#Central Cumberland Plateau

[sophiologism]

i love the south. the ozarks and ouachitas, the piney woods, southeast texas, the mid-south, the lower delta, cajun country, the cumberland plateau, the deep south, new orleans, central appalachia, the smokies, the piedmont, the gulf coast, chesapeake bay, the south atlantic plain, the outer banks, the carolina beaches, the lowcountry, all of north florida… i just love it here and i love being from here. i love how diverse an area it is with so many different cultural identities and yet we all have solidarity due to common struggles and experiences. it has a lot of issues, and we as southerners have a lot of work to do, but i’ll never give up on us and our home.

[ahye1427]

Lot 80 Long Branch Rd Spencer, TN 38585

Are you looking for a unique community of neighbors? Are you a hiker looking for trails that are close to home? This is a 3.29 AC wooded lot. Long Branch Lakes sits atop the Cumberland Plateau in Central Tennessee. Property boasts Waterfall and Wet Weather Creek running through. It is 3500 acres of Woodlands, Lakes, and Equestrian properties surrounded by 7000 acres of The Bledsoe State Forest and adjacent to Fall Creek Falls State Park. Amenities include fishing, hiking, kayaking, tennis, sports fields, and other outdoor activities. Property owners have access to the equestrian facilities. You will fall in love with this fire-wise community! Don't miss this opportunity to own your slice of heaven! Call Elijah Castelli 931-283-6644 for more details.

[ourcrazyrvlife]

A moody photo of Smith Lake in Arley, Alabama, taken this morning (February 9, 2023)... "Lewis Smith Lake (or Smith Lake) is located in North-Central Alabama about 20 miles northwest of Birmingham in state of Alabama (U.S.) counties of Cullman, Walker and Winston. The 300-foot high dam, completed in 1961 by Alabama Power Company, impounds the Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior River to form the lake. Smith Lake has a surface area of 21,200 acres, 500 miles of shoreline, a watershed area of 944 square miles, a retention time of 435 days, and a maximum depth of 264 feet. The western side of the lake's watershed is crowned by the 180,000-acre Bankhead National Forest, which blankets the deeply dissected southern edge of the Cumberland Plateau. The Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior River, Alabama's only Wild and Scenic River, flows through the Bankhead National Forest. The Sipsey Wilderness, Land of a Thousand Waterfalls, lies within the Bankhead National Forest and is home to Alabama's largest tree, a tulip poplar with a 21-foot circumference at its base." Via https://www.smithlake.info/ #sweethomealabama #rv #rvlife #rvliving #believe #camping #livinginanrv #rvtravel #ourcrazyrvlife #rvfulltime #fulltimerving #Christian #blessings #lifeontheroad #rvadventures #rvlivingfulltime  #rvcamping  #traveltrailerlife #rvcouple #prayer #love #faith #rvlifestyle (at Arley, Alabama) https://www.instagram.com/p/Coc47Ihubtr/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thorsenmark]

A Cave Ceiling Towering Above (Mammoth Cave National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: With this image I wanted to capture the sheer immenseness of the cave around me at this point of the Mammoth Passage Tour.

[autotrails]

American Auto Trail-Cincinnati Lookout Mountain Air-Line Highway (Bitter Creek to Harriman TN)

American Auto Trail-Cincinnati Lookout Mountain Air-Line Highway (Bitter Creek to Harriman TN) https://youtu.be/eqjbL1A_IO4

                      American Auto Trail-Cincinnati Lookout Mountain Air-Line Highway (Bitter Creek to Harriman TN)

In 1921, the Chattanooga Automobile Club organized the Cincinnati Lookout Mountain Air-Line Highway Association.  This route was one hundred miles shorter than the Western Division of the Dixie Highway, connecting Cincinnati with Chattanooga through Somerset, Kentucky.  Attempts…

[cedar-glade]

Meehania cordata

Meehan’s Heart Mint. 

altough associated with core populations in Alleghany plat -Piedmont of the Appalachian Mountains, we see it often in sections of the Red in spots here and there all though the red is part of the ILP and is adjacent to the norther Cumberland plat section of the Appalachian mountains. This species was broken off from the scullcap genera a long time ago, it remains the only species in the genera and often is associated with a unique mesic forest habitat called Allegheny Plateau-Central Appalachian Acidic Seep Forest. Sections along rough trail near Military Wall are rich with this species, as it is, this also happens to be a well known population at the western most section of their range along Martin’s fork in Slade county and unique in it’s geographic placement. 

