Deesha Philyaw began writing in the early 2000s as a personal hobby. What started as respite from the duties of being a stay-at-home mom to a busy toddler has led Philyaw into literary acclaim, a path she hadn’t quite imagined for herself 20 years ago.
An award-winning writer, Philyaw studied economics at Yale and worked as a management consultant before returning to graduate school and becoming an elementary school teacher. Later, she started a family and decided to be a stay-at-home mom, which led her to writing.
“Our oldest daughter was a toddler who didn’t nap,” Philyaw said. “So, I started grabbing like 30 minutes out of the day just to write, something I could do for myself and sort of lose myself in another world.”
Philyaw, the author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies which won her the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and landed her as a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, will be a featured guest at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 21. Ahead of her first visit to Mississippi, Brown spoke with Mississippi Today about her career and her influences.
Over the years, she wrote dozens of stories based on the nostalgia of her childhood and young adulthood in her hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. Her writings centered Black women, like her own mother and grandmother, and the church, a place she spent much of her upbringing.
“It was a curiosity I had about these women as a child and as an adolescent that rose to the surface when I started writing about them because I was dissatisfied with my own life at that time. And so I thought it was safer to give my dissatisfaction to these characters that I was conjuring up rather than writing about my own life,” Philyaw said.
After she divorced in 2006, Philyaw began writing for a living to support herself and her two young children. She freelanced and published short stories and personal essays on themes like race, parenting, gender and culture in The New York Times, The Undefeated and Ebony Magazine. She also co-authored a book with her ex-husband, Co-Parenting 101: Helping Your Kids Thrive in Two Households After Divorce.
But it was while she was on hiatus from working on a novel when Philyaw’s agent encouraged her to focus more on the “church lady stories” – the short stories she began writing all those years ago about Black women and the church.
“(My agent) sort of saw them as church lady stories. I wasn’t thinking of them in that way. But then I did get really intentional,” Philyaw said. “I already had a couple dozen stories in the pipeline with various degrees of completion that could be a part of such a collection…Finishing the collection felt like something I could do. And I did.”
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, Philyaw’s award-winning book which published in 2020, is a collection of nine short stories, a sort of fine-tuned culmination of the stories she began writing years ago, exploring the themes of Black women, sex and the Black church.
Philyaw said she wanted Black women to see themselves reflected in the characters and stories in her book, which also grapples with themes of motherhood, personal freedom, agency, identity and truth.
“(The title) just seems to fit,” Philyaw said. “The stories are the kinds of things that Black women whisper amongst ourselves. So, those are the secrets about how we navigate our full humanity, our full sexuality, our full sexual lives in the face of the church’s teachings, which are, in many ways, antithetical to freedom, in particular, sexual freedom.”
Though the short stories center Black Southern church women, Philyaw said people of many different backgrounds can relate to and identify with the stories in The Secret Lives of Church Ladies. Philyaw’s book is also being adapted for television for HBO Max by actress Tessa Thompson.
“So many of us have these struggles, trying to reconcile the reality of our lives and the complexity of who we are with these sort of oversimplified structural rules that the church gives,” she said.
Philyaw was recently named the 2022-2023 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
And as the 2022-2023 Grisham Writer-in-Residence, Philyaw is returning to her home region of the South for the first time in over 30 years, she said, following in the footsteps of other Southern writers like Maurice Ruffin, Jesmyn Ward and her dear friend Kiese Laymon.
“We’ve survived the pandemic. (Kiese) is one of the many people I can’t wait to hug again because we didn’t know if we were going to get to do that again,” Philyaw said. “Mississippi has this long, complicated literary legacy, and to be in the place where so many of the complex and beautiful stories have been told by complex and beautiful people, I’m excited about that. And the food.”
In this episode of The Other Side, Secretary of State Michael Watson said he believes Gov. Tate Reeves should call a special session of the Legislature to address issues created by a Supreme Court ruling that struck down the Initiative 65 medical marijuana program and Mississippi voters’ right to ballot initiative.
Geoff Pender: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Other Side podcast. This is Geoff Pender with Mississippi Today. I’m joined today by my fellow political reporter, Bobby Harrison.
Bobby Harrison: [00:00:18] Hey Geoff.
Geoff Pender: [00:00:18] Hey Bobby. And our guest today is Secretary of State Michael Watson. He has been secretary of state since 2020. He formerly served as a state senator for District 51 I believe from 2008 to 2020, and pails from beautiful Pascagoula. Welcome Mr. Secretary.
Michael Watson: [00:00:42] Thank you, Geoff and Bobby. Great to be with you both.
Geoff Pender: [00:00:45] Well, let’s get started. There’s been a lot of stuff in the news that you you’ve had a keen interest in recently, the Supreme Court ruling and the issues with our state voter ballot initiative and the medical marijuana ballot initiative that passed, but got struck down.
So where do things stand with that right now? And what are you advocating happens now?
Michael Watson: [00:01:08] Yeah. So I mean, a few things, you know, you’ve got the Supreme Court case of medical marijuana, and we have talked a little bit about, you know, what that looks like as far as a special session whether or not the Legislature would come in.
Obviously the governor would have to call that in. And on the other side initiative process you know, the court struck that down, but the process itself is still technically alive. And so we’ve got a few initiatives that are still out there. You know, depending on if the Legislature comes in and changes the rules or, we have some type of special election to change the constitution in the provisions, in which we saw dealt with. I was thinking about Supreme Court case. You know, that could happen prior to the year running with folks, getting their signatures. So those are still technically alive, but we’ve got a lot of conversation to be had in Jackson at the Capitol, as well as again, if the Legislature changes the initiative process by amendment to the constitution, then that would have to go to a vote.
