OurTupelo

Have you ever wanted to relive your old memories? What would it mean if you could? 

In “The Candy House,” author Jennifer Egan imagines a technology  — Own Your Unconscious — that allows users to upload all of their memories into a cube-shaped hard drive and review them with a headset. The technology evolves into the Collective Conscious, a shared database of memories anyone can access for the price of their own consciousness being added to the collective. 

The novel exists in the same universe as Egan’s Pulitzer Prize-winning hit, “A Visit From the Goon Squad,” but shifts the focus to new characters and the way the Collective Conscious reshapes their life. “The Candy House” is also written in the same structure as its predecessor — each chapter is an individual unit with its own style, and chapters jump back and forth across time, but loosely connect. 

Egan, who will be appearing as a featured guest at the Mississippi Book Festival Aug. 20, spoke with Mississippi Today about her newest work. 

Editor’s note: This story has been edited for clarity and length.

Mississippi Today: I didn’t realize when I started it that “The Candy House” is a sort of sister novel to “A Visit From the Goon Squad” — another book to add to my reading list.

Jennifer Egan: I actually think that going in the direction that you’re going, starting with “The Candy House,” I think is optimal. It’s not a sequel, it’s just a related world.

MT: I’m curious, why do you think that’s optimal?

Egan: Well, I’ll back up a little, I had originally thought that “A Visit From the Good Squad,” would go in a backwards chronology. That ended up not working very well, so I ended up having no chronology, just organizing it around curiosity. But the reason I thought it would go backwards was that I was really delighted with the kind of unexpected surprise of, instead of saying, “Gee what’s gonna happen?” you’re saying, “Oh, what was that like?” So a kind of backwards pattern of curiosity, having curiosity be satisfied backwards instead of forwards.

I was very interested in that because there are all kinds of advantages that it gives the reader. The reader already knows the future, so the reader experiences the present with a particular character in a very different way than we do if we’re just wondering, “Gee, what’s gonna happen?” as the character is. That kind of relationship to time and narrative has been exciting to me from the very start. I couldn’t make it work in a straight backwards chronology, but it’s my general feeling that in books like this, finding out what did happen is as fun or more fun than finding out what will happen. That’s what makes me think starting with “The Candy House” would be more satisfying. It’s not a neat sequence. But I think that those surprises of hearing about events that came and went and then being plunged into the middle of them, that particular form of surprise and satisfaction is going to be more present going from “Candy House” to “Goon Squad” than the other way around.

MT: But in terms of the chronology of your experience of writing these books, you were choosing to return to this world, even if not really continuing the narrative that you had before. How did you decide to do that?

Egan: Well, another aspect of books constructed this way is that there’s no real end to them exactly. There’s a story arc in both books for sure, but because they’re such ensemble creations and each character has its own constellation of history, people, experience, et cetera, and new peripheral characters to be curious about and turn into major characters, there’s no clear end to it except the exhaustion of curiosity. That’s what would put an end to it, the exhaustion of my curiosity. That definitely had not happened after “Goon Squad.”

… Beyond just the kind of structural curiosity that is built into books like this, another reason that I think I was so eager to continue is that there’s a high failure ratio writing books like this. In other words, I would say about 50% of the first draft material that I created for both books really didn’t end up being viable. I think part of that is when you’re trying to take a different narrative approach every time, you’re going to strike out a lot. But what that means is sometimes I end up in a strange position of knowing things about my characters that the reader doesn’t know because I learned them in chapters that didn’t end up in the book. That’s sort of a strange feeling. Usually, in my books, I don’t know any more than I’m letting my readers know. I don’t withhold information. So that feeling of knowing things that the reader didn’t know led me to feel very naturally that this was stuff that I had to share in some way. These stories were not complete.

The final thing I would say is I really do love taking genres that are out there in the culture and using them to write fiction, and these kinds of books are a great way to do that. I wouldn’t want to have written an entire novel in Twitter at 140 characters, but it was a lot of fun to write one chapter like that. These books, if I can make them work, just become a really good vehicle for lots of development and experimentation on my own part.

MT: It sounds like a really exciting process personally that you work through when you’re building each chapter narrative and how they fit together.

