Market Rhes - Going the way of the Crystal Palace

The good news: all of Market Rhes's dry goods are 20% off.

The bad news: Market Rhes is going out of business.

This fabulous little market and lunch spot opened only one year ago. It provides speciality groceries like you won't find anywhere else in the region... sometimes even in this country. They provide exceptional meats, seafood and cheeses, all fresh and cut to order.

I don't know any details about when they plan to close, but I am devastated that this little shop has gone the way of so many other little independent shops in Oxford, like the Crystal Palace that used to be on University Ave. The Crystal Palace was a great little bead shop, the ONLY bead shop in Oxford, much like Market Rhes is the ONLY shop of it's kind in Oxford.

Market Rhes is open from 10:30AM - 6:30PM, Monday through Saturday, and they serve lunch from 11AM - 2PM daily. Check out their website here.

Market Rhes

721 North Lamar Boulevard

Oxford, MS 38655

Please support small businesses during the holiday season and during these hard times. You may pay a tiny bit more for products in some cases, but you are paying for quality and craftsmenship, and you are supporting your neighbors, as opposed to supporting our friends over in China.

Meanwhile, while all the small businesses suffer, Walmart racks in the record-breaking profits.

Did we shop our way straight to the unemployment line? Check out this article from 2003 by Charles Fishman: The Walmart You Don't Know. It seems that some of us can still look up from our shopping cart in time to see the future.

Buy Handmade and Support Local Artists and Craftspeople this holiday season

The countdown is on, and despite the worsening economy, I've noticed a lot of shoppers in Oxford, MS actually shopping.

What I ask the Oxonians to consider is this: buying handmade, locally-resourced products.

Why, you ask?

According to www.buyhandmade.org:

Buying Handmade makes for better gift-giving.

The giver of a handmade gift has avoided the parking lots and long lines of the big chain stores in favor of something more meaningful. If the giver has purchased the gift, s/he feels the satisfaction of supporting an artist or crafter directly. The recipient of the handmade gift receives something that is one-of-a-kind, and made with care and attention that can be seen and touched. It is the result of skill and craftsmanship that is absent in the world of large-scale manufacturing.

Buying handmade is better for people.

The ascendancy of chain store culture and global manufacturing has left us dressing, furnishing, and decorating alike. We are encouraged to be consumers, not producers, of our own culture. Our ties to the local and human sources of our goods have been lost. Buying handmade helps us reconnect.

Buying handmade is better for the environment.

The accumulating environmental effects of mass production are a major cause of global warming and the poisoning of our air, water and soil. Every item you make or purchase from a small-scale independent artist or crafter strikes a small blow to the forces of mass production.

We can look at the idea of shopping and consumerism from many different viewpoints. For example, when citizens of the USA were issued extra funds in their rebate checks, critics hoped this little extra lift would boost our own economy. But many Americans used their rebates to purchase new flatscreen TVs that were manufactured in China, and therefore gave a big boost to the Chinese economy, and not to our own. Companies like Circuit City still went bust. If Americans had invested their money entirely in locally produced, manufactured or handmade goods, our economy may have gotten a leg up on what is turning out to be a global recession. Time will tell, and in all truth, buying gifts from smaller companies or local artists is a great way to give a gift that is more unique and more thoughtful, especially if you are seeking gifts for those who seem to have one of everything.

Oxonians are lucky this year that the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council is hosting a Holiday Arts Market during the first week of December. 22 different vendors from Oxford and beyond will turn the Powerhouse Community Arts Center into a handmade gift-shoppers one stop shop. More details to come!

Consider how much more you often suffer from your anger and grief than from those very things for which you are angry and grieved.

- Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Text from the memorial archway:

Today we place a marker on that road. It is a marker that tells us not only where we have been, but where we need to be going.

-Former Gov. William Winter
Open Doors Ceremony, October 1st, 2002

Last Wednesday, after hearing the news of Obama's victory, I decided to take a few photos of the James Meredith statue on the campus of Ole Miss.

I had never visited the statue before. The bronze cast of Meredith, approaching the archway reading "Opportunity" on one side, and "Courage" on the other, marks the event that forever changed the face of the University: the day that a black man was admitted as a student.

That was in 1962, only 46 years ago. It seems shockingly recent, in terms of a lifetime. It seems disturbingly close, as if it is just on the other side of a time-shut door. When you stand next to Meredith's statue, the memory of that moment is contained, and it is intensely tangible. In the same way that the War Between the States ended 143 years ago, it seems that you don't even have to stretch to reach back in time and touch something of it that still exists, or see something that reminds you of it, and the ways that war hurt everyone who was envolved.

James Meredith's walk to school 46 years ago caused a violent riot on campus. Two people were killed in the clash between protesting segregationalists and U.S. Federal troops that day. The blazing hatred of that historic day still exists, just as the fierce hope for equality keeps breathing.

The Daily Mississippian reported on Thursday, November 6, that there were a few disruptions on campus, specifically in the dorms as the election result was announced. The University Police Chief compared the incidents to celebrations for Monday night football, and though students were handcuffed, no arrests were made. The multiple incidents were said to be caused by the exchange of racial slurs between white and black students.

