Living Jackson Magazine

Building Bridges
by Priscilla Daves

Right from the start let me say that Living Jackson is about bridges—building, covering, using and enjoying.

The fact that one of our first stories talks about our bridges, the people who maintain them and the people who know them is a strong indication that we take bridges seriously.

With deepest regard to people here who judge by what side of the river you are from, we take a different stand. Living Jackson is about a celebration of the people, events and places of this wonderful, funny, sad, miraculous and tragic county. These are the stories we want to tell.

Whether you are new to this land or one of the increasingly outnumbered of us who were born here, we have all of this in common: we want to belong. We want opportunities and we want to live in peace and safety, no matter how we seem to strive to the contrary. We want to be a part of this community.

Many years ago, botanists discovered that this land has a unique ability to tolerate and nuture plants that should not grow either this far south or north. This county has its own arboretum because one of those scientists wanted to help us celebrate the diversity of our county and its geography. You could say our people are also diverse and are thriving in this land. In the Jackson County I grew up in, most of the names were English, Scot, German, Irish and occasionally Polish. Now we have people from all over the world. I also grew up in a county with a reputation for crime and violence, and now we have a reputation for good schools, good people and a great future.

Sometimes it seems that every day we have new stories, new jobs, new families. Yet the people who have been here a long time are part of the growth. We long-timers recognized a long time ago that growth was coming, and we’ve tried to welcome what we considered the best while discouraging what we consider the worst. In answer to all you newcomers, we do know how wonderful the county is, but look what we would have missed if we’d been able to close the gate before you moved in. Other new people will bring us their talents and special gifts too.

The members of the staff at Living Jackson want to be your guides to the new Jackson County. We will show you who is who in the current power structure, who is coming up and where the old power structure sits now. We’ll tell you what is happening so you can participate—or take an alternate route around the traffic. We’ll tell you how your neighbors live so you can enjoy them as your neighbors and not think of them as strangers. We may even tell you some history and ghost stories.

Come join us in our journey. We are talking bridges and certainly will talk about the rivers, but we promise we’ll never look at them as a way to divide people or places or events.