The Oxford Parks Commission’s Fencing Program, was started in 2017 by Coach Linda Margarete. OPC’s fencing program is offered to children ages 10-18. Coach Margarete tries to teach her students discipline, dexterity, and endurance in her classes. OPC Deputy Director, Mike Young says that he has seen the fencing program grow steadily while working at the Parks Commission. Even though the Fencing Program doesn’t have huge enrollment numbers, Young said OPC is more concerned with the program’s quality, which he feels Coach Margarete has consistently delivered every year.

Dating back to 1200 B.C.E., fencing was an ancient form of combat in warfare. Though the sport’s origins are rather violent, modern-day fencing is less about training to kill the enemy and more geared towards besting one’s opponent with superior speed, agility, and endurance. While fencing was a sport that rose to prominence in Europe during the 14th century, the first American fencing school was not opened until 1874. Then in 1896, at the Olympics’ first modern games, fencing was finally recognized as an Olympic sport. To register points, players’ swords and vests are electronically wired to the scoring box via a cord. Fencer’s compete on a “piste” that is 46 feet by six feet wide strip with hash marks to warn fencers where boundaries are on the strip.

The most important piece of equipment in fencing (besides protective attire) is the weapon itself. Fencers use three different blades: the epée, the foil, and the sabre, each a separate event. The epée is the heaviest of the three swords. The entire body is a valid target area in epée duels; fencers must be able to anticipate their opponent’s moves and strike at the correct time. The foil is a lighter, more flexible blade used for thrusting at your opponent’s torso (including the lower part of the bib of the mask) and groin; the arms are considered off-target. The sabre is both a cutting and thrusting weapon. Unlike the other two swords, sabre fencers can score by slashing their opponents with the edge of the blade. The general target area for sabre bouts is the entire torso, arms, and head. However, the legs, hands and feet are not part of the valid target area. At the Olympics, fencing matches are contested over three three-minute rounds; the first fencer to score 15 points or the fencer with the most touches after three round is the winner.

     

Local Ceramicist Andrew McIntyre Shares how Chinese Pottery and Spanish Architecture Influenced his Work

OXFORD, Ms. – At first glance, the organic creations of Andrew McIntyre, a Ceramic Technician and Instructor in Ceramics at the University of Mississippi, appear to just be functional porcelain vessels with colorful glazes. However, when the light hits one of McIntyre’s pots or mugs, the pottery takes on a translucent quality and reveals something new.

“I like this idea that there is a visual language that I’m marking onto the pot within form, within volume, within the tools that I use, the way my hand marks the clay,” McIntyre said. “But then also how glaze affects that surface, so I’m literally making decisions during the making process that will then result in how the glaze forms and changes in color on top of that.”

McIntyre first fell in love with pottery 18 years ago after he enrolled in a three-week ceramics class at Power APAC, Visual and Performing arts elementary school. Growing up in Jackson, Ms., McIntyre said he had many mentors that were encouraging him to be a ceramicist, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to pursue ceramics professionally. That all changed during his freshmen year of college when he took his first ceramics class. 

“It started to click that not only did I like to make pottery, I liked to make really anything in clay, I also liked to teach, and I like to give back,” McIntyre said. “So those things kind of went hand-in-hand and throughout my four years at Ole Miss that guided me to think about how I was going to be a professional in ceramics and what I was going to do out in the world.”

The style of porcelain pots that McIntyre makes and teaches his students to make in his courses is called soda fired pottery. The soda firing process involves spraying a super-saturated solution of sodium carbonate (baking soda) into a kiln towards the end of the firing. The baking soda then separates into sodium ions and carbon dioxide; the CO2 leaves the kiln, but a portion of the sodium remains attached in the clay and creates a glaze. The baking soda mixture mingles with the silica, alumina and interacts with the clay to create rich rustic colors that often range from yellow, red, brown and gold.

McIntyre received his BFA in Ceramics from the University of Mississippi in 2011 and his MFA in Ceramics from Syracuse University in 2015. While he was in graduate school, McIntyre completed two artist in residency programs abroad. While McIntyre was at The Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, he discovered the technique that allows him to create translucency in his pottery.

“During grad school, I went to China one year and then India the next year for a three-week residency,” McIntyre said. “I was immersed in those different cultures, histories and ceramics – that alone was a wealth of knowledge – but what I started to love specifically when I went to China is this form called ‘rice grain’ pattern.”

“Rice grain” is a technique that came to China from Turkey during the 14th century; it involves making small piercings in the walls of a piece of unfired porcelain. The holes are then filled with translucent glaze. After the porcelain solidifies with the glaze, the walls are thinned down enough to allow light to pass through the pot and reveal hidden patterns.

Four years ago, McIntyre and his wife took a trip to Barcelona, Spain, for their honeymoon. McIntyre said one of the draws of visiting Barcelona was Spanish Architect Antonio Gaudí’s design and architecture. Born in Catalonia, Spain, in 1852, Gaudí is best known for his intricate structures throughout Barcelona, his masterpiece being the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, a large unfinished Roman Catholic minor basilica. The Sagrada Família’s exterior features a lot of Gothic architecture with elements such as blister windows, exterior buttresses, and a tall needle-like spire. Inside the basilica, columns shaped like tree trunks branch out into a celling of kaleidoscopic shapes making the visitor feel like they are deep inside a forest; the church is also full of vibrant stained-glass windows that set the mood for prayer, meditation and reflection.

After visiting the Sagrada Família and seeing how light passed through the basilica’s beautiful stained-glass windows, McIntyre said he was inspired to incorporate Gaudí’s design into his work by creating little windows within his pottery.

“We went to the Sagrada Família, and all of these things started to click in terms of a visual aesthetic and light coming through the stained-glass windows and the different types of architecture,” McIntyre said. “So, I had already been looking at moving my work in a direction of pushing form more and pushing these repetitions of line, but now I’ve brought back this idea of how glaze looks on a pot and how light shines through it.”

