WellsFest, The Place to Be

Wells United Methodist Church does a lot of things different.  First, at a time when others have packed up and moved out of Jackson, Wells has stayed put.  Not only have they stayed in their original location but part of their church mission reaches into the surrounding area, to a community that does not resemble much of it's membership.   Indeed, Wells UMC is a strange bird.

Last year, while President of the Board at Mustard Seed, I was introduced to that "strange bird".  The Wells United Methodist Church, WellsFest committee, chose Mustard Seed to be the beneficiary of the proceeds from the 2011 WellsFest.  This is a great honor for any non-profit.

The people at Wells UMC have their act together and WellsFest is by far their biggest undertaking of the year.  Each year the committee goes over applications from different charities and non-profits, all from Hinds, Madison and Rankin counties.  The committee narrows down the list and in the case of Mustard Seed, a site visit was made to learn more about our campus and the people that we serve.  Upon selection, there is much to be done, not only by the WellsFest committee but from the chosen charity/non-profit in order to maximize the benefit from WellsFest.

The staff at Mustard Seed did so much to help the WellsFest committee and volunteers and the 2011 WellsFest was a great success.  

Now in just two days (Saturday, Sept 29th), WellsFest 2012 will kick off it's 29th festival at the Jamie Fowler Bowle Park on Lakeland Drive.  This great shaded park provides a nice setting for something as wonderful as WellsFest.  This year, the beneficiary for WellsFest will be the Farish Street YMCA. 

If you have never been to WellsFest, I invite you to come.  It is a great place for families and music lovers and people who just like having fun.  Bring a folding chair and sit and listen to the mostly local music from the dual stage.  Also, as an added treat, Mac McAnally will there this year for your musical entertainment.   WellsFest will be the place to be this Saturday!

For more information on WellsFest, please click the following link:  www.wellsfest.org

Oh My!!

"Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not being honest."

- William Faulkner

Over the past few weeks, I have been making an attempt to learn more about blogging.  While searching the internet, I found several good sites that gave advice on the art of blogging.  Also, from one of those sites, I stumbled upon a blog directory.  In that directory, I typed in the word, "Mississippi", to search for other Mississippi bloggers or blogs about Mississippi.

The first blog that I ran across was called, Muddy Mississippi Justice, a blog that is dedicated to reporting injustice of all sorts.  I clicked onto the blog and looked at the blog history.

What popped out at me was a story titled:

Sex With Hogs May Land Greenwood Man 120 Years in Prison

I thought to myself, what the crap! and immediately clicked on the link to the story.  The headline was like a bad car wreck.  I knew it wasn't going to be good but I had to look.

It told of a Leflore County man named Andrew Nash.  It seems that the owner of four hogs took the animals to the vet for an annual examination where it was discovered that all four hogs had vaginal infections.  The following is the rest of the story as told by Muddy Mississippi Justice:

During a routine examination, a local veterinarian found that four hogs brought in by their owner had vaginal infections.  Chief Investigator Huntley Nevels says that the hog's owner knew someone was messing with them (hogs), and the veterinarian confirmed the assault.  

Andrew Lee Nash was arrested on December 3, 2010 after authorities in Greenwood Mississippi, set up surveillance cameras, in the owner's stalls, near U.S. Highway 82 and the Yazoo River.  Nash was arrested and charged with 12 counts of unnatural intercourse.  His bond was set at $600,000, then reduced to $60,000.

Now I have seen Dateline on television when they lure in grown men who like to have "hot" chats on their computers with under aged girls in hopes of a sexual encounter.  I have watched them as they are caught and they all seem terribly embarrassed and ashamed of their actions, but can you imagine poor ol' Andrew Nash, pig molester?  There he is caught on tape, "makin' bacon".  Sex with a hog!  Hopefully Inmate Nash has some sort of mental disorder as that would make his behavior a bit more understandable.

But can you imagine Inmate Andrew Nash?  He checks into prison, meets with the warden who looks at his file and just shakes his head.  Then he gets to meet his fellow inmates and what do you suppose one of their first questions will be?  Yep, "Whatta you in for?"  There is no good answer for Inmate Nash.

Luckily for Andrew Nash, his only criminal charge is not just unnatural intercourse.  He was also charged with uttering forgery and when he has to face the other inmates, that just may be his saving grace.

