We've all witnessed it. You're in a restaurant and at a nearby table a couple sitting across from each other are both engrossed in their cell phones. A friend calls it "prayer meeting."
Tuesday afternoon James Towery stood in a cluster of willow trees near the edge of Proctor Lake.
"I'd call it a miracle," a W alumna was saying Saturday afternoon. She was talking about the love fest going on at her alma mater this weekend. Anyone who endured the dark days of a few years back, when alumni had taken to the barricades and there was talk of merger with State, would have to agree.
A couple of years ago we tried to catch the armadillo. At night he would emerge from his lair to root around in our yard for grubs. Each morning the grass looked as though a foursome of golfers had spent the night practicing their chip shots.
Thursday afternoon, before answering his wife's call to lunch, Randy Classen walked out on his back porch. The area was under a storm warning and he wondered if he could see evidence of a tornado that had torn through neighboring Kemper County less than an hour earlier.
Walk out into the backyard at 4 a.m. and the first thing you notice is the birds. A million of them there must be, all singing their particular songs. The result is a symphonic composition more complex and beautiful than anything a human could conceive.
A word of advice: When the revolution comes, make sure Tina Perry is on your side. In the meantime, I'm glad she's on ours. This past week Tina hardly had time to note the passing of her 30th anniversary at The Dispatch. There was, after all, a paper to get out.
Friday afternoon Earnestine Mobley took me for a ride in her Cadillac. The car is beautiful, black leather interior with wood trim, OnStar navigation, heated seats and steering wheel, the works. Near the automatic stick shift on the console is a small black plaque that reads, "This Cadillac exclusively built for Earnestine Nash Mobley." As it happens, the car is pink.
Earlier this month two women were married in Laurel. Since same-sex marriage is not legal in Mississippi, so they are not married, at least not in a legal sense. Still, there was a ceremony, cake and wedding gown. One of the women, Crystal Craven, has been battling brain cancer and has undergone three surgeries, the most recent just weeks before the wedding.
When reporter Carmen Sisson, whose story about Magnolia Bowl appears in today's Dispatch, asked me about the old stadium, she unleashed a flood of memories.
Early last week I sent Jeff Smith and Martha Liddell an email. Neither had taken nor returned calls from our reporters who were working on stories in which each of them was a principal player.
The story of a skirmish between a hawk and a duck shouldn't be all that difficult to tell. Now consider the duck belongs to a Thai man who speaks broken English and lives in east Columbus, that almost everyone in the story has two names, and the tale begins with a bet on a golf game where the loser will cook duck for the victor.
Thursday night it was my good fortune to see Spike Lee's heart-rending documentary, "4 Little Girls." The screening was the second item in a remarkably dense schedule of events Dream 365 organizers have programed over six days, beginning with a spelling bee on Wednesday and culminating tomorrow with a prayer breakfast.
Saturday morning I took the dogs down to Friendship. They know the drill. I open the gate and say, "Get in the truck." The truck being a battered Ford Ranger with a tailgate that wants to fall off. Hank leaps in barking with excitement while Maggie cowers, waiting to be lifted.
You'll find little here today about resolutions or sage observations about the year just past or the one before us. Nothing so ambitious. I have only a modest wish on this, the cusp of a new year: that the Minnesota Vikings make the playoffs. And, to do that they have to win this afternoon.
The first thing you want to ask Sao Timratthana is how he went from being a cook at a Buddhist monastery in Tibet to owning a Thai restaurant on Wilkins-Wise Road in Columbus, Mississippi.
If you took in any of the first annual Possum Town Tales Storytelling Festival, you don't need anyone to tell you how good it was.
Search articles back to February 2009 with the form above.
1. One child found dead, search continues for brother COLUMBUS & LOWNDES COUNTY
2. Body of second boy recovered COLUMBUS & LOWNDES COUNTY
3. Search continues for boy feared drowned COLUMBUS & LOWNDES COUNTY
4. Voice of the people: Starkville election LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (VOICE@CDISPATCH.COM)
5. Suspect sought in morning shooting COLUMBUS & LOWNDES COUNTY