in the coating, but that will make a mess.

Instead, drop one of the spheres into the tray, and spoon the melted coating over it.  Then lift the truffle by the sides to the waiting wax paper.

Repeat until complete.

You can make the frozen truffle balls ahead and just roll them in the candy coating the day of.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com.

Written by Ginger Watkins, owner of Hickory Pit BBQ

When I first opened the Hickory Pit, I was 24 years old and no one in my family had ever been in the restaurant business — they thought I was nuts! Friends and family both would ask me all of the time if I was scared… I wasn’t scared at all! I was excited! But who is scared of anything at 24, right? I was too naive to know how hard the restaurant business can be, but determined enough to do what it took to make it work! 

Now, I admit, I’ve learned a lot of things the hard way… and have had some pretty hard knocks along the way! But buying the Hickory Pit in 1979 was the best decision I have ever made in my life. Not only have my customers become dear friends, but as a single mom I was able to raise my children in a fun, lively atmosphere — where their friends wanted to ‘hang out’. My daughter and her friends would pile up in the booths during the afternoon, when it was slow to talk about the day and they would sometimes go ahead and do their homework. One time my son was showing off to his friends (or possibly the girls) and dove off of a table like Superman; which resulted in a concussion!

My goal for the Hickory Pit was, and still is, to provide the best BBQ and the best customer service along with fun times and lasting memories! For 35 years, my customers have created Hickory Pit’s success. I am so proud to have earned three generations of customers… and two generations of employees! I would say success in the restaurant business comes from a LOT of hard work, being true to yourself as well as your customers! 

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619, visit us online at lemuriabooks.com, or stop by the Hickory Pit for a signed copy! 

Written by Justin Showah 

The Crawdad Hole encapsulates Jackson’s soul. When you walk inside the gate, you are greeted by a funky decor — strings of lights and picnic tables surrounded by haphazard pictures of sports and music personalities under tin roofs. A shaded creek runs by the outdoor dining area, and the food is spicy southern goodness you eat with a bunch of friends or family who have wheeled in their own cooler of beer. Y’all are subject to the weather, sitting around fans and firepits, the house supplying cans of bugspray, tiki torches, and citronella candles as darkness eases in. All races, ages, and walks of life commingle around the live music, the good times, and the feeling that you are hanging out at a clubhouse. There are no tablecloths here — heck, there’s not even silverware — you just come as you are, grab a big bowl of crawfish or shrimp, and start peeling.

I was my Dad’s first employee 18 years ago when he started with one crawfish pot in the back storage room of a rundown wooden building and remain amazed to have watched this place blossom from a weekend hobby into the established hangout it is today.  Like Jackson, the Crawdad Hole is unique in the world, and there will never be another place like it. I can’t think of another place I would rather be.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619, visit us online at lemuriabooks.com, or pick up a signed copy at the Crawdad Hole! 

Written by Lee Anne Bryan

There is so much that I love about Jackson—it would fill up a book, not one blog post.  So I will limit myself to the circle that I drive every day, from my house to my job and then back home again.

I am not ashamed to admit that Briarwood Liquor Store is high on this list.  Nathan and Lesley are AWESOME.

THANK YOU GOD FOR WHOLE FOODS!  Not going to lie, this was my missing puzzle piece.  Now that I can get fish and kale for lunch that I didn’t have to cook myself—my life is complete.

St. Andrew’s Lower School.  It has provided our kids with the best start they could possibly have.

Murrah High School.  My first “real” job out of college.  And today has some of the most dedicated English teachers I have ever seen working there.  Go Mustangs!

The Eudora Welty House and Garden, which is my office.  Lots of people talk about a “dream job.”  I actually have one.  I get to walk around in Eudora Welty’s house during the day, telling visitors about her books and her love of reading and her life in Jackson.  I get to show school groups and students what it actually means to EDIT writing—by using Eudora’s drafts of One Writer’s Beginnings with her cut-and-pin method of revision.   Occasionally, I get to take a famous author through the house and be a little star-struck.   But I have to say that my favorite thing about my job is community.   There is a “Welty community” in Jackson, which includes the Eudora Welty Foundation, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Millsaps College, the Belhaven neighborhood, Lemuria Bookstore, and a legion of fans, volunteers, supporters, and great readers.   I am surrounded every day by people who share my love of reading and education and who believe that books and discussion MATTER in the world.

I grew up in Dallas.  Or, as one of my high school friends refers to it, “the land of lipstick.”  And if Dallas had any kind of literary community at all, I never saw it.  It was in my first semester at Millsaps College that Dr. Lorne Fienberg sent us as a class to Lemuria bookstore.   And I fell in love.  (Literally.  I met my husband at Lemuria.  But that’s a blog for another day.)  Between Lemuria, being able to go out at night to C.S.’s in running shoes and cutoffs, the great friends I made at Millsaps, and the fabulous book club we formed as Murrah teachers (which still meets), I found that I was HOME.

And now, twenty plus years later, my family and my job make me happier than I ever thought I could be.

Thanks, Jackson.  You’ve given and continue to give me a great life.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us in celebrating Jackson tonight at 5:00 at the Eudora Welty House and Garden. 

