Cheap Gas, Deep Fried Oreo, and the Medgar Evers Homecoming Parade

From the past couple days:

This is the cheapest gas we've seen around here--and the cheapest I've seen in many years. 

Catfish (and other, more kosher-friendly delicacies) fry at a coworkers' house yesterday. I had hushpuppies for the first time, and the fried plantain (pictured below) were delicious--as were the deep-fried Oreos.

On Thursday, some of the interns took a field trip to the old headquarters of COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations under which the NAACP, SNCC, SCLC, and CORE were all organized for a few years during the Civil Rights movement. The headquarters are now a mini-museum. After the visit at COFO, we headed out to the former home of civil rights activist Medgar Evers, who was assassinated in his driveway in 1963. The house opened as a quasi-museum only in the last two decades when the movie Ghosts of Mississippi wanted to use the house for some on-sight filming and paid to have it fixed up and furnished. 

Yesterday was the Medgar Evers Homecoming Parade. Diana and I drove out to watch, and got there in time to see the Pocahontas Riding Club go by on their horses. The parade provided an interesting perspective on Jackson demographics; the city is about 79% black, and 18% white--the parade, and its viewers, excluding us, were 100% black. From what we've seen just driving through the city and in the area around work, Jackson is still very segregated. Though by no means unwelcome at the parade, it was very clear that our whiteness indicated that we weren't from Jackson. 

In the Fondren neighborhood, the first Thursday of the month is called Fondren After 5, and business stay open a bit later and there's lots of live music going on everywhere. One of the businesses that stays open late is Silly Billy's the great thrift store we found last week. This was their sidewalk display. 

Some great paint!

The biggest horseradish I ever saw. Bigger than the one from our back yard.

Pretty little birdy.

A fabulous garden.