[fatehbaz]

Biogeography of unique shade-loving, cliff-dwelling French’s shootingstar of the central hardoowds forests of North America, and its isolated presence in Alabama:

Photo 1: French’s Shootingstar - Dodecatheon frenchii - under a sandstone overhang in Shawnee National Forest, southern Illinois. (Source.) Photo 2: A colony of the plant in typical habitat under an overhang at Devil’s Hollow in Cane Creek Canyon Nature Preserve in Alabama. (Source.)

Text from R. Scot Duncan’s Southern Wonder: Alabama’s Surprising Biodiversity:

Within the deep canyons of Little Mountain is found French’s Shootingstar, a lovely little plant whose presence in northwestern Alabama is linked to an ancient coastline. Early each spring, the shootingstar emerges from dormancy and grows low to the ground. By late spring, older plants will develop a thin stalk several inches long on which hang several delicate flowers. At the base of each petal is a strip of deep maroon bordered in yellow, but the rest of the petal is an immaculate white turning pink with age. The flower strongly recurves its petals skyward while aiming its pistil and stamens downward. As the name suggests, the overall display could resemble a meteorite streaking earthward.

However, these shootingstars will never see the sky, for they live exclusively beneath the lip of sandstone overhangs provided by the Cumberland Acidic Cliff and Rockhouse ecosystem. Why the shootingstar lives here is clear: light is so scarce and the soils can be so dry that virtually no other vascular plants vie for this habitat. What’s more, the rockhouse protects the plants from erosion and being smothered by the thick mats of leaf litter accumulating on the forest floor just a few feet away. [...] How rockhouses came to be in [northern Alabama] takes us back to 340 million years ago [...] when [...] the area that is now the Southwestern Appalachians [...] was a shallow tropical sea. [...] Just offshore, sands accumulated as a chain of barrier islands like those along the Gulf Coast. This island chain became a thick rock formation dubbed the Harstelle Sandstone.

The Pride Mountain and Hartselle Sandstone formations breach the surface of northern Alabama in several locales, but nowhere as prominently as in the Little Mountain ecoregion of the Interior Plateau. [...] The dry, sandy soils on the caprock sustain the Southern Interior Low Plateau Dry-Mesic Oak Forest that was once widespread in [the Deep South’s interior plateau region]. [...] The most intriguing ecosystems of Little Mountain occupy the valleys and canyons weaving through these hills. These sheltered slopes harbor another variation of the [the Deep South’s wetter interior mesophytic forests] and hundreds of animals and plants rare elsewhere in the Southeast. Among them are orchids, lilies, azaleas, American Ginseng, Goldenseal, American Columbo, Bosch’s Filmy Fern, Eastern Leatherwood, and Kentucky Yellowood, to name a few. [...] There’s so much plant diversity that plant enthusiasts return to Little Mountain year after year. The rockhouse homes of French’s Shootingstar occupy the steepest slops of Little Mountains canyons. They form because [...] softer and lower rocks of Pride Mountain Formation erode first, while the upper and harder Harstelle Sandstone yields more slowly. These differential rates of erosion create the overhangs. [...]

French’s Shootingstar is known from Arkansas and four Midwestern states, but its presence in Alabama is a biogeographical puzzle. None of Alabama’s neighboring states have populations. What’s more, Alabama’s only population is on Little Mountain, despite the proximity of rockhouses a dozen miles away in the Dissected Plateau ecoregion. For whatever reason, this little plant survives in Alabama thanks to those barrier islands from long, long ago.