While his travels have inspired him to craft beautiful vessels of color and symmetry, at the end of the day, McIntyre said he wants to create pottery that is not only beautiful but also functional. The act of making something out of clay like a mug that someone will use to pour their coffee into or creating a bowl that a family will serve their dinner out of is an aspect of functional pottery that McIntyre said is very important to him.

Though he has bad days at the pottery wheel, McIntyre said he embraces those challenges because he knows the end result will be worth it.

“Being hands-on is who I am,” McIntyre said. “That process of making the clay all the way to making the pot and finishing the pot – there are challenges through all of that, but one of the things that I love about ceramics is problem-solving and working through those challenges and then, in the end, having something that represents the culmination of all of that.”

OXFORD, Ms. – Coming off a 100-show tour that lasted 13 months, local folk-rock singer-songwriter Will Griffith had high hopes for 2020 after a record-breaking 2019. Everything was lining up perfectly for another successful year of touring, that is until a deadly microscopic visitor arrived in the United States and spoiled his, and everybody else’s plans.

In March of 2020, Griffith joined a cascade of canceled tours when his next destinations – Portland, Ore., Seattle, Wash., and San Francisco, Cali. – became COVID-19 hotspots.

“It was like ‘oh my God,” we were just rolling so hard, we were getting a lot more rhythm going with our touring,” Griffith said. “Music is my life, I still bartend at Proud Larry’s, I still work a job, and I always will, but that was a big chunk of my mind and heart that was really extracted from me, and as I said, we had so much integrity and promise, everything was looking up and this happened.”

Originally from Cleveland, Ms., Griffith has played in punk rock and country bands since he was 13 years old. His latest project: The Great Dying, came about when he moved back to Mississippi after living in Nashville, Tn., for four years. Instead of going back home to the Delta, Griffith decided to move to Oxford to play in venues like Proud Larry’s, a local establishment that he’s bartended at for about seven years now.

Griffith describes his music as “dark country”, because it’s an amalgamation of punk rock and country.

During his time in Oxford, Griffith said many great local artists have played in the Great Dying, which typically features Griffith on vocals and guitar accompanied by Craig Pratt on guitar when they tour on the road. When the Great Dying plays in Oxford, Griffith said the act features a rotating roster of artists like Kell Kellum (guitar), Bronson Tew (drums), and Matt Patton (bass guitar), who also plays with the Drive-By-Truckers and the Dexateens.

Patton is also co-owner of Dial Black Sound, a production studio and record label in Water Valley, Ms.; Patton also helped Griffith produce his first-ever album, “Bloody Noses & Roses” in 2018. 

When Griffith returned home from the road last March, life was not the same. The world had changed, and there were aspects of his life, such as his job at Proud Larry’s, that he could not return to for a couple of months.

Like many of us, Griffith said he regrets not being more productive during the first couple of months in lockdown.

“I wish I had been a little bit more creative in the beginning of this,” Griffith said. “I felt like I was just sitting around waiting for things to get better; I wasn’t writing all the time during the first few months, I was reading a bunch, but I was not being very creative.”

Though he was not as productive as he had hoped during the early stages of lockdown, Griffith still found time to write some songs and work on his new album, “Hearts to the Wall Outside the Ball”, which he just finished recording. Griffith is hoping to release the new album this fall, but nothing is set in stone yet. When the new record does debut, Griffith said he is excited to see people’s reaction to the stylistic departure that the band takes from “Bloody Noses and Roses.”

“This (album) is going to be a little more masterful,” Griffith said. “I took years to write some of these songs; it’s all so different, but it’s all cohesive, and it’s all going to work together linearly.”

With all the lockdowns and restrictions last year, artists had an abundance of time in 2020 to work on their craft and record new albums. However, Griffith said one of the main reasons he decided to delay his new album to the fall is that bigger bands – like Grammy-winning rock band Kings of Leon, who released their new album “When You See Yourself” on March. 5 – are dropping new music this spring and summer.

“I think there is going to be an avalanche of releases maybe at the end of this month,” Griffith said. “Maybe at the beginning of summer, because I think everybody has got a record finished; myself included, I don’t have the artwork together yet, but I don’t want to release a record being kind of small as I am amongst the chaos of everybody else above me releasing records because I’ll just get drowned.”

Griffith also said he believes that all of the creative free time that cooped-up artists had in 2020 could result in a resurgence of arts and culture this year.

“I think there is going to be a renaissance to come out of this,” Griffith said. “Not just with music but think about the great books that are going to come out of this; artists and painters have probably got a wealth of stuff to put up.”

Musical resurgence or not, Griffith is just hoping that he can pick up where he left off at the beginning of 2020 and get back out on the road this year and start touring again.

“I will be grateful for any time that I have to get back out there and play,” Griffith said. “I won’t take anything for granted; if I get 10 shows in six months, I’ll be happy to play those 10 shows; I’m just trying to be optimistic; hopefully, we will be back out there.”

The City of Oxford’s Pathways Commission held its monthly meeting on Monday, Oct. 26, to converse about current and potential plans for the city and review the commission’s annual report for the Board of Aldermen. 

The commissioners present at the meeting were Don Feitel, Kate Kellum, Meaghin Burke, Roger Kuhnle, Claude Gunter, Michael Worthy, Will Townes, and Robert Baxter, the City Liaison.

The goal of the Pathways Commission is to make Oxford a more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly place by increasing accessibility; this includes creating new pedestrian sidewalks, bike paths, recreational paths, and addressing the town’s traffic issues. The commission meets every fourth Monday of the month at 5:00 p.m.; however, because of the pandemic, they now meet over Zoom instead of at City Hall.

