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City Targets Upper Level, Again
City officials are in Hinds County Chancery Court trying to shut down the Upper Level Bar & Grill today. Police Chief Malcolm McMillin and Jackson Mayor Frank Melton say the club needs to be closed as a public nuisance because of the business' proximity to shootings and other forms of crime in the area. The city is seeking a permanent injunction to close the club.
Like a Caveman: F'n Burger
I heard the bang when the F'n Burger hit the table at F. Jones Corner. This menu itemwhich joins a short list of incredibly good food with irredeemably suggestive names, like the F'n Chicken and the F'n Crab burgerain't a frozen patty meant for split-second nuking.
How to Pass a Restitution Bill
Passing a law is rarely an easy process when it comes to a contentious issue that requires a state commitment to more money, especially when that money is essentially an apology and the legal admission that the state was wrong.
Building Robots for the Future
Math is the language of the universe, and speaking that language effectively is the only way to put two gears together and link them with the right kind of motor to get a desired effect. Use the wrong components, and either your gears won't turn at all, or they won't stop turning.
Destruction and Hot Tempers
"They said I needed to get out, and that's what I did," said Tony Porter, who says he owned a photo and camera repair shop not too far off the northeast section of Magazine Street in New Orleans. Porter, who was passing through Jackson on the way to a friend's house in Memphis, speaks of his small, young business in the past tense as he sits at a Phillips 66 gas station in North Jackson.
For Goodness Snakes!
Professional herpetologist Terry Vandeventer has been studying snakes for 50 years and is Mississippi's foremost expert on snakes (Mississippi, alone, has 55 indigenous species). Vandeventer is a crusader against the flood of misconceptions about snakes, and bears the mantle of the Mississippi Wildlife Federation's Conservation Educator of the Year in 2006 for in his efforts to stomp out the wriggly little lies surrounding reptiles.
[Green Day] Start With The Home
Some of the homes in Jackson have seen better days. An unoccupied home near Farish Street may have portions of its roof rotted away and the front eave hanging down. Another home, off Terry Road near Highway 80, unquestionably the abode of somebody who had considerable money during the population explosion of the 1950s, doesn't show its former glory. Today, the home has a sinking front porch and blasted windows.
Shopocalypse Now!
Activist and entertainer "Reverend Billy" visits Crossroads Film Festival to promote his film, "What Would Jesus Buy?"
Hit the Bricks
Painting courtesy of Ellen Langford
All the beauty provided by the stylish brickwork and elegant street lighting of downtown's Congress Street goes mostly unappreciated, laments Downtown Jackson Partners Executive Director John Lawrence.
Questioning Human Nature
Alexander Pearce was an Irish convict transported to Tasmania by the British judicial system for theft of six pairs of shoes in 1819. He was also, by accusation of the British government, a cannibal.
Suffer The Children
Ginger Smith is founder and administrator of The Renaissance Academy, a division of the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center, which works to educate troubled students in Hinds County. Since 2004, Smith has directed her passion to kids at the academy, though she has been in the business of teaching hard cases for 36 years. Her initiative and drive got her on USA Today's All-USA Teacher Team in 2001. The Monticello native was working as a coordinator of the education component at Henley-Young when she devised The Renaissance Academy. Components of the program entail daylong alternative teaching classes, work-force development, an after-school program and family-support classes, which take the teaching to parents desperate to turn their kids around.
How to Make Enemies
When award-winning journalist Curtis Wilkie sets out to cover the downfall of Mississippi's foremost trial attorney, he goes at it like a neurotic terrier digging in a graveyard--with a macabre cloud of grotesque tidbits flying out over his furry back. And unlike partisans who try to twist the saga their direction, he then lets the bits fall where they may.
[Talk] Thompson's Easy Win Shocks Many
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-2nd District, easily trounced his Democratic opponent Chuck Espy in the June 6 primary. Thompson, who has held his seat for more than a decade, won the election with more than 55,000 votes, or 65 percent, to Espy's 30,000, or 35 percent.
Scared of Xenophobes?
A great number of the bills pushing through the Legislature this session—more than in most years previously—deal with immigration and immigrants.
Kenneth Grigsby
Young Democrats of Mississippi President Kenneth Grigsby, 32, is an attorney at Phelps Dunbar who's been living in the Jackson area for five and a half years. The Tupelo native and Ole Miss graduate joins his wife, Kathleen, 29, and 3-year-old daughter, Taylor, as some of the little blue Democratic specks living in Madison—though Grigsby says there may be more "specks" in Madison than most people think.
Bob Kochtitzky
Bob Kochtitzky, director of Mississippi 2020, has the gift of foresight. He can pick out warning signs years before the rest of society catches on, and he figured out ages ago that sustainable living is a necessity if the planet is still going to be usable far into the future. The hard part, Kochtitzky will tell you, is convincing everybody else.
David Watkins
David Watkins is an attorney who's been haunting the city of Jackson for the last half-century. Though the Fondren resident has been all over the world, he says he always had to keep coming back to Jackson. "This is home. I've spent a lot of time in Europe. I love California and New York and Washington. I've lived in Cape Cod and Atlanta, but those heartstrings keep tugging away."
Jimmy Robinson
There are few faces in his community that Virden Addition Association President Jimmy Robinson does not recognize. He is the epitome of what draws a neighborhood together: a talkative nature and the kind of ambient nosiness associated with Mayberry's Aunt B.
Isaac Byrd
Isaac Byrd, 54, is not the kind of guy who bases his self-assessments on the opinions of others. "One of the great downfalls of black America and Mississippi is that the black community, for historic reasons, has been externally driven by what other people think and do. It's important to be aware of things, but don't let others dictate what you are," Byrd says.
Shawna Davie
Davie blew away the crowd at the Reproductive Freedom Project rally last month with her passionate defense of a woman's right to make decisions for her body. The Jackson State student works part time with the ACLU, organizing events like the Freedom Rally, but she also organized protests during the state Legislature's failed attempt to outlaw abortion earlier this year, as well as its botched attempt to limit a woman's ability to get braids by producing a bill requiring hair specialists to be licensed to twist hair.