Ismael and Angelica want the Jackson community to know that they are here to serve and build community. Their bakery is not just about selling bread; it's about breaking bread and building friendships, creating a sense of home for everyone who walks through their doors. They believe it's important to pass down their traditions to their children so that their culture continues to thrive.

“I just need a space to dance,” Mona Lisa Lanier said to me as she flicked on the lights of a former elementary school turned community recreation center. The room, once a classroom, is now a dance studio with mirrors and photos of dancers in brightly colored costumes lining the wall. 

Lanier proudly pointed out her students and how much they’ve grown since these photos were taken. 

It was late, and the ferry felt cool in the summer’s evening breeze. We were only a week into my summer in Istanbul, but in our short time learning basic Turkish, navigating public transit, and hopping between Asia and Europe the way I do now between Highland and the Bypass, we felt like naturals. The warm glow of the nearest café’s neon sign welcomed us to the European shore where the five of us girls were staying for the week, and we didn’t need much convincing to stop in for a late-night dinner of pasta and whatever scrumptious-looking mystery pastry the shelf held.

I had a college professor tell me once, “Remember, you are changing your generation and the generations of the people around you.” Those words are so true and are still relevant in my life today. In fact, that professor was living proof of that statement by changing my life with mentoring, advising, and pushing me to be better. It was not just that one professor, of course. There were (and still are) many people who continually wanted to invest in me as I grew up here. My father and mother met at Lambuth University, but my dad was not in school there.

“Where are you from?” The dreaded question. Whenever someone asks me this, I laugh and try to assess whether the person asking wants the long answer or the short one. Even the long version has been condensed for convenience over the years. This question has had different answers at different points in my life. When I was ten, I was from Northern Kentucky. When I was eleven and my family had moved to South Africa as missionaries, I was from America.

Eight days late and after thirty-six hours of labor from my hard-working mother, I was born at the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital on a hot April day in 1976. Forty-two years later, I am an attending physician in that very same department. It’s very unusual for a physician to practice in their hometown, but I am thankful that my journey has brought me back to where I started. My earliest memory of life in Jackson is from First Presbyterian Playschool.

Eight days late and after thirty-six hours of labor from my hard-working mother, I was born at the Jackson-Madison County General Hospital on a hot April day in 1976. Forty-two years later, I am an attending physician in that very same department. It’s very unusual for a physician to practice in their hometown, but I am thankful that my journey has brought me back to where I started. My earliest memory of life in Jackson is from First Presbyterian Playschool.

2002 was the year that changed my life. I had just moved to “the big city” of Jackson from the incredibly small town of Trezevant, Tennessee. My new journey started at Union University as a Christian Studies major, and quickly I realized I had turned religion into a textbook, not an action. It took a while to recover from the shock of not knowing what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, as this was my plan for quite some time—going into ministry. I continued pressing on with my major until 201 Ash Street happened.

Never ever in a million years would I have guessed that I would be a small business owner living in Jackson, Tennessee. I am one of the most shy people you will ever meet. That ambitious entrepreneur spirit is in me, but growing up, it wasn’t readily apparent, even to me. My husband, on the other hand, always knew he would work for himself and probably stay here in Jackson. Both of our grandparents owned their own businesses, and their examples shaped our lives. When I think of Jackson, I think of my family.

“Community is not something you have, like pizza,” wrote social critic James Howard Kunstler in The Geography of Nowhere. “Nor is it something you can buy. It’s a living organism based on a web of interdependencies—which is to say a local economy.” Americans, perhaps above all others, have bought into the lie in the last couple of generations that each person is an island, shaping her or his own destiny with nothing but a morning shot of caffeine and a solid WiFi connection.

If you had asked me about my future in the fall of 1994, I would have told you that I was planning on moving back home to Paducah, Kentucky, as soon as I finished college. I was supposed to live on Jefferson Street, right next door to my life-long BFF, Laura. She was going to live in her grandmother’s house, and I would buy the house next door. Twenty-four years later, she still reminds me of that broken promise. I had roots there in Paducah. They were strong and firmly planted. My daddy grew up there, too

If you told the twenty-year-old me that I would eventually live in Jackson, Tennessee, he would have died laughing. I wasn't even sure I would be living in Tennessee period. Twenty-year-old me was an M1-A1 Abrahms Tank System Specialist (tank mechanic, y'all, I was a tank mechanic) that had dreams of completing a twenty-year career and retiring. And then after my retirement, I would launch some sort of startup with the security of a nice, fat check to fall back on if things didn't work out. Twenty-year-old me was married to the first of two ex-wives and had no kids.

It was partly selfish. Admittedly, I wanted to feel closer to home. Reflecting back, I wanted to reconnect with a meaningful period of life in a place I loved. Like many folks sprouting a few gray hairs, I felt like I could offer a bit of advice to the generation just behind me. The blank spaces in our daily schedules during the 2020-2021 COVID year(s) provided a moment to brainstorm about how we could build on the Jackson Grown series started in 2017 and published in Our Jackson Home magazine.