So we’re, we’re still actively following each of these issues.
Bobby Harrison: [00:02:10] And Mr. Secretary, just to be clear to background for people which, you know, better than anybody. The initiative process was struck down by the Supreme Court and a lawsuit over to America medical marijuana that was passed by voters back in November, that ballot initiative was. And what was challenged in the courtroom was the fact that language in the constitution about an initiative process says that the signatures to place an issue on the ballot have to be gathered equally from five congressional districts. That was put into the constitution in 1992, I believe. And in 2000, we lost a congressional district based on the census. So now we just have four.
So it’s mathematically impossible to do what the constitution calls to be done. And in the past it’s been ruled that just collect those signatures from the four districts. That was just kind of like a common sense type thing to do. But the court said no, that the language had to be rewritten. Am I correct in that?
And just tell me your impressions of the court ruling. And I mean, you kind of argued that it should just go the way it’s been going for the past 10 years. So just using the four districts togetherto get signatures. So I don’t know if there’s a question in there, but comment on it.
Michael Watson: [00:03:21] Sure. Bobby, a few things there to unpack kind of as an attorney. What the ruling said was basically, look, you’ve got to have signatures from the old five.
The constitution says you know, one fifth of the 20%, which makes it unworkable. However, It didn’t strike the process itself. They basically said, look, you know, and this is me paraphrasing. The process is still there, but you’re never going to be able to get that to a ballot because there’s a question about where the signatures need to come from.
And until that is dealt with, you know, in theory, again, it’s unworkable. However, the other portions of the constitution are still there dealing with the initiative process. So we’ve got some, you know, initiatives, we’ve got heck five or six that are still alive technically. And again, once you get through the process of having it published and getting the title in summary, you publish that and then you’ve got a year once you start collecting signatures. So again, in theory, If the Legislature acted and the constitutional provision was changed and then adopted by the people of Mississippi within a year timeframe, however, that may happen, you still could technically get some of these amendments that are still alive to the ballot.
So we’re going to watch that closely. You know, clearly, if the Legislature doesn’t act any time soon that year time is going to lapse and then absent some type of language in an amendment in statute, in the constitution provision that would allow them to rescue those initiatives.
They would die if that year time lapsed. So it’s confusing a little bit, and it’s tough to kind of get down into the weeds. But again, the process is still there. It’s just unworkable with the signature requirement as is .Now, you’re right. We were right dead middle of the case. We did argue there’s a statute out there that, that you know, basically says, hey, you’re the five congressional districts.
It’s still a statute it’s still in law. So our argument was for the purposes of, you know, gathering signatures from congressional districts, we’re going to refer to this statute. As you know, there are other board commissions out there that still refer to the five congressional districts. Again, the court struck down the initiative process with the signatures coming from the old five congressional districts because there now are four congressional districts. So there’s some confusion there too. And I think you’re going to see that walked through by the Legislature once they address that, and we’ll see what they do with it.
Geoff Pender: [00:05:47] You touched on something just then that I’ve seen some other people questioning. These five districts are still used for some other purposes Now perhaps their accompanying laws are such that this ruling wouldn’t automatically hamper that. Or can you explain that? How can those five districts still be used for things such as board appointments, judicial, the community college board? How does that work? How can they still be used?
Michael Watson: [00:06:16] That’s a great question. And the one that we’re still asking too. I got a call the other day from some folks over at wildlife. Some of their commissioners, same kind of situation. So I think again, when the Legislature comes in to address that, whether that’s in a special session or, you know, first of next year when they address this provision, I think they’re going to have to look at that across the board.
Well, it doesn’t just impact signature gathering for initiative process. It also applies to many of these boards and commissions. So do we need to reword those? Do we need to restructure those? What does that look like? So it’s a great question, Geoff, and one that I can’t answer for you.
Geoff Pender: [00:06:52] The only explanations I’ve heard on that is it some of those other accompanying laws dealing with board, whatever, that their wording is a little different.
They say districts as they existed in such and such time and date. If that were something that would prevent problems with those, then one might ask the question: well, why couldn’t you come back and just change the accompanying statute? Maybe even, I don’t know, without going through amending the constitution or an election or whatever. But would that be possible?
Michael Watson: [00:07:31] I think so, via statute. Now the initiative process, you know, clearly that was in 2733 in the constitution. So you’re going to have to amend the constitution for that purpose. But as far as these other boards and commissions, and you’re right, some of them did say, you know, as drawn in so-and-so date.
And I think that was part of the argument from the other side against our position at the hearing. You know, look, it wasn’t spoken to specifically. That’s a moving target in a sense that if congressional districts change, then so does signature gathering requirements. And obviously the court found that to be a compelling argument, and that’s what they ruled.
Bobby Harrison: [00:08:10] Interestingly, the Court of Appeals judges, the court right below the Supreme Court, is they’re elected from those old five congressional districts, but they did change the law in that instance. They call them Court of Appeals districts instead of congressional districts.
But I mean, I’ve read the law concerning the wildlife board and the community college board and they don’t change. I mean, it just says the five congressional districts. It doesn’t make any reference to how they existed at any such and such time. So there’s a lot of inconsistency there it seems like.
Michael Watson: [00:08:40] Yeah, definitely. Being a former legislator, you know, sometimes we will. amend a code section. And our legal services, they do an outstanding job. And many times you’ve got to change provisions in other statutes, just because you tinkered with one here, it impacts something over there. And that’s what we’re seeing.