“We are a resource for people who have concerns, and we are also a resource for the city to find problem areas; we are charged with looking at the city through the eyes of a pedestrian or bicyclist, and solving problems, presenting problems and increasing accessibility,” Burke said.

At 5:00 p.m., Feitel, the committee chair, called the meeting to begin. The committee came together and approved the prior month of September’s agenda, which had been approved unanimously.

Because of the pandemic, the City of Oxford’s general operation budget is down around $3.2 million per an article published by Magnolia State Live. As a result of the reduction in funding, there has been a slowdown in building around town, which has impacted the commission’s projects. When the land-use code was revised a couple of years ago, the city included bike lanes and sidewalks in future development projects. But, because of the city’s drastic change in funding between pre-pandemic and now, Feitel said there has been a slowdown in building, which means fewer development projects are happening around Oxford.

“It’s all trickle down, there is less money to necessarily build sidewalks if they are worrying about furloughing employees and things like that, you know as it should be; so one of the things that we have had to do is, whereas normally we might be reviewing multiple projects or talking about other areas of town to build sidewalks… there’s just less options to do that,” Feitel said. “So as a commission we’re trying to think of things to prioritize, thinking of what projects we do and don’t want to push with the Board (of Alderman); because again they don’t necessarily have the funds that they thought they would and so we want to be careful with what we ask for.”

One of the first items that the commission discussed during their meeting was the projected construction of the Bramlett Boulevard Sidewalk Project, a $167,000 project that the commission has tried to get off the ground for several years. Funded by the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the city, the project aims to finish the sidewalks along the right side of Bramlett Boulevard from University Avenue to Jefferson Avenue. The project will also increase pedestrian accessibility to Oxford Middle School, the Old Armory Pavilion, and the Oxford Community Market; Feitel said he spoke with John Crawley, Oxford’s Assistant City Engineer, who estimates that the project might start construction as early as December.

One of the main agenda items that the commission addressed during their monthly meeting was their annual report, which they submit to the Board of Aldermen. Every year, all the city’s commissions have to check-in and inform the Board of the business that they are doing. In their report, the commission highlights specific things that they are doing and concerns that they have, such as getting regular maintenance of bike lanes around town, because a lot of debris – such as gravel, branches, glass – gets knocked out of car travel lanes and ends up in bike lanes.

“A lot of areas in our town aren’t necessarily served by sidewalks, so areas that have bike lanes, you often see people running and walking in them,” Feitel said. “So cleaning is always a priority because if we can clean the lanes, they are more inviting, and if they are more inviting, more people use them.”

Besides cleaning up bike lanes, Feitel also mentioned that the committee wants the Board to address particular areas of town where bike lanes are unsafe. Specifically, the commission is concerned about the bike lane on College Hill Road and West Jackson Avenue; the bike lane is located on a sharp curve often encroached on by cars exiting off West Jackson.

The commission also discussed building a potential path in Lakeway Gardens, a neighborhood located off Highway 314. The crux of the project, which is just an idea at this point, is to build a walking or biking path between the neighborhood’s two entrances: Lakeway Drive and Cedar Street; the path will help increase bicycle and pedestrian accessibility. Townes also said he thinks this project is important because it will create another loop in the neighborhood that people can use to walk and bike safely, and he said a path could help prevent another cyclist fatality, like Kevser Ermin, a UM doctoral student, who was tragically hit by a car while biking along Highway 314 in 2011. 

“The first goal is to just make another loop in the neighborhood, and then the second goal, which is maybe more pie in the sky thinking, is if we are going to do that can we do something that also spurs on a future path along Old Sardis Road,” Townes said. “Where it ends up is not at all determined or anything, but I think the first goal is to get from Lamar Park to mTrade Park.”

OXFORD, Ms. — It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon in early November on the Square. College students and locals converse as they meander along the intersecting streets that branch out from the trunk of Oxford’s historic courthouse; friends meet for lunch and revel in old memories. At times it feels like a sense of normalcy has returned to the Square. However, that feeling quickly fades as you pass under a large milky white tent and look back to see the light bounce off the steel sidewalk barriers of South Lamar Boulevard, fortifications that now guard the entrances of institutions like Proud Larry’s: a small-town pizza joint, bar, and music venue that has been in business since 1993. During its time on the Square, Proud Larry’s has hosted live performances by renowned artists like John Mayer, The Black Keys, Elvis Costello, and Warren Zevon. However, the business of making memories through melodies was paused when the pandemic lockdown forced Proud Larry’s to close in March.

“The music industry was really banging when things came to a screeching halt,” Said Scott Caradine, owner of Proud Larry’s. “It was busy; we were selling more tickets here for shows than we had ever sold.”

Typically, Proud Larry’s hosts around 200 live shows a year and averages $100,000 — $200,000 a month in revenue generated from those performances. But, after being shut down for three months and going through a fall without a proper college football season, Proud Larry’s has taken a 25% hit in live music revenue; a blow that Caradine said could take years to recover from.

“I think from a business perspective we are very fortunate at Proud Larry’s that we are a full-service restaurant,” Caradine said. “We typically, over our 27-year existence, have done about 65% food business and 35% bar business, just you know: beer, liquor, and wine; we’re able to break even, we’re able to keep our head above water right now, it’s tough, but we’re doing it… but we missed the live music side of things.”

Since re-opening in June, Proud Larry’s hasn’t had live music for about nine months. But, that all changed on Nov. 6 when Proud Larry’s staged a 40-table reduced capacity concert featuring Will Griffith — known musically as The Great Dying — a local folk-rock singer-songwriter and bartender at Proud Larry’s. The Great Dying has a rotating roster of Oxford artists, but the act usually involves Griffith on vocals and guitar accompanied by Craig Pratt on guitar or Kell Kellum on slide guitar. Born in the Mississippi Delta, Griffith describes his music as “dark country” because it’s an amalgamation of punk rock and country.

