Postcard Exchange // Pen Pals

Today I mailed the last of my postcards from the previous swap and now there's a little lonesome spot on my desk that is looking for more mail from more people!  I had over a 80 postcards last time and I send out over 106 postcards to people all over the world.  Why 116?  Well, some of you sent such interesting stuff that it took a series of postcards to respond fully.  I loved that!  So, if you haven't gotten a response from the swap a few months back then just hold tight.  The mail is on its way!  *pinky swear*

Yet again, I have a huge stack of postcards from my travels and a big ol' roll of stamps at the ready!  If you've swapped before then get in touch again.  If not, keep reading to find out more...

How To Swap  You can either a) send me a postcard and I'll send you one when I get yours OR you can email me your address (mine's provided at the bottom of this post) and I'll go ahead and send you a card.  Easy peasy.

Theme  Share something about yourself.  Where you are from originally.  Your favorite food to eat or make.  Where you volunteer.  Your most difficult goal for the year.  Anything you feel comfortable with.  Be as creative as you like or keep it simple and sweet.  Make or buy the postcard.  That part doesn't matter as long as you put some thought into it or make it personal and reflective of you.  This is all about getting to know each other in varying ways and supporting each others endeavors, maybe?  Or if you need a theme for named for you in order to encourage the start of the whole process might I suggest discussing the recent marches and maybe share what you feel is important to you?  Not political?  How about the best book you've read in the last few months or some art you feel connected with?

How Often  As much as you'd like.  Once.  Twice.  Three times (a lady).  A hundred.  I'll answer every email and/or every card sent.  If you need me I'm here.

Where  All correspondence can be addressed to: Jennifer Keene 145 Mulberry St Athens, GA 30601.  Email is gritsandmoxie@gmail.com.  No spam or the like, ok?  Thanks.

Questions  Email me.  The address is right there ^ .

I can't wait to start writing to you all!  The postcards are waiting...

Pasaquan // 2

Poor Brady.  I wooed him with the promises of Pho in Macon and a stop at his parent's home if he rode along with me to Pasaquan.  He doesn't regret going with me but I should've warned him that a) I was going to be there a while b) this artwork is blindingly fresh and bright c) the whole place is based on a dream about time travelers from other planets.  Although I do think that after almost 9 years of marriage that he should know what to expect when he hops in the truck for one of my adventures...hehehe.

We walked onto the property and were immediately met by the caretaker covered in beads and swathed in bright fabrics all while bellowing 'welcome, welcome, WELCOME' and gesturing wildy towards the many exhibits.  He also told us the bathroom was haunted and there were someone's ashes scattered in the sacred sand circle out back.  Despite how weird, and maybe a bit morbid?, that all sounded, or maybe because of how weird and morbid it sounded, I couldn't wait to get to exploring.

This pose makes me snort laugh because it looks like I'm trying to be all cool and casual but in reality I was trying to hide how far my pockets were sticking out because of all of the oranges, water bottles, sunscreen and notepads I had on me.  I don't wear overalls for a fashion statement, oh nonono.  I wear them because I can carry everything I need for an adventure without lugging my work backpack around.  But, truth, also because I like them, unflattering as they are...

If you want to see what all this looked like before the restoration then take a gander at this video.  Also take a gander at the interviewer's culottes!  I've decided that's my next thrift store hunt - some funky culottes.  These culottes in fact.  Then I'll go back to Pasaquan to pose with my culottes and it'll alllll come full circle.  This is what I typed late at night and it made sense to me but this morning it looks kind of silly but, eh, I'm leaving it.  

Travel Adventures // Living History Society Market Faire

My Mom and Stepdad live in Winder, Ga which is, oh, about a 25 minute drive from our house here in Athens.  Alas, we don't get to go over that way very much because they are often traveling out-of-town or working hours that are the opposite of ours.  But we try to make time whenever we can to meet up, hang out and either go grab a bite to eat or go adventuring.  This visit was definitely more about the adventuring thing!

