Written by Kathy Potts

When Ramey management apprised the agency of our relocation options in 2008, the group made it no further than the location boasting “rooftop access”.  Forget cost per square footage; visions sprang immediately of cool late-afternoon soirees and a Fondren perch to observe those less fortunate souls below with no such perks.

At least that was my vision.  Turns out other ideas were spawned reflecting the diverse nature of the shop that is Ramey.

A traffic manager saw a rooftop urban garden.  We formed a group sharing that interest and have produced quite a bounty of heat-loving flowers and vegetables … but mostly banana peppers.

Our musically inclined, of which there are many, saw it as a venue resulting in a variety of sessions with local musicians.  One particularly lively night ended with the Delta Mountain Boys treating us to hours, beyond their agreement, of bluegrass delights and a shared bottle of bourbon.

Our more competitive set immediately jumped into action creating a space for win-at-all-cost corn hole. (Come to think of it, there has not been a game in quite a while due to some unattended ill will.)

However, the best times on the Ramey Roof have been spontaneous.  Releasing a leftover “wish lantern” with clients at the end of a productive day embedded a fond memory for all. On any given (cooler) day, you might find a group enjoying lunch or having an update on a creative project.  However, I have personally noticed that, yes, late afternoon will bring a gathering to enjoy a cold beverage while perching to watch those without perks below.

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

I’ve always thought the phrase comfort food as utterly redundant, and anyone who’s spent a modest amount of time around me can testify to my love of all things edible. But Keifer’s is, to me, extra comfortable food. Before I lived in Jackson, I knew about Keifer’s. Coming to visit friends or volunteering a week at Camp Bratton-Green just north of Canton, Kiefer’s was a place I could always count on seeing while in town. While I was a Millsaps student, the restaurant offered a nearby escape from the bubble of academia and non-academia that filled so much of my time. Few things are better than a table on the restaurant’s wraparound porch. Add to that hypothetical table a group of friends, several plates of food, a few pitchers of beer, and the carefree laughter that a good meal can produce. Keifer’s was my first experience with humus, and I had never seen fries quite like their cottage fries.

And the feta dressing.

The Feta Dressing.

I fancy myself proficient in the kitchen, but I’ve never been able to recreate that stuff. Friends who have moved away from town wax poetic about dunking their cottage fries in it. I’ve even handed a container of the salty ambrosia, on ice, off to a former Jacksonian living in Birmingham as I drove through to Atlanta.

When I heard that the house the restaurant was in was being torn down to make way for The Belhaven building, I was a little concerned. Despite assurances from the staff that the new building would be almost identical, I was still unconvinced that the new digs would have the same raffish charm of the old place. As is often the case, I was wrong. The new location, literally across the street from its predecessor, is almost a mirror image of the old one with a few improvements. It’s easier to move around, for one, and I’m not worried that my girth will be too much for the old hardwood floors. It’s a touch cleaner, but still comfortable. Kind of like an old high school friend whom you haven’t seen in years, Keifer’s is still the same, if a bit more mature. And if you see me there, on the porch with a smear of feta dressing in my beard, hand me a napkin.

Written by Jamie

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

Jim PathFinder Ewing has written six books, published in English, French, German, Russian and Japanese. His latest is “Conscious Food: Sustainable Growing, Spiritual Eating” (Findhorn Press, 2012). His next book — about which he is mysteriously silent — is scheduled to be released in Spring, 2015. Find him on Facebook, join him on Twitter @EdiblePrayers, or see his website,www.blueskywaters.com

In the photo, it’s called Old Tavern on George Street, but folks of a certain age – those who first listened to the Beatles when they debuted on the Ed Sullivan Show – remember it as George Street Grocery. A lot of schemes were hatched in the back of that bar back in the 1970s and early 1980s. 

Not many people remember that there used to be a framed plaque on the wall next to a round table at the very back that read in gold: “Capital Press Corps.” That’s where a handful of journalists used to retire after work and have drinks with various movers and shakers, including legislators, judges, even former and sitting governors on occasion – all “off the record.” It was a great way to find out what was really going on and why. The rule was: We couldn’t quote anything we heard at that table; but if we found out about it elsewhere, it was fair game.

I doubt that goes on much anymore in Mississippi (fraternizing between journalists and public officials, or even between public officials of different parties). There’s a Capital Press Corps that still meets, convened by the Stennis Center, but I doubt they even know who the founders were — or where, why, when or for what reason they met. Last time I went to one of the Stennis meetings, I had to invite myself and they didn’t know who I was. Everybody looked very serious and, well, sober. The meeting was orderly and on the record.

Back then was more fun.

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

As one of Lemuria’s youngest employees, I am just now entering my second year of college at Millsaps, which means I have ALL the freshman stories, but I think I’ll keep the majority to myself until that elusive diploma rests safely in my hands. And while I do not have any personal experiences or stories to share about Millsaps’ observatory (which is featured in our upcoming book about Jackson), I do have many of the campus itself. Back when I was in high school (so, forever ago) I went through the typical teenage struggles of deciding which college I should attend after graduation. In short, which campus would be right for me? Then I made my list of pros and cons, visited the other college I was considering, made some revisions to that list until the only thing left I had to do was visit Millsaps’ campus; on which I found a swing bench by one of the dorms, sheltered by trees. That’s when I decided Millsaps was the right choice. I could see myself on that bench reading after class, relaxing…which I did (for about a week) until I realized that I needed to spend some quality time with my homework. But do I regret my choice? NEVER! And since I chose to stay in Jackson that means I not only get to continue working at Lemuria but I also get to go to all the other cool places shown in our book. So there.