Everyone knows that emotions run high during elections. As the Ole Miss Police Chief also noted, disturbances were reported at other schools as well. We also know that many election parties at Universities across the nation came to an end without violence or hateful language.

No one is immune from the adrenaline, but we can learn to control our anger, when things don't go our way. According to Dr. Steven G. Pratt of Superfoods Healthstyle, anger robs us of our health.

In one study of over one thousand medical students, it was revealed that those with the highest levels of anger, expressed or concealed, were at significant risk for developing premature heart attacks versus those with lower levels of anger. A high level of anger not only serves as a potential trigger for a heart attack, but in this study it was a trigger for causing a premature heart attack. These students with excessively angry responses to stress appeared to initiate biochemical changes marking them for an early heart attack.

Pratt suggests that finding Personal Peace is the key to relieving stress. However, there's no simple prescription for finding one's personal peace. He suggests that relaxation, meditation, breathing deeply, listening to music, thinking positively and seeking fun and friendship are just a few ways to tap into your personal peace. Finally, he writes that embracing nature plays an essential role in our health and well-being.

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts: the sight of a deep-blue sky, and the clustering stars above, seem to impart a quiet to the mind.

-Jonathan Edwards

Obama at the wheel!

Obama’s Top Priority: Spark a New Energy Economy - October 27, 2008
by Jessie Jenkins of It's Getting Hot In Here: Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement

Barack Obama’s top priority if elected president is to launch an Apollo-style national project to build a new, clean energy economy. That’s what he told Time magazine reporter Joe Klein last week.
With America’s economy rocked by a one-two-punch of spiking energy prices this summer and the credit crisis this fall, our nation needs a president with a clear sense of how to free our nation from dependency on oil and a plan to get America back to work. And with climate change continuing unchecked, we need a president that will take the lead in building a post-carbon energy system. A national project to build a new, clean energy economy is the right answer to these interlinking challenges, and Obama knows it.

From Time:
[Obama] has a clearer handle on the big picture, on how various policy components fit together, and a strong sense of what his top priority would be. He wants to launch an “Apollo project” to build a new alternative-energy economy. His rationale for doing so includes some hard truths about the current economic mess: “The engine of economic growth for the past 20 years is not going to be there for the next 20. That was consumer spending. Basically, we turbocharged this economy based on cheap credit.” But the days of easy credit are over, Obama said, “because there is too much deleveraging taking place, too much debt.” A new economic turbocharger is going to have to be found, and “there is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy … That’s going to be my No. 1 priority when I get into office.“

Hold him to it! And I will believe it when I see it!

The hard work of the Obama supporters at the poll here in Oxford did not pay off for Mississippi, who went red instead of blue. But it seems that much of the hard work paid off elsewhere.

Let's hope for the future of these little tykes that Obama can pull together a plan, a nation and an economy that has been so thoroughly poisoned by foreign oil and politics.

Ole Miss Green Initiative attempts to combat gameday trash

There have been many mixed messages coming from The Daily Mississippian in the last couple of weeks, concerning the efforts of the Ole Miss Green Initiative. One article quoted students saying that the recycling receptacles were not conveniently placed in areas where students eat and create trash, such as the Student Union. Other news claims that bus-riding numbers are up on the Oxford University Transit, a great sign that the program will continue.


I was on campus yesterday in the Barnard Observatory, and I noticed that at just about every doorway and exit there were multiple recycling receptacles. I won't call them trash cans, because they are actually white boxes with a hole cut in the top. Here's what I'm talking about.

Thursdays are all about preparation for the big game in Oxford. You will start seeing the, "RV No Right Turn" signs close to the highway exits on Wednesday before the game. If you cruise through the square Thursday morning, you will see the big beer trucks pulled up in the round about, unloading cases and kegs to all the various bars and restaurants.

This is the site you will see in the grove on Thursday before the game. Not a recycling receptacle in sight. But this is because the Ole Miss Green Initiative passes out green trash bags, for grove-goers to collect their bottles and cans themselves and take them home to recycle them, or to the appropriate recycling facility. This is a great way to promote recycling in the grove, however, I have always hoped that the University of Mississippi would take on the problem of gameday waste in a more responsible manner. If Ole Miss is prepared to haul the multitude of cans it sets out in the grove, why are they not able to place some white recycling receptacles out there as well?

I'll tell you why. Game day in the grove is all about the party. It is the biggest and most well-known tradition associated with Ole Miss, in my experience anyway. (I love the grove, I frequently visit the grove and am not trying to knock this tradition in anyway.) And from personal experience, I would say that when people are having a good time in the grove, it is difficult for them to remember to recycle, and they might also forget NOT to put the wrong sort of trash in a recycling receptacle. So for now, the green trash bags are as good as it gets, I suppose. But the quantity of trash and recyclables that accrues during a single game is quite huge. I imagine that many of the grove-goers are not inclined to drive back to their homes in other counties and cities, with a giant green trash bag in their car. They may actually not have room in their car for such a large trash bag, considering space for the kids, the luggage, the game day gear, the tent, the tables, the left over tupperware and trays, vases, camping chairs, etc.

Check out this article and particularly the video of the Ole Miss Green Initiative taking steps to promote green partying in the Grove.

http://news.olemiss.edu/index.php/Ole-Miss-News/News-Releases/greentailgating.html