“You’re never too old to learn” was just something to say until I began blogging with Sop and learned more about the weather than my not- exactly- young self thought possible. On my father’s side, mine was a family of generations of farmers with weather their measure of time – time to sow and time to reap, too cold to plant, too hot to harvest when the sun was up. Yet, I am also my mother’s beach-loving daughter who measures time by the opening of the local farmer’s market – or did before yesterday when I discovered mine had become a craft show!
Readers in the “bold new city” that is Mississippi’s capital know the insurance controversy that followed Katrina pales when compared to the one that followed the State’s decision to move the Farmer’s Market. While the fight on the Coast is over the quality of policy coverage, the battle over the relocation of the Farmer’s Market was fought over the quality of produce, assuming, I suppose, one eats handmade soap that looks like a slice of fudge.
Nonetheless, the two controversies find common ground in their impact on quality of life – and, given the all but total absence of farmers from the Farmer’s Market, the SLABBED must “never, never, never give up”. I didn’t give up my search for fresh produce – but my father could have plowed a field with the gas it took for me to come up with the lady peas simmering as I type.
The “build it and they’ll come” folks won; so they build it but the farmers didn’t come. Expecting people who measure time by the weather to sell the fruit vegetables of their labor from tables inside a building instead of an open-air stall was folly – as was the focus on rebuilding schools in the coastal counties where other rebuilding was stalled. The Sun Herald reports, Biloxi may close 3 school:
Biloxi’s enrollment never has reached pre-Katrina levels… The district is down about 1,300 students from 2005 and with the lack of affordable housing and the cost of insurance, Tisdale doesn’t expect enrollment to increase dramatically.
“The recession isn’t our biggest issue,” he said. “Student enrollment is our biggest issue.” Continue reading “a hurricane is a thunderstorm without thunder and a Farmer’s Market without farmers is a…”