The new cable-stayed bridge over the Mississippi River in Greenville, Mississippi, which is the 3rd longest bridge span in the United States (and has towers tall enough that, if the statute of liberty were set on the deck, the torch would come to the top of the towers) has opened.  I’m curious to see it.  Here and here is some history of the old bridge, and there’s a picture of the new one and the old one below.  The old bridge, which is apparently a hazard to navigation, will be torn down now.

William Grimes obit for Barry Hannah in the New York Times is well worth reading.  Check it out.

At 5:00 (in about 10 minutes), Sid Salter is going to have Curtis Wilkie and some other guy from Oxford on the phone talking about Barry Hannah on Mississippi Supertalk Radio.

The Eagle has reported this.  The Oxford Conference of the Book this weekend centers around his work.

Jerry Mitchell has started a blog, devoted to his investigative work about civil rights era murderers who are still alive and not prosecuted.  His latest series of posts describe four individuals, still living, who he believes participated in the 1964 killings of Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman (here, here, and here, particularly), and sets forth the evidence of their participation.  He describes how he decided to start a blog in the first post.

h/t Sam Hall’s blog.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I mentioned that I got a knife for Christmas made by a local blacksmith that I was going to have to learn to use.  The knife was made by Andy Waller, a blacksmith here in Oxford.  There had been a blacksmith here in Oxford named Mr. Hall, who’d had a shop on Tyler Avenue, the alley running down from South Lamar, in a space behind both what was once the Gin and what was once Murfs.  He opened the shop after returning from shoeing horses for the Army in Texas during WWI; he’d been a blacksmith since before that, learning where he’d grown up in Ripley.  When I was in high school and college, I would go and hang out in his shop, where Mr. Hall welcomed any visitors.  Andy bought Mr. Hall’s anvil and other tools when Mr. Hall finally retired in the late 70s, and has them in his blacksmith’s shop out where he lives on an old section line road near College Hill.  The anvil is pictured below in Andy’s shop.

Sometime in the Fall at a local craft show, I saw a beautiful knife that Andy had made.  As did Mr. Hall, Andy begins with automobile spring steel.  The knife looked to me to be a great kitchen tool, and just simply a beautiful thing.  I didn’t buy it, but instead asked Andy to make me a pairing knife.  And, on Christmas, my wife gave me the knife I’d admired.

Here’s the pair.  Andy made a sheath for the knife I’d originally seen, which I didn’t initially think I’d need, but my knife block is full in my knife drawer, and it turns out to be a handy way to take care of it.

Here’s a closer picture of the deer bone handle he made (the handle on the paring knife is Osage orange or bois d’arc wood, which I liked getting because Mr. Hall favored that for knife handles) .  These pictures do not do justice to the knives.

Both knives have thicker blades than I’m accustomed.  What that means at least with the larger one is that it’s just a different tool to be used in a slightly different way.  It slices extremely steadily and straight– it’s ideal for anything that needs a long cut in a straight line.  It’s nice and sharp and makes quick work of chopping vegetables.  The blade is too thick for it to be a carving knife.  I’ve used the paring knife slightly less but like it a great deal, too.