Egan: It is. It’s a very intuitive process. It’s not cerebral — well, that’s not true. It’s an alternation between intuition and analysis. I rely on my intuition to come up with a very improvisational draft, and then I evaluate them very critically. That’s why 50% of it ends up on the cutting room floor, as they say. I take the best and try to work with that and shape it into something meaningful. So that’s my process. It’s an alternation, but I place a high value on intuition and improvisation. It’s where I get a lot of my best stuff.

MT: So, when you were saying that you were still curious about the characters 12 years ago, and that’s what drew you back to it — do you feel like you still have that curiosity?

Egan: I can’t totally tell, to be honest. There are definitely forms that I want to try. That list is still active — things that I haven’t done yet, or haven’t managed to pull off, frankly, that I hope I can. I am curious about certain characters, but I’m not sure the curiosity is at the fever pitch that it was after I finished “Goon Squad.” I think right now, I feel very eager to move away from the present day, which I did after “Goon Squad.” I wrote a historical novel set in the thirties and forties, which took a huge amount of research and was a very different kind of book told much more traditionally. Shipwreck, survival at sea, wartime, combat, I mean, it’s just really different. But I had written a bunch of first draft material for “The Candy House” before I kind of dove deeply into that book. This time, I think I’m going to move into writing about the past, possibly without dabbling anymore in these characters for a bit. I’m not quite sure why. I think part of it is writing about the present day feels inevitably like writing about technology, and I feel a little bit weary of that. I was after “Goon Squad” too, but more so this time.

MT: Well, technology plays a more central role in this book too.

Egan: And a more central role in our lives. That combination, I find it just wearisome in the end. I’m not anti-tech, I think that’s clear in this book, I take a pretty playful approach to it. It was a very useful tool, narratively, for me to engage with because it lets me do all kinds of things that I couldn’t have done otherwise. That was really how I arrived at the tech in the book. I did not start out with it. It was an invention that could do all the things I wanted it to do. But I also feel a real eagerness to move away from it, back to a time that I actually remember — no internet. 

I was in my thirties before I ever got online. It’s really refreshing to imagine in the pre-internet period. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the internet. It does a million things for us, and it was a big help to me imaginatively in “The Candy House”, but the fact that all roads lead there just closes off a lot of dramatic possibilities. If you think about movies that involve technology, we spend more and more time staring at people clicking away on computers, and that’s not interesting dramatically. So the pleasure of going back in time is the pleasure of more dramatic situations that would be ridiculous now because these problems would be solved in ten minutes online.

MT: So the issue you were more interested in exploring in this book was more about memory than the tech. The tech was kind of just a tool to reach that question. Would you say that?

Egan: Not exactly, but obviously memory is a big part of it. I was interested in enabling connections and shared experience between people that was impossible without the machine, but my awareness of the machine came about very incrementally. For example, one of the early chapters I wrote was “Rhyme Scheme.” In it, Lincoln is trying to figure out how to make his colleague fall in love with him and he very briefly considers the idea that he could view her consciousness — that term gray grab was very instantaneous. I remember the moment when I wrote it and I thought, “oh, I see, I get what that is.” He has a way of being able to see inside her consciousness, so there must be some sort of sharing possibility there. That was my first inkling of what the device would be. And it just comes and goes, because he considers it and then immediately disregards it because there is clearly an interdiction against that. But that’s the kind of little clue that I got. 

Then a moment when things became really clear was when I wrote the chapter called “What the Forest Remembers.” I started out with Lou and his pals going on this adventure to the marijuana farm, and then there came a moment where Charlene says “How could I possibly know all this?” and that was a moment where the machine really crystallized for me. 

“Ah, I get it. She’s using a device that lets her see memories through other people’s eyes.” That was so exciting to me because it let me do something that you really can’t do in fiction that easily, which is to justify being in two people’s first-person viewpoints at the same time. I mean, of course, you can kind of do anything in fiction, but I love the idea of a technology that enabled and justified that.

Once I defined the machine and was really leaning into the way people fetishize the color that their cube is and etcetera, I would sometimes imagine myself giving one of these cubes a big kick and just having it disappear. Inside, there’s just the book that we’re holding in our hands. Because in a way, what I’m doing in the book is moving through a collective of different points of view and memories as I move through my 14 characters’ points of view.

