Youth Summit Plans

We traveled to Mound Bayou again on Saturday to meet with a group of youth and adult sponsors to do the first planning meeting for the upcoming Mound Bayou Youth Summit in June.  Some of these youth attended the Historic Preservation Workshop in October.  The Youth Summit is a way of involving youth as participating stakeholders in the community, in terms of civic pride, community development, and engaged participation in the future of the community.  It was an incredible day!

The team leader, Dr. Moore, started off the introductions for the purpose of the planning session and how we would proceed.  First, we asked them to generate a list of what they wanted the Youth Summit to accomplish and what type of things they wanted to include.  All adults left the room to leave them to their work, and when they finished, they would let us know.  Each member of the adult team had a specific area: Dr. Simmons-personal identity development; Dr. Brooks-challenges youth face making healthy choices; Alderwoman Spann-civic engagement and local community concerns; Ms. Sims-teaching the history of Mound Bayou to others; and mine-economic development and youth entrepreneurship.

They generated their lists on each area, and shared them with us.  Our next task is to take the areas, refine them to a specific focus to be covered during the youth summit, and finalize our agenda.  At the end of the summit, the youth will select one or more projects to engage in over the coming year, and at the next summit in 2013, they will present the results of their work.  The mentors will be working along side of them for the year as they need us or resources.  At the next meeting, each youth present was challenged to bring one person with him or her so we can grow the group.  Ultimately, we hope this project will spread to surrounding counties and we will produce a regional summit.  This group of students and citizens are grounded in their history, culture, knowledge and experiences and it is a joy and celebration to have the privilege to work with them.

Poor Monkeys Lounge

 Yesterday when we finished with the planning session for the upcoming Youth Summit, we decided to try to find Poor Monkeys, one of the last original juke joints left standing and operational.  It sits next to a field, down a gravel and dirt road just a stone's throw from the Blues Highway.

 Owned by Mr. Willie Seaberry, the joint got its name from his nickname:  He was called Po' Monkey from the time he was a child.

The name originally was a 'jook' joint.  Jook is a word from the African-influenced Gullah dialect off the Carolina coast, and meant "disorderly" or "wicked."  Juke joints were places for relaxation, dancing, and socializing after the day's hard labor ended for rural workers.

Poor Monkeys is famous now, having had several articles written about the place, and Mr. Seaberry, in the New York Times, not to mention all the YouTube videos, interviews, and blogs.  Tourists visit from all over the world, but it is still the spot where locals enjoy a few beers and dance after the work is done.  Notice the white sign below the rules of the establishment?  There is a contribution box for donations for having taken pictures.  We pulled out our ones, and deposited one for each photo we took--we operate on an ethics code!  As Chris got back into the car, he said, "I wonder if there is even any money in there?"  Mr. Seaberry said he may be famous, but he is still po.

What did this inspire?

Legend has it that a certain gentleman had a few pints too many at the local pub one night.  On his way home, he looked up at this tower and had the inspiration for something well known to all of us.  Can you figure out what it was?

Downtown Biloxi: Post Katrina

As usual, the post over at MissPres this morning got me thinking--this time about downtown Biloxi after Katrina.  I spent a week there working in the Disaster Recovery Centers of the area following Hurricane Katrina in 2005.  I stayed at the Imperial Palace Hotel and Casino, which we promptly re-named the FEMA Hilton, our headquarters for our stay.

 It was near dark when I arrived the first night, so I did not really have an inkling of what it would look like until the next morning.

While dragging my luggage through the parking garage and over to the hotel, I ran into a man in the elevator wearing his MEMA shirt.  He looked down at my luggage and asked, "Checking in or out?"  In.  He replied, "First time or return?"  First.  And you?  


He was in his 7th deployment, and still smiling and pleasant.  I thought it was my first lesson in disaster work.

Wilmer, Alabama: Church Town

 Wilmer, Alabama is a small unincorporated community on highway 98 out of Mobile.  We passed through on our way home from Florida about 10 years ago.  I was fascinated with all the store-front churches along the short spanse of the community visible on this narrow little 2-lane road.  Why did one little community have so many churches?  Who attended?  No larger than this community appeared to be (it is so small, the only numbers I can find are rolled into the Mobile County report), how many folks could there be in each church?  Perhaps it is fitting, as the town is named for Richard H. Wilmer, an Episcopal bishop.

