NMissCommentor

The photo above, by Eli Williams for the Oxford Enterprise, of Hal Neilson leaving his arraignment.

Paul Quinn has a story about the Hal Neilson arraignment in yesterday’s Oxford Enterprise and the reports about whether or not he was a whistleblower.  Paul has talked to a lot of different camps– defense lawyers from the Scruggs case, folks inside the US attorneys office, etc., and has lots of interesting (if inconclusive) datapoints.

The story is on the Oxford Enterprise website (no permalinks, so it will be gone on Sunday next), which on my browser (Firefox on a Mac) comes up looking very strange. Looks ok in Safari.  Anyhow, here’s the story:

The case surrounding FBI agent Phillip Halbert “Hal” Neilson is shaping up to be a politically charged one, as allegations fly about a troubled relationship between Neilson and recently retired U.S. Attorney Jim Greenlee that had gone on for years in the Northern District of Mississippi.

Neilson pleaded not guilty Monday to a five-count indictment alleging that he concealed his ownership in the FBI building that he supervised and lied on financial disclosure documents he was required to fill out yearly. There wasn’t an empty seat in the small courtroom on the second floor of the U.S. District Courthouse.

Continue reading Paul Quinn on Hal Neilson arraignment and whistleblower allegations

My daughter, Sarah Simonson, had a movie in the Oxford Film Festival this weekend.  It’s called “Dinner on the Grounds: A Soul Reviving Feast,” is about 17 minutes long, and is about traditions involving dinners for all-day sacred harp sings, decoration days, and memorial days in Mississippi and Alabama.  Here it is on Vimeo; if you click through to the Vimeo link you can also see her short piece on William Faulkner and Phil Stone.  Watch for the picture of the little girl standing on a gravestone; that’s my wife Joyce.

Lately, I’ve been enjoying the food site Food52, which is a project of Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs, who both write for the NY Times .  Among other things, they are using the site to put together a cookbook through a year of contests of reader-submitted recipes, with both readers and the authors selecting best recipes every week.  This week, one of their contests is various kinds of porridge, savory and sweet, and so I decided to submit my recipe for grillades and grits.

In addition to my daughter’s film, I especially liked “I Am A Man” and “Mississippi Queen.”  Also quite good were “Weedle’s Groove” and “D Tour”

By sheer coincidence, I ended up watching documentaries only, and saw eight of them.  I enjoyed everything, but found the five just mentioned particularly good.

“I’m A Man” was about the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike (the one Martin Luther King arrived to help, when he was killed).  It focused on the sanitation workers themselves, to great effect.

“Mississippi Queen” was a documentary memoir by a woman who grew up in a Baptist family in Clinton and realized in high school she was gay. Her mother later founded an “ex-gay” ministry– one focused on “converting” gays.  The movie was remarkable in its sensitivity to essentially every point of view of subject in the film, letting everyone say their piece and the audience draw its conclusions.  The distinct impression was that the filmmaker used this as a way of communicating with her parents.

“Wheedle’s Groove” was about the soul scene in Seatle, and was a fun look at a minor soul scene.  I was intrigued enough to buy the cd compilation that inspired the documentary.

“D Tour” was about a musician– the drummer in the band Rogue Wave– who, as his band was taking off, had to deal with the fact that he was on dialisis and awaiting a kidney transplant.  It was intensely and genuninely emotional, with some startling narrative turns.

Seeing eight documentaries means I saw only a small fraction of the whole festival– I missed the narrative, animation, and lots else.  But, as noted, I enjoyed what I saw.

From here on: Tell me what you liked in this year’s Oxford Film Festival.

The Commercial Appeal has an interesting review of Al-Rayan, a Yemeni restaurant in Memphis on Cleveland just north of Poplar (that would be near Saigon Le and several decent ethnic markets).   Beyond food that intrigues me– a sort of Mid-East-meets-Ethiopian– there’s also quite an international mix in the kitchen: The article says that the owner, with roots in Yemen and Ethiopia, cooks with two of her friends, one from Mexico and one from Iraq.  The review describes a warming stew…

… called selta — or salta, depending on which menu you’re reading. The robust stew, which Al-Rayan owner Hindi Nahwi makes with lamb and potatoes, is a traditional dish of Yemen, and arrives bubbling in a black clay pot. Combine it with a cup of the hot Arabic sweet tea, steeped in cardamom and cloves, and you’ve set a standard for winter comfort food.

