grace grits and gardening

ramblings from an arkansas farm girl

Fitzgerald Museum: how much the heart can hold

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Fitzgerald Museum

Last April, I toured the Fitzgerald Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. It’s taken me this long to write about it.

In the Beginning…

They met at a country club in Montgomery, Alabama. Scott was a mid-western boy, a 2nd lieutenant assigned to a nearby infantry. He was a Princeton dropout. Zelda, an uninhibited southern belle, was the seventeen-year-old daughter of a wealthy Alabama Supreme Court Judge.

Zelda needed a husband who could maintain a certain lifestyle. The lifestyle she’d always known.

He was desperate for her. For the wannabe writer, it was love at first sight.

After some urging, they married on April 3, 1920 at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, one week after his debut novel, This Side of Paradise, was published.Continue Reading

Lucy and Annabelle go to Collier Drug

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Lucy and annabelle go to Collier DrugYesterday, Lucy and Annabelle bounded right on in to Collier Drug and were greeted like the stars they think they are. If you live in Fayetteville, Arkansas, you probably already know how wonderful Collier Drug is. And if you don’t, you absolutely should. Collier is a once-upon-a-time drugstore, a dying breed in this world of soul sucking chain stores. Family-owned and independent—that’s the secret.

Not that’s it’s a secret.

So by now you’ve probably heard that Fayetteville was recently ranked by U.S. News as the 5th best place to live in America. If you extrapolate this, no doubt Collier is one of the top five drugstores in all the land.

This year, Collier celebrates 100 years in Fayetteville.Continue Reading

The energy of Denver Street Art

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Denver Street Art…

Denver Street Art

Mural, 16th Street Mall, by @zehb_1

I spent an entire day last week walking around taking pictures of Denver street art. There’s so, so much! The beautiful day felt as though I’d downloaded it from a weather app, fairytale perfect—I was extremely fortunate in that regard. Denver. January. It could have been way different.

Street art is technically defined as “art developed in public places”. I consider street art as anything that stops me, draws my eye, makes me take a second look. In a good or interesting way, of course.

Something to note: Denver street art has been a real thing for decades. There are entire pockets of the city devoted to it. In the summer, Denver hosts a Chalk Art Festival. Each September, the Crush Street Art Festival showcases and celebrates a series of remarkable murals. The city even has its own society of crocheting street artists commissioned from time to time to crochet bomb large installations.  Continue Reading

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