MT: The end of the book and that image both seem to be an inclination towards fiction over tech, which I’m sure is natural as a writer, but I was curious if you agree with that.Egan: I would say that, as a general matter, we should spend less time looking at pictures and more time engaging with language. It’s important to keep our brains fit and pictures don’t do that. It’s a very lazy way of consuming information. I think we all feel that. Does anyone feel good after spending two hours scrolling on social media? I would love to hear from that person …

I don’t include watching a movie in that lazy category, but reading is different from all of this because there are no pictures. We have to supply them. Reading is harder to do if you fall out of the habit of doing it. And I think that we would all, and I include myself in this, be well advised to pick periods of the day when our phones are not near us, and it’s amazing how quickly you forget about them actually. 

… I think that reading books is really important, not only for our mental fitness — there is a kind of learning and experience that we can have reading if we are fit, that we can’t have looking at pictures. It’s a very simple fact that’s inarguable. 

Fiction is the only narrative art form that takes us authentically inside the minds and points of view of other people. If you are staring at a picture, you are, by definition, having the opposite experience. You are on the outside, anything the human in that picture tells you is performative. So I would argue that fiction still does something no other narrative art form can do. And therefore, it is worth staying fit in order to be able to have that experience.

MT: Do you worry there will be a day when the machine that you imagined or something similar becomes real and the experience of fiction becomes less relevant?

Egan: I think that there are so many other things to be frightened of if that machine ever came to pass that the disappearance of books is almost not even on the list. My assumption was that such a machine could not exist because we don’t understand the brain well enough, but people have been telling me since “The Candy House” came out that I’m actually wrong and that we are closer to that than I think. That is truly horrifying. 

And I have to say, I think if that happened, a kind of resistance of the sort I’m imagining actually could be the response  — where people are so unwilling to be represented in this collective that they actually might consider as radical a step as shedding their identities and starting over. That actually becomes imaginable to me if there is an online collective that contains actual consciousness. Right now, it contains performative consciousness, and inadvertent consciousness in the form of all the information we don’t realize we’ve given up as the price of access to A, B or C. But I really cannot fathom that such a machine could exist. I just don’t think we understand the brain well enough to replicate it. If we can’t fix mental illness, if we can’t solve schizophrenia and still don’t even understand what causes it, how on earth could we externalize consciousness? I truly don’t believe it.

MT: That feels funny though, for people to have told you since the book was released, that the impossibility you’ve created on purpose is actually possible.

Egan: It is funny. But I will say this. Sometimes things that seem ludicrously impossible do come to pass, and that is something I’ve witnessed in my lifetime. Sometimes the ridiculous things do happen, but I share your feeling that this doesn’t even hold together as an idea if you look too closely, much to less a reality. One reason I think it feels so imminent is that to a certain degree, the internet already functions as a kind of collective consciousness, and that may be why all of this feels so possible. You can spend time on social media and learn an enormous amount about someone, far more than they probably realize. There is a collective of information. It’s not consciousness exactly, but it gets a lot closer to it than anything we’ve had before.

MT: This feels funny to say, in terms of this conversation — I don’t remember if this was something I thought to myself or something I read that someone else wrote, but reading “Candy House” feels a bit like an expanded version of scrolling through an Instagram feed. In a much more in-depth capacity, but because it’s an interconnected world, it’s like my interconnected circle of people who know each other and who overlap very loosely, and you’re like taking little snippets of each piece. Like, “Here’s a moment. And then here’s a completely separate moment, but it’s a little bit related, and here are the threads as to why.”

Egan: For sure. That’s to some degree intentional, in that I like the feeling of moving among consciousnesses as a way of moving among worlds. And I also connect that to gaming, something like dungeons and dragons where we move among pre-created worlds that are imaginative, but also have these hand-drawn corollaries.

I also want to say one more thing about what you said, “I’m not sure if I thought this or I read it,” which complicates our conversation a little bit — I would argue that consciousness is always collective to some degree. In other words, our individual consciousnesses consist of enormous amounts of shared understanding and cultural awareness that we share with everyone who is alive at this moment. We are always calling on knowledge that is not exactly “ours” originally but is in the culture around us. There’s nothing wrong with that. 

