For more than ten years, Jennifer Hooper taught music to K-12 students and directed choirs at various Jackson schools. But about a year ago, she left that position. After graduating from Union University, Jennifer got pregnant with her first son, Riley, during her first year of teaching. Having always been a full-time working mother, she struggled balancing her work and home life for years.
Read MoreSummertime means that bees are out and about pollinating our crops and private gardens and the untamed lots where wildflowers grow. They work hard to collect pollen and nectar, they communicate by dance, and they feed from the honey stored in their delicately crafted honeycomb. As they go about this routine, they can provoke a variety of reactions from people.
Read MoreWe have all heard the adage that it takes a village to raise a child. The vision of JMCSS Strong, a newly formed public school advocacy group in Jackson-Madison County, is for each child in our school system to have a village to help him/her succeed. Since we know that villages are formed by connecting people to one another, we want to make sure that children, along with their parents and teachers, are not disconnected from the larger system.
Read MoreMy friendship with William Watson, Pastor of Historic First Baptist Church, began with a telephone conversation in the Fall of 2011, and the partnership between our two churches began soon afterward. But, truth be told, that’s not really where this story begins. No, this story actually begins long before William Watson and I were even born. It begins in the 1800s, and it begins with one First Baptist Church in Jackson, not two. Let me explain.
Read MoreIt has been nearly seven years since I landed in Jackson, and in that time I have lived at all three corners of this town’s Kroger Triangle. First I lived on Union’s campus and then in Midtown for a couple years, until eventually moving back north. Then, last summer when the lease was up and I had already given notice at work without knowing the next step, I crashed with my friends Angie and David’s family while I took time to “figure things out” (very millennial of me, no?). For about two months I was unsure of whether or not I would stay in Jackson, but by the end of the summer I was settling in the Lambuth area into a little apartment of my very own.
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