Jackson. A town nestled in West Tennessee with a population of approximately 65,211*. Upon first glance, Jackson seems like an average urban area of the South, but visitors and locals alike are often surprised at the number of different people groups residing here: Arab, Japanese, Hispanic, Brazilian, and Ethiopian to name a few. Why is Jackson so diverse? Who are the people that make up our city?
Read MoreIt’s a damp Saturday evening after the rainy weather has subsided; I make the drive across town to a local Starbucks, and on arrival I find comfort on an outdoor couch to avoid the noise and clutter of inside. I take my laptop out of my leather backpack and begin looking over my spread and questions. Not long after, two girls walk by me, myself unnoticed. “Here” the text on my phone reads.
Read MoreI had been craving some good country biscuits for a while when the Autrys invited me over for breakfast one Sunday. Marcie told me that her husband, Jamie, makes excellent biscuits and, man, was she right. “One of our dreams is to have a biscuit truck at the farmers’ market. We have a lot of dreams, though,” she said laughing in their kitchen. In fact, they’ve started keeping a written list, storing their dreams away in a log, ready for the picking when the time is right.
Read MoreIf your coffee education has been anything like mine, you were probably introduced to the centuries-old beverage that’s been studied and practiced and thought about deeply by way of the Just Add Sugar method. You know what I’m talking about. Your dad might have taught it to you and maybe still practices it to this day. He tears those little pink packets open and pours their contents into his steaming cup, and you see a look of satisfaction on his face after that first sip.
Read MoreBuildings matter. This is a concept that is foreign to us now. As anyone who spends more than a few minutes driving around our city can easily attest to, the vast majority of the buildings (houses, stores, banks, even—I cringe as I write this last one—churches) look like they have come out of some factory where they are mass produced on an assembly line. Buildings used to mean something. There was some idea, value, universal concept that held the building together and directed its growth and form.
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