There are some boards of commissions that were changed. There are some that weren’t or some maybe they weren’t intended to be changed, but it’s caused some confusion now. So we’re going to have to go in, or excuse me, the Legislature’s going to have to go in and correct many of those, in my opinion.
Bobby Harrison: [00:09:12] Mr. Secretary, you referenced that as a former legislator, and you’re also a former Constitution Committee chair in the Senate. And I’m asking a question I really don’t know the answer to, but I mean, one thing that came up into court arguments was the fact that the Legislature had a chance to change this and they did not change it.
I mean, I think part of it was just the legislators didn’t think it was a big deal, but didn’t you introduce a bill, not a bill but a constitutional resolution, to change it one time? I may be wrong about that, but I think you did.
Michael Watson: [00:09:40] No, you’re you’re correct, 2015. And you know, I think the Legislature had been kind of rested on the idea that we’d had a couple of other provisions, initiatives that have gone through and didn’t see an issue with it.
So maybe there was no immediacy to address it. You know, again you know, I saw the language. I saw that there could be an issue, and that’s why we had that drafted and then tried to get that done. You’ll recall, you know I was chairman of constitution, and the former lieutenant governor maybe he didn’t think that was such a big deal.
So we’ll see. It has to be dealt with now. And we tried to do it back then, but it is what it is.
Geoff Pender: [00:10:19] Looking forward a little bit, there’s already been some talk. And I know this has been a debate for many, many, many, many years, but in your mind, as they address the ballot initiative process, are there changes they should make, improvements?
There’s been talk of a allowing voters to change or create statute, but not amend the constitution. Perfect world, having a magic wand, what would you like to to see done as they address this?
Michael Watson: [00:10:50] Yeah, we’ve been proactive on that, Geoff, and I think it’s a two-step process. Number one, obviously people need to have a way to have their voices heard if the Legislature is not reacting or, you know, performing their duties in a sense.
And we’ve seen this provision mechanism happen numerous times, obviously voter ID, eminent domain and then now Initiative 65. So it’s been a successful provision and used by Mississippians. And I think they deserve and need that. My hope is again, a two-step process. Number one, let’s go ahead and fix what we have to reflect the four congressional districts.
Let’s get that in and get that voted on. And number two, I think it’s going to take a little bit of time to kind of flesh this out in the sense of we’ve seen other states where they do allow their constituents, their citizens to amend statute. They do allow for their citizens, you know, to amend the constitution.
So do we want both? And if you go back and look originally, I think it was in 1916, we amended our constitution to add both, where you could amend statute and amend the constitution.
Bobby Harrison: [00:11:56] Oh, both were in the original constitution? I did not know that.
Michael Watson: [00:12:01] 1916 we added that to the constitution. Now it was struck down. I believe it was the Powers case in 1922 if I’m not mistaken. You can go back and kind of dig through that, which by the way, the Powers case is one of the reasons that we decided not to ask for a rehearing. But we could talk another hour about that. But again, that was in our constitution, and they amended it back in 1916. So that’s been thought through before. You know, are there different hurdles for a statutory as opposed to a constitution?
Do you want those? Is it just the statute? Is just a constitutional amendment? So that’s something that we’re digging through. We’re looking at all of the other 50 states trying to get an idea of what’s worked well in these other states. And is this something that we need to add here in Mississippi?
So again, I think it’s a two-step deal. Let’s fix what we have. And then let’s take some time to make sure we get it right. And then ultimately, you know, do we want to change it to a statutory and that constitutional initiative process? So we’re going to do our homework and present a plan to the Legislature.
And obviously they’re the ones that have to make that change moving forward.
Bobby Harrison: [00:13:04] Well, staying on the issue of the Legislature. There’s a couple of different issues here. Would you prefer a special session to go ahead and get this done? And if there was a special session would you just want to take up the medical marijuana issue and wait on the the overall ballot initiative issue or what’s your position?
Michael Watson: [00:13:18] All the above. You know, I believe that we should go into a special session for numerous reasons. Number one: so many folks came out of medical marijuana. It clearly passed with a strong majority of Mississippians voting. Matter of fact just this past week, a very close family friend of mine whose mother is now battling stage four cancer couldn’t eat, was in pain and they were able to get her some. I’m not sure if it was gummies or brownies. I’m not too familiar with that industry, but she was able to ingest that and then, you know, was able to eat and get her appetite back. So Mississippians voted for that, and I think you can help so many people.
So I would like to see the Legislature come in and handle that as quickly as possible while they’re there. Let’s fix this provision so we can go up for a vote. And then, you know, as we’ve mentioned before, the other initiatives that had passed there’s questions out there, whether or not they can be challenged. I think that they would both stand a challenge, but why waste that time?
Why put that risk out there when you could go ahead and address those? There’s statute and do it in a special session. So you’ve got four things that you could fix pretty quickly in my mind. And you get some, you get some relief, the Mississippians who clearly voted strongly for it. You get the process back before the people for the constitutional provision.
Now, the question is, would you call a special election, which they have done before? You may recall back in 2001. Or do you wait to 2022? And if they waited to 2022,then obviously that would take the immediacy out of fixing that provision. So those are decisions that the governor is going to have to make whether or not he calls the special session, and if he does what he includes. But as far as I’m concerned, I would say, yes, let’s do it, the will of the people into statute and get some relief to people who desperately need it.
