And that is still skimpy with the info. In lieu of other, official or historically correct information on the Interweb, then, I am forced to explain to you a bit about what makes this old Natchez town house special, mainly via photos.

First, please note that what makes Longwood special is in no small part what I was making a bad pun about above: This grand, then- innovative house looks as if it should be Natchez’s crown jewel in the antebellum architecture department. The octagonal home with the onion dome is a crown jewel, in its own way. It was just never completed.

As to the why: Before construction stopped, Longwood was being built by Philadelphia PA architect Sam Sloan for cotton planter Haller Nutt and wife Julia. The architecture was based a plan of Sloan’s that the Nutts came across in a book of design prototypes, this one for a similarly octagonal house of mock-East Indian design. Their timing was awful, however. Sloan and a band of northern construction people were still working on the house when the Civil War began, in 1861. The people building subsequently scrammed.

There are complications. Nutt died of pneumonia in 1864, before the war ended. Meanwhile, his crops were burned by the Union Army, and this being the war he lost everything. (The ever-reliable Wikipedia tells me that Nutt filed papers with the federal government for compensation after the war, which ended in 1865.) Then wife Julia had eight kids and had and no money and … whatnot. The waw-uh! (That’s “war” with two syllables, as spoken in a Hollywood Southern accent.)

Anyway, the family ended up staying on the basement or “first” floor of the house, and never again had the money to complete the second and third floors. Those main floors cannot be completed or renovated now either, given that the home was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in the early 1970s.

You can get more visual information about the first floor interior of Longwood only via the tours, or via photos taken by scofflaws and naughty party guests or what have you. I followed the rules, so you will only get shots of the unfinished floors. These are more interesting than the furnished floor anyhow.

In the unfinished portion, you can see boxes full of building materials that have never been moved, and the unfinished skylight and rotunda, with boarding seemingly left untouched since construction stopped. You can also get a feel for how the home would have been lit during the day (via skylight, even all the way down to the basement), and how its octagonal shape would help with air circulation.

Keep all this in mind when looking at the photos below. One or two come from the courtyard of the home (which was meant to be a town home, by the way, not a plantation house). The column shots, meanwhile, were taken on the porch of the official first, non-basement floor. Otherwise, I think the photos are easily understood in the context of the story presented above.

Oh, and for those into this (I’m not), this house’s exterior was used in “True Blood” as the home of some or the other vampire king of Mississippi and Louisiana. (It is, in the HBO show’s world, located in Jackson MS in that show, despite the fact that most of Jackson is not Antebellum Home Central. I think you can probably figure out why by knowing that many things around here have “Chimneyville” in the name.)

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• longwood, natchez

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These ere all taken at a little event in suburban Jackson MS, in Ridegeland MS specifically, called the Township Jazz Festival. There was another festival going on across town, in the hipper Fondren neighborhood, and with funk and R&B. But this event, unlike the other, was free, and the legendary jazz and blues piano dude (and proto-snarkmeister and eternally cool cat) Mose Allison and a 10-piece Latin band were playing. Also, free beignets were going to be served as part of a “beignet throwdown” competition. So, I was game.

Anyway, it turned out to be a great little event, with even the high school jazz bands being great fun to watch. Also, it was Cinco de Mayo, so I had cut-rate margaritas at a nearby swank semi-Tex-Mex joint called Sombre.

After tonight, it’s to St. Francisville LA and Natchez, officially for work purposes (including taking graduation photos at Alcorn State University in Mississippi on Saturday). So … That’s some beautiful territory. Expect plenty of photos to come next week. Some video from the Rideglend event might come in the short term.

Image above: The Mose Allison Trio.

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• township jazz

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I took photos of almost anyone and anything I was asked to take photos of, including photos of people standing in long lines, filmmakers being interviewed and the like. It was a busy and popular event, and one that featured much more engagement between filmmakers and audiences than I have seen at other film fests I have attended, including the Atlanta and New Orleans Film Festivals. I have included a couple of shots of that sort of thing just to provide a little flavor of the event here.

Even so, I found my photos from ticket and membership sales areas of the cinema lobby on Friday, and others that I took at the after-party later that night, to be more interesting. And they were interesting, in no small part, because of the people taking part in the festival. Take the photo at the top, for instance. The simple explanation for this one: I was getting maybe a bit too wacky with my off-camera flash system at the after-party, when one of the filmmakers (Jess Wise is her name) decided that it would be a good idea to play along. Her comment before I took this one was to the effect of, Hey, let’s get something really creepy this time. Interesting and creative people make for interesting and creative stills!

I could go on and on about the specifics of the festival here, but will resist the urge. Suffice it to say that I found it a much more tightly focused film festival than others I have attended. This seemed a smarter bet for a small city fest, given that it cannot hope to gain as many major festival circuit films as ones in the larger metro areas. The Crossroads event has more of pronounced southern accent, for instance, like its host city (and moi), although it did feature a goodly amount of international programming. What stood out to me more, though, was a focus on social change and films about discrimination and civil rights, including the historically central African-American civil rights experience. but by no means limited to that. Hispanic immigration and gay and lesbian discrimination were also the focus of a few of the documentaries.

At the same time, Crossroads presented a number of films about environmental sustainability. My favorite, of this ilk: A presentation, via a short doc, that made the case for Kudzu as a Renewable Resource. It’s a vitamin-rich foodstuff, you can make paper with it, goats love it, etc. It doesn’t just have to take over everything, as it has done since introduced by federal agricultural experts to the south many decades ago. The time-lapse, grainy black-and-white photography of kudzu growth was entertaining and curiously beautiful, regardless.