The Shooting Star Cliffs of Perry County and Crawford County, Indiana, featuring some ecological communities more similar to Appalachia rather than the “typical” Heartland. (Source.)

[themoosetress]

If any of y’all are in or from central TN/Nashville please let me know if you’re okay!! Could hear the signature tornado train-rumbling thunder from the other side of the Cumberland plateau last night 🙁

[geotourism]

The Great Appalachian Mountain range of the USA and its Geology

Appalachian Mountains range

The Appalachian Mountains range is a series of mountain ranges that stretches from the eastern to the northeastern part of North America. The mountain is on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains. The Appalachian Mountains extend for about 2896 km from the Central Alabama region in the United States to the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. These mountain ranges form a natural boundary between the eastern Coastal Plain and the Interior Lowlands of North America. The range is a popular tourist destination and is home to many ski resorts. The Appalachian Highland is also home to some of the most rugged terrain in the eastern United States and is known for forestry, farming and is home to many different types of wildlife.

Geology of the area

Appalachian Mountain Tectonic Plates are involved in the plate tectonics that makes up the Earth's crust. Mountains are regarded as the oldest mountain chain on the earth. Research revealed that mountains have been formed approximately 480 million years ago during the Ordovician period. At this time, the ancient Iapetus oceanic plate began to subduct beneath the North American Plate, leading to a period of mountain-building, known as Taconic orogeny, which resulted in the formation of the mountains Appalachian. Over the next 250 million years, the region experienced a series of mountain-building processes including the Alleghenian, Acadian, Caledonian, and Hercynian orogenies.

The southern and central regions of the Appalachian Mountains are known for their coal deposits mainly bituminous and anthracite coal. Petroleum, natural gas, and minerals like iron and zinc have also been found in the region.

Appalachian Mountains range has a deeply rugged topography due to fluvial action and Relatively low elevation, reaching its highest point on Mount Mitchell 2,037 m. Pleistocene glaciations evidence has been found in the northern part of the Appalachians, such as the Great Lakes. It is revealed in research that the Appalachians were initially as high as the Alps and the Rocky Mountains, but natural erosion eventually led to a reduction in the height of the mountains.

Sedimentary deposits in the Appalachian Range vary from Paleozoic rocks in the north to metamorphic and granite in the south (Blue Ridge). The features reveal that the Blue Ridge Mountains were formed before the northern part of the Appalachian Range. Appalachian Mountain system can be divided into three large physiographic regions. See the Appalachian Mountains Map.

North Applaiachian mountain stretches from the Newfoundland and Labrador province in Canada to the Hudson River in New York. The mountain ranges which are found in the northern region include the Annieopsquotch Mountains, Long Range Mountains, Chic-Choc Mountains, Green Mountains.

Central Applaiachian mountain

The central region extends from the Hudson valley to the new river which flows through the US states of Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina. The Central section includes the Taconic Mountains, The Great Appalachian Valley, The New York Jersey Highlands, and a Major part of the Blue Ridge Mountain.

South Appalachian mountain range

The southern section includes the Cumberland Plateau, the Ridge and Valley Appalachians, and the rest of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The highest mountain peaks in the southern section of the Appalachians include the peaks of the Black Mountains in North Carolina and the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and North Carolina.

Famous mountain ranges in Applaiachian

Smoky Mountains

The Smoky Mountains consist of Layers of limestone that were added to already existing sedimentation at the beginning of the mountain formations around 300 million years ago. The mountain structures grew to great elevation with the shifting and tilting of the underlying metamorphic rock. Erosion plays important role in the formation of mountains. Most of the rocks in the Smoky Mountains date to the Precambrian Age.

Also read- The Spectacular Niagara Waterfalls and its Geology

Blue Ridge Mountains

The Blue Ridge is of the Appalachian Mountains range remarkably uniform in shape and elevation. The Blue Ridge Mountains have a crystalline foundation and its basement comprises gneiss and schist transformed from volcanic rock. This indicates that volcanic flow may have been partly responsible for the formation of these mountains.