Bobby Harrison: [00:15:08] My math showed, and it’s scary to say my math. People who know me know my math is usually not too good, but my math showed that a special election would cost somewhere around $1.5 million roughly. Would you concur in that or would you say my math’s wrong?
Michael Watson: [00:15:28] You got that one about right Bobby. We’ve shot at between $1 to $1.5. And so it’s better to err on the side of the conservative nature there and say $1.5 would get it done.
Bobby Harrison: [00:15:38] Changing the topic real quick. I know you’re busy, so we won’t keep you much longer. One of the ballot initiatives deals with early voting. I think you’ve gone on record in the past that you might be willing to look at some type of expanded early voting in Mississippi, but you’re dead set against expanded mail-in voting. Would you like to see something done on that issue during the upcoming 2022 session?
Michael Watson: [00:16:00] Yeah, so I’m a thousand percent against universal vote by mail. I think that’s a terrible idea. And one that we could see much more fraud involved with that. So I’m totally against that. On the other piece, I believe the last conversation that I had dealing with that was, look, there’s an initiative out there.
And by the way, it’s still out there, Initiative 78, which is one of the ones that I mentioned. You know,if the Legislature acted, if there was a special election in theory, they still could get their signatures within the year process and put that on the ballot. So I gotta be careful with that one.
Obviously we oversee that initiative process. But with that being on the plate there, my conversation, the last one we had anyway, was basically, look, if this is coming before the people, perhaps the Legislature should be proactive and look at what other states have done, Florida, and several others who have done it and done it well and successfully without the fraud. How have they done it, and is that something that we should look at in Mississippi? I think we owe it to Mississippians to have an open mind, to at least listen, to do our homework and form our opinions based on that homework that we have done. So other states have done it andhave gotten it right. I would say this, Bobby, some of the, not some of, most of the studies that I’ve seen, that basically said there is no increase in turnout with early voting.
It’s basically just a convenience issue. So I’m still old school in the sense that I love Election Day. And I think that is, I don’t think, I know that it’s the safest way to vote. So that’s my preference. But if there is a conversation, if there is an appetite, it is something that Mississippians deserve us to sit down and listen and do the homework and make sure we’re making wise decisions for our state.
Bobby Harrison: [00:17:41] Some people have said that the Legislature should address medical marijuana, which I think what you’re saying on early voting prior to the initiative, so that what some people saw problems with in the medical marijuana initiative could have been ironed out through the legislative process, but they chose not to take it up.
Michael Watson: [00:17:58] Yeah, absolutely. Bobby, you see this in the number. We’ve got five or six initiatives that were before us. So I think that’s a national trend that you’re going to see more folks going in that direction. So if you’re seeing that, you know, public sentiment grow in certain areas and yeah, I think it is the Legislature’s job to listen and respond.
That’s why we’re elected or elected to do the will of the people. And, that was one of the reasons we had that conversation, but you’re right. Same thing with medical marijuana. I think, you know, everybody kind of saw that thing from the ground up, just that train left the station. Perhaps the Legislature should have done something prior to, and I think that’s where we find ourselves now. Let’s get it right.
People want it Mississippi so we needed to be responsive to that. And again, that’s one of the reasons I said, let’s go ahead and have a special session and get it done.
Geoff Pender: [00:18:43] Mr. Secretary, your office deals with many, many different things. A lot of people may not realize some of the business responsibilities. Just real quickly, looking at the coming legislative session and all, what are some other issues that are top of mind or that you might be pushing for with the Legislature?
Michael Watson: [00:19:04] Yeah, Geoff, that’s a great question. And really quickly, just so people know, elections obviously is the face of the office, but then we have business services. So your LLCs, your corporations, your nonprofits, your cemeteries, your sports agents.
And I could keep going down that list, but those are filed with our office. We have the APA, the Administrative Procedures Act so rules and regs are under our office. We really impact your lives just about every facet, whether you know it or not every day. And then we have public lands. So we’ve got 16 section lands.
Then with education, we’ve got Tidelands along the coast. We’ve got forfeited properties. It’s a big office, and it has a big impact. So you’re right. We’re looking at several different things, right? One of the things that I’m really excited about, we’re working through with DOR. And I learned this, Alabama does this.
So every year LLCs and others have to file your annual report. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s a quick, easy kind of thing to do. It’s free. It doesn’t, you know, there’s no cost to it, those that are in Mississippi. But what if you could do that on your tax return? So it just knocks out one more step that you have to do as a business.
You could just do your filing. It’d be intertwined with your tax return. A DOR would send us that information. Again, just one less step that somebody has to have as a small business, just kind of hanging over their head. Not a big deal, but again, if you can make it easier for businesses, that’s something that we want to do.
So we’re looking at that. We’ve got some issues that have arisen in the scrap metal area. So we’re doing some homework and research in that. You may see some of that coming forward. As you know, again, elections. We had two big pieces last year that we’re going to come back with this year on dealing with voter roll maintenance.
And that’s been a big topic of conversation with S1 and HR1 as well as our proof of citizenship legislation. So we’ve got a bunch of things out there be it business, be it land. We’ve got some 16 section land questions on the ag side. Should we extend those leases to give farmers more time with the leases to invest in the land to get better returns? Many questions out there. We’re looking at some conservation ideas.
So you’re going to see a very active Secretary of State’s office. Again, coming from the Legislature and understanding that process really kind of gives me a leg up to understand how to get things done over there. So we’re going to be active and you know, we’re going to work hard for Mississippians.