What Makes A Teacher Special?

I have often said that of all the courses that I took in Junior High and High School, typing is the one that I use the most each day.  I remember we had electric typewriters for the first time ever.   There were two desks that sat side by side for each row, a typewriter on each desk, electrical outlets running long ways in the room and between each of the two desks.  The girl that sat beside me was very proficient at typing and I was not.  At least once each week I would reach down between the desks just before we had a speed typing test and unplug my classmates typewriter.  The teacher would say, "go" and my classmate would pound away at a dead typewriter.  I found great fun in that.  For some reason, I remember all of that but I don't remember the teacher's name.

Water Color by Wyatt Waters
Wyatt Waters Gallery, 307 Jefferson St, Clinton, MS

A teacher that I do remember well is Mrs. Graham from Peeples Jr. High. She was either my 8th or 9th grade English teacher and she had a great pride in Mississippi writers.  I think she was my teacher the year that Jackson's own Eudora Welty won the Pulitzer Prize.  I remember that she instructed us to go to one of Welty's plays at New Stage Theatre which then was located in an old house.  She told us to dress nicely as we were going to the theatre.  I remember sitting on the uncomfortable pew-like wooden benches,  my hands in my lap, my suit coat overlapping down the side of my hip and onto the homemade cushioned seat.  

Waiting for the play to start, I remember a beautiful girl, coming my way to sit beside me.  Her name and her being was unknown to me but she was an 8th grade boy's dream.  She sat right beside me, her rear end securely mashing the tail of my suit coat onto the cushioned seat.  Stuck in my suit coat, I could not move, but that was fine.  She was fine and she was sitting on the tail of my coat.  

I really don't remember anything about the play except what I have told you.  I never introduced myself or asked the girl what her name was and off she went, as beautiful a mystery leaving as she had been when she arrived to sit beside me.

It is funny what you remember.  What I remember about Mrs. Graham and her class was that she taught us to be proud of being Mississippians.  While our state might rank last in everything good and first in everything bad, there was one category that was good where we ranked first:  Authors/Writers.

She would tell us of William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Tennessee Williams, Willie Morris, Richard Wright and so many others.  She taught us that although we might be the most illiterate state in the union, Mississippians can write.  

It was her influence that has made my reading list be primarily Southern authors with a lean towards those from Mississippi.  I look over my Kindle at what I have read this year and the reading list as is follows:

The Voice at the Back Door, by Elizabeth Spencer (Mississippi Author, Mississippi story from 1950's)
The Pecan Man, by Cassie Dandridge Selleck (Florida, on Kindle only)
A Land More Kind Than Home, (N. Carolina, enjoyable book)
The Monarch of Key West, by David Paule (Florida, fun book and not a bad read while at Key West)
All Over But the Shoutin', by Rick Bragg (Alabama, only non-fiction I have read, excellent)
The Glad River, by Will Campbell (Mississippi native, interesting story)
Safe From the Neighbors, by Steve Yarbrough (Mississippi native, a story from the MS Delta)
Boy's Life, by Robert McCammon (Alabama, a book about growing up in 1960's Alabama)
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, by Tom Franklin (Mississippi, an excellent story)
Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen, by Susan Gregg Gilmore (Georgia, a fun story)
The Litigators, by John Grisham (Mississippi native, a Grisham book I had not read)
The King of Torts, by John Grisham (Mississippi native, another Grisham lawyer story)
Through the Years with Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter (Georgia, Jimmy and I agree on a lot)


Mrs. Graham now lives in Rossville, Georgia.  She is divorced and is now known to her friends as Nancy Taylor.  To me, she will always be, Mrs. Graham.

For years I have wanted to thank her for the passion that she gave me towards reading books primarily about the South and written by Southerners.  As a Mississippian, it is easy to have an inferiority complex.  Mrs. Graham helped to instill in me a sense of pride in self and state and perhaps most of all, the joy of reading.  And on occasion I dabble in writing, because as a Mississippian, Mrs. Graham told me I could do it.

Thank you to Ms. Nancy Taylor (Mrs. Graham) for taking the job of being my teacher seriously.  It will forever be appreciated.  

Still Going Strong

As I get older, I really enjoy being around active people who are in their 70's and 80's.  It gives me hope for the future and encourages me to stay active.  Of course, a lot of getting to my 70's or 80's is very much out of my control.  However, I have had some great role models around me that have shown me how to keep on keeping on.