After having his tour canceled by COVID-19 earlier this year, Griffith said the experience of playing in front of a live audience again was the ultimate high for him.

“I haven’t played in front of a crowd in about 244 days, and I was just stoned,” Griffith said. “I was so high on the feeling of performing again; excuse my language, but everybody there was so horny for live music, people that were there were music fans and fans of The Great Dying, so it just could not have been a better situation.”

Caradine said The Great Dying’s concert was such a success in terms of people adhering to Proud Larry’s COVID-19 guidelines during the show. As long as fans play by the rules, Caradine thinks he now has a good template to follow for future shows at Proud Larry’s.

“Since that worked out, we said okay this model will work,” Caradine said. “It’s not the same as packing kids or people, in general, in here for a concert, but it’s an outlet for live music, for the fan experience, for the artists experience and for the business model that we can do business this way, our bar can sell some drinks, and it’s not the same as it was before… but, it’s a start.”

Caradine has spoken with some friends who are still hesitant about attending live performances at venues, but for the most part, he said a lot of people he’s talked to are really excited to have live performances back, even if it’s in the form of an hour and a half, limited capacity in-door show with masks when standing.

“A lot of people are really itching to go see live music,” Caradine said. “They want to go in a safe space and see live music; they want to go outside and see it, where they can space out from people and get the experience.”

However, Oxford’s bigger concert venues like The Lyric are not taking any chances right now with limited capacity performances.

“Certainly, limited capacity would be a big help in a lot of respects,” Said Lindsay Dillion-Maginnis, general manager of The Lyric. “But it’s also the hardest to enforce because if you cut the capacity of The Lyric down to half, you’re still going to have half of those people who are going to want to be as close as possible to the band; so for all the solutions that we have, we seem to have a new set of problems that will arise.”

Live music is a huge part of The Lyric’s business; according to Dillion-Maginnis it’s included in 99% of the venue’s events. In a typical year, The Lyric hosts anywhere from 50–75 ticketed shows — not including other events like sorority formals and weddings that also feature live music — but this year has been far from typical for the venue.

Dillion-Maginnis said after having a record-breaking year in 2019, The Lyric has pushed all of its ticketed shows to next summer. Since its last show on Feb. 29, The Lyric has done a handful of contracted events, but Dillion-Maginnis said for all intents and purposes the venue is closed right now.

“We’ve been around now for 12 years and the business is solid, but it can’t sustain this forever,” Dillion-Maginnis said.

The Lyric is not alone; according to a 2020 survey of independent concert venue owners conducted by the National Independent Venue Association(NIVA), 90% of independent music venues could close forever if they don’t receive significant financial aid soon. NIVA is a non-profit group that supports over 2,000 independent live venue owners and promoters in all 50 states.

MISSISSIPPI is home to independent venues like @HalAndMals, @TheLyricOxford, and more which are at risk of closing permanently. We’d like to thank @SenHydeSmith & @SenatorWicker for their bipartisan cosponsorship of the #SaveOurStages Act. https://t.co/tE6csZd051

— NIVA | #SaveOurStages (@nivassoc) November 3, 2020

Formed back in April when the pandemic shut down live music, NIVA’s mission is to use its resources to sustain the country’s “ecosystem” of independent venues and promoters; this includes advocating for the passage of the Save our Stages Act (SSA), which is part of the $2.2 trillion Heroes Act, a relief package passed by the House of Representatives in October. If the Senate and the President approve the Heroes Act, it will provide over $10 billion in funding for independent venues in the form of loans and non-repayable grants.

“If real support comes, we can have the strongest independent ecosystem that we’ve ever had coming out of this,” Said Stephen Chilton, vice president of NIVA and owner of The Rebel Lounge in Phoenix, Az. “If we can get aid, we’re going to see a great thriving community after this, but if we can’t get aid it’s going to be devastating; we are going to lose venues by the thousands.”

The stimulus bill’s funding will help cover six months’ worth of payroll and operating expenses, which is a big deal for an industry, that according to trade publication Pollstar, could lose as much as $8.9 billion in revenue this year. But, as Variety Magazine points out, that figure “doesn’t include the losses of income by musicians, technicians, dancers, and others in its sprawling supply chain.”

“There are tons of artists out there that would normally be working and gigging back and forth making money, and that work is just not there,” Said Damein Wash, a local singer, songwriter, arranger, and pianist. “So, anything to put people back to work would be great; not to mention to just save the performance industry because we are needed, absolutely we are… people work all week and to have a nice concert to go to or somewhere they can breathe free and not have to worry about the stress of the mundaneness of everyday life; that’s super important for everyone, not just the musicians.”

The loss of independent music venues, concert halls, and theatres is also a major blow to the U.S. economy and to local artists like Griffith and Wash who make their living performing in front of crowds. According to a 2017 study by the National Endowment for the Arts, the value added by arts and culture to the U.S. economy is “five times greater than the value from the agricultural sector.” The study also points out that in 2017 the Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account found that arts and culture contributed $877.8 billion, or 4.5%, to the nation’s gross domestic product.

As much as they help fuel the national economy, independent venues like The Lyric and Proud Larry’s are more than just a business. They are also a form of secular community where all walks of life can come together, and that’s important in and of itself.

“It’s all about creating a community with people, and there’s a real integration of the fan, the artist, and the business model that’s helping produce it,” Caradine said. “Whether it’s for-profit or not, it’s really important that those things happen together and if people want to see it continue to grow and slowly get back to a life of doing business with real music with shows on a bigger scale… It just takes everybody’s patience, it also takes everybody’s commitment to doing it safely.”

The overabundance of food donations creates a problem for The Pantry of Oxford and Lafayette County during the holiday season.

