My grandfather, John Oliver Emmerich, wrote a daily column for the McComb Enterprise-Journal for 50 years. He called it Headlights in the Headlines.
His column writing style was much different than mine. Whereas I pick one subject and exhaust it, my grandfather would dedicate just a few paragraphs on one subject and then move on to the next, covering multiple subjects in one column. He would separate the subjects with a series of asterisks.
So in homage to my grandfather, I’m going to try out the Oliver Emmerich column writing style. Except instead of asterisks, I’m going to boldface the first few words of a new subject. Here goes:
The Grammys. It’s hard to imagine how great the cultural gap is between Hollywood and Mississippi. Here in Mississippi we do our best to follow the Bible and the teachings of Jesus. In Hollywood, they dress up like Satan and do a dance celebrating sin.
Apparently wokism doesn’t apply to Christians, who are free game to offend.
Don’t get me wrong. A correct thinking Christian does not think he or she is holier than thou. We are all sinners. But to celebrate sin is another thing altogether.
Grammy winner Kim Petras, who performed, along with Sam Smith, the Satan worshipping dance, explained it this way:
“I think a lot of people, honestly, have kind of labeled what I stand for and what Sam stands for as religiously not cool, and I personally grew up wondering about religion and wanting to be a part of it but slowly realizing it didn’t want me to be a part of it. So it’s a take on not being able to choose religion. And not being able to live the way that people might want you to live, because as a trans person I’m already not kind of wanted in religion. So we were doing a take on that and I was kind of hellkeeper Kim.”
What jumps out at me is the comment about “choosing religion” as though God were an item on a restaurant menu. The Hollywood mentality, indeed our prevailing culture, harbors the harmful concept that we are free to choose to be whatever we want to be or follow whatever we want to follow, according to our whims, since we are the center of the universe. Nothing could be more wrong.
Jackson potholes. There is a huge pothole in the middle of the intersection of Northside Drive/I-55 frontage road on the west side of the interstate. It’s been there for weeks. No telling how many rims have been busted or tires flattened. There is also a huge pothole on Briarwood Drive just west of I-55. It’s been there for weeks.
This is just one more example of how Jackson city government has become dysfunctional. They can’t even fill a pothole in a timely manner. Seven years ago, the city bought two pothole machines that could rapidly fill a pothole. They cost about $200,000 and could fill 2,500 potholes a month.
There was a rumor going around that the pothole machines were damaged when city employees tried to mount a water cooler on the side of the machines, drilling through the circuit boards and critically damaging the pothole trucks.
Nobody has seen the pothole machine trucks working for several years. Neither council member Ashby Foote of Ward 1 nor Virgi Lindsay of Ward 7 could answer the question. Council members serve a part-time position and, unlike the mayor and his executive team, are not responsible for the daily operation of the city departments.
Pete Perry, a member of the One Percent Sales Tax Commission that paid for a custom-built pothole repair machine for the city of Jackson, doubts the machines are in use.
“Three years ago, I asked about it and they said they weren’t using them,” he said. “They said they took too much maintenance because they weren’t properly used.”
The Sun reached out to city officials for the answer and we were completely ignored, as usual.
This type of dysfunction is why the state of Mississippi is having to take over more and more functions of the capital city governance.
Wood pellets. Retired Northside insurance agent and active tree farmer Julian Watson sent me a note about the booming wood pellet industry in Mississippi.
Wood pellets are in huge demand in England where Green Energy regulations are forcing coal plants to run on wood pellets rather than coal.
The idea is that if you burn coal, you release greenhouse gases that were trapped underground whereas tree pellets simply recycle greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere.
Wood pellets are produced from wood waste leftover from harvesting pine trees, increasing the overall value of stumpage, which has suffered from low prices for the last 20 years, discouraging many Mississippi landowners who once could rely on their pine trees for money. Sixty-five percent of Mississippi is covered in forests.
There is an environmental plus: removing wood waste reduces the destructive pine beetle population and fire risk.
Mandatory minimum sentences. Facing Chris McDaniel’s challenge from the right, Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann announces his support for a five-year minimum mandatory sentence for carjacking.
This is politically popular but it’s bad law, taking discretion out of the hands of our judges. Each carjacking case is different and should be handled differently based on the circumstances of the case. One size fits all never works and leads to the ruination of young lives who could have been saved and overcrowding of our prisons.
The key to solving crime is swift, sure but reasonable and rehabilitative sentences for young, first-time offenders while reserving long-term prison space for the truly dangerous chronic crooks. “One size fits all” achieves the exact opposite.
Fighting for ownership of the Jackson water department. Why in the world would anybody fight to retain ownership of the Jackson water department? It is a money-losing disaster yet Jackson officials and representatives resent state legislation setting up an independent water district, claiming it’s stealing assets from the city. Stealing assets? Are you kidding? The water department is a huge liability and the city should be thanking their lucky stars the feds having taken it over and, after that, it will be run by an independent water district.