Appalachian mountain trail

The Appalachian Mountain Trail is a 2400 km hiking trail that runs from Georgia to Maine. The Appalachian Mountains are made up of many different types of rocks and are some of the oldest mountains in the world. The Trail is a long and difficult hiking trail and one of the most beautiful trails in the United States.

See more-   Geotourism

[addictionrecoveryassistance]

Detox Centers In Cincinnatus New York 13040

Contents

Cortland works career

States census bureau

Zestimate … nearby schools

… family health

Cincinnatus alcohol rehab centers

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[theperidotshade]

I, uh, never noticed the fact that it’s a Chattanooga news van before now...which means it’s supposed to be very close to where I grew up, holy shit.  I knew it was in TN, obviously, but damn.  TN’s a fairly big state (for context, at 60-70mph, it takes my family on the southern border of TN 45 min to get to Chattanooga, the nearest big city, and 1hr 30min to get to Nashville, the capital and a central-ish city of the state—Memphis, the westernmost city that you’d have heard of, is ~5hrs), but if it’s a Chattanooga station instead of a Nashville one or a Knoxville one, the fictional ‘Rose Hill’ has got to be in the Cumberland Plateau/TN River Valley area.  Which is very rural, sparsely populated, and a weird mixture of deeply impoverished counties and rich Nashvillians’ weekend mountain homes.  Just a bit of context that makes this part of the movie make a little more sense to me.

“He’s not thinking straight”

[auskultu]

Monday, March 27, 1967

As the air war continued, United States pilots shot down the 38th MIG jet over North Vietnam, but enemy gunners in South Vietnam brought down seven American helicopters. During the attack on a supply depot 23 miles west of Hanoi, U.S. pilots said they destroyed three warehouses and set fire to another building.

A mood of anger appears to be spreading along the ridges of the Cumberland plateau, and according to many observers, a sense of militancy is replacing the traditional apathy among the people in the heartland of Appalachian poverty. What some have called the beginning of a “rural revolution" has spread along the Cumberland Mountain range in eastern Kentucky, southwestern Virginia and southern West Virginia. 

Gov. Richard J. Hughes of New Jersey has been named chairman of the Democratic National Committee’s Special Equal Rights Committee, where part of his assignment will be the sensitive political job of drafting a plan to insure fair Negro representation at the Democratic Convention in 1968. 

Republican advisers to George Romney of Michigan are split over whether the Governor should become a hawk or a dove on the issue of Vietnam. At stake in the decision are Mr. Romney’s chances for winning the Presidential nomination and the question of whether the G.O.P. will try to make Vietnam an issue at all in the 1968 election.

From dawn to dusk, a crowd of more than 10,000 wandered through the Sheep Meadow in Central Park for a noisy, chaotic and surrealistic “Be-In.”

[wendyimmiller]

The Okra Illuminati

“Artemis Rat Okra” aka V.E.G. Ham.

Let me introduce Van Eugene Gatewood Ham, a native of Greenville, Mississippi, with a soft spot for okra.

Gene Ham visits Central Kentucky every Thanksgiving to catch up with childhood friends who live nearby. He came to our home last year for a Friday evening party. A small pile of crispy okra seedpods, the color of dried parchment, sitting on the kitchen counter, caught his eye. He recognized the seedpods immediately. I was impressed. Okra seedpods would stump most folks on an ID quiz, even savvy horticulturists.

I asked Gene if he was an okra fan. He held the seed pods tenderly, glanced knowingly, turned serious, and unwound—slowly—“Oh, yeah.”

Gene figured correctly. I love okra, also.

He looked around.

He did not want to be overheard. “Do you have time for a story?” Gene’s a storyteller. He began sketching details about the origins and history of the Knights and United Daughters of Okra.

Where, exactly, any of this story took place, Gene wouldn’t tell me. There were references to Southwest Virginia and the Cumberland Plateau, but who knows?

The outline was a doozy, but pieces were missing. His story was not a tell-all. Gene did not want to betray his brethren and sisterhood.