John Kohne, director of food distribution for The Pantry, says that from October to January, The Pantry experiences an exponential increase in canned, dried and frozen food donations, which causes the food bank’s available storage space to decrease dramatically. Even though he admits finding space for all of the product is difficult, Kohne says The Pantry is grateful for all the food donations it receives during the holiday season as it helps feed around 500 food-insecure families in Oxford and Lafayette County, which has a food insecurity rating of 18.9%.

“It’s a good problem to have in that we do have product to put on the shelves, and we can make it work,” Kohne said. “Especially from October through May, we can handle it.”

While there is room for most of The Pantry’s extra dry product in both of their 6-by-12-foot storage units, Kohne says space fills up when local organizations like the Oxford Night Owls Motorcycle Civic Club and the 100 Men of Oxford and Lafayette County Club donate massive amounts of canned and dried goods to The Pantry. Last November and December, Kohne says the Night Owls held two big weekend food rushes and donated about seven thousand cans of food to The Pantry.

“It’s such an immense amount of food, and we have to sort it, get through it, and then get it out, but all that food we have to do something with it, and that’s the challenge,” Kohne said. “Dealing with the heavy, heavy amount of food that we get in October, November, December and January.”

To help with the influx of donations and clients during the holidays, The Pantry partners with 12 churches in Oxford and Lafayette County.

Each month one of those churches brings in at least 12 volunteers to unload all of the product from the trucks and stock the shelves with enough food to serve 125 families a week. Pantry clients are only eligible to receive food if they are at or below the income guidelines set by The Emergency Food Assistance Program, a federal program that aids low-income Americans with emergency food assistance for free.

Carol Wedge, The Pantry’s manager during November, says that last year The Pantry served 102 families on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and 98 families on Thanksgiving Day. Wedge says that the support from Oxford’s churches and other local organizations helps the food bank operate smoothly during the busiest time of the year.

“It really helps the week before Christmas and Thanksgiving, it’s busier,” Wedge said.

Besides the 12 local churches, the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP) — a nationwide program that enhances retirement for seniors by sending volunteer talent to work at local organizations — also helps out at The Pantry during the holidays.

One of the volunteers for RSVP, Clarissa Jordan, said that even though it was her first time, she enjoyed helping out at The Pantry in November.

“Well, I enjoy helping people, the people who work here are nice and you feel like you’re doing something for other people,” Jordan said. “It’s enjoyable, and it’s a lot of fun.”

The time of year that The Pantry doesn’t need as many volunteers is during the summer months. Kohne says that the lack of donations from May — July forces The Pantry to draw food from the Mid-South Food Bank’s supply or purchase supplemental food from Larson’s Cash Savers.

“In May, June and July people are thinking about vacation, where they’re going to go and what they’re going to do,” Kohne said. “They are not dropping off ten to thirty dollars or cases of food to the food bank.”

The City of Oxford’s Pathways Commission held its monthly meeting on Monday, Oct. 26, to converse about current and potential plans for the city and review the commission’s annual report for the Board of Aldermen. 

The commissioners present at the meeting were Don Feitel, Kate Kellum, Meaghin Burke, Roger Kuhnle, Claude Gunter, Michael Worthy, Will Townes, and Robert Baxter, the City Liaison.

The goal of the Pathways Commission is to make Oxford a more pedestrian and bicycle-friendly place by increasing accessibility; this includes creating new pedestrian sidewalks, bike paths, recreational paths, and addressing the town’s traffic issues. The commission meets every fourth Monday of the month at 5:00 p.m.; however, because of the pandemic, they now meet over Zoom instead of at City Hall.

“We are a resource for people who have concerns, and we are also a resource for the city to find problem areas; we are charged with looking at the city through the eyes of a pedestrian or bicyclist, and solving problems, presenting problems and increasing accessibility,” Burke said.

At 5:00 p.m., Feitel, the committee chair, called the meeting to begin. The committee came together and approved the prior month of September’s agenda, which had been approved unanimously.

Because of the pandemic, the City of Oxford’s general operation budget is down around $3.2 million per an article published by Magnolia State Live. As a result of the reduction in funding, there has been a slowdown in building around town, which has impacted the commission’s projects. When the land-use code was revised a couple of years ago, the city included bike lanes and sidewalks in future development projects. But, because of the city’s drastic change in funding between pre-pandemic and now, Feitel said there has been a slowdown in building, which means fewer development projects are happening around Oxford.

“It’s all trickle down, there is less money to necessarily build sidewalks if they are worrying about furloughing employees and things like that, you know as it should be; so one of the things that we have had to do is, whereas normally we might be reviewing multiple projects or talking about other areas of town to build sidewalks… there’s just less options to do that,” Feitel said. “So as a commission we’re trying to think of things to prioritize, thinking of what projects we do and don’t want to push with the Board (of Alderman); because again they don’t necessarily have the funds that they thought they would and so we want to be careful with what we ask for.”

One of the first items that the commission discussed during their meeting was the projected construction of the Bramlett Boulevard Sidewalk Project, a $167,000 project that the commission has tried to get off the ground for several years. Funded by the Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) and the city, the project aims to finish the sidewalks along the right side of Bramlett Boulevard from University Avenue to Jefferson Avenue. The project will also increase pedestrian accessibility to Oxford Middle School, the Old Armory Pavilion, and the Oxford Community Market; Feitel said he spoke with John Crawley, Oxford’s Assistant City Engineer, who estimates that the project might start construction as early as December.

One of the main agenda items that the commission addressed during their monthly meeting was their annual report, which they submit to the Board of Aldermen. Every year, all the city’s commissions have to check-in and inform the Board of the business that they are doing. In their report, the commission highlights specific things that they are doing and concerns that they have, such as getting regular maintenance of bike lanes around town, because a lot of debris – such as gravel, branches, glass – gets knocked out of car travel lanes and ends up in bike lanes.

“A lot of areas in our town aren’t necessarily served by sidewalks, so areas that have bike lanes, you often see people running and walking in them,” Feitel said. “So cleaning is always a priority because if we can clean the lanes, they are more inviting, and if they are more inviting, more people use them.”