There’s a lot of stuff that I don’t think of, that I don’t even know consciously, that ends up in my books. Names are one of the most obvious places that I see this. Here’s one example from “The Candy House” that was just pointed out to me recently: in the chapter called “Rhyme Scheme,” which is really where we first come to understand the sort of Orwellian future we’ve ended up in, there’s an important character in that in that chapter called O’Brien who ends up being the defier of this new reality. O’Brien is the name of the protagonist in George Orwell’s “1984”, but I had forgotten that. These sorts of name clues pop up again and again in my books. What they show is that I, like you, don’t know whether I thought of things or whether they were already in me from other things I had read and done, because consciousness is collective.

The post Q&A with ‘The Candy House’ author Jennifer Egan appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Nicole Akins Boyd, R-Oxford, a first-term state senator, talks with Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Bobby Harrison about ways to improve the lives of mothers and children in light of the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade. She is chairing the nine-member Senate Study Group on Women, Children and Families created by Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

The post Podcast: Sen. Boyd: Postpartum Medicaid extension support in Senate near unanimous appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In Mississippi, like Kansas, the Supreme Court has said the state Constitution provides a right to an abortion.

The Kansas Supreme Court made its ruling in 2019. The Mississippi ruling came in 1998.

In an effort to supersede the Kansas Supreme Court ruling, the Legislature placed on the ballot a proposal to proclaim that the state Constitution does not include abortion rights.

That proposal was defeated Tuesday by Kansas voters by a 59% to 41% margin, meaning abortion remains legal in the state viewed as one of the most conservative in the nation.

Mississippi’s Supreme Court ruling said, “While we do not interpret our Constitution as recognizing an explicit right to an abortion, we believe that autonomous bodily integrity is protected under the right to privacy … Protected within the right of autonomous bodily integrity is an implicit right to have an abortion.”

There are two ways to reverse that 1998 Supreme Court ruling. The high court in a new case could overturn it. But since there is no abortion case pending before the Supreme Court, it is difficult to ascertain how such a reversal could occur. Another option would be to attempt what Kansas tried to do and amend the Constitution to state explicitly there is no right to an abortion. Like in Kansas, the proposal to amend the Constitution also would require voter approval.

The question then is whether the outcome in Mississippi would be different than in Kansas. Most observers were surprised that the anti-abortion proposal in Kansas was defeated. Mississippi Center for Justice attorney Rob McDuff, who has defended abortion rights, said he is not so sure the outcome here would be different than in Kansas.

“Mississippi is a conservative state in many ways, but a lot of people here believe in the rights of the individual and believe government should not dictate a person’s beliefs,” McDuff said. “For centuries, people have debated and disagreed about the fundamental question of when life begins.”

McDuff continued: “When a woman is faced with the possibility of carrying a pregnancy inside her own body and bearing a child against her will, I think most Mississippians believe this is a decision for her to make in light of her own beliefs, and perhaps in consultation with her family and her doctor and her pastor, and not a decision for the majority of the state Legislature. That is what Mississippians said the last time they were asked this question in 2011, when, by a wide margin, they voted no on an amendment that would have banned abortion for purposes of our state Constitution. I expect the answer would be the same today. Recent polling in Mississippi bears that out.”

A recent poll commissioned by the ACLU of Mississippi found 51% opposed the overturning of Roe v. Wade that provided a national right to an abortion.

In 2012, after Mississippi voters rejected the so-called “personhood” amendment that stated life begins at conception, Speaker Philip Gunn authored a resolution saying abortion was not a constitutional right. That resolution died in the House Constitution Committee. Had it been passed by a two-thirds vote of both legislative chambers and been approved by voters, it would have overturned the 1998 Supreme Court ruling saying the Mississippi Constitution granted the right to an abortion.

Gunn, who was in his first year as speaker in 2012, said recently he did not remember details about the proposal. When asked if the House might take up a similar proposal in the 2023 session, he said, “We are looking at a lot of things.”