Geoff Pender: [00:21:16] Well, we appreciate you joining us today. We’ll be staying in touch as some of these things progress or don’t as the case may be whether there’s a session or not. Again, thank you for joining us.
Bobby Harrison: [00:21:29] Appreciate it, Mr. Secretary.
Michael Watson: [00:21:30] You got it, Bobby. Thank you guys.
Adam Ganucheau: [00:21:39] As we cover the biggest political stories in the state, you don’t want to miss an episode of The Other Side. We’ll bring you more reporting from every corner of the state, sharing the voices of Mississippians and how they’re impacted by the news. So, what do we need from you, the listener? We need your feedback and support.
If you listen to the podcast on a player like iTunes or Stitcher, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. We also have an email in which you can share your feedback. That address is Podcast@MississippiToday.org. Y’all can also reach out to me or any of my colleagues through social media or email. And as always thank you for your feedback and support.
Subscribe to our weekly podcast on your favorite podcast app or stream episodes online at MississippiToday.org/the-other-side. For the Mississippi Today team I’m Adam Ganucheau. The Other Side is produced by Mississippi Today and engineered by Blue Sky Studios. We hope you’ll join us for our next episode.
On Tuesday, June 23 Mississippi Today Circle Members were given exclusive access to a Zoom conversation between sports great Archie Manning and Mississippi Today’s Rick Cleveland. Intimate conversations with celebrated Mississippians is just one perk of Circle Membership. To learn more or join, click here.
It has been more than 50 years since Archie Manning’s final football season at Ole Miss, yet he remains one of the most beloved athletes in Mississippi history. Archie and his family transcend athletics, with a generational generosity that has elevated them as celebrated philanthropists, and golden-hearted community leaders.
In this live, virtual event, Archie and Rick swap stories of the times they’ve spent together on the sidelines, in the locker room and everywhere in between, including a discussion about the recruitment of Archie’s grandson, Arch Manning, who is the top high school quarterback in the nation. They also explore why it is that 50 years after his graduation from Ole Miss, he remains one of the most beloved – if not most beloved– athletes in Mississippi history.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-At-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with a true Mississippi storyteller, acclaimed investigative journalist Jerry Mitchell. Mitchell, who founded the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting in 2018 after a long career at the Clarion Ledger, talks about his recent book Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era and the cases he has covered in his illustrious career, including how his reporting convicted serial killer Felix Vail to justice. Ramsey and Mitchell also talk about current state of journalism and why investigative journalism is more important than ever. Mitchell shares why he has chosen to stay in Mississippi after all these years.
Rusty Thoms, right, with Judd Merkel and his long lost cap.
Twenty-four years ago, Mississippi State’s Rusty Thoms won the hearts of Omaha and fans of the College World Series.
Twenty-three years ago, on a memorable return trip, Thoms paid tribute to those Omaha fans in his own special way.
This week, in Omaha, one College World Series fan paid Thoms back still again.
Warning: This is a neat story. If you don’t want to feel a little bit better today, stop reading now.
Omaha is a college baseball player’s heaven on earth. It is the place every college baseball player aspires to be. Another pack of Mississippi State Bulldogs are there again this June. So far, the trip has been just heavenly. The ‘Dogs have won two straight games in dramatic fashion. They are three victories away from a national championship.
Here’s the short version: Thoms played the best baseball of his career in the 1997 and 1998 College World Series. At bat, he hit nearly everything they threw him. In the field, he made diving catches all over left field. Fans in the left field bleachers adopted him as their MBP (Most Beloved Player) in ’97. They remembered him in ’98 and showered him with love.
“RUSTY! RUSTY! RUSTY!” they cheered. They made up signs. They made up T-shirt designs. They painted their bodies to spell out his name. It was marvelous.
And when the Bulldogs finally bowed out of the ’98 CWS, Thoms paid those fans back. After the final out, with fans still chanting his name, Thoms emerged from the dugout and trotted out to left field. First, he took off his sweatbands and threw them to the fans. Then, he threw his batting gloves. Then, he tossed his cap. And then, he threw his mitt to some lucky fan.
“Why?” this sports writer asked Thoms later that night.
“I’m not going to need them anymore,” he replied.
Thoms, a superb and clutch college baseball player, wasn’t Major League material and he knew it. He didn’t have quite the arm or the foot speed or the power. This was his ultimate baseball moment and he understood it. He had given his all and now he was giving more. Rusty Thoms got it. All of it. Intuitively, it seemed, the fans did, too. This old sports writer’s eyes become moist just thinking about it.
The Merkel and the Thoms families outside Ameritrade Park in Omaha.
So this week, this old sports writer used social media to tweet out a link to the story I wrote three years ago about Thoms’ CWS experience. And here’s more proof of how the Internet has made this a so much smaller world. In Omaha, a fan read it. That fan’s name is Judd Merkel. He was 16 years young and sitting in those left field bleachers in 1998. He emailed me. He was the guy who caught Rusty’s cap.
“I remember the guys that spelled out Rusty across their chests in paint, the chants of Rusty that I was a part of,” Merkel wrote. “I remember the diving catches that sent us all to a new level of cheering. I have three young kids now and I tell them the story every time the CWS comes to town.”
Merkel said he wanted to give Thoms his cap back. He sent me his phone number. Meanwhile, Lindsey Dugas Thoms, Rusty’s wife, sent me a note of thanks for linking the old column on social media and re-kindling the memories. She said Rusty and two of their sons were en route to Omaha to root on the Bulldogs. This was Rusty’s first trip back to Omaha since 1998. You can guess what happened next.
