Articles by Steve Mullen
Steve Mullen: The light in August is overrated
I learned back in college that William Faulkner’s wife made a remark to him about the “light in August,” giving him the name for one of his novels. (If you still can’t guess which one, Google it.)
Steve Mullen: Back to the future: Starkville takes steps toward more livable community
What do Starkville and Oxford have in common?
Starkville today reminds me much of Oxford, circa 1995. If you take offense at the suggestion that Starkville is 15 years behind Oxford, swallow your Bulldog pride and take a trip up there.
Steve Mullen: Ghilles in the mist: Amid graffiti sweep, kids spraying more than paint
Do you feel like you’re being watched?
If you were strolling down the Riverwalk in the evening hours over the past three weeks, you probably were.
Steve Mullen: Where there’s smoke, there’s fat
Maybe we picked the wrong time to start all these smoking bans. Tobacco’s on a roll.
Steve Mullen: During the Williams Home’s intermission, a costume change
The Tennessee Williams Home and Welcome Center at the corner of Main and Third streets — and much of the block it sits on — is abuzz with activity. Tuesday, a platoon of workers was laying the foundation for the new condominiums and office building behind the welcome center. The new building, which is being constructed by local developer Mark Castleberry, will have the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau as a downstairs tenant.
Steve Mullen: Things to do in the summer doldrums
We’re in the doldrums. The Independence Day weekend is behind us. Most of us, if we were even planning to take a vacation, have gone and come back.
Steve Mullen: At Ole Miss, lions and muppets and bears — oh my.
The good news: Admiral Ackbar, the fish-faced “Star Wars” character who was a campus favorite for Ole Miss’ new mascot, isn’t on the ballot.
Steve Mullen: Adventures in street-crossing
I don’t have a crystal ball, but I know where I may very well die one day: In the intersection of College Street and Fifth Street South.
Steve Mullen: A to-do list for the Not From Here
People who are new to this corner of the earth quickly realize there are two types of people: Those who are From Here and those who aren’t.
Steve Mullen: The oil has shown up. Who else will?
Much of the news swirling around BP’s oil spill of late is about who and what has shown up, and who and what hasn’t.
Steve Mullen: The Y pool experience, without the Nehi
A kid shouldn’t be forced to make it through summer without access to a body of water. In “Caddyshack,” Chevy Chase said he had pool and a pond. Either would be good for the kids. But we have neither, so we had to go looking.
Steve Mullen: A tragic lesson, not learned
Graduation parties should be a time for celebration. But parties are ending in gunfire, and death, all too often.
Steve Mullen: The oil isn’t here … yet
The massive oil spill about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast in the Gulf of Mexico, which by energy giant BP’s own estimate has been growing by 5,000 barrels each day since April 20, still hasn’t reached Mississippi’s shores. Yet.
Steve Mullen: A bridge that helped revive a city
It’s too outdated to handle traffic. It has been derided as a bridge to nowhere — or at least nowhere that anyone wants to go. Some wonder why we shouldn’t just knock it down, rather than fix it up.
Steve Mullen: Teamwork, and vision, needed for downtown
For decades, management types have been warned to avoid a “silo” mentality in their businesses — imagine those tall Midwestern grain silos, which hold everything in and keep everything else out. Simply put, people tend to cluster within their own area, or their own department, inside a business. As the thinking goes, while individual departments within the same business might look similar, they don’t communicate — they’re trapped within their own silo. So, good ideas don’t spread and the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. The business doesn’t innovate, or grow.
Steve Mullen: Picking the Civil War’s nit
Here we are, halfway through Confederate Heritage Month, and I didn’t even realize it was going on — that is, until the fracas over governor’s proclamations in Virginia and Mississippi.
Steve Mullen: Pardon our progress …
Welcome, visitors to Columbus! Jump on board our red double-decker tour bus here, for a quick trip around our historic city. This isn’t the tour we had originally planned, but recent events have caused a slight change to the program.
Steve Mullen: A pop quiz for the first quarter: The answers
If this column seems more incoherent than usual, the you probably missed last week’s questions about the top local news stories of the first three months of 2010.