Mary Lea and I were in San Antonio last night and the weather was rather rainy.  This made being out on the Riverwalk not a good idea.  There was a theatre across the street from us, the Majestic Theatre, a grand old theatre from days gone by.  Singing at the Majestic that night was Tony Bennett.

Now, my kids and their generation probably don't know who Tony Bennett is and that is kind of a shame.  Think about it, he has almost outlived his audience.  And radio, the medium that used to convey his new songs to his fans, well,   there just aren't that many stations playing his and similar music.  He has been in the music business for sixty years.  His songs have gone from records to eight tracks to cassettes to CD's to digital downloads.  I would have to guess that a large portion of Tony's audience is not that familiar with downloading music.

But, Tony keeps on keeping on, and his audience is there for him.  In a cool manner, he struts onto the stage in a white suit jacket and navy blue slacks, shirt and tie.  He is looking good, smiling at the crowd as he crosses the stage, bending his arm upward to give a thumbs up to the crowd and his band which was comprised of a piano, guitar, drums and string bass.  The band is all dressed in coat and tie.  In some ways, it was a show from a different time but may be just exactly what we need more of.

Tony Bennett signing autographs after the show.

Bennett talks to the crowd and sings songs that you remember, some that you have not heard in a long time and others that are almost standards (I Left My Heart in San Francisco).  It was a great show and the little old lady that sat beside me, probably 75 plus years old or more, she had the happiest look on her face the entire time.  A great smile beaming in the darkness of the theatre.  And the great thing about the lady sitting beside me and the older people comprising the majority of the theatre... they were there!  They were living life as it should be lived and enjoying a sound and a song from the past.

By the way, I talked to Tony Bennett's guitar player after the show and I asked him how old Tony Bennett was.  He told me that he had just turned 86 years old.  He said, "He's incredible, man.  His voice is just as good as ever.  He hasn't lost a thing.  He is still going strong."  

May we all find our "inner Tony Bennett" and keep going strong!

Just Another Day

Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

Psalms 116:15

For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. 

So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

Romans 14:8

Back in the mid-70's while I was a student at Jim Hill HS, a new fresh out of college, Bobby Walden showed up at our school.  I knew him as a large built man who had played football at Mississippi State. Dressed in a green shirt and polyester old gold coaching pants, I watched Coach Walden march the sidelines, ranting at and comforting his players during and after the football game.  

Not only was he a big man but he had a big heart.   Conservative in nature, he was a loving husband, father and grandfather.  

Several years later, after my wife and I married, we attended Daniel Memorial Baptist Church.  It was there that Bobby Walden was my Sunday School teacher.  He had a love for the Lord and did not mind sharing it with you.  As time passed and we went in different directions,  I would see Coach Walden and his wife, Libby, out in public every couple of years and we would get a quick update on how each of us were doing and what was going on in our lives.

This past Saturday, this 60 year old man was out riding his motorcycle when a rainstorm came up.  He pulled his motorcycle under a bridge overpass.  A car hydroplaned on the pavement and ran over Bobby Walden.  On this past Saturday, a day like any other day, Bobby Walden met what would be the end of him.  No sickness, no lingering health problem, just another day.

Bobby Walden has reached the end of this world.  He will be missed by many especially his wife and family.  May we all realize how precious life is and how at any moment, our lives may end.  

A BRIEF TESTIMONY BY BOBBY WALDEN

www.fbcj.org/BookOfLife/Walden-Bobby.html

You may have to take it on faith but I have been in athletics most of my life and received all kinds of awards: Jackson Public Schools All City Football Player both defense and offense for two years, All-Big Eight Conference Football Player, Parade Magazine 2nd team All American in Football, the H D Huddleston Award for Best Defensive Lineman, Most Valuable Lineman in the 1969 Mississippi Bowl, Mississippi High School All-Star, Mississippi Track record in the Shot Put, and a scholarship to play football at Mississippi State University to mention a few.

I gave my life to Christ in a Fellowship of Christian Athletes meeting at Central High School in the fall of 1967. I played with being a Christian till I got to Mississippi State where I was playing football. While at State, I made some good Christian friends who helped me gain assurance of a personal relationship with Christ. I learned that Christ indicated that if I opened the door of my life and asked Him to come in He would come in and would never leave me nor forsake me.

