Miss’ippi musings .. and hogs

From afar, Mississippi has always seemed so poverty stricken and I’ve always thought it must be a sad place to live. But the locals we’ve met here absolutely love Mississippi. They say that it has a strong sense of community, where everyone helps everyone out. It’s a reminder that happiness and wealth are often disconnected … although perhaps we weren’t talking enough to people at the poorest end of the spectrum?

The Canemount Plantation along Natchez Trace, now a wonderful B&B.

In the west, we don’t live history the way people in the south do. The native populations, antebellum era, civil war all loom large along with family histories and historical events. This leads, somehow, to a strong sense of common culture and pride of place, much like Europe. It would actually be nice to have more of that deeper view of time in our part of the country.

Southern Hospitality seems real. People in the South have a ‘culture of honor’ (you may not want to insult people here) and graciously polite with grace, way more so than us Northerners. “Yes Sir”, “Much appreciated, Y’all” are standard, smiles are broad and greetings are easy. Dinah had one person tell her in Natchez that underneath those smiles, can be some pettiness .. but if that’s the case, maybe that is a small town culture issue, not Southern!?

Dinah sorta hugging a small Dogwood tree.

It’s really green here with so many birds and their choruses along with a thick covering of green forests and trees. We have mountains, but the south wins on amount of plant life. And insects! Yes you need a “bug pretreatment” as part of the car wash drive through.

There is fun, amazing food here and people eat ..um … well. Most of it is rich, rich, rich. Our bodies miss lighter options at all meals, even while enjoying the heck out of this decadence. I’m using an AI based nutrition advice tool from Metabite, a startup company that I’m on the Board of. It REALLY doesn’t like BBQ, suggesting I swap out the meat for some lentils. And the laughter that Jackie, our morning cook one day burst out into, when the App recommended swapping out the eggs for some tofu was priceless. However, the AI has a point .. there are a lot of really heavy and out of shape people here, such as the very sweaty and heavily breathing new parent we saw on our hike today, who looked at Dinah and I and said “Wow, look at you old people making me feel ashamed”.

As an outsider and newcomer, I’m hesitant to comment on the race issue. But I will say that while the economic differences between whites and blacks seem clear – as they are most places in the US – I feel there is an ease between races that I’d not expected, given my personal stereotypes of the south. The African American owner of a museum about the Civil War that we attended thinks that the racism issue is way overblown, although he does acknowledge an ongoing ‘evil vs good’ issue. This is obviously complicated and we surely haven’t been here long enough to conclude anything … but I’m going to work hard to drop any preconceptions about the South and race I had when arriving.

Wild hog along a Texas highway.

Another random learning on our journey: in the 15th century, the Spanish brought over hogs for food. They escaped. 500 years later there are seven million feral hogs in North America that are causing $2B/year in destruction and growing rapidly worse, mostly in the south and Texas. There is no easy solution … maybe the AK-47s actually do have a role!?