From 731 to 212

There is nothing quite like southern suburbia. It’s filled with people who just want to sit you down and offer you a proper sweet tea, cars nearly big enough to fly to space, and monograms embellishing almost everything you own. Like most of you readers, I was born and raised in Jackson, Tennessee. I grew up with two loving and supportive parents, a beautiful nanny whom I would come to know as family, a hilarious sister two years younger than me, and a huge black lab named Winston. (He was named this after the prime minister Winston Churchill, of course.)

Gift Guide: The Holiday Hostess

We've got the perfect selection of local goodies that make for unique gifts and even better entertaining ideas. Check out details below.

I Don't Know Why I Run, but You Should Join Me

The air hovers thick. It’s almost too heavy with moisture to breathe in. The field is still green with summer’s gift of abundant rain and sunshine, but the leaves on the nearby trees are starting to shrink up, dry out, turn brown. Fall is coming soon, bringing with it the growing anticipation of a new cross country season.The year is 2009, and I’m in high school at Trinity Christian Academy. It’s another oppressively hot August, but most people don’t notice too much since they’re properly air conditioned.

Game On

Jackson, Tennessee, is a constantly changing and expanding city—with the many colleges and schools in the area, it also has an influx of a younger age group that calls Jackson home. With this younger crowd comes different and varying interests, along with new forms of entertainment.Enter Alex Sanchez, competitive online gamer. Sanchez graduated from Union University in 2017 with a degree in business and an unstoppable vision to bring people together in Jackson under the banner of e-gaming.

Remains

Inevitability is the evil twin of hope. Hope is when we’re not quite sure what will happen, but we’re certain that we want it to happen. The mystery of hope and, to be quite honest, the appeal of hope rest in its uncertainty. There’s the idea that what we are hoping for will eventually morph into reality and, if we’re lucky, possibly exceed our original expectations. Hope is why the idea of something is oftentimes better than the thing itself. We survive on hope. Hope keeps us moving.Inevitability, however, is certain.