Besides cleaning up bike lanes, Feitel also mentioned that the committee wants the Board to address particular areas of town where bike lanes are unsafe. Specifically, the commission is concerned about the bike lane on College Hill Road and West Jackson Avenue; the bike lane is located on a sharp curve often encroached on by cars exiting off West Jackson.

The commission also discussed building a potential path in Lakeway Gardens, a neighborhood located off Highway 314. The crux of the project, which is just an idea at this point, is to build a walking or biking path between the neighborhood’s two entrances: Lakeway Drive and Cedar Street; the path will help increase bicycle and pedestrian accessibility. Townes also said he thinks this project is important because it will create another loop in the neighborhood that people can use to walk and bike safely, and he said a path could help prevent another cyclist fatality, like Kevser Ermin, a UM doctoral student, who was tragically hit by a car while biking along Highway 314 in 2011. 

“The first goal is to just make another loop in the neighborhood, and then the second goal, which is maybe more pie in the sky thinking, is if we are going to do that can we do something that also spurs on a future path along Old Sardis Road,” Townes said. “Where it ends up is not at all determined or anything, but I think the first goal is to get from Lamar Park to mTrade Park.”

OXFORD, Ms. – The pandemic has already made 2020 an especially frightening year, but with Halloween right around the corner, the UM Theatre and Film Department is looking to make 2020 just a bit scarier with its new production, “Listening in the Shadows.”

“Listening in the Shadows” is a series of five radio dramas that will release on the Department’s Facebook page and YouTube channel at 7 p.m. on Oct. 30. The radio dramas will also be distributed on the Department’s new podcast, “Stage & Screen,” which will premiere with “Listening in the Shadows.” Program Coordinator Katherine W. Stewart said the purpose of “Stage & Screen” will be to give a behind the scenes look at everything going on in the Department. The podcast will also feature interviews with students, faculty, staff, alumni, and special guests.

Written, directed, and acted by students in the Department, “Listening in the Shadows” will explore creepy and uncanny themes.

“It has just worked out that it fits as a Halloween idea, that’s not officially the direction we took with it, but timing wise it’s going to come out October 30; the uniting principle of all these plays, I gave the playwrights a theme to work around, is The Shadow which in one sense is a tip of the hat to one of the most popular radio dramas of all time “The Shadow”, who was a crime fighting millionaire, he was a precursor to Batman, it was a very popular crime fighting radio show,” Said Dr. Matthew Shifflett, the producer for “Listening in the Shadows” and an assistant professor of Theatre Arts. “But also, it allowed them to explore Jungian themes, like the psychoanalyst Jung, who talked about The Shadow and its role in dreams and fairy tales or to explore the darker side of human nature.”

As a longtime lover of radio, Shifflett said he has always wanted to do a radio show like “Listening in the Shadows,” and with the pandemic making live performance an unsafe option, a radio drama was a great way for the Department to allow students to perform this semester. 

“I suppose there were two or three live wires were sitting there: we wanted to do more radio dramas, we wanted to give the students more voice work, and we wanted to do more original student-written plays within the Department,” Shifflett said. “When this quarantine forced us into a situation where we need to re-think our programming, all those wires just braided together.”

“Listening in the Shadows” began production earlier this month when five student playwrights were given prompts and told they had one weekend to each write their 15-minute radio dramas. The following Monday, those scripts were given to five student directors who cast the parts based on recorded audio monologues sent in by the student actors. After the casts were assembled, Shifflett said the Department handed out microphones, and each of the creative teams got together, at a safe social distance, and recorded their radio dramas using a program called Audacity, a multi-track audio editor and recording program. Currently, the Department is in the process of adding sound effects and foley, the re-production of everyday sounds such as footsteps or squeaky doors, to the radio dramas.

Megan Longton, a senior musical theatre major, said she has directed other productions before, but “Listening in the Shadows” will be her first opportunity to see her vision as a director fully realized.

“It makes me emotional for some reason because it’s very intense and personal to share that with people; because I’ve been working on it for so long, and my actors worked on it for a weekend,” Longton said. “When they had the script and recorded it, they were done in three days, but even though we are on a pretty quick schedule for this show, I’ve been working on it a little longer than they have, so I have a little more of a connection to it and emotional stakes towards people’s reaction to it,” Longton said.

One of the actors in Longton’s radio drama is Lauren Hite, a freshman fine arts major, said that she is excited to be part of “Listening in the Shadows” because it’s different from a lot of other college theatre departments are doing during the pandemic.

“Perhaps we’re not pioneering the idea of doing a radio drama, but I definitely feel like it’s not something that everybody’s jumping to; I feel like a lot of people just jump to Zoom and doing Zoom shows,” Hite said. “So to be able to give a show but also kind of have a new learning experience (for student actors) – I think that’s really fun and really interesting.”

For the production, Longton is directing a radio drama named “When Nobody was Watching,” a murder mystery written by Emma Siler, a junior fine arts major. Siler says she based her script on an actual unsolved murder case that happened in New Orleans, La., in 1964. The case revolved around Dr. Mary Sherman; a renowned orthopedic cancer researcher found dead in her New Orleans apartment after a fire. Police discovered that Sherman suffered several stab wounds, including a fatal stab wound to the heart. They also found that her body was so severely burned that only a charred stump remained of her right arm. 

To this day, the murder remains unsolved, but several conspiracy theories have arisen since her death, such as author Edward Haslam’s theory, in which he claims that Sherman’s death was a government cover-up because she was involved in finding a cure to prevent an outbreak of soft-tissue cancers caused by the polio vaccine.