It all comes together at Al-Rayan in Midtown: Saudi-reared owner Hindi Nahwi has roots in Yemen, Ethiopia; her coworkers are from Iraq and Mexico.

Or, if you’re not a meat-eater, have the lentil soup, which arrives in a clay pot as the selta does, and looks like a mini-pool of bubbling lava. Nahwi blends vermicelli noodles with the lentil broth; you add the hot sauce. Two versions are offered, a red and a green chile. The green chile is perfectly balanced with garlic, tomato and parsley.

There’s a weekday lunch buffet, and the prices are very low.

Campbell Robertson writes:

There was a vote here last month. It was hard-fought, with dueling newspaper advertisements and yard signs, tableside debates in restaurants, a prayer rally and a fusillade of last-minute phone calls.

But only one side could win, and the victory was a historic one: in a couple of months, a person will be able to buy a beer legally here in William Faulkner’s birthplace for the first time in more than 50 years.

The story includes some history of prohibition in Mississippi, with quotes from William Faulkner’s flier advocating the legalization of beer in Oxford:

Mississippi, the first state to ratify Prohibition, has a peculiar history when it comes to temperance. Liquor was banned here long after federal Prohibition was repealed in 1933, under an arrangement that pleased everyone: the Baptists, the bootleggers and the state, which, curiously enough, levied taxes on illegal alcohol.

That came to an end in 1966, not long after the sheriff in the state capital, Jackson, raided the annual Junior League Mardi Gras ball at the Jackson Country Club, breaking open the liquor cabinet and carting off the Champagne before a startled crowd of blue bloods and high-ranking state officials.

A few months later, the Legislature passed a bill allowing counties and municipalities to opt out of prohibition. More than a third of the state is still dry.  ….

In the summer of 1950, Faulkner, who was born in New Albany in a house that sat on the corner of Cleveland and Jefferson Streets, lobbied hard for an ordinance allowing beer in Oxford, which sits in the next county. The Faulkner family had moved there when he was young.

According to Joseph Blotner’s “Faulkner: A Biography,” Faulkner distributed a broadside around town criticizing the ministers who had lined up in opposition, condemning them as meddling in civic affairs.

“Yours for a freer Oxford,” wrote Faulkner, who had a long history of drinking binges, “where publicans can be law-abiding publicans six days a week and ministers of God can be ministers of God all seven days in the week.”

First, watch this space for a post with some serious c-r-a-z-i-n-e-s-s (well, at least allegations of serious craziness) from notorious Louisiana ex-lawyer Ashton O’Dwyer.  Second, open thread.

I’ve been remiss for not drawing attention to the Oxford Film Festival, particularly since my daughter, Sarah Simonson, has a documentary short film in the festival!

I recommend going to see Dinner on the Grounds, at 11:15 tomorrow (Saturday) morning. That’s Sarah’s film.  It’s a documentary about traditions of “all day suppers and dinner on the grounds,” including sacred harp sings, decoration day, and a tradition in Natchez (sadly, now prohibited by the Veteran’s Administration National Park Service) going back over a hundred years in which folks in the Black community would parade to and then picnic in the Civil War cemetery to commemorate the memory of the Black Union Troops buried there.  The park service thought the picnic was not respectful! Later, I’ll update this to include a link to the film on Visio.

There’s a lot else–e.g. a documentary by Mary Warner and Joe York about Thacker Mountain Radio.

I’ll be there.

Emily Wagster Pettus of the AP has noted the title of an actual bill before the Mississippi legislature:

AN ACT TO REQUIRE THE MISSISSIPPI COMMISSION ON WILDLIFE, FISHERIES AND PARKS TO ESTABLISH A SPECIAL HUNTING SEASON FOR TERMINALLY ILL YOUTH UNDER THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSES.

Mainly I’m not commenting because Anderson beat me to the best comment:  “is Barbour behind this? Because it might just be another way to reduce Medicaid costs.”  H/t Anderson and Will Bardwell.

I’m going to do a giant pot of chicken and sausage gumbo for a party Sunday.  Not sure what else to go with it…

What’s on at other parties?