Fort Yargo is a smallish state park right outside of the town featuring biking trails, a huge lake, hiking trails, disc golf, mini golf (oh yeahhhhhhh...we love our mini golf!), camping, yurting, kayaking, swimming, etc.  And sometimes they have folks from the Living History Society show up and hold events that recreate life in 1700's Colonial Georgia.  We went to the park for a short hike and ended up at the last day of this society's Market Faire after stumbling across it by accident.  So, of course we had to stroll around, eat apple pie and take it all in.  I didn't remember I had tucked my camera into the back of the truck (oops!) til near the end of the event so I didn't get nearly the amount of photos that I wanted due to lack of time...

Everyone in the LHS dresses up in period costume and shows off their trade or interest.  There were musicians playing lilting tunes under a small tents, Native Americans showing their talents in a variety of areas including pottery and tanning animal hides, a school teacher with a small collection of toys, and then this young man pictured above who made a number of decorative leaves of iron on a real anvil.

Ohhhh, this was a fun game that was basically the earliest version of cornhole.  I mean, it literally uses corn!  I skipped the tug-of-war game and sawing a log the old-timey way in order to challenge some folks to a few rounds of corncob toss...

Happiness is a laughing while holding corn cobs and showing off some double chins and playing silly games while strangers cheer you on.  I also showed off where I got bit by ants on my face when I was moving our kayaks in the backyard the day before.  Fun times!  Spring is definitely here and with it comes all the bitey stingy bugs that just love me.

Action shot showing off Brady's throwing a corn cob into grapevine hoop talent!  I'm seriously wanting to make something like this for the house since it would be easy to get grapevine wreaths from the thrift store, grab some corn cobs and attach one of my (humanely) gathered feathers I've got scattered all over the house.

Traditional cornhusk dolls = nightmare maker.  While I find these endearing in a small way, the creepiness factor rates much higher.  I blame it on that dang Children Of The Corn movie/story.  *shudders*

The lecture about chocolate, tobacco, tea, spices and the creation of international trade routes was incredibly interesting although I kept getting distracted by those bars in the back as well as the smell of roasting cocoa beans.  There was no sampling at this booth (what the what?) so we made do with that apple handpie a bit later...

That 7 pepper jelly came home with us and will be consumed on a butter cracker with a slab of cream cheese to accompany it.  Anyone else grew up eating that?  My Nana made me pepper jelly + cream cheese + crackers for my afternoon snack up until I moved away for college.  So, about 14 years of my life involved this 'food' combo almost daily and I'm still not tired of it even after all this time.

This was one fannnnncy tent in comparison to the one next to it where the 'militia' slept on thin blankets on the ground.  I don't know if anyone in the LHS actually sleeps at the fort overnight or what but if you did then this was where you wanted to be.  And, yes, that's a skunk's skin on the bed...

And then we finish it all with a much more modern game of miniature golf!  This course had loop-de-loops, a funnel type shoot and lots of areas where your ball could get trapped.  It was actually a really challenging course but I'm happy to say that I ended up playing a pretty good game.  Wish I could say the same for Brady...hehehe.

My Life In Pictures

stellar sky // Pasaquan // early morning work vibes // some trees get all the good names // Mama Kitty is the cutest, right? // grey days are sometimes my favorite thing // spring has sprung // will clean for chickens

Hello.  Hi.

First, let me say that I've been truly overwhelmed by the generosity I have received from so many of you.  I got emails, postcards and care packages after the passing of Miss Tullah Belle, and while every single one made me cry be assured that they were not bitter tears.  Thank you for that.  My grief has been at times a low stoked fire and at times a deep dark thing that is shocking in its intensity.  That dog had been in my life for 13 years and had seen my at my worst (far too often than I care to admit on that one because I had a lot of self-destructive tendencies in my early/mid 30's) and at my best (which I feel is so much in part for my love of her).  Ok, I'm crying again as I type this but I'm not avoiding the pain.  If anyone else out there has lost a loved one of the furry kind or know someone who has then I recommend reading this.  I'm lucky enough to have a great support group that has never questioned the depth of my sadness but I think that's unfortunately not the norm.

