On the hillside of a Humboldt vineyard, in what was once a barn in the land’s historic farm days, is the Companion Gallery, where local ceramicist Eric Botbyl has his studio as well as a gallery shop featuring work by fellow potters from around the country. It’s a quiet place where the doors are left open to catch the breeze on spring days like today and is kept warm by a wood-burning stove in the winter. It’s surrounded by twenty-two acres of grapevines and neighbors the Crown Winery’s Tuscan-style villa.
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We gathered in a living room of earthen walls painted mint green with a dirt floor covered by tarp. Our hostess sat aside from the group on a bench lining one of the walls so that we could all have a seat in a circle of sunk-in couches and ottomans. Alemaz Bola is a mother of five and an entrepreneur. She wore a head wrap striped with the green, yellow, and red of the Ethiopian flag and sat meekly aside as if to stay out of the way, despite the fact that we came to hear her story.
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Sitting with Taylor and Craig Lott at their recently opened business The Rugged Reclaimers, I ask them to describe their business to me, partly because I’ve had so much trouble describing it myself. A retailer of reclaimed (and new) goods, it’s tempting to group Rugged Reclaimers in under the moniker of antique or thrift store. But despite the number of antiques and goods usually associated with thrifting (pre-owned men’s flannel shirts, furniture, etc.), “antique” or “thrift store” still doesn’t sound quite right.
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I’m seated by a floor-to-ceiling window in a Memphis coffee shop waiting for a former professor of mine. Memphis, because it’s his home turf. I watch the passersby coming and going on this sunny Saturday, and as I’m looking outside, I see Bobby C. Rogers turning the corner of Cooper and Cowden. He is a professor of English at Union University.
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It seems like I find myself in a lot of conversations about how much Jackson is growing. You might also hear natives and non-natives alike saying, “Jackson is nothing like it was ten years ago.” I recently found myself in conversation with a new Jackson resident while waiting in a food truck line at the farmers’ market, and the California-native remarked on how young and up-and-coming Jackson feels compared to other small Southeastern towns she’s experienced.
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