Slimantics: BP settlement offers ethical dilemma

I was pretty confident Alwyn H. Luckey had picked the wrong audience for what he was proposing.

Luckey, an attorney from Ocean Springs who is intimately involved in the legal proceedings that resulted from the BP oil spill, had a fascinating story to tell.

In Starkville, it was a hard night to ‘believe’

It was a little after 8 p.m. Saturday and Natalie Spencer was still believing.

Slimantics: 1980: Champions of the world

I find myself a solitary footnote of a figure in Mississippi State football history.

Apparently, I was the only MSU student in 1980 who was not in the stadium on that momentous day in Jackson when State upset No. 1 Alabama, 6 to 3.

Slim Smith: The entitled Middle Class

This being the season for politics, we hear a lot about “entitlements” these days, especially from deficit hawks and those who espouse small government. The

Slimantics: Mississippi needs a different ‘growth industry’

It was a March afternoon in 2007. I was sitting in my bunk at Durango Jail, reading a year-old copy of TIME Magazine the crack staff of the Maricopa County Jail system had provided for the reading pleasure of the inmates they had stacked like cordwood into Building 4, A Pod.

Monday profile: Smith likes her ‘thankless’ job

Tameka Smith has become a familiar figure in downtown Columbus over the past year-and-a-half.

Quick to smile, quick to say hello, the 33-year-old mother of three has come to know just about everybody who works, lives or shops downtown.

It’s time for ‘Abstinence Plus Everything’

In Sunday’s Dispatch, reporter Sarah Fowler tackled a problem that has reached epidemic proportions in Mississippi — teenage sex.

Local employment numbers up over last year

Data released by the Mississippi Department of Employment Services (MDES) shows unemployment rates fell in August in every county. But the more telling data is comparing August unemployment numbers to those of the previous August.

Slimantics: Crappie Masters: Not in it for the money … yet

A visit to the visitor’s bureau Tuesday evening to meet a few of the contestants in this week’s Crappie Masters National Championship confirmed for me one of life’s great truths:

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will blow the rent at BassPro.

Slimantics: When kids drop out

For some time now, we’ve been hearing that you can’t fix what’s wrong with our education system by throwing money at it.

Slimantics: A look beyond the statistics…

Thursday afternoon at Emerson School in Starkville, I walked into a room full of statistics.

And if the folks in charge had taken role, I imagine it would have gone something like this:

Poverty?

Here!

For Pete’s sake … Horse lover finds answered prayer in rescue horse

When Lisa Oswalt was 3 years old, her father bought her a pony.

“He always said it was the worst mistake he ever made,” says Oswalt, now 46. “Except for maybe about three years, I’ve had horses ever since.”

Calling them as he sees ’em for more than 30 years

Stan Murray spoke Thursday at the weekly meeting of The Exchange Club of Columbus.

At 59, he maintains the lean, athletic build of the college athlete he once was — he played football at Mississippi State in the early 1970s.

Slimantics: The conditional right to vote….

It is an ageless truth: You often don’t realize the value of something until you lose it.

I suppose that is why I am particularly sensitive to the recent trend for Voter ID laws in some states.

Slimantics: How Slim saved the Wave…sort of

High school football started this week, and I found myself thinking about my own experience playing high school football. It has been 36 years since I last wore the Gold and Blue of the Tupelo Golden Wave. Somehow, they have managed to press on without me.

Slimantics: An unanswered prayer …

It is the custom of the Caledonia Board of Aldermen to begin each of its monthly meetings with an invocation delivered by Town Attorney Jeff Smith.

I do not know if Smith tailors the prayer to each month’s agenda or if he simply follows a time-honored script, like the Book of Common Prayer, for example.

Slim Smith: Something rotten in Denmark

I have been here only been 60 days, I know, but I am beginning to come to a conclusion: What Columbus lacks is leadership.

Slimantics: Offend mor chikin’

Somewhere above the Manhattan skyline, in one of those towering office buildings that line Madison Avenue, the account executive for the firm that handles the Kentucky Fried Chicken account is getting an earful from his boss.

Slimantics: Grants: Mythical manna from heaven…

I am not picking on Starkville Alderman Roy A. Perkins.

I use him merely as an example of something that seems more and more prevalent these days, and not just among officials and politicians.

Slimantics: Allgood’s 60 percent …

The longer I am around public officials, the more convinced I am of one simple truth: Sixty-percent of the truth is worse than 100 percent of a lie.