 Do you wonder if there is a lot of schism in the community?  'Cause I'm thinking if there is so much brotherly love and desire for salvation going on here, how come there is a church every 6 feet?  What prompts someone to just up and start a new church right next door to a church?  Above is the Miracle Deliverance Tabernacle, which also sported its big US flag on the church wall.  They could have just been zealous patriots, as this was probably pretty close to 2001.  I always had the idea that when Jesus said render to Caesar what was Caesar's and to the Lord what was the Lord's that he was suggesting politics and religion were not in the same domain.

 If you are not desirous of a miraculous deliverance, you could step next door to the Final Harvest Full Gospel Church, which has something of a note of...well, finality, to it.

 Services here at The New Testament Church are held at 3 p.m. and on Thursday rather than the traditional Wednesday.  That could have been an effort to accommodate neighbors, or possibly Pastor Art was just not an early morning person.

Don't you get a kind of 'other-world' feel to the Living Waters Tabernacle view?  Given it was the same exact day, nano-seconds apart from taking the other photos, I have to wonder about this one.  Was it just the humidity of the moment or some actual time-warp where we were about to be pulled into another dimension?

Possibly the only building in the community that was not a church--at least as far as we could determine.

Smitty's Produce Stand Mound Bayou

During the January class in Mound Bayou, one of the student's service learning projects was to document all of the community assets--a process known as Asset Mapping.  It goes beyond a community needs assessment, to locate and determine the assets in a community in terms of kin/relationship, economics, education, political system, religion, and associations.

 Photo courtesy Glenn Sudduth

Mr. Curtis Smith, aka "Smitty" has grown and sold fresh produce at this corner for quite some while.  On the particular day the students were in this area of town, Mr. Smitty was working out of his truck--it had been cold and rainy for days.  One of his customers graciously allowed the students to take her picture.

Photo courtesy Glenn Sudduth

 Mr. Smitty insisted on getting out his table and setting up his normal stand so that we could get capture the typical view for customers.  Debra and I bought produce last October from him, and again on this trip, and both times, he had his tables filled with beautiful fresh produce.  He was generous with his time, and sharing information with the students.

Photo courtesy Glenn Sudduth

Debra cooked those greens all day long, and added the turnips--and the magic southern ingredient, bacon drippings.  The candied sweet potatoes were superb--there is a reason Mississippi is famous for its sweet potatoes!

I know I posted about the wonderful meal on the earlier entry of "Sister Debra's Ethnic Soul Food Kitchen" but you did not get to see where those yummy dishes originated.  I hope Mr. Smitty is open next Saturday when we are back in Mound Bayou.  I have a hankering for some more greens, turnips and sweet potatoes--along with a little cornbread baked in my cast iron skillet.  Some things from growing up with southern poor people's country cooking just never leave you.

The Austin, Texas Capitol Building

Interior view of the dome.

 The Texas capitol building was completed in 1888 as the "winning design in a national competition."  The Renaissance Revival building was designed by architect Elijah E. Myers, who also designed the Michigan and Colorado capitols.

 The Goddess of Liberty statue was placed atop the dome in 1888.  The exterior walls are "sunset red" grant, quarried from nearby Marble Falls.  The quarry donated the granite, and the state provided 1,000 convicts to be used as stonecutters.  In 1885, the granite cutters union objected to convict labor and Scottish stonecutters were imported to complete the quarry work.

The building also has cast iron columns and beams, and masonry walls.  Construction was paid for with 3 million acres of land in the Panhandle, which would later become the XIT ranch.  The capitol building is the largest gross square footage of all state capitols and the second only to the nation's capitol in DC.  It is, however, 15 feet taller.

Whilst our South African friends were visiting the US for their first time, this Texas officer introduced them to such Texas sayings as "Jeet yet?" and "Sgweet."  (Translation: Did you eat yet?  Let's go eat.)