Cooking at home should never be stressful or frustrating. Whether you’re throwing together a simple lunch or making dinner for the neighborhood, it should be a pleasant, relaxing experience. You also don’t need to be a classically trained chef or have a kitchen stocked with exotic ingredients to whip up something delicious. Anyone can do this, and that’s what we’re going to show you.
Read MoreOnly sixty years ago, our town, like much of the south, was in the middle of its own pain. Jim Crow laws had allowed states and communities to practice legal segregation under the guise of “separate but equal.” While clearly separating “coloreds” from “whites”, the results of that separation were anything but equal. Many times, these laws would be enforced by racist vigilantes before they were ever enforced by local law enforcement. Law enforcement would take a protester to jail; a vigilante would degrade a protester through physical and emotional violence.
Read MoreFood, and my relationship with it, is an important facet of not only my personal identity, but also of my culture, and the culture I grew up in. I believe food is spiritual and that the act of creating, serving, and eating a meal is an act of holy worship — a practice of religion. I myself am agnostic, but sometimes when I make a meal for my fiancé after a long day's work, or when I eat something special made just for me, I can see the existence of God.
Read MoreUp until this year, thirty-five of my years as a student or a teacher have played out exactly like this: a beginning, a middle, and an end. There’s some comfort in that rhythm; the ebb and flow of certainty. August is always long, but the grass is still green and the days are still long. When the weather turns, I know Christmas isn’t far off. By February, though, fatigue has set in and we’re all (students and teachers) hanging by a thread. Then the days start to get longer, and you can hear the mowers humming outside the classroom — the familiar markers of the end of the year. We all start to relax a little.
Read MoreThere are plenty of conversations about what art is and isn’t, who it is and isn’t for. I’m interested in this conversation, but I can’t answer that question, unless I answer it for myself. This September, I painted a mural that is now one of the first things to greet you when you arrive in downtown Jackson. Nestled just past Grubb’s Grocery and the Jackson Walk on North Highland, it’s a bright and idyllic scene, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that it’s an even more idealistic message: Love your neighborhood.
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