I’d had second helpings of skillet-fried okra on the brain for months, wondering about Gene’s story, and then I read the wonderful Walks to the Paradise Garden—A Lowdown Southern Odyssey.

Gene’s name was in the book’s acknowledgements—in code!

‘”Artemis Rat Okra” aka V.E.G. Ham.”’

Turns out, Gene was a player in this southern odyssey by virtue of okra, though, no doubt also a participant in conversations about all manner of things, besides okra, among friends and colleagues who were also acknowledged.

Jonathan Williams, the late poet and “provocateur,” laid out the project’s intent in the book’s introduction. “For one thing, most of the people (folk artists) in this book are directly involved with making paradise for themselves in the front yard, the back garden, the parlor, the sun porch, the basement. Making things has been a way to salvage a little dignity from poor and difficult lives.” Later on, Williams wrote clearly and proudly: These are  “visionaries, eccentrics and treasures.”

“Walks in the Paradise Garden, “Williams explains, “is not Kunsthistorichwerk, or criticism, or sociology or anthropology, or camp for the coffee table. It is a collection of outlandish findings by three southern persons, all white and all male. This is something we don’t fret about and hope that you won’t either. May we please both okra-eaters and non-okra-eaters alike!”

Jonathan Williams and photographers Roger Manley and Guy Mendes drove around the south in the 1970s until the early 1990s, attempting to meet and document outsider artists.

The next meal was never far away. There were breakfasts of beaten biscuits and country ham, pecan waffles and grits. (Grits lost ground briefly to polenta in uppity southern restaurants in the 1990s but survived the cultural skirmish.) There were odyssey dinners (lunchtime) and suppers (dinners) with barbecue, catfish, turnip greens, fried chicken, sweet potato casserole and, of course, okra.

The Lowdown Southern Odyssey project lay dormant for years but was not forgotten. Walks in the Paradise Garden was published by Institute 193, this spring, at long last, accompanied by an exhibit at Atlanta’s High Museum.

  Sister Gertrude Morgan in her Everlasting Gospel Revelation Mission, New Orleans, LA, 1974. Guy Mendes photo. Courtesy of the artist and Institute 193.

Back to Gene Ham.

I wrote Gene (he doesn’t use a computer) a few months ago, after I read the wonderful Walks to the Paradise Garden. I hoped Gene would school me on okra and Okra Memorial University. Gene, by the way, is a retired English teacher who lives now in Fayetteville, Tennessee.

A few weeks went by before a finely written letter arrived. “As is typical of other fraternal and sororal orders there are mysteries which can not be revealed…like the nearly lost origins of Free Masons in the distant past.”

One point was clear: “Then, as now, members were bound together by a love of the divine vegetable. Several of the generals were exiles from the deeper south who were greatly dismayed at the absence of okra in local produce markets.”

Gene Ham allowed that Okra Memorial University, and its pop-up satellite affiliates—wherever, or if they were ever—have on occasion, granted degrees that are “chiefly honorary.” Doctorates have been conferred on Wendell Berry, Allen Ginsburg and Ken Kesey in “simple but significant ceremonies over the years.”

  https://www.gardenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Gene-Ham-Roy-Blount-Jr.-Okra-080719.mp3

Listen to Gene Ham recite Roy Blount Jr.’s Song to Okra.

  This is the scantest little I know of the mythic Okra Illuminati.

Good luck if you try to Google The Knights and United Daughters of Okra.

I was in my early 20s before I first tasted okra. I was smitten, and I’ll admit: I have an inherited taste for greasy food. I can’t, however, explain why, or how, delectably, slimy okra had been hidden from me for so many years.

(For anyone willing to explore okra’s history, culture, sociology, recipes (not all greasy), seed strains and, yes, tips on  “mucilaginous” hair conditioner, I recommend, also: The Whole Okra—A Seed to Stem Celebration.)

  Gene Ham likes okra the simple way: boiled with a little bit of butter and black pepper. Or Creole style: fried with okra cut crosswise along with tomatoes, green pepper, onions, and garlic,laid on a bed of rice.

