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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/biden-oil-move-aims-to-cut-gas-prices-fairly-significantly/article_e55629d1-a9db-564c-b4bb-a9b8935f88a0.html
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WASHINGTON • President Joe Biden on Thursday ordered the release of 1 million barrels of oil per day from the nation's strategic petroleum reserve for six months, a bid to control energy prices that have spiked after the United States and allies imposed steep sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.
The president said it was not known how much gasoline prices could decline as a result of his move, but he suggested it might be "anything from 10 cents to 35 cents a gallon." Gas is averaging about $4.23 a gallon, compared with $2.87 a year ago, according to AAA.
"The bottom line is if we want lower gas prices we need to have more oil supply right now," Biden said. "This is a moment of consequence and peril for the world, and pain at the pump for American families."
The president also wants Congress to impose financial penalties on oil and gas companies that lease public lands but are not producing. He said he will invoke the Defense Production Act to encourage the mining of critical minerals for batteries in electric vehicles, part of a broader push to shift toward cleaner energy sources and reduce the use of fossil fuels.
The actions show that oil remains a vulnerability for the U.S. Higher prices have hurt Biden's approval domestically and added billions of oil-export dollars to the Russian government as it wages war on Ukraine.
Tapping the stockpile would create pressures that could reduce oil prices, though Biden has twice ordered releases from the reserves without causing a meaningful shift in oil markets. Biden said Thursday he expects gasoline prices could drop "fairly significantly."
Part of Biden's concern is that high prices have not so far coaxed a meaningful jump in oil production. The planned release is a way to increase supplies as a bridge until oil companies ramp up their own production, with administration officials estimating that domestic production will grow by 1 million barrels daily this year and an additional 700,000 barrels daily in 2023.
The markets reacted quickly with crude oil prices dropping about 6% in Thursday trading to roughly $101 a barrel. Still, oil is up from roughly $60 a year ago, with supplies failing to keep up with demand as the world economy has begun to rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. That inflationary problem was compounded by Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, which created new uncertainties about oil and natural gas supplies and led to retaliatory sanctions from the U.S. and its allies.
Stewart Glickman, an oil analyst for CFRA Research, said the release would bring short-term relief on prices and would be akin to "taking some Advil for a headache." But markets would ultimately look to see whether, after the releases stop, the underlying problems that led to Biden's decisions remain.
"The root cause of the headache is probably still going to be there after the medicine wears off," Glickman said.
Biden has been in talks with allies and partners to join in additional releases of oil, such that the world market will get more than the 180 million barrels total being pledged by the U.S.
Americans on average use about 21 million barrels of oil daily, with about 40% of that devoted to gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That total accounts for about one-fifth of total global consumption of oil.
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/mississippi-man-gets-124-years-for-selling-deadly-drug/article_ca0ca9fe-a7e4-5778-af20-ced5e1fde2d8.html
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/police-runaway-alabama-girl-located-in-mississippi-has-died/article_59a284f7-d1d8-52ea-a52b-8dda239b9379.html
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MOBILE, Ala. • A 13-year-old girl who reportedly ran away from her home in Alabama before being found in a nearby Mississippi city has died, Mobile Police said.
The circumstances around the death of Keyanna Sylvester remain unclear, police said.
D'Iberville Police Capt. Jason King said the girl was at a motel in the city and at some point went to an area hospital, although he added that it is uncertain how she died. He told WALA-TV that investigators are waiting for a report by the medical examiner to confirm a cause of death.
"We're saddened by the events that occurred in our city," he said.
The girl reportedly ran away March 21 and was believed to have spent some time in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and was seen two days later in Moss Point before being found in D'Iberville and taken to a hospital, the station reported.
King said it was too early in the investigation to say whether Sylvester's death was the result of foul play.
"We're making sure we're careful about not saying whether it's criminal or not criminal at this time," he said.
The girl's death took neighbor Alexie Thames by surprise. She described Sylvester as a sweet girl who was almost like her own daughter. She said the girl attended the school where she works.
"It hurts me real bad because Keyanna was my baby," she said, fighting through tears. "It's sad. Whoever did this to my favorite baby, I hope, I hope – Lord. Please, God. Oh my God."
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/taste-of-tupelo/article_267bb2ef-32fc-5d4c-9db4-5bb8127b2213.html
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/college/mississippi-state/mississippi-state-football-mourns-loss-of-dave-nichol/article_8f11a660-7b7b-51ac-a155-d4e49f122eee.html
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STARKVILLE, MS - August 06, 2021 - Mississippi State Inside Receivers Coach Dave Nichol during training camp practice at the Leo Seal Jr. Football Complex at Mississippi State University in Starkville, MS. Photo By Chamberlain Smith
STARKVILLE • As Mississippi State’s spring season continues, the memory of former wide receivers coach Dave Nichol lives on.
Nichol died March 25 after health issues suddenly got worse. His death came just days after it was reported he was stepping away from his new role as an assistant on Lincoln Riley’s staff at Southern California.
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Mississippi State’s outside receivers coach Steve Spurrier Jr. met with reporters Thursday following the team’s fourth spring practice. Before fielding questions regarding play on the field, he opened by discussing the loss of a close friend and longtime colleague.
“Thoughts to Coach Nichol and his family,” he said. “What a sad event. Thoughts and prayers with him. Obviously for a guy that was very healthy, that kinda snuck up and got him fast. That impacted a lot of people.”
Spurrier worked alongside Nichol throughout the first two seasons of Mike Leach’s tenure at Mississippi State, but their relationship stems outside Starkville. They spent a couple seasons working together under Leach at Washington State.
MSU’s staff has been vocal about Nichol’s loss and how others can help his legacy live on. Leach shared details Thursday regarding a service which will be held for Nichol on Monday in Plano, Texas.
Mississippi State’s staff will be in attendance, a team spokesperson said.
Along with staff members, Mississippi State has a veteran roster losing a mentor and friend.
Players such as quarterback Will Rogers took to social media to post their well wishes for Nichol while expressing their gratitude for getting to play for him.
Spurrier says the news was difficult to process for his players and likely for many who have played for or coached with Nichol in the past outside of MSU. In the loss, Spurrier hopes his team can find the silver lining in gratitude for what they have.
“It was shocking. I mean, he’s gone,” Spurrier said. “We knew about a month before he was taken from us that he’s sick. It’s heartbreakingly sad. (The) message to everyone too is to count your blessings and make sure you realize how fortunate you are in what we have. Make sure you enjoy every day. Just be appreciative and thankful for what you have.”
STEFAN KRAJISNIK is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for the Daily Journal. Contact him at stefan.krajisnik@djournal.com.
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https://www.djournal.com/monroe/news/nettleton-school-district-dismissing-early-wednesday-due-to-weather-threat/article_d14796f7-6e0f-53d5-89a3-4578ea5b24bc.html
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/high-school/division-1-6a-baseball-up-for-grabs/article_2554cbc7-cb64-599f-bf7d-3722cd7e167e.html
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Who is the favorite to win the Division 1-6A baseball title? The answer is even murkier than I once thought.
Entering tonight’s games, Grenada, Oxford, Starkville and Tupelo are all 2-2. Grenada took two of three from Oxford last week, then lost its series opener against Tupelo on Tuesday. Starkville took two of three from Tupelo, then lost to Oxford on Tuesday.
Before the season began, I’d have said that Oxford and Tupelo would be battling for the No. 1 playoff berth. I have either overestimated those teams or underestimated the other two.
Of course, when the season began, Tupelo still had Mason Morris, the pitcher and shortstop who is committed to Ole Miss. He’s been out for over two weeks with an undisclosed injury, and it’s unclear when or if he will return to the Golden Wave.
That means McClain Ray has to be sharp every time he takes the mound, and that’s been the case thus far. He allowed just one run against Starkville last week in a 7-6 win, and he tossed four shutout innings against Grenada.
The issue is the rest of the pitching staff, which has a collective 4.81 ERA. The bullpen nearly blew that game against Starkville, and the rotation behind Ray is all hands on deck. There’s plenty of talent on the staff, but it’s largely unproven.
Grenada, on the other hand, has gotten some solid pitching and enough offense to back it up. Jude Westmoreland allowed just one earned run in the Chargers’ series-clinching 8-4 win over Oxford on Saturday. For the season, he’s 3-0 with a 0.57 ERA.
If Grenada has a weakness, it’s in the field. It survived making five errors in that Saturday win, but six errors proved costly against Tupelo on Tuesday. The Chargers have an .845 fielding percentage on the season.
Starkville’s pitching has been all over the map. Ethan Pulliam allowed three hits in five innings in Starkville’s 16-1 win over Tupelo last Friday, but Cole Kendrick was chased after just one inning against Oxford on Tuesday.
The Yellowjackets have also been inconsistent on offense.
Gun to my head, I’d have to say Oxford is the favorite to win this division. The pitching has been strong on the whole, led by Dixon Webb, who’s 6-1 with a 1.60 ERA.
The Chargers are hitting .325 as a team. Catcher Campbell Smithwick, a transfer from South Carolina, is hitting .438 with 14 RBIs. Ty Wicker checks in at .404 and 13 RBIs. Oxford has a .927 fielding percentage.
The top three teams will make the playoffs. Damned if I know which one will be left at home.
Brad Locke is senior sports writer for the Daily Journal. Contact him on Twitter @bradlocke or via email at brad.locke@journalinc.com.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/meditation-ready-to-hear/article_c9b6be11-c20e-5433-a0b8-823ad3270bbf.html
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Lots of biblical ideas make the belief-reluctant smile or chuckle, if not laugh out loud. Most such ideas fit under the following heading: Supernatural. Contrary to popular notion, supernatural does not mean in opposition to or in conflict with the natural but, rather, an order beyond common comprehension. If you’d like an analogy, spend some quality time with a child as she wakes to butterflies, buttercups, buttered toast and the countless wonders all around her. Something like this is what the theologians mean by supernatural.
Consider, for example, this odd phrase: Hearing the voice of God.
Our pastoral studies professor at Memphis Theological Seminary, quite a comical fellow, told us of his call to ministry at a Billy Graham rally, when he heard an audible voice. “I was tickled,” he said, “that God speaks English!” At least two others I know have had similar experiences. But most believing souls sojourning through the planet cannot lay claim to such a boon. So where does that leave us?
It leaves us just where we need to be, thank you very much. A mother hears the cries of a child from miles and miles away and calls long-distance. “What’s wrong?” A dog howls at pitches that escape us. “I hear what you’re saying,” one friend says to another. Well, so can everyone else around them, of course, yet not everyone comprehends everything being communicated at that precise moment. At the risk of sounding far too religious, there is hearing, and then there is hearing.
Two women stood one morning at the front doors of a church, Q-tips and rubbing alcohol in hand, so that they could clean out the ears of everyone in advance. You never know what you might hear when you get ready to hear. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Matthew 11:15).
The Rev. Eugene Stockstill is pastor of Ebenezer United Methodist Church and Myrtle United Methodist Church in Union County.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/religion/lynn-jones-patience-for-the-changing-seasons/article_a7107351-99f4-5a0a-b2b5-7b1805b8c8d9.html
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A few years ago, I made several long trips across this country with Edwin Way Teale. I didn’t do it in person, but I did it with him in four books that he wrote. Teale was a naturalist, who along with his wife, Nellie, made four journeys across the country in the 1950s and 1960s. Each trip coincided with a season of the year, and he wrote accounts of these trips in his four books.
Traveling alongside Edwin Teale was an exciting journey. Not only was Teale a vast repository of information about the land, plants, and animals of this country, but along the way he would pick up and pass on bits of folk wisdom. One year as he and his wife made their way through Montana, he picked up a saying he heard. In the range country of Montana, there sometimes comes a time in spring when the winter hay is gone, and the new grass has not arrived. In this period between hay and grass, the cattle are hard-pressed for food. “Similarly,” he wrote, “a man in difficulties is described as being ‘between hay and grass.’”
I can remember such days on the farm. The hay had about run out, and the grass was not quite big enough to provide much food for the cows. You’re caught between hay and grass.
Such moments come in life when one door closes, and another door has not yet opened. It happened to Paul and his companions on the second missionary journey when they arrived in Troas. God had closed the doors into Asia and into Bithynia, but He had not yet opened the door into Macedonia. Paul and his fellow travelers had to settle down in Troas and wait until another door opened.
Waiting is hard on us. I heard about a man who went to his first play. He watched the first act and then got up and left. A friend saw him leave, and the next day when the friend saw him, he asked, “Why did you leave the play after the first act?” The man replied, “Well, on the program, it said that the second act takes place three days later.”
Patience has never been our strong suit, but when you’re caught between hay and grass, patience and faith are necessary. We’re about two weeks away from the average date of our last frost. It won’t be long before the grass that is brown and dormant will be turning green and growing.
If you’re caught between hay and grass in your life, don’t give up. After the stillness of that evening in Troas, there came the excitement of the Macedonian vision and planting the gospel for the first time on the continent of Europe. You never can tell when God is going to open an exciting new door for you!
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https://www.djournal.com/news/crime-law-enforcement/crime-reports-friday-april-1-2022/article_6de89b77-6fc8-5dcd-8352-a5ec4509d08e.html
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The following people were booked into the Lee County-Tupelo Adult Jail in connection with felony charges ending Thursday at 11 a.m.
Charles Bishop, 39, of Blue Springs, was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff's Office, child abuse, sexual battery, aggravated domestic violence, touching a child for lustful purposes.
Stacey Lynn Mills, 50, of Mooreville, was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff's Office, exploitation of a vulnerable adult.
Rodricus Riley, 37, of Tupelo, was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff's Office, arson.
Lee County Sheriff's Office
The following reports were filed Thursday by the Lee County Sheriff's Office.
A County Road 931 Tupelo man said someone entered a fenced area at Twin Creek Rentals and stole his EZ Go golf cart over the weekend. He had just installed new batteries, and the thief took the charger as well.
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A woman said while she was in the shower at a male acquaintance's County Road 1147 Auburn house, a female suspect entered the house and took nude pictures of her. After the suspect left, the woman realized her iPhone was missing as well. The man said he did not know how the suspect got into the house.
A Drive 288 Shannon woman was doing yard work in front of her house and pushed her lawnmower to the edge of the ditch. When she got ready to mow the ditch, she discovered her push mower was gone.
A Mitchell Road woman was looking out the window, watching for bad weather, when she saw her daughter’s ex-boyfriend/baby daddy walk past. She thought it was suspicious for him to be at the apartment complex.
A Stratton Drive Tupelo man said someone rang his doorbell numerous times between 1 a.m. and 2:30 a.m. Each time he checked, the unknown person ran away. Between doorbell rings, he could hear someone in the backyard, but no one was there when he would check.
Tupelo Police Department
No reports filed since March 25.
Anyone with information on any of these crimes is urged to call the Lee County Sheriff's Office at 841-9041, the Tupelo Police Department at 841-6491 or Crime Stoppers of Northeast Mississippi at (800) 773-TIPS or download the P3 Tip App and leave an anonymous tip that way.
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https://www.djournal.com/news/state-news/legislature-passes-bill-to-create-more-freestanding-ers-in-rural-counties/article_c728b6e8-8718-5a29-b105-1b834a6ecdc5.html
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JACKSON • A bill that could fill a crucial health care need in rural Northeast Mississippi is headed to Gov. Tate Reeves’ desk for review.
Both chambers of the state Legislature have approved a final version of a bill that would permit the construction of “freestanding” emergency rooms — ERs unattached to hospitals — in rural counties without one.
The bill passed the House 117-4. Rep. Chris Brown, R-Nettleton, was the only Northeast Mississippi lawmaker to vote against it. The legislation unanimously passed the Senate.
If Reeves signs the bill into law, it could lead to more emergency health care access for rural counties in Northeast Mississippi – particularly Chickasaw County, which has long fought to get an emergency room.
“I’ve gotten numerous calls, texts and emails from folks in Chickasaw County, and they’re excited about it,” said Republican Sen. Ben Suber of Bruce, the author of the bill. “It’s a huge need in our area.”
Houston, one of the county seats in Chickasaw County, could be considered to be in the middle of an emergency room desert. The town has just one medical facility, Trace Medical, which offers only limited hours and care.
The nearest emergency room is located in Calhoun City — 25 minutes away. Emergency rooms in West Point and Tupelo are each roughly 45 minutes away.
Trace Medical shut down its emergency room in 2014, citing low profits.
Traditional emergency rooms in Mississippi often struggle financially because of a variety of factors, including tight restrictions from private insurance companies and lawmakers' refusal to expand Medicaid coverage to the working poor.
However, a provision in state Medicaid laws allows emergency facilities without inpatient beds to receive a higher Medicaid reimbursement rate, elevating the chance that a freestanding ER could be financially feasible.
The general idea behind a freestanding facility would be for patients to seek enough emergency care from a licensed physician to be stabilized and then moved to another facility for long-term treatment.
If signed into law, the bill would create a pilot program that allows a freestanding facility in counties where none exists, even if there is a hospital. The legislation limits the number of these facilities to five statewide so lawmakers can see if the program works.
If the governor signs the legislation, the Mississippi State Department of Health will create regulations to govern the facilities, and they’ll be responsible for choosing which five counties can have freestanding emergency rooms.
Since Houston has been without an emergency room for eight years, both Suber and Rep. Jon Lancaster, R-Houston, made access to rural health care a critical part of their campaign in 2019.
"I'm excited about this," Suber said. "It means a lot to our area."
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https://www.djournal.com/opinion/columnists/historical-research-requires-maps/article_330d0c25-0d3c-5d29-a5e0-ae1089e5a8f3.html
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Maps provide an essential key to understanding our stories as individuals and as an All-America City. Here at the Oren Dunn City Museum, we use a series of maps to tell the Tupelo Story. But you can access some maps on your own and discover more about Tupelo and Northeast Mississippi.
First, you have to thank the Phoenix Assurance Co. Ltd. for initiating fire insurance maps in the late 18th century. In 1790, surveyors for Phoenix assembled information about every structure in the city of London, England, to create a map that would assist fire insurance agents to determine the degree of hazard associated with a particular property.
By 1790, Phoenix had surveyors in Charleston, S.C., making the publication of a fire insurance maps of that city the first of its kind in 1790. Edmund Petrie conducted the survey. Petrie would go on to survey other larger cities in the United States as she grew.
And then came Daniel Alfred Sanborn.
Petrie and other surveyors created various iterations of fire insurance maps, but it wasn’t until Aetna Insurance Co. hired Sanborn to make maps for some Tennessee-based cities after the Civil War. Officials at Aetna had noticed the surveyor from his work in 1867 because he created a “city atlas” for Boston. The publication, “Insurance Map of Boston,” became a sort of standard for the maps.
You could say it put Sanborn on the map.
Most people do not realize these maps exist. For Tupelo, the Library of Congress has Sanborn Map Co. maps for 1889, 1894, 1899, 1903, 1909, 1914, 1919, 1924, and 1929. You can access them at loc.gov/collections/sanborn-maps. The museum has a set from 1924 you may spread on a table and peruse. Just give us a call, so we can bring them up for you.
The maps come as a series of pages with a title page at the beginning. A smaller, title page kind of map gives you an overview of the city. The page also lists an index of streets and special buildings. On that index you’ll find the page, or what the mapmakers call “sheet” to search. For example, on Tupelo’s 1924 Sanborn Map, All Saints Episcopal Church is on sheet 10.
The title page also gives an overview of the water and its sources available and the fire department. Again, in Tupelo in 1924, mapmakers noted the city owned the water works — a gravity and direct pressure system installed in 1905. Among other bits of technical information, the map also reveals the average daily consumption was 1 million gallons. Oh, and Tupelo had a population of 6,100 people at the time of the map.
In addition, the Tupelo Fire Department consisted of four paid firefighters, an assistant chief and a chief. The department had a combination truck with a 1000-foot hose, 2.5 inches in diameter and a 40-gallon chemical tank with a 190-foot chemical hose and 40 feet of ladders.
The map also noted that by Jan. 1, 1925, the fire department would have an American La France truck with a pumping capacity of 750 gallons per minute and 1500 feet of hose, 2.5 inches in diameter. The department also had an electric siren on the roof of the headquarters building at the Tupelo Municipal Plant.
The Library of Congress provides a key to reading the map. For instance, a reddish color means the building was built of brick or tile; yellow means a frame or wooden structure; green denotes fire-resistant construction and gray represents adobe buildings.
We know from looking at these maps that Tupelo once had a First Street and a Second Street. We’ve seen where the Catholic church moved from a wooden structure on South Green to its present location on North Gloster.
Maps are fun. If you’re interested in your roots, in where you live and in seeing changes, play with the Sanborn maps.
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/speaking-strength-tupelo-child-shares-unspoken-wisdom-with-all-who-will-listen/article_fe812568-92f0-5e95-86b1-155d600b3276.html
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TUPELO • “Suffering is our teacher; suffer here with joy.”
Those profound words didn’t come from the pen of an ancient Desert Father or an early Christian martyr. They came from ten-year-old Caleb Rodgers of Tupelo.
“Pastor Caleb,” as he is known by many, has cerebral palsy. He communicates by pointing to letters on a card while his mother writes out the messages. Those messages, both on social media and in his many live engagements, bring hope and strength to everyone who hears them.
A recent post from his Facebook page, Caleb Rodgers Updates, exemplifies his work: “Some individuals out there think they have never had someone to love them! You must let me tell you about my God if you want to know unconditional love!”
Caleb’s father, Rodney Rodgers, is a nurse practitioner who owns East Main Family Medical Clinic in Tupelo. He said Caleb’s condition is both physically painful and emotionally frustrating.
“Cerebral palsy is a brain injury that affects the connection between the muscles and the brain,” he said. “It’s like being trapped in your own body.”
Rodney said despite it all, Caleb faces even the worst days with joy and courage.
“He went through a long period where he was having ice pick headaches,” he said. “He’d scream in pain all day, and then at the end of the day, he’d spell out ‘great day.’”
Though Caleb is nonverbal, Rodney said everywhere he goes, people sit up and listen. “Pastor Caleb” dictates his messages to his mother, who reads them aloud.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “I can stand up and speak and people will nod off. But when Caleb speaks, there won’t be a dry eye in the room. Even kids get quiet. They’re just drawn to him. It’s amazing.”
Caleb’s mother, Jennie, said Caleb has always had a sense of what could only be called his “divine calling.”
“He’s not of this world,” she said. “For years, he’s been saying, ‘Only eternal things are important. This is not our home. I’m here for a purpose.’”
Caleb has crystal-clarity about what that purpose is, Jennie said.
“He always says, ‘I was put here for two reasons: to make you (his parents) good soldiers, and to encourage others,’” she said. “He has no agenda; he just loves people and wants them to know about Jesus.”
Even when he isn’t speaking publicly or posting on social media about his faith, it is never far from his consciousness, Jennie said.
“He has to have his uninterrupted ‘Jesus time’ every day,” she said. “When he’s chilling, he watches Adrian Rogers. He’s had two backyard revivals for his birthday, and he has published two devotionals. He’s been saving his allowance for years to buy plane tickets so he can go to Africa to tell people about Jesus.”
Not content just to speak about his faith, Caleb wants others to read about it for themselves. What began with Caleb saving his allowance to buy giveaway Bibles has turned into a ministry of its own, Jennie said.
“In March of 2020, we started a nonprofit called Just Jesus Inc.,” she said. “We’ve given away about 2,500 Bibles so far. We give Bibles away to all kinds of places–jails, rehab facilities, beach condos, you name it. We just did Hotel Tupelo.”
Whatever he’s doing, “Pastor Caleb” is living out his mission of encouraging others. And he’s making good soldiers of his parents, too.
“Caleb is a gift,” Rodney said. “He’s on a different level. He has drawn us closer to God through his walk.”
On days when Jennie feels overwhelmed or discouraged, Caleb is there to speak words of encouragement to her, she said.
“He refers to me as ‘strong mother,’” she said. “He’ll say, ‘Faint not, strong mother.’ He speaks strength into my life.”
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/outdoors/collection-of-stories-covers-natural-cornucopia/article_2d8dc38f-f6cb-5e83-9645-b9b3f583d1e7.html
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Variety in game, seasons and experience is one of the most attractive elements of a life outdoors. Sharing that joy drives storytellers like Jim Spencer and Larry Dablemont in the craft that’s defined their lives. Their latest book captures the woods’ wondrous array in a rare and satisfying read.
Few hunters or fishermen set out from childhood to be single-species specialists, but the practicalities of full-time freelance outdoor writing tend to steer those chasing such dreams into defined lanes. The wit and ability to write any story for any buyer is valuable, but becoming an established authority in a particular niche allows a writer to build name recognition with editors and readers alike. That’s how Spencer and Dablemont, both residents of the Ozarks, came to write primarily about turkeys and smallmouth bass respectively. Nonetheless, the two have been at work in their chosen field for decades, and each has written about every outdoor activity under the sun along the way.
Because of the value of subject matter expertise, their previous collections in book form have focused mainly on the topics for which they’re best known. That restriction has kept many gems buried in the files. A squirrel hunting story is out of place in a turkey hunting collection, no matter how well-turned its phrases may be.
The notion of far too many bright lines fading and forgotten, and the opportunity to build a collection together, led them to act.
“Larry and I have been friends, adversaries and competitors for at least 40 years,” Spencer said. “We’ve been brothers in arms in this industry since we were both young, which was never yesterday.”
Their friendly rivalry and an opportunity to work together, not to mention an avalanche of once-published stories waiting to be re-told, brought to life their new book, “The Way I Remember It.” Through 60 stories and filling a shade more than 300 pages, “The Way I Remember It” gathers what each writer considers the very best examples from his own body of work.
“The value of the book is its wide scope,” Spencer said. “Each of us went through our stuff and selected 40 pieces. Then we swapped, read through each other’s choices and said which 10 we’d recommend be cut, so the final would have 30 stories from each of us.
Sweeping scope
“We wanted it to be a substantial book, but not monstrous. We wanted to keep the final product to just a little more than 300 pages, and we did that.”
Spencer and Dablemont have plied their trades primarily in the Midwest. They share the common ground of hidden lakes and steep hillsides, of appreciation for the quiet places and lives lived close to the land, but their styles of describing what they see and do there are quite different.
Both approach the task with a confidence that comes from hundreds of miles of typewritten lines whacked letter by letter onto pages beyond counting. Spencer’s copy is descriptive and direct. His cleanly-constructed sentences deliver facts or narrate action with a practiced ease. Dablemont’s writing flows at a conversational pace. It recalls an era of less hectic times and small, closely-knit communities. Each style is an excellent platform from which outdoor yarns may be told. Together, the styles and the stories they share form a warm, wonderful blend. The varied subject matter supports that well.
“There’s more than one facet of the outdoors, no matter what your favorite thing to do may be,” Spencer said. “We wanted the book to reflect that.
“I went through and picked out 50 or 60 fo what I consider my best stuff from my full body of work. Then I started looking to divvy it up between ducks and squirrels and fishing and everything else. Larry did the same, and we each picked stories that meant something to us.”
The result is a book that will mean something to any outdoors enthusiast who picks it up.
The book is available by mail order for $27, a total that includes shipping. Send checks to Treble Hook Unlimited, P.O. Box 758, Calico Rock, AR 72519.
An outdoor life
“I could read when I was about 3 years old because my grandmother taught me, reading comic books and running her finger along the words printed in the bubbles above the character’s heads,” Spencer said. “From the time I was about 6 years old and on, her Christmas present to me every year was a subscription to Outdoor Life. I’d read the stories by Jack O’Connor, Elmer Keith and all those guys and think, ‘I could do that.’”
Eventually, Spencer decided to give freelance writing a serious try.
“I wrote a newspaper column for a few years, then I made a point to focus on selling specifically to magazines,” he said. “I checked a book out of the library titled, ‘Writing to Sell,’ by Scott Meredith. He was a literary agent from New York. In the book he said to put out of your mind stories you’ve already written and sent and move on to the next one. I took that to heart. I wrote a deer hunting story and sent it to Argosy Magazine. When their editor called and said he wanted to buy it, he had to jog my memory, I’d forgotten it so completely.”
This would have been in the 1970s, when outdoor magazines were in their full stride.
“The deer hunting story sold for $150 and, man, I thought I was on top of the world,” Spencer said. “I sold them a story on squirrel hunting right after that. Then it was 97 rejections after that before I sold another story. I might have given up but, since I had sold those two hunting stories, I knew I could sell hunting stories, so I kept going.”
Decades on, the outdoor reading public is much richer for his efforts.
For more information on Spencer’s other books, email him at modernmountainman@gmail.com.
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TUPELO • “Suffering is our teacher; suffer here with joy.”
Those profound words didn’t come from the pen of an ancient Desert Father or an early Christian martyr. They came from ten-year-old Caleb Rodgers of Tupelo.
“Pastor Caleb,” as he is known by many, has cerebral palsy. He communicates by pointing to letters on a card while his mother writes out the messages. Those messages, both on social media and in his many live engagements, bring hope and strength to everyone who hears them.
A recent post from his Facebook page, Caleb Rodgers Updates, exemplifies his work: “Some individuals out there think they have never had someone to love them! You must let me tell you about my God if you want to know unconditional love!”
Caleb’s father, Rodney Rodgers, is a nurse practitioner who owns East Main Family Medical Clinic in Tupelo. He said Caleb’s condition is both physically painful and emotionally frustrating.
“Cerebral palsy is a brain injury that affects the connection between the muscles and the brain,” he said. “It’s like being trapped in your own body.”
Rodney said despite it all, Caleb faces even the worst days with joy and courage.
“He went through a long period where he was having ice pick headaches,” he said. “He’d scream in pain all day, and then at the end of the day, he’d spell out ‘great day.’”
Though Caleb is nonverbal, Rodney said everywhere he goes, people sit up and listen. “Pastor Caleb” dictates his messages to his mother, who reads them aloud.
“It’s amazing,” he said. “I can stand up and speak and people will nod off. But when Caleb speaks, there won’t be a dry eye in the room. Even kids get quiet. They’re just drawn to him. It’s amazing.”
Caleb’s mother, Jennie, said Caleb has always had a sense of what could only be called his “divine calling.”
“He’s not of this world,” she said. “For years, he’s been saying, ‘Only eternal things are important. This is not our home. I’m here for a purpose.’”
Caleb has crystal-clarity about what that purpose is, Jennie said.
“He always says, ‘I was put here for two reasons: to make you (his parents) good soldiers, and to encourage others,’” she said. “He has no agenda; he just loves people and wants them to know about Jesus.”
Even when he isn’t speaking publicly or posting on social media about his faith, it is never far from his consciousness, Jennie said.
“He has to have his uninterrupted ‘Jesus time’ every day,” she said. “When he’s chilling, he watches Adrian Rogers. He’s had two backyard revivals for his birthday, and he has published two devotionals. He’s been saving his allowance for years to buy plane tickets so he can go to Africa to tell people about Jesus.”
Not content just to speak about his faith, Caleb wants others to read about it for themselves. What began with Caleb saving his allowance to buy giveaway Bibles has turned into a ministry of its own, Jennie said.
“In March of 2020, we started a nonprofit called Just Jesus Inc.,” she said. “We’ve given away about 2,500 Bibles so far. We give Bibles away to all kinds of places–jails, rehab facilities, beach condos, you name it. We just did Hotel Tupelo.”
Whatever he’s doing, “Pastor Caleb” is living out his mission of encouraging others. And he’s making good soldiers of his parents, too.
