Plantersville Community Revival

This week, the town of Plantersville has been in revival with the congregations from its four churches – two white, two African-American – coming together to worship as one. The four-night community revival – each church hosts an evening of fellowship between neighbors – ends tonight. I’ve been to two of the services, and it has been an uplifting experience for me.

I’m posting two videoclips via YouTube from Tuesday night’s service at New Chapel Methodist. The mass choir leads the congregation in the singing of “Majesty” and “He Lives.” The speaker at the end is the Rev. Glenn Parks, pastor of New Chapel. I shot them with a Kodak EasyShare digital camera, so the quality may not be as sharp as those shot with a digital videocamera. The two songs were on one clip about 3 minutes, 40 seconds long, but I couldn’t load it on YouTube. So, I used my video editing program on my laptop to chop it into two clips. And I must admit, I don’t have the steadiest of hands when it comes to videotaping.

If you view the YouTube clips and there’s no sound, check the sound button next to the timer and see if the lever is turned up. Also, check the audio level on your computer. It may take a minute or two for the clip to load before it plays uninterrupted.

Photos from the revival will be published in next week’s Neighbors.

A Day at Warped

I wanted to update the blog after returning to the hotel room following Wednesday’s Vans Warped Tour in Atlanta. But after driving 30 miles back to Douglasville, dealing with a fast-food drive-through mixup, getting in the room about 11 p.m. and chowing down on my burger and fries, I crashed. I did wake up at 4 a.m. ET and set up shop here in the Holiday Inn Express lobby for breakfast, photo downloading and blogging.

The four of us – daughter Samantha, her friends Kaylee Watson and Joseph Nichols, and I – were sore and exhausted when  we got to the room, but it was well worth the trip. As I mentioned in the previous post, this was the third Warped for Samantha, Kaylee and I and the first for Joseph.  I could write forever about the day’s activities, but I’ll try to keep it to a reasonable length and focus on the highlights.

* For starters, it’s always neat to run into some ‘Neighbors’ while out of town. It didn’t take long to meet them at Warped. When we pulled into the parking area, I noticed the car two spots down from us had a Lee County tag.  It turned out to be John Hayes of Tupelo, his daughter Ashley and her friends Brendan Wood and Riley Gordon. Another coincidence: They were also staying in Douglasville.  I plan to contact John tomorrow to find out his Warped experience. As I was leaving the east gate of the Hi-Fi Buys Amphitheatre grounds, I saw a black Dodge pickup with a Lee County plate. If you’re the person with Dodge truck and you’re reading this, contact me at 678-1592.

* The kids and I went into the gate together, but soon split after that. They did their thing and I did mine. I saw them at a couple of stages during the afternoon and then at the end, around 9 p.m. Kaylee called me on the cell a couple of times to update me on what they were doing, yet I wasn’t worried about them. They’re good kids and knew they wouldn’t get in trouble. It did warm up into the low 90s, but there was an occasional breeze and a few clouds in the sky that made this the coolest Warped weather-wise of the three we’ve been.

* The performances went off without a hitch. The music ranged from punk, metal, reggae, emo … a nice variety for everyone in attendance. Bands are limited to a set time to perform, and they don’t waste time rambling in between songs.  I counted seven stages, including two on the amphitheatre stage. The main stages stand side-by-side: One was called the ‘Lucky’ stage and the other the ‘13′ stage – commemorating the tour’s 13th anniversary.

*Warped is more than just bands performing. It’s a merchandising and social awareness haven. Each band pitches a tent to sell its CDs, T-shirts, posters and other merchandise, even thongs. Bands also make an appearance to sign autographs and interact with fans. There are general vendors selling items like T-shirts, dresses, sunglasses, purses, caps, bracelets, tennis shoes and cellular phone service. Groups set up tents to promote a variety of social issues, including animal rights (PETA),  anti-smoking (Truth.com), vegetarian living, breast cancer, global warming, rainforests and anti-government in general. Each band and awareness tent had a sign-up list for inclusion on their respective mailing/e-mail list for newsletters and merchandise. I signed up for the Warped Eco Initiative, which promises to e-mail four newsletters. It also entered me in a drawing for a guitar signed by some band named Bad Religion.