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, ignoring the Supreme Court ruling, recently said, “I don’t think we need a constitutional amendment in Mississippi because we have a state statute which speaks to that. The only abortion clinic that operated in our state is now closed, I don’t know that it has to be in the Constitution.”

It’s true that laws banning most abortions in the state went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the national constitutional right to an abortion in a landmark case from Mississippi. The practical effect of those laws is that abortions are not being performed in Mississippi.

But that 1998 decision hangs out there. At some point, there could be a conflict in the Mississippi judicial system between that constitutional right to an abortion as cited by the Mississippi Supreme Court and the normally lesser-in-the-eyes of the judiciary laws or statutes.

At the very least, by ignoring that Supreme Court ruling, a precedent is being established in the state that the Mississippi Supreme Court can be — well, ignored.

A simple way to resolve the conflict between state law and the Mississippi Constitution is to let the people vote like they did in Kansas.

The post Should Mississippi, like Kansas, vote on abortion? Would the outcome differ? appeared first on Mississippi Today.

In the beginning, it was called “Contrology.” 

Joseph Pilates, a German physical fitness trainer, developed a series of exercises for the body and mind as an effective way to alleviate the aches and pains of dancers.

Controlled breathing, fluid movements using lower back and abdominal muscles, tone and shape without the pain associated with high-impact exercises. Over time, “Pilates,” as it’s come to be known, has become a popular alternative to the grind of a gym workout.

Angela Brown opened her Pilates of Jackson studio 13 years ago at the Canton Mart Square shopping center, located in northeast Jackson.

Walking into Pilates of Jackson, you’re immediately breathing in and exhaling slowly. The lighting is dim, a calming ambiance, filled with giggles, light banter and the aroma of scented candles. A decorative, painted stone above the door reads, “Namaste y’all.”

Brown is welcoming, encouraging and demanding without being a drill sergeant. Her charges follow her lead in swirling legs in circles, holding balls between knees while lifting and holding rumps high in the air, or gently shadow-boxing using a series of spring-controlled pulleys.

“Lift up and hold it,” Brown tells a class of women, slowly counting backwards to the sounds of their collective relief. “C’mon, ladies. One more set, and then we’ll take a break.” Sighs fill the air, and the leg lifts begin again. 

In her mid-50s, Brown is a testament to the benefits of practicing what she teaches.

“I was always a gym rat. After having three kids, I wasn’t happy with how my body changed,” said Brown, while stretching using a series of straps and pulleys. “I worked out, killing myself, but never really lost weight. I fell in love with Pilates and joined a studio in Ridgeland.”

As the women’s session ends, a group of Jackson State football players are the next group to file in. Brown greets them all by name as they prepare for their session.

“See these guys breaking a sweat?” Brown asks, her hand sweeping in a semi-circle to include all the grunting and grinning young men. “They never would’ve believed this kind of exercise could help them. They’re believers now,” she says with a satisfied smile.

A few groans in agreement emanate from the footballers. 

Brown works the room, adjusting the placement of a foot, the bend of a knee or the height of lifted legs.

“Being a mom of three, Pilates helped me get back to my pre-baby shape with a stronger core, better balance and flexibility,” she said, while kicking off her sandals to join the young men. “Pilates began to change my mind, body and spirit. It’s a series of core exercises where the leaner muscle you build, the more weight you lose. It focuses on a lengthened and stronger core. Being low-impact, your joints and muscle don’t hurt, and it’s still a great workout.”

“Isn’t that right, fellas? Okay. Everybody take five,” Brown says, releasing the group from a series of core building leg lifts.

Their satisfaction is palpable.

The post At Pilates of Jackson, even JSU football players break a sweat appeared first on Mississippi Today.

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Four-year-olds enrolled in state-funded pre-K through Head Start did not perform as well as their counterparts enrolled through school districts last school year, which state officials attributed to more time spent in virtual learning. 

Early learning collaboratives (ELCs) are one form of public pre-K, made up of partnerships among school districts, Head Start agencies, childcare centers, and nonprofit groups. Collaboratives follow the same curriculum and share professional development opportunities and resources, with the goal of providing all students enrolled with the same quality of instruction. 