“Caleb is a gift,” Rodney said. “He’s on a different level. He has drawn us closer to God through his walk.”
On days when Jennie feels overwhelmed or discouraged, Caleb is there to speak words of encouragement to her, she said.
“He refers to me as ‘strong mother,’” she said. “He’ll say, ‘Faint not, strong mother.’ He speaks strength into my life.”
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https://www.djournal.com/monroe/living/transplanted-volunteer-remembered-for-monroe-county-contributions/article_5fe09579-c49a-5d3a-87ea-c8a36bfeea96.html
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AMORY – A unique character came to Monroe County in 2011, responding to his inner call to help in recovery efforts after the Smithville tornado. Vere Craig Gardner, whose volunteer spirit possessed him to remain in the county, died March 19 in a little cabin south of Becker after battling cancer for a couple of years.
In the years since the recovery effort in Smithville, Gardner worked as a groundskeeper for Larry and Gayle George in Amory. He previously worked as a landscaper in Marion, Indiana before migrating south.
“Some of you may have known him from giving his time to loading, picking up stock and overseeing the blessing box here in Amory from the start of it over six years ago,” Gayle said in a tribute to him. “I am proud to say Vere gave his soul to Christ when he was in the hospital as he began his fight with cancer over two years ago.”
Gayle said he once told her that she softened him up, which she took as a compliment.
He was also involved at First Friends Respite Center.
“He often looked a vagrant but as soon as he opened his mouth, you knew he was a person of wisdom. I had to take him on his terms, however, because if I expected him on a certain day and he didn’t show up, I just needed to relax with it because he had found something in his world that was more important to him than my job. He would return when he wanted to,” said former First Friends director Mary Nell Dorris.
Among the tributes that poured in upon news of Gardner’s passing came from Ed Wheatley, a friend from Marion, Indiana.
“He was always a friend no matter the distance or faults,” he said.
Gayle said Gardner moved south because he was attracted by his love of southern hospitality and the warmer climate.
After falling upon bad luck, he paddled south from Indiana in a kayak with a backpack on various rivers to Memphis rather than following highways. He wound up living in a tent community with fellow homeless adventurers on Mud Island in downtown Memphis for eight years.
Gardner was a canoeing enthusiast with the nickname River Rat tattooed on his arm who was planning to eventually travel to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast until an event happened that changed his course.
“I was a drunk living on a creek bank in Olive Branch contemplating suicide after a string of shattering reversals in my life. I saw news coverage on television at a bar about the tornado that hit Smithville. My arm raised up and pointed to the screen. I told myself that I was going there and I didn’t even know where it was,” he said in an April 2021 interview with the Monroe Journal.
He asked the way to Smithville, loaded up his belongings on his back and set out. He walked the entire distance from Southaven to Smithville.
Gardner’s cremains were scattered into the waters of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway at his request on March 25 following a committal service along the riverbank behind the Georges’ residence.
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https://www.djournal.com/monroe/living/vfw-post-4490-hosting-easter-egg-hunt/article_e4428e92-6695-58c2-8712-13db534c7ef3.html
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WREN – VFW Post #4494 is getting into the Easter spirit April 2 with an event for children and adults alike. The free Easter event will be from 1 until 3 p.m., and the VFW is located at 20028 VFW Post Dr., outside of Aberdeen.
“It’s open to the public and it’s a community event. If you’ve got kids or if you just want to come down and fellowship, we’ll do that,” said Chris Roberson, quartermaster of the post. “We have to get back in touch with the community. That’s a big milestone for me.”
He lost his son to a car accident last year, and Easter was a fond time for them to spend with each other, and he wants to spread the same joy of the season to other families.
Roberson said Ricky Polk of Corinth is helping fill 100 Easter baskets with items such as coloring books, candy and stuffed animals.
There will be more than 500 Easter eggs for the hunt, and the Easter bunny will also be there. People are encouraged to bring their own phones and cameras for photos.
Additionally, there will be barbecue chicken plates with potato salad and baked beans available at no cost. However, donations are being accepted.
“If the Lord puts it on your heart to do a love offering, by all means, please do but don’t feel obligated. We’re going to cook until we’re out of food and when we’re out, we’ll go get more if we have to,” Roberson said.
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https://www.djournal.com/monroe/news/iccs-baggett-evans-selected-as-finalists-for-prestigious-transfer-scholarship/article_859334cc-dbe6-5e78-a74d-ea12df70fd75.html
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Itawamba Community College sophomores TayaRenea Leigh Baggett of Hamilton and Chloe Evans of Plantersville have been selected as semifinalists for the prestigious Jack Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship.
Baggett is majoring in music education with emphasis on trumpet. Her activities and honors include Phi Theta Kappa, choir, chamber choir, brass ensemble, band, Honors College, President’s List, recipient of the Dean’s and Linda Kay Gilreath Endowed Scholarships and former member of CenterStage. She is a member of St. James Catholic Church, where she is in the choir. Baggett’s parents are Christie and Joseph Hesse.
Evans’ activities and honors at ICC include band/Indianette, Indian Delegation president, lead orientation leader, Student Government Association at-large representative, Phi Theta Kappa vice president of leadership, Sigma Kappa Delta president, Honors College, Chieftain staff writer, Fashion Tribe graphic designer, Baptist Student Union and Wesley Foundation. She is also the recipient of the Coca-Cola Leaders of Promise Scholarship. Her parents are Brad and Melissa Evans.
The Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship is a highly-selective scholarship for the nation’s top community college students seeking to complete their bachelor’s degrees at for-year colleges or universities. Each Cooke Scholar has access to generous financial support for two to three years, college planning support, ongoing advising and the opportunity to connect with the thriving community of fellow Scholars.
This year’s 440 semifinalists were selected from a pool of more than 1,200 applicants attending 180 community colleges in 35 states.
“This past year has been particularly difficult as students continue to navigate the complexities of hybrid learning, the demands of family care and disrupted work schedules,” said Seppy Basili, executive director of the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation. “We are so proud of these semifinalists for their perseverance and achievements at their community colleges.”
Since its inception, the Cooke Foundation has selected transfer students from more than 337 community colleges and has awarded more than $54 million in transfer scholarships.
The Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship recipients will be announced in early May. Cooke Transfer Scholars are selected based on their exceptional academic ability and achievement, financial need, persistence, service and leadership. Students must be currently enrolled in community college or recent alumni.
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https://www.djournal.com/monroe/sports/noles-rebound-from-division-losses-with-sweep-of-falkner/article_fbb86a0f-5ed6-55f5-9bf8-78d351178f6c.html
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SMITHVILLE – The Smithville Seminoles had a hard week of division play, dropping a pair of games to Ingomar, but bounced back on Saturday with a sweep of Falkner.
The Noles finished off the run-rule win in six innings, 12-1, in the first game, before winning 8-7 in five innings in the second game.
“We came in today, and I thought we would be a little flat after scoring 15 runs and getting beat 16-15 last night,” Smithville coach Ben Spann said. “We were a little bit to begin with, but our defense was pretty solid today and Clay Tacker pitched one heck of a game. That’s probably the best game of his life. He kept them off balance, and they didn’t have very many hits. We made the plays behind him.”
The two teams stayed locked in a 1-1 tie for the first four innings.
Smithville scored its first run in the third after Pearson Duke walked and scored on a Peyton Nanney RBI single.
Tacker allowed an unearned run in the top of the third after a double and a passed ball, but the Noles turned two key double plays in the second and third fourth innings.
“We turned those two double plays today, which was huge,” Spann said “Those are a pitcher’s best friend. Clay kept his pitch count down.”
The Noles found their groove offensively in the final two innings, scoring six in the fifth and five in the sixth.
Carson Spann singled to jump start the fifth, and Duke drove him in with an RBI single to right center. Nanney reached on an error at first to send another run home, and Brayden Rowland, Cayden Fellows and Lane O’Brian had three straight hits to drive in four more runs.
Smithville finished off the win in the sixth with a run-scoring base hit from Dayton Hipps to right, a two-RBI single to left from Nanney and Tacker’s RBI single to center.
“Everybody was hitting at the end, and it’s contagious,” Spann said. “I tell the leadoff batter every inning to get us started, and everybody else will follow and that’s kind of how it happened today.”
In Game 2 against Falkner, Duke and Tacker had a pair of hits each, while Spann had three-plus scoreless innings in relief and struck out four.
Tacker drove in the go-ahead run with an RBI single in the bottom of the fourth to score Brunetti.
Tuesday: Ingomar 7, Smithville 3
The Seminoles led 3-1 going into the fifth, but Ingomar scored five in that inning which included three Smithville errors.
Smithville scored their runs in the first, third and fourth innings. In the first and third, Dayton Hipps drove in the first two runs with an RBI single in each.
In the fourth, Lane O’Brian singled to center with one out, and Clay Tacker drilled a two-out RBI single to left.
The Noles were held to just four hits from there, two from Chandler Brunetti and one each from Carson Spann and Drew Gideon.
Peyton Nanney went five-plus innings in the start, allowing one earned run on five hits, striking out seven and walking two.
“(Peyton) Nanney pitched a heck of a game, one of the better games I’ve seen him pitch. We just had one bad inning, and if you take that one away, we won the ballgame,” Spann said. “Their pitcher did a good job keeping us off balance, and their coach does a good job with their team hitting. They are going to put the ball in play. We had too many strikeouts and too many errors at the wrong time, same story, different game. Hopefully we can get it fixed and get it right. The season is still young, and we are a talented team and it just hasn’t come together yet.”
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AMORY – The Amory Panthers were tested with two other quality teams on Saturday afternoon, splitting a pair of games against East Union and New Hope.
All three teams had one loss coming into Saturday with Amory falling in the first game 5-2 to New Hope before limiting East Union to just three hits in an 8-1 victory in the second game.
“Overall it wasn’t a bad day. Those are both very good teams with long futures ahead of them,” Amory coach Chris Pace said. “I think we got in that mentality after running some wins off and going up 1-0 on New Hope that we were going to score some more runs, and we hit cruise control. We needed to be tested, no doubt.”
The Panthers put up a pair of runs with two outs in the first inning against East Union. Ethan Kimbrough and Bo Rock each drew walks, moved up on a passed ball and a steal from Kimbrough and scored on Corbin Gillentine’s two-run single to left center.
East Union cut it to a one-run game in the third after an infield single and three walks, but Jack Howell sat the Urchins down in the next two innings and the Panthers were able to add to their lead.
They utilized some small ball in the fourth to score a pair of runs. Jack Clayton reached on an error, and Clayton Reese followed him up with a bunt single. Will McComb sacrificed them both over with a bunt, and Reed Stanford reached on an infield single to score both runs.
Rock smashed his second home run of the day in the bottom of the fifth, a solo shot to right, to make it 5-1, and Amory tacked on three more runs in the sixth.
McComb was hit by a pitch, and Stanford and Walker Maranto loaded the bases on walks. Pinch hitter Tyler Sledge drew the fourth free pass of the inning to send home another run, and Stanford came home on an error on a pickoff attempt.
Gillentine reached on a fielder’s choice that scored Maranto to finish off the Panthers’ scoring.
Howell went five-plus innings in the start and allowed just one hit and one run while striking out five. Rock came on in relief for an inning and two-thirds and struck out the first two batters he faced.
“We had some guys come through with hits in that one and some better approaches,” Pace said. “Jack (Howell) was coming off that great outing against Starkville, and he threw more pitches today and was effectively wild. He kept them off balance, and coming behind him with (Bo) Rock was pretty good.”
In the first game against New Hope, Amory took a quick 1-0 lead in the bottom of the second on Rock’s solo shot but were held to just two hits from there, including Stanford’s RBI double in the bottom of the seventh.
Sledge struck out four in the start, while Cayden Smith threw a scoreless inning of relief with a pair of strikeouts.
“We fought back in the end and have to work on some approaches at the plate,” Pace said. “We got some different guys in the lineup and still have the pressure thing going if you’re not hitting, someone’s coming for you. Our mentality has to change a little bit because it’s going to be good baseball from here on.”
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New Albany went on the road to win two key matches as the Bulldogs defeated Pontotoc in division play and later in the week avenged a loss to 6A Tupelo.
New Albany 6, Pontotoc 1
New Albany kept their slate perfect with the 6-1 win over Pontotoc in Division 2-4A on March 25.
Seniors John David Nelson and Joseph Durrett led the Bulldogs as they won in Boys 1 doubles 6-0, 6-0 over Lorenzo Ramos and Chambers Lane.
Will Boyington and Gregory Nelson won in three by scores of 7-6, 4-6, 11-9 over Joseph Henry and David Metcalf in Boys 2 doubles.
Sarah Robbins and Gracie Mason won the Girls 1 doubles court by scores of 6-1, 6-0 over Samantha McGregor and Heather Tedford.
Girls 2 doubles court saw Eva Aldridge and Caurie Clayton defeat Mollie Rackley and Caroline Howard by 6-4, 6-4 scores.
Everett Garrett moved over to the mixed doubles court and paired with Natalie Creekmore to post a 6-0, 6-1 win over Tay Thornton and Holly Stewart.
Heidi Clayton won the girls singles match over Izzy Park with scores of 6-0, 6-0.
Bradyn Bowman returned to the courts after being sidelined by an injury and lost a close one to Sawyer Richie with the court going to Pontotoc on 6-4, 6-7, 10-8 scores.
New Albany 4, Tupelo 3
The Bulldogs traveled to Tupelo on March 26 to face the Golden Wave of Class 6A and New Albany came home with a 4-3 decision in their favor.
"Our kids are looking sharp going into the final weeks of regular season," New Albany coach Suzy Bowman said. "Now we just have to finish strong."
John David Nelson and Joseph Durrett again led the Tennis Dogs to the win as they overcame an early loss to take a 3-6, 6-4, 11-9 win over Knox Watener and Wes Henson in Boys 2 doubles.
Everett Garrett and Natalie Creekmore paired up for the second consecutive day on mixed doubles and won 6-4, 6-2 over Ashton Posey and Morrison Sliman.
Heidi Clayton was the winner in girls singles by 6-3, 6-2 scores over Isabelle Elmer.
Bradyn Bowman won a hard-fought decision over Luke Williamson by scores of 6-3, 4-6, 15-13 in boys singles.
"I was proud of Bradyn Bowman, coming back just 3.5 weeks after surgery on his hand and playing a strong singles match for us," Suzy said. "It was nice to have him back in the lineup this close to the playoffs."
Girls 1 doubles partners Sarah Robbins and Gracie Mason lost a tight match with Isabella Posey and Laurie Watener by 3-6, 6-1, 11-13 scores.
Tupelo's Beyla Waldrop and Taylor O'Rear won the Girls 2 doubles court by 6-0, 6-2 scores over New Albany's Eva Aldridge and Caurie Clayton.
The Golden Wave duo of Mont Watener and William Henson won over on the Boys 1 doubles court by 6-4, 6-1 scores over Will Boyington and Gregory Nelson of New Albany.
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https://www.djournal.com/news/calhoun-county-takes-brunt-of-storm-damage-in-northeast-mississippi/article_14be88d1-57c7-55c5-9ac3-e60568c25918.html
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This photograph, captured by a drone and provided by the Calhoun County Sheriff's Office, shows the remains of three outbuildings destroyed during a series of storms that swept across the Deep South, Wednesday. Calhoun received the brunt of the damage in Northeast Mississippi.
TUPELO • A line of thunderstorms and straight line winds that moved through the region on Wednesday evening wreaked havoc on a portion of Calhoun County, but spared most of Northeast Mississippi.
The preliminary damage report from the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, Thursday morning, showed only three counties in the Daily Journal coverage area – Calhoun, Lafayette and Oktibbeha – reported some type of damage to homes, ranging from affected to destroyed.
Of the three, Calhoun County was the only one to show significant damage. And the bulk of that was in the northeast corner of the county, said Sheriff Greg Pollan.
“Highway 9 from County Road 267 to the Pontotoc County line had extensive damage,” Pollan said. “I estimate there were 100 trees down. And when they went down, they took out the power lines. In just that stretch, there were at least a dozen homes damaged.”
By lunchtime on Thursday, the number of homes damaged across the county had grown to around two dozen. And officials had not even started counting the number of shops, barns and outbuildings damaged.
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The Calhoun County Sheriff’s Office used their drone to help assess damages. In one case, three outbuildings within a couple hundred feet of a house were destroyed, but the residence only lost one piece of tin.
“We were very fortunate that there has not been one report of someone being injured,” Pollan said.
Just to the north of Calhoun County, there were only a couple a houses damaged. Lafayette County Emergency Management Agency director Steven Quarles said a tree limb went through the roof of an house in Oxford, and a tree fell across a prefabricated structure in the county, cutting it in half.
“There was a lady in it at the time. She was carried to the hospital, but only had minor injuries,” Quarles said. “We came out of this lucky. Panola County was hit worse than us and it looks like Tallahatchie County got the brunt of it as far as damage in north Mississippi.”
Weather officials are still trying to determine if the damage was caused by tornadoes or just straight line winds. According to National Weather Service in Memphis, Tupelo saw a wind gust of 53 mph at 1:49 p.m. on March 30. Iuka and Corinth saw gusts in the upper 40s and Aberdeen, Amory and Oxford topped out around 45 mph.
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https://www.djournal.com/pontotoc/ask-the-master-gardener/article_dac28fc3-4962-5be7-8e3d-47a82f70afb0.html
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Question: What are some tips shared by Dr. Jeff Wilson at last week’s Pontotoc Master Gardener grafting workshop?
Answer: First, publication #P3402 defines grafting. “Grafting is a method of asexual plant propagation that joins parts from different plants so that they will heal and grow as one plant.” The scion (the stem from the desired variety) is a shoot with several dormant buds to produce the new branches. The rootstock becomes the root system of a grafted or budded tree.
If wondering--why aren’t more gardeners outside grafting trees? For a successful graft, the cambium layer on both tree parts must align and grow together. This may mean acquiring some skill through practicing this growing process.
Grafting techniques are a section of our Master Gardener manual and learning sessions. Gardeners here agreed that with Dr. Wilson’s expertise, we might share the efforts to succeed in this age-old strategy. Already we knew that there had to be compatible stock and scion, cambium layers must meet properly, scions must be healthy, turned correctly, uninjured or displaced, and dormant with a graft properly secured with grafting tape. So many variables to conflict!
And, so many chances to redirect growth.
So, while it is mandatory that nursery workers and fruit tree producers know how to graft, the rest of us may be “hobbyists” who just hope to learn a useful technique. Here, gardeners from different areas of North Mississippi learned how to propagate for the better use of superior root systems or to maintain clonal reproduction, important even to home orchard growers.
Many months of gathering scions and acquiring rootstock (by president Julia and Dr. Jeff Wilson) preceded this session. Garden enthusiasts from outlying areas came to learn—and left with grafted fruit trees for their home orchards.
We heard that thriving orchard owners could create newer, better-yielding varieties of fruit trees more resistant to insects and disease. Dr. Wilson said that many plants do not reproduce true from seeds nor are they economically reproduced from cuttings. Some fruit trees require cross-pollination by a second—often different—variety, often unavailable; by grafting a scion from a male tree onto the female one, a grower may have that needed pollinizer. This (seemingly practice-oriented) work can change the root system by using rootstocks with best growth habits and better anchorage. Rootstocks for apple varieties, for instance, have increased resistance to crown gall and root aphids, along with providing often desirable dwarfing potential (MSU Extension).
We learned how important grafting tools are (and have been through the ages). Some now available are box cutters or grafting and budding knives, preferably flat on one side of the blade. Why? One of the more critical steps to successful grafting is to prevent air from getting into the graft site and drying it out. No longer needing to coat with wax, Dr. Wilson used a stretchable plastic parafilm that held scion and rootstock together with an airtight seal. Since this tape breaks down, removing it later is unnecessary (P#3402).
Visiting gardeners could choose from several kinds of grafts. Two of these were the whip and tongue and the cleft. I noticed that one gardener had cut a wedge-shaped cut narrower on the opposite side and inserted the scion into the limb stock using the cleft graft. Another asked about having a pecan-grafting workshop (with the four-flap graft working best for pecans and recommended in April by Publication #IS1296). Additionally, a bark graft for scions larger than a two-inch diameter might be worth trying during the active growing season (June through September) to attempt budding, maybe with grape vines.
Who wouldn’t want—on one’s own land—a fruit orchard or an arbor, cluster-laden? Aunt Bea's sturdy grape arbor—passed just before entering her garden gate, welcomed. Later there for us, in Willa Cather’s My Antonia, her family's apple orchard, each tree planted and cared for by hand, showed rare, unthinkable fruit growing from the Nebraska plains. I imagine, from—not just hard work.
Betty Crane, Ph.D., is a trained volunteer with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. Have a question for the Pontotoc Master Gardeners? Visit the Pontotoc Extension office or call 662-489-3911.
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A senator holds a bag of hemp product, used by Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, lead negotiator, to illustrate to lawmakers what specific portions of the Mississippi Medical Cannabis Equivalency Units would look like, during his presentation of the Mississippi Medical Cannabis Act in the Senate Chamber at the Mississippi State Capitol in Jackson, Miss., Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022.
PONTOTOC • Pontotoc County Supervisors won't allow businesses to cultivate or sell legalized medical marijuana within the county.
In two separate votes during their regular meeting on March 31, Pontotoc supervisors voted against allowing medical marijuana to be grown, cultivated or distributed within Pontotoc County.
The vote against the sale of medical marijuana was unanimous. Supervisors were divided, however, of whether to permit the growing of medical marijuana. Dan McKnight and Ernie Wright voted to allow growers to cultivate medicinal pot; Brad Ward, Mike McGregor and Wayne Stokes voted against.
State law requires municipalities to decide whether they will opt out of permitting the cultivation and sale of medical marijuana within their borders by May 3. The residents of any municipality that does so could, via petition, force a special election to allow the citizenry to determine whether the growth and sale of medical cannabis is allowed.
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/amazon-workers-in-nyc-vote-to-unionize-a-first-for-company/article_71af2463-511e-58e9-9945-be41774074f5.html
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NEW YORK • Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize on Friday, marking the first successful U.S. organizing effort in the retail giant's history and handing an unexpected win to a nascent group that fueled the union drive.
Warehouse workers cast 2,654 votes in favor of a union, giving the fledgling Amazon Labor Union enough support to pull off a victory. According to the National Labor Relations Board, which is overseeing the process, 2,131 workers rejected the union bid.
The 67 ballots that were challenged by either Amazon or the ALU were not enough to sway the outcome. About 57% of the more than 8,300 workers on the voter list cast their ballots.
Federal labor officials said the results of the count won't be verified until they process any objections that both parties may file. Any objections are due by April 8.
The victory was an uphill battle for the independent group, made up of former and current workers who lacked official backing from an established union and were out-gunned by the deep-pocketed retail giant. Despite obstacles, organizers believed their grassroots approach was more relatable to workers and could help them overcome where established unions have failed in the past.
Tristan Dutchin, who began working for the online retailer about a year ago, is hopeful that the new union will improve working conditions at his workplace.
"I'm excited that we're making history," Dutchin said. "We're about to unionize a multibillion, trillion-dollar company. This will be a fantastic time for workers to be surrounded in a better, safer working environment."
Chris Smalls, a fired Amazon employee who has been leading the ALU in its fight on Staten Island, bounded out the NLRB building in Brooklyn on Friday with other union organizers, pumping their fists and jumping, chanting "ALU." They uncorked a bottle if Champagne.
Meanwhile, Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, appear to have rejected a union bid but outstanding challenged ballots could change the outcome. The votes were 993-to-875 against the union. A hearing to review 416 challenged ballots is expected to begin in the next few days.
The union campaigns come at a time of widespread labor unrest at many corporations. Workers at more than 140 Starbucks locations around the country, for instance, have requested union elections and several of them have already been successful.
John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, said the early vote counts in New York have been "shocking." The nascent Amazon Labor Union, which is leading the charge on Staten Island, has no backing from an established union and is powered by former and current warehouse workers.
"I don't think that many people thought that the Amazon Labor Union had much of a chance of winning at all," Logan said. "And I think we're likely to see more of those (approaches) going forward."
After a crushing defeat last year in Bessemer, when a majority of workers voted against forming a union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union got a second chance to organize another campaign when the NLRB ordered a do-over after determining that Amazon tainted the first election.
Though RWDSU is currently lagging in the latest election, Logan said the early results were still remarkable because the union has made a good effort narrowing its margin from last year.
Amazon has pushed back hard in the lead-up to both elections. The retail giant held mandatory meetings, where workers were told unions are a bad idea. The company also launched an anti-union website targeting workers and placed English and Spanish posters across the Staten Island facility urging them to reject the union. In Bessemer, Amazon has made some changes to but still kept a controversial U.S. Postal Service mailbox that was key in the NLRB's decision to invalidate last year's vote.
In a filing released on Thursday, Amazon disclosed it spent about $4.2 million last year on labor consultants, which organizers say the retailer routinely solicits to persuade workers not to unionize. It's unclear how much it spent on such services in 2022.
Both labor fights faced unique challenges. Alabama, for instance, is a right-to-work state that prohibits a company and a union from signing a contract that requires workers to pay dues to the union that represents them.
The union landscape in Alabama is also starkly different from New York. Last year, union members accounted for 22.2% of wage and salary workers in New York, ranked only behind Hawaii, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's more than double the national average of 10.3%. In Alabama, it's 5.9%.
The mostly Black workforce at the Amazon facility, which opened in 2020, mirrors the Bessemer population of more than 70% Black residents, according to the latest U.S. Census data.
Pro-union workers say they want better working conditions, longer breaks and higher wages. Regular full-time employees at the Bessemer facility earn at least $15.80 an hour, higher than the estimated $14.55 per hour on average in the city. That figure is based on an analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau's annual median household income for Bessemer of $30,284, which could include more than one worker.
The ALU said they don't have a demographic breakdown of the warehouse workers on Staten Island and Amazon declined to provide the information to The Associated Press, citing the union vote. Internal records leaked to The New York Times from 2019 showed more than 60% of the hourly associates at the facility were Black or Latino, while most of managers were white or Asian.
Amazon workers there are seeking longer breaks, paid time off for injured employees and an hourly wage of $30, up from a minimum of just over $18 per hour offered by the company. The estimated average wage for the borough is $41 per hour, according to a similar U.S. Census Bureau analysis of Staten Island's $85,381 median household income.
A spokesperson for Amazon said the company invests in wages and benefits, such as health care, 401(k) plans and a prepaid college tuition program to help grow workers' careers.
"As a company, we don't think unions are the best answer for our employees," the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "Our focus remains on working directly with our team to continue making Amazon a great place to work."
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/covid-pandemics-end-may-bring-turbulence-for-us-health-care/article_4ee8ffc7-40e2-5fad-bfcb-e56ba282cc31.html
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WASHINGTON • When the end of the COVID-19 pandemic comes, it could create major disruptions for a cumbersome U.S. health care system made more generous, flexible and up-to-date technologically through a raft of temporary emergency measures.
Winding down those policies could begin as early as the summer. That could force an estimated 15 million Medicaid recipients to find new sources of coverage, require congressional action to preserve broad telehealth access for Medicare enrollees, and scramble special COVID-19 rules and payment policies for hospitals, doctors and insurers. There are also questions about how emergency use approvals for COVID-19 treatments will be handled.
The array of issues is tied to the coronavirus public health emergency first declared more than two years ago and periodically renewed since then. It's set to end April 16 and the expectation is that the Biden administration will extend it through mid-July. Some would like a longer off-ramp.
Transitions don't bode well for the complex U.S. health care system, with its mix of private and government insurance and its labyrinth of policies and procedures. Health care chaos, if it breaks out, could create midterm election headaches for Democrats and Republicans alike.
"The flexibilities granted through the public health emergency have helped people stay covered and get access to care, so moving forward the key question is how to build on what has been a success and not lose ground," said Juliette Cubanski, a Medicare expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, who has been researching potential consequences of winding down the pandemic emergency.
MEDICAID CHURN
Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for low-income people, is covering about 79 million people, a record partly due to the pandemic.
But the nonpartisan Urban Institute think tank estimates that about 15 million people could lose Medicaid when the public health emergency ends, at a rate of at least 1 million per month.
Congress increased federal Medicaid payments to states because of COVID-19, but it also required states to keep people on the rolls during the health emergency. In normal times states routinely disenroll Medicaid recipients whose incomes rise beyond certain levels, or for other life changes affecting eligibility. That process will switch on again when the emergency ends, and some states are eager to move forward.
Virtually all of those losing Medicaid are expected to be eligible for some other source of coverage, either through employers, the Affordable Care Act or — for kids — the Children's Health Insurance Program.
But that's not going to happen automatically, said Matthew Buettgens, lead researcher on the Urban Institute study. Cost and lack of awareness about options could get in the way.
People dropped from Medicaid may not realize they can pick up taxpayer-subsidized ACA coverage. Medicaid is usually free, so people offered workplace insurance could find the premiums too high.
"This is an unprecedented situation," said Buettgens. "The uncertainty is real."
The federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, is advising states to take it slow and connect Medicaid recipients who are disenrolled with other potential coverage. The agency will keep an eye on states' accuracy in making eligibility decisions. Biden officials want coverage shifts, not losses.
"We are focused on making sure we hold on to the gains in coverage we have made under the Biden-Harris administration," said CMS Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure. "We are at the strongest point in our history and we are going make sure that we hold on to the coverage gains."
ACA coverage — or "Obamacare" — is an option for many who would lose Medicaid. But it will be less affordable if congressional Democrats fail to extend generous financial assistance called for in President Joe Biden's social legislation. Democrats stalling the bill would face blame.
Republicans in mostly Southern states that have refused to expand Medicaid are also vulnerable. In those states, it can be very difficult for low-income adults to get coverage and more people could wind up uninsured.
State Medicaid officials don't want to be the scapegoats. "Medicaid has done its job," said Matt Salo, head of the National Association of Medicaid Directors. "We have looked out for physical, mental and behavioral health needs. As we come out of this emergency, we are supposed to right-size the program."
TELEHEALTH STATIC
Millions of Americans discovered telehealth in 2020 when coronavirus shutdowns led to the suspension of routine medical consultations. In-person visits are again the norm, but telehealth has shown its usefulness and gained broader acceptance.
The end of the public health emergency would jeopardize telehealth access for millions enrolled in traditional Medicare. Restrictions predating COVID-19 limit telehealth mainly to rural residents, in part to mitigate against health care fraud. Congress has given itself 151 days after the end of the public health emergency to come up with new rules.
"If there are no changes to the law after that, most Medicare beneficiaries will lose access to coverage for telehealth," the Kaiser Foundation's Cubanski said.
A major exception applies to enrollees in private Medicare Advantage plans, which generally do cover telehealth. However, nearly 6 in 10 Medicare enrollees are in the traditional fee-for-service program.
TESTS, VACCINES, TREATMENTS, PAYMENTS & PROCEDURES
Widespread access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments rests on legal authority connected to the public health emergency.
One example is the Biden administration's requirement for insurers to cover up to eight free at-home COVID-19 tests per month.
An area that's particularly murky is what happens to tests, treatments and vaccines covered under emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration.
Some experts say emergency use approvals last only through the duration of the public health emergency. Others say it's not as simple as that, because a different federal emergency statute also applies to vaccines, tests and treatments. There's no clear direction yet from health officials.
The FDA has granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine for those 16 and older and Moderna's for those 18 and older, so their continued use would not be affected.
But hospitals could take a financial hit. Currently Medicare pays them 20% more for the care of COVID-19 patients. That's only for the duration of the emergency.
