I completed two of my three tasks today. The first task was to take in Bob McElvaine at History is Lunch at the Mississippi History Museum to discuss his book "The Times They Are A Changing".
If you haven't been to our two museum complexes, you owe it to yourself. When I got there, there were at least a dozen yellow buses lined up outside, with hundreds of kids inside. Going in, I passed some guy telling a group of teenagers how if they work hard, they can buy a Bugatti like his, and sure enough, there was a Bugatti parked on the street.
I was kind of expecting Bob's presentation to be a Millsaps Runion of sorts, but there were only about seven of us there, the rest were all townies, and it was packed! The lecture went really well. There was one fella at the end who asked a question that lasted about forty-five minutes, but god bless him; this stuff is important to him.
I got to corner Keith Dunn for a minute. Some of the kids had been asking me about why our pool doesn't work, so I asked him. The numbers on fixing the pool would shock you. They shocked me. It might be easier to build an entirely new one. Doing anything with concrete in central Mississippi can be tricky. I haven't given up on the project, but it's not gonna be a quick fix. I suppose if it was a quick fix, it'd be fixed by now. The problem with spending that kind of money on fixing the existing pool is that there are so many other projects we need that would use that amount of money, like building fifteen new black box theaters. Anyway, I'm not giving up, but don't expect results soon.
Having read Bob's book and listening to his presentation, I kept thinking about what's going on with approved school reading lists and book banning in Florida. This trend is certainly not going to end in Florida. It will spread to Mississippi and Tennessee almost certainly next. Having read the proposed and existing legislation in Florida, I don't know any way Bob's book can avoid getting banned there. This is a perfect example of what these people think Critical Race Theory is. It's not actually what Critical Race Theory is, but these people have no desire to know the truth. We're soon going to be in a situation where it might even be questionable whether these kids can even visit our Mississippi History or Civil Rights museums because some of the exhibits will violate this ant CRT rampage. There are artifacts in the museum that teachers will jeopardize their jobs if they teach about them or show them to their classes. I wish I was exaggerating.
After the lecture, I had lunch at the Nissan Cave by Nick Wallace at the museum. Nick used to be the head chef at the King Edward Hotel, near where I lived at the Standard Life Building. Nick's a remarkably talented chef. I'd love it if somebody could help set him up at Parlor Market and get that going again. I had the Ramen Bowl with pork belly and boiled egg. It was so good.
My next step in the plan for the day was to go from the Museum to the Capitol building for a protest aiming to strike down some of the anti-trans legislation that's on this year's docket. Sometimes I like to challenge myself. Actually, all of the times, I like to challenge myself. I kept the option open to take an uber to the Capitol, but as it had not started raining yet, I decided to wheel it. Many of the sidewalks downtown have recently been maintained, so getting to the Capitol by wheelchair wasn't actually that difficult. It took about twenty minutes, but I made it with no problems.
The poster on Facebook for the protest said it was going from noon till four. I got there close to 2:30 and was just in time to see them making their way down congress street to go bother Tate at home. Because I was already kind of spent, I decided not to join them.
The third leg of the day's journey was going to be attending the Majors Basketball game vs. Birmingham Southern, but the sky was looking pretty annoyed, so I tap-tapped my phone for an uber home. The driver was a guy I knew from Calloway, and we had a good time catching up and discussing some of the challenges that Jackson faces and regret for letting things get this bad. That's kind of a constant refrain these days: how did we let things get this bad. I'm not dismayed, but I'm not naive either. The things I want to do won't be easy.
The Roast for Jeff Good benefiting the Mississippi Press Association Education Fund is tomorrow night at the Westin Downtown. The weather is supposed to be horrendous. I have tickets, but if it's as bad as they say, I may skate. It's not that I don't love the people involved, but using an Uber in really bad rain can be dicey. I'll be there in spirit.
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