However one might choose to gauge her, Lauren Pritchard, who goes by the stage name LOLO, does not situate comfortably into the traditional West Tennessee templates assigned to a middle class white girl. The church choir, theatre class, prom-going standards simply don’t work.

Drew Sutton and I were skinny, rival players with more or less realistic hopes of playing baseball for a low to mid-level university... somewhere.

August 1966 was a complicated time in the United States. Across the American landscape, leaders emerged, convictions solidified and movements progressed around highly-charged civil rights issues such as voting, education, and worker rights. It was also host to a range of less visible currents that touched the lives of African Americans. Frances, the daughter of West Tennessee sharecroppers and devoted parents, grew up in this time of tectonic social and political shifts.

The year was 1984, and a young student from a remote region in the heart of Africa walked out of a small Jesuit mission in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Makim Mputubwele was leaving a torn country to study applied linguistics in the sprawling, peaceful landscapes of Indiana.

It is one of the most tense places in the world. A tightly packed geographic meeting of three major religions and a nervous geopolitical flashpoint, the area sits within the inner circle of major foreign policy decisions for most countries. Needless to say, the Old City of Jerusalem does not regularly serve as an exhibition stage for fringe outdoor sports. On May 2, 2016, however, visitors to the Tower of David on the western edge of the Old City saw something unique.

There is a little Italian café in Geneva, Switzerland, that sits just across the street from the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I found myself there one rainy morning in February hunched over coffee with a colleague. We ran through the updates of the people around us who were doing their best to keep their flags flying in the midst of deep decreases in global budgets and broad increases in needs for life-saving work in areas such as human rights and global health.

In Norway it gets dark early. As we left for the arena around 4:00 P.M., the hazy glow of the daytime winter sky in Oslo had faded. I was on the bus headed to a concert honoring one of our own. Daniel was a member of our little band of misfits living in Geneva, Switzerland, who worked in and around the United Nations on issues ranging from poverty, hunger, and demining to human rights, health, and humanitarian relief. By all measurements, Daniel had “made it.”

Life will map the legacy we will leave and before we know it, we’ll be looking back on how the decisions we’ve made laid the foundation for future generations. In this interview between father and son, Quinton Atwater interviews his father Ronald Atwater, discussing how concrete finishing became the birthright to the Atwater legacy of entrepreneurship.

We’ve all been there: mindlessly scrolling through Facebook only to be caught completely off-guard by a disturbing photo, a shocking headline, or an ignorant comment. It’s pretty common these days to interact with social media a bit like a minefield, but it’s rare for those “explosions” to produce laughter and “amen.” Susannah B. Lewis is one of these unique Facebook-dwellers, and I’ll never forget the day I first stumbled across this striking blonde with a smart mouth speaking some things that needed saying. I was a little mesmerized, I must admit.

Asanta Brooks is an author and freelance writer. Her passion for writing stemmed from creating and illustrating comic strips as a child, which lead to her becoming involved with the high school paper and excelling as a feature writer for her college paper. She resides in Jackson with her adorably energetic four-year-old son, Alex, and today we’re excited to share a little more about her and why she’s a part of Our Jackson Home.

I like tattoos. I like tattoos a lot. So when the chance came up for me to interview the owners of Other Mother Tattoo, I jumped at the opportunity. I already knew that Briana Walker and Whitney Harbin were amazing at what they did, but after our conversation, I decided to start referring to them (and all the other tattoo artists that I know) as artists—not just tattoo artists. After reading our discussion, you might choose to do the same.

It’s a cloudy, dreary December day outside, but the laughter between the three musicians I’m sitting with is making things seem brighter. It’s their first time at theCO, and I had them crash on the couches to create a comfy environment for our interview. Ben Gilbreath, Nathan Megelsh, and Tyler Marberry are meeting with me today to talk about their band, Forked Deer Homeschool Parade. If you’re from around the more southern West Tennessee area, you probably know that it’s pronounced “Fork-ed Deer.”

Jackson’s musical dichotomy has had a strange, often polarizing environment for musicians to grow in over the last decade. Often touted as the bathroom break between Memphis and Nashville, Jackson—with the exception of Carl Perkins’ aeonian influence on rockabilly—is not critically recognized as a musically significant city. To say that Jackson is part of a bigger delta blues triangle would be more plausible. Music scenes are often planted in Jackson but never seem to flourish.

Small Town Big Sound started off with a dream: Keegan Paluso’s desire to use his musical background to help others in West Tennessee realize their potential. What began as this idea soon formed into a community of local artists, each with different and diverse experiences, working together to create original music. Keegan shared with me about how Small Town Big Sound writes, records, and produces the music of our area. 

