Moving to Jackson, MS

A few people have requested that I take up the Blog Formerly Known as the Prague Blague, since I am once again in a new place doing new things with with new people and will be traveling quite a bit. I can't promise that I'll be as diligent about this as I have been in the past, but I'll try, at least for a bit. And at the very least, just as a good way of saying bringing family and friends up to speed with what I'm doing now.

A few words of introduction: Exactly one month and one day ago I became a resident of Mississippi, or "The Hospitality State," as my new driver's license proudly advertises. I moved here (specifically, to Jackson) to begin a two-year fellowship with the education department of the Institute of Southern Jewish Life. Yes, the very same place where I interned in the summer of 2012. Essentially, the ISJL works with Jewish communities all over the south, from Texas to Virginia, to help document their histories, preserve their communities, and enhance their Jewish educational opportunities and religious experiences. As a Fellow, I'll be "attached" to 6-7 specific communities and make visits to each 3 times a year running programming, coordinating services, teaching classes, and really whatever it is I'm asked to do. Our big conference is this weekend, and shortly after I'll find out which communities I'll be assigned to for the upcoming year!

But I've gotten ahead of myself. I'll give a brief outline of what has happened in the past months since I became a Mississippi resident:

 As soon as I was done with finals, I met my dad in Jackson to set up logistics for my move. We got everything done (got a license, registered a car, got license plates, set up water for my apartment, got car insurance, and visited the state capitol!)

I flew back to campus, and a couple days later, drove up to Maine to go hiking with friends. We spent a couple days in the White Mountains (on the Maine side of the border) and a couple in Acadia National Park (in eastern Maine). Both of these photos were taken in Acadia, on one of the most beautiful hikes I've done. The colors and textures were so vibrant! It was a wonderful week, and exactly where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing with some great people. 

I arrived back on campus the night Reunions (capital R, plural) began. The absolute highlight for me was getting to (re)introduce to each other two men who hadn't seen each other in 75 years, both of whom I interviewed for my senior thesis on the development of Jewish student life at Princeton, between 1915-1972. On the left is Henry Morgenthau III '39 (97 years old) and on the right is Joseph Schein '37 (99 years old). As a student in the 1930s, Joseph Schein led the Jewish services for the (very small) population of Jewish students on campus. I was fortunate to have the honor of walking with Henry Morgenthau in the P-Rade alumni parade, at his 75th reunion.

And then I graduated!

And a few hours later I was on my way to the airport to start the next two years of my life! Except the airport gods had other plans that involved "sleeping" overnight in the Atlanta airport. It was Shavuot (a Jewish holiday celebrating the receiving of the Torah), so I downloaded a sound file of the book of Ruth (the book traditionally read on the holiday) and celebrated that way. I finally made it to Jackson on the first flight the next morning.

There have been some incredibly beautiful sky things happening since I've been down here:

My fourth night down here there was an incredible lightning storm. It was almost midnight and I was heading to bed when I saw huge flashes coming from outside and immediately grabbed my camera and headed out to watch. 

Two nights later I was at Shabbat dinner at a friend and coworker's house (I have coworkers!) and stepped outside to grab something from my car when I looked up and saw this. The contrast is not as stark here as it was in real life, but on the right (south) side, looking west, there was a light, fluffy-looking pink cloud taking up most of the sky and the light blue strip right next door made it look like cotton candy. But to the north was an incredibly ominous dark grey rain cloud. (I also saw a rainbow that day!)

Mom called me to tell me to go outside and look at the moon, so obviously I did just that. This is what I saw from the street in front of my house. 

And now a little bit about settling in:

This is my house!

And this is my porch swing! The first few
days I ate ever single meal on the swing :)

This is my room. The postcard collection has been
in the works for a long while--one is from a high
school friend, sent to me at camp in 2007!

And these are my Mississippi Frizzies!

There have been two poignant frustrations in the past couple weeks: 1) One of my boxes never arrived! According to the tracking website, it went from New Jersey to..... California, and then to Memphis. And then disappeared. An actual quote of something I said to one of the tens of USPS employees I've spoken to by phone in the past week and a half: "I know it's probably a federal offense for you to open my package, but I can tell you exactly what's in it in case you are allowed..." (I wrote up an incredibly comprehensive list and it's currently circulating in Jackson, Memphis, and (hopefully) the package recovery warehouse in Atlanta. So what's in the box? All my thesis books and all my books on Mississippi and the Civil Rights Movement. Hopefully I'll get it back...

  2) The internet. I didn't have it until two days ago. And then when they finally sent the modem, etc., it turns out that my house is too far from the cable connection point outside, so the signal doesn't work. Probably the funniest thing about the whole mess is every time you call they tell you "you know, you can set this all up online!" Um, the whole point is that I can't, because I don't have internet, which is why I'm trying to get internet. Anyway, after too much hold music and much back-and-forth, the technician finally came out; now it's working, though they still need to tighten up the distances so it's as fast as it's supposed to be. Let me tell you, trying to move and set up all the new things one has to set up when when moves--or trying to deal with a lost package--without internet is a real pain. 