And Medicare enrollees would have more hoops to jump through to be approved for rehab in a nursing home. A suspended Medicare rule requiring a prior three-day hospital stay would come back into effect.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra recently told The Associated Press that his department is committed to giving "ample notice" when it ends the public health emergency.
"We want to make sure we're not putting in a detrimental position Americans who still need our help," Becerra said. "The one that people are really worried about is Medicaid."
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/house-passes-35-a-month-insulin-cap-as-dems-seek-wider-bill/article_41aff084-d9b0-592e-8261-22c419bfd338.html
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WASHINGTON • The House has passed a bill capping the monthly cost of insulin at $35 for insured patients, part of an election-year push by Democrats for price curbs on prescription drugs at a time of rising inflation.
Experts say the legislation, which passed 232-193 Thursday, would provide significant relief for privately insured patients with skimpier plans and for Medicare enrollees facing rising out-of-pocket costs for their insulin. Some could save hundreds of dollars annually, and all insured patients would get the benefit of predictable monthly costs for insulin. The bill would not help the uninsured.
But the Affordable Insulin Now Act will serve as a political vehicle to rally Democrats and force Republicans who oppose it into uncomfortable votes ahead of the midterms. For the legislation to pass Congress, 10 Republican senators would have to vote in favor. Democrats acknowledge they don't have an answer for how that's going to happen.
"If 10 Republicans stand between the American people being able to get access to affordable insulin, that's a good question for 10 Republicans to answer," said Rep. Dan Kildee, D-Mich., a cosponsor of the House bill. "Republicans get diabetes, too. Republicans die from diabetes."
Public opinion polls have consistently shown support across party lines for congressional action to limit drug costs.
But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., complained the legislation is only "a small piece of a larger package around government price controls for prescription drugs." Critics say the bill would raise premiums and fails to target pharmaceutical middlemen seen as contributing to high list prices for insulin.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Democrats could have a deal on prescription drugs if they drop their bid to authorize Medicare to negotiate prices. "Do Democrats really want to help seniors, or would they rather have the campaign issue?" Grassley said.
The insulin bill, which would take effect in 2023, represents just one provision of a much broader prescription drug package in President Joe Biden's social and climate legislation.
In addition to a similar $35 cap on insulin, the Biden bill would authorize Medicare to negotiate prices for a range of drugs, including insulin. It would penalize drugmakers who raise prices faster than inflation and overhaul the Medicare prescription drug benefit to limit out-of-pocket costs for enrollees.
Biden's agenda passed the House only to stall in the Senate because Democrats could not reach consensus. Party leaders haven't abandoned hope of getting the legislation moving again, and preserving its drug pricing curbs largely intact.
The idea of a $35 monthly cost cap for insulin actually has a bipartisan pedigree. The Trump administration had created a voluntary option for Medicare enrollees to get insulin for $35, and the Biden administration continued it.
In the Senate, Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire are working on a bipartisan insulin bill. Georgia Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has introduced legislation similar to the House bill, with the support of Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York.
Stung by criticism that Biden's economic policies spur inflation, Democrats are redoubling efforts to show how they'd help people cope with costs. On Thursday, the Commerce Department reported a key inflation gauge jumped 6.4% in February compared with a year ago, the largest year-over-year rise since January 1982.
But experts say the House bill would not help uninsured people, who face the highest out-of-pocket costs for insulin. Also, people with diabetes often take other medications as well as insulin. That's done to treat the diabetes itself, along with other serious health conditions often associated with the disease. The House legislation would not help with those costs, either. Collins says she's looking for a way to help uninsured people through her bill.
About 37 million Americans have diabetes, and an estimated 6 million to 7 million use insulin to keep their blood sugars under control. It's an old drug, refined and improved over the years, that has seen relentless price increases.
Steep list prices don't reflect the rates insurance plans negotiate with manufacturers. But those list prices are used to calculate cost-sharing amounts that patients owe. Patients who can't afford their insulin reduce or skip doses, a strategy born of desperation, which can lead to serious complications and even death.
Economist Sherry Glied of New York University said the market for insulin is a "total disaster" for many patients, particularly those with skimpy insurance plans or no insurance.
"This will make private insurance for people with diabetes a much more attractive proposition," said Glied.
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/jan-6-panel-pressures-garland-to-charge-higher-ups/article_359d1dda-24c0-5b1c-ae97-e9ecb1326301.html
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WASHINGTON • Lawmakers investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol are increasingly going public with critical statements, court filings and more to deliver a blunt message to Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice.
President Donald Trump and his allies likely committed crimes, they say. And it's up to you to do something about it.
"Attorney General Garland, do your job so we can do ours," prodded Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia.
"We are upholding our responsibility. The Department of Justice must do the same," echoed Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.
Their rhetoric, focused this week on two contempt of Congress referrals approved by the committee, is just the latest example of the pressure campaign the lawmakers are waging. It reflects a stark reality: While they can investigate Jan. 6 and issue subpoenas to gather information, only the Justice Department can bring criminal charges.
Committee members see the case they are building against Trump and his allies as a once-in-a-generation circumstance. If it's not fully prosecuted, they say, it could set a dangerous precedent that threatens the foundations of American democracy.
The lawmakers seem nearly certain to send a criminal referral to the Justice Department once their work is through.
It all puts Garland, who has spent his tenure trying to shield the Justice Department from political pressure, in a precarious spot. Any criminal charges related to Jan. 6 would trigger a firestorm, thrusting prosecutors back into the partisan crossfire that proved so damaging during the Trump-Russia influence investigation and an email probe of Hillary Clinton.
Garland has given no public indication about whether prosecutors might be considering a case against the former president. He has, though, vowed to hold accountable "all January 6th perpetrators, at any level" and has said that would include those who were "present that day or were otherwise criminally responsible for the assault on our democracy."
It's already the largest criminal prosecution in the department's history — for rioters who entered the Capitol building on Jan. 6 as well as members of extremist groups who are accused of planning the attack. More than 750 people have been charged with federal crimes. Over 220 riot defendants have pleaded guilty, more than 100 have been sentenced and at least 90 others have trial dates.
Parts of the department's investigation have overlapped with the committee's. One example is in late January when Justice announced it had opened a probe into a fake slate of electors who falsely tried to declare Trump the winner of the 2020 election in seven swing states that Joe Biden won. Three days later, lawmakers subpoenaed more than a dozen people involved in the effort.
But the Jan. 6 committee wants more. Their message was amplified this week when a federal judge in California — District Judge David Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee — wrote that it is "more likely than not" that Trump himself committed crimes in his attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
The practical effect of that ruling was to order the release of more than 100 emails from Trump adviser John Eastman to the Jan. 6 Committee. But lawmakers zeroed in on a particular passage in the judge's opinion that characterized Jan. 6 as a "coup."
"Dr. Eastman and President Trump launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history. Their campaign was not confined to the ivory tower—it was a coup in search of a legal theory," Carter wrote.
But experts caution that Carter's opinion was only in a civil case and does not meet the longstanding charging policy the Justice Department is required to meet. Justin Danilewitz, a Philadelphia-based attorney and former federal prosecutor, noted the department faces a higher burden of proof in court to show that presidential immunity should not apply. And he said the legal advice Trump received from Eastman "undermines an inference of corrupt or deceitful intent."
The department will be guided by the evidence and law, he said, "but the social and political ramifications of a decision of this kind will not be far from the minds of Attorney General Garland and his staff."
"A decision to bring or not bring criminal charges will have significant ripple effects," he added.
Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesperson, called the judge's ruling an "absurd and baseless ruling by a Clinton-appointed Judge in California." He called the House committee's investigation a "circus of partisanship."
Another point of friction with the Justice Department is the effort to enforce subpoenas through contempt of Congress charges.
The House approved a contempt referral against former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows in December after he ceased cooperating with the Jan. 6 panel. While an earlier contempt referral against former Trump adviser Steve Bannon resulted in an indictment, the Department of Justice has been slower to decide whether to prosecute Meadows.
"The Department of Justice is entrusted with defending our Constitution," Rep. Liz Cheney, the Republican committee chair, said at a hearing this week. "Department leadership should not apply any doctrine of immunity that might block Congress from fully uncovering and addressing the causes of the January 6 attack."
A decision to pursue the contempt charges against Meadows would have to come from career prosecutors in the U.S. attorney's office in Washington before senior Justice Department officials would weigh in and decide how to proceed.
Bringing a case against Meadows would be more challenging for prosecutors than the case against Bannon, in large part because Bannon wasn't a White House official during the insurrection.
The Justice Department has long maintained that senior aides generally cannot be forced to testify if a president invokes executive privilege, as Trump has done. And bringing charges could risk undermining the longstanding principle that lets the executive branch of the government keep most discussions private.
While the majority of committee members have turned up the pressure on Garland, one member, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, has not gone as far.
"I feel strongly that we restore the tradition of respect for the independence of the law enforcement function," Raskin told reporters this week. "That was one of the things that got trashed during the Trump period. And so I think that Congress and the president should let the Department of Justice and attorney general do their job."
"Attorney General Garland is my constituent," Raskin added, "and I don't beat up on my constituents."
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/three-um-students-named-goldwater-scholars/article_58fbdfc4-d1c9-5ca9-b46f-1abece546d39.html
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OXFORD • For the first time at the University of Mississippi, three students have been awarded Goldwater Scholarships in a single year.
Ethan Lambert, of Corinth; Reinhard "Matt" Knerr, of Paducah, Kentucky; and Alexandria "Ally" Watrous, of Lexington, Kentucky, all members of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, have become the university's 19th, 20th and 21st winners.
The Goldwater is one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. It supports exceptional sophomores and juniors who show promise in becoming the next generation of research leaders in these fields.
This year, the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation awarded 417 scholarships from a pool of 1,242 outstanding undergraduates nominated by 433 institutions.
"Ethan, Matt and Ally have all presented an incredible commitment to a career in research, and a genuine display of intellectual curiosity," said Vivian Ibrahim, director of the UM Office of National Scholarship Advisement. "This is the first time UM has had three Goldwater scholars. We couldn't be more excited for them."
In recent years, the office has had steady success in recruiting competitive students for the Goldwater, Ibrahim said.
Knerr, Lambert and Watrous follow in the footsteps of Ole Miss Goldwater scholars Ivy Li and Austin Wallace in 2021, William Meador and Jax Dallas in 2020, and Addison Roush in 2019.
An Annexstad scholar[11] , Lambert is set to graduate in 2023 with a bachelor's degree in chemistry with an emphasis in chemical physics and a minor in mathematics.
"I am thrilled to be named a Goldwater Scholar but this accomplishment would not have been possible without the incredible people around me in the lab," he said. "They taught me new techniques, proofread and answered my questions at 2 a.m. when I couldn't sleep.
"I would be a fraction of the person I am without them around me."
Lambert hopes to apply for a graduate research fellowship from the National Science Foundation next year to fund a doctorate in chemistry with a focus on studying how to use light to induce electron transfers between small molecules. This work has potential real-world applications in solar energy conversion.
Already first author on three published research papers and co-author of a book, Lambert has been working with Nathan Hammer, UM professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
"It has been a joy mentoring Ethan in the lab," Hammer said. "He truly has the love for science and the aptitude for research. I expect great things from him for the remainder of his time with us at UM and beyond."
Knerr is a Stamps scholar who is pursuing a degree in biochemistry, with minors in neuroscience, biological sciences, environmental studies and psychology.
"I am fascinated by aging," he said. "My time abroad – in Spain, Costa Rica and the Netherlands – has really shed light on different ways to approach how we age.
"In the future, I want to be able to look at aging from a scientific angle as well as a moral and humanistic one."
Knerr has four published articles and has worked Joshua Bloomekatz, an assistant professor of biology.
"Matt is a dynamic student with a passion for research, who shows great promise as a physician scientist," Bloomekatz said.
Watrous is the only Ole Miss sophomore to be awarded a Goldwater, which will provide funding for her junior and senior years at the university. She is pursuing bachelor's degrees in chemistry with a chemical physics emphasis, in physics and in German with minors in French and mathematics.
In the long term, Watrous is interested in collaborating internationally while conducting research in computational chemistry.
"The whole national scholarship and Goldwater process reaffirmed that grad school is something I want to do and can achieve," she said.
Watrous has three peer-reviewed papers and one cover article to date as part of the UM Computational Astrochemistry Group, headed by Ryan Fortenberry, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.
"Ally is an absolute joy to have in our group, and I count myself lucky to be on her team through her education," Fortenberry said. "Most often, about the time that students get trained, they leave. However, she'll be around for a few more years, and I look forward to continuing my collaboration with her."
For more information on the Goldwater Scholarships and how to apply for them, contact the Office of National Scholarship Advisement at onsa@olemiss.edu.
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/ummc-goes-out-of-network-with-blue-cross-blue-shield/article_1f456502-5d2b-5e44-a0bd-fcb5606a17e3.html
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Mississippi’s largest hospital went out of network with the state’s largest insurer on Friday, meaning thousands of Mississippians will now face higher out-of-pocket costs for their health care or be forced to leave the state for certain specialty care.
This is the first time the state’s only academic medical center has officially gone out of network and not had an active contract with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mississippi, according to UMMC officials’ knowledge.
Even though representatives for both sides have been meeting in person each week since January, the two entities were not able to agree to a new contract before the March 31 deadline.
UMMC is asking Blue Cross for substantial increases to inpatient, outpatient and professional reimbursement rates, some as large as 50%. UMMC maintains it’s asking for below market rates for academic medical centers, while Blue Cross officials say that steep rate hikes would necessitate a substantial increase in customer premiums.
“We are disappointed that Blue Cross doesn’t value the Medical Center enough to agree to a fair contract and keep us in its network,” Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the UMMC School of Medicine, said in a press release. “We know that patients are disheartened and frustrated. We must – for the health and wellness of all Mississippians – stand firm in our resolve that Blue Cross should agree to pay us at fair market rates.”
The two sides have also sparred over Blue Cross’ quality care plan, which measures hospital performance and whether services provided to patients are adequate across 15 different categories. UMMC leadership has said that the complexity involved in the care the hospital provides means it should have an individualized quality care program, while Blue Cross maintains that UMMC should be held to the same standards as its other network providers.
“It is unfortunate we have not been able to reach an agreement,” said Cayla Mangrum, corporate communications manager at BCBSMS, in a statement. “Unreasonable demands by UMMC for increased payments, along with their unwillingness to agree to Network Hospital quality requirements, are not in the best interest of our Members and Groups as we seek to provide access to quality, cost-effective health care. We will continue to work to reach an agreement with UMMC, but until then, our primary goal remains our Members’ health.”
There are certain services and facilities UMMC has that cannot be found anywhere else in the state. These include Mississippi’s only Level 1 trauma center, Level IV neonatal intensive care unit and children’s hospital, among other critical care services.
Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney told Mississippi Today this week that he questions whether BCBS could meet the state’s Managed Care Plan Network Adequacy Regulation without UMMC in its network. The regulation requires health insurance providers to “maintain a network that is sufficient in numbers and types of participating providers to assure that all devices to covered persons will be accessible without reasonable delay.”
Cheney also said his office would get involved if the two parties didn’t strike a deal by Friday.
This week, Mississippi Today spoke to parents whose children have been receiving specialty care at Children’s of Mississippi. Few have received answers about what the future holds and some are scrambling to find an alternative provider for their children.
“The truth is we can’t go anywhere else,” said Lanier Craft, whose son has Pompe disease, a rare genetic condition that affects the muscles. “This is all there is for us. Batson has been there since I walked in the door in February eight years ago with my child. They have done everything for us, and to just completely lose that within a day because of an agreement over money is unimaginable.”
There are three groups of Blue Cross Blue Shield customers that UMMC’s out-of-network status won’t apply to:
Those enrolled in the Mississippi State and School Employees’ Health Insurance Plan. Though that plan is administered through BCBS, only commercial insurance plans are affected.
Patients who come into UMMC’s emergency room or are transferred from another hospital.
Patients for which UMMC has a continuity of care obligation. UMMC can’t stop caring for, say, a pregnant woman in her last trimester of pregnancy or a cancer patient who is in round two of 12 rounds of chemotherapy. For these patients, this period of coverage will expire 90 days from April 1.
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America's employers extended a streak of robust hiring in March, adding 431,000 jobs in a sign of the economy's resilience in the face of a still-destructive pandemic, Russia's war against Ukraine and the highest inflation in 40 years.
The government's report Friday showed that last month's job growth helped shrink the unemployment rate to 3.6%. That's the lowest rate since the pandemic erupted two years ago and just above the half-century low of 3.5% that was reached two years ago.
Despite the inflation surge, persistent supply bottlenecks, damage from COVID-19 and now a war in Europe, employers have added at least 400,000 jobs for 11 straight months. In its report, the government also sharply revised up its estimate of hiring in January and February by a combined 95,000 jobs.
The March report sketched a bright picture of the job market, with steady hiring and rising wages in many industries. Average hourly pay has risen a strong 5.6% over the past 12 months, welcome news for employees across the economy.
Still, those pay raises aren't keeping up with the spike in inflation that has put the Federal Reserve on track to raise rates multiple times, perhaps aggressively, in the coming months. Those rate hikes will result in costlier loans for many consumers and businesses. In the meantime, worker pay raises, a response in many cases to labor shortages, are themselves feeding the economy's inflation pressures.
Since the pandemic struck in 2020, many people have remained on the sidelines of the job market, a trend that has contributed to the worker shortage in many industries. But in an encouraging sign for the economy, 418,000 people began looking for a job in March, and many found one.
Over the past year, 3.8 million people have rejoined the labor force, meaning they now either have a job or are looking for one.
The job growth in March, though solid, was the lowest since September and slightly below what economists had expected. Still, Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Dreyfus and Mellon, said the numbers show that "the U.S. economy continues to have underlying momentum and that firms are taking workers when they can.''
Across the economy, hiring gains were widespread last month. Restaurants and bars added 61,000 jobs, retailers 49,000, manufacturers 38,000 and hotels 25,000. Construction jobs rose by 19,000 and have now returned to their pre-pandemic level.
Some economists sounded a note of caution, though, suggesting that the prospect of much higher borrowing rates engineered by the Fed will inevitably slow the job market and the overall economy.
"We continue to expect that the Federal Reserve will move rates up expeditiously to counter surging inflation, and that this report only adds more urgency to their plans to do so,'' said Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association.
For now, the job market continues to rebound with unexpected speed from the coronavirus recession. Job openings are at a near-record level, and applications for unemployment benefits have dropped to near their lowest point since 1969.
Fueled by generous federal aid, savings amassed during the pandemic and ultra-low borrowing rates orchestrated by the Fed, U.S. consumers have spent so fast that many factories, warehouses, shipping companies and ports have failed to keep pace with their customer demand. Supply chains have snarled, forcing up prices.
As the pandemic has eased, consumers have been broadening their spending beyond goods to services, such as health care, travel and entertainment, which they had long avoided during the worst of the pandemic. The resulting high inflation is causing hardships for many lower-income households that face sharp price increases for such necessities as food, gasoline and rent.
The proportion of Americans who are either working or looking for work — the so-called labor force participation rate — ticked up to 62.4% last month, the highest since the early days of the pandemic in March 2020. Even so, the participation rate remains a full percentage point below its pre-pandemic level, limiting the pool of potential job applicants employers can choose from. Many Americans remain on the sidelines because of lingering health concerns and trouble finding childcare.
"You can't keep adding 400,000 workers a month without running out of workers,'' said Reinhart, a former high-ranking Fed economist.
Reinhart said he expects higher interest rates, on top of the expiration of government aid, to eventually slow hiring to "a more sustainable" pace.
"The bad news," he said, "is we haven't yet recovered the pre-pandemic level of employment, and it will take longer" to get there.
Karen Fichuk, CEO of the staffing company Randstad North America, noted that the economy now has a record 1.7 job openings for every unemployed person.
"Even if you get all the unemployed workers back, it still leaves a gap,'' she said. "We need to attract people back into the workforce.''
In particular, Fichuk said, businesses need to draw more women back by, for example, offering flexible hours and childcare centers or stipends for childcare expenses.
It's unclear how long the economy can maintain its momentum of the past year, especially as high inflation and the Fed's rate hikes slow economic activity. Hourly pay, adjusted for higher consumer prices, fell 2.6% in February from a year earlier — the 11th straight month in which inflation has outpaced year-over-year wage growth. According to AAA, average gasoline prices, at $4.23 a gallon, are up a dizzying 47% from a year ago.
Squeezed by inflation, some consumers are paring their spending. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that consumer spending rose just 0.2%% in February — and fell 0.4% when adjusted for inflation — down from a 2.7% increase in January.
At the same time, the job market has kept hurtling ahead. Employers posted a near-record 11.3 million positions in February. Nearly 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs, a sign of confidence that they could find something better.
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FROM KING FEATURES SYNDICATE, 300 W. 57TH STREET, 41ST FLOOR, NEW YORK, NY 10019
FOR RELEASE saturday, april 2, 2022
CUSTOMER SERVICE: (800) 708-7311 EXT. 236
HINTS FROM HELOISE #12345_20220402
BYLINE: By Heloise
TITLE: Digging, chewing toys
---
Dear Heloise: From time to time, there are hints in your column about how to stop dogs from digging holes in the yard or chewing on things inside. We had a dog that dug many holes in our yard, so we asked our veterinarian how to discourage that behavior. He said to buy a large bone to encourage the dog to chew on it when he was bored, and discourage him from digging holes. We did exactly that, and he dug a large hole to bury his large bone. Well, it was worth a try. -- Shirley Hendricks, Maumelle, Arkansas
PHOTO STUCK TO THE GLASS IN A FRAME?
Dear Readers: If you have a treasured photo in this awful situation, you can try to save and remove it. Follow these steps carefully. First, scan the pic or take a photo of it through the glass. You will have a copy, just in case. Second, put the frame and photo or just glass and photo into a plastic freezer bag, but don't close it completely shut so moisture can evaporate. Then place it in the freezer for a day or two. You should be able to slowly lift the photo from the glass. But do not try this with antique, valuable or one-of-a kind pictures. Instead, call a professional photo restorer. -- Heloise
CLOTHESPIN USES
Dear Heloise: In addition to the woman's suggestion to use a clothespin to attach a shopping list to her shopping cart, there is a more expansive use for clothespins for grocery items. I became sick and tired of undoing the many twist ties and plastic clips to open loaves of bread, fruits and vegetables, etc. It's a major effort to open the packages and a lot of work spinning the plastic bags and then reattaching the clip or twist ties to re-close them.
So to make it simple, I simply use a clothespin to close the package. It works like a charm. You unpin to open and pin back to close the plastic. It saves a major amount of time and cuts down on frustration. -- Steve P., via email
DOUBLE BAGGED BREAD
Dear Heloise: I tend to buy bread when it's on sale. I double bag the bread and freeze it You never know if the bread bag has tears or holes. Also, I reuse the newspaper plastic bags for scraps, which I put in my freezer, since I only put out my trash every other week. I read your column in the Omaha World-Herald every day. I have many articles that I and my late mother have saved. -- Diane Holmes, Omaha, Nebraska
Diane, reusing plastic helps to save our planet, so good for you! -- Heloise
GIFTS FOR SENIORS
Dear Heloise: We always struggled with what to get my mother-in-law for birthdays or holidays. My sister-in-law gave her gift cards for groceries, personal items, etc. We decided to pay for 100 gallons of fuel oil for her, and I made a gift certificate to put in her card. It was really appreciated and a big help. -- Mary T. in Vermont
PET PAL
Dear Heloise: Our 3-year-old black and tan German shepherd is named Hilton. We were vacationing on Hilton Island, South Carolina, and found a family with a litter of pups for sale. What else could we have named her but Hilton? -- Cheryl D. Coffman
Readers, to see Hilton and our other Pet Pals, go to www.Heloise.com and click on "Pet of the Week."
Do you have a furry family member to share with our readers? Send a pic and description to Heloise@Heloise.com. -- Heloise
(c)2022 by King Features Syndicate Inc.
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MCSO makes possession of a controlled substance arrests Ray Van Dusen Ray Van Dusen Managing Editor Author email Apr 1, 2022 54 min ago Comments Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, Marie Unice Jernighan, 37, of Amory was charged with possession of a controlled substance.Michael Scott Daniels, 47, of Aberdeen was arrested and charged with possession of a controlled substance. Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save Ray Van Dusen Managing Editor Ray is the managing editor of the Monroe Journal. Author email Follow Ray Van Dusen Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today Recommended for you Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus 63° Sunny Amory, MS (38821) Today Clear to partly cloudy. Low 41F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Clear to partly cloudy. Low 41F. Winds light and variable. Updated: April 1, 2022 @ 3:39 pm Full Forecast Latest Posts News MCSO makes possession of a controlled substance arrests 54 min ago Sports Noles rebound from division losses with sweep of Falkner 7 hrs ago Sports Panthers split big tests against East Union, New Hope 8 hrs ago News ICC's Baggett, Evans selected as finalists for prestigious transfer scholarship 8 hrs ago Living Smithville Events Committee hosting Easter egg hunt 8 hrs ago Living VFW Post #4490 hosting Easter egg hunt 8 hrs ago Latest News Louisiana man convicted of crossing state lines for sex with minor Consequences of the count: Smithville census shows significant decrease. Officials disagree Judge orders new mayoral election in Nettleton between Mem Riley, Phillip Baulch Two dead following Friday morning Nettleton shootout Lady Panthers turn back New Albany in shutout Monroe County Schools to require face masks beginning Thursday Pedestrian killed in Amory Authorities searching for missing Monroe County teen
Ray Van Dusen Managing Editor Ray is the managing editor of the Monroe Journal. Author email Follow Ray Van Dusen Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today
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FROM ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
FOR RELEASE: SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2022
DEAR ABBY by Abigail Van Buren
THERE'S PLENTY TO CHEW ON AFTER DINNER WITH IN-LAWS
DEAR ABBY: I once hosted a holiday dinner for which I had made a ham and a turkey with all the sides and three different pies. I even made a special mince pie for one of the guests. The guests -- my brothers-in-law, my brother and his family of four and his mother-in-law -- all showed up carrying empty Tupperware. At the end of the day, all I had left was dirty dishes.
The same family then invited me and my husband for a holiday dinner. My husband wasn't feeling well and couldn't go. When I asked my sister-in-law if I could take a plate home for him, she said, "Nope! If he doesn't want to come to the house, he can't have any of the food." Yes, Abby, she was serious.
My sister-in-law cooks the meat she received as a gift from her employer, and the rest of the guests prepare the sides and desserts. I NEVER go empty-handed. At the end of the meal, she transfers any leftovers to their own Tupperware and gives us back the cleaned bowls. If I ask for a little of something to take home, she protects her leftovers like they were her children.
What's your take on leftovers? Is asking for a little fruit salad off limits? Is relieving your host of the burden of storing all of their leftovers out of line? Are there rules of etiquette here? -- HOPING FOR A SANDWICH LATER
DEAR HOPING: If you would like the living, breathing definition of presumptuous guests and ungracious hosts, look no further than your in-laws' contact file. The fault, however, may not lie solely with them. If this has happened more than once and you cannot summon the courage to tell these greedy folks to put away their Tupperware and help with the dishes, you can't blame them for assuming you don't mind being imposed upon in this way.
As to the sister-in-law who refused to allow you to bring any of her food to your sick husband, I wouldn't blame you if you chose not to grace her table again after telling her the reason why.
** ** **
DEAR ABBY: I am an adopted 17-year-old high school senior, and I live with four people who all have a disability. I want to move out when I'm 18 if I am able to. I have several older brothers and sisters, but they each have a family to take care of. My oldest brother is in his 60s, and my youngest in his 40s.
I don't want to seem selfish for wanting to live independently, but I don't know how to tell them. I don't know how to tell them anything because, in the past, they haven't listened to me. If you have any advice on how to tell them, I would be very grateful. -- NERVOUS GIRL IN NEW YORK
DEAR NERVOUS GIRL: I wish you had mentioned when you will be turning 18, because at that point you will be legally entitled to live wherever you wish, and your parents and siblings will HAVE to "listen to you."
Because you are determined to move, it is crucial that you start preparing now. You will need to find a job so you can afford a security deposit and pay for rent, food, etc. You may also have to find roommates until you can afford a place that is all your own. A counselor at school may be able to guide you, particularly if you plan to continue your education.
** ** **
Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Contact Dear Abby at www.DearAbby.com or P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.
** ** **
What teens need to know about sex, drugs, AIDS and getting along with peers and parents is in "What Every Teen Should Know." Send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $8 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby, Teen Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. (Shipping and handling are included in the price.)
(EDITORS: If you have editorial questions, please contact Clint Hooker, chooker@amuniversal.com.)
COPYRIGHT 2022 ANDREWS MCMEEL SYNDICATION
1130 Walnut, Kansas City, MO 64106; 816-581-7500
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Mantachie baseball played a tight ballgame against Kossuth through four innings Tuesday. Had a handful more pitches hit their spots, or a couple hard-hit balls landed, the homestanding Mustangs might have come out of the game with a W.
But things didn't go that way for Mantachie (5-8, 1-1 in Region 1-3A) as the Mustangs fell to the Aggies 7-2.
"We were about three little things away from that being a different ballgame," head coach B.J. Cox said. "And that's kind of where we are. When we get the small stuff figured out, we'll hopefully be clicking a little better."
Mustangs starting pitcher Luke Ellis got into trouble early as he walked the first two Aggies batters he faced and gave up a single to the third. Ellis balked during the next at-bat, giving Kossuth a free run. But he managed to escape the inning without further damage.
Mantachie answered in the bottom half when Cooper Guin dropped a single in right-centerfield, scoring Hunter West from second to tie the game at 1.
Ellis shut the Aggies down in the second, notching two strikeouts. The Mustangs went to work with a pair of singles in the bottom half but left the runners stranded.
Kossuth opened the third with a rocket of a homerun to left-center from pitcher Jack Johnson.
The Aggies followed up the dinger with a walk and a double, but a heads up play from Ellis helped limit the damage. On a groundball back to the mound, Ellis managed to freeze an Aggie runner between home and third. In the confusion that followed, the Mustangs managed to tag out both that runner and the Aggie advancing from second. Ellis put the inning away with a strikeout.
Getting out of the inning gave the Mustangs a spark at the plate in the third. Hunter West led off with a single up the middle and stole second on a pass ball. Greg Raper's dink grounder to third looked like an easy out, but Mantachie caught a break when the ball fell from the Aggie first baseman's glove when he tried to tag Raper, advancing Raper to second and allowing West to score.
With the score tied 2-2 through four, Kossuth finally pulled ahead for good. Ellis walked three of the four batters he faced in the inning, one of whom scored on an errant throw to third. Raper came in to relieve Ellis with one out, allowing another run on a sac fly before escaping the inning with the Aggies holding a 4-2 lead.
Kossuth padded its lead with another run in the sixth and two in the seventh while holding the Mustangs to one hit the rest of the way. Mantachie loaded the bases in the bottom of the seventh on a Raper single and a pair of walks, but they left the runners stranded.
Missed opportunities abounded for the Mustangs as they left 10 runners stranded in the contest.
West led the way at the plate for the Mustangs, batting 2-for-3 with a pair of singles and a walk. Raper and Cory Mills added two singles apiece as well, while Guin notched the team's lone RBI.
Ellis took the loss on the mound. Kossuth scored three runs on his watch as he struck out four but gave up three hits and walked eight in 4-1/3 innings of work. Raper pitched 2-2/3 innings of relief, allowing four runs on two hits with two walks and three batters hit by a pitch. Raper struck out three.
