The 33rd annual Great Mississippi River Balloon Race at Natchez disappeared with the wind this year. Turbulence canceled all but the preliminary “hare and hounds” race on Friday. The town has endured winds of change – at times catastrophic – since it was founded 300 years ago. It was spared the torch by U.S. Grant, who had a bigger prize ...

As Executive Director of the Mississippi Urban Forestry Council, Donna Yowell is a true cheerleader for the virtues and benefits of urban forestry. The MUFC is a non-profit organization working closely with communities all over Mississippi, providing assistance in planning and implementation for urban forestry programs, storm water management, park planning, and horticulture therapy. “A well managed program will have ...

Did you lose your property because of a tax sale? Did you buy property at a tax sale in August? Did your mortgage company pay your real estate taxes? There are two times during any given calendar year that the subject of unpaid property taxes is certain to make the news. The first is February-March, when the list of properties ...

In 2017 Gallup reported Mississippi had retained its spot as the most religious state in the U.S., with 59% of residents calling themselves “very religious” and another 29% “moderately religious.”   A Pew Research Center report published in 2015 counted 83% of adult Mississippians as Christian. That would approximate 1.9 million adults.   Making up most of the 83% were ...

By Jack Weatherly The grumpy old man brought in the hatchet with a chunk missing from the blade. He wanted a new hatchet, and didn’t want to pay for it. JACK WEATHERLY Fine, the hardware department manager said and walked to the proper bin and handed the man a brand-new Craftsman hatchet. The manager, whose name, you’ll forgive me, I ...

EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS Mississippi voters sent Republican Thad Cochran to the U.S. House in 1972 and the U.S. Senate in 1978, and he served on Capitol Hill until frail health prompted him to retire in April of this year. For most of his 40-year political career, Cochran didn’t have to exert himself in campaigns. He faced a tough race in ...

BILL CRAWFORD Record numbers of jobs and job growth in Mississippi top political speeches by incumbent politicians these days. Yes, more Mississippians have jobs now than before the Great Recession. Yes, more Mississippians have jobs now than ever before. But, there is more to the story. Total residence-based employment (the number that includes part-time and self-employed individuals used to calculate ...

JACK WEATHERLY This is not the way it should end. He should die with his fingers on the keyboard, producing another rhapsody. Paul Greenberg was (a tense I can’t fully believe) a writer, not a pianist, but there is absolutely music in his prose. He couldn’t live without his lifeblood – ink. That was what he dipped his pen in ...

JEFF AMY If a debate in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race to fill out the unexpired term of the retired Thad Cochran had gone off as planned last Thursday at Millsaps College in Jackson, you might be reading more about the event in this space. But the debate fell apart after appointed Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said she wouldn’t be there. ...

BILL CRAWFORD And so it begins, the anomaly versus the tsunami, the hope versus the expectation, the last Democrat versus the next-in-line Republican. Mississippi’s only Democrat holding statewide office, Attorney General Jim Hood, has officially announced his candidacy for Governor. His all-but-announced governor-in-waiting opponent will be Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves. The night before Hood announced, Reeves was on stage ...