Written by Chase Wynn 

Thank God she didn’t have a Kindle.

She being Eudora Welty, I mean. Have you been to her house? If you’re a reader, you really should. Not just because she was a great writer—and not just in the way you’re imagining. The little white-haired lady who wrote about quaint things like weddings in the Delta and people who lived in post offices? She was so, so much more than that. Read “No Place for You, My Love” sometime, or “The Hitch-Hikers,” or “A Still Moment.” Read “The Burning.”

That’s not why you should visit the house. Come look at her books. She had a lot of them—between five and six thousand in the house when she passed on. They’re everywhere. On shelves, yes, but also stacked on the couches, the tables, the spare beds. I’m told she liked to keep a different book going in every room of the house, so that no matter where she sat down, she could just keep going.

The usual suspects are there—Faulkner, and Proust, and Woolf—but so many others, too. Things I didn’t expect. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. A Confederacy of Dunces. True Grit. And mysteries, mysteries, mysteries. A snobby reader our girl was not.

A man named Tim Parks wrote an article for The New York Review of Books that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, especially when I walk in the Welty house: “The conditions in which we read today are not those of fifty or even thirty years ago… [today] every moment of serious reading has to be fought for.” I don’t mean to sound snarky when I say, “Thank God she didn’t have a Kindle.” This isn’t some sort of anti-tech rant. Heck, you’re reading this on a blog, right? But in a time when serious reading is so hard to do, in a time when you really have to fight for it, it’s nice to walk through her Tudor arch doorway and into a place that feels like a monument not only to a great writer, but to a truly great reader.

It’s the collection of a real reader, too. Yeah, there are some beautiful, leather-bound volumes in there. Mostly, though, there are tattered paperbacks and creased, worn out spines. She read the hell out of those books. She loved them—you can tell.

Come check her out sometime.

The Eudora Welty House will be hosting Ken Murphy for a signing of Jackson: Photographs by Ken Murphy Monday, August 11th @ 5 p.m. The book is also available for purchase at Lemuria (800-366-7619, or online at lemuriabooks.com)

Written by Malcolm White

By the time I moved to Jackson in the spring of 1979, just in time for the Easter Flood, I had already lived in Washington D.C., Los Gatos, California and New Orleans.  I committed to a one year contract for a job offer I simply could not refuse.  My plan was to get a good year’s experience and sock some money away before heading back to NOLA where a job offer to return to my old restaurant team and my idea of southern, global culture awaited. For a lot of reasons and thirty five years later, I’m still here.  If I had to name three, I would say opportunity, love and comfort are the most obvious, but Eudora Welty, Margaret Walker Alexander, William Winter, Willie Morris, Sam Myers, Cassandra Wilson and Charles Evers were a few more.

My best friend Michael Rubenstein made sure I met all the right people and touched all the essential bases in that first year. The music scene was ripe and the community was ready to enjoy a good gathering.  I felt free and empowered, untethered and boundless.  I worked hard and took chances and the climate suited my clothes. And it was home of the great southern, Greek-American “comeback sauce”.

When I presented B.B. King, Mose Allison, John Lee Hooker, Big Joe Williams or Dr. John, Ray Charles or John Prine, people came and supported those shows. I called for a parade and people showed up in costumes, ready to march.  I opened clubs and restaurants and people came to eat and drink.  I met every writer who came to Lemuria or The Book Worm and attended every lecture and concert from Allen Ginsberg at Tougaloo to Ace Cannon at Pop’s Around The Corner to James Brown at the Masonic Lodge.

And when I called my brother Hal in 1985 and told him I had the lease on the old GM&O Freight Depot in downtown, he packed his bags and we started construction on what would become Hal & Mal’s, now 30 years and two generations in the making.  And this place we created, would become the organic gathering place of the Jackson we envisioned, a place to eat local food, to hear traditional music and to celebrate our home, our town, our culture.

Rich, diverse, urban and rural, Jackson is an enigma and an oasis.  “Diddy Wah Diddy”, Willie Dixon would say, “ain’t no town, ain’t no city, just a little place called Diddy Wah Diddy”.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. Please join us and photographer Ken Murphy in celebrating Jackson tonight at 8:00 at Hal and Mal’s. 

Written by Ron Chaney (better known as Chane), who is the creative director of Fondren After 5 and owner of Swell-O-Phonic, Soma, and Studio Chane in Fondren. 

Jackson is in many ways a hidden gem of creativity.  I started realizing this years ago when our store started promoting all-age rock shows.  There were always new bands popping up in an endless fashion.  Today as a shop owner and the creative director of Fondren After 5, I am more certain than ever that there is a growing strength of creatives in Jackson.  I feel Jackson is now a fertile resource  that brings many artists back from other places where many had escaped to learn.  Now many are back bringing knowledge and inspiration from other big cities and the artist revolution is happening – Yes, in Jackson Mississippi.  I am proud to be from here because JXN is now a never-ending supply of the same inspiration that I used to have to chase elsewhere.

Join us tonight at Fondren after 5! We will have tents set up in front of Fondren Corner and Brent’s Drugs. Don’t miss this amazing Jackson event!

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com.