I hope this column finds you in your favorite chair tonight or at the kitchen table drinking coffee this morning.
Visiting with you is a privilege I never take for granted.
You stop me in the restaurant or the store and tell me you read my column and you like what I write. I can’t tell you the number of times I have been smeared by a local politician that day and your kind words truly salve the wound.
You tell me to just print the truth and get after those elected officials who don’t want to change things around here.
So let’s take a look at today’s paper.
Page One
Your Clarksdale Press Register will not stop pounding on cleaning up this town until - well, we clean up this town.
City fathers have also repeatedly been told by you to clean up Clarksdale. That is because a clean Clarksdale benefits every person in this town.
I love the Sunflower Festival.
The Juke Joint is more commercial and brings in more dollars and that suits me fine.
But there is something about that VIP tent and the more laid-back atmosphere of the Sunflower Festival that is true to its blues roots and what Southern Culture is all about.
As I’ve said before Clarksdale needs four big festivals: Juke Joint in the spring; Sunflower in the summer; Mighty Roots in the fall; and we need to create a winter event that we hold in the Civic Auditorium.
Please tell the people you voted for to pick up their signs. Yes, we have a runoff on Aug. 29, but those out of the race need to pull their signs down.‘Nuff said!
Chronic absenteeism in our schools is a crime.
How will this community ever attract high paying jobs unless we have the highly educated people worthy of those good jobs?
There are many factors that have produced a failing education system in our community. Not making kids go to school is one of them.
Inside Pages
This paper is full of advertising.
The call for a political boycott of your Clarksdale Press Register this spring by certain elected officials and business leaders never really took off.
This election proved what this paper has been printing for the past four years has opened the eyes of people in Clarksdale and Coahoma County.
Clarksdale has so much potential and really is a neat place to live. Coahoma County is lucky to be situated on this fine Delta dirt with one of the world’s greatest rivers to the west, an Interstate highway just down the road to the east and Highway 61 rolling right through the middle. We need to work together to solve some of our problems and all share the glory.
I regret we had to “Jump” our obituaries from Page 3 to Page 11. Again too many ads is a good problem to have. I do want to add that those obituaries will last a lot longer than this paper as a whole.
Those Clarksdale Press Register obits will be clipped out and slipped in the family Bible to be enjoyed by you decades down the road.
We’ve got football news on our sports pages today. We will have you a football preview in a week or two and hope you will read - and advertise in – this edition when it hits the streets.
Yes, we also have a police report as we do every week, because crime is a concern for an aging community. We hope you realize our police needs your help. A tip from you saw a suspected murder arrested two weeks ago.
Last but not least, please look at the tax sale listing in this week’s newspaper.
There will always be names you know in this newspaper. Today is no different.
I do want to point out Coahoma County’s tax sale list is much smaller than Tunica’s list. I hope that is because Coahoma County has more people wanting to stay in their home than move out. I hope it says our economy is just a little bit stronger and people here have been able to pay their taxes this year.
Eight minutes
They say it takes eight minutes to read a newspaper. The movers and shakers in this community read several newspapers daily.
You need to know what is happening in your community if you want to get the most out of life.
Events covered in this paper this week will affect your life, your business and your family for years to come.
Well, it’s time to go. I’ve enjoyed the visit. Let’s meet again next week.
Floyd Ingram is Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. Stop by his office at 128 East Second Street in Downtown Clarksdale and spend 8-minutes with him.
