When you drive around Jackson, what are some of the thoughts that travel through your mind? Do you ever find yourself in awe? Is there a moment where you wish you were somewhere else? No matter what your thoughts are today, there comes a point for everyone in life where they feel a little lackluster about the place they call home. For one Jackson native, his hometown seemed to be the one place on earth that lacked inspiration for his photography.
Read MoreIt’s a muggy June evening, and a small crowd of about thirty gathers outside the J. R. Hyde Science Building at the University of Memphis at Lambuth. The crowd represents all portraits of life in Jackson: families with multiple small children, retirees, and a small group of teens looking to break the monotony of their typical summer drudgery by doing something singularly unique.
Read MoreThere is a little Italian café in Geneva, Switzerland, that sits just across the street from the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I found myself there one rainy morning in February hunched over coffee with a colleague. We ran through the updates of the people around us who were doing their best to keep their flags flying in the midst of deep decreases in global budgets and broad increases in needs for life-saving work in areas such as human rights and global health.
Read MoreConfession: I used to love instant grits. Perhaps that’s not a huge deal to those of you who don’t care much for grits, but to those of you who grew up in the deep South, you have every right to “tisk-tisk” me. On the other side of a few culinary experiences, I now understand the miles of distance between instant grits and the real thing—you know, slow-cooked, creamy, and enough butter to remind you that ignorance is bliss. And what goes better with a big bowl of grits than some juicy shrimp?
Read MoreIf you told the twenty-year-old me that I would eventually live in Jackson, Tennessee, he would have died laughing. I wasn't even sure I would be living in Tennessee period. Twenty-year-old me was an M1-A1 Abrahms Tank System Specialist (tank mechanic, y'all, I was a tank mechanic) that had dreams of completing a twenty-year career and retiring. And then after my retirement, I would launch some sort of startup with the security of a nice, fat check to fall back on if things didn't work out. Twenty-year-old me was married to the first of two ex-wives and had no kids.
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