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BOOKS FOR SUMMER

Recommendations from STACY GRANING

General Manager, Brookhaven Magazine This edition’s summer reads offer a mix of thoughtprovoking essays and page-turning thrillers deisgned for weekends at the beach or by the pool.

The Heathens (A Quinn Colson Novel #11)

By Ace Atkins

Sheriff Quinn Colson and his former deputy Lillie Virgil find themselves on opposite sides of a case for the first time after a woman is found dead and three delinquent teens go on the run.

The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You: Stories

By Maurice Carlos Ruffin (Grisham Writer in Residence 2020-2021)

A collection of raucous stories that offer a panoramic view of New Orleans from the author of the “stunning and audacious” (NPR) debut novel We Cast a Shadow

Bring Your Baggage