Share Your Mississippi Stories: S. Neyland

2017 is Mississippi's bicentennial! To celebrate, the Mississippi Library Commission has created the Bicentennial Bingo project. Throughout the year, fill in the squares in our bingo card to get the full Mississippi experience and learn more about our state. Even though the bicentennial year is almost over, the Bicentennial Bingo project will remain available on the Mississippi Reads site for the foreseeable future. It's never too late to participate. One of our favorite squares is "Share Your Mississippi Stories," the responses from which we'll be sharing here and on our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We're so pleased to share our first Mississippi Story submission below.

My Big “O” Grand-Mama; My Lit “O” Grand-Mama

I was born and raised in a family of 12 children in a small Mississippi town in Wilkinson County. Myself being number 6. I was the middle child, making me the more balanced child. We had a mother and father and two living grandmothers. My father's father passed away before I was born. Likewise, my father also died before my son and daughter were born. I plan to break that cycle with my children. My mother’s father is a different story for another day.

As stated in the previous paragraph, my siblings and I had two living grandmothers when I was a child. Once, we were getting ready to load into the family Chevy station wagon to go visit our grandmothers. My older sister asked the younger children, “Do we want to go see our big ole grand-mama first or our little ole grand-mama?” My mother’s mama was stout and my father’s mama was thin. When I went to see my mother’s mama I call her BIG “O” and like all grandparents, who like everything their grands do, she liked the nickname and it stuck from that time forward. Likewise, when we visited my father’s mama, we called her LIT “O” and the nickname stuck as well. We visited BIG “O” first, because she lived closer.

However as time went on LIT “O” got older, so her sons built her a house across the road from our house. She eventually passed way, full of years. However, she did outlive my father. She died while I was still single so my children never got to meet my LIT “O” grandmother. They did get to meet my BIG “O” grand-mama, or Grand-Mama BIG-O, as they would call her. Grand-Mama BIG-O, also eventually passed, full of years. I am looking forward to the time, I can be the Grand “O” granddad, or what every nickname by grands come up with. I will love it.

By S. Neyland

Until next time, happy bingo-ing!

Mississippi Museum Musts

It's International Museum Day! This day celebrates the fact that "museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples." What better day to mark off the Visit a Museum square on your Bicentennial Bingo card?

With its unique melting pot of peoples, cultures, and heritage, Mississippi has a number of fascinating and fun museum experiences to offer. Here are just a few tantalizing museum visits waiting for you:

• Winterville Mounds is a prehistoric ceremonial center of over twenty mounds located near Greenville. This site and museum is a must-see for those interested in the indigenous peoples of Mississippi.
• The Eudora Welty House in Jackson is where the famed author lived the majority of her life. The garden, created by Welty's mother Chestina and tended to by both women, is also available for viewing.
• The Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs holds not only Walter Inglis Anderson's art, but also work by his two brothers Peter Anderson and James McConnell Anderson. There's even a portion of Anderson's cottage on the Mississippi coast, where he went to get away when he couldn't make the trip to Horn Island.
• The Smith Robertson Museum and Cultural Center is located in Jackson's first school for African American children. Renowned author Richard Wright's first short story was published while he was a student here in the 1920s. Visit the museum for exhibits on the African American experience, especially as relates to Mississippi.
• The African American Military History Museum in Hattiesburg is housed in the only remaining USO building built for African American soldiers. African Americans have fought in every war since our country's beginning and the AAMHM honors them all.
• The Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson is Mississippi's largest museum. In 2010, it received the IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Services, the nation’s highest honor for museum and library service to the community. Housing pieces from a multitude of artists, the museum also hosts traveling exhibits across Mississippi for the benefit of those who cannot travel to Jackson. An Art Across Mississippi exhibit is currently showing at the McComb Public Library.
• The Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale is Mississippi's oldest music museum and a 2013 recipient of the IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Services. On your visit, check out items like Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker's guitars, among many, many more blues memorabilia items.
• The Mississippi Children's Museum in Jackson is an innovative discovery and exploration museum for kids. Exhibits focus on literacy, health and nutrition, culture and history, and STEM topics. It is a finalist for 2017's IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Services.
• The Lynn Meadows Discovery Center in Gulfport received the IMLS National Medal for Museum and Library Services in 2016. Visit the center for interactive, hands-on fun with your children.
• In December, the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum will open to the public in Jackson. We can't wait to see all the fine artifacts, memorabilia, and exhibits these museums will offer.

There are many, many more museums located across our beautiful state. Visit one today for an life-changing experience and don't forget to check off your Bicentennial Bingo card. Until next time, happy reading!

My Mississippiversary: C.A. Pierson

2017 is Mississippi's bicentennial! To celebrate, the Mississippi Library Commission has created the Bicentennial Bingo project. Throughout the year, fill in the squares in our bingo card to get the full Mississippi experience and learn more about our state. One of our favorite squares is "Tell us about your Mississippiversary," the responses from which we'll be sharing here and on our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We're so pleased to share our next Mississippiversary submission below.

"I was born in Gulfport in 1981, so I suppose that's when I officially became a Mississippian, but I moved to Savannah, Georgia, in 2001. I lived there for a couple years expecting to be there at least a decade before moving further north... but when Hurricane Katrina hit, I was out of contact with family for far too long.

 

It was frightening not knowing what was going on and looking for familiar faces in news footage, hearing that "due to inclement weather in the area you are trying to reach, your call cannot be completed as dialed" a hundred times, and eventually learning that family members had been injured and I wasn't here to help. It was too much, so, by November 2005, I'd moved back. So, that was the first time I chose to live in Mississippi." -C.A. Pierson

My Mississippiversary: D.S. Payne

2017 is Mississippi's bicentennial! To celebrate, the Mississippi Library Commission has created the Bicentennial Bingo project. Throughout the year, fill in the squares in our bingo card to get the full Mississippi experience and learn more about our state. One of our favorite squares is "Tell us about your Mississippiversary," the responses from which we'll be sharing here and on our Facebook and Twitter feeds. We're so pleased to share our first Mississippiversary submission below.

"My Mississippiversary is the date of my birth. The blessed event happened in Vicksburg, in the hospital, in the full heat of summer, before central air. I was educated in the Catholic school system of the Diocese of Natchez-Jackson (now the Diocese of Jackson). That was also a blessing because education was separated by race/skin color (and the Catholic system followed the laws of the day), but the nuns who taught in Black schools educated students for college, not fields and factories. That sound foundation readied me to be able to leave Mississippi and enjoy a fullness of life not possible in the state because of legalized racial and social segregation and oppression. In the years I was away, some change occurred. The generations-old underlining systems did not support many of those changes however, and the state remains an oppressive place for many. If you only consider the beauty of the hills, forests, and waterways you ignore the social problems and reasons for poverty, crime, inadequate funding of public schools, and continued exodus of Mississippians who want to live free in a free society.

Mississippiversaries are good to have. It is good to acknowledge milestones and footprints of the people who have made the state what it is. It is good to recognize the heroes and heroines of both the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement that sought to undo the damage of slavery and Jim Crow. It is good to, yet again, acknowledge Welty, Faulkner, Morris, and Grisham. It would be great if the Mississippi writers who are/were Black were also acknowledged beyond an occasional send-up of Walker and Wright. Celebrating Mississippiversaries still looks like the history of the state: separate and unequal, well-funded and unfunded." -D.S. Payne