Being young with creative aspirations takes hard work and initiative, sometimes particularly so in smaller towns. Yet Jackson is the lucky home to a plethora of up-and-coming talent with big plans for the future. Having lived and worked here for several years now, the members of Coopertheband are no strangers to the trials and rewards of the independent music world. They have recently played several shows back-to-back in the community, extending their central messages of hope and joy through their lyrics.

For years I’ve been hearing the name James Cherry. I first heard of him when I was a student at Union University (also his alma mater) and then continued to hear about this guy as a Jacksonian interested in writing. It’s clear that locals are proud to have this Jackson native around. He’s the president of the Griot Collective of West Tennessee, a monthly poetry workshop, and is, upon meeting him, very obviously cool. He has an easy going temperament and a steady, unquestionable passion for the written word.

Rain falls steadily against the sidewalk, bouncing back up almost as soon as it brushes the ground, and all I have for a shield is my military-green rain jacket as I hurry into Alba. Throwing off my hood, I spota guy in a sharp polka-dotted button-up and a girl with cool eyeliner sitting in the corner of the coffee shop. Together, local artists Hunter Cross and Cameron Briley combine their talents as The Skeleton Krew, an original band with a 60s-inspired, blues-rock vibe.

I have an affinity for hardworking people. That's why I like guys like Brandon Barnett. Brandon is one of Jackson's more interesting songwriters, and he also has a knack for churning out thought­provoking podcasts about the struggles of being a musician via "Left of Nashville." I sat down with Brandon last month to talk about things we liked and his music/podcast endeavors.

In eager anticipation of their upcoming concert this weekend, I jumped at the chance to speak with singer-songwriter couple Cody and Melody Curtis as well as vocalist/musician/visual artist Thomas Griffith about PSALLOS. PSALLOS is a musical group made up of fourteen individuals currently supporting their ambitious ROMANS project, a concept album that details the book of Romans in the Bible.

A husband of twenty-one years and the father of three teens, Andrew Peterson is a Christian singer-songwriter and author based out of Nashville, Tennessee. Since moving there from the homeland he lovingly calls "redneck Florida," Andrew has produced seventeen albums and written a four-part book series, The Wingfeather Saga. The Star Center has the joy of welcoming Andrew to Jackson this Saturday, February 20, for a concert at Fellowship Bible Church benefiting their Literacy Lab scholarships.

In between casually referencing James Blunt, discussing My Chemical Romance’s best records, and pouring over photos of the various orcs from The Lord of The Rings, Rob and Thomas Griffith of Flying Colours spoke with me this week about the band’s upcoming show in Jackson. The Flying Colours have been featured before in Our Jackson Home; for this interview, Rob and Thomas opened up about the latest news for the band and their gratitude for the support that Jackson has shown for them throughout the years.

Garrett Hinson of Trenton, Tennessee, is no stranger to the artistic struggle, but what makes his struggle so interesting is how he has grown into his own brand of aural singularity. Folk and rock music are incredibly different than their traditional interpretations, and that’s part of what makes Garrett’s sound so enjoyable. Garrett applies the traditional and contemporary styles of folk and rock for a sound that doesn’t cross barriers but fuses them instead.

Nashville is an interesting place for a plethora of reasons, but one of the most interesting things about the city is what it does to musicians. The best of the best from all over the world flock to the city in hopes of fulfilling some guilded dream of becoming some sort of star, but in actuality they are sharpening the fangs of the cities growing problem with musical egocentrism. Why am I saying all of this? Because Erin Rae is part of the solution to the very problem I just described to you.

Instead of exploring the seemingly rich platitudes that most mediocre artists tend to in their formative years, West Tennessee’s Lauren Pritchard has taken another route. Pritchard, who now goes by her stage name LOLO, is a performing veteran with an impressive credits list ranging from Broadway to Jay Leno. LOLO is now signed to DCD2, a label started by Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz.

Logan Wall is a twenty-two-year-old Jackson native with an impeccable ear for melody. Not only can he write music well, but he is also a very talented singer-songwriter. Logan is currently studying audio engineering at MTSU, but he already has an enviable amount of studio experience as a player, engineer, and producer under his belt. One could say Logan is a Jack-of-all-trades when it comes to music, but you’d never know due to his humble nature.

Hannah Russell is a Marketing Assistant at Lane College and freelance photographer in Jackson, focusing her creative efforts primarily in portrait and studio photography. As a recent graduate of Union University’s art program, she is continually discovering how to transform the everyday person into the most interesting of subjects through her attention to composition and form. “Photography for me is kind of like an adventure. It’s a very curious and exploratory activity; a search for the best composition."

The journey down the rabbit hole is one that most American children can recall vividly. Alice in Wonderland is a story that is colorful and bizarre in the very best ways. The Ballet Arts of Jackson performance this weekend was exceptional in the way they brought all of those iconic characteristics to the Civic Center stage.