In addition to seeing friends I don’t meet very often, the conference gives me the opportunity to travel around the state.  Mississippi is a bigger place than people realize and there are some areas I would not otherwise have visited.  Vicksburg and Biloxi are two examples.  This year it was held in Natchez.

Located an hour south of Vicksburg, Natchez is one of the oldest cities in Mississippi (and indeed in the whole Mississippi River Valley) being founded in 1716.   At one time it was the capital of the state, before being replaced by Jackson.  For a very long time, Natchez was a port city where the cotton and sugar grown on the surrounding land was shipped out to elsewhere in the US as well as overseas.   Eventually the structure of the economy changed and Natchez along with it¹.

Its story is similar to many places in western Mississippi including the Delta.  Like Vicksburg, Clarksdale, and Greenville Natchez had its hey day long ago.   All of these places thrived on cotton production which generated great wealth for those few who controlled the trade.   The signs are still visible in the mansions lining the streets of Natchez and Vicksburg.  However where the Delta has fallen into decline Natchez has been able to capitalize on its heritage.  The city today survives primarily on tourism and to an extent on revenue from a pair of casinos located near the city.  The same is true of Vicksburg although Natchez pulls it off much better.  The city has far more shops and restaurants not to mention bars.   While last year I ended up eating most meals in my hotel and sitting around, Natchez offered more in the way of places to go.  I even was able to get some fudge at a shop downtown.

Interestingly Natchez is a city of only about 15,000 people which is not much more than Cleveland.  However the two places could not be any more different.  The latter is essentially a college town with some ambitions to be a center of blues related tourism.   The former is a once thriving center of commerce now turned into a tourist destination.  Natchez really does not feel as small as it actually is.  Population statistics don’t paint a complete picture of a place.  The number of people living in a given town is less important than how the economy is structured and how wealth is distributed.

It remains to be seen if Cleveland can capitalize on its heritage the way Natchez has.  This town does not have as illustrious a past being primarily the home of Delta State University.   Certainly there are efforts to bring people in – the Grammy Museum for example.  However there is little to keep people here for more than a day.  Where as places such as Natchez have more of an urban feel, Cleveland really is a small town.   The buildings aren’t as big and there isn’t as much to do.   Certainly there is no convention center here as there is in Natchez.  In the end its more about the resources a town has more than its population.

More Images of Natchez

Notes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland,_Mississippi

First a little background.  Back in August I went to a contra dance in the town of Mentone, Alabama.  It is put on by a Birmingham based group known as FOOTMAD (Friends of Old-Time Music and Dance).  Every year they hold a dance at a camp on top of a mountain in the Northeast part of the state.  The location was beautiful, the weather was great, and the people were friendly.  The dance is attended by people from Atlanta, Birmingham, and Hunstville so some of the folks were familiar from Catapult 2014.  All in all it was a good time.

While there, I heard of an event in Jackson called Celtic Fest.  A friend of mine from Mississippi, who is also into contra dancing, told me there would be dancing.  It was Irish dancing, not contra, but hey dancing is dancing.  Jackson is only about two hours away and I had no other plans the weekend of the festival.  So on September 12th, off I went.

The Mississippi Celtic Festival is an annual event held every year on the ground of the Mississippi Agriculture and Forestry Museum.  The museum itself leads patrons

through the history of agriculture and forestry in Mississippi.  It does a good job of showing the importance of both of those areas in the state’s history.  Beyond the main building, there is a small mock village on the surrounding land.  In someways it reminds me of Olde Mystic Village in Connecticut except there are no shops other than a blacksmith’s forge.  There is also a trail through the forest which offered a peaceful diversion from the festivities.

The actual festival itself is mostly focused on music.  There were four or five stages featuring musicians from all over the South as well as some from overseas.   One of the stage featured Irish dancing we well.  CelticFest also had the usual assortment of food as well as vendors selling artwork, medieval weapons, clothing, and jewelry.  There was a children’s area and even a blacksmith making palm sized gerbil swords out of nails.

However the part I was looking forward to the most was the Ceili Mor on Saturday night.  Basically a large social dance, the Ceili was led by a caller from Ireland and featured several shifts of live music.  The dancing began at around 8:15 PM and lasted nonstop until almost midnight.  Much to my surprise there were no breaks.  People came and went as they pleased sometimes changing partners or sticking with their friends.  Everything was taught and the dances varied from simple partner dances to set dances of up to ten people.  It took a while to get the hang of things and I didn’t feel I knew what I was doing until taking a brief lesson on Sunday.   Fortunately no one else seemed to know what they were doing either so I fit right in.  It was a good time, although the dance floor bit crowded.