*The bands that stood out for me: Pepper (more on it later), Gallows (lead singer Frank Carter spent most of the set singing in the crowd), headliners Hawthorne Heights, Yellowcard, Killswitch Engage, New Found Glory and The Starting Line (I missed Cute Is What We Aim For), and one of the most entertaining and popular bands I’ve ever seen, Family Force 5. For each Warped stop, fans can go online to vote for a band that would receive 10 extra minutes to perform its set, and Family Force 5 was the winner of the Atlanta stop. I see why this group has a big following, including my daughter and her friends. It combines rock and rap, a lead singer who performs a song wearing a Transformers helmet and recruits fans to join them on stage to dance. I got caught up in the packed crowd in front of the stage, and I was probably the oldest one in the group, but it was fun. The kids were especially thrilled to see Amberlin.

* I did everything possible to avoid circles (at the band’s request, spectators create a huge circle and run like they’re being chased by bulls) and mosh pits (where people dance or simply crash into each other and push each other around). When photographing a circle or mosh pits, it’s best to stay clear of the action or else put your camera and your body in jeopardy.

* Once again, the festival had a ‘Reverse Daycare’ tent for parents who want the avoid the music and heat. Chairs are set up where they read a book or watch a movie on a big-screen TV. I found it to be the most boring thing at the festival. I went into the tent and stayed long enough to snap a photo. I didn’t go to Warped to sit in a tent all day.

* As I mentioned earlier, Warped gives fans an opportunity to meet the bands, take their photo and get autographs. Samantha, Kaylee and Joseph were thrilled to meet Family Force 5 after its rousing set while I had the honor of meeting the three guys who make up my namesake band, Pepper. When I stepped up to the first member, guitarist Kaleo Wassman, I told him my last name was Pepper. He was thrilled. “You’re the real Pepper,” he said. After he signed my notepad, Wassman handed to bassist Bret Bollinger and said, ‘Man, this dude’s the real Pepper. Sign it.” Yesod Williams, the drummer, rounds out the band. He didn’t make the photo because he was signing another fan’s autograph. I had my photo taken with Wassman and Bollinger. I admit, I’ve heard only a couple of Pepper songs before Warped. But after seeing them live, I plan to buy one of their CDs.

* Speaking of photos, I hope you’ve enjoyed the photo slide show.  One of my favorite photos is the closeup of the young woman raising her arms up and yelling as she crowd surfs. Here’s the story. When Hawthorne Heights began its final song, I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was the woman, who later identified herself only as “Sam”…. I thought she wanted me to move, but what she wanted was my help to lift her up over our heads. Another guy and I picked her up, and when she was above our heads other people grabbed a hold of her and began passing her to others to start her crowd surf. I quickly raised the camera and snapped a shot before she surfed away. It was a perfect shot at the perfect place and time.

* One final word: A ran into a guy about my age who wore a T-shirt that said, “If I music’s too loud, you’re too old.” He told me he bought it at Kohl’s Department Store. Hmmm….There’s a Kohl’s being built in Tupelo. I think I’ll stop by there when it opens and buy me one. And then I’ll wear it to next year’s Warped.

Vans Warped Tour in Atlanta

It’s 7:20 a.m. Eastern time and there are three teenagers fast asleep in the room upstairs here at the Holiday Inn Express in Douglasville, Ga. In a few hours, they will rocking, rolling, moshing and head banging to the music at the Vans Warped Tour stop in Atlanta. This is the third year for me to make this trip along with my daughter, Samantha, and her friend Kaylee Watson. Joining us for the first time is their friend Joseph Nichols.

We got here about 11 p.m. ET after leaving Saltillo about 5 p.m., and that includes driving through a nasty thunderstorm when we entered Georgia. It was so bad I had to pull over on an exit and wait five minutes before continuing.