And a bit of civil rights before signing off:

Last Sunday I drove up to Philadelphia, MS for the kickoff of the Freedom Summer 50th Anniversary Commemoration. The ceremony--a memorial/commemoration for James Chaney, Andy Goodman, and Mickey Schwerner, three Freedom Summer volunteers murdered by the KKK in Philadelphia, MS that summer because of their work. Some of those in attendance included Bob Moses (third person from left in the chain), Dave Dennis (to Moses' right), Rita Schwerner-Bender (next to Dennis), former Governor William Winter (behind Schwerner-Bender), and Congressman John Lewis (second from right in the row).

This upcoming week is the Mississippi Freedom Summer 50th Anniversary Conference, and the ISJL is helping to coordinate some additional programs, events, and speakers. One of those is a gallery tour of the This Light of Ours photography exhibit currently up at the Mississippi Museum of Art; coincidentally, the curator (and one of the artists whose work is included) is Matt Herron, a Princeton alumnus ('53) featured on the June issue of the alumni magazine. I sent him an email to see if he might be in town for any of the conference, and it turns out he is--and invited me to attend the gallery tour he's giving on Thursday!

Neshoba County Fair: Mississippi's Giant Houseparty

For weeks, people around the office have been talking about the Neshoba County Fair, an hour-and-a-half northeast of Jackson in Philadelphia, MS. (Mississippi also boasts its own Madison, Cleveland, Little Rock, and Paris).

But the Neshoba County Fair is not your typical county fair. Sure, it's got a ferris wheel and prize-winning farm animals and abnormally large watermelons. It's also got deep-fried Oreos. But what sets it apart is that people actually live on the fairgrounds for the week of the festivities. And not in any old houses. There are these cabins that they live in--about 600 on the property--that get passed down from parent to child. They stay in the family line, and if you want one of them, you better marry in. They go for a lot of money but, get this, they are only occupied for the single week every year during which the fair takes place. People take a lot of pride in them, especially if your cabin is in the "Founder's Square" (the original square where the fair took place, where people started building them). They also take great care to decorate and personalize the (outsides) of the cabins, as you'll see below. Entire extended families come out for the year--even if they live nowhere near Mississippi anymore--and people cram as many as 25 people into the beds that litter the upper floor(s) of their cabins.

The other thing that sets the Neshoba County Fair apart is that it is, for lack of a better phrase, a haven of Republican politics [it's been called the Woodstock of Republicans]. Of the ten politicians who spoke, one was a democrat. The Secretary of State said, "I want to encourage ya'll to go out and vote for the Romney of your choice." And, since it's not a local-election year, nearly every other politician who spoke echoed that sentiment, touting Romney while flouting Obama. One said, "We want to make Washington [D.C.] like Mississippi." Perhaps he meant emulating the fact that Mississippi leads the country in obesity, diabetes and HIV, not to mention poverty...

Well, back to pictures. Can't let too much politics get into my blog (although there's plenty to go around in Mississippi!)

The prize-winning watermelon in the "children's section" whatever that means. Not sure how much this one weighed, but you can see that it's pretty large. Passed one later on that weighed in at 160 pounds, I believe.

Good to know that "postering" is still a verb post-college. This almost rivals the most number of posters I've ever seen on a lamppost, but certain popular weeks on campus have even the Neshoba County Fair politician-lineup beat in that regard.

Classic county fair

Not-so-classic county fair. Some of the 600+ cabins that are occupied during (and only during) the week of the fair. As I mentioned above, people go through great pains to individualize their cabins, which get passed down through family lines.  One person I met is the grandson of a man who was in the lumber-business in Philadelphia in the early years of the fair, so naturally he built a cabin. Still in the family!

  

Well, Dan, you've finally made it. There is a better picture of Dan (also a better picture of the horse-racing), but I figured one that included both of them was the best option. Plus, it's a classic look. 

Just a fun thing we saw: a small child sitting atop a rusted truck.

More classic-fair: small children showing prize animals. This boy couldn't have been more than 6, and looked about 6. 

Prize-winning canned things. I probably don't want to know all the kinds of things they're preserving in those Mason jars.

Dan and I took a walk around the fairgrounds, and we're pretty confident that we saw all 600 cabins (we didn't venture into the land of the 1200+ RV campers that set up for the week). Among the best things we saw was this little boy trying to sell rocks. I'm not sure why his parents didn't tell him that selling rocks was not going to be a successful business venture, but Dan played along well and bought two for the shockingly-low price of $.25. 

I'll spare you pictures of all the Confederate flags hung up on a number of cabins, but here's the  official Neshoba County Fair flag. "Mississippi's Giant Houseparty".

And, of course, the horse-racing. (Chariot-racing?). After the horse-racing, there's something called a "chair race". That means that everyone grabs their folding lawn chairs and races around the track with them to get the best seats for the concert that follows the race. Running with chairs seems only slightly less dangerous than running with scissors or standing on wiggly chairs.