"We're streaky right now," Cox said. "We're not where we need to be. We've got a lot of the youth on the field. The younger guys are just learning from these moments."
The Mustangs get a shot at revenge when they visit the Aggies at 7 p.m. Friday.
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Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves speaks about the importance of his signing a teacher pay raise bill, Thursday, March 31, 2022, at Madison Central High School in Madison.
JACKSON • Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the nation, will likely have the largest tax cut plan in the state’s history codified into state law, based on comments from Gov. Tate Reeves.
Reeves, a Republican, told reporters Friday that he intends to sign House Bill 531 into law, which will slash state revenue collections by around $525 million over a four-year period.
“It’s a major tax cut that heads us in the direction of eliminating the income tax,” Reeves said. “And literally every Mississippian who pays income taxes in our state will have the opportunity to send less of their money to the government and the ability to keep more of their money.”
The bill would do away with the state's 4% income tax bracket within the first year of the plan’s implementation, which would cost the state around $185 million.
During the second year, the 5% tax rate would be reduced to 4.7%. In the third year, it would drop to 4.4%, and after the fourth year, it would go to 4%.
Mississippi currently has a gradual income tax system. If the new plan were to become law, it would eventually leave a flat 4% rate for all earned income over $10,000.
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For the past two years, Reeves has advocated for the Legislature to eliminate the income tax. The bill he intends to sign into law would not outright abolish the tax, but it would significantly reduce it.
But the bill does contain a clause that makes it clear the intent of the Legislature to revisit the issue in 2026 and completely abolish the income tax.
Mississippi has a lengthy list of well-documented problems, including two lengthy lawsuits against state agencies and crumbling infrastructure.
Republican leaders have said cutting the income tax is needed to attract new businesses to the state, and they intended to use federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars to improve state agencies and other issues.
The governor has until April 5 to either sign the bill into law or veto it.
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Polly Ann Haynes Coleman, 81, passed away Friday, April 1, 2022, at The Meadows in Fulton. She was born September 3, 1940 to the late Otis Lee Haynes and the late Eva Nell Gilbert Haynes. Polly moved to Fulton in 1977 with her husband, James, and opened up the first Sonic in downtown Fulton. She moved back to Arkansas 17 years ago to help take care of her mother. She loved to crochet and make prayer shawls and baby hats to donate to Children's Hospital in Little Rock, AR. She enjoyed riding the back roads and watching for deer. She loved going to Granny's Restaurant in Arkansas and talking to everyone. She enjoyed cooking and especially being with her family. She was a blessing to many and she blessed many as well. A visitation only will be 2:00-4:00 pm Sunday, April 3, 2022, at Senter Funeral Home. Funeral service will be held at a later date with Benton Funeral Home in Fordyce, AR. Burial will be at Moses Cemetery in Hampton, AR. Survivors include sons: Gary (Deborah) Coleman of Fulton, Keith (Bertie) Coleman of Hampton, AR, Scotty Coleman of Fulton, Tommy (Angie) Coleman of Fulton; many grandchildren and great-grandchildren, 1 great, great-grandchild. Preceded in death by her parents; husband, James Coleman; brothers: Troy Haynes and Rod Haynes. In lieu of flowers donations are encouraged to be made to Arkansas Children's Hospital at www.archildrens.org Online condolences can be expressed at www.senterfuneraldirectors.com
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Lena House, 103, left this world to be with the Lord at the Green Houses on Wednesday, March 30, 2022. She will always be remembered for her love of cooking for her family, sewing and caring for her house plants. She was employed by Joyner Fields for a number of years before returning home to be a housewife. She was a member of Beech Springs Baptist Church. Funeral services will be at the chapel of Waters Funeral Home, Saturday, April 2, 2022 at 3 p.m. visitation will be 1p.m. until service time with Bro. Bobby Holland officiating. Burial will be in Jones Cemetery in the Jug Fork community. Lena is survived by her daughter, Mary Lynn Carter of Birmingham Ridge; granddaughter, Teresa Wilson and grandson, Tony Allen Carter (Pam) of Birmingham Ridge; three great grandchildren, Ashley Thomas (Gary Lee) of Saltillo, Bryan Carter of Dumas and Nikki Minor (Cody) of Birmingham Ridge; great-great-grandchildren, Dalton Burgett and D.C. Thomas of Saltillo; one sister, Molene Buskirk of Saltillo; special friend, Stacy Laster (James) and son JR of Saltillo; and a host of nieces, nephews and other family members. Lena was preceded in death by her husband, Willard C. House; parents, Perry and Mary Wimbs; brothers, R.C. Wimbs, Howard (Buck) Wimbs and James Archie (Dutch) Wimbs; sister Lorene Finney; son-in-law, Ray Dean Carter. Pallbearers will be Gary Lee Thomas, Dalton Burgett, James Laster, Nickey Carter, Brad Carter and Larry Campbell. Honorary pallbearers will be D.C. Thomas, Bryan Carter and Mike McBrayer. The family would like to thank the staff of the Martin House at Traceway Retirement in Tupelo for the exceptional care during her years of residency there. Expressions of sympathy may be sent to the family @www.watersfuneralservice.com
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Carolyn Jackson, 76, passed away on Thursday, March 31, 2022 surrounded by her loving family. A service honoring the life of Mrs. Jackson will be on Monday, April 4, 2022 at 2:00pm at Harmony Baptist Church with a visitation from 11:00am till the start of the service at 2:00pm. Mrs. Jackson was born May 26, 1945 in New Albany, MS to the late Pete and Earline Seger. She was a retired sewer in the furniture factory. A devoted member of Harmony Baptist Church. She was blessed with a loving family whom she adored, grandchildren, who were her pride and joy and friends who were many. She enjoyed gospel music, working outside, game shows, coloring, and most importantly Jesus Christ. Memories will continue to be shared with two daughters, Elizabeth Jackson and Torrie Willard (Caleb), two sons, Teddy Jackson (Tina) and Blake Lee (Kala), three grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren, and one sister, Pat Wildman.She is preceded in death by her parents, her husband, Eason Jackson, two daughters, one daughter-in-law, and a host of brothers and sisters. In lieu of flower donations can be made to Sanctuary Hospice House in Tupelo, MS. Please visit www.unitedfuneralservice.com
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/pietruszkiewicz-walter-pete/article_44347824-38f0-5eb5-8aff-c2938906dc80.html
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Master Sergeant Walter J Pietruszkiewicz, USMC, Retired passed away peacefully after a brief illness on Thursday, March 31, 2022 while at his daughter, Terry's home. He was 94 years old. He was born on July 9,1927 to Peter and Catherine Pietruszkiewicz, Polish immigrants that came to America and settled in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1920s. "Pete" proudly served in the Marine Corps for 28 years. He fought in the Korean conflict. He served his country with pride and honor. Once a Marine, always a Marine. Semper Fi! He faithfully attended Mass at St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Booneville until his health declined. His retirement years were spent catching fish in his backyard pond when he lived out east of Booneville. He enjoyed mowing the church yard and his own yard. He mowed his own lawn up until the age of 93. He refused to use a riding lawn mower. In his later years he would go to the local gym and work out. He looked forward to the monthly Bingo games at the community center. He enjoyed the NFL. He was a die hard New England Patriots fan. He loved watching Tom Brady play, even when he moved to Tampa Bay. He loved listening to music, especially the big bands and the American tenor, Mario Lanza. Until his eyesight failed, he either had a book in his hand or a word puzzle. Survivors include his daughters, Vickie (John) Walendzik of Booneville and Terry Sanders of Saltillo. His son in law, Roger Sanders of Saltillo. His grandchildren, John (Tamra) Walendzik Jr, Noah (Bailie) Sanders and Sarah Sanders. His great grandchildren, Anna and Grant Walendzik and Kannon Sanders. His special nephew and niece, Alex Getek and Mary Grogan. His 15 year old dog, Diamond. He was preceded in death by his parents, his loving wife of 64 years, Ludie Whitlow Pietruszkiewicz, his sister, Helen Getek, his sweet niece, Joanne Getek. The pallbearers will be John Walendzik, Grant Walendzik, Noah Sanders, Kenny Floyd, Toy Pharr and Karl Courtney. Visitation will be Monday, April 4 from 5-7pm at St Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Booneville. A Mass of Christian Burial will be Tuesday, April 5 at 11am. Burial will follow at Candlers Chapel. In lieu of flowers donations may be made to St. Francis of Assisi Church. Condolences may be left at www.mcmillanfuneralhome.com.
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/poole-jackie-wayne/article_8691c0f3-91e7-5cde-a413-664b70e36c26.html
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Jackie Wayne Poole, 77, passed away Thursday, March 31, 2022, at Magnolia Regional Health Center in Corinth, MS. Services will be on Sunday, April 3, 2 p.m. at Forest Grove Missionary Baptist Church, Tishomingo, MS. Visitation will be on Saturday, April 2, beginning at 5 p.m. and continuing until service time on Sunday at Forest Grove Missionary Baptist Church. Burial will follow at Forest Grove Cemetery, Tishomingo, MS.
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/paris-attacks-trial-key-suspect-speaks-shocking-images/article_200f4326-81e3-5b9c-a8c0-0db34f6cb8f4.html
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PARIS • Shouts of fear and panic. The thunder of gunfire. Dozens of corpses in pools of blood on the floor of the Bataclan concert hall. A Paris court on Friday released audio recordings and photos of the 2015 Paris terror attacks that had never been made public before, to expose the horrors of that night.
Some survivors of the attacks cried while others left the courtroom in shock.
It was a jarring end to the most crucial week in the months-long trial over the Islamic State attacks on the Bataclan, cafes in Paris and France's national stadium on Nov. 13, 2015, which killed 130 people. With thousands of plaintiffs, this trial is among the the biggest in modern French history.
Lawyers and victims' families saw this week as crucial for shedding light on what happened, but it left many of them frustrated.
The last surviving member of the attack team, Salah Abdeslam, and suspected accomplices were questioned at last about the day of the attacks itself. They stayed largely silent, refusing to answer most questions, while the courtroom waited in breathless silence.
And when Abdeslam finally chose to speak briefly, instead of expressing remorse for his role in the attacks, he expressed regret that he didn't detonate his suicide belt that bloody night.
"I didn't go all the way," Salah Abdelslam told the court Wednesday. "I gave up trying to put on the (suicide) belt, not out of cowardice or fear. I didn't want to, that's all."
Abdelslam dropped off three attackers in a car, who then blew themselves up on the forecourt of France's national soccer stadium moments after a France-Germany match kicked off. Abdelslam said he subsequently drove to the north of Paris, and took the metro to the southern suburb of Montrouge, where he hid his explosives belt after he claimed didn't have the nerve to detonate it.
Abdelslam said he lied to his co-attackers that the belt had not worked "because I was ashamed of not having gone all the way. I was afraid of the eyes of others." Abdelslam's testimony contradicted that of a police explosives expert who has told the court that the suicide belt was faulty.
Then on Friday, the court heard audio recordings and was shown photos from inside the Bataclan concert hall that have never been made public before.
The first recording marked the moment the attackers entered the theater. Music from the performers on stage — American band Eagles of Death Metal — can still be heard as the assailants unleashed a solid minute of constant gunfire from their automatic weapons. The crowd shouted and cried, and the music stops. And then the shooting starts again.
The second recording involved the subsequent hostage-taking, including the voice of one victim who said "they're going to blow up everything — they have explosives."
Then came the final assault: A volley of gunfire from police, followed by blasts from the attackers' suicide belts. Then the evacuation, as police commanded: "Go! Go! We're getting out, hands up and run!"
The 20 photos included images from around the Bataclan hall — the entry, the balcony, the stairwell. Blood is everywhere. One shows about 30 corpses in the dance pit below the stage.
Some survivors cried while watching the images. About 20 other people left the courtroom, visibly upset, as the audio played.
All the attackers were killed that night, but Abdeslam fled France and traveled to the Molenbeek district of Brussels where he grew up. He was arrested in March 2016. For years, he refused to speak to investigators, and he has stayed largely silent through the trial.
During Wednesday's key session, chief judge Jean-Louis Peries spent an hour asking Abdeslam questions. No answer, again and again.
Finally Abdeslam agreed to answer the questions of just one of the plaintiffs' many lawyers. He said three days before the attacks, he was planning to travel to Syria and was unaware of the attack plot until his brother Brahim filled him in. Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up on Nov. 13, 2015, after attacking a Paris cafe.
Abdelslam's lawyers Olivia Ronen and Martin Vettes defended his reluctance to speak. In a statement to The Associated Press, they said Abdeslam "made use of his right to silence" but then decided to answer the questions of one lawyer for the civil parties who "sought to understand what he had to say."
A total of 20 people are on trial on charges including attack planning, the supply of weapons and giving logistical support. Several are presumed to have been killed while fighting for the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq. The end of the trial is scheduled for June.
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/talks-resume-as-ukraine-denies-hitting-depot-on-russian-soil/article_c472d818-fd18-5536-bcca-b0ad0adb4381.html
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KYIV, Ukraine • Talks to stop the fighting in Ukraine resumed Friday, as another desperate attempt to rescue civilians from the encircled city of Mariupol failed and the Kremlin accused the Ukrainians of launching a helicopter attack on a fuel depot on Russian soil.
Ukraine denied responsibility for the fiery blast, but if Moscow's claim is confirmed, it would be the war's first known attack in which Ukrainian aircraft penetrated Russian airspace.
"Certainly, this is not something that can be perceived as creating comfortable conditions for the continuation of the talks," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, five weeks after Moscow began sending upwards of 150,000 of its own troops across Ukraine's border.
Meanwhile, Russia continued withdrawing some of its ground forces from areas around Kyiv after saying earlier this week it would reduce military activity near the Ukrainian capital and the northern city of Chernihiv to promote trust at the bargaining table.
While the Russians kept up their bombardment of those two zones, Ukrainian troops exploited the pullback on the ground by mounting counterattacks and retaking a number of towns and villages.
Still, Ukraine and its allies warned that the Kremlin is not de-escalating but resupplying and shifting its troops to the country's east for an intensified assault on the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region in the country's east, which includes Mariupol.
The latest negotiations took place by video. At a round of talks earlier in the week, Ukraine said it would be willing to abandon a bid to join NATO and declare itself neutral — Moscow's chief demand — in return for security guarantees from several other countries.
The invasion has left thousands dead and driven more than 4 million refugees from Ukraine.
Mariupol, the shattered and besieged southern port city, has seen some of the worst suffering of the war. Its capture would be a major prize for Russian President Vladimir Putin, giving his country an unbroken land bridge to Crimea, seized from Ukraine in 2014.
Mariupol's fate could determine the course of the negotiations to end the war, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian think tank Penta.
"Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance," Fesenko said, "and without its conquest, Putin cannot sit down at the negotiating table." The fall of Mariupol, he said, "will open the way to a peace agreement."
On Friday, the International Committee for the Red Cross said it was unable to carry out an operation to bring civilians out of Mariupol by bus. It said a team had been on its way but had to turn back.
City authorities said the Russians were blocking access to Mariupol.
"We do not see a real desire on the part of the Russians and their satellites to provide an opportunity for Mariupol residents to evacuate to territory controlled by Ukraine," Petro Andryushchenko, an adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
He said Russian forces "are categorically not allowing any humanitarian cargo, even in small amounts, into the city."
Around 100,000 people are believed left in the city, down from a prewar 430,000, and weeks of Russian bombardment and street fighting have caused severe shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
"We are running out of adjectives to describe the horrors that residents in Mariupol have suffered," Red Cross spokesperson Ewan Watson said.
On Thursday, Russian forces blocked a 45-bus convoy attempting to evacuate people from Mariupol and seized 14 tons of food and medical supplies bound for the city, Ukrainian authorities said.
As for the fuel depot explosion, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said two Ukrainian helicopter gunships flew in extremely low and attacked the civilian oil storage facility on the outskirts of the city of Belgorod, about 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the Ukraine border.
The regional governor said two workers at the depot were wounded, but the Rosneft state oil company denied anyone was hurt.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine's national security council, said on Ukrainian television: "For some reason they say that we did it, but in fact this does not correspond with reality."
Russia has reported cross-border shelling from Ukraine before, including an incident last week that killed a military chaplain, but not an incursion of its airspace.
Amid the Russian pullback on the ground and its continued bombardment, Ukraine's military said it had retaken 29 settlements in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions.
Russian forces in the northeast also continued to shell Kharkiv, and in the southeast sought to seize the cities of Popasna and Rubizhne as well as Mariupol, the Ukrainian military said.
On on the outskirts of Kyiv, where Russian troops have withdrawn, damaged cars lined the streets of Irpin, a suburban area popular with young families, now in ruins. Emergency workers carried elderly people on stretchers over a wrecked bridge to safety.
Three wooden crosses next to a residential building that was damaged in a shelling marked the graves of a mother and son and an unknown man. A resident who gave her name only as Lila said she helped hurriedly bury them on March 5, just before Russian troops moved in.
"They were hit with artillery and they were burned alive," she said.
An Irpin resident who gave his name only as Andriy said the Russians packed up their equipment and left on Tuesday. The next day, they shelled the town for close to an hour before Ukrainian soldiers retook it.
"I don't think this is over," Andriy said. "They will be back."
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https://www.djournal.com/pontotoc/pontotoc-police-report-purse-stolen-from-car/article_ae0aaa2a-4794-5dc3-af5a-efa4a8f5230e.html
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Pontotoc Police Chief Randy Tutor said one black female suspect and two black male suspects, dressed as women, are being sought in connection with a car burglary which occurred around 8:30 p.m. on Monday night, March 28.
Chief Tutor said the vehicle burglarized was parked along the court square on Marion Street in downtown Pontotoc.
"They broke out the car window and stole a purse, which contained credit and debit cards, and some air-pods," Tutor said.
Tutor said the suspects were driving a black Ford Expedition.
"We have seen video of the vehicle driving around, obviously they were looking for a vehicle to burglarize," Tutor said. "We were able to track where they went to a couple of businesses."
"One suspect was female and the other two appeared to be males dressed in women's clothing, wearing wigs and covid masks. They tried unsuccessfully to use the stolen cards."
"This car burglary is not connected to the car burglaries which occurred on March 17 in the Ridgewood Drive area where subsequently a vehicle was stolen. It's definitely not the same suspects."
Tutor again cautioned residents not to leave valuables in vehicles, locked or unlocked.
"Always lock your vehicle, even at home and don't keep anything valuable inside the vehicle," Tutor said. "Thieves are looking for something visible inside to steal."
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https://www.djournal.com/print-features/new-vehicles-must-average-40-mpg-by-2026-up-from-28-mpg/article_758031d2-a8e1-5113-8490-bff222cf35cd.html
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DETROIT • New vehicles sold in the U.S. will have to average at least 40 miles per gallon of gasoline in 2026, up from about 28 mpg, under new federal rules unveiled Friday that undo a rollback of standards enacted under President Donald Trump.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said its new fuel economy requirements are the strongest to date and the maximum the industry can achieve over the time period. They will reduce gasoline consumption by more than 220 billion gallons over the life of vehicles, compared with the Trump standards.
They're expected to decrease carbon dioxide emissions — but not as much as some environmentalists want — and raise new vehicle prices in an industry already pressed by inflation and supply chain issues.
For the current model year, standards enacted under Trump require the fleet of new vehicles to get just under 28 miles per gallon in real-world driving. The new requirements increase gas mileage by 8% per year for model years 2024 and 2025 and 10% in the 2026 model year.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose department includes NHTSA, said the rules also will help strengthen national security by making the country less dependent on foreign oil and less vulnerable to volatile gasoline prices. Gasoline nationwide has spiked to an average of more than $4.22 per gallon, with much of the increase coming since Russia, a major oil producer, invaded Ukraine in late February. It cost $2.88 per gallon just a year ago, according to AAA.
Gas prices also have helped to fuel inflation to a 40-year high, eating up household budgets and hitting President Joe Biden's approval ratings.
"Transportation is the second-largest cost for American families, only behind housing," Buttigieg said. The new standards, he said, will help keep the U.S. more secure and preserve "the freedom of our country to chart its future without being subject to other countries and to the decisions that are being made in the boardrooms of energy companies."
But auto dealers say more stringent requirements drive up prices and push people out of an already expensive new-car market. NHTSA projects that the new rules will raise the price of a new vehicle in the 2029 model year by $1,087.
Trump's administration rolled back fuel economy standards, allowing them to rise 1.5% per year, which environmental groups said was inadequate to limit planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change. The standards had been rising about 5% per year previously.
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/college/ole-miss/dylan-delucia-delivers-clutch-pitching-performance-as-ole-miss-wins-opener-at-kentucky/article_152a0f13-b9e5-58d2-ae3b-6ee702b81b28.html
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Ole Miss junior Dylan DeLucia pitched a brilliant 6 1/3 innings for the No. 10 Rebels Friday night at Kentucky, and senior Hayden Leatherwood drove in the go-ahead run with two outs in the ninth to lead the Rebels past the Wildcats 2-1.
DeLucia — making his first start of the season — surrendered just three hits and no earned runs to go with five strikeouts. The Rebel bullpen did not surrender a hit in 2 2/3 innings of work.
DeLucia said he didn't find out he would start Friday until the flight to Lexington, Kentucky on Thursday.
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"I'll tell you what, we needed it," senior pitcher Brandon Johnson said. "For (DeLucia) to go out there and give us that kind of start, it's big time. Wouldn't expect it from anybody else, either.
Redshirt sophomore T.J. McCants led off the ninth inning with a triple, setting the stage for Leatherwood’s heroics.
Ole Miss (18-7, 3-4 SEC) struck first on a single Friday night from senior first baseman Tim Elko that drove in sophomore shortstop Jacob Gonzalez.
Kentucky (17-10, 2-5) tied the game in the sixth when leadoff batter Ryan Ritter got on base via error, got to second on a passed ball, stole third and came home on a fielder’s choice.
With a pair of runners on and one out in the seventh, senior John Gaddis entered the game in relief of DeLucia. Gaddis — who started in five of his prior six appearances with the Rebels — retired the final two patters of the inning on a strikeout and fly out.
"Yes (it's toughing having the game out of your hands), but I also had huge confidence in Gaddis. He comes in and shuts the door all the time. He's a good pitcher," DeLucia said. "And he just showed it tonight, that he could come in and do that job."
Ole Miss starters hadn't gotten through five full innings since sophomore Jack Dougherty did so on March 19 in the finale at Auburn. DeLucia's start was a much-needed boost.
"I mean, it's not pressure. It's just playing the game, at the end of the day," DeLucia said. "We want to win, and that's what we're here to do. ... Today was just an all-team effort."
Johnson pitched final two innings of the game, striking out five of the six batters he faced.
Shortly following the end of the game, Ole Miss announced that Hunter Elliott will start Saturday's game against the Wildcats. First pitch is 1 p.m.
MICHAEL KATZ is the Ole Miss athletics reporter for the Daily Journal. Contact him at michael.katz@djournal.com.
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/college/mississippi-state/arkansas-steamrolls-past-mississippi-state-in-series-opener-as-preston-johnson-struggles/article_deff0f26-6d70-51ed-9156-3d219af36a73.html
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Luke Hancock’s head swung back in disbelief as he walked back toward Mississippi State’s dugout. He had just swung through a Connor Noland 2-2 pitch — the fourth of six strikeouts for the Arkansas right-hander Friday and the second for the MSU slugger.
It’s not Hancock’s fault the Bulldogs fell 8-1 to the Razorbacks to open this weekend’s marquee series. But it’s telling of a game with nothing working in State’s favor.
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Hancock struck out on 5% of at-bats this season entering the contest. With Preston Johnson struggling with command, the defense doing little favors and Arkansas capitalizing on both, Hancock’s strikeouts were the final piece in an ugly puzzle for MSU.
Johnson said two months ago that this early-April series at Arkansas was circled. He remembered the Razorbacks sweeping the Bulldogs at Dudy Noble Field last season, and he wanted his team to return the favor.
At that time, State was seven months removed from a national championship. And Johnson was not expecting to be MSU’s Friday night arm.
With Landon Sims out for the season, Johnson was thrust into the top of the rotation. He pitched five consecutive quality starts entering the series, but he lacked the alpha approach a guy such as Sims provides. Six innings with three earned runs allowed is good, but it’s not the greatness often seen on Friday nights in the SEC.
With Noland flashing the latter in Fayetteville, Johnson was rocked from the start by a Razorbacks squad clearly aware of his comments.
Johnson gave MSU four innings but allowed seven earned runs while walking five and striking out seven. Jalen Battles — Arkansas’ No. 8 hitter — took the MSU right-hander deep twice.
"I was looking for a fastball," Battles told reporters of the first home run. "I mean, through our whole prep for this dude, we knew he was heavy fastball. I didn't miss it."
The silver lining in a rough day on the mound was an opportunity for Chris Lemonis to trot out younger arms. He did the same in the team’s opening SEC weekend at Georgia two weeks ago when freshman Cole Cheatham allowed three runs in an inning amidst an 11-0 loss.
Cheatham made his first appearance since that outing on Friday and allowed no earned runs in 1 2/3 innings.
The teams return to Baum-Walker Stadium at 6:30 p.m. Saturday.
STEFAN KRAJISNIK is the Mississippi State athletics reporter for the Daily Journal. Contact him at stefan.krajisnik@djournal.com.
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https://www.djournal.com/chickasaw/service-unto-death-stories-of-the-10-chickasaw-men-who-died-in-the-vietnam-war/article_17f9873a-ca64-53ba-b514-40ef5ae95afc.html
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Editor’s note: I’m indebted to Chickasaw County Veteran’s Service Officer Kenneth Nichols, William D. Sykes Post 7149 (Houston) Post Commander Frank Pemper, and Houston Attorney Rex Sanderson and his late wife Sharyn (nee: Adams) Sanderson BSRN, 1/Lt. Tennessee ANG, all of whom provided the following information about these men.
For more information, go to honorstates.org
HOUSTON --Vietnam Veterans Day was Tuesday, March 29. It’s a fitting time to remember the 10 young men from Chickasaw County who died in that war.
All who took part in that long, costly, divisive conflict from 1964-1975 in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos gave some, but 58,220 Americans gave all.
Those who died including eight women, who were all military nurses, and the war’s youngest American combat death, a 15 year old U. S. Marine from North Carolina who had lied about his age to join up, records indicate.
Here’s a list of the Chickasaw County men who were among 637 from Mississippi killed in that conflict.
The names of those men are also listed on a plaque at the Chickasaw County Courthouse.
The names follow:
Leon Vincent Fox
In December, 1966, Leon Vincent Fox of Houston became the first casualty from Chickasaw County in the Viet Nam War.
He was born on May 9, 1946 in Chickasaw County.
He was drafted into the Army and began his tour on May 30, 1966. Fox had the rank of Private First Class. His military occupation specialty was Field Artillery Basic. He was attached to 1st Cavalry Division, 6th Battalion, 16th Artillery, C Battery.
He was killed on December 18, 1966 in Binh Long Province in South Vietnam while firing a 144 mm. howitzer when the breach blew open and hit him in the chest.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman Badge, National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Army Presidential Unit Citation, Vietnam Gallantry Cross, and the Army Good Conduct Medal.
He is honored on the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial in Washington D.C. His name is inscribed at Vietnam Memorial Wall, Panel 13e, Line 58.
He is buried at Macedonia Cemetery in Houston.
***
Lucien Gillespie, Jr.
He was born on July 23, 1946, the son of Lucien and Mary Snow Gillespie of Egypt, Mississippi.
He served as a Lance Corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps in K Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines. He was a machine gunner and was wounded August 20,1967, on night patrol in Quang Nam Province, South Vietnam of fragmentation wounds to head, arm, and chest.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Combat Action Ribbon.
He died on August 21, 1967, at Da Nang, Vietnam, at 21 years of age.
His name is listed on Panel 25E, Line 23 of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Zion Spring Cemetery, Okolona.
***
Harold Douglas Gore
He was born on March 11, I948, the son of Samuel (Buddy) and Virginia McQuary Gore of Houston, Mississippi. He worked at Simmon's Service Station.
He volunteered for duty and was inducted at Memphis, Tennessee. He took his boot training at Parris Island. He served as a Corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division as a Mortarman. His tour of duty began on February 1, 1968. He handled A-1 millimeter mortars. He saw quite a bit of action. He was wounded March 18, 1968, but returned to front line action. He was 1 of 8 from the E Company who died on the same day. He was killed in the vicinity of Quang Tri by a gunshot wound to the head from hostile rifle fire.
He was awarded two Purple Hearts, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal and Vietnam Campaign Medal.
He was killed in action on May 31, 1968, at 20 years of age.
His name is listed on Panel 62W, Line 009 of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
His body was accompanied by his brother, Billy Mack Gore, also serving in Vietnam with the Army Engineers, 4th Army.
He is buried in Pleasant Grove Cemetery, Chickasaw County.
***
Allen Avery Griffin
He was born on September 17, 1939, the son of James Sidney and Mildred Helen Easley Griffin of Houston, Mississippi.
This was the second Army "hitch" for Griffin. He was inducted into the Army for two years, received his basic training at Fort Pope, and then was sent to Fort Sill for about two years. He served a year in Germany. He was mustered out of the service in 1965 and remained out of uniform for about two months. Then he re-enlisted for six years. He went back to Fort Sill, stayed there about a year and was then was sent to Germany for two years, then returned to the U.S. and was assigned to Fort Campbell, Kentucky for about a month. On June 20, 1968, he left for Viet Nam. He served as a Specialist 4 in Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, Ist Cavalry Division in the U.S. Army. He was killed in the Quang Tri Province of Viet Nam by rocket or mortar fire fragments to the chest. He was admitted to a military hospital and later died.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal and Vietnam Campaign Medal.
He was killed in action on August 27, 1968, at 28 years age.
His name is listed on Panel 46W, Line 041 of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Macedonia Church Cemetery, Chickasaw County.
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Jimmy Wayne Hamby
He was born on February 10, 1947, the son of Warren E. (Pete) and Mattie Lou Griffin Hamby of Houston.
He enlisted around October 1,1965, and volunteered for duty in Viet Nam. Prior to arriving in Viet Nam, he trained troops at Fort Knox, Kentucky, for about a year and a half. He found time during this period to receive his high school diploma through the Army. He served as an E4 with the 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry, 1st Infantry Division in the U.S. Army. He was one of three soldiers killed during hostile action when their armored personnel carrier ran over a mine near Lal Kal, in the Binh Duong Province in Viet Nam.
He wrote the following prayer to the mother of a young private who had trained at Fort Knox and had been killed in action. "Since I can't find words to explain why your son died here in these forsaken jungles, I'm sending a 'Prayer for Peace' that I want you to keep until I return. If I don't return, please keep it always":
" Our Father in Heaven, hear this fervent prayer; May the people of all nations be united in Thy care. For earth's peace and man's salvation can only come by Thy grace, and not through bombs and missiles and quest for outer space. For until all men recognize that 'The Battle is the Lord's,' and that peace on earth cannot be won with strategy and swords, we will go on vainly fighting as we have in ages past, finding only empty victories and a peace that cannot last. But we've grown so rich, so mighty, and so arrogantly strong we no longer ask in humbleness, 'God, show us where we're wrong.' We have come to trust completely in the power of man-made things, unmindful of God's mighty power, unmindful that He is 'King of Kings.' We have turned our eyes away from Him to go our selfish ways. Money, power, and pleasure are the gods we serve. And the good green earth God gave us to peacefully enjoy, through greed and fear and hatred we are seeking to destroy. Oh, Father in Heaven, stir and awaken our sleeping souls. Renew our faith and lift us up and give us higher goals. And grant us heavenly guidance. For, more than guided missiles, all the World needs is guided men."
