Articles by Birney Imes
OUR VIEW: Behind the scenes in the search for a police chief
Several weeks ago when the mayor asked me to serve on the committee to help with the police chief selection, I asked him to let me think it over. As a newspaper publisher, my first responsibility is to see the public gets a fair, accurate and unvarnished report through every step of the process. Would my involvement compromise our ability to do that or the public’s perception of the impartiality of our reporting?
Birney Imes: Talking chain saws with Sebastian Junger
OK, your first book (“The Perfect Storm”) spent three years on the New York Times bestseller list and was made into a motion picture starring George Clooney; you’ve worked as a war correspondent in Africa and in Afghanistan for Vanity Fair; you wrote a much-acclaimed book (“War”) and co-produced an Academy Award nominated documentary (“Restrepo”) from the Afghanistan experience. You would think someone with that sort of success and the accompanying fanfare — scores of book signings, TV appearances, readings, even a turn on Hollywood’s red carpet — might be a little stuffy, a little jaded when dealing with admirers in a far-flung small town in the South.
Birney Imes: The search for a winner
Reading resumes is a bit like reading tea leaves, I would think. The art of telling fortunes by studying the residue in the bottoms of wine glasses and tea and coffee cups is called tasseography. How it’s done, I have no idea. Over the years, though, I’ve read a lot of resumes.
Last week I was among 21 Columbians looking at the resumes of 25 people who want to be Columbus’ next police chief.
Birney Imes: Talking Jesus by the side of the road
Chris Colley is a holy man who sleeps under bridges. This year he has also slept in a preacher’s garage apartment and recently camped behind the farm shop of a Mennonite in Aberdeen. He’s just finished reading a book about Daniel Boone and Abraham Lincoln he got while in Hopkinsville, Ky., but mostly he reads from a red, palm-sized Gideon’s Bible.
Birney Imes: Flowers by the side of the road
Like some sort of airborne grasshopper, the yellow crop duster dips and swoops above the white fields. The flier has little to worry about here, one small clump of trees and a single row of power lines along a dusty gravel road. There is a hypnotic beauty to his dance; an upward loop and a flip and then he’s again skimming across the tops of cotton plants, leaving a fine mist in his wake.
Birney Imes: The power of a few well-chosen words
The moon vine in the backyard has entwined the empty chicken coop and is now launching an assault on the Mexican petunia next to it. The vine’s large blooms are white and diaphanous, like tissues left on a make-up table in the dressing room of a Broadway star.
Birney Imes: On turning 60
Last week a photographer emailed me a picture he’d taken of the folk artist L.V. Hull of Kosciusko.
Birney Imes: A midsummer night’s walk
At 2 a.m. the cats are perched on the backyard grass like proud lions waiting to be photographed. When the dew begins to form, they will drift over to the pine mulch of the flower beds and lie on their backs among the black-eyed Susans.
Birney Imes: Time to do your part
For the past two months a lot of people have spent a lot of time, energy and money trying to convince you to give them a four-year job. On Tuesday, they’ll find out how convincing they’ve been.
Birney Imes: Time to pay the piper
Speculation has been rife in recent weeks over what manner of tax increase will be required for the city schools’ budget. The lack of information coming from the district’s central office has fueled a growing sense of unease.
Birney Imes: The lessons of St. Joe
If Columbus Police Chief Joe St. John was struggling with any self-esteem issues, they were vanquished Tuesday evening at the city’s Municipal Complex.
Birney Imes: The Joe St. John Phenomenon
If elections for mayor were held today and Police Chief Joe St. John was a candidate, I wouldn’t want to be in the race. The crazy upshot of the chief’s latest misstep seems to be a spike in his popularity.
Birney Imes: Watermelon memories
Shortly after 7, Saturday morning Pat Burwell was hoisting the second of two Gilmer brothers watermelons into the back of her husband’s pickup.
“One for us and one for the chickens,” she laughed.
Husband Brooke confirmed it from the other side of the truck.
“Our dog eats the rinds,” he added. “Loves them.”
Birney Imes: One man’s story
On a recent Friday afternoon while buying a watermelon at a fruit stand across the street from United Deli on Gardner Boulevard, I met a man who told me something about my father I never knew. The man now owns a golf course, but he came to know my father when he was a teenager working as a carhop at a place across the river called The Coffee Cup.
Birney Imes: A spoonful of honey
Thursday afternoon a friend from childhood rode with me to the West Point Farmers’ Market. He’s a journalism professor in a highly respected program at a school in the Midwest and was back in Mississippi to attend the 100th-year celebration at Ole Miss of The Daily Mississippian, a paper he edited while in college.
Birney Imes: Local politics: Why you should care
Take away family, friends and candidates and you might have had a handful of people at Thursday’s political forum put on by the Columbus-Lowndes Voters League. Why there weren’t more folks there, I haven’t a clue.
Birney Imes: A short drive to an earlier time
By 8:30 Saturday morning Beth and I
were coffeed up and headed east on 82. Our destination: Gordo, AL, for
the town’s annual celebration of the mule and the chicken, Mule Day
Chicken Fest.
Letter: SCOTUS to lower courts: Solve less, exempt more
July 17, 2025
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