Warped is an all-day festival of music, extreme sports and merchandise. In addition to 58 bands performing on various stages throughout the Hi-Fi Buys property, there will be a makeshift skateboard park and vendor tents promoting everything from T-shirts to animal rights. In the past we’ve seen bands like My Chemical Romance, The Academy Is …, Underoath, and one of my favorites from my younger days, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. The photos posted in the slide show are from last year’s event.

Some of the “name” bands performing today include Hawthorne Heights, Cute Is What We Aim For, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Yellowcard. Hey, aren’t you impressed someone like me, a child of the 8-Track Generation, actually knows something about these young bands? I know they’re not anything like my favorite band, Rush, or other favorite classic rockers like the Allman Brothers, Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, but it’s good to hear the new sounds and understand what kids are listening to these days.

The kids already have looked at the band lineup and plotted out which ones to see. I’m especially curious about a band with a very familiar name: Pepper.

If today is like our previous two Warped visits, we’ll have a great time. I’ve heard the weather forecast for Atlanta today, and it’s good news: High of 89 (not the usual Hotlanta heat) with a chance for rain. If it rains, it will be the first time for it to happen in our three visits here.

I may not be able to post anything the during show, but I’ll have a notepad handy and take notes throughout the day for a complete wrap up with photos.

Now it’s time to go wake up those kids and get ‘em ready for the show.

This Week in Neighbors (July 18-24)

This week’s This Week in Neighbors comes to you live from the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express in Douglasville, Ga. I made the drive here last night for today’s Vans Warped Tour music festival in Atlanta. I’ll be posting this morning and this evening on those events. As for this week’s Neighbors section.

I’ve created a slide show featuring this week’s cover story, Shelby Wayne and Joann Moore, and all there flowers. Once again, I did something extreme to get a photo and the story: Climbed a ladder to get on top of the Moores’ home to photograph their property. It was very shaky; I’m afraid of heights to begin with. But I managed to do it. When you see the slide show, it’s obvious which photos I’m talking about. The Moores put in a lot of time and work to upkeep their property. Tuesday morning, I dropped by their home to check on something and learned Joann was down in her back. Here’s hoping she makes a quick recovery so she can go outside and tend to her beloved flowers.

The Club Spotlight was on Young at Heart, an active group of people age 50 and older who meet on Thursdays at the Bel Air Center in Tupelo. The people there are truly ‘young at heart.’ During my visit I was asked if I would join them on the dance floor; I politely declined, saying I don’t dance on company time. (haha). The assignment also gave me a chance to reunite with Shirley Bonds, who was one of my fourth-grade teachers at Houston Elementary School 35 years ago. That’s Shirley and her husband, Larry, dancing in the slide show.

The Brewer Community is featured on the Our Neighbors page. This is one of my favorite communities in the county. Anytime I visit Brewer I feel at home. Brewer’s Fourth of July parade is a fun project, and it covers a large path. Vicki Lindsey, who helped organize the parade this year, said it takes about an hour for the parade to cover its route.

If you know of a person, community or group that would make a good Lee County Neighbors story, e-mail it to me at neighbors@djournal.com

Miss Mississippi Photos

Here’s a collection of photos featuring Lee County’s Corie Stanford (Miss Tupelo) and Kimberley Perry (Miss Historic Crossroads) at the Miss Mississippi Pageant. Also, you’ll see two shots of Jennifer Jo Blair, Miss Mississippi 1971, from Tupelo. The images are courtesy of the Miss Mississippi web site and Elwin Williams of Entertainment Media and Print Services of Vicksburg.

This Week In Neighbors (July 11-17)

As I write this, a very wicked thunderstorm is rumbling through. Lots of lightning can be seen through the window. Just hope the lightning doesn’t run through the lines into my home computer and fry my fingers I update my blog.