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal and Vietnam Campaign Medal.
He was first reported missing in action. He was killed in action on May 21,1968, at 21 years of age.
His name is listed on Panel 64E, Line 14 on the Vietnam Wall, Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery, Chickasaw County.
***
Fred Lee Hampton
He was born on February 7, 1947, the son of Sam L. and Ozella Hampton of Houlka.
He entered Viet Nam in April 1968. He served as an E2 in Company 1, 3rd Battalion, 9th Marines, 3rd Marine Division in the U.S. Marine Corps as an Antitank Assaultman. He was one of 12 soldiers killed in the same "event" in Quang Tri Province, South Viet Nam. They were providing security for tractors and bulldozers working to clear the area. He was killed by hostile sniper fire while on patrol and died outright.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal and Combat Action Ribbon.
He was killed in action on May 31, 1968, at 21 years of age.
His name is listed on Panel 62W, Line 10 of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Sunset Gardens of Memory, East St. Louis, Illinois.
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James Edward Hill
He was born on December 16, 1944, the son of Mr. Lee Hill and Mrs. Inez Hill Stokes of Okolona.
He served as a Private First Class Infantryman, Reconnaissance Platoon, HHC, 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Division in the U.S. Army. He died from multiple fragmentation wounds caused by an exploding grenade near the Cambodian border in the Binh Long Province. Thirty-four Americans died in this encounter with the Viet Cong near the Loc Ninh Rubber Plantation.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal and Vietnam Campaign Medal.
He was killed in action on June 11,1966, at 21 years of age.
His name is listed on Panel 08E, Line 036 on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Union Baptist Memorial Gardens, McCondy.
***
Johnny Ray Holloway
He was born on July 14, 1945, the son of the late Anderson (Coy) Holloway and Mrs. Loane Bevill of Okolona.
He enlisted in the US Marine Corps on August 1,1962, in Memphis, Tennessee. He served as a Corporal in the H&S Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines. He was part of Operation Utah, when his Company met with two Battalions of the North Vietnamese Army. The first wave of Marines were taken under fire but managed to secure the landing zone and begin to move toward their objectives. Advancing in a general easterly direction, the Marines pushed forward for a few hundred meters before they were taken under heavy enemy fire. Company G penetrated the enemy positions in two places but couldn't take advantage of these minor gains because of the lack of reserves. Company H on the right made some progress until the North Viet Nam Army counterattacked in force. The attack was repulsed with the use of 81 mm mortars on the NVA troops pouring across open rice paddies. The NVA then struck Company F with a heavy volume of fire; casualties were piling up from the devastating enemy fire for all the Marine units battling the hardened enemy troops they encountered in the open paddies, in the hedgerows and tree lines. The NVA attack was finally repulsed by air strikes, using bombs, rockets and napalm that were dropped on the NVA until the Marines reached their night defensive positions near the hamlet of Chau Nhai. He was one of 42 Marine casualties from the 2nd Battalion. He was killed by enemy gunshot wound to the abdomen near Chau Nhai, near the South China Sea.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal and Compact Action Ribbon.
He was killed in action on March 4, 1966, at 21 years of age.
His name is listed on Panel 05E, Line 104 on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Lee Memorial Park, Verona.
***
Eugene Hunt
He was born on April 16,1950, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Eustace J. Hunt of Okolona. He is survived by his wife Linda Wagoner and a daughter, Becky of Glendale, Arizona.
He served as a Corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, an E4 in H & S Company, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division. He died in Quang Tri Combat Base of fragmentation wounds to the head and body from hostile rocket fire. He was one of three casualties of this encounter. Quang Tri was the scene of some of the fiercest ground fighting in the war from 1966 until the war's end. Latin descriptions on the 3rd Recon's badge translated into "Swift-Silent-Deadly." In 1966 at Da Nang, a sign in their mess hall read, " We lead the Division, where the Division goes, we've been."
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal and Combat Action Ribbon.
He was killed in action on August 31,1969, at 19 years of age.
His name is listed on Panel 18W, Line 015 of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Lee Memorial Park, Verona.
***
George Michael Wall
He was born on December 5,1944, the son of Ervin Connie and Kathleen Roebuck Wall. He was survived by his wife, Brenda K. Wall (secretary to Chancellor Woodrow W. Brand, Jr.) all of Houston. He was a graduate of Houston High School and received his BS degree in chemistry from Mississippi State University.
He served as a 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. He was commissioned in1967 upon his graduation from Officer Training School at Lackland AFB, Texas and completed survival school at Fairchild AFB Spokane, Washington. He began his tour of duty in Vietnam in 1969 as a pilot in the 362nd Technical Electronic Warfare Squadron, 460th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, 7th Air Force, flying out of Pleiku, Vietnam. His squadron flew EC-47s, called the "Electronic Goon," a World War II era aircraft that had been retrofitted with special electronic intelligence equipment. The squadron's job was to fly reconnaissance missions in hostile areas, gathering much needed intelligence for the Army and Air Force. He was on just such a mission on April 22, 1970. The EC-47 took off at 3:30 AM with a mission flight time of 6 hours. There were eight crew members aboard, and Wall was the aircraft commander. He was the pilot that day as he and his crew flew over the border between Laos and South Vietnam. The territory beneath them was swarming with Viet Cong soldiers. He and his crew had almost completed their mission when their aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire. His first option was to turn the plane back to the east and make it to their base. But the plane was too badly damaged to make it, with one engine already out. The second option was to land at a nearby airstrip, but it was reported that the airstrip was controlled by the Viet Cong. The last option was to abandon the plane and jump out, but the plane was far too low. Wall ordered everyone to their seats and prepare for a crash landing in the jungle. The rugged mountainous terrain made it impossible to find a spot suited for a landing. The entire crew went down knowing the jungle they were about to hit was thick with the enemy. The EC-47 went in hard, losing its left wing after it clipped a tree. Wall and the radio operator Mike Conner died on impact. The rest of the six crew members escaped the crash with injuries. Within minutes a rescue helicopter showed up on site to pick up the survivors. Air Force aircraft and Army gunships also showed up to keep the Viet Cong away from the crash site due to the classified equipment inside. After the survivors were picked up and the bodies of Wall and Conner were taken out, the crashed EC-47 was blown up and completely burned.
He was awarded the Purple Heart, National Defense Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Vietnam Campaign Medal, and Air Medal.
He was killed in action on April 22, 1970 in Thua Thien Province, Hue, Viet Nam at 26 years of age just 86 days before he was to have completed his assignment.
His name is listed on Panel 11 W, Line 039 on the Vietnam Wall, Washington, D.C.
He is buried in Houston Cemetery, Houston.
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Felonies
The following people were booked into the Lee County-Tupelo Adult Jail in connection with felony charges ending Friday at 11 a.m.
Shadney Brown, 47, of Tupelo, was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff's Office, possession of a firearm by a felon.
Courtney Green, 24, of Tupelo, was arrested by the Tupelo Police Department, grand larceny.
Adam Lee, 41, of Tupelo, was arrested by the Tupelo Police Department, possession of a Schedule II drug.
John Patton, 53, of Guntown, was arrested by the Guntown Police Department, possession of a weapon by a felon, improper equipment.
Brendon Dane Rea, 45, of Baldwyn, was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff's Office, possession of a weapon by a felon, improper equipment, no insurance.
Jesse Shelton, 51, of Tupelo, was arrested by the Lee County Sheriff's Office, failure to register as a sex offender.
Jalen Taylor, 21, no address listed, was arrested by the Verona Police Department, possession of methamphetamine.
Lee County Sheriff's Office
The following reports were filed Friday by the Lee County Sheriff's Office.
A Mitchell Road apartment complex trapped an aggressive pit bull inside the tennis court. Since they had a signed pickup order from Justice Court, deputies carried the dog to the animal shelter.
A Shannon woman said while driving down County Road 468 near County Road 501, she saw two black bags. Inside the bags were syringes, a spoon and a glass pipe. She called 911 to turn over the drug paraphernalia.
A Lake Ridge Saltillo woman said someone broke into her house and stole six china cups and a crystal vase with silk flowers. She estimated their value at $3,600.
A County Road 325 Tupelo woman said she was at a male acquaintance’s County Road 1147 Mooreville house when she was assaulted by the man and a female suspect. She was looking for her belongings, and the suspects refused to take her to her car. When she got into the man’s truck, the female suspect began hitting her with her fists. She said the man first got between the two women, then pulled her out of the truck and onto the ground. The suspects got into the other woman’s car and allegedly tried to run over her. She ran to a neighbor’s house to call 911.
A County Road 1009 Tupelo woman withdrew $1,500 from the bank and gave it to her mother “to keep it safe.” The mother put the cash under her bed. When she went to get the money about two weeks later, it was gone. The mother said a male relative, 45, was the only other person who knew the money was there.
A County Road 1460 Tupelo man said someone had been inside his home. He found a half-empty 24-ounce Dr. Pepper bottle in his bathroom sink. Nothing appeared to be stolen but someone had locked the patio door. He said he normally leaves his patio door unlocked and the garage door lifted to allow the dog to come and go.
A County Road 931 Tupelo man called and said he knew where his stolen golf cart was. Deputies found a man riding the golf cart around his County Road 1147 Tupelo yard. He said he bought the cart from an acquaintance for $700.
A State Park Road man said a tenant asked him to call 911 because two men refused to leave her house. She told a deputy that she gave one man permission to stay there “for a few days” then his brother showed up as well. They had people over at all hours of the night. When she told the men they had overstayed their welcome, they became hostile. When deputies arrived, the men agreed to leave.
Tupelo Police Department
The following reports were filed Friday by the Tupelo Police Department.
A McNeece Street woman said a female acquaintance called her employer’s corporate office, pretended to be a customer and filed a complaint saying the woman offended her. The district manager called and she had to explain the situation.
An Ida Street man said he is letting a friend stay with him. The friend keeps inviting a woman over. She gets loud, causes disturbances and gets into fights with the friend. The man said he doesn't want her to comeback or the friend will have to find another place to stay.
A South Madison Street woman said someone broke into her car and stole her purse.
A West Main Walmart employee said a female customer tried to shoplift a $52 door lock. She was detained for police and cited for shoplifting.
A woman said she got to work at Home Depot around 4 a.m. When she went to her truck at 10 a.m. it sounded different. Someone had stolen her catalytic converter.
A woman said her car was parked outside the West Main Walmart. She said high winds around 5 p.m. blew a shopping cart into her 2017 Toyota Camry, damaging the front grill.
A woman said she was shopping in Ollie’s when she got a call. She set her wallet down on some merchandise to take the call and forgot about the wallet. Two men found the wallet and turned it in. The manager said he put the wallet in the store safe without looking inside. When the woman reported her wallet missing, it was returned to her. When she looked inside, she said it was missing $1,000 in cash.
Anyone with information on any of these crimes is urged to call the Lee County Sheriff's Office at 841-9041, the Tupelo Police Department at 841-6491 or Crime Stoppers of Northeast Mississippi at (800) 773-TIPS or download the P3 Tip App and leave an anonymous tip that way.
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IAHS baseball By BEN SUTTON Itawamba County Times Ben Sutton Sports Editor Author facebook Author twitter Author email Apr 1, 2022 20 hrs ago Comments Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save ben.sutton@djournal.com Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save Tags Iahs Baseball Itawamba Ahs Itawamba Ahs Indians Iahs Indians Dylan Walters Ben Sutton Sports Editor Ben is sports editor of the Itawamba County Times. Author facebook Author twitter Author email Follow Ben Sutton Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today Recommended for you Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus 52° Rain Shower Fulton, MS (38843) Today Rain showers early with bright sunshine by the afternoon. High 71F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.. Tonight Clear skies. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable. Updated: April 2, 2022 @ 10:00 am Full Forecast Latest Posts Itawamba Times Mantachie baseball misses opportunities in loss to Kossuth 17 hrs ago Itawamba Times IAHS baseball 20 hrs ago News Deadline to file homestead exemption is April 1 Mar 30, 2022 News Community Spirit Bank set to open in Fulton Mar 30, 2022 News The Redlands Festival has arrived! Mar 30, 2022 News Two men facing charges in Tennessee after high-speed chase Mar 30, 2022 Latest e-Edition Itawamba Times Itawamba Times
Ben Sutton Sports Editor Ben is sports editor of the Itawamba County Times. Author facebook Author twitter Author email Follow Ben Sutton Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today
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https://www.djournal.com/monroe/opinion/im-always-learning-and-gathering-from-the-seasons-of-life/article_ae5b7bfd-4341-5f2b-aa67-83e64b97b3fe.html
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Rudyard Kipling said, “This is a brief life, but in its brevity, it offers us some splendid moments, some meaningful adventures.”
My foray into journalism these last few years has indeed provided me with not only meaningful adventures but also the opportunity to meet interesting people that have added dimension to my life.
One of those interesting people was Vere Gardner, with whom I connected through Gayle George, who was one of Vere’s mainstays in his life after he came to Amory from his volunteer work in Smithville.
Vere, who recently lost his life, was getting along fine working for his keep among various hosts until his life handed him a round of hard luck. He was no stranger to bumpier roads of life.
“I started feeling a little sore spot in the side of my throat but thought it would go away with self-help remedies,” he said during a previous Monroe Journal interview. “It did for a while but then came back. I waited too long to visit a doctor, hoping it might just be a goiter or something.”
When he learned it was cancer, he needed time to come to terms with it.
“The doctor wanted to admit me for treatment right away, but I didn’t come back for three weeks,” he said during the previous interview.
When you’re battling an aggressive enemy, time is usually not on your side.
Medical teams did their best to battle the malignancy with aggressive chemotherapy, radiation and surgery that introduced a new lifestyle to Vere. The treatment included a tracheotomy and the implanting of a feeding tube since he was no longer able to swallow food without choking.
Vere was younger than me by about three years but looked every bit of how he characterized himself.
“I’ve got a lot of miles on me,” he told me one day.
I heard a few comments about the seasons of life from a radio preacher recently while on my way home from work. Pastor Jeff Shreve based his comments on the writings of King Solomon as recorded in Ecclesiastes chapter 3.
“Life is made up of seasons, all of which have limited durations,” he said.
Borrowing from the analogy of farming or gardening, we can find some parallels for life in the practices of planting, cultivation and harvesting.
We plant direction for our lives through learning, from potty training to college or vocational school. We cultivate skills as we pursue our careers, start a family and learn to balance work and leisure. I’m approaching retirement now and evaluating how I can live with how I have managed my health and measuring the resources accumulated during my working years. We harvest what we sow.
Vere lived much of his life off the beaten track, as best I could learn from him. He learned to accept what life handed him and made the best he could out of whatever circumstances came his way.
“We can surprise ourselves by learning what we can live without,” he told me from his hospital bed as he began his battle with cancer.
The radio preacher shared another observation.
“For some, it’s starting out. For others, it’s starting over,” he said.
I’ve been involved in three different professional pursuits during my working years and have garnered more than my share of good things along the way, even though I wasn’t very excited about starting over on another path when others I knew seemed to be well settled in only one career. I’ve learned a lot, received a lot and shared as much as I could.
I conclude with one more quote from that radio preacher.
“At the proper time, God will bring His promises to pass in your life. It’s going to be wonderful because He is faithful, purposeful and merciful,” he said.
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Pontotoc senior Ethan Ball runs toward third base in Friday's game at Ripley. Ball had a 2-run, go-ahead single in the top of the eighth inning in the Warriors' 10-6 win.
Pontotoc senior Ethan Ball runs toward third base in Friday's game at Ripley. Ball had a 2-run, go-ahead single in the top of the eighth inning in the Warriors' 10-6 win.
RIPLEY • Just as momentum seemed to favor Ripley in the late innings of Friday’s Division 2-4A series finale, Pontotoc seized back control with a four-run top of the eighth inning for a 10-6 win, completing the sweep of the Tigers.
Ripley’s Conner Graves drilled a one-out, RBI double in the bottom of the seventh to things at 6-6.
But the Tigers (8-7, 4-2) left him standing on third, giving the No. 9-ranked Warriors (17-4, 5-1) another chance.
Ethan Ball roped a bases-loaded single to score a pair. Then, Jackson Williams and Garrett Pound added RBIs on singles to stretch the lead to four.
“Ethan’s been a guy that comes through a lot this year,” said Pontotoc head coach Josh Dowdy. “We call on him. He’s a senior and gets a big hit right there.”
The Warriors’ win didn’t come without some warts. Pontotoc committed five errors that hurt its cause.
Pontotoc plated four runs in the second on a single, from Braxton Whiteside, a Walt Gardner double, and a RBI groundout from Brice Deaton for a 4-1 lead.
In the bottom half, a pair of Pontotoc errors on the same play cut the lead to two, before a RBI single from Joson Burks followed by a throwing error on that hit tied the game at 4-4.
“We didn’t play real well defensively. If we catch the ball that game, it’s a whole different ball game,” Dowdy said. “But you know, that just shows the maturity of our guys this year. We’ve grown up a lot and been in a lot of close games. There’s no quit in these guys.”
Ty Clayton broke a 5-5 tie in the top of the sixth with a solo leadoff home run. That was one of 10 hits for Pontotoc, who also struck out 11 times.
Pound took the win in 2 2/3 innings of relief, allowing one run on two hits, striking out six and one walk. Jon Robert Carnes drew the start, giving up just one earned run on five hits, while striking out six to just two walks.
Graves took the loss for Ripley, allowing four runs on five hits in two innings of work.
Extra Bases
Big Inning: Warriors had five singles and one walk in a four-run eighth inning that lifted them to the win.
Big Stat: Pontotoc has scored double digit runs seven times this season, including three of its last four games.
Coach Speak: “You cannot let somebody that talented have opportunity, after opportunity, after opportunity … You give someone that many chances they’re going to beat you over and over, no matter if it’s seven innings or eight innings.” - Ripley head coach Joel Gafford.
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TODAY'S OBITUARIES
Katie Crawford, Paducah, Kentucky
Greta Good, Orange Beach, Alabama
Carolyn Jackson, New Albany
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MEMO
Katie Crawford
PADUCAH, KENTUCKY - Katie Crawford, 99, passed away Wednesday, March 30, 2022, at Baptist Health Hospital in Paducah, KY. Services will be on 04/05/22 at Booneville Cemetery with a Graveside Service at 11:00 AM.
MEMO, UNITED LOGO
Carolyn Jackson
NEW ALBANY - Carolyn Jackson, 76, passed away on Thursday, March 31, 2022 surrounded by her loving family. A service honoring the life of Mrs. Jackson will be on Monday, April 4, 2022 at 2:00pm at Harmony Baptist Church with a visitation from 11:00am till the start of the service at 2:00pm. Mrs. Jackson was born May 26, 1945 in New Albany, MS to the late Pete and Earline Seger. She was a retired sewer in the furniture factory. A devoted member of Harmony Baptist Church. She was blessed with a loving family whom she adored, grandchildren, who were her pride and joy and friends who were many. She enjoyed gospel music, working outside, game shows, coloring, and most importantly Jesus Christ.
Memories will continue to be shared with two daughters, Elizabeth Jackson and Torrie Willard (Caleb), two sons, Teddy Jackson (Tina) and Blake Lee (Kala), three grandchildren and twelve great-grandchildren, and one sister, Pat Wildman. She is preceded in death by her parents, her husband, Eason Jackson, two daughters, one daughter-in-law, and a host of brothers and sisters.
In lieu of flower donations can be made to Sanctuary Hospice House in Tupelo, MS. Please visit www.unitedfuneralservice.com
MEMO
Greta Good
ORANGE BEACH, ALABAMA - Greta Good, aged 77, left this world to be with the Lord on Monday, March 21, 2022 at home in Orange Beach, Alabama. She was born January 25, 1945 to Fred and Mattie Keeton in Mobile, Alabama. She was a member of Friendship Baptist Church in Aberdeen, MS. She had been married the last 20 years of her life to Greg Good.
Greta found her calling as a massage therapist, helping many people with chronic pain, while building many beautiful friendships. She loved the water, be it boating on the Tombigbee River, fishing for snapper in the Gulf of Mexico or just going to the beach to watch the sunset. She loved traveling and exploring the world.
She loved her family very much and was so very proud of her grandchildren.
She will be greatly missed by her son Todd Sullivan (Jessica) of Rockford, IL, her daughter Dee Prisock (Bob) of Aberdeen, MS, her sister Betty Carter of Hatley, MS, and three grandchildren, Tyler Oswalt, Abigail Sullivan and Mattie Sullivan as well as many cousins, nephews and nieces. She is preceded in heaven by her father and mother Fred and Mattie Keeton as well as her sister, Dianne Williams.
A Graveside Memorial Service will be held at Friendship Baptist Church in Aberdeen, MS on April 9, 2022 at 1:00.
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20220402
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https://www.djournal.com/opinion/columnists/amid-shortages-immigration-overages-hurt-all/article_d8546e68-8cee-583f-ae87-4a522af8cad7.html
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In Congress, an inverse relationship exists between the numbers of border crossers and a discussion about how millions of new migrants will be cared for. The greater the numbers, the less is said about open borders and the resultant negative long-term population consequences.
The latest border report indicates that immigration agents stopped about 7,100 worldwide migrants each day during a recent week, up from February’s daily 6,800 average. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said the total includes 1,500 Cubans, well more than double the daily average from February. Because of diplomatic challenges and the expense of sending them home, Cubans are automatically released into the interior to pursue asylum claims.
In the unlikely event that the asylum requests are denied, the Cubans will remain anyway — these days, hardly anyone is expelled. Department of Homeland Security officials predict that fiscal 2022 migration totals will surpass last year’s 2 million, plus an estimated 1,000-a-day “gotaways.” Once Title 42 is eliminated, anticipated within days, the illegal alien surge will intensify because agents won’t be allowed to return migrants to Mexico based on COVID-19 grounds.
President Biden and those who advise him have privately agreed — they wouldn’t dare make a public announcement — that open borders are OK with them. In this era of shortages in oil and affordable housing and of supply chain disruptions causing product shortages everywhere, what will happens next to the migrants and to the U.S. environment after they settle? Limits to population growth exist but are a taboo subject in Congress. Remember also that immigrants have multiplier factors like chain migration and increasing family size or starting new family units that must eventually be provided for.
Consider the most fundamental natural resource need that everyone requires: water, and the nationwide dire shortage of it. The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, in partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has created the U.S. Drought Monitor that maps nationwide drought conditions and maintains historical drought records. Ranked according to drought severity, the top seven states include four that are primary migrant destinations: Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas, the arrival point for thousands of migrants.
As of March 21, 90% of Texas is experiencing drought conditions, with High Plains residents suffering from extreme drought. Forecasters warn that drought conditions could worsen, and some predict the possibility of unprecedented 10-year megadroughts that will bring hotter, drier and more extreme weather than normally seen.
The University of Texas and its Environmental Institute analyzed the state’s water crisis and the probability of it expanding. Identified as one of the major contributors to water shortage was population growth. Texas’ population will increase from today’s 29.5 million people to 51 million by 2070, with the majority residing in urban areas. Inarguably, the more people added to Texas’ population, the more difficult it becomes to overcome water shortage challenges.
The expected Texas population increase of 21 million people in less than 50 years is part of the U.S. total population growth of 70 million, to 404 million, during the same half decade. All will be daily consumers of water in multiple ways.
Those calling for increased immigration forget that growth is finite. Sir David Attenborough, the natural history filmmaker and biologist who advocated halving immigration into the United Kingdom to preserve as much of the landscape as possible once said, “I’ve never seen a problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer people, or harder, and ultimately impossible, with more.”
Attenborough could have mentioned that water supply is an impossible-to-solve problem for any area when there are no limits to population growth.
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https://www.djournal.com/opinion/columnists/the-u-s-continues-to-fail-our-future-doctors/article_b60ca787-ec16-5b9d-b77b-5da8493e1618.html
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For basketball fans and players, the third month of the year means “March Madness,” one of the biggest sporting events. March for some college undergraduates means spring break in exotic locales. For thousands of this year’s medical school graduates, March means the exciting culmination of eight years of higher education — undergraduate training and medical school — and the next step in the medical profession: residency training.
But for thousands of other doctors, it means rejection, doubt and questioning the way forward.
Residency training is the additional hands-on learning that occurs at a teaching hospital or clinic after a doctor has graduated from medical school. Residencies are funded by taxpayers at a cost of about $150,000 per year. Of that, the average medical resident earns $64,000 a year. The length of training can last from two to five or more years, depending on the specialty area. Residencies are grueling and punishing, with exceedingly long hours.
The National Resident Matching Program is the nonprofit organization that has been “matching” doctors to residency programs since 1952. Public perception for a long time has been that once a doctor graduates from medical school, that’s it. A doctor is a doctor and can go forth and practice medicine.
That was pretty much true for several decades. But then began a divergence. There were more doctors — including ones from other countries — applying for residencies than there were residencies. A major factor was the 1997 Balanced Budget Act, which capped the number of residents and fellows that the federal Medicare program would support. And Medicare was the single largest source of funding for graduate medical education.
Not until the end of 2020 was there an increase in residency positions when H.R.133 — Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, was signed into law. The legislation included funding for 1,000 (200 slots per year over five years) new Medicare-supported positions.
In this year’s Match, the National Resident Matching Program put a positive spin on the numbers, reporting, “The 2022 Match realized many significant milestones including a record number of U.S. MD and U.S. DO senior applicants and the largest number of total and first-year positions offered.”
But the reality is that more than 7,000 doctors who are U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents still don’t have residencies. Thus, we continue to fail our doctors who have invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars for their training, and who are eager to contribute to America’s healthcare system and alleviate the much-discussed looming U.S. shortage of between 38,000 and 124,000 physicians in both primary and specialty care.
Last month, Kevin Lynn, cofounder of Doctors without Jobs, testified before the House Committee on the Judiciary on the topic. Lynn emphasized that not only are we sidelining our talent, we’re also subsidizing doctors from other countries by importing them to fill U.S. taxpayer-funded residencies. The number is significant: more than 40,000 foreign doctors have been given taxpayer-funded residencies in the last 10 years.
This issue impacts every American who accesses the healthcare system. Unmatched doctors and American citizens alike should call and write their elected officials — weekly, until this is fixed — and ask that they prioritize our doctors for residency positions. Current legislation, H.R. 2256, The Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2021, would create more residency slots, but in its current iteration, it does not prioritize U.S. physicians for these spots. H.R. 2256 needs to be modified to hire American doctors first.
U.S. politicians have had no problem in recent weeks quickly finding $14 billion for Ukraine, which includes both humanitarian aid and weapons. But for more than a dozen years, these elected officials haven’t been able to find the dollars to take care of American doctors. Maybe there’s no money to be made for American elites and the political class by fixing this problem.
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/college/mississippi-state/how-does-mississippi-state-make-up-for-losing-makai-polk-at-outside-receiver/article_e55b6c19-7caa-54bb-af78-841a304d1b20.html
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STARKVILLE – Steve Spurrier Jr. doesn’t shy away from what’s obvious for his outside receivers unit: losing Makai Polk is a big deal.
The record-breaking receiver accounted for more than 100 of Will Rogers’ 505 completions last season. Without him, Spurrier and Mike Leach need to find a way to spread those out because the quantity of passes thrown in the Air Raid offense won’t be dropping.
Whether that comes from one player – perhaps transfer Justin Robinson, redshirt-senior Caleb Ducking or sophomore Rara Thomas – or an assortment of players is to be determined. But in the early parts of spring practice, Spurrier is seeing progress to give reason to believe the loss of Polk can be made up.
Thomas is the obvious name expected to shine because of the promise he showed in his freshman year. His pure talent led Thomas to 18 receptions – five for touchdowns.
For a player who didn’t play football until his junior year at Eufaula High School, it was an impressive welcome to the SEC. And the room for improvement is ground for excitement.
“He’s still very raw to the position,” Spurrier said. “Didn’t play a lot of receiver in high school.”
Ducking, a junior college product, caught nine passes last season for 83 yards. At 6-5 and 205 pounds, it’s clear why coaches and players speak highly of him.
In basic drills, Rogers is constantly motivating Ducking. Spurrier is often pulling the receiver aside and pushing him to improve on various fundamentals. Someone needs to take the next step in Spurrier’s room, and there’s belief Ducking could be that guy.
The leaping, juggling and contested grab he made along the sideline at Thursday’s practice is an example of why.
“It’s his time,” Spurrier said. “I think he recognizes that it’s his opportunity to go play and he knows he’s in a position where the ball is gonna come to him.”
Robinson’s frame is evident without the metrics. His stature among teammates in the huddle suggests his 6-4, 220-pound measurements on the team’s website could be selling him short.
The redshirt-sophomore came to Starkville from Georgia where he struggled to find the field in two seasons.
Leach considered Polk the ultimate transfer portal success story. The pitch to Robinson was an easy one to come help fill Polk’s shoes.
The same goes for Jordan Mosley, a transfer out of Northwestern. Along with Lideatrick Griffin, Spurrier has a plethora of options to choose from.
He said in a “perfect world” two players evenly divide the load at the two outside receiver spots. With Polk playing about 90% of the Z-WR snaps last season, he was an anomaly for Leach’s offense.
A return to the norm could be ahead this fall with the number of players Spurrier sees with ability to help make up for Polk.
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/college/ole-miss/luke-altmyer-believes-in-himself-as-ole-miss-qbs-compete/article_e1a241a0-3973-5219-b0fd-2dbfc63f00b7.html
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OXFORD – Upon arriving at his first throwing session with Ole Miss players, the first person to shake Southern Cal transfer Jaxson Dart’s hand was his competition. But don’t mistake Luke Altmyer’s friendliness for a lack of fire.
The sophomore quarterback wants to lead the Rebels into battle as badly as anyone.
Altmyer spent most of the 2021 season as the top backup to Matt Corral. He and junior Kinkead Dent were always the in-house options to succeed Corral, a likely first-round pick in this month’s NFL draft, a seventh-place Heisman Trophy finisher and a legendary figure in recent Ole Miss lore.
The Rebels’ quarterback room changed drastically in January, however, when Dart, one of the most coveted players in the transfer portal, chose Ole Miss. An addition to the roster wasn’t unsurprising, Altmyer said, as he and Dent were the only scholarship quarterbacks on the team.
But a two-man race suddenly became a three-man race, and excitement around the program was palpable with Dart’s addition. “Darty in the ‘Sip” became a rallying cry for the Rebel faithful.
One of Dart’s biggest fans at practice is Altmyer. The two have become “fast friends,” according to Altmyer. But the Starkville native and four-star recruit from the 2021 class has his eyes on the prize, too — the right to start under center come the Sept. 3 season opener against Troy.
“I believe in myself. I really do,” Altmyer said. “I understand the nature of the business, and everything like that. But I go to work every day with the belief that I can lead this team.”
In some ways, Jan. 1 was Altmyer’s first audition for the right to succeed Corral. It was a mixed bag, which wasn’t unexpected given the circumstances.
Altmyer was thrust into the Sugar Bowl after Corral went down with an ankle injury late in the first quarter. He completed 15 of 28 passes for 174 yards, a touchdown and two interceptions in the biggest moment of his young career.