Written by Elizabeth

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

My memories of downtown are firmly rooted in the Mayflower and all the other buildings’ locations are, in my head, in relation to the Mayflower. This is was the go-to place for my family to go out to eat until I was in my teens. Now, a few words about how my family eats:

There are rules to eating, like if we go to a new place I will not allow anyone to order the same thing (you have to try as much of the menu as possible). Each family member has a quirk but all of them pale in comparison to rule #1, my mother’s rule: if shrimp are ordered, they MUST be eaten. This was non-negotiable and established in large part because of how good the shrimp are at Mayflower.

We ate there so much we cultivated usuals. Mine was crab bisque and fried shrimp. We knew all the staff, and more importantly they knew they couldn’t take any of the plates away while they still had shrimp on them. Seriously, I was forced to eat shrimp cold-green-beans style, choking them down so we could pay the check and leave. I went back there because I saw the photos in this book. The usual still tasted as good as I remember. I finished all the shrimp.

Written by Daniel

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

The Mississippi State Fair is dynamic: loud and quiet; simple and gaudy; here and gone. And this dynamism trickles down to the individual, too. During my childhood, the fair meant a day trip up from Hattiesburg and falling asleep on the return trip down Highway 49. As a Millsaps student, it was a distraction from whatever paper was due the next day. Now, as a parent, it’s something entirely different.

My son’s daycare closes so their staff can attend the annual Mississippi Early Childhood Association conference, and for the past three years, this has coincided with the opening week of the Fair. Since I had to take off a day of work to stay with him, and I love corn dogs, the Fair seemed a logical way to spend part of our day. He was two during our first outing, and he didn’t last too long; it was chilly that October, and the petting zoo kind of freaked him out. But each subsequent year, he’s enjoyed it more.

The next year he rode the carousel with me in tow till the both of us were nearly laid out with vertigo. Last year he rode his first ride alone: a kiddie roller coaster shaped like a cartoonish centipede whose track waved a lazy oval. Wanting something a bit faster, he and I did a few tandem trips down the big slide, becoming airborne on the last hump and laughing like . . . well, like a dad and his 4-year-old. No longer afraid of the petting zoo, he cackled and made up an impromptu song as the goats nibbled carrot chips from his hand.

For my son, the Fair means ice cream, funnel cakes and rides. Right now, it means a day with dad. Sooner than I’d like to think, it’ll be a place where he goes with his friends, shunning his goofy dad’s presence as teenagers are supposed to do. I hope that the Fair will mean nostalgia for him as he treads through memories with fondness similar to mine. The rides he’ll ride will be bigger, faster, more fun, more dangerous. For him, the Fair will be an ever-increasing whirling blur of excitement and screams and light, just like when he was growing up. But for me, part of the Fair will always be me sitting on a square of burlap, my kid locked between my knees as we zip down the fiberglass slide, our laughter trailing behind us.

Written by Jamie

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

You may have noticed a recent trend on Lemuria’s blog, that trend being us shouting our love for the city of Jackson from the rooftops. If you don’t already know, Lemuria is publishing a book about our great capital city! Jackson: Photographs by Ken Murphy is a collection of all of the things that we think make this place so incredible and worth sticking around for. All of us here at the store have been working on blogs about what makes Jackson special for each of us personally, but we want to hear from you, too!

I’m sending out a call to arms, a call for you to help us yell and holler until we’re hoarse about how this city is more than statistics, more than its past, and full of the possibility for a bright present and future. I need you to write a few paragraphs about what makes Jackson special to you personally and send it in to me so that I can put it up on our blog. You guys are the reason that Lemuria exists, and your voices are so, so important to us. So crack those knuckles, sit down with that cup of coffee, and tell me why you love this place. Let’s share it with the world.

Please email all entries to hannah@lemuriabooks.com

Written by Hannah

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!

“In order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes” –Roland Barthes

There is something to be said for an image haunting you; the photograph that reemerges again and again in your mind’s eye. Nine months ago, I met Ken Murphy at the Apothecary behind Brent’s Drugs to photograph the bar. I dimmed the lights, set the fruit in color-coordinated pyramids, lit some candles. Thirty minutes later the image of that back room was in the camera, the lenses back in their cases, the tripod folded. Even though I was standing next to Ken when the shutter stopped down, seeing the photograph in its final form—plate 100 of the Jackson book—was startling. It wasn’t at all how I remembered the bar that night.

Nine months of stirring and shaking  drinks have enlivened the space since the photo was snapped. The walls have more stories to tell, the marble bar has been rubbed by leaning elbows, the wood is a bit more worn. Roland Barthes’ reflection on photography, Camera Lucida, explores the somewhat magical qualities of still images—the vibrancy with which a photograph captures a moment the duration of a fraction of a second. Time holds its breath for the shutter. He writes, “the Photograph does not call up the past…The effect it produces upon me is not to restore what has been abolished (by time, by distance) but to attest that what I see has indeed existed.” (82)

This book is a marker. On these pages, the evolving and living city of Jackson holds its breath. Behind each closed door, someone is waiting to walk through.

Written by Adie

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 on August 5th at 5:00 in Banner Hall!