Lindsey sent her husband Merkel’s phone number. Rusty called him. They — and their children — met outside the ballpark before the game. Merkel gave Rusty his old maroon cap. The bible verse Thoms had inscribed on the cap was still there.
“I’m not gonna lie, I got emotional seeing that,” Thoms said. “They (Merkel and his family) were so nice. To think, they had had my cap and taken care of it for all these years. And to share this with my sons, who had heard the story all these years, but this really made it real for them. The whole thing is just surreal.”
Rusty Thoms had the cap sitting beside him for much of the game, as the Bulldogs trailed 4-0 and were hitless. Then, it started raining, and he put it on his head.
Then came the eighth inning, and you know what happened next. For Rusty Thoms and Mississippi State, this is a story that keeps on giving.
Rusty Thoms’ old baseball cap, which he was gifted all these years later.
Kellum Clark circles the bases after hitting a two-run homer in the eighth inning, cutting Virginia’s lead to 4-2 and propelling the Mississippi State Bulldogs to a 6-5 victory in the College World Series Tuesday night. (AP Photo/John Peterson)
Down 4-0 and hitless for seven and two-thirds innings, Mississippi State Tuesday night somehow found a way to victory. SEC Player of the Year Tanner Allen surely helped. So did some splendid relief pitching. And a questionable decision by the opposing coach surely didn’t hurt.
The Bulldogs came off the mat with a six-run eighth inning to defeat Virginia 6-5 and climb snugly into the driver’s seat of its bracket in the College World Series. The Bulldogs, who now have two days off, are one victory away from playing in the best-two-of-three national championship series that starts next Monday.
Rick Cleveland
“We just believe in each other,” Allen said afterward. ”We keep playing no matter what.”
Allen’s three-run home run in the top of the eighth inning was the game’s biggest blow and put the Bulldogs on top 5-4. The thing is, Virginia didn’t have to pitch to him.
Here was the situation: The Bulldogs, trailing 4-2, had runners at second and third and one out. First base was open. Yeah, I know, you never want to put the go-ahead run, which Allen represented, on base. Then again, do you really want to pitch to Allen, he of the .387 batting average, the 10 home runs and 62 RBI — he who bleeds clutch?
I wouldn’t have. Said so at the time. Would you? Virginia coach Brian O’Connor did. And Allen blasted a laser of a home run well over the right centerfield fence.
“Obviously, he’s a tremendous player,” O’Connor said of Allen. “He’s the kind of player that you could sit there and say, ‘You don’t want him to beat you.’ But you also don’t want to walk him because his run takes the lead. So you want to make him earn it. And to his credit he did. He made us pay for it.”
Allen wasn’t expecting much to hit.
“We had a base open and I knew he wasn’t going throw me a fastball, so I sat on the slider,” Allen said. “He threw it and I put a good swing on it.”
State had put precious few good swings on any pitch through the first seven innings. Virginia pitcher Griff McGarry was masterful, painting corners with a 97 mph fastball and keeping the Bulldogs honest with a quality slider. McGarry had struck out eight Bulldogs and had held the Bulldogs hitless entering the eighth.
But then Kellum Clark’s two-run home run, State’s first hit, cut the lead in half at 4-2. Josh Hatcher singled and Rowdey Jordan doubled, setting the stage for Allen’s heroics.
The Bulldogs had the lead but they weren’t finished. Scotty Dubrule added a run-scoring single for State’s sixth run of the inning and what would prove to be the winning run. Chris Newell’s opposite field home run off State’s Stone Simmons cut the Bulldog lead to 6-5. Simmons was the seventh State pitcher. The Bulldogs would need an eighth to seal the deal. And you can probably guess who Chris Lemonis went to with two out in the eighth inning. Yes, he called on Landon Sims, who had thrown 52 pitches Sunday night, saving State’s 2-1 victory over Texas.
Sims didn’t have his best stuff, but he had enough. He threw more breaking pitches than usual. His fastball, normally in the mid-90s, topped out at 89-90. But he gutted it out. Really, all the Bulldogs did.
“I felt good,” Sims would say. “I wanted the last three outs no matter what.”
He got the last four, retiring all four batters he faced, the last on a strikeout.
Said Allen of Sims, “That guy gives it all he’s got every time he goes to the mound. … That guy’s unbelievable.
And so it is that the Bulldogs have two days off. The two teams they have already beaten, Texas and Virginia, will play Thursday night, for the right to play the Bulldogs on Friday. That Thursday winner would have to beat State twice.
In other words, the Bulldogs are right where they want to be: just three victories from a national championship.
Mississippi farmers are losing the catfish wars against their foreign competitors with the very weapon they saw as their salvation.
The domestic catfish industry along with representatives like the late U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi lobbied to move oversight of catfish processing from the Food and Drug Administration to the U.S. Department of Agriculture five years ago with the expectation the USDA’s stricter eye would limit the foreign imports that had decimated domestic production throughout the Mississippi Delta.
Instead, imports of siluriformes – the larger category of catfish and catfish-like fish sometimes referred to by their family name “pangasius”– have only increased since the switch to the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service in 2016. Meanwhile, domestic prices and production, mainly in Mississippi and other Southern states, have continued to decline.
Almost 65,000 additional tons of catfish were imported in 2019 than in 2015 before the FSIS took over according to data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Marine Fisheries Service.
The Mississippi Department of Agriculture and Commerce lists recent processing volumes at 5 million pounds per month less than in 2015 during FDA oversight. As domestic prices have declined, the average value of imports has grown with the added USDA label.