Altmyer showed flashes of elite potential — a perfectly arced 37-yard pass to Braylon Sanders that tied the game at seven apiece doubled as his first college touchdown pass — and some freshman moments that included a 96-yard pick six.
New Year’s Day has been on Altmyer’s mind a lot the last few months. The scenarios of what he should have done, what he could have done better in a 21-7 loss to Baylor, have raced through his mind.
Perfectionism is the ultimate double-edged sword.
“Looking back, I think about how surreal it was. I think about it every day, kind of beat myself up over it. I think my biggest flaw as a player and a person, I’m the biggest perfectionist and overthinker there is,” Altmyer said. “It’s hard to battle some days. But I wouldn’t trade the experience for the world.”
As the quarterback derby rages on indefinitely (Altmyer said he has “no clue” about a timetable for a decision), Altmyer remains confident in his abilities. In his quest to be better, he finds himself thinking back to lessons he learned from his mentor.
Corral taught Altmyer a lot of things, some obviously related to football — Corral’s enthusiasm and “workman attitude” were “contagious,” Altmyer notes. But the biggest lessons he took from his predecessor were about presence and being a teammate. There’s a lot more to being a quarterback and leader of men than the ability to throw a tight spiral.
“I think in life there’s truly two types of people. And I think Matt really embodied those two. And those two are, I think, in life, people really seek to understand, and I think some people are really understood. And I think he really had both of those qualities,” Altmyer said. “When he walked in the room, he was understood. He commanded the room.
“But he was always wanting to understand more about himself, the game, his teammates, about life itself. It was truly inspiring.”
Observations from Saturday’s open practice
It’s hard to gather a ton of intel from spring practice —things are fluid, as starters and backups are often mixed together — but the offensive line group of (from left to right) junior Jeremy James, senior Nick Broeker, junior Caleb Warren, sophomore Eli Acker and graduate transfer Mason Brooks got almost all the reps with what appeared to be a largely first-team offense.
Altmyer and Dart both got reps with the first-team groupings, though Altmyer got the first crack at it early on in practice. Junior running back Kentrel Bullock saw a lot of first-team reps as did a trio of wide receivers — junior Louisville transfer Jordan Watkins, sophomore Bralon Brown and senior Dannis Jackson. Senior Jonathan Mingo was wearing a black non-contact jersey.
Junior TCU transfer Zach Evans, who figures to be a big piece of the Rebels’ running game in 2022, sprinted down the sideline for a touchdown that had teammates excited.
Defensively, true freshman cornerback Davison Igbinosun worked a bit with what figures to be the top defense. Sophomore Auburn transfer Ladarius Tennison also saw a lot of work with the first unit.
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20220402
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https://www.djournal.com/news/local/marker-honors-memories-of-lafayette-county-lynching-victims/article_adfebda6-054e-53af-a391-1185c8b67f0c.html
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OXFORD • After a five-year effort, the seven known victims of lynchings in Lafayette County were remembered at a marker dedication Saturday.
Around 200 people gathered in front of Oxford City Hall for a marker dedication hosted by the Lafayette County Remembrance Project (LCRP).
The coalition of Lafayette County community members centers their work on ensuring the stories and legacies of these victims is told. The marker is located on the Lafayette County Courthouse lawn. Erecting it, and the subsequent efforts to memorialize the seven Black men, is just one step in encouraging community healing by acknowledging racial injustice.
“That’s going to be unique for Lafayette County. In many other places, you won’t see it there in the center of the courthouse. That’s why we’re so proud that Oxford and Lafayette County has stepped forward,” said LCRP member Don Cole.
The dedication happened just days after President Joe Biden signed H.R. 55, the "Emmett Till Antilynching Act" on Tuesday, making lynching a federal hate crime.
The lynchings of Harris Tunstal, Will McGregory, Will Steen, William Chandler, Lawson Patton, Elwood Higginbottom and an unknown Black man occurred over a 50-year period, with the last documented victim, Higginbottom, killed on Sept. 17, 1935. None of the perpetrators were ever brought to justice.
The marker is funded by the Montgomery, Alabama-based nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative. Representatives with EJI, the Alluvial Collective, the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, and local leaders attended. There were performances by the UM Gospel Choir, Lenny Kaye, descendants of Higginbottom and Effie Burt.
Descendants of Steen, Patton and Higginbottom were in attendance. LCRP’s efforts started in 2017, when Kyleen Burke, a Northeastern University law student, was researching Higginbottom as part of Northeastern’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Burke messaged Tyrone Higginbottom, Elwood Higgingbottom’s son, after he had used Ancestry.com.
“I thought it was barbaric, what they did to my grandfather, and I really wish there was a way we could have received retribution for what happened,” Tyrone Higginbottom said.
The group held a dedication of a bench honoring the memory of Elwood Higginbottom’s son, the Rev. E.W. Higginbottom Sr. following the marker dedication. The bench is located at the Old Armory Pavilion at the corner of Bramlett and University Avenue.
The Rev. E.W. Higginbottom was only four years old when his father was killed, and was part of the 2017 and 2018 memorialization efforts for his father in Oxford. He died on April 29, 2020, from COVID-19.
For Tina Higgingbottom Washington, Elwood Higginbottom’s granddaughter, the entire process has helped bring closure, and she hopes it serves as a catalyst to addressing current racial injustice.
“Hopefully my children will learn from this and the community as well,” Washington said.
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/benefield-shirley/article_b260cd28-2203-5dcd-bc68-ebd15cc2732b.html
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Shirley Tackett Benefield, a resident of Okolona at Shearer Richardson Nursing Home, passed away on Saturday, April 2, 2022. She was born on August 26, 1926 to Columbus and Arra Morris. She worked at the ammunition plant in Prarie, MS; Delta Trousers; Stratford and Comfort Furniture and loved going to church at Carnation Baptist Church in Okolona. She also loved cooking, going to gospel singings, making fried pies and selling them, walking with Jeanette Franklin, tending to her flowers, and spending time with her grandchildren. In addition to her parents; Shirley was preceded in death by Billy Harris (1951); Bro. Herbert Tackett (1997); son, Chuck Tackett, 2 granddaughters, Maggie Tackett and Angel Tackett; five brothers; and one sister. She is survived by her husband, Johnny Benefield; two daughters, Betty Owen (Danny) and Jean Farley, three sons, Billy "Pete" Harris (Donna), Jimmy Tackett (Susan), Larry Tackett (Margaret); and two brothers, Troy Morris and Jake Morris. She is also survived by 10 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren; and 1 great-great-grandchild. A celebration of Shirley's life will be held at 2 PM Monday, April 4, 2022 at Holland Funeral Directors- Okolona Chapel with Bro. Danny Owen and Bro. Jimmy Tackett officiating. Visitation will be from 3-5 PM today and 12-2 PM Monday, all at the funeral home. Holland Funeral Directors of Okolona are honored to be serving their friends. Online guestbook www.hollandfuneraldirectors.net.
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/greta-good/article_9cd91586-b2ca-11ec-90cd-8320d7d85c4b.html
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Greta Good, aged 77, left this world to be with the Lord on Monday, March 21, 2022 at home in Orange Beach, Alabama. She was born January 25, 1945 to Fred and Mattie Keeton in Mobile, Alabama. She was a member of Friendship Baptist Church in Aberdeen, MS. She had been married the last 20 years of her life to Greg Good.
Greta found her calling as a massage therapist, helping many people with chronic pain, while building many beautiful friendships. She loved the water, be it boating on the Tombigbee River, fishing for snapper in the Gulf of Mexico or just going to the beach to watch the sunset. She loved traveling and exploring the world.
She loved her family very much and was so very proud of her grandchildren.
She will be greatly missed by her son Todd Sullivan (Jessica) of Rockford, IL, her daughter Dee Prisock (Bob) of Aberdeen, MS, her sister Betty Carter of Hatley, MS, and three grandchildren, Tyler Oswalt, Abigail Sullivan and Mattie Sullivan as well as many cousins, nephews and nieces. She is preceded in heaven by her father and mother Fred and Mattie Keeton as well as her sister, Dianne Williams.
A Graveside Memorial Service will be held at Friendship Baptist Church in Aberdeen, MS on April 9, 2022 at 1:00.
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20220402
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/maxey-rev-robert-n/article_1ef1edab-b7d2-5175-9750-2fedb8fb2d79.html
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Robert Neal Maxey, founding minister of Evergreen Church of Lord Jesus Christ, died Thursday, March 31, 2022, at North Mississippi Medical Center. Born on April 29, 1933, in Monroe County, he was the eldest child of Cleveland Maxey and Ruby Miller Maxey. In 1954, he married Mattie Florence Bishop Maxey. They lived in many places during their marriage including 10 years in Kenosha, Wisconsin while he worked at American Motors, and several other communities before making Evergreen home. He retired after 15 years from Gibson Container. He started or helped start many churches during his many moves including Evergreen Church of Lord Jesus Christ. He was a hard-working man who always kept busy, whether founding a church, raising rabbits, squirrel hunting, or vegetable gardening he always gave one hundred percent. Robert is survived by his children, Gloria Hester of the Auburn Community, and Bro. Bobby Maxey and his wife, Brenda, of Lexington, Tennessee; five grandchildren, Delisa Sheffield of Nettleton, Monaletto "Teto" Hester of Belden, Shanda Goff and her husband, Tracy, of Auburn Community, Angie Russell and her husband, Joseph, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Jerius Maxey and his wife, Alisha, of Booneville; 13 great-grandchildren; and one great-great-grandchild; one brother, James Maxey and his wife, Margie, of Amory; and sisters-in-law, Diane Maxey and Kate Maxey. He was preceded in death by his parents, Cleveland Maxey and Ruby Maxey Ball; daughter, Sharon Cheri Kisor; daughter-in-law, Glenda Annette Maxey; and siblings, Ruble Maxey, Doris Camp, and Junior Maxey. Visitation will be 5 until 8 p.m. Sunday, April 3, 2022, at W. E. Pegues, Tupelo. Services honoring his life will be 2 p.m. Monday, April 4, 2022, at the Jefferson Street Chapel of W. E. Pegues with Rev. William Kirkman and Rev. Steve Denton officiating and family remarks provided by Jerius Maxey. Graveside services will follow in Jones Chapel Cemetery in Nettleton. Pallbearers will be Tracy Goff, Brady Goff, Ty Goff, Teto Hester, Wesley Russell, and Keegan Russell. Expressions of sympathy and fond memories may be made to www.peguesfuneralhome.com.
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20220402
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/ramirez-olidia-reyez/article_4efc1b1c-2558-5454-9634-ffab36b5f265.html
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Olidia Ramirez, 59, resident of Vardaman, passed away Sunday, March 27, 2022, at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. A private memorial service will be held at a later date. New Albany Funeral and Cremation Care will be in charge of arrangements. Ms. Ramirez was born April 25, 1962, in Orlando, FL to the late Jose and Evajealina Herrera Reyes. She received her education from the Apopka public school system and worked for the Houston MS Police Department until her retirement two years ago. A Christian, Ms. Ramirez will be remembered for having a loving heart and helping others. Her pastimes included sharing time with her beloved grandchildren, listening to oldies music and watching horror movies. Those left to cherish her memories include her husband, Luis Manuel Ramirez, also of Vardaman, two sons, Richard Benge (Camron), of Morristown, TN, and Shaun Lynch (Courtney) of Vardaman, four sisters, Maria Warren (Larry), Laya Lopez (Ruben), Lisa Moore and Artie Holmes, four brothers, Ray Reyes, Joe Reyes, James Reyes and Gerada Reyes (Christina) and five grandchildren, Amber, Kristjon, Leland, Serenity and Richelle Benge. New Albany Funeral and Cremation Care invites you to share memories with the Ramirez family at nafuneralsandcremations.com.
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20220402
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/whipple-wayne/article_bd5910d8-ab6b-5757-9309-3ea20f553ca3.html
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Wayne Whipple , 69, passed away Thursday, March 31, 2022, at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo. Services will be on Wednesday, April 6, 2022 at 11 a.m. at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Tupelo. Visitation will be on Tuesday, April 5, 2022 from 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. at W. E. Pegues, Tupelo. W. E. Pegues Funeral Directors is in charge of the arrangements. Expressions of sympathy and fond memories may be made at www.peguesfuneralhome.com. Burial will follow at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Cemetery in Prentiss County.
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20220402
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https://www.djournal.com/obituaries/djournal/white-william-bill/article_f0a0d569-4cd0-59aa-a2ea-6a6384980541.html
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William "Bill" Stratton White, age 73, passed away on Saturday, April 2, 2022 at his residence. He was born September 15, 1948 to Earl Stratton and Mary Lola Fritch White. Bill was a member of Piney Grove Baptist Church. He was a meat cutter for over 50 years having worked at Piggly Wiggly and Price Cutters. Bill was a Vietnam Veteran where he served in the Army. He enjoyed playing and watching golf. Services will be at 11:00 AM, Monday, April 4, 2022 at Browning Funeral Home Chapel with Rev. Marcus Coward officiating; burial will follow in the Pleasant Grove Cemetery. Browning Funeral Home in Pontotoc is in charge of the arrangements. Survivors include his wife of 38 years, Grace Hester White; his children, Linda, Richard, Jennifer and William; two sisters, Arlyss Friddle and Mary Catherine White; two brothers, David White and Earnest White; and a hose of nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents; and a sister, Deborah Kay White; three brothers, Ralph White, Richard White and an infant brother. Visitation will be from 5 to 8 PM Sunday and from 10 to 11 AM Monday at the funeral home. Condolences may be offered at www.browningpontotoc.com
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20220402
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/college/ole-miss/ole-miss-bats-go-quiet-once-again-in-saturday-loss-at-kentucky/article_8fe56e00-98cd-5bb4-9789-4961f5b4b4b3.html
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No. 10 Ole Miss’ normally potent bats were quieted by Kentucky for the second day in a row on Saturday. This time, however, strong pitching wasn’t there to save the day.
The Wildcats took down the Rebels 9-2 in the middle game of a three-game set between the teams. Ole Miss has scored two runs in each of the games against Kentucky, as the Rebels won the opener 2-1. Kentucky’s Jacob Plastiak hit a pair of two-run home runs Saturday. The Rebels (18-8, 3-5 SEC) had just three hits in the game.
Kentucky starter Darren Williams pitched 6 1-3 inning and gave up just one hit after the first inning.
“We just couldn’t get any good swings off, and we just looked really uncomfortable (after the first inning),” Ole Miss coach Mike Bianco said.
As was the case in Game 1, Ole Miss struck in the first inning, plating two runs on RBIs from senior first baseman Tim Elko and redshirt sophomore outfielder T.J. McCants.
Tupelo native Hunter Elliott made the second start of his Ole Miss career (and his first on the road) and was solid in his 4 1-3 innings, striking out four batters without allowing an earned run.
“It was fun,” Elliott said of his first SEC start. “As a starting pitcher, you look to settle into the game, and it's of course tougher on the road. But, feel like I did a pretty good job with that.”
The freshman did surrender two unearned runs, though, the last coming on a sacrifice fly that tied the game at two in the fifth. Fellow freshman Riley Maddox entered the game in relief of Elliott and put the first two batters he faced on base before inducing a pair of groundouts to end the inning.
“I don’t think (Elliott) pitched real well. He competed real hard, which we knew he would do. I don’t think it was his best stuff,” Bianco said. “And we didn’t help him. It was a bad day for us all the way around … But with all that said ... if you get to the fifth inning and only give up a couple runs … you have to be proud of him for (his) first SEC start. He just competed his rear end off, but he’s better than that, and I think he would admit that.”
Kentucky (18-10, 3-5) scored the go-ahead run in the bottom of the sixth off Maddox on a two-out triple from John Thrasher. The Wildcats tacked on another run in the inning to make it 4-2.
Junior Derek Diamond surrendered a two-run home run to Plastiak in the bottom of the seventh to give Kentucky extra breathing room. Plastiak hit his second long ball of the game in the bottom of the eighth.
The series finale between Ole Miss and Kentucky will start at noon Sunday. Junior Jack Washburn will get the start for the Rebels. The game will be broadcast on SEC Network+.
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https://www.djournal.com/news/crime-law-enforcement/police-investigating-death-in-west-tupelo/article_e380a544-f360-5d2b-b9a4-0d7cfb10377d.html
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https://www.djournal.com/ukrainian-forces-retake-areas-near-kyiv-amid-fear-of-traps/article_9d8d03ff-fe9a-55cc-b9df-850c3c1d51f2.html
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By NEBI QENA and YURAS KARMANAU Associated Press
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainian troops moved cautiously to retake territory north of the country's capital on Saturday, using cables to pull the bodies of civilians off streets of one town out of fear that Russian forces may have left them booby-trapped.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that departing Russian troops were creating a "catastrophic" situation for civilians by leaving mines around homes, abandoned equipment and "even the bodies of those killed." His claims could not be independently verified.
Associated Press journalists in Bucha, a suburb northwest of Kyiv, watched as Ukrainian soldiers backed by a column of tanks and other armored vehicles used cables to drag bodies off of a street from a distance. Locals said the dead — the AP counted at least six — were civilians killed without provocation by departing Russian soldiers.
"Those people were just walking and they shot them without any reason. Bang," said a Bucha resident who declined to give his name citing safety reasons. "In the next neighborhood, Stekolka, it was even worse. They would shoot without asking any question."
Ukraine and its Western allies reported mounting evidence of Russia withdrawing its forces from around Kyiv and building its troop strength in eastern Ukraine.
The visible shift did not mean the country faced a reprieve from more than five weeks of war or that the more than 4 million refugees who have fled Ukraine will return soon. Zelenskyy said he expects departed towns to endure missile and rocket strikes from afar and for the battle in the east to be intense.
"It's still not possible to return to normal life, as it used to be, even at the territories that we are taking back after the fighting," the president said.
Moscow's focus on eastern Ukraine also kept the besieged southeastern city of Mariupol in the crosshairs. The port city on the Sea of Azov is located in the mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region, where Moscow-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian troops for eight years. Military analysts think Russian President Vladimir Putin is determined to capture the region after his forces failed to secure Kyiv and other major cities.
The International Committee of the Red Cross had hoped to evacuate Mariupol residents Saturday but had not yet reached the city. A day earlier, local authorities said the Red Cross was blocked by Russian forces.
An adviser to Zelenskyy, Oleksiy Arestovych, said in an interview with Russian lawyer and activist Mark Feygin that Russia and Ukraine had reached an agreement to allow 45 buses to drive to Mariupol to evacuate residents "in coming days."
The Mariupol city council said earlier Saturday that 10 empty buses were headed to Berdyansk, a city 84 kilometers (52.2 miles) west of Mariupol, to pick up people who managed to get there on their own. About 2,000 made it out of Mariupol on Friday, some on buses and some in their own vehicles, city officials said.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said 765 Mariupol residents on Saturday used private vehicles to reach Zaporizhzhia, a city still under Ukrainian control that has served as the destination for other planned evacuations.
Among those escaping was Tamila Mazurenko, who said she fled Mariupol on Monday, made it to Berdyansk that night and then took a bus to Zaporizhzhia. Mazurenko said she waited for a bus until Friday, spending one night sleeping in a field.
"I have only one question: Why?" she said of her city's ordeal. "We only lived as normal people. And our normal life was destroyed. And we lost everything. I don't have any job, I can't find my son."
Mariupol has been surrounded by Russian forces for more than a month and suffered some of the war's worst attacks, including on a maternity hospital and a theater that was sheltering civilians. Around 100,000 people are believed to remain in the city, down from a prewar population of 430,000, and they face dire shortages of water, food, fuel and medicine.
The city's capture would give Moscow an unbroken land bridge from Russia to Crimea, which it seized from Ukraine in 2014. But its resistance also has taken on symbolic significance during Russia's invasion, said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Ukrainian think tank Penta.
"Mariupol has become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance, and without its conquest, Putin cannot sit down at the negotiating table," Fesenko said.
About 500 refugees from eastern Ukraine, including 99 children and 12 people with disabilities, arrived in the Russian city of Kazan by train overnight. Asked if he saw a chance to return home, Mariupol resident Artur Kirillov answered, "That's unlikely, there is no city anymore."
In towns and cities surrounding Kyiv, signs of fierce fighting were everywhere in the wake of the Russian redeployment. Destroyed armored vehicles from both armies lay in streets and fields along with scattered military gear.
Ukrainian troops were stationed at the entrance to Antonov Airport in suburb of Hostomel, demonstrating control of the runway that Russia tried to storm in the first days of the war.
Inside the compound, the Mriya, one of the biggest planes ever built, lay wrecked underneath a hangar pockmarked with holes from the February attack.
"The Russians couldn't make one like it so they destroyed it," said Oleksandr Merkushev, mayor of the Kyiv suburb of Irpin.
Irpin has seen some of the fiercest battles, and Merkushev said Russian troops "left behind them many bodies, many destroyed buildings, and they mined many places."
A prominent Ukrainian photojournalist who went missing last month in a combat zone near the capital was found dead Friday in the Huta Mezhyhirska village north of Kyiv, the country's prosecutor general's office announced. The prosecutor general's office attributed Maks Levin's death to two gunshots allegedly fired by the Russian military and said an investigation was underway.
Elsewhere, at least three Russian ballistic missiles were fired late Friday at the Odesa region on the Black Sea, regional leader Maksim Marchenko said. The Ukrainian military said the Iskander missiles did not hit the critical infrastructure they targeted in Odesa, Ukraine's largest port and the headquarters of its navy.
Ukraine's state nuclear agency reported a series of blasts Saturday that injured four people in Enerhodar, a southeastern city that has been under Russian control since early March along with the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Ukraine's human rights ombudsman said via Telegram that the four were badly burned when Russian troops fired light and noise grenades and mortars at a pro-Ukraine demonstration.
The head of Ukraine's delegation in talks with Russia said Moscow's negotiators informally agreed to most of a draft proposal discussed during face-to-face talks in Istanbul this week, but no written confirmation has been provided. However, Davyd Arakhamia said on Ukrainian TV that he hopes that draft is developed enough so that the two countries' presidents can meet to discuss it.
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https://www.djournal.com/sports/college/mississippi-state/rinse-repeat-arkansas-jumps-on-mississippi-state-early-wins-big/article_72cad36b-e5dc-5441-8012-cecd54418adf.html
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Join the conversation in our exclusive Facebook group for Bulldog fans
MSU starter Preston Johnson gave up six runs in the second, seven runs total – all earned – in his four innings and 97 pitches Friday.
Arkansas shortstop Jalen Battles homered twice off Johnson to lead the Razorbacks’ 8-1 win.
Behind Johnson the MSU bullpen mostly stabilized things.
Drew Talley allowed a seventh-inning run in his 2 1-3 innings. Cole Cheatham, the first man out, walked four batters but did not give up a hit or run in 1 2-3 innings.
The Razorbacks (21-4, 7-1 SEC) won Saturday by chasing MSU starter Parker Stinnett after 1 2-3 innings.
Stinnett gave up only one hit, but it was a two-run single. He walked three and also allowed a run on a wild pitch. Stinnett gave up four earned runs in his brief appearance.
Cam Tullar was not a stabilizing force behind him. Tullar also thew only 1 2-3 innings while giving up three home runs and a double among his five hits. He also walked three batters.
The Razorbacks led 12-3 after six innings.
The Bulldogs, meanwhile, were efficient with their hits there just weren’t enough of them.
MSU (16-12, 3-5 SEC) scored its five runs on only five hits.
Kellum Clark had two hits, and Luke Hancock had a two-run home run to lead the Bulldogs.
Arkansas scored its 12 runs on eight hits.
MSU pitching surrendered eight walks.
PARRISH ALFORD is the college sports editor and columnist for the Daily Journal. Contact him at parrish.alford@journalinc.com.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/oh-the-stupid-but-fun-things-we-did-as-children/article_eb60b43c-4ef7-53f1-9df1-3ccc0930c603.html
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Boy, did we do some stupid things as kids. Everybody says that, but no, really.
Jumping off roofs, BB gun fights, jumping out of trees, jumping our bikes off ramps – there was a lot of jumping. There were no helmets, and there was a lot of pain.
My friend Nate once skateboarded off the roof of my house, breaking his arm. Another time, we’d built a ramp at the far end of his driveway and took turns jumping it. Our buddy Jason wanted to get a good head of steam, so he started in the road, but when he turned into the driveway he hit a patch of loose gravel and went sliding like a motorbike racer.
Jason decided to go home.
When I was 7 or 8, I was rolling full tilt down my street when a school bus stopped in front of me. Being the idiot I am, I swerved around its left side – and nearly destroyed my neighbor, who was just walking out from in front of the bus.
My friends and I once grabbed chunks of loose asphalt and threw them at each other. I was running away from one of my friends, but he bonked me right atop the head from a good 30 yards. Great throw, to be honest.
I once touched an electric fence just to see how it felt.
I’ve fallen off the backs of several four-wheelers.
I’ve taken a whiffle ball bat upside the head, and that hurts even worse than you’d think.
But all of my misadventures pale in comparison to something I read on Twitter the other day. It was a thread of people giving examples of the crazy things they did as children. This stuff is gold.
• “We picked the tar off of our concrete streets and tried to chew it like gum.”
• “As a kid I found a rusty razor blade lying in the street and didn’t believe all the hype about how sharp they were so I did the obvious thing – I ran it down my whole finger. In the ER it occurred to me that I maybe could have tried it on a piece of paper instead.”
• “Me and my cousin tried to run through a wooden fence to leave an outline like Bugs Bunny. … It did not work.”
• “We used to play a game called ‘gauntlet’ where the neighborhood kids would line up on each side of the street and throw rocks and sticks at you and your bike tires to try to get you to crash.”
• “One snow storm my sister and I super glued our feet together. It did not end well.”
• “When I was a kid we would find dead pieces of bamboo – always full of ants – and fling ants at each other.”
• “We made napalm on a hot plate and tested it on a bully’s hood.”
• “At my uncle’s, we used to swing from the hay loft over the tops of the cows in the barn and try to land on their backs.”
• “We thought it was fun to see how far we could fly off the hood of a car when whatever crazy older kid we hung out with hit the brakes.”
• “Kid I knew was sitting on the front of the hood of a car when the driver stopped short. Car had a hood ornament. Later he went on to adopt a couple of kids.”
Yeah, after reading these, my childhood was actually pretty tame. Feel like I missed out.
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https://www.djournal.com/news/business/dave-says-i-wouldnt-charge-high-school-age-son-rent/article_fb808a9e-5903-5e28-975a-5b7ac925e108.html
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Q. Our son is in high school, and he has a part-time job. He makes good grades, and we have always tried to teach him how to save and handle money according to your advice. He has even managed to set aside a few thousand dollars for college. My wife and I were talking the other night, and I brought up the idea of charging him a small amount for rent, maybe just $20 or $25 a month, to help him be even better prepared for the real world. What do you think about this?
A. I appreciate the fact that you’re looking for teachable moments. But making a high school kid pay rent? No, that’s a little over the top.
Listen, you and your wife are already way ahead of a lot of parents. Teaching him financial responsibility and the importance of education are great things. It sounds like your son is a bright, motivated young man, too.
I talk to adults all the time who are decades older, but still don’t grasp the concepts of maturity and responsibility like this kid does already. With the kind of start you’re giving him, I think he’s going to grow up to be a very successful adult. Keep up the good work, and let that young man know how proud you both are of him!
Get the latest local and national business news from Daily Journal Business Editor Dennis Seid in this exclusive Facebook group.
Q. I own a small business. How much should I have in a business emergency fund when my annual sales are around $100,000? Currently, I have two months of expenses set aside.
A. Generally, I like the idea of small businesses having about six months of expenses on hand. That kind of cushion usually eliminates the need for borrowing money. It also provides peace of mind. And if you’ve been an entrepreneur very long, you know that’s an invaluable thing.
Having a personal emergency fund set aside is a little different than having one in place for your business. When it comes to personal finance, I recommend having three to six months of expenses set aside. The basic idea is the same, though. A fully-funded emergency fund gives you an option– besides debt – when unexpected things happen!
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• Neurologist Donna Harrington, M.D., of Neurology Consultants retired March 29 after practicing in Tupelo for 33 years.
A California native, Dr. Harrington graduated from Ocean Springs High School in 1974 and earned a bachelor’s degree in foods and nutrition from Mississippi State University in Starkville in 1978. She received her medical degree in 1982 from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in Jackson and completed residency training at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock.
While her husband, Andrew Kellum, M.D., was completing an oncology fellowship in Oklahoma City, Dr. Harrington served three years on the faculty at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.
Drs. Harrington and Kellum moved to Tupelo with their young children in 1989. She joined Dr. Sam Newell and Dr. Thomas Oakes at Tupelo Neurology, which affiliated with North Mississippi Health Services 10 years ago and became Neurology Consultants.
With more than three decades of practice, Dr. Harrington has witnessed many changes. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which was developed about the time she began practicing but was not widely available, has been a game-changer. Treatment options for neurologic disease have also expanded since her early days in practice.
• Tupelo pediatrician Dr. Charles “Skip” Robertson retired March 31 after 35 years of practice in Tupelo.
After practicing in Jackson for nine years, Dr. Robertson joined Children’s Clinic of Tupelo in 1987. He practiced with Drs. Bill Hilbun, Ed Ivancic and Gordon Meador, who is his wife’s brother. In 1993, Children’s Clinic of Tupelo merged with Drs. Charles Tharp, Marion Winkler and Frank Wilburn of the Infant, Children and Adolescent Clinic to form North Mississippi Pediatrics.
In 2017, North Mississippi Pediatrics forged a partnership with North Mississippi Health Services and Children’s of Mississippi, and the practice became (once again) Children’s Clinic of Tupelo and Saltillo. In 2021, the two clinics moved into a centralized location in Fairpark in downtown Tupelo.
A 1966 graduate of Meridian High School, Dr. Robertson earned a bachelor’s degree in history with minors in Greek and English from the University of Mississippi in Oxford in 1970. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Mississippi School of Medicine in Jackson in 1975 and completed residency training in pediatrics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in 1978.
Dr. Robertson practiced at Children’s Clinic in Jackson for two years before working in the UMMC Department of Pediatrics from 1980-1985. In 1986 he completed a fellowship at Children’s Hospital in Boston in ambulatory pediatrics, with a focus on children who should be doing well in school but weren’t. He rejoined the UMMC Department of Pediatrics for a year before moving to Tupelo.
Dr. Robertson served almost 20 years as a pediatrics preceptor for North Mississippi Medical Center’s Family Medicine Residency Program and was chosen Preceptor of the Year in 2007. He still volunteers as a pediatrician for CATCH Kids three nights each month.
At NMMC, he served as chair of the OB-GYN/Pediatrics section from 1996-1998 and received the Golden Tongue Blade Award in 2009. He served on the School Nurse Project Steering Committee and Child Protection Taskforce. He also taught Pediatric Advanced Life Support courses.
In 2007, Dr. Robertson was one of two private practice pediatricians statewide appointed to the Caring for Mississippi Individuals with Autism Taskforce. He also served on the editorial board for Mississippi Healthy Babies Update.
He was an active volunteer with Tupelo Public School District, serving on the Board of Trustees from 1995-2003 and as school board president from 1997-1999 and 2001-2003. He tutored the THS Academic Decathlon Team and has led staff development sessions for teachers on attentional disorders in children, which is a special interest of his.
• Tiffany Garth has joined Express Employment Professionals in Tupelo as business development manager.