Last month, the Mississippi Department of Education released the most recent results from the Kindergarten Readiness Assessment, which measures public pre-K and kindergarten students on their early literacy skills. It is used as an instructional baseline for teachers, and students who meet their benchmark score have been shown to become proficient in reading by the end of third grade. This spring, 48% of students in an ELC through Head Start met the benchmark score, while 71% of the other ELC students did.

 Edshundra Gary, the Greenwood Leflore School District’s early learning director, attributed this decline to a few weeks of lost instructional time teaching students who never attended daycare how to behave in a classroom and how to observe COVID safety protocols. 

Students who participate through Head Start, a federally-funded program that promotes school readiness in children from low-income families, are shown in data from previous years to score a little bit below their ELC counterparts, but still score well above the state benchmark for reading readiness. During the pandemic, all students started lower, but the gap between Head Start students and other participants widened compared to previous years. 

Jill Dent, the bureau director of early childhood for the Mississippi Department of Education, primarily attributed this difference to virtual learning. While it did vary locally, she said more Head Start students were virtual than other ELC students. 

Despite this, Dent expressed confidence that students will be back on track with their reading scores soon.

“This next kindergarten year is really going to help them,” she said. “They’ll have a solid full year in school, and I expect they’ll catch up and be back on track by the end of the year.” 

Leigh Ann Reynolds, director of early childhood for the Sunflower County Consolidated School District, has also identified ways that the gaps can be made up. The Delta Health Alliance, which operates Head Starts in the county, also has a summer program which she said has been shown to get children to the correct benchmarks by the end of the summer. 

This discrepancy may be resolved soon, as every Head Start in Mississippi will be fully returning to in-person instruction this fall according to the Mississippi Head Start Association. Nita Thompson, executive director of the organization, said it was a combination of federal guidance and local decision making whether to keep students virtual over the last two years, but that being able to resume home visits and engage parents in the classroom will help students get back on track.

Thompson also pointed out that there are still significant benefits to participating in pre-K programs, including emotional and cognitive development and learning to form relationships outside the home. Research has also shown that participation in early learning decreases the likelihood of students getting held back and increases the likelihood of graduating from high school. 

Thompson said that a student’s early learning experience is not only impacted by time spent in person, but also by community resources like access to transportation, parks and playgrounds, healthy food options, and healthcare. 

“All of those things will impact development, and particularly attendance, and we know that there is a direct correlation between attendance and growth,” she said. 

Micayla Tatum, associate director of early childhood policy at Mississippi First, elaborated on this point, saying Head Start, by design, serves students from a low socio-economic status, which research shows means they are more likely to struggle with literacy because of higher levels of stress. She also said that low socio-economic status individuals were also more vulnerable to the impacts of the pandemic, which results in many Head Start students needing additional assistance to achieve at the same level as their peers. 

“Families recognize that their children haven’t learned as much these past two years as they would have in a full-time program, so I think families are also ready to re-engage and connect to make sure their children make those gains,” Thompson said.

The post Head Start students score behind peers in pre-K, but gap expected to close this fall appeared first on Mississippi Today.

House Speaker Philip Gunn did not put rumors about his political future to rest during the Neshoba County Fair.

The third-term speaker told Mississippi Today last week that he is in a “constant evaluation” about whether he will run for governor, for another term as speaker or not run for anything at all. That indecision has left many members in the 122-member House of Representatives openly questioning what they should expect in the final year of the term.

Normally by this time in a four-year term, speakers planning to remain in office for another term go out of their way to allay speculation about their future. Traditionally, speakers want to affirm their commitment to presiding over the often contentious chamber to fend off potential challengers. Any sign of an open speaker’s post or uncertainty draws potential candidates like bees to honey, and running a lower legislative chamber is hard enough without questions and doubts about the leadership. And power abhors a vacuum.

“I honestly don’t know what’s going on, and I’m not sure that anybody knows right now,” said longtime Rep. Manly Barton, R-Moss Point. “… (Gunn) running for governor was the rumor we’ve all heard, but there’s been no announcement. He has never addressed it with me … We heard it pretty much during the session last year up until a month ago … There’s been a lot of conjecture, guessing based on what we’ve been seeing — (Speaker Pro Tem Jason White) fundraising, and the assumption there was fixing to be a change in leadership … There’s been no announcement, and we had been led to believe there was be an announcement.”