“What really got me was the fact that this really happened, something about that is more scary and horrifying than a slasher film that you can turn off and walk away from… this is true,” Siler said.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. –  After eight years of working as a collaborative pianist at the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., Collaborative Pianist Maeve Brophy felt a calling to come back home to Memphis last year. Since her return home, Brophy is trying to contribute to the Bluff City’s growing arts renaissance through the work that she is doing for her Crosstown Arts residency.

“I just felt drawn to come back to my home town and be part of the artistic scene here; I had a vision to open my own private teaching studio which I have done and I really just wanted to come home and get involved in things here, “Brophy said.

In October 2017, Crosstown Arts, a nonprofit arts organization founded in 2010, moved into its new home: Crosstown Concourse – a 16-acre $210 million mixed-use development complex that is rooted in expanding culture, arts, education, and healthcare in Memphis’ Crosstown neighborhood. A year later, Crosstown Arts launched its artist residency program, a multi-disciplinary residency geared towards visiting and Memphis-based artists who work in visual and performing arts, music, film, writing in all genres, and any other creative discipline.

Each year, Crosstown Arts offers three-month residencies for the spring (Feb. 1 – April 30) and fall (Sept. 15 – Dec. 15). For fall 2020, Brophy was one of the five artists chosen for the program.

“We really are interested in forming diverse cohorts, so we want people from different backgrounds doing different types of things; there has to be a certain level of professionalism in their work,” said Crosstown Arts Residency Manager Mary Jo Karimnia.

Brophy is no stranger to Crosstown Concourse; she has played in the Green Room – Crosstown Art’s performance space, which is fully decked out in green décor – twice and accompanied a silent horror film at Crosstown Theatre last year. The rebirth of the Memphis arts scene and the Concourse, a vibrant “vertical village” that serves as a sprawling conduit of creativity and interaction in a bustling metropolis, were both major draws for Brophy to come back home.

“I saw what was happening in Memphis with the arts scene – Crosstown going up and all the events happening there… Memphis really seemed to have hit a stride economically, and definitely artistically, neighborhoods in Midtown were really thriving, and Downtown has undergone an enormous change in the past 15 years,” Brophy said.

Growing up, Brophy received lessons from Russian classical pianist Yakov Kasman, who won a silver medal at the 1997 Van Cliburn Competition. For her higher education, Brophy studied piano performance at the Manhattan School of Music, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, New England Conservatory of Music and Texas Christian University. Brophy is also half of The Brophy Sisters, a duo with her younger sister Linnaea, a violinist.

“I would accompany her on the piano when she was first learning violin; so we have always played as a duo, and we came up with the Brophy Sisters name in 2015 around the time that we started working on our first album which is to date our only album,” Brophy said.

After accepting a new job as a collaborative pianist at Ole Miss, Brophy applied for the composer residency program about a year ago. Though she intended to spend her residency composing and recording her compositions, Brophy’s plans changed after Karimnia sent her pictures of the newly renovated resident music studios, nicknamed Grandma’s House, and Grandpa’s House.

“I thought that would be really beautiful space to make videos and then I thought with the pandemic and everything all music creation is becoming virtual,” Brophy said. “I thought maybe instead of working on composing; I could work on my YouTube channel, which is another project that I had envisioned… I hadn’t particularly envisioned it for Crosstown, but that is what I’m doing now at Crosstown.” 

Brophy currently lives in Bartlett, Tenn., with her daughter and will not be living in Grandma’s House during her residency. Instead, she uses the house as an “extravagantly outfitted” workspace to make videos for her YouTube channel, where she performs renditions of neglected compositions by women and nonbinary composers on her Kawai RX-2 BLAK piano, provided by one of her sponsor’s Lane Music. Brophy said it’s her mission to highlight the work of composers who have been historically neglected because of who they were and the environment they lived in while they were composing.

During her time as a pianist at Fisk University, a private historically black university (HBCU) in Nashville, Brophy said the students she was accompanying were performing music by composers that were unknown to her. After doing some research, Brophy said she found an entire catalog of black composers that she had never learned about in the education she received at predominately white institutions.

“By working at an HBCU, I learned of the existence of major black classical composers, and to me, that was really shocking that I hadn’t learned of these composers in my own education,” Brophy said. “At that point, I decided that I had to spend the rest of my life working to get those names into the standard repertoire and getting them recognized and considered part of the canon of classical music that everybody studies; this applies to women composers as well.”

One of the underrepresented composers that Brophy is featuring on her YouTube channel is Florence Price, an African American classical composer and pianist born in Little Rock, Ark., in 1887. 

Price was the first African American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer and the first to have one of her compositions played by a major orchestra, her Symphony No. 1 in E minor was performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933. During her life, Price wrote a total of four symphonies; after the debut of her first, she was recognized as a very talented composer, but none of her other symphonies were performed by a major orchestra in the 1900s, and to this day, there is still no recorded evidence of a major orchestra performing any of her other symphonies.

“She struggled her entire life to be taken seriously because she was a woman, and she was black,” Brophy said. 

Not long after the New Yorker published an article in 2018 detailing the discovery of Price’s long-lost manuscripts – found in an abandoned house in St. Anne, Ill. – Publisher G. Schirmer Inc., located Price’s heirs and began publishing her work. A year later, Schirmer found an additional cache of manuscripts and worked with musicologist John Michael Cooper (Southwestern University) to edit some of the scores to be published. Schirmer has now published about 50 of Price’s piano pieces; Brophy says that she has bought about 10 of them for her work.

Price’s “Barcarolle” and “Until We Meet” are two pieces that Brophy bought to feature on her YouTube channel, and as of this moment, Brophy says her recorded performances of those two piano compositions are the only ones in existence on the Internet. In all of her videos, Brophy’s years of classical education and experience are apparent: she sits at the edge of her bench, back straight, arms relaxed in front of her, and when she begins to play, her fingers gracefully dance across the keyboard to produce beautiful melodies.