Today I have a wonderful family and the best wife in the world, but as I look back over my life and look at the awards and all the special things I’ve received or have been a part of, I consider it all lost compared to my relationship with Jesus Christ.

Thank God for the life of Bobby Walden and may his family find the comfort and peace needed to make it through this very difficult time.  

Jobs: Citizens or Prisoners?

There are times when I read a newspaper story and the content of that story simply makes me wonder, why is this allowed to happen?  The story that I speak of was reported by the Associated Press and published online by the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal.  The Associated Press reports that two plants in Columbus, MS and Fayette, AL will be closed.  Both plants made military clothing and combined employed 261 people.  So, where did the jobs go?  Can it just be blamed on a bad economy?  No!  Believe it or not, during these hard economic times when unemployment is high, these jobs will be given to federal inmates! 

American Power Source, Inc
Columbus, Mississippi

I appreciate inmates working in prison but when they take jobs away from private businesses that supply jobs to law-abiding citizens, something is simply not right.  It may be time to call your senator or congressman and ask them to amend the laws that apply to Federal Prison Industries.  What is happening in Columbus, MS and Fayette, AL never needs to happen again.  The following is the link and the story to which I refer:    

Alabama, Mississippi plants losing 261 jobs to prison labor

 FAYETTE, Ala. — A company that makes clothes for the U.S. military will shutter plants in Alabama and Mississippi, shedding about 260 jobs total, as federal inmates begin manufacturing the apparel inside prisons.

The Tuscaloosa News reported Wednesday that American Power Source will close a plant that employs 119 people in Fayette, located in west Alabama, and another one that employs 142 people in Columbus, Miss.

Cathy Griffith, operations manager for the two factories, said the 261 employees were informed of the decision on Friday. She said the announcement was met with tears and anger.

American Power Source has made military clothing in Fayette since 2001, and it opened in Columbus in 2003. With the loss of the federal contracts, the company will be out of business on Nov. 1 unless the federal government reverses its decision, Griffith said.

"Our government is putting law-abiding, tax-paying citizens out of work," she said.

Ed Ross, a spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said it wasn't immediately clear where the work would be performed that had been done by employees at American Power Source.

Federal Prison Industries, which operates plants inside federal corrections facilities, is not allowed to sell inmate products to private companies, but it can sell to government agencies. The federal law that created the prison industries requires federal agencies to buy inmate-made items even if they are more expensive than like items made by private companies.

American Power Source isn't the first apparel plant affected by federal inmate labor. On May 31, Selma-based American Apparel, which also makes military clothing, closed its Fort Deposit plant, putting about 175 people out of work. It, too, cited the loss of military contracts.

Fayette Mayor Ray Nelson called it "crazy" to let prisoners claim jobs from the community.

"I am just asking our representatives in Congress and our senators to help us with this," he said. "We have convicted felons taking away jobs from law-abiding citizens." 

How is the "War on Women" Going?

During this election year, we have heard a lot about the "war on women".   In reading Mark McComb's blog, Bring Data, he has produced some interesting data from some reliable sources.  Concerning the "War on Women", this data is strictly economic in nature and does not measure the "war" in any other manner.   The interesting thing to me is that generally when your educational and socio-economic level rises, the more political clout and power you attain.  If you are female, this is good news and both political parties should certainly take notice.

The chart to the right shows the percentage of men in 1960 who were doctors, lawyers and managers versus that of 2008.  It shows that today, there is much "greater equality of opportunity in the U.S. economy".  McComb explains this much better than I ever could and the following is a link to his blog:  ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY DATA

On McComb's blog on a separate post, he also recently blogged  concerning the data on income in the U.S. by sex.  There is still a gap between men and women but females are catching up in the income gap.  For the first time ever, women make up more of the workforce than men.   Since 1947, the income for women has almost tripled vs the income for men which has been just more than doubled.  The following is a link to McComb's blog and a chart concerning this issue:  INCOME BY SEX

So how is the "war on women" going?  From an economic and opportunity standpoint, it appears that women are making progress.  As the father of a daughter in medical school, this is good news.  There is still work to be done but time seems to be a great healer as it appears that women have progressed both under Democratic and Republican administrations.