Not everyone can be blessed with Gene Ham’s good taste.

Please, no more okraphobic slurs of cotton’s cousin.

Set your taste buds free.

The Okra Illuminati originally appeared on GardenRant on August 14, 2019.

from Gardening https://www.gardenrant.com/2019/08/the-okra-illuminati.html via http://www.rssmix.com/

[ourcrazyrvlife]

A moody photo of Smith Lake in Arley, Alabama, taken this morning (February 9, 2023)... "Lewis Smith Lake (or Smith Lake) is located in North-Central Alabama about 20 miles northwest of Birmingham in state of Alabama (U.S.) counties of Cullman, Walker and Winston. The 300-foot high dam, completed in 1961 by Alabama Power Company, impounds the Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior River to form the lake. Smith Lake has a surface area of 21,200 acres, 500 miles of shoreline, a watershed area of 944 square miles, a retention time of 435 days, and a maximum depth of 264 feet. The western side of the lake's watershed is crowned by the 180,000-acre Bankhead National Forest, which blankets the deeply dissected southern edge of the Cumberland Plateau. The Sipsey Fork of the Black Warrior River, Alabama's only Wild and Scenic River, flows through the Bankhead National Forest. The Sipsey Wilderness, Land of a Thousand Waterfalls, lies within the Bankhead National Forest and is home to Alabama's largest tree, a tulip poplar with a 21-foot circumference at its base." Via https://www.smithlake.info/ #sweethomealabama #rv #rvlife #rvliving #believe #camping #livinginanrv #rvtravel #ourcrazyrvlife #rvfulltime #fulltimerving #Christian #blessings #lifeontheroad #rvadventures #rvlivingfulltime  #rvcamping  #traveltrailerlife #rvcouple #prayer #love #faith #rvlifestyle https://www.instagram.com/p/CocsceiOS-5/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[thorsenmark]

Rain Fed Water Fall into Mammoth Cave at the Historic Entrance View (Mammoth Cave National Park) by Mark Stevens Via Flickr: A portrait orientation of an image from just inside the main, historic entrance in this part of Mammoth Cave National Park with a view looking to just outside the cave. While most of the images at this point had been with a landscape orientation, I felt a portrait one would best capture that feel of the cave entrance, especially with the waters falling from the top to some nearby rocks a little to my front. I decided to go with a longer exposure in order to bring out more of a milkier look to the falling waters. I then worked with Capture NX2 and used some D-Lighting adjustments to bring out the more shadowed areas without including too much color cast. I later did some work with color control points for the final image seen.

[turfandlawncare]

The Okra Illuminati

“Artemis Rat Okra” aka V.E.G. Ham.

Let me introduce Van Eugene Gatewood Ham, a native of Greenville, Mississippi, with a soft spot for okra.

Gene Ham visits Central Kentucky every Thanksgiving to catch up with childhood friends who live nearby. He came to our home last year for a Friday evening party. A small pile of crispy okra seedpods, the color of dried parchment, sitting on the kitchen counter, caught his eye. He recognized the seedpods immediately. I was impressed. Okra seedpods would stump most folks on an ID quiz, even savvy horticulturists.

I asked Gene if he was an okra fan. He held the seed pods tenderly, glanced knowingly, turned serious, and unwound—slowly—“Oh, yeah.”

Gene figured correctly. I love okra, also.

He looked around.

He did not want to be overheard. “Do you have time for a story?” Gene’s a storyteller. He began sketching details about the origins and history of the Knights and United Daughters of Okra.

Where, exactly, any of this story took place, Gene wouldn’t tell me. There were references to Southwest Virginia and the Cumberland Plateau, but who knows?

The outline was a doozy, but pieces were missing. His story was not a tell-all. Gene did not want to betray his brethren and sisterhood.

I’d had second helpings of skillet-fried okra on the brain for months, wondering about Gene’s story, and then I read the wonderful Walks to the Paradise Garden—A Lowdown Southern Odyssey.

Gene’s name was in the book’s acknowledgements—in code!