Cover Story: As I referred to in earlier posts, this was the preview on Lee County’s Corie Stanford and Kimberley Perry at the Miss Mississippi Pageant. I posted a photo album with a couple of shots of the girls as a way to tease to this week’s article. I’ll add a few more this week. The section also featured a related article on two girls – Miss Alcorn County Melissa King and Miss ICC Amanda Fleming – who don’t live in Lee County, but have family ties to our county. The pageant is under way in Vicksburg, with Pontotoc’s Tara Tutor – one of the girls from Daily Journal coverage area – among the winners in Tuesday’s preliminaries.

School’s Out: While taking a stroll around Ballard Park during the All-American City Family Picnic in the Park, I stopped for a few minutes at the Tupelo Skate Park to watch the skateboarders do their tricks. I thought to myself, these kids would make an interesting feature on the School’s Out page, so I returned late Friday afternoon and, sure enough, a dozen kids were out there with their boards. I especially thought it was cool to see a kid like David Anderson, who’ll attend Tupelo Middle School this fall, doing tricks and stuff on roller skates – the old fashioned four-wheeled kind I used to wear at the roller rink in Houston way, way back in the day. Phil Russell, the oldest skateboarder out there, volunteered to do some tricks for me to shoot. Deep down inside, I was  hoping the kid wouldn’t get hurt because I’ve seen some of these skateboarding videos (I have a teenage son, you know) and some of those skateboarding injuries were very nasty. Thankfully, no one was injured was I taking photos, though I was almost run over by a couple of skaters.

Our Neighbors: The Willis Heights neighborhood was this week’s featured area. It has a combination of people who make the extra effort to make their neighborhood a good place to live, and then there are some folks who make you wonder if they really care about upkeeping their property. Well, the neighborhood association is working hard to make the area a nice and safe place to live.

Sports: I broke out my old sportswriting skills for a story on the high school sports divisions for the next two school years. Even though I’m no longer on the sports staff, I still enjoy being around the high school sports scene.

 There weren’t many posts between last week to this. The Fourth of July holiday set my schedule back a day or two, so the past few days were spent playing catch-up. Next week’s This Week post may be a day or two late. After work Tuesday I’m leaving with my daughter and some of her friends to Atlanta. We’re attending the Vans Warped Tour stop on Wednesday. Lots of bands and hours of music. This will be the third straight year I’ll drag my old self out there to supervise the kids and enjoy the music and the sights myself.

Enjoying Independence Day

I hope everyone enjoyed the Fourth of July. I spent it both working and relaxing. I went to three Fourth of July neighborhood parades here in Lee County (Brewer, Carr-Visita and Highland Circle, a party for us Journal folks, a town festival/political speaking rally in Guntown and, finally, Tupelo’s annual All American City Picnic in the Park. The busy day wore me out. I was so tired, I actually slept nine hours – more than twice the average length for me.

I’m loading a slideshow of the Fourth of July parades and the Picnic in the Park. Maybe it’ll inspire you to have an Independence Day parade in your neighborhood or community next year.

This Week in Neighbors (July 4-10)

Happy Independence Day!

Let’s start this day off with a bang (LOL) by reviewing this week’s Lee County Neighbors. Due to a drop in advertising, this week’s edition was our smallest section page-wise (24) since the February rollout. Nevertheless, I packed it with plenty of stories and photos. It may have been a small section, but it was an exhausting week with more stories and the section’s regular lay-out person, Judy Putt, out on vacation. I had to do most of the page designs in addition to photos, writing stories, etc. I was wiped out when I finished the section at 4 p.m. Tuesday.

 The cover story was about a group of friends from the old town of East Tupelo (now Presley Heights in Tupelo). East Tupelo was overtaken by Tupelo in the late 1940s. The people from that side of Tupelo have been looked down on and disrespected by many people in the city; I can relate to how the East Tupelo folks feel. I’ve always made it a point during my time as Neighbors editor to write about the people and events of that neighborhood. They are good folks with a strong sense of history and community.