OK, I haven’t even gotten into how much I loved the documentaries produced by Clarksdale MS’s Barefoot Workshops (focusing on musicians, a cyclist hit by a distracted cell-phone user, an eccentric Miss. Delta dude who makes sculptures of robots and such from used parts and hangs out at one of the last rural juke joints at night, owned and operated by a guy wearing a red zoot suit), a hilarious, fictional tribute to women’s empowerment country of the ’60s and ’70s called “Queens of Country,” an affectionate but bitingly hilarious doc about the life and career or artist and “Pee Wee’s Playhouse” animator and set designers and whatnot Wayne White, a bizarre animated Korean short on “mutant attack chickens,” a doc about the seemingly lost modern architecture masterpieces of the National Arts Schools of Cuba, and so many more.

In any case, I not only saw many great films and learned a lot, but worked with and met some great people at the festival. No matter where I am living in the next year or over the long term, I want to go to this festival again, and again after that. Now on to the photos.

Before I forget, however: The band in the photos, from the after-party, is the Jackson-based, New Orleans-style brass band Southern Komfort.

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• crossroads film fest

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I kid you not. Anyway, took this one at Gigi’s Cupcakes in Ridgeland MS, a Jackson suburb. That is not my Porsche in the background. Its color certainly does offset the cupcake’s well, though!

I went here with a friend yesterday, and brought the camera along for the heck of it. I hadn’t been planning any shoot. I ended up taking a few with the DSLR, and others with the cameraphone, and maybe got a little too snap-happy. All those gift items, though! I know where to go when planning my next macro shoot.

The only other thing you probably need to know about Brent’s is that it’s not a real working drug store and diner, a la what the tabloids refer to as the “infamous” Mickey Fine Pharmacy of Beverly Hills, and celebrities are not stocking up on pharmaceuticals there, despite the recent Hollywood connection. If you want a hamburger and some plastic “beer goggles,” however, or a classic shake or ice cream in a waffle cone or whatever, and a toy robot or wacky retro sunglasses, etc., and you’re at or near the Fondren area, you know where to go.

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• brent's drugs

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Ends up, it did remarkably well on a few shots here and there while I was out on the Natchez Trace Parkway and associated trails near Jackson MS, although it made some of the leaves look a bit too sharp or busy a few times. The camera proved especially handy, however, for a panoramic shot of the Trace’s Reservoir Overlook site. Click on the long, tiny shot below for a larger-scale view.

The parkway, the road, is to the left in the pic. Swing around to the right, at the top of the hill, and you’ll see the entry-way to several miles of bike and exercise trails. I was taking a water break here.

Oh, for the record: I took the shot below with the new-ish Camera ICS, an enhanced version of the basic camera app for Android 2.2 operating system (known as the “Ice Cream Sandwich” version).

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• spring 2012

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Now, here it is: A series of photos from Newt Gingrich’s pre-Mississippi GOP primary in Jackson MS.

I went to see the former House Speaker for a couple of reasons. One, I was working in the wee hours nearby, and could get straight over to the Jackson Hilton, early. I had read that he was getting Secret Service protection, so I thought I might need to get to the site early anyway. Secondly, although the whole GOP primary candidate and media circus is coming to town this week, I did not want to go to Santorum’s rally. Mitt Romney, I learned, would be coming Friday, but no location or exact time had been announced, and rain was predicted for Friday in any case.

So I went with Newt. Please note that the event was sparsely attended, with maybe 100 people attending who were not reporters, tops. Tops!

To make a long story short, I was tired and did not sit through the entire speech. However, I got more than enough pictures, including everything from macro shots of candidate buttons and bumper stickers to an apparent Newt baby cap. What I wanted to do was tell a story via photos about what went on at the center, give you some feel for the setting, and the like.

You can find the larger series of shots via my Picasa Web Albums, and my Google Plus account. Select favorites are included here. Oh, and that’s James Meredith, sitting off by himself, reading a newspaper. Also, the shot with the rainbow flag? That one was held by a protester, of what she termed Gingrich’s “War Against Women” outside. That’s the next-to-the-last shot I took.

(Also, I had chicken and waffles before heading out. I will never grow tired of saying that.)

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• newt gingrich 2012

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Please note that I have a love-hate affair with my smart phone’s camera. It is said that the best camera is the one you have, but sometimes I wish I had another one on me. The one on my phone, the HTC Thunderbolt, is a dandy if you have some decent lighting around, but cameraphone flashes are notoriously awful.

I have been hearing lately about a Polaroid device that’s a camera first, and just happens to have a phone and Internet access, and a Nokia (non-North-American-market) phone’s camera with higher megapixel counts and megapixel binding, etc., and hope one of these is eventually sold in the US at a decent price.  I would stand in line for a smart phone that put shooting photos first.

I do enjoy playing around with the phone, though, and occasionally get some goodies. Here are a few, all taken at rather pedestrian sites around Jackson MS, including my residence (the one with the strawberries, in the latter case). The one with the books? I did not set that one up. The books were found that way, on display at a mega-bookstore.

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• cameraphone vol 1

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Please note that I took these in the Marigny district–located east (or, as is said among many locals, on “the downtown side”) of the French Quarter–on Mardi Gras Day, which fell on February 21 this year.

Various mostly-open-to-all marching clubs, among them the Krewe of St. Ann (or Society de Saint Anne) begin their jaunts further east, in the Bywater area, early on Tuesday and make their way into the heart of the French Quarter by noon.

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• mardi gras day 2012

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