CFD urges education as Fire Prevention Month approaches

The approach of fall means different things to different people.

To Martin Andrews, it means the busiest time of the year.

Slimantics: Twelve years and a day ago

It’s been 12 years now, yet anybody over the age of 20 or so remembers where they were when the first planes hit the World Trade Center.

I was living in Arizona then, on my way to work, listening to sports talk radio. I don’t recall the topic they were discussing, of course, but do remember one of the radio hosts commenting on something he had just noticed on the TV. “Wow. What is that?” he said. “It looks like a plane flew into a building somewhere.”

Grant collection at MSU ‘wonderful resource’

From one perspective, it might seem odd that the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library would be located in Mississippi, where Grant’s siege of Vicksburg in July 1863 was a decisive moment in the defeat of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

Victory doesn’t prove a lot about MSU

For Mississippi State University football fans, it must be tempting to look at all that transpired Saturday in a 51-7 victory against Alcorn State University and pronounce MSU is fully recovered from last week’s disappointing opener.

Slimantics: Reflecting on the original meaning of Labor Day

Monday is Labor Day, a holiday that really has no traditions associated with it. The day is more commonly used as a day to celebrate the approaching end of summer.

Slimantics: The joy of football

The high school football season begins tonight when Caledonia makes the short trek south to play Heritage Academy.

While Caledonia and Heritage are the only area teams playing tonight, most teams will commence the 2013 season Friday. High school football is a big deal in this part of the world, naturally.

Slimantics: A Slim by any other name …

An email and a phone call Monday have convinced me to make a confession.

The email came from city attorney Jeff Turnage, who asked about the identity of Spencer Smith, who wrote a scathing letter to the editor that was published in Monday’s Dispatch on the city’s hiring of J5/Broaddus as project manager.

Slimantics: Memories of the first day of school

Roughly a half-million kids will descend on roughly 1,100 Mississippi public schools to begin the 2013-14 school year on Wednesday.

I suspect it will be a controlled chaos and that most of what is learned Wednesday won’t be found on the syllabus.

Will Latch On catch on in Mississippi?

At the Indianapolis 500, the race starts with the announcement, “Gentlemen, start you engines!”

At the Kentucky Derby, it’s “And they’re off!”

At the 929 Coffee Bar in Starkville Saturday, it was “Ladies, start your babies!”

Slimantics: Gopher Frogs: They’ve lost that lovin’ feelin’

As part of its mission as a research university, the folks at Mississippi State are always up to something interesting. Hardly a week goes by that we do not receive a press release that provides details of research projects the university is working on. Some are more interesting than others, obviously.

Slimantics: Columbus’ Elvis, largely ignored

I grew up in East Tupelo, about a mile from the birthplace of Elvis Presley.

Even though Elvis was at his height as a performer during my youth, Tupelo didn’t make too big a deal out of Elvis in the late 1960s.

Slimantics: Football, Deen and Liddell

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Paula Deen and Martha Liddell and the strange phenomenon that ties the two together.

Both have been in the news recently ­ — Deen on the national stage and Liddell here in Columbus.

Slimantics: Three ‘F’s for Frazier: Faith, family, friends

Finally, the dirt on Leslie Frazier.

Thursday, Frazier returned to his native Columbus, serving as keynote speaker at a fundraiser held at the Trotter Convention Center for the Mayors Senior Citizens Thanksgiving Luncheon.

Slimantics: Mississippi: Where the Grapes of Wrath are stored

I’m probably the only person in Mississippi that feels sort of sorry for ESPN commentator Mike Patrick today.

I doubt the ESPN commentator meant any offense with an off-the-cuff remark about Mississippi State’s enormous following at the College World Series made during the broadcast of Monday’s Mississippi State-UCLA game.

Slimantics: A welcome breath of fresh air

Somebody pinch me.

Thursday evening, the Columbus Municipal School District Board of Trustees continued a recent run of mystifying behavior, removing board president Currie Fisher and installing long-time school administrator Edna McGill to run the district while the search for an interim superintendent continues.

Slimantics: Hooray for transparency!

In a delicious bit of irony, Lavonne Harris of the NAACP went before the Columbus City Council to ask that the council use its influence in demanding more transparency from the Columbus Municipal School Board of Trustees.

Those were (are?) the good old days

Things are never the same when you go home after being away for a number of years. Somehow, things seem smaller, less vivid than the images preserved in memory.

Rea, Holder go from rivals to long-haired teammates

STARKVILLE — As a 10th-grader, Jonathan Holder stood on the mound and — in the terms normally applied to some Biblical epic — sort of “beheld” Wes Rea.

Slimantics: Legislature: Just say ‘no’ to drug courts

Our elected officials have had plenty to say recently about the need for Mississippi to improve its education.

A good place to start would be at the Legislature itself, which seems to have no grasp of the basic concepts of math.

Slimantics: Notes on the municipal elections

Tuesday’s municipal elections reaffirmed something Abraham Lincoln said during the Gettysburg Address about the nature of our system of government.

Ours is a government of some of the people, by some of the people and for some of the people.