Proponents who lobbied to move oversight to USDA had argued Vietnamese pangasius farms were packed gill-to-gill, tainted with excess antibiotics and dyes, and the FDA wasn’t testing enough. A 2011 peer-reviewed article in the journal Food Policy described Vietnamese swai as grown under “the single most intensive high volume commercial food production system on the planet.” A 2016 report by the environmental nonprofit Oceana listed pangasius as the most common substitute used in seafood fraud. The assumption was USDA’s tighter inspection protocols would lead to a safer product that would limit the lower quality imports flooding the market.
Bill James, previously chief public health veterinarian with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said the agency’s program is the superior inspection system, and the USDA label with its certification and accompanying legend of ingredients makes products much more attractive to consumers.
Catfish is the only fish handled by FSIS, which otherwise handles processing of beef, pork and poultry, and the decision to have an exception just for catfish aquaculture was contentious. Yet, most of the concern stemmed from the duplication of efforts, bureaucratic waste, potential trade repercussions and the attempt to stifle imports.
The Government Accountability Office released 10 reports against the move with one in 2012 simply titled “Responsibility for Inspecting Catfish Should Not Be Assigned to USDA.”
The 2012 GAO report noted the food-borne bacteria salmonella, a major concern that led to the switch, was rarely found in catfish. The report lists only one instance of a salmonella outbreak in the U.S. in 1991, and it may not have been related to catfish.
In a World Trade Organization complaint, Vietnam contested the USDA move as not being based on scientific research or a risk assessment. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, despite the extremely high farming density, large disease outbreaks among pangasius are rare.
But the increased oversight and its accompanying costs have taken their toll domestically. A major Alabama processor and feed producer, SouthFresh, filed for bankruptcy in 2019, claiming stricter protocols, lower prices and increased imports hastened its demise.
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who represents the Delta in Mississippi’s second district, said if imports are still eating away at the domestic industry, “then the move to USDA fails to meet the purpose of the congressional motion, which was to set a standard for health concerns and to protect U.S. industry.”
Chad Causey, representative for the trade organization Catfish Farmers of America, said the move to USDA oversight was never about limiting imports and was solely about stopping unsafe products from entering the market. In his view, the industry is confident in these inspections, which is far and above FDA’s oversight. While he wouldn’t speak to how much imports are affecting the industry, he said the industry “is fine with competition.”
In 2020, Catfish Farmers of America asked NOAA’s Seafood Trade Task Force to “require imported seafood to meet our standards” to level the playing field and help domestic industry compete with “unfair competition.” The group has been involved in numerous lawsuits over a U.S. trade enforcement investigation against Vietnamese importers that has resulted in millions in compensation and legal fees.
Mississippi’s U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, who holds Cochran’s previous seat, said the USDA program is working exactly as intended to ensure all catfish is “safe, wholesome, and unadulterated.” She pointed to numerous large rejections of imports from China because of chemical additives as evidence the program is working.
While most of the domestic catfish industry supported the move, criticism has come from wild-caught producers like those trying to take advantage of the invasive blue catfish in the Chesapeake Bay.
Often small operations, they rely on individual fishermen and smaller processing facilities and are unlikely to afford the USDA standards and inspections, despite fewer risks of added chemicals that compromise the food’s safety. While major processors in Vietnam can afford USDA inspections with the help of government capital, the small, wild-caught catfish operations in the U.S. cannot.
Mike Mitchell of Acari Foods, producer of a jerky made from wild-caught catfish, said the switch to USDA has limited his own business and caused a detrimental effect almost across the board. “It’s not helping U.S. consumers, mom and pop operations, or most producers,” he said. “Only a few large operations are surviving.”
Origins Of The Import Flood
The original concern for imported siluriformes goes back to 2000. Back then, domestic catfish producers dominated the market. But a flood of imports began to take over. The share of catfish consumption supplied by domestic producers went from 80% in 2002 to 24% in 2019. Imports from Vietnam grew more than five-fold.
The increased competition from foreign markets decimated domestic producers. Production capacity was cut in half. The industry saw large declines in employment and hours worked. That trend continued through the USDA takeover as a glut of catfish on the market depressed prices into 2018.
Early on, catfish farmers may have been hit the hardest. The flood of imports came as prices for catfish food peaked at the same time. Farmers saw steady declines in almost every metric: total sales, total inventories, net profits.
Farmers may have been buffered by the price on catfish fry and fingerlings – small fish below 2 and 6 inches in size respectively – according to data from the USDA’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Farmers saw an increase in price that offset the large collapse in sales volume. Prices in 2018 are more than double what they were in 2005.
FDA vs. USDA Oversight
The switch from FDA to USDA oversight was not a small move. The agencies have different systems for hazard analysis and critical control points, where imported food products are inspected and tested for safety.
Since the move to USDA in 2016, there have been declines in average price, total acres of water in production and inventories of food-sized fish.
Under FDA oversight, the agency tests a certain portion of imports as they come into the country – sometimes less than 2 percent.
But USDA oversees all products and tests imports as they come into approved facilities from USDA-equivalent processing facilities in other countries. Both the foreign processing facilities and the U.S. import facilities undergo an approval process that can be revoked.
According to Acari’s Mitchell, funding that oversight falls to the processor, a huge capital investment. “We would need a new, bigger plant, to hire our own inspector, and be able to coordinate a schedule with the inspector. That’s not so easy for fishermen who make their catch based on the weather,” he said.
