This is the time of year when we take a look back at 2022 and at the same time look forward to 2023.
It's a bittersweet time of year. There have been weddings and funerals, cars bought and trucks crashed, profits and losses, good times and sad times. This was also the year we learned about inflation, our labor force and how politics may be the worst sickness in society.
I try not to dwell too much on the past. Yes, there is much to be learned by looking back at what went wrong and what went right in 2022. But I'm an optimist and I prefer to look forward to good times ahead.
I have never heard of someone honestly trying to fail. None of us should head down any path knowing full well that heartache and misery are waiting. Life is for the living and we need to look to each new day as an opportunity and a chance to make this world a little better place.
So with all that said, let's take a look back at 2022 and a then peer into 2023 and strive for the best!
2022
• It is the elephant in the room. Inflation and a workforce that never went back to work after COVID changed our world – yours and mine.
I hope it proved to people that as much as we pride ourselves in being free and independent, we are a social species and we must work together to solve our problems.
• You will hear gunshots in Clarksdale this weekend. We heard them all too regularly in 2022. As bad as it is, I want to tip my hat to local law enforcement for making arrests as quickly as possible. Yes, we do have a few unsolved homicides, but the hunt is always on.
The shots fired calls bother me more than my family being the victim of a possible homicide. Randomly fired bullets don’t have a target and care less whose life they ruin. I think we need to teach these crooks how to shoot so they can hit their target and not me.
• We didn’t have the big industrial announcements we have had over the past few years, but that should come as no surprise.
Business has put on the brakes. Business was forced to put on the brakes by inflation and the anti-business mood in Washington.
I point to Jackson’s water crisis. Why solve a problem yourself when the government will come in and bail you out? If Clarksdale wants to correct problems they must find the leaders who can solve problems.
I have heard rumblings of yet more job announcements and we have county elections this coming year. Let’s see what 2023 holds.
• Clarksdale saw several mom-and-pop businesses call it quits this year. We also saw several national retail stores close in 2022. Those businesses will never come back.
• What happened in our schools in 2022 probably concerns me the most.
We fired a superintendent. We couldn’t get good people to serve on the school board. Our grades on the state assessment were once again pitiful.
The day the state walks in here and takes over our schools, I promise not to say “I told you so!”
Wake up Clarksdale. Our schools are not jobs programs, they are the future of our children and this community.
If you hear nothing else I ever say, please remember the only hope your children, my children and all Clarksdale’s children have is a good education.
It has been estimated a lack of skills and education in Clarksdale will cause an extra 10 percent of our children to become criminals and go to prison. What a tragedy. What a waste.
2023
• This will be the year Clarksdale gets some kind of homeless shelter. We have a food kitchen, we have an animal shelter, and we have good people wanting a homeless shelter. This will be the year it truly gets started.
• Are we ever going to get that housing development, community center and grocery store that has been promised Clarksdale?
I was not here when they were first promised, but I have read in the old Clarksdale Press Register files where they were.
Communities around us are getting grocery stores, we are still in a region that has been called “food scare” by universities and major media, and we still need another grocery store.
• This is the year we start putting people back in jail for crime. COVID and “defund the police” has stopped law enforcement from making arrests. Oh, and it will soon be an election year and I hope that was not a factor.
Maybe this is the year we give law enforcement a little support and they start locking crooks up again.
• Coahoma County farmers had a good year in 2022 and I have been told this was one of the best cotton crops in decades. Agri-business is big business around here and this is one segment of our economy that keeps moving forward. I hope and pray we have a good growing season in 2023.
• This is the year we get some kind of “new” hospital. Actually this will be the year we get new partners in healthcare in Clarksdale.
Just like a wedding, we need to unite hearts and minds and form a long-lasting relationship between this community and our doctors and healthcare managers.
It couldn’t happen at a better time for this community. The other option is to see the doors close.
• I spoke with a group of tourist outside my office Tuesday. They were up from New Orleans and this was their first vacation in nine months.
It was good to see tourist in our town again. It was refreshing to hear someone left the Big Easy to come party in the Blues Capital of The World.
Be thankful
I hope you can look back on 2022 and see the blessings that have fallen on you. I hope you can put to rest those failures and losses that you suffered – I had them, too.
Like I said earlier, let's look forward to 2023 and when we meet here again at this time next year we can all smile and say it has been a good year!
Floyd Ingram is Editor of your Clarksdale Press Register. He is an optimist, capitalist and a Baptist and you can call him at 627-2201 to talk the future, business or religion.
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