The Bitter Southerner

08/14/2025

2 new truckers, 4 total! Slide through ->

08/13/2025

BITTER SOUTHERNERS IN TELLURIDE : Repost from
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Join us for a talk and signing with co-author of RIVERS & DREAMS, Jim Barger, on Monday, August 18th at 5:00 on the library terrace!

For more than half a century, and from Plains to Patagonia, Dr. Carlton Hicks fished with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, their group of loyal guides, and a merry band of best friends and anglers. Before, during, and after his presidency, Jimmy Carter’s pursuit of a better world often involved his ride-or-die buddies fly fishing and feasting with world leaders – and in some wild circumstances – dangerous dictators.

In 12 stories set in 12 locations around the globe, Jim Barger Jr. and Hicks recount how President Carter and his lifelong friends changed the course of world history, all while casting flies and pursuing the perfect strike.

08/12/2025

08/12/2025

Let’s wear these t-shirts as a direct message to our Secretary of Defense … shall we?
✊✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿

We should make more t-shirts, specifically for women, in the resistance … and we will.

08/12/2025

CROSS COUNTRY QUEST OR WILD GOOSE CHASE?

When collector Gregory K. Day reached out claiming he owned quilts by legendary Atlanta artist Nellie Mae Rowe that nobody – not even Rowe’s family – knew existed. High Museum of Art curator Katherine Jentleson ( ) was skeptical. She’d heard wild claims before. Her curator adventures in years past had led to unmarked warehouses and questionable situations that would make 20/20 producers take notes.

But after years of correspondence, Jentleson made the trip from Atlanta to Palm Springs. What she found was extraordinary: three quilts Rowe had made in her youth, stored between mattresses for decades, worn threadbare from a lifetime of use.

What unfolds is a mystery, an acquisition journey, a story of brilliance, hope, and resilience.

ODYSSEY OF AN ACQUISITION
Originally published in Issue No. 12 of The Bitter Southerner
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🎨 Nellie Mae Rowe
📝
📸 & Gregory K Day
🔗 to read online in profile
🔗 to read in our magazine in image

08/12/2025

A note from Chef Jose Andras.🙏🏽♥️🇺🇸

We love you, DC.

Repost from
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you didn’t have the power to call the National Guard on January 6 but now you do? Washington DC is not only our nation’s capital…it’s a beautiful city that 700,000 people call home. I’m proud to run a business and raise a family here. DC doesn’t need federalized troops…it needs leaders who respect our fundamental founding principles of democracy, dignity, and respect.

08/11/2025

TIME TO MAKE SOME NOISE, DC.

Hang signs. Take up space. LOVE the pot banging at 8pm.

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Earlier today Donald Trump announced that he is placing MPD under federal control and plans to deploy the National Guard to DC.

This is a dangerous escalation for our communities. But our people have been through things like this before.

Here are three ways everyone can help DC weather what’s ahead, starting tonight.

08/10/2025

Sale ends at midnight‼️‼️‼️

08/09/2025

WHEN A STORY ABOUT OKRA IS MORE THAN A STORY ABOUT OKRA — “An Undeserved Gift” by , published October 2019.

Read it online at link in our profile or in Shane’s book, THE CROP CYCLE, link to order in images above ^

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AN UNDESERVED GIFT by .

Shane Mitchell ( ) is the author of many crop cycle stories for the . Over the years, Shane has covered grits, rice, peaches, tomatoes, peanuts, tea, sugarcane and more.

On her family’s history with okra: “My mother knew two okra recipes. She would fry the chopped pods in cornmeal. Almost edible, because fried. The other dish was from her childhood, the one she ate on still summer afternoons at her grandmother’s house in Columbia, South Carolina. Stewed okra and tomatoes for the mid-day dinner…”

On tracking down okra’s origin story:

“Language is more telling about okra’s exodus. Òkụ̀rụ̀ (Igbo), okro, ochroes, okree. Ila (Yoruba), nkruma (Twi), kingumbo (Bantu), quillobo (Congolese), quingumbo (Portuguese). Gombo (French), kalalou gombo (Haitian Creole). Baamiyaa (Arabic), bhindi (Hindi), tindisha (Sanskrit). The Fon people called it fevi.

Sunn m’Cheaux, the resident Gullah lecturer in the African Language Program at Harvard University, explains that okra is a loanword, carried here phonetically, not in writing. Okra does not appear on ship provision manifests, unlike horse beans, cassava, or yams, the most common rations fed to kidnapped Africans during voyages to the New World.”

This story is incredible. Read “An Undeserved Gift” at the link in our profile.



✍🏽
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08/09/2025

Shane knows okra. See next post.💚

Repost from
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goo
my Mom loved stewed okra with tomatoes at height of summer but it’s one of those dishes that would commence the table battle of wills. would rather sit all day than swallow a bite. maybe I’ll dust these pods with cornmeal. pan sear with masala? or freeze them and delay the inevitable.

08/09/2025

Spotted on the ferry to New Haven, Maine. 👋🏽(Zoom in for a good look at our Gulf of Mexico shirt.) Link to order in image.