Despite, or potentially because of, the increased scrutiny, import refusals of siluriformes because of chemical additives have dropped by half since the move to the USDA. From 2012-2016, the FDA rejected 106 imports for “adulterants,” while 45 were rejected by the USDA from 2016-2020 based on laboratory analysis of residual chemicals.
Most USDA rejections were over torn packaging, defects or invalid labels. Of those rejected for laboratory tests, few were from Vietnam, with others coming from the U.S. or countries without establishments eligible to export to the U.S., like Brazil.
Bill James, previously with Food Safety and Inspection Service, believes fewer rejections from chemical testing are a result of exporters needing to send their best product to get it past the rigors of USDA inspection.
While less is being rejected under USDA, the agency tests substantially more for chemical additives. In 2020, it tested 649 samples — more than what FDA tested over the course of five years between 2010 and 2015.
While the standards for catfish processing under the Food Safety and Inspection Service is robust, there may still be some outlying discrepancies.
FSIS has not made Vietnamese farm visits routine. Without farm visits they may not know if they are testing for the right antibiotics and if there are other issues with how the fish are raised.
There are also ongoing discrepancies between what the FDA tests for in all types of finfish, what the FSIS tests for, and what other countries test for. The list of potential additives regularly changes.
In 2019, the USDA listed returning siluriformes oversight back to the FDA in its 2019 budget proposal based on a request from Congress, but that recommendation disappeared in the following year’s budget.
The catfish industry is mum about the increased imports of Vietnamese pangasius. None of the major processors or farms contacted for this story would comment about the trend.
Catfish Farmers of America, the only industry group willing to speak, wasn’t fazed by the continuing flood of Vietnamese pangasius that inspired federal action. According to CFA’s Causey, catfish farmers are more concerned about the effects of the pandemic.
Because of its restrictions, farms and processors have struggled to find workers to keep up with demand and some are turning to temporary visas for migrant workers to fill in the gap.
In their view, he said, the demand for catfish is there whether imports are growing or not, “it’s just a matter of finding enough employees to provide it.”
First Lady Jill Biden will visit COVID-19 vaccination sites in Jackson on Tuesday as part of the Biden Administration’s nationwide tour to reach Americans who haven’t been vaccinated and promote vaccine education.
The visit comes as Mississippi continues to rank last in the nation in the share of its population that has been vaccinated. Only 32% of Mississippians have been fully vaccinated despite significant gains made in recent months in vaccinating the most vulnerable and making vaccine access more equitable.
Mississippi is also the state furthest behind in reaching President Joe Biden’s goal of getting at least one COVID-19 shot into the arms of 70% of adults by July 4. Just over 36% of Mississippians are currently vaccinated, providing no hope the state will reach even 50% by Independence Day. If vaccination rates don’t improve significantly, the state wouldn’t reach that 70% threshold for well over a year.
No significant improvement is on the horizon as the state’s vaccination rate continues to tank. The 15,073 shots given last week represent a decrease of over 87% from February’s peak.
As the state’s vaccine rate continues to sputter, Gov. Tate Reeves announced last week that the last remnants of COVID-related government policy in Mississippi — the state’s COVID-19 emergency orders — will expire on Aug. 15, more than a year after the orders were first enacted.
“While a State of Emergency should no longer be necessary after August 15, all Mississippians should remain vigilant, get vaccinated, and follow public health guidance,” Reeves said in a statement.
Even though Mississippi has remained under a state of emergency order due to the pandemic, there have been virtually no safety protocols in effect formonths.
Reeves also announced that emergency COVID-19 operations with the Mississippi National Guard will end on July 15. The guard’s involvement has been an essential component of the state’s vaccine rollout, assisting the Mississippi State Department of Health with the logistical challenges of operating vaccination sites and putting shots in the arms of thousands of Mississippians.
“The governor’s timeline to lift Mississippi’s State of Emergency declaration on August 15, 2021, ensures our over 1,500 service members complete all necessary out-processing requirements and receive the benefits and entitlements they have earned during their dedicated service to our state,” Maj. Gen. Janson Boyles, the adjutant general of the Mississippi National Guard, said in a written statement.
The Mississippi Department of Health reported on Friday that 1,071,623 people in Mississippi — about 36% of the state’s population — have received at least their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Nearly 953,00 people have been fully inoculated since the state began distributing vaccines in December.
A neighbor has been charged with arson for burning the trailer where former state Rep. Ashley Henley’s sister-in-law’s body was found around Christmas — the same property where authorities say Henley was gunned down on June 13.
Assistant District Attorney Steven Jubera said that Billy Brooks, 42, who lived across the road from the burned trailer, was arrested Friday on an arson charge from the Dec. 26 fire. He has not been charged in the death of Kristina Michelle Jones, whose body was found inside the burned mobile home.
Jubera said investigation into the deaths of Jones and Henley is continuing and no further details are currently being released.
Henley, who along with her husband had said Jones was murdered and publicly criticized what they said was lack of investigation by the Yalobusha County Sheriff’s Department, was herself shot and killed while cutting the grass at the property where the burned trailer was at 12 Patricia Drive in Water Valley. Henley and her husband had vowed to continue to push for justice in Jones’ case.
Henley, 40, a former school teacher and community college professor, served as representative of District 40 in DeSoto County from 2016-2020 and was vice chair of the House Military Affairs Committee and a member of the Education, Tourism, Workforce Development and Youth and Family Affairs committees. She lost her reelection bid in 2019 by 14 votes.
Jubera said Henley’s homicide is being investigated by the Yalobusha Sheriff’s Department, Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, District 17 District Attorney’s office and other agencies.