In addition to posting videos on YouTube and Facebook – her next live stream performance is on Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. – Brophy has also promoted her content on Against the Grain, Crosstown Art’s new online platform. Against the Grain features over 100 local artists who record their musical performances from home and post their videos on Crosstown Art’s website for online viewers, who have free unlimited access to all of the website’s videos. 

With the pandemic putting an end to most live performances, Against the Grain gives viewers the option to directly support local artists by buying a virtual ticket, which starts at $5. Musicians are also paid semi-monthly for all of the online revenue that their content generates.

“We are still trying to make sure that musicians know that this is still an ongoing project, actually don’t intend to ever really stop it because once these videos are on here, people can always donate,” Said Crosstown Arts Music Department Manager Jenny Davis.

Brophy said she is happy that Crosstown Arts is continuing to support local arts during these tough times. 

“I think it’s a really wonderful thing that Crosstown did for all of us artists who had gigs canceled in the pandemic, Crosstown is continuing to promote Memphis musicians just like it always has,” Brophy said.

OXFORD, Ms. – The Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) has decided to host this year’s annual Fall Symposium virtually.

The Southern Foodways Alliance last Saturday kicked off its 23^rd Fall Symposium with the first of four virtual events, featuring broadcast filmed presentations and Q&A’s in which presenters speak to this year’s theme: How Southern food and culture is changing, and what that evolution will look like in the years to come. 

This Saturday’s lineup, titled “Sustenance,” will feature cookbook author and editor of Plate Magazine Chandra Ram, chef Oscar Diaz, and bestselling novelist Silas House.

After studying journalism (Loyola University Chicago), culinary arts (The Culinary Institute of America), and wine, Chandra Ram eventually started writing regularly for Plate and eventually became the editor of the award-winning food magazine for chefs. Over the years, Ram has authored cookbooks, such as The Complete Indian Pot Cookbook, and has won multiple awards for her writing, including a James Beard nomination and an IACP nomination. One of her latest articles for Food & Wine Magazine entitled, “Brown in the South” Dinners Explore Ties Between India and the American South” is the focal point of her Symposium film presentation. Ram said the “Brown in the South” dinners resonated with her because she is half Indian and first-generation American who grew up in Lexington, Ky.

“I still struggled with what that meant to me in terms of my identity and in terms of who I was as a Southerner and who I was as someone who presents themself as looking at least somewhat Indian,” Ram said. “I grew up spending a lot of time in India, and I recognized that this was something that reflected my own questions about identity.”

“Brown in the South” is a collaborative dinner series that explores the ties between India and the American South. The dinner series is put together by seven chiefs of Indian and Sri Lankan descent: Vishwesh Bhatt of Snackbar in Oxford, MS; Cheetie Kumar of Garland in Raleigh, NC; Meherwan Irani of Cahi Pani in Asheville, NC; Asha Gomez of The Third Space in Atlanta, GA; and Maneet Chauhan of Chauhan Ale and Masala House in Nashville, TN. These seven chiefs have made the South their home and as a result each of the “Brown in the South” dinners will celebrate and incorporate ingredients such as okra that are used in both cultures.

“If you look at something like Carolina barbecue, for example, it has tangy elements and spiciness to it – it’s this long slow-cooked meat, and then you can look at vindaloo pork from Goa in Southeastern India and see a lot of the same kind of flavors coming through, and it leaves you with the same kind of feeling after you eat it,” Ram said.

After attended several of the Brown in the South dinners, Ram said she is excited to share more about her “really cool experience” in her Symposium film. She also hopes that her film can add to the huge conversation about race and equality in this country.

“It’s a good time for us to address the fact that those of us who are brown in the South – Indians and other South-Asians – should talk about what our experience is in a predominately white culture,” Ram said. “There is racism within the culture, there is racism between brown people from different parts of the world, brown people and black people – so, it’s to say, if we are doing this event that celebrates commonality and celebrates all these things that show us how alike we are, then how can we use this event to not just give us a feel-good moment but actually prompt heart-to-heart discussions that we need to have and really affect change.”

Ram won’t be the only Symposium presenter on Saturday who will speak to how Southern food is becoming more multicultural due to immigration. 2019 James Beard award semifinalist chef Oscar Diaz of The Cortez and Jose and Sons in Raleigh, N.C., will show how he melds his family’s Mexican cooking with Southern cuisine in his BrunsMex stew. During his Symposium film, Diaz will reflect on his dish, a take on Brunswick stew – a tomato-based stew that features beans, vegetables, and meat. 

The third and final presenter of Saturday’s lineup will be Silas House, a novelist, music journalist, and columnist. House is the nationally bestselling author of six novels, including 2018’s “Southernmost,” in which House grapples with the limits of belief, faith succumbing to fear, and the infinite ways to love in a small Tennessee town. House said the inspiration behind his latest novel comes from his desire to write about LGBTQ people and religion in the modern South.

For this year’s Symposium, House will share a pre-recorded video entitled, A Crowded Table, during which he will reflect on his childhood memories, a time when he “loved to dance and refused to squirrel hunt.” House said he hopes the message behind his event will inspire others to sit down and share a meal with anyone regardless of their differences of opinion, unless that difference of opinion is harmful to others.

“I just want to encourage people to be more empathetic,” House said. “I think if anything can lead us to be that way, maybe it’s thinking about eating together because, in a way, it’s the most human experience… we all have to do it.”

With so many events going virtual in 2020, Mary Beth Lasseter, associate director of the SFA, said she hopes this year’s Fall Symposium will bring something unique to the table.

“We hope that we are going to deliver something that is a little different because we have these professionally produced films instead of just talking heads all day, but people will let us know if we deliver after we survey them after the event,” Lasseter said.

The SFA’s next Symposium event, “Exemplars,” is on October 17 from 9 a.m. to noon. For more information on future Symposium events or the SFA, visit southernfoodways.org or contact Lasseter at marybeth@southernfoodways.org.