Barton continued: “It can get squirrelly if people are not sure who the leadership is going to be or what the leadership team looks like, when things are unsettled. That’s the reason members are calling around trying to find out who’s on first and who’s on second.”

Rep. John Hines, D-Greenville, said, “Absolutely people are talking about it. But I have not personally had the speaker tell me he is not running. But people are discussing it.”

READ MORE: If Gunn runs for governor, there will be speaker’s race, but not like old-time donnybrooks

The numerous rumors about Gunn’s future prompted colorful state Rep. Michael Evans, an independent from Kemper County, to announce during his speech last week at the Neshoba County Fair — one day before Gunn spoke — that he was endorsing White, R-West, as the next speaker.

“I don’t know anything for sure,” Evans said when asked he if he was certain Gunn was stepping down and White, perhaps Gunn’s closest lieutenant in the House, was running for speaker. “I have heard things like everyone else that Gunn is leaving. But he has not said. I don’t know.”

Evans added, “Everybody said Jason is going to run for speaker. I went ahead and threw my support out there just in case.”

At the same time, Evans pointed out Gunn needed to come back for one more term to be fully vested in the state retirement system and to be able to draw his full pension. He questioned whether he would give up that retirement.

“Maybe that is not that important to him,” Evans said.

Of course, if some of the rumors are true, Gunn might not lose his state pension in his new position. For months, it has been rumored that Gunn was considering a challenge of Gov. Tate Reeves in the 2023 Republican primary. In recent weeks, though, those rumors have cooled off.

There also has been speculation associating Gunn with the vacant post of executive director of the Mississippi Community and Junior College Board and with the vacant position of head of the Mississippi Development Authority. Ironically, Reeves would appoint the MDA executive director. And to take either post, it appears Gunn would have to retire sooner rather than later.

To perhaps add credence to some of the rumors, White has been fundraising statewide, appearing to stand in for Gunn in some instances.

White could not be reached for comment.

“I don’t see a scenario where Jason runs against Philip,” said House Ways and Means Chair Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, who is close to both legislators. “I don’t see that happening.”

Of course, the main person spurring the rumors is Gunn by not saying unequivocally he is running for re-election to his state House seat, which includes portions of Hinds and Madison counties, and to the post of speaker.

In the summer of 2002 rumors began percolating that four-term incumbent Speaker Tim Ford was not seeking re-election in 2003. Reacting to those rumors, Ford, a Baldwyn Democrat, released a statement in the summer of 2002 that if anything helped to spur the rumors instead of quelling them. He said he would make a final announcement in October.

In October of that year, the Legislature was in the midst of one the longest and infamous special sessions in state history — an 83-day special session on the issue of making changes to the civil justice system to make it more difficult to sue businesses. Some have speculated that the uncertainty of Ford’s future made the normally powerful speaker unable to control the House, prolonging the special session. In reality, though, there also were other difficult factors that prolonged the special session.

At any rate, in December 2002, just before the start of the final legislative session of the four-year term, Ford finally made his announcement: He would not seek re-election.

For much of the 2003 session, various House members jockeyed for the open seat. Billy McCoy, D-Rienzi, prevailed and served two terms as speaker. McCoy announced his retirement after the final session of his second four-year term.

He was succeeded by Gunn. The question now is will Gunn vie for his fourth term as speaker, attempting to tie Ford as the second longest serving speaker in state history.

Besides White, Barton is among a handful of lawmakers who have been mentioned as a potential speaker or pro tem in the future.

“I’ve never shied away from that,” Barton said. “I would certainly enjoy being in a leadership role. I don’t think it’s a secret I want to be in a leadership role — not necessarily speaker, but in leadership.”

The reason there are questions about the leadership of the House, Lamar said, is that he does not believe Gunn has made a final decision on his political future.

“There are options,” Lamar said for the speaker.

