Mississippi & Journalism

Over the years I've not cared for this journalist and his points of few much. However, what he says he's been trying to do -- with his wife -- in Mississippi (and other regions not so carefully tracked in national media), what I've been trying to do these last months with Mississippi, which is to see clearly and as honestly as possible (which is pretty hard to do on both counts, for such a strong Opinionator as r me).

Fallows quotes a Mississippian who has responded to what he and his wife have been doing, the quote which includes these words, which for me are the heart of so much that so many of us get wrong about everywhere and everything:

I love my home state as much as an American can love the political subdivision in which he was born and raised. I do not, however, think Mississippi is a “great place.” It is not. In the present day it is a strange, tribalistic, confused and impoverished. However, I do believe Mississippi has great potential to be a better place. Thank you for sharing with your readers what many of us believe are the green shoots of some kind of economic transformation here. But more so, thank you for letting Joe Max Higgins and Kimberly Sanford speak about discovering ways forward from this dark, green, lonely place. 

Hattiesburg, Mississippi

That's it. The honesty of love, that does love, and knows of what that love is made, and yet understands what is loved is not a "great place" for whichever of the many reasons that can make somewhere not a great place.

It would help so much if that stars and bars would be taken out of the state flag that flies over the state's U.S. post offices.

Geography creates history, something that climate change should have us all thinking about very hard these days.  If not for ourselves, at least for our grandchildren.  Not to mention for most animals and birds, plants and trees.