Yet in many ways CelticFest proved how dour Mississippi really is.  First of all the average age of people at the Ceili seemed to be about 22.  Most of the folks on the floor were kids and teens.  Almost everyone older sat off to the side.  The dance floor was also such a chaotic mass of people it was downright dangerous.  Clearly no one had ever danced before.  In fact the caller asked how many of us had ever done so and maybe a dozen participants raised their hands.  My suspicion is dancing is seen as something done only by children at best.  The God fearing residents of Mississippi probably wouldn’t be caught dead moving their feet.

All the same I did have a good time.  CelticFest is smaller than I thought it would be.  There weren’t many vendors.  But the ice cream truck mixed flavor syrup into plain vanilla thus offering about fifty different flavors.  It made my day.  However the music was good and I enjoyed being exposed to something other than contra dancing.  I got a nice Tree of Gondor pendant and spent some time visiting the Agriculture and Forestry museum itself.   The day and a half I was there was time well spent.

Ultimately there are probably bigger Celtic Festivals elsewhere.  Folk music and dancing don’t seem to be high priorities around here.  Mississippians like country music, football, and barbecue.  Those first two aren’t really my thing.  It makes life a bit duller than would otherwise be the case, but oh well.  I have my whole life to surround myself with interesting people and activities.

Thus I decided to take advantage of the time and travel back home myself.  Its become something of a tradition to return in the first two weeks of August.  For the last two years I’ve gone to a conference which occurs around now.  Even though I didn’t go, it was the perfect time for a vacation being near my birthday and all.

Spending time back in the New York area was refreshing.  The trip helped me reaffirm my feeling that New York will always be home.  Its where I’m from.  I know the culture and the people.  My family is there.  While life in Mississippi is good I am and always will be a New Yorker.

But being home also made me realize just how much wealth there is in New York.  I’m from the suburbs (Rockland County specifically).  Yet even there one sees an endless line of strip malls, shops, cars, and traffic.  Go across the river and one sees more still.  Not everyone is well off of course.  But most people are.  The suburbs I grew up in are filled with block after block of houses with multiple cars in the driveway, fences, and dogs in the yard.  People drive the latest models from the common Honda Civic to Beamers, Mercedes, and Volvos.  I did not personally see any Ferraris, but they’re around.  All the big chain stores have branches in the New York area, usually more than one (there are a few exceptions such as Walmart, Cracker Barrel, and Chick Fil-A which only has one location in the whole state – at NYU).   We’ve also got a lot of boutique stores.  The city sets trends in both fashion and culture.  People dream of moving to the Big Apple.  Its residents are the first to get everything from movies (which sometimes debut in New York and LA before anywhere else in the country) to technology and more.  Living in New York, one easily forgets about the troubles afflicting the rest of the country, particularly if one is wealthy.  It is the heart of American prosperity.  New York is Rome.

Mississippi is a completely different world.  There are certainly pockets of prosperity.  But much of the state struggles with deep poverty, particularly the Delta.   When there is wealth it is very concentrated along with the political power in the state.  Mississippi lacks nearly everything New York has.  Chain stores are less numerous and the ones which dot the land tend to be looked down upon by well to do Northerners: Walmart, McDonald’s, Burger King, etc.  The nation has long since written off the whole state as backward, ignorant, and worthless.  Of course the picture is more complicated in practice, a fact I try to draw attention to with this blog.  Yet the perception is there and its a hard one to shake.  It consistently ranks near the bottom of nearly every metric one can use to measure prosperity.

The reasons are many.  A lot of it has to do with location.  Mississippi is not especially strategic, sitting as it does in the middle of the Deep South.  Furthermore much of the economy revolves around agriculture and to a lesser extent logging and tourism.  None of those industries produces widespread prosperity.  New York, by virtue of a large natural harbor and a mild climate, has been a commercial and financial hub for centuries.   Moreover the culture is more progressive.  There is a constant influx of new people and ideas as folks from elsewhere in the country – and indeed the world – relocate to the city.  The result is an ethnically diverse population a fact which has major political implications.  By contrast, Mississippi is rarely a destination for transplants and those who do relocate tend to blend in with the local culture.   With few outsiders influencing the state, nothing ever changes.  The political system remains controlled by the same people – and the same party – public life remains dominated by religion, and the culture remains rooted in ideals much of the country has long since abandoned.

Clearly New York and Mississippi represent very different Americas.  Arguably much of the above applies to the Delta, which is the poorest region of the state.  Other places may be different.  And New York is far from perfect.  It’s had its fair share of racial issues, not just in the recent past, but going back decades.  There’s a lot of poverty in the city and the gap between rich and poor is arguably far wider.  New York State, after all had 88 billionaires as of 2014, second only to California.  Mississippi has none.   So the reality is complicated.

But the depths of poverty in New York don’t even come close to what I see in the Mississippi Delta.  The difference is especially pronounced in Upstate New York, which is full of quaint small, if isolated, towns as well as cities.  Certainly much of Upstate has seen better days, but its not as bad as the Delta.  The critical difference, in my opinion, is a state government (largely controlled by the progressive New York metro area) willing to invest in its people.

The Delta was once described as “the most Southern Place on Earth”.  That does not mean its most representative of the Deep South.  Rather its a land of contrasts and extremes, a lens through which people elsewhere look at themselves.  Its certainly not a simple place.  Along side the poverty and despair are glimmers of hope.  The new Grammy museum is attracting attention and there is a small, but steady stream of tourists who come to learn the history of the blues, a musical genre which came from this region.   It may not be Rome, but its story is worth telling.

Located in Starkville, Mississippi the University is nestled in the heart of what is known as the Golden Triangle region.  It encompasses an area in the eastern portion of the state a little ways south of Oxford (home to the University of Mississippi) and bordering Alabama.  I’d been there before.  On my way to Catapult Showcase in 2014 I stopped at the McAlister’s in Starkville.  Its right across the street from one of MSU’s entrances.  However being Memorial Day weekend the place was deserted.  In any case, I did not get very far into Starkville.

This time was different.  Owing to a wrong turn out of my hotel I ended up driving through the heart of the town.   It felt as if I’d accidentally dug up a pot of gold.  On either side of me were rows of strip malls, stores, and restaurants.  I saw Ruby Tuesday, Buffalo Wild Wings, even a Cold Stone Creamery.  In Starkville, I found everything Cleveland lacked.  Here was civilization with all its amenities and traffic.  Sadly I did not have time to stop.

Of course the bulk of my trip was spent on the campus itself.  Mississippi State University has around 21,000 students making it about seven times the size of Delta State.   It is one of the “big three” schools in IHL which get the most students, funding, and notoriety.  MSU, along with Ole Miss, are part of the SEC and their football games are an even bigger deal around here than the NFL.

So as one might imagine, the campus huge.  Its also seriously confusing to drive around.  Both of the schools I attended in New York were largely built around the same time by Governor Nelson Rockefeller in the 1960s.  Their design is relatively straightforward: main buildings clustered in the center with a road around the outside.  But MSU is more spread out and haphazard making navigation difficult.  My suspicion is most universities in America are built in such a manner.

The buildings also had that classic American university look.  I once went to the University of Maryland at College Park and MSU looked somewhat similar.  Standing on one of the quads (pictured below) in front of the library, I could not help, but be impressed.  Except for the building labelled “chemical engineering” (or something along those lines) I wasn’t sure what went on in any of them.  But I could feel the weight of learning which happened within their walls.  Delta State is a regional university, a teaching school.  Its a fine place to work.  But in Starkville, I was standing in the big leagues.

Mississippi has a reputation for being impoverished, but in Starkville one can see the picture is more complicated.  It is here where the other half lives.  You see it in the sprawling campus, the constant construction, and the enormous frat houses.  There’s definitely a lot of money floating around Starkville.  Delta State manages to stay afloat, but we’re dwarfed by the big dog in the yard.

Of course most states have a flagship school (New York is an exception).  My understanding is the University of Mississippi holds that distinction around here. But MSU certainly do a lot of work around Mississippi.  The MSU Extension Service operates offices across the state and their library leads a consortium of 50+ public and academic libraries.   Thus I’ve always had warmer feelings towards MSU than the University of Mississippi.  Ole Miss is tucked way up in the north near Tennessee and they mostly stick to themselves.

Being around such a big school reminded me of the possibilities within reach.  Academia is a huge place, spread out across a vast country.  At times the Delta feels as if its the only place on earth.  Everything is so far away.  Excursions such as these keep me on my feet.  I don’t know what the future will bring, but I can certainly dream.

This past week I was at the Mississippi Library Association conference.  While my main purpose in going was to present a poster it was nice to see friends both new and old.  It was also a chance to revisit a city I’d been to only briefly over Memorial Day weekend 2013.  You might remember the MLA conference from when I wrote about it last October.  Then it was in Biloxi. This time it was held in Vicksburg which is located at the southern end of the Delta about two hours from Cleveland.   The last time I was there, it was to visit the Vicksburg Military Park which commemorates the Siege of Vicksburg in 1863.  You can see pictures from that trip, such as the one above, here.  While the park was great it is on the edge of the city and so there wasn’t much chance to see the rest of the area.

However with MLA being at the Vicksburg Convention Center, this year was different.   My hotel was a half mile away in downtown not far from the river.  Interestingly it turns out that the body of water running past the city is not the actual Mississippi River.  In 1876 it suddenly changed course leaving the city high and dry.  So in 1902, the Army Corps of Engineers diverted part of the nearby Yazoo River thus giving Vicksburg its river back.

The city itself is not large.  There is a small downtown area centered around Washington and Clay

Looking down Washington Street, Vicksburg

Streets (see right).  There are shops and a few restaurants around here plus the convention center and Portofino Hotel not far away on Mulberry Street. Along the river itself there is a park and a set of murals painted on the concrete levee which adds character to what would otherwise be an eyesore.  Farther afield you find the casinos as well as more restaurants.  Vicksburg also has a lot of historic homes and a few Bed and Breakfasts.  And the movie, O Brother Where Art Thou? was, in part, filmed in Vicksburg.  In fact MLA had its reception at the place where the stage scene was shot.  Here is the proof.  All of that is in addition to the Military Park which wraps around the north and east sides of the city plus a cluster of motels and fast food chains by Interstate 20.

All of that sounds very quaint and to a certain extent it is. The city does have a lot of history.  But it doesn’t have much more than that other than gambling.  The downtown is small and sparse with few places open after dark.  Having traveled down with someone else I was restricted to walking around. The situation was not as bad as last year’s MLA conference.  The Portofino Hotel (where I stayed) was close to downtown so I was not too isolated.  But Vicksburg doesn’t have a lot of hot spots (wi-fi aside).  This is someplace you come to appreciate the past, not enjoy the present.

That’s the story of the Delta in many ways.  Driving south on Highway 61 you really get a sense that this is a place that has seen better days.  After Leland, the road narrows and all you see is cotton and trees.  There is hardly even a street light until you get to Vicksburg.  The towns you pass through, such as Rolling Fork and Anguilla, aren’t exactly happening.  At one point these were thriving places, but time and out-migration have taken their toll.  Cleveland is different because Delta State and the USDA lab in Stoneville attract people from all over the place.  Thus we have a thriving local business community and strong culture around here.  Most places aren’t so lucky.

Yet things may perhaps be changing.  There is plenty of history, not just in Cleveland but around the Delta in general.  People already travel here to appreciate that in general and of the Blues in particular. With the Grammy Museum opening a branch in Cleveland next year more people will come.  The thinking is that it will act as a catalyst for future growth.  I cannot comment on that much, but I hope so.  The people of the Delta deserve a lucky break.

In the mean time, here are some more pictures from the trip.

The problem is that Memphis is not a big airport. The major airlines, to say nothing about low cost carriers, don’t really go there so you are instead relying on their partners who do business under their name. Examples include “Delta Connection” and “United Express”. While on the whole I’ve had decent experiences they operate smaller planes with cramped seats and no in flight entertainment. And the cost is not cheap either. On top of that the airport itself is over two hours away and unless you have your own plane there are no alternatives. Such is life when living in the Delta.

However there was one good thing I did learn out of all of this. At one point I began making contingency plans should I be unable to travel. It was not hard to find someone with an extra seat at the Thanksgiving table. In fact one of that faculty members at DSU regularly has dinner on Thanksgiving for those unable to make it home. That sort of community is one of the things I do like about Cleveland. Back in New York if your alone during the Holidays then your alone.

So there are positives and negatives about Cleveland just as there are about any place. Spending a few days in Rockland has definitely given me a perspective on what those are. In particular, there is much more to do and many more places to go and shop around here than in Cleveland. But that is a topic that deserves its own post.