READ MORE: Will Gunn run? Speaker has signaled 2023 challenge of Gov. Tate Reeves

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Mississippi Today presents a members-only exclusive event via Zoom on Monday, August 15 at 6 p.m. featuring a live conversation and Q&A with award-winning chef and now author Vishwesh Bhatt, hosted by managing editor Kayleigh Skinner. Read a full review of Bhatt’s new book.

A native of Gujarat, India, Bhatt later moved to the United States where he’s become known for his inventive dishes that bring southern staples together with subcontinent cuisine, such as Peanut Masala–Stuffed Baby Eggplant and Collard-Wrapped Catfish with a spicy Peanut Pesto. He is 2019 Southern Living’s Southerner of the Year, 2019 James Beard Foundation Best Chef South, and was inducted into the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs in 2022. Bhatt has been a part of Chef John Currence’s City Grocery Restaurant Group since 1997, becoming executive chef of Snackbar in Oxford, Miss., in 2009. I Am From Here debuts August 16 and is a collection of recipes and stories from his unique perspective as a southern chef.

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Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday said he’s “pushing back on the left” by pulling Mississippi out of a federal pandemic rental assistance program and plans to send any unspent dollars back to Washington.

Reeves said “Mississippi’s economy is booming,” unemployment is at a record low, and the rental assistance program has been incentivizing people to stay out of the workforce by offering up to 15 months of rental and utility bill assistance.

“There is a job available for virtually every Mississippian who wants to work,” Reeves said at a press conference on Wednesday. “These socialist experiment programs being pushed from Washington are cruel, like a bookie offering free cash but never mentioning the downside.”

Advocates who help people with rental assistance said Reeves’ decision will hurt Mississippians — many of whom are working but struggling to pay all of their living expenses.

“This is not a good day,” said Gwen Bouie-Haynes, the executive director of the National Association of Social Workers-Mississippi Chapter, which has helped residents sign up for the program. “… This will result in more people living on the street in Jackson and across the state of Mississippi.”

Reeves said he’s unsure how much money is left and will be returned to Washington. The COVID-19 federal rental assistance program started in 2020 with the first round of pandemic funding for states and continued last year with a subsequent funding program. Mississippi was allocated about $340 million in assistance. Reeves said Wednesday that the state has spent about $200 million. He said that 86,146 people applied for the program and that 36,889 were approved for assistance.

READ MORE: Reeves to end $300 unemployment stipend after Gunn calls for crackdown

Reeves said he’s ordering the Mississippi Home Corporation to stop taking applications for the Rental Assistance for Mississippians Program on Aug. 15.

Reeves said that early on, the program required people to show proof of unemployment or hardship related to the pandemic, but that was later waived. He said ending the program will not affect applications already submitted or those made before Aug. 15. He said emergency rental and utility assistance programs that existed before the pandemic will also continue.

“My top priority is making Mississippi the best place in the nation to live and to work and to raise a family, and that’s impossible to achieve if able-bodied people aren’t working,” Reeves said.

In February, Mississippi Today reported, based on information provided by the Home Corporation, that 66% of the applicants approved to receive funds through the program were employed, and the majority are Black and female.

The latest U.S. Census data available, for the week ending July 11, showed that 44.5% of adult Mississippians surveyed reported being behind on their rent or mortgage, with eviction or foreclosure in the next two months being either very likely or somewhat likely.

At the same time period last year, 60.5% reported eviction or foreclosure as likely. At times during the pandemic, Mississippi led the nation in the percentage of people reporting likelihood of eviction or foreclosure.

Various groups, such as the NAACP and Children’s Defense Fund stepped in to help Mississippians sign up for the program after the state received national attention on both the local and national level for a slow rollout.

On Wednesday, Reeves praised the Mississippi Home Corp for its administration of the program.

Bouie-Haynes said there are still people impacted by COVID-19 and who are unable or who struggle to pay for housing, rent and utilities. She said the advocacy groups found that high utility costs were a major problem in rural areas.

In addition, she said many of the people receiving assistance are “the working poor” who are employed in jobs that do not pay enough to cover the high costs of rent and utilities. She said her office still gets about 8-10 phone calls per week from people who are trying to to find out where their application stands in the process for gaining rental assistance.

Reeves said some states have exhausted their federal funds for the program, but said he did not know of any other state returning its share of the money to the federal government.

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