Garth has several years of experience in outside sales and customer service, and in her role at EEP, she will focus on helping new clients with their staffing needs.
Express provides temporary workers, evaluation hire employees and direct professional hire services.
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2022 All-Area Boys Basketball Team By BRAD LOCKE Daily Journal Brad Locke Senior sports reporter Author twitter Author email Apr 3, 2022 2 hrs ago Comments Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save FIRST TEAMJaylen Edwards, PontotocSenior guard• Averaged 25.0 points, 4.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists per game; shot 37.5% on 3-pointers, 79.1% on free throws.London Fields, TupeloJunior guard• Averaged 17.1 points, 6.2 rebounds per game; led Tupelo to Class 6A quarterfinals.Makhi Myles, StarkvilleJunior forward• Averaged 22.0 points, 11.0 rebounds, 4.0 blocks per game.Carson Rowland, Pine GroveSenior guard• Averaged 20.1 points, 5.3 rebounds, 4.6 assists per game; led Panthers to 2A title.Gavin Shannon, TupeloJunior forward• Averaged 17.8 points, 8.2 rebounds per game; two-time All-Area selection.SECOND TEAMJoe Haze Austin, South PontotocSenior forward• Averaged 15.6 points, 6.9 rebounds, 3.1 steals per game; shot 45% from field, 70% on free throws.Kamron Carter, New AlbanySenior guard• Averaged 23.0 points, 4.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists per game; shot 31% on 3-pointers.Dailin Cooperwood, OkolonaSenior guard• Averaged 25.0 points, 7.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 3.0 steals per game.Devin Moore, H.W. ByersSenior forward• Averaged 18.0 points, 15.0 rebounds, 4.0 blocks per game; led Byers to 1A final.Tyler Shephard, PontotocJunior guard• Averaged 23.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 4.0 assists per game; shot 71.4% on free throws.THIRD TEAMBraxton Bishop, TupeloSenior guard• Averaged 10.0 points, 6.5 assists per game; selected to Mississippi/Alabama All-Star Game.Zae Davis, BiggersvilleSenior guard• Averaged 16.0 points, 4.4 assists, 2.1 steals per game; led Lions to 1A title.Karon Hooper, BruceSenior guard/forward• Averaged 23.1 points, 5.7 rebounds, 2.4 assists, 2.0 steals per game; shot 55% from field.M.J. Smith, West PointJunior forward• Houston transfer averaged 17.0 points, 10.0 rebounds, 4.0 blocks per game.LaTrell Vance, RipleySenior guard• Averaged 16.5 points, 7.4 rebounds, 4.1 assists, 1.8 steals per game. brad.locke@journalinc.com Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save Tags High School Basketball All-area Basketball Brad Locke Senior sports reporter Brad is a senior sports reporter and columnist. Author twitter Author email Follow Brad Locke Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today Recommended for you Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus Newsletters Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. The Daily You'll receive our top headlines each morning, seven days a week, as well as each weekday afternoon. News Alerts & Top Stories Get news sent to your inbox as it happens, as well as our top stories each week. The Session Get weekly recaps during Mississippi's annual legislative session, plus breaking alerts, from our state politics team. You must select at least one email list. Please enter a valid email address. Sign up All Newsletters
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2022 All-Area Girls Basketball Team By BRAD LOCKE Daily Journal Brad Locke Senior sports reporter Author twitter Author email Apr 3, 2022 2 hrs ago Comments Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save FIRST TEAMAllie Beckley, PontotocSenior guard• Point guard averaged 11.9 points, 6.6 assists, 3.4 steals per game; shot 51% from field, 32% on 3-pointers.Samya Brooks, PontotocSenior forward• Averaged 18.4 points, 8.3 rebounds per game; Alabama State signee; shot 56% from field.Kinsley Gordon, MyrtleSenior guard• Averaged 28.2 points, 6.4 rebounds, 2.7 assists, 4.6 steals per game.Madi Kate Vuncannon, WalnutJunior guard• Averaged 28.4 points, 10.8 rebounds, 3.8 steals per game; shot 47% from field, 41% on 3-pointers.Lily Whitley, New SiteSenior forward• Averaged 19.3 points, 7.4 rebounds per game; shot 76% on free throws.SECOND TEAMReese Moore, Tishomingo Co.Sophomore guard• Averaged 16.5 points, 6.0 rebounds per game; shot 38% on 3-pointers.Macie Phifer, IngomarFreshman forward• Averaged 19.5 points, 7.8 rebounds, 1.6 steals per game; shot 58% from field, 36% on 3-pointers.Asia Stafford, BiggersvilleJunior forward• Averaged 18.0 points, 14.0 rebounds per game; shot 56% from field; led Biggersville to 1A title.Mary-Grace Storment, BelmontJunior guard• Averaged 18.5 points, 5.3 rebounds, 1.6 steals per game; led Belmont to 2A state final.Alorian Story, RipleySophomore center• Averaged 22.0 points, 12.0 rebounds per game.THIRD TEAMTaitiana Beene, BoonevilleSenior guardAveraged 13.0 points, 5.0 rebounds, 3.0 assists, 5.0 steals per game; led Booneville to 3A title.Madison Bennett, Tishomingo Co.Senior guard• Averaged 18.0 points, 3.0 steals per game; shot 30% on 3-pointers; led Tish to 4A state final.Jamyia Bowen, PontotocSenior forward• Averaged 14.1 points, 9.2 rebounds, 7.6 blocks per game; shot 58% from field.Carlie Brock, BelmontFreshman guard• Point guard averaged 13.0 points, 3.8 rebounds, 3.8 assists, 3.4 steals per game.Mariah Reed-Jones, LafayetteJunior guard• Averaged 17.0 points, 6.7 rebounds, 4.3 steals per game; shot 46% from field, 31% on 3-pointers. brad.locke@journalinc.com Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Save Tags High School Basketball All-area Basketball Brad Locke Senior sports reporter Brad is a senior sports reporter and columnist. Author twitter Author email Follow Brad Locke Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today Recommended for you Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. comments powered by Disqus Newsletters Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. The Daily You'll receive our top headlines each morning, seven days a week, as well as each weekday afternoon. News Alerts & Top Stories Get news sent to your inbox as it happens, as well as our top stories each week. The Session Get weekly recaps during Mississippi's annual legislative session, plus breaking alerts, from our state politics team. You must select at least one email list. Please enter a valid email address. Sign up All Newsletters
Brad Locke Senior sports reporter Brad is a senior sports reporter and columnist. Author twitter Author email Follow Brad Locke Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today
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PINE GROVE – When Jake Walker was hired as Pine Grove’s boys basketball coach seven years ago, a state championship was not at the forefront of his mind. The Panthers had not won a title since 1977, so it’s not as if it was an outside expectation, either.
“I never moved here thinking, hey, we’re going to win a boys state championship. It’s just kind of worked out,” Walker said.
Indeed it did, as the Panthers claimed the Class 2A title in March. Walker is the 2022 Daily Journal Boys Basketball Coach of the Year.
When he arrived at Pine Grove after six years at Falkner, Walker had the good fortune to be an assistant to girls head coach Katie Bates, who in turn is his boys assistant. Bates led the Lady Panthers to four-straight state titles (2017-20).
“I think our philosophies are very similar,” Walker said. “Seeing the success she had kind of coaching the same way that I wanted to coach kept me on that same path.”
This year’s team realized the potential Walker saw in it years earlier. Senior Carson Rowland was the unquestioned star, but players like Jamas Cox, Hayden Holcomb, Jack Hudson and Keaton Wilkerson found their roles and settled into them.
No game illustrated that better than the Division 1-2A tournament final, most of which Rowland missed due to foul trouble. Pine Grove beat Baldwyn 51-43.
“You could see it as we went into the division tournament, as we went into the playoffs, nobody cared,” Walker said. “They were able to overlook all the outside talk, all the noise and get over personal battles that some of them had with themselves. They kind of fell into line with what we had been teaching and preaching all year long.”
A good example is Cox, a junior who had to sit out the 2020-21 season after transferring from Ripley. At 6-foot-3, he gave Pine Grove a much-needed rebounder, averaging a team-high 7.2 per game.
“He found his way inside and had big rebounding games for us, which is what we struggle with the most out here, is rebounding the basketball,” Walker said.
Without Rowland, the team’s lone senior, Cox should have a bigger scoring impact next season. In fact, everyone will need to expand their roles if the Panthers hope to win another title.
“I’ve got some hungry guys who want that opportunity to step up and be the guy,” Walker said. “They loved Carson and knew what he did for us, but I think they’re ready for the challenge. I hope they are.”
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PINE GROVE – As the Pine Grove Panthers were lined up in the Mississippi Coliseum tunnel, ready to take the floor in the Class 2A state title game, Carson Rowland had his forehead against a cargo door, talking to himself.
He wasn’t about to let the moment get the better of him.
“I was just reminding myself not to be nervous, because this is what we’ve worked for all year, this is what I’ve worked for my whole life,” Rowland said.
He certainly didn’t play nervous. The senior guard scored 23 points to lead Pine Grove past Velma Jackson, 43-39, and claim the program’s first state championship in 45 years. It capped a remarkable career for Rowland, who is the 2022 Daily Journal Boys Basketball Player of the Year.
It also fulfilled a goal Rowland and his teammates had set three years earlier.
“It still doesn’t feel real sometimes,” Rowland said.
It’s as real as Rowland’s fierce competitive nature, which has been a driving force for him over the years. He figures he got it from his parents, Ronnie and Mellissa, the latter of whom reached Jackson twice as part of Falkner’s basketball team.
“There’s nothing I hate more than losing, no matter what it is,” Rowland said. “… My parents were kind of hard on me. They don’t like losing, either, so growing up around them with that same competitive nature just rubbed off on me, I guess.”
His dad was the one who made Rowland go to the gym even when he complained of being too tired. He kept putting in the work, and the results spoke for themselves. He averaged 18.4 points per game over four years. This past season, Rowland averaged 20.1 points to go with 5.3 rebounds and 4.6 assists.
“We had a lot of help, we had a lot of good players, but it’s no coincidence – 45 years and he comes to Pine Grove, and here we are with a state championship,” coach Jake Walker said.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing. The Panthers lost five-straight games in the middle of the season, and then Rowland had to sit out most of the Division 1-2A tournament final with foul trouble – a game Pine Grove won.
“When we lost five games in a row – that didn’t really too much sense – I saw something in our guys,” Rowland said. “We came to practice, and it’s like something just clicked. We started working harder every day, and we started winning big games after that.”
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Booneville's Michael Smith led both the girls and boys team to state titles this season. He had plenty of good help in assistants Bryant Tynes, from left, Kenny Paul Geno, Chip Johnson, Micah Moment and Cole Lauderdale.
BOONEVILLE – Michael Smith has heard the comments about his assistant coaching staff.
During Booneville’s boys and girls basketball games, Smith is joined by five aides: Kenny Paul Geno, Chip Johnson, Cole Lauderdale, Micah Moment and Bryant Tynes. Moment and Tynes also coach the junior high teams, while Geno is a part-timer.
“People make those slick comments all the time, that, ‘You have six guys that coach every basketball team here,’” Smith said. “That’s eight teams. That’s junior high, high school and JV.”
Smith prefers not to isolate his assistants in other parts of the program. It’s an approach that has paid off, as Booneville swept the Class 3A state championships this year. Smith has been named the 2022 Daily Journal Girls Basketball Coach of the Year, but he’s quick to point out that it’s not a one-man job.
As coach of both varsity teams, Smith has to lean heavily on his assistants, be it scouting opponents or getting the boys team ready to play while Smith is still on the floor with the girls.
“We’re all in the whole thing together, and I think that speaks volumes to both of our teams,” Smith said.
Smith and his coaching staff faced a particularly daunting challenge with the girls this season. The Lady Devils won just five games last year, but transfers Taitianna Beene, Kaylee Johnson and Kylee Johnson gave them a boost.
Kaylee Johnson suffered a season-ending injury in December, but Booneville carried on, going 30-2 en route to the title.
“It was a unique team. They were so close,” Smith said. “We never really had one person that you felt like had to take over games.”
Smith pinpointed several key games throughout the season that had an impact, like the season opener against Ripley and its 5-foot-11 double-double machine, Alorian Story. Booneville won, 44-41.
“Where some groups you may not be as concerned with that first game or first couple of games, we felt it was critical that right out of the gate we played well enough that they started to believe,” Smith said.
When the Lady Devils beat Kossuth in division play, “We started realizing that we may have a chance at this.”
Booneville rolled through the playoffs, winning each game by double digits. It was a special season, even more so because of who Smith had with him on the bench.
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PONTOTOC – Samya Brooks could see her future at a young age.
She first got a glimpse of it in seventh grade when she saw her older AAU teammates committing to college basketball programs. Brooks knew immediately that’s what she wanted to do.
That future will soon come to pass, as the Pontotoc senior will head to Alabama State after graduating. The 6-foot forward leaves behind a stellar career that ends with her being named the 2022 Daily Journal Girls Basketball Player of the Year.
When Brooks declared her intentions to play in college, her mother Lamesha was quick to encourage her.
“My mom especially, she told me the benefits of college,” Brooks said. “You get to go to school free, you get to play ball. She led me in the right path of wanting to play.”
The first order of business was becoming good enough to earn scholarship offers. Her raw talent was no a question; coach Kyle Heard spotted that his first year on the job, when Brooks was a seventh grader.
“She had a knack for making layups, and at that age if they consistently make layups and they’ve got a little size, you’re like, this girl’s got a chance,” Heard said.
Brooks had a strong freshman campaign, but it ended prematurely when fourth-seeded New Albany stunned Pontotoc in the first round of the Class 4A playoffs.
“I got in the gym every day after that. I didn’t want to lose that way again,” Brooks said.
Two years later, the Lady Warriors were state champions, and Brooks was named the title game MVP. A repeat was not in the cards this past season, but Pontotoc still went 29-4, as Brooks averaged 18.4 points and 8.3 rebounds per game while shooting 56% from the floor.
She’s developed into a post player who’s not only strong, but nimble and savvy.
“The thing is, a lot of that wasn’t natural,” Heard said. “She has spent the time. She’s worked with a lot of trainers. If I say there’s an open gym, she’s at the open gym. She’s wanted this, and she’s worked for this her whole career.”
The next step – going to college – can be intimidating. But Brooks has been looking forward to it for so long, and she can’t wait.
“I want to go and play in different college stadiums, and I want to just get to feel the college part of it – going to class and coming back the next day, waking up early,” she said. “People say that they hate doing that, but I want to experience it for myself and see how it feels not to be here any more and going off to another state and playing, and having a different coaching staff and getting closer to them.”
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HOUSTON—No April fools these…
Someone once said that if one takes no thought to what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.
These Houston Middle School youngsters, peering into possible careers that will help determine their future, aren’t making that mistake…
Houston Middle School held a Career Expo hosted by 8th grade students in collaboration with the Houston Career and Technical Education (CTE) Center Friday, April 1 in the HMS Gym from 8:30-11 a.m.
About 150 8th grade students researched careers that interest them and created information boards about the careers, said Katie Miller, who is Houston Middle and High School Graduation Coach.
Houston 2nd and 4th grade classes attended along with parents. School board members were also invited.
The parents also appreciated the event.
"I think today is a great opportunity to know what is available for career paths," said Serena Kilgore, parent of Emma Grace Kilgore.
"I didn't expect it to be this big. I enjoyed being invited," said Benita Autry, aunt of Benjamin Holliday.
"I love how HMS gives our students a chance to explore careers of their interest. These young people are our future. The expo opens up possibilities and ideas they may not have thought of otherwise. It's a great jump start for them in a unique way," said Chasity Pearson, parent of Cara Pearson.
The 8th graders chose a career to research from inside 16 broad career clusters established by 8th grade STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Math) teacher Hannah Watson.
Watson required that several careers be chosen from each of the clusters. That meant that not all students got their first choice to research, but it did insure that many careers were examined.
"I think the career expo was beneficial to our son Greyson because it opened his eyes to a new career that beforehand he never knew existed. It allowed him to research and learn the field so he was knowledgeable to speak in front of his peers, other grades, teachers, and parents. We all know how intimidating public speaking can be, so for him to be able to prepare for that now will be a huge plus in the future career he chooses. He also learned how valuable working together is and just like the workforce it takes hard work and dedication from everyone to get the job done," said Autumn Samuel, parent of Greyson Prestage.
The project, part of a four-year plan, covers several really important bases, Miller said.
“It’s a great way for students to see what different careers are out there, to see what their future could hold, and not just what their parents did for a living,” the career counselor said.
It gave youngsters a chance to better decide educational routes to take in high school to meet their career goals.
"Our career expo encourages you to do more research about the job you want, which also pushes you to research more colleges that offer better programs in that field" said Matthew Dendy.
The Expo was a continuation of Graduation Awareness Month in February.
Focusing on a career can also help reduce dropouts. That focus triggered state funds to pay costs of the Expo.
The school paid for all materials, students did not have to pay for anything.
“We’re trying to push different careers, expose students to different possibilities. Not every kid is built for a four year college degree. There are a lot of other options out there, including vocational education, and other two-year degrees.
“Those options can let someone make just as good an income as a four year degree,” Miller said.
Using list of questions from Watson, students used the Internet to research their careers. The U. S. Bureau of Labor website provided a wealth of information. For youngsters with their eye on the bottom line, those federal statistics also included income ranges from national salaries and Mississippi salaries, which were often different, and a real eye-opener to some of the young researchers.
“The kids really enjoyed the research, because it gave them a chance to do hands-on work on their phones and computers,” Miller said.
It also helped with their communication skills.
"I think the Career Expo benefits me as an eighth grader by learning how to interact with all different people," said Ella Cate Alford. "Through the Career Expo, I can get in depth with careers that I am interested in and other options available."
Students had two weeks to complete their project, broken into a week of research, and a week to put their boards together.
Among the most popular careers to research was the health sciences field. “That’s because it’s such a broad area. It can include social work, nursing, dental hygiene, mental health, laboratory technology, and speech pathology, among other things,” Miller said.
The least popular career: Government jobs. “I’m not sure why,” she said.
The boys most liked construction, welding, manufacturing, and other hands-on jobs. They least liked health sciences.
The girls most liked nursing jobs, “perhaps because women tend to be more nurturing,” she said. Their least favorite jobs: manufacturing and construction.
The Expos were held in 2018, 2019, 2020, but not last year due to Covid concerns.
"I love this time every year," said HMS Principal Zane Thomas. "It's an opportunity for our kids to display what they've learned throughout the year, but also looking toward the future. Our job is to be in coordination with the CTE and feed that program, but on a bigger platform, we are exploring the options that they have for careers. Our mission here at the middle school, specifically, is for them to be equipped learners, and to leave this building to be productive members of our community. The career expo always gets their mind churning and we get our elementary and upper involved to so they can see what is to come."
This was Miller’s first year to host the event as a graduation coach.
Plans are to hold another Expo next year. “We want to keep it rolling as an annual event,” she said.
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VARDAMAN – The Vardaman Lady Rams took to their home field against the Houlka Lady Wildcats last week in a match that only went three innings.
The Lady Rams took a decisive 17-2 victory over the Lady Cats in the three inning bout.
Houlka put up a run in the top of the first, however, the Lady Rams soon took the lead on a double by Makynlie Jones, who then scored on a wild pitch.
Kandrailia Nash reached on a single, and Kyleigh Scott hit an RBI single.
Amry Logan was the first out of the inning, popping out.
Saige Williams tacked on another RBI single, but Laura Ellen McGreger struck out looking to end the inning, and the game was far from a runaway at 6-1.
The top of the second saw the Lady Cats remaining scoreless, and the Lady Rams only tacked on one more run in the bottom of the second on an RBI double from Jones which brought Maddie Terrell home, bringing the score to 7-1.
The top of the third saw the Lady Wildcats possibly mounting a comeback, spurred by Kayden Huffman's solo home run to centerfield, which brought the score to 7-2.
This was followed by a double from Madison Martin and Lily Fowler being hit by a pitch.
However, the two runners were left stranded and the momentum was lost.
The bottom of the third saw the Lady Rams pulling away and eventually ending the game by reaching the 15 point deficit in three innings.
The first runner was Logan, who reached on a single.
She was brought home on an RBI double from Williams.
McGreger walked, and Terrell hit a single.
Kiersten Perkins brought home a run on an RBI single and so did Jones.
Nash reached on a single and Scott brought home another run.
Addie Lucius walked and Logan brought all of the runners home on an RBI triple.
She then scored on a wild pitch to end the game, 17-2.
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https://www.djournal.com/chickasaw/rams-down-wildcats-in-three/article_a8a6bb54-cfc1-558a-af43-7634fd844f1c.html
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VARDAMAN – The Vardaman Rams defeated the Houlka Wildcats 15-0 in three innings last week when they faced off on their home turf.
The Rams opened the game with pitcher Chipper Moore throwing a three up, three down inning against the top of the Wildcats' lineup.
The Rams' momentum picked up in the bottom of the first with a double by Andrew Easley to get the first base hit of the game.
Moore walked, and Easley was brought home on an RBI by Ethan Parker.
Tucker Graham grounded out, but he brought Moore across the plate, making it 2-0.
Bentley Hamilton brought home Parker and Josh Jenkins walked, however, Hamilton and Jenkins were stranded and the inning ended 3-0.
The top of the second was another three and out for the Wildcats, with Peyton Day, Jerome Staton and Carter Barkley all striking out.
The Rams continued tacking runs on in the bottom of the second.
Brady White was walked to begin the inning, followed by a single from Zane Ragon.
Easley laid down a bunt that scored a run, and Moore also had an RBI.
Parker walked and Graham had an RBI.
Hamilton reached base on a bases loaded walk, and Jenkins hit an RBI.
The lineup cycled through this inning, and the Wildcats were finally able to get out of the inning on a groundout by Parker, however, the score was 14-0.
The Wildcats had Nehemiah Flemmings on the mound, however, his outing was not as bad as the score would seem to indicate. Much of the problems came on defensive errors behind him.
The top of the third saw the first base runner for the Wildcats, Andre Turner, who was walked following double strikeouts by Flemmings and Gavin Burt.
However, he was left stranded when Ryder Wilson struck out to end the inning.
The Rams tacked on another run in the bottom of the third to bring it to 15-0 and end the game.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/braving-the-crowds-inside-buc-ees-in-leeds-alabama/article_3af2274c-c1d7-5238-9ab6-8b35cd0b8bd7.html
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I don’t know that I’d ever seen so many people packed into one building at the same time.
Mandy, never one for even small crowds, turned to me and made vocal what I had already suspected.
“I just stepped into my nightmare,” she said.
At least, I think that’s what she said. Although I could see her mouth moving, and the two of us have been together long enough that we can, when the stars are aligned just right, sometimes telepathically transmit thoughts to one another, I didn’t actually hear a single word she said. Her voice had been swallowed by the cacophonous babble of the roughly 17,000 people who — like us — had dropped by the Buc-ee’s in Leeds, Alabama, at that particular moment on that particular day.
For those unfamiliar with Buc-ee’s, the growing Texas-based chain of kaiju-sized convenience stores are what you might get if a Love’s mated with a Walmart and gave birth to a small theme park … which was then exposed to a blast of gamma radiation. These sprawling compounds feature super-sized selections of standard gas station fare — sodas and coffee, snacks and various other road trip essentials and impulse-purchase memorabilia — while also offering up a full deli’s worth of meats, clothing, hunting supplies, toys and shelf after rack after bin packed with merch featuring the store’s beloved mascot: A grinning, bucktoothed beaver named Buc-ee.
People seemed to move about the store with no sense of purpose other than to create anarchy. It’s as if the store drained any sense of personal space from anyone who entered, leaving its customers to careen haphazardly toward whatever’s caught their attention at a given moment.
In just about any other situation, we would have jumped ship. Faced with such an oppressive number of fellow humans, Mandy and I usually make for the door faster than one of us can mutter the words, “We’ve got to get out of here.”
But this time was different. This time, we’d traversed roughly 153 miles — enduring a seemingly endless series of bathroom breaks and other emergencies — specifically to visit this gargantuan monument to the modern road tripper as one of those why-the-heck-not day trips on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Neither of us were quite ready to admit we’d undertaken a fool’s errand and turn tail without first picking up a few nonessentials with which to memorialize our pointless journey.
Even if we had wanted to skedaddle immediately, our child had other ideas. Despite her constant stream of complaints from the moment I floated the idea of the adventure to the second we stepped from the car into the expanse of vehicles and concrete that was the Buc-ee’s parking lot, as soon as we entered the sliding doors, our 5-year-old was desperate to vanish among the dense forest of legs.
“Stay with us, Arlie,” Mandy commanded, snatching our daughter away from a family of oblivious gawkers hellbent on crushing tiny, equally oblivious children.
Just in case our kid had suddenly been struck blind, Mandy added, “There are a lot of people here.”
“OK, Mama,” Arlie promised, then immediately began to wander off again.
“We’re with you,” Mandy told me as she snatched our child back to her side. For the life of me, I couldn’t recall being put in charge of the itinerary of this journey. Failing to find a tree I could climb to get a better understanding of the lay of the land, I motioned toward the heart of the store, where throngs of people had gathered.
“I want to snag a brisket sandwich before we leave,” I yelled. “And maybe some stickers.”
I’m not certain if either of them heard me, but as I forced my way through the crush of people, they followed.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/celebrity-vervet-monkeys-near-florida-airport-delight-visitors/article_09a8b35e-5e72-5d74-b145-fbfed54b3cd7.html
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DANIA BEACH, Florida – As departing jetliners roared overhead, an aging vervet monkey moped on a mangrove branch one recent afternoon in the woods he inhabits near a South Florida airport, his ego bruised.
Mikey, as he is called by his human observers, has long been the laid-back alpha male of a troop of monkeys ruling this tract of land, tucked off a busy runway at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. But this day he lost when challenged by a feisty youngster called Spike. Mikey fled screaming and was now sullenly staring at humans watching him from 15 feet away.
"Did you have a bad day?" asks Deborah "Missy" Williams, a Lynn University science professor who has been studying the troop and others nearby since 2014. She is also founder of the Dania Beach Vervet Project, which seeks to preserve this unique colony. "We will leave you alone so you can ponder."
The United States has no native monkeys, but the smallish vervets have roamed Dania Beach since the late 1940s after a dozen brought from West Africa fled a now long-closed breeding facility and roadside zoo. Today, 40 descendants are broken into four troops living within 1,500 acres around the airport. Florida also has a few colonies of escaped macaques and squirrel monkeys.
Florida wildlife officials often kill invasive species to protect native animals. But they tolerate the vervets, if they stay put. The monkeys are local celebrities, their travails detailed by TV and newspapers, and popular visitors with nearby workers, who feed them despite signs saying that's illegal.
"My friends are like, 'You have monkeys at your job?'" laughed airport parking lot attendant Harlen Caldera as she gave them raisins and nuts. Some ate from her hand, while others snatched what food she scattered.
Travelers are often surprised to see the monkeys. They squeal in delight and grab their cellphones, hoping for photos. Vervets are gray and black with a greenish tinge, helping them blend into the trees. Males typically grow to 2 feet and 15 pounds; females reach 18 inches and 10 pounds. They live about 20 years.
Caldera and her coworkers are protective of the monkeys, which have no fear of humans, making sure no one tries to catch or harm them.
"You never know what people will do," she said.
The entrance to the 16 acres ruled by Mikey, the matriarch, Snow White, and their troop is at the parking lot's rear, sealed by a locked fence. The mangrove trees are thick and the trail muddy – except where it's covered in shallow water.
Williams began studying monkeys while doing doctoral work at Florida Atlantic University, and stayed on. As she and her guests waded deeper into the monkeys' grounds one recent afternoon, the 16-member troop approached. The colony lives on spiders, ants, lizards, seeds and flowers – when not scrounging people food.
"They quickly learn to adapt to a human diet – they love sugary things and salty things," Williams said, noting they tolerate human food remarkably well.
In Africa, vervets are eaten by leopards, eagles and snakes. But in Florida the dangers are outside the mangroves – mostly cars and trappers, who sell them as pets.
As monkeys are an invasive species, Florida puts tight restrictions on how Williams' group can help them. Trapped monkeys can't be released – they must be euthanized or placed into captivity.
Because Williams doesn't believe monkeys should be pets, she doesn't seek veterinary care for seriously injured and ill monkeys, hoping nature will heal them. But her group is building an enclosure for vervets captured for treatment or because they wandered too far.
Ultimately, Williams wants Florida to allow the release of captured vervets. Unlike Burmese pythons, iguanas and other invasive species, she argues, the colony doesn't harm the environment.
"The monkeys' lives matter regardless if they are nonnative or native," she said. "All options should be exhausted to avoid euthanasia." Her models show that without change, the colony will die off within 50 years.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission responded that while the colony can remain, no exception allowing the monkeys' release after capture can be made because their effects on the ecosystem are "not well understood."
"There is also an inherent risk of injury when handling wildlife. Monkeys can act defensively and may bite or scratch. Mammals, including vervet monkeys, may harbor diseases transmissible to humans including rabies," the statement said.
As darkness neared, the troop moved from the mangroves into the airport parking lot. It's dinner time and there are seeds to pluck and workers' treats to get. Some played while others groomed each other. Spike and Mikey again tussled before Williams' admonition separated them. The aging king and his would-be heir then sat feet apart, eyeing each other warily.
Soon sated, the monkeys climbed back into their trees to spend another night in their unexpected realm, paying no heed to the loud metallic birds flying above.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/living-plants-help-reduce-indoor-pollution/article_6b432b3d-1672-5d3d-a0f0-cfd2a9449f60.html
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Houseplants can be problematic. We all have purchased them, brought them home with anticipation, knowing exactly where we will put our treasure, only to have them struggle and eventually die.
Discouraged, but not defeated, most of us will try again before we give up and maybe purchase a fake plant to put in that perfect spot. Before you declare your green thumbs brown, I would like to encourage you to keep trying. Living plants can solve indoor air pollution problems by helping to reduce, if not eliminate, indoor pollution.
When considering air pollutants, most of us think of automobile exhaust, burning coal, or forest fires, yet counterintuitively, research shows that indoor air is about 30 times more toxic than the air outside. A study led by B.C. Wolverton and published in 1989 by the Stennis Space Center offers houseplants as a solution. Plants and associated microorganisms in the soil around them are “nature’s life-support system.” Through photosynthesis, plants absorb pollutants and carbon dioxide through their leaves. Microbes surrounding the root system break down the contaminant and then emit pure oxygen. Just 15 houseplants in an average-size home offer a significant reduction in the number of indoor contaminants.
Common houseplants like spider plants, philodendrons, and Boston ferns clear formaldehyde from the air. Peace lilies take care of trichloroethylene, while English ivy, chrysanthemums, and gerbera daisies handle benzene. Marginata and Mother In Law’s Tongue are excellent plants for healthy indoor air. The most useful household plants are the areca palm, golden pothos, Janet Craig and corn plant. They do not require much light and are effective air-cleaners; just place two to three plants in a room.
Wolverton’s book "How to Grow Fresh Air" is a wonderful reference on the subject of plants and indoor fresh air. Remember that some plants can be toxic if eaten by children or pets so choose plants wisely.
Now about your brown thumb. If your houseplant is suffering go to https://extension.msstate.edu/search and type houseplants in the search bar for publications about houseplants. The benefits of plants in your living space are numerous and definitely worth the effort!
