Opinion: RHETA JOHNSON: Thankful for Mississippi, small moments of peace....
Fishtrap Hollow, MS
The world’s problems are best solved with old friends around a warm fire in the kitchen stove in Fishtrap Hollow. Three of us sat talking about France, dogs, the Middle East, good sausage, the Ottoman Empire, giblet gravy and other complex matters, less confident of our own pronouncements than we might have been a week before.
A week before, the Eiffel Tower went dark, and that made all of us who appreciate beauty and art and cultural contributions depressed, defenseless and unsure of all we once took for granted.
And, yet, this is the season of thanks, when we are taught to count our blessings, to remember the good and forget what ails us. With the same determination of my French friends, that’s what I aim to do here.
The Bradford pears along the driveway are wearing red berets, changing slowly this year, but in time for Thanksgiving. The branch is full, its spring source renewed by recent pelting showers. Family, including gorgeous teenage girls who like to bake, are spending the holiday with us.
I’m thankful, as always, for such small moments of peace in a world largely deprived of it.
My heart is full of thanks that presidential debates are not required viewing, and that old reruns of “NYPD Blue” appear on one of my severely limited channels.
I am grateful Auburn’s football season is nearly over, and for one last chance to salvage it. Even during a dismal season like this one, I’m thankful to pull for a team with fans who don’t leave until the game is over, no matter the outcome.
A new biography of the writer Joseph Mitchell inspired me to re-read a book for which all word-lovers should give thanks: “Up in the Old Hotel.” And an amazingly readable little book called “Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style” made me even more grateful to E.B. White for his work in preserving the Rosetta Stone of good writing.
William Strunk said a mouthful: “Omit needless words!” If I were the kind of gal who wanted a tattoo, I’d have Strunk’s admonition inked across my typing hand.
I heard about one of Levon Helm’s last albums, “Dirt Farmer,” and I’m thankful he had it in him. Word of that came from a photographer friend, Marc Lamkin, whose sometimes lonely, sometimes funny photographs never cease to amaze me.
I’m increasingly grateful for such creative friends in a world seduced by technology, dizzy with devices, not thought. I’m thankful to have lived before the Internet.
And that brings me to pals who paint, like John McKellar, or write, like Johnny Williams and Ellis Anderson, or garden with gusto, Gale Laird, or design interiors with raised cypress, Betty Douglass, or write plays that make you laugh and cry simultaneously, Cheryl Sproles. I’m thankful to spend time in a state with such diverse and delightful artists and artisans, people who know what really matters.
And that, of course, brings me to Mississippi, the state one former New Yorker, Richard Grant, recently “discovered” but had difficulty explaining to his friends. “They viewed Mississippi as a backwater, at best, and more commonly as a byword for ignorance and bigotry.”
I’m thankful to know better.
Rheta Grimsley Johnson’s most recent book is “Hank Hung the Moon … And Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts.” Comments are welcomed at rhetagrimsley@aol.com.