In the last few weeks I've also been putting myself out in the world much more than usual.  I think it's my way of coping?  The bingo games at the VFW.  The kayaking in the wee morning hours.  The late day hikes.  The photography sessions for friends.  Little things like a bite of a local strawberry, the swirl of apple cider vinegar+maple syrup+h2o in a big mason jar or the color of a spring sky seem to be tastier/brighter.

Oh, and the prepping for raising chickens and veggies and flowersand herbs at a friend's property has been prettttttttty fun.  That bottom right photo is my friend Ansley doing some roof cleaning on the coop which is, luckily, in an 'almost ready' state of repair.  I'm going tomorrow to finish the inside of the coop, prep some dirt bath areas, hang a few swings for the chickens and build some herb boxes that will provide our future hens with some delicious noms.  I don't really care about the eggs we harvest and we are definitely NOT eating our chickens but I'm beyond excited to hopefully build some relationships with these birds.  I want them to be my friends!

Yesterday I built a compost bin out of discarded wood bits from a 150 year old house. My neck is so whacked out right now (ouchy ouch ouch) it's not even funny but, damn, that bin looks amazing and is rather heavy.  I have about 10 tofu buckets of fruit and veggies scraps from work that are just waiting to get in that thing.  I can't wait til it's all ready to go in the garden and work towards making our veggies something stellar.

Let's see...what else?  We went to Pasaquan as you can see in the post below.  I'll share more photos soon.

My assistant is on tour right now, our new gluten-free cakes/pies just rolled out and everyone's buying them up, it was parent's weekend at UGA and a million charity events are clamoring for cookie donations so, as you can imagine, work is busy.  What's new, right?  But you should go see my co-worker's band!  Nana Grizol is simply amazing. For you Chattanooga folks, they're playing Sluggo's in early April.  You won't regret it.

Is anyone else watching Legion?  No?  You should.  It'll tide you over til the new Twin Peaks gets here.

Well, that's all I got for today.  Happy Monday!

PS  Follow me on Instagram @ grits_and_moxie

Pasaquan // 1

Eye See You

Before he took his life in 1986, Eddie Owens Martin would worry at times about what would become of Pasaquan, the magical art environment he had fashioned on a remote former farmstead over his last 30 years.

Martin was a guru with no followers, a visionary art trailblazer with few in the art establishment on his trail. He earned a living as a fortune-teller, the proceeds from which he pumped into his handmade wonderland of Technicolor-hued structures, totems and masonry fences, decorated walkways and commanding concrete sculptures.

Working under the name St. EOM, Martin liberally borrowed motifs from a panoply of exotic cultures, transforming his south Georgia parcel between Columbus and Plains into what his biographer Tom Patterson later termed “a sort of mock pre-Columbian psychedelic wonderland.”

For most of his time at Pasaquan, Martin’s oft-shrouded head roamed among the clouds, dialed into a tuning fork whose tone few others could discern. But gravity and declining health began pulling him down.

“He was pessimistic,” recalled Fred Fussell, a Columbus-based folklorist and curator. “He thought that probably the whole place would be torn down and done away with.”

Little could Martin have imagined Pasaquan today, radiating life and saturated in intense pigments as it prepares for its grand reopening on Oct. 22. This turn of events follows a stunning multimillion-dollar revival that spanned more than two years and involved a consortium of the country’s top art restoration experts.

Three decades after St. EOM (pronounced Ohm) departed this mortal coil, his greatest creation reverberates with cosmic energy, its mandalas, moons and other symbols blanketing six major structures and 900-plus feet of concrete fence demanding closer inspection.

The return of Pasaquan, which was mostly shuttered and in a sun-bleached decline for more than a decade, is almost as unlikely as its unannounced birth.

Via and you should read the rest of the article here.  It's fascinating!