ANN HALL, a Master Gardener, is a trained volunteer with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. For gardening questions, call the Help Center at (662) 620-8280 in Lee County or (866) 920-4678 outside Lee County and leave a message.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/petulance-doesnt-qualify-as-misbehavior-in-child/article_e64b14ac-0daf-5ec6-b008-8ca5549b3cd5.html
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Q: When I give my 5-year-old daughter a chore, she does it, but all the while she is muttering under her breath, huffing and puffing, and so on. Do I discipline that behavior or just let her vent?
A: Let her vent! She may have a “bad attitude,” but she does what she is told. She’s just being petulant, which in this situation doesn’t qualify as misbehavior. It’s mere childishness. In fact, I would predict that if you began punishing her petulant outbursts, she might swing true rebellion. Count your blessings and leave this issue alone.
Q: I am a stepmother to three girls – ages 9, 10, and 11. My husband has custody. At our house, the kids have chores, rules, and consequences if they break the rules. When they go to their mom’s house, however, everything we try to teach them goes out the window. She has actually told them to lie to us, she has slept with her boyfriend while they are with her, buys them nearly everything they want, and so on. How do we combat this and not look like parenting Nazis?
A: The way to deal with this is to be true to your values and persist tenaciously in doing what you know is right. You cannot influence what goes on at their mother’s house, and if you make it your project to compensate for it, you may create problems and solve none. When a divorced parent (with or without a stepparent) raises children with a constant eye on what the ex-spouse is and isn’t doing, the divorced parent quickly loses a sense of clear direction. The children, furthermore, almost inevitably feel themselves to be in the middle of an unstated, ongoing conflict between their parents. They’re likely, under the circumstances, to become angry and manipulative: a most undesirable combination. Do what you know is right, with a blind eye to the wrong.
Q: When I told him I was about to begin toilet training my 20-month-old daughter, my pediatrician said she was too young and recommended I hold off until she’s at least 2 1/2 years old. I’m interested in your opinion. I’m going ahead with it, by the way.
A: Good for you! The proper “season” for toilet training is between 18 and 24 months. In the 1950s, when training was still being done within that window, nearly 90 percent of children 24 months of age were fully trained and accident-free (study done by Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford). The longer a parent waits past 24 months to begin training, the more problems the parent is going to have. That’s clearly verified by the number of parents today who are waiting and then experiencing toilet training wars of one form or another. Obviously, your common sense is your best parenting asset. Keep on rockin’ in the free world!
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/retro-plants-really-just-old-fashioned-ones/article_305c33ea-4d2a-536e-ae9e-a4e8becc426d.html
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Today the terms “retro” and “vintage” are often used simultaneously when labeling certain plants. Research and reading about the plants can help the gardener recognize them.
The basic definitions for things that are labeled “retro” and “vintage” are as follows: terms that are used to describe an older style of an item. Additionally, when considering both terms, people often consider items that describe something that was introduced and popular from the 1920s to the 1980s.
From my research I found that retro and vintage plants could be considered what people label as “old-fashioned plants.” When this term is used, I always remember my grandmother’s flower garden. The following are types of flowers that were found there: hollyhocks, sweet peas, heliotrope, foxglove, spider flower, delphinium, plumbago, coleus, portulaca and caladiums. Gardeners today not only recognize the names of these plants, but they also include them in their gardens. Retro planters are also very poplar to purchase and add to the look of the plant.
In one of the publications of Mississippi State University Extension, Cement & Blue Poppies | Mississippi State Trial Gardens, the story of how Butchart Gardens began is included with emphasis on the Himalayan Blue Poppy, Meconopsis baileyi, (an old-fashioned plant). This story took place around 1915 and tells the story of Jennie Butchart who began her gardens with vintage or retro plants.
In an article Retro Garden Ideas: Pink, Black and Turquoise Plants for A '50s Garden Theme, from www.gardeningknowhow.com, a retro garden plan is included. Along with the plants that would be considered retro, an assortment of mass-produced decorations like plastic wildlife, garden gnomes, and lantern holders would be there. These items help the flowers to display a former “time.” Here you would also find wide open, well-manicured lawns and an abundance of round- or box-pruned evergreen foundation plants such as yew, juniper, boxwood, and holly. Retro or not, the garden should always reflect the choices of the gardener.
LISA LUCIUS, a Master Gardener, is a trained volunteer with the Mississippi State University Extension Service. For gardening questions, call the Help Center at (662) 620-8280 in Lee County or (866) 920-4678 outside Lee County and leave a message.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/sense-of-pride-comes-from-watching-your-child-become-an-adult/article_63a87b9a-dd74-5c12-8395-cf5a1dfafffd.html
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PETROGNANO, Tuscany – For the good part of the past decade I have hosted groups of American travelers – mostly Southerners – in this part of the world. I have always believed that Tuscany is a lot like the American South. It’s an agrarian society, but instead of soybeans and cotton they grow olives and grapes. The Tuscans are friendly and hospitable. They love food, and love sharing a meal with family and friends. They love having fun and they know how to party. That’s why Southerners connect with the people over here.
I always feel like I’m coming home to this area. It connected with me the first time I ever set foot on this ancient Etruscan soil. I don’t believe in reincarnation. But if I did, I would suspect several of my past lives were spent here in this area. It’s been familiar since the start.
It felt even more like coming home this time because my 20-year-old son is living and working here.
When my family first came to Tuscany in 2011 we all felt a familial connection, my son maybe more than me. He’s got his father’s wanderlust and has returned often with us and on his own. He’s currently in the early stages of an eight-year plan that I have set for him moving into his professional career. He wants to go into the restaurant business, and I told him if he’s going to go into the family business he’s going to have to go about it in the right way, and with a plan.
The plan is basically what I wish I would have done, and what I should have done at the beginning of my career. He's getting a business degree, a chef's degree, and working for friends of mine in other restaurants for at least two years.
That’s what brings him to living in a third-floor walk-up in Florence and riding the bus for two hours every day to the small Tuscan town of Barberino-Tavernelle to work in the kitchen of a friend of mine, a place he’s eaten in since he was 10 years old.
The first thing on my list whenever I come to town here is to have lunch at one of my favorite restaurants in the area, Caffe Degli Amici. This visit I was excited to go to the restaurant because my son was in the kitchen that day. I’ve always dreamed of going to a restaurant where my son was working. I’ve thought often of what it might be like – me sitting in the dining room as a customer with him in the kitchen preparing my meal. It’s hard to describe the sense of pride I had as a peaked my head into that tiny kitchen and saw him cooking.
My wife and I arrived late for lunch so we could just sit and wait until he got off and then eat with him. I don’t know what other fathers feel like when their sons join them in their law practice, their plumbing business, or their accounting firm, and granted, my son has yet to join my business. But I do know the feeling of sitting down with him in another restaurant, a restaurant 5,232 miles from home, and sharing a meal that he prepared. It is wonderful. It was a very proud moment for me as a father.
He spent that night in the villa with us, and I drove him to work the next day. Before he went to work we stopped for breakfast at my favorite little bakery in town. It’s a place he and I went to every morning for weeks when we were first here and he was 10 years old.
As we ate our pastries we sat in silence for a minute, I just looked at him and remembered that 10-year-old boy who was so enthusiastic about life and everything that came his way. I was now looking at a 20-year-old man who was living independently, and on his own, in a major European city.
I grew up without a father, and as a consequence, I always wanted to be a father, even at an early age. It wasn’t until I was 36 that my daughter was born, an amazing young lady in her own right. My son was born when I was 40. I always knew I would love my children, though I had no idea when I dreamed of being a father all those years ago that I would have the capacity to love another human being like I love those two children. I also never knew that sense of pride that naturally comes from watching your children become adults.
We are here for four weeks, and I plan to spend a good bit of time with my son, dining in different restaurants, and going to certain food sites that we both love. Sometimes, even when you’re in the middle of it, you know you are experiencing a time period that you will remember for the rest of your life. It’s the feeling I had the entire time we traveled through Europe for six months in 2011. It’s the feeling I have today.
Onward.
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https://www.djournal.com/lifestyle/living/three-good-options-to-cover-exposed-tree-roots/article_eddb3699-eaea-53d4-b9b9-e202cd217301.html
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Question comes up nearly every week: Can I cover up the exposed roots of my tree? The mower keeps stalling out on them, the mailman trips on them, kids can’t play there, grass died and I’ve tried everything but it won’t grow back …”
The short answer is “Yes” - just don’t kill your tree in the process.
In spite of popular myths, trees aren’t naturally deep- or shallow-rooted; depending on soil type and the availability of both water and air, trees we think of as shallow-rooted can have roots many feet deep, and allegedly deep-rooted trees often have roots right on the surface. You’ve seen them blown over, with roots only a foot or two deep.
This is because though roots generally grow downward, they require oxygen to process stuff; if the soil is heavy clay or poorly drained and stays wet for weeks on end, roots can’t get the oxygen they need and they either don’t grow deep or those that do rot.
Bottom line is, if a tree has roots on top of the ground, it’s usually because they can’t grow any deeper, so covering them up more than just a couple of inches or so with dirt can suffocate them. Not always but believe me I see it happen all the time.
So, what to do? There are three good options (four, really, if not noticing them at all counts). You can celebrate them by clearing away leaves and let them be prominent; you can cover them with a mulch of leaves, bark, pine straw, gravel, chipped slate, spaced-out flagstone, or other porous material that still lets air and water get to the roots; or you can plant shade loving groundcovers or small shrubs. All three work and are done commonly in botanic gardens.
I like the first one, in which a distinct line is cut into the ground outside the exposed roots so the area has a distinct shape, allowing gnarly roots to rise from bare dirt or moss as an important, ancient, even showy part of the tree. The line can be a shallow trench, metal edging, bricks, or monkey grass – doesn’t matter as long as it looks purposeful. When leaves fall, just blow them back underneath the tree to replenish the soil.
Planting beneath mature trees can be a challenge, aside from the difficulty of digging organic matter into soft spots between tree-size roots. There’s not much opportunity to provide a good start to whole new plants in need of their own elbow room, and you only get one shot at it, so do the best you can (hint: it’s easier a day after a good soaking rain).
As for plants, there aren’t a lot that can tolerate the heavy shade and competition for root room and moisture; some aren’t fashionable or can be invasive without a border. The most commonly planted and attractive low-growing groundcovers I see thriving under mature trees in older neighborhoods include English ivy, Vinca major, Liriope, mondo grass, Asiatic jasmine, moss, and Ajuga. There are others, but these reign the roost.
Trouble is, the plant approach takes time; the old horticultural adage is “first year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap.” Meanwhile, add a few clumps of taller shade plants like ferns, aspidistra, hosta, daffodils, and azaleas or other small shrubs, plus a bench, chairs, urn, birdbath, driftwood, or other “hard” feature to provide instant appeal.
Whatever you do, please remember that those bark-covered behemoths are the shoulders of far-reaching arms and are important to the tree. Important enough protect and celebrate, rather than hide.
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https://www.djournal.com/news/business/clean-and-clear-buff-city-soap-in-tupelo-offers-all-natural-ways-to-wash/article_44b9d8cb-e64b-51a5-8ac7-53523151d526.html
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TUPELO • For a long time, Krista Scott was on the lookout for products that were not going to irritate her sensitive skin. Something that would moisturize and take care of it.
She knows she's not alone.
"I think a lot of people are also aware of what is going into their body and on their body," she said.
She happened to discover what was then called Bartlett Soap Company as a customer, which later became Buff City Soap. Today, the company is expanding quickly, with nearly 200 stores in 29 states.
"I not only used it every day, but it was something I really believed in and decided to became a part of it an open my own store," she said.
She opened that store in Tupelo in early March at 898 Barnes Crossing Road, in the Thompson Square shopping center adjacent to Kroger.
Founded in 2013 by former firefighter Brad Kellum, Buff City Soap offered an alternative to commercial soap products full of harsh chemicals, detergents, animal fats and sulfates, and replaced then with all-natural ingredients.
"We know exactly what goes into it because we're making it ourselves," Scott said, pointing to an employee who's making body butter with olive oil and a block shea. "When our guests come in, they can see what goes on the shelves. It's completely transparent. It's not being mass-produced by some machine in some factory somewhere."
Customers also get a chance to see the soap-making process live inside each "Soap Makery." Each store has more than 30 unique and customizable scents across dozens of handcrafted soap products including its soap bars, bath bombs, bath salts, shower fizzies, foaming hand soap and laundry soap. Customers also can customize the scent and ingredients to create a unique scent profile.
Popular secrets include top-selling "Narcissist," "Good Morning Sunshine," "All Hail the Queen," "Lavender" and "Black Raspberry Vanilla," Scott said.
The store also has seasonal scents available including local soaps that are exclusive to Tupelo, such as "Golden Wave," "Tupelo Honey" and "King's Guitar."
Some of additives used to give the soaps their scents include coffee grounds, poppy seeds, oats, Black Sea salt, lavender, rose and more.
"We have everything you need to clean and moisturize yourself from head to toe," Scott said. "We have products for women and men, and we even have beard and shave products for men."
Originally from Illinois, Scott has lived in the mid-south for more than 20 years. She fell in love with the area and Tupelo.
"I love this community," she said. "We're really fortunate because Tupelo has really strong small business community. Small business owners have really opened their arms to us, and we're really fortunate that we've reached out to them, and they've reached out to us. We're lucky and happy to be invited to be a part of the community."
Scott searched most of north Mississippi for the perfect location for her store, but ultimately found Tupelo to be ideal.
"We thought that not only could it support the store, but it could also benefit from it," she said. "We also own a store in Southaven, and we had customers who would drive an hour from Tupelo to shop there. So we knew there was a desire and need, and we decide to open here."
It took about a year for her to find the right spot, and the space she found was exactly what she was seeking.
"We're right here for people to get what they need to wash their bodies as they get food to feed their bodies," she said.
The Tupelo Buff City Soap store, including the back storage space, is about 3,500 square feet, making it one of the larger stores in the company. The store also can host bath bomb parties, and will have soap-making classes
The Tupelo store hours are Monday – Saturday 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Sunday noon to 6 p.m.
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https://www.djournal.com/news/education/gas-up-higher-fuel-prices-could-affect-next-years-school-municipal-budgets/article_477f210e-fd8d-50dd-9d73-f654a506497f.html
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TUPELO • On Friday morning, Tupelo Public School District's Transportation Director Gary Enis stopped by a local gas station to fill up a school bus with diesel fuel.
By the time the pump clicked off, Enis had put more than $400 into the bus — nearly double what it would have been last April.
Until late February, gas prices, stagnating since the onset of the pandemic, had been slowly climbing for months. But the cost of oil spiked suddenly and dramatically after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. In mid-March, gas prices hit an all-time national high of $4.17, according to AAA.
Although prices at the pump have plateaued in recent weeks, they remain far higher than they were a year, or even a couple of months, ago. On Friday, AAA reported an average gas price of $3.90 in Mississippi — a 50% increase from the same time in 2021.
This increase in fuel costs doesn’t just affect the average resident filling up their cars; it also throws a wrench in governmental operations across Northeast Mississippi, from police patrols and fire departments, to school and city infrastructure projects.
Big yellow gas guzzlers
Tupelo Public School District buses run 75 routes per day to pick up and drop off students, along with any buses used for field trips and other activities.
All those miles on the road add up. The week of Feb. 8, 2021, the district spent $7,328 on fuel carrying kids to and from school. That same week this year cost TPSD $11,159. That's a 52% increase.
March was even more dramatic. The week of March 8, 2021, the district spent $7,603 on fuel. That same time this year, the district spent $15,246 — a 100% increase.
Since the week of Oct. 11, 2021, the weekly cost of the school district’s daily transportation has increased by more than 61%.
Rachel Murphree, TPSD's chief financial officer, said the district has built enough money into this fiscal year’s budget to cover the excess fuel costs, although school officials are keeping an eye on spending.
To date, rising gas prices haven’t forced the district to cancel any field trips or travel for sports.
"Thankfully, we have a very sound fund balance that can take care of us until the economy recovers," Murphree added.
However, Murphree said the district will have to budget significantly more money — likely 50% to 75% more — for fuel during the upcoming 2022-23 school year.
Likewise, the Lee County School District's monthly fuel expenditures have doubled since 2021.
The district spent $9,600 per week on fuel in Feb. 2021, compared to $16,000 in Feb. 2022. That's a 66% increase in a year.
In mid-October 2021, Lee County Schools spent $12,500 on fuel. By the week of March 13, the cost had increased to $17,500, an increase of 40% in about five months.
Michael Martin, LCSD's business manager, said the district budgets expenditures high and revenue low to allow a cushion, especially for fuel prices, since prices are subject to increase.
Budgeted money for fuel that goes unused each year is rolled over to the next, so the district has built up a surplus to carry it through the end of the year.
The district will continue to run its regular 102 bus routes per day, and LCSD Superintendent Coke Magee said fuel prices won’t affect any field trips, sports or activity travel for the 2021-22 school year.
Next year, however, could be a different story.
"If we have a full year, next year, at these prices, it could eat into the fund balance a bit more," he said.
From hot mix to patrol cars
Kim Hanna, chief financial officer for the city of Tupelo, said the city was already looking for cost-saving measures in anticipation of additional spending on fuel when gas prices spiked in late February and early March.
With gas prices already climbing even before the sudden surge, Hanna said departments had been trimming the fat from their expenses to make room in their budgets for additional expenditures on fuel.
Still, Hanna expects higher gas prices to hit the city’s budget hard, particularly for departments like police, fire, public works and sanitation, all of which require regular travel.
For example, the Tupelo Police Department used roughly 9,000 gallons of gas each month between October 2020 and February 2021. All that travel cost the city’s taxpayers an average of $23,423 a month.
Hanna expects that average monthly fuel bill to jump significantly once the department delivers its March report.
Not that there’s much that can be done about the amount police officers travel each day, Hanna said. They can’t stop patrolling the city.
Still, there are ways police, the fire department and other public works departments could cut costs, and city officials are currently exploring those options.
It’s a similar situation outside the city, in Lee County. County Administrator Bill Benson also sees the rising fuel costs as a problem that requires shuffling budgets.
Although Benson said he’d seen some signs that gas prices might rise while he was building this fiscal year’s budget, he said there was no way to anticipate just how much the cost would increase.
“It hasn’t wrecked budgets yet, but over time it can,” Benson said. “We certainly didn’t budget for $4 a gallon. We really had no way to predict it. Nobody was expecting (Russia’s invasion) on Oct. 1 when we were approving budgets.”
Benson said the county sheriff’s office and road department see the most regular travel and would therefore be the hardest hit by increased fuel prices.
That impact is already being seen. According to Benson, the Lee County Sheriff’s Office spent $177,045 on fuel during the last fiscal year; in the first six months of the current fiscal year, they’ve spent $111,362 — 63% of what they spent during the entire previous year.
March of last year cost the county $13,307 to fund travel for the sheriff’s office. This March was slightly higher — $14,839 — but not nearly as significant as it could have been.
Benson said the full impact of the gas hike would make itself more obvious over the next few months.
But it’s not just the cost at the pump that could potentially hurt county and city coffers. Rising fuel costs affect the budgets of nearly every project. Both Benson and Hanna noted that, though projects and contractors have flexible budgets for gas, it will still play a role in how much can be done on existing and future projects.
“Our hot mix bid was $72 a ton last year, and now we are talking about, at a minimum, $20 more,” Benson said. “It is not only gasoline, but it is also the asphalt products that are rising.”
Wait and see
Though gas prices are an immediate issue, Hanna said the city will not know how much pain the increased fuel cost will inflict until the city’s sales tax reimbursements are released later this spring.
“We will have to wait until May before we know the impact of the spike,” she said. “We don’t want to respond drastically. We will not be making sweeping cuts to our services.”
If the spike in fuel prices should cause the city to go over budget, a likely scenario, Hanna said city officials would need to amend the budget and, possibly, adjust their plans.
Lee County School District officials have adopted a similar wait-and-see approach, at least for now.
With the 2021-22 school year nearing its end, Martin is already eyeing next year's budget. But with the district not knowing its 2022-23 school year funding level yet, it's still too early to know how big an issue increased gas prices could prove to be.
"We don't budget $600,000 for fuel every year," Martin said. "If prices are still where they are and aren't projected to go down within the next year, then we're going to have to look at that a lot harder.”
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https://www.djournal.com/opinion/columnists/getting-america-to-do-right-by-americans-of-color/article_e2509c54-175a-5ce1-a9d6-c2d1134adb9a.html
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Two hundred times, they failed to get it done.
They failed after 1899. That was the year an African-American man named Sam Hose was massacred by a white mob near Newnan, Georgia, that castrated him, skinned his face, then cooked him alive over a fire and parceled out pieces of his body; his knuckles were offered for sale by a grocer in Atlanta.
They failed after 1904, too. That was the year an African-American man named Luther Holbert and a woman who was never identified were put to death by a white mob in Doddsville, Mississippi, who used a large corkscrew to drill into the pair's flesh and yank out raw chunks of them as spectators dined on deviled eggs and lemonade.
And they failed after 1934. That was the year an African-American man named Claude Neal was butchered by a white mob in Marianna, Florida, that castrated, burned and shot him, dragged his ruined body through the streets behind a car and then left it hanging from a tree that still stands in front of the Jackson County Courthouse.
This sort of thing was the opposite of uncommon. As documented by Tuskegee University, it happened 4,743 times between 1882 and 1968, the vast majority of the victims African Americans. Their killers were virtually never tried and even less often punished. And approximately 200 times since 1900, legislation has been introduced in Congress to make lynching a federal crime. Each time, Congress has failed to pass it.
So it's hard to know what to make of last week's signing of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. The bill, named for the 14-year-old Black boy from Chicago who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly getting fresh with a white woman, at last achieves the old goal. And the response has been celebratory, as of a mountain finally scaled. You can't begrudge anyone who feels a sense of triumph, particularly Rep. Bobby Rush, the soon-to-retire Chicago Democrat who sponsored the bill.
He said in a statement that the new law corrects a "historic and abhorrent injustice." And he invoked Martin Luther King: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
You'll get no argument here. But you will get some mixed emotions.
Two hundred times, Congress failed the likes of Sam Hose, Luther Holbert and Claude Neal. It failed Mary Turner and Rubin Stacy, failed Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, Laura Nelson, Bennie Simmons, Emmett Till and 4,733 more. Two hundred times, it had the chance to declare on behalf of the nation that these Black lives mattered — and it did not. And if Rep. Bobby Rush is inspired by what King said about the arc of the moral universe, well, it is apropos that he also said this: "We must come to see, with one our distinguished jurists, that 'justice too long delayed is justice denied.'"
Amen. And no one can give justice to the 4,743 men and women Congress failed. Any meaningful chance to do so long ago turned to dust. Yes, people of color still suffer racially motivated killings, and this bill provides a new tool to hold perpetrators accountable. That's an undeniably good thing.
But it's a good thing wrapped in the frustration that getting America to do right by Americans of color is always such an ordeal. As Gil Scott-Heron once said: "I have become a special amendment for what included me all along: 'All men are created equal.'" The bitterness of that truth shades the sweetness of any joy.
Two hundred times, they failed to get it done.
Apparently, the 201st was the charm.
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https://www.djournal.com/opinion/columnists/mississippi-s-largest-teacher-pay-raise-it-is-according-to-how-largest-is-defined/article_7558adfe-1c54-505e-9e07-b371e7bea2d5.html
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Gov. Tate Reeves, members of the media and other politicians are touting the $246 million teacher pay raise passed this session of the Mississippi Legislature as the largest in state history.
“The largest teacher and assistant teacher pay raise in Mississippi history is now law,” the governor proclaimed on social media.
Often, people lose perspective and are caught in the moment when they proclaim something is the best, biggest or most significant in history. But in terms of sheer dollars, it is true that the proposal approved during the 2022 legislative session is the largest single year pay raise for Mississippi’s kindergarten through 12th grade teachers in the state’s history.
But there are many nuances to the claim “largest in state history.” Through the history of the state, despite being known for perennially poor pay for teachers, there have been significant salary bumps for Mississippi’s kindergarten through 12th grade instructors.
The pay raise passed this session provides teachers an average increase of $5,140, costing $246 million annually.
On social media, Ray Mabus, who served as governor of the state from 1988 until 1992 and later served as U.S. Navy secretary, said he did not see how the pay raise passed this year could be the largest in state history.
“We passed an average $4,400 pay raise in 1988. Adjusted for inflation, the raise today to be the largest would have to be an average of $10,000 or more,” Mabus said on social media.
According to the Associated Press, the 1988 legislation increased teacher pay on average 18% compared to more than 10% for the current raise.
In the 2000 session, at the behest of then-Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, the Legislature approved a multi-year, $338 million pay raise that was fully enacted in 2005. At the time, the raise increased teacher pay from an average of $31,892 per year to $41,445 or an increase of 30%, according to reporting by the New York Times from the 2000s.
And earlier, starting in 1997, the Legislature under then-Gov. Kirk Fordice approved a three-year raise totaling an average of $1,297 when fully enacted.
In the 2014 session, during the first term when Republicans controlled both chambers, the Legislature approved a $2,500 pay raise spread out over two years, and then a $1,500 raise in 2019 and a roughly $1,000 raise in 2021.
The point is that the 1988 and 2000 pay raises were at least as significant as this year’s effort by the Mississippi Legislature.
That is not to diminish or downplay the efforts of the current Legislature. Legislators are to be commended. But the fact is that in the coming years — not too far in the future — the Legislature most likely will pass another raise that can be called the largest in history. After all, almost every year legislators tout they have appropriated the most money in history for education. They never go on to add that they also have approved the largest overall budget in the state’s history.
But that is what happens with inflation. Just like in the private sector, inflation drives costs up.
State Economist Corey Miller said recently that wages and salaries grew by 7.2% in 2021. Considering recent wage growth and inflation, it would be almost surprising if the Legislature did not pass the largest pay raise in state history this year.
And it could be asked why it took so long after that watershed pay raise of 2000 for the Legislature to again approve such a significant proposal for teachers.
After all, almost every politician elected since 2000 has spoken of the importance of education and of teachers to the state.
The proof of that commitment might not be this year’s admittedly significant — even historic raise — but what happens going forward. Every politician from Reeves to most legislators said this year’s pay raise was only the beginning in terms of the state’s commitment to public education.
Said Senate Education Chair Dennis DeBar, R-Leakesville, “We want to continue this. It will not be the end.”
That continuance, if it occurs, could indeed be historic.
But at some point, that commitment also will have to include more than the level funding that legislators continue to budget for the other aspects of public schools. After all, schools’ costs for gasoline, utilities and other items also are increasing.
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https://www.djournal.com/opinion/columnists/republicans-should-walk-forward-better-to-beat-biden/article_fddb9bee-de35-52f6-b9ac-9a017b615656.html
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It's an old Washington political trick. When you're in trouble, change the subject.
When President Biden's poll numbers are low and falling, when the economy has produced the worst inflation in four decades and gas prices in some states have reached record highs, when he claims we should expect food shortages and produces gaffes instead of gas and then refuses to walk them back, even after aides have tried to correct him, change the subject. Biden's troubles are compounded when he denies walking back any of his statements and tries to explain he didn't mean what he said.
While the president attempts to persuade us that we are experiencing the best economy in decades, we know otherwise. We should not focus on bad things, he tells us, but look to his budget proposal for fiscal 2023, which he claims will lower the deficit and do all sorts of things for us, while imposing a wealth tax on those evil "billionaires" who just haven't been paying their "fair share." It's a line Democrats have used for decades without defining fair share.
A Wall Street Journal editorial gets it right: "The fiscal 2023 budget (Biden) unveiled Monday re-proposes most of the bad ideas that haven't passed Congress and adds a new one — a tax on wealth that he refused to endorse as a candidate in 2020. On the economy, he's pivoting further to the left, presumably to fire up sullen progressives in November."
The president is again trying to include in this budget monstrosity money to pay for lawyers to assist undocumented immigrants who have broken our laws to get into the country. It is something he proposed a year ago but couldn't get through Congress along with the rest of his "Build Back Better" legislation. Stop and consider that for a moment. The president, who took an oath to uphold the Constitution and laws of the land, wants to hire lawyers and pay them with our tax dollars to help people who have broken those laws to live in the U.S. and receive other benefits, also paid for by taxpayers.
Does this make sense? One hopes none of it will pass Congress and when Republicans take over one or both branches in the November elections many of these spending ideas will never again see the light of day.
Two polls demonstrate the deep hole in which the president finds himself. A Gallup poll shows him at the lowest of his presidency with a 40% approval rating for the job he's doing on foreign policy. His overall approval rating is 41%. What is there to approve of, given his foreign and domestic policy disasters?
An NBC News poll found "7 in 10 Americans expressed low confidence in President Joe Biden's ability to deal with Russia's invasion of Ukraine ... and 8 in 10 voiced worry that the war will increase gas prices and possibly involve nuclear weapons."
Those impressions are unlikely to be reversed before the election, especially since it seems the left is looking to use high gas prices to drive us into electric vehicles, whose average cost is $40,000, a price most people can't afford.
Biden's gaffes don't help. On Monday, cameras showed note cards from which he read answers to questions his staff thought would likely be asked by reporters, a device the former president readily used to much criticism.
It is now up to Republicans. They should not just point out the obvious failures of the Biden presidency, but propose solutions that will reverse disastrous foreign and domestic policies. Maybe they could call it "walk forward better."
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https://www.djournal.com/opinion/editorials/prioritize-regional-projects-with-arpa-spending/article_7562bd27-86b7-5407-b882-4fc71760a17b.html
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Mississippi lawmakers are finalizing spending plans for $1.8 billion in federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act. This money provides an unprecedented opportunity to invest in Mississippi's local infrastructure in ways that will strengthen our communities and address decades' old issues.
From the start, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann has called for using these moneys on "generational projects." He and Speaker Philip Gunn, along with other Senate and House leaders, have come up with proposals that would create matching grant programs for local entities, doubling the spending opportunities these local governments have from their own funds.
This is a smart plan, and we have praised it multiple times in the past. Now we are hoping that the state will go one step further. The state can encourage better regional development and cooperation by prioritizing projects that include multiple governing and geopolitical bodies, such as multi-county investments or cooperative projects between a county and the municipalities within it.
There are countless examples of these kinds of agreements, and most of them provide incredible success. Look at the efforts of Pontotoc, Lee and Union counties to form the PUL Alliance, which was the cornerstone of landing the Toyota plant in Blue Springs. By pooling resources, spending priorities and tax agreements, they made possible for the region what would have likely been impossible for any one of the counties alone.
Of course, not every regional cooperative effort has to be on the scale of landing an automotive manufacturer and still have a tremendous shared impact for a larger area. Broadband expansion, water and sewer upgrades, road funds, and tourism and recreational projects all can raise the profile, quality of life and economic opportunities of entire regions if multiple bodies work together.
Most of what has been discussed with ARPA spending is based on projects guided solely by a single local governing entity. There are a lot of needs, a lot of long wishlists and priorities that have sat idle for countless years. And regional projects take longer to design than local ones. All of that is understandable.
At the same time, that does not mean regional efforts should be ignored. By prioritizing such projects with some of the ARPA funds, it could help create generational change not just in the form of individual projects but by encouraging a new sense of regional cooperation throughout the state.
This could be accomplished in several ways, such as setting aside a certain percentage of funds for cooperative projects or increasing the matching percentages for regional efforts.
Whatever the case, ARPA funds provide what is likely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to foster a new era of regional cooperation in Mississippi. The state would be foolhardy not to take advantage of it.
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