‘”Artemis Rat Okra” aka V.E.G. Ham.”’

Turns out, Gene was a player in this southern odyssey by virtue of okra, though, no doubt also a participant in conversations about all manner of things, besides okra, among friends and colleagues who were also acknowledged.

Jonathan Williams, the late poet and “provocateur,” laid out the project’s intent in the book’s introduction. “For one thing, most of the people (folk artists) in this book are directly involved with making paradise for themselves in the front yard, the back garden, the parlor, the sun porch, the basement. Making things has been a way to salvage a little dignity from poor and difficult lives.” Later on, Williams wrote clearly and proudly: These are  “visionaries, eccentrics and treasures.”

“Walks in the Paradise Garden, “Williams explains, “is not Kunsthistorichwerk, or criticism, or sociology or anthropology, or camp for the coffee table. It is a collection of outlandish findings by three southern persons, all white and all male. This is something we don’t fret about and hope that you won’t either. May we please both okra-eaters and non-okra-eaters alike!”

Jonathan Williams and photographers Roger Manley and Guy Mendes drove around the south in the 1970s until the early 1990s, attempting to meet and document outsider artists.

The next meal was never far away. There were breakfasts of beaten biscuits and country ham, pecan waffles and grits. (Grits lost ground briefly to polenta in uppity southern restaurants in the 1990s but survived the cultural skirmish.) There were odyssey dinners (lunchtime) and suppers (dinners) with barbecue, catfish, turnip greens, fried chicken, sweet potato casserole and, of course, okra.

The Lowdown Southern Odyssey project lay dormant for years but was not forgotten. Walks in the Paradise Garden was published by Institute 193, this spring, at long last, accompanied by an exhibit at Atlanta’s High Museum.

  Sister Gertrude Morgan in her Everlasting Gospel Revelation Mission, New Orleans, LA, 1974. Guy Mendes photo. Courtesy of the artist and Institute 193.

Back to Gene Ham.

I wrote Gene (he doesn’t use a computer) a few months ago, after I read the wonderful Walks to the Paradise Garden. I hoped Gene would school me on okra and Okra Memorial University. Gene, by the way, is a retired English teacher who lives now in Fayetteville, Tennessee.

A few weeks went by before a finely written letter arrived. “As is typical of other fraternal and sororal orders there are mysteries which can not be revealed…like the nearly lost origins of Free Masons in the distant past.”

One point was clear: “Then, as now, members were bound together by a love of the divine vegetable. Several of the generals were exiles from the deeper south who were greatly dismayed at the absence of okra in local produce markets.”

Gene Ham allowed that Okra Memorial University, and its pop-up satellite affiliates—wherever, or if they were ever—have on occasion, granted degrees that are “chiefly honorary.” Doctorates have been conferred on Wendell Berry, Allen Ginsburg and Ken Kesey in “simple but significant ceremonies over the years.”

  https://www.gardenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Gene-Ham-Roy-Blount-Jr.-Okra-080719.mp3

Listen to Gene Ham recite Roy Blount Jr.’s Song to Okra.

  This is the scantest little I know of the mythic Okra Illuminati.

Good luck if you try to Google The Knights and United Daughters of Okra.

I was in my early 20s before I first tasted okra. I was smitten, and I’ll admit: I have an inherited taste for greasy food. I can’t, however, explain why, or how, delectably, slimy okra had been hidden from me for so many years.

(For anyone willing to explore okra’s history, culture, sociology, recipes (not all greasy), seed strains and, yes, tips on  “mucilaginous” hair conditioner, I recommend, also: The Whole Okra—A Seed to Stem Celebration.)

  Gene Ham likes okra the simple way: boiled with a little bit of butter and black pepper. Or Creole style: fried with okra cut crosswise along with tomatoes, green pepper, onions, and garlic,laid on a bed of rice.

Not everyone can be blessed with Gene Ham’s good taste.

Please, no more okraphobic slurs of cotton’s cousin.

Set your taste buds free.

The Okra Illuminati originally appeared on GardenRant on August 14, 2019.

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