School’s Out: Lacey Hearn of Saltillo is out in Vegas hoping to catch the attention of a talent scout. Pretty soon, she’ll be back doing her bit as a “featured zombie” in the horror flick Scream Farm being shot in Alabama. Here’s something else about Lacey: She was a pretty good youth soccer player. I know because I coached her for a season four years ago, had coached against her in previous seasons and refereed games in which she played. I’m sure someone who’s knows my involvement in youth soccer will notice the irony of a story about Lacey written by me on the same page with a story promoting a Saltillo soccer camp.

Club Spotlight: Instead of a feature on a specific club, this week we chose to run a story about the roast of Dr. Ken Davis benefitting the Free Clinic in Tupelo.

Our Neighbors: The regular neighborhood/community feature was held this week. In its place was the bi-monthly Verona News column by Margaret Baker and plenty of photos from the Verona Yard of the Month program. The next neighborhood featured will be Willis Heights in Tupelo.

Sports: Wrote about those Band-Aid Boys from Saltillo. See the previous post on them about their story.

Band-Aid Boys

I’ve interviewed a lot of people in my 28 years in journalism, and that includes some pretty famous people. Folks like Bear Bryant, Eddie Robinson, John Elway, Al Gore, etc. But when I met the Band-Aid Boys, I think this was the first time I had to get down on my knees to interview someone.

The Band-Aid Boys is a tee-ball team out of Saltillo. The coaches, Stacy Cobb and Susan Duffie-Morgan, couldn’t find a sponsor for their team, so they decided to sponsor it themselves and gave themselves an unique team name. The band-aid part was influenced by the fact both Cobb and Duffie-Morgan are nurses.

 I watched the team play its last game and then met a few of them afterwards. The boy photographed with me is Jack Cobb, Stacy’s son. He proved to be one tough interview. As I said earlier, I had to get on my knees to go face-to-face with him. Here’s an example of one Q&A exchange between us:

Me: Why do you wear Band-Aids during a game?

Jack: I don’t know.

See what I mean. I eventually got a comment from him, which is in the story in this week’s Neighbors. It just so happened when I was shooting the Fun Day at the Park in Tupelo (a gathering of kids from various daycares and summer schools for games), Jack came up to me and said, “You talked to at our game.” I was tickled that he remembered me.

I wasn’t able to use all the photos of the Band-Aid Boys submitted to me for publication, so some have been posted here in a slideshow. It includes the photo of Jack and I.

Miss Mississippi Trunk Shows

Here’s another entry from the “Boy, I’m glad I’m not a sports writer or working on the Web site anymore” file …

Lee County Neighbors gives me an opportunity and the flexibility to cover a variety of events. Sunday was one of those days … I covered two “trunk shows” featuring local Miss Mississippi Pageant contestants: Miss Tupelo Corie Stanford and Miss Historic Crossroads Kimberley Perry.

For those of you unfamilar with a trunk show, it’s an opportunity for a pageant contestant to give her supporters a sneak preview of what she’ll wear and the talent she’ll perform at an upcoming competition. The young woman will model an outfit while her pageant director or coach makes a comment about it. To see more photos of a what a trunk show is all about, this is a link to the current Miss Mississippi, Taryn Foshee, and her trunk show before going to Miss America. I guess the term “trunk show” was coined long ago when people actually put their gowns, interview and party dresses, swimsuits, shoes and accessories in trunks before heading off to the pageant.

The shows were in different locations – Corie’s at the Link Centre in Tupelo and Kimberley’s at Mount Vernon Place near the Macedonia community outside of Tupelo. I spent about 30 minutes at Corie’s and then took a 10-minute drive to spend time at Kim’s. The photos I took at each stop are for next week’s cover story. I had planned to attend the trunk show of Amanda Fleming, Miss Itawamba Community College, on Thursday night in Fulton, but couldn’t because of a last-minute conflict.

The contestants will report to Vicksburg for Miss Mississippi this weekend. Preliminaires begin Monday morning and continue through Thursday evening. The finals and crowning of the next Miss Mississippi is set for Saturday, July 14.

Click to view the page feature all of this year’s Miss Mississippi contestants.