A Rebel Without A Clue

Slash Pine Slashed For Turpentine (photo: North Carolina State University) Turpentine business ain't what it used to be.  I grew up in the Piney Woods. I still live in the Piney Woods (or the "Pine Belt," as the public relationists and promoters have tagged the underbelly of Mississippi). But the Piney Woods ain't quite as piney as they used to be, unless you happen to think suburban development isn't a sappy mess or wind up in the Pine Grove Treatment Center in Hattiesburg. Among other things, they specialize in sex addiction , so you might want to check in for a few rounds of golf or some heavy metal music . At $37,000 for a month and a half, it's probably no more expensive than renting a condo at Hilton Head and paying greens fees. But that's not the point here. Or maybe it is. They cut down a bunch of trees to build the city where "Pine Grove" is. The Jefferson Starship built a city on rock and roll, but the city where rock and roll was bor...

  I pledge allegiance to the Great Mosquito and to the Yellow Fever which it spreads The Mississippi Commission to Redesign the State Flag received over 3,000 proposals. Some were obviously jokes, which was expected, and at least one of those jokes -- or at least we assume it was a joke -- inadvertently made its way onto the published list of 147 "finalists." Supposedly this happened because of a typo on a commissioner's "first cut" list.  While it's not exactly dignified enough for courtrooms, the Great Mosquito Flag certainly strikes a chord in the hearts of all Mississippians. According to one source , the mosquito pictured on the proposed flag would be capable of sucking 12 gallons of blood per hour! As far as I know, the only bloodsucking parasite capable of exceeding this rate of consumption is a Mississippi politician.  Seriously (and in my opinion, sadly), the Great Mosquito flag was a joke . The guy who submitted it did so to poke fun at a coworker...

Once it had mandated the removal of the 1894 "Confederate" state flag, the Mississippi Legislature realized it had bigger fish to fry. First up, repealing Prohibition . That's right, Prohibition. You know, the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcoholic beverages. The same Prohibition that ended in the United States of America in 1933.  Okay, it's not quite as weird as it sounds for Mississippi to be repealing Prohibition almost 90 years after the fact. It's weirder.  It's instructive to begin with the beginning. Mississippi enacted statewide prohibition of alcohol in 1907 . And it was the first state to ratify the Eighteenth Amendment twelve years later. But in truth, the Great Sovereign State of Mississippi has a much longer history with restricting the sale of booze. Around 1839, there was a (short-lived) state law that banned the sale of alcohol in amounts less than one gallon. Naturally, this didn't sit well with tavern keepers, and the law was r...

Today, Sunday, 28 June 2020, the Mississippi Legislature approved a bill to remove the current state flag , which features the Battle Flag of the Army of Northern Virginia in the canton. The bill goes to the governor for his signature, and he's already said he would sign it. (Actually, the Governor refused to consider such bills when he was Lieutenant Governor, consistently stated his preference for "letting the voters decide," and changed his pitch only when a two-thirds "supermajority" of Legislators voted yesterday to suspend rules in order to consider this bill after the usual deadline.)   Updated Update: On 30 June 2020, Governor Tate "Tater Tot" Reeves signed the bill into law. This means his signature went down on the right side of history. (It's entirely conceivable that he might have simply not vetoed the bill and let it become law by holding it for 15 days. (There's no "pocket veto" in Mississippi.) A few legislators (and th...

"The only thing that I did wrong was stay in Mississippi a day too long" - Bob Dylan Harley-Davidson Knucklehead I live in the Great Sovereign State of Mississippi. This is an admission that not only am I descended from knuckleheads and live surrounded by knuckleheads but that, at the end of the day, I am a knucklehead myself. This does not mean I am a Harley-Davidson, although a lot of knuckleheads ride knuckleheads. Now, I'll be the first to admit that Mississippi has much bigger fish to fry than what design is used for a piece of cloth, fish like our stubborn refusal to implement Medicaid, our abysmal educational levels, our lack of decent-paying jobs, and ignorant politicians campaigning on such burning issues as the need to keep "In God We Trust" on the automobile license plate, but hey, I enjoy a good fish fry! I also enjoy history. So here I go down the slippery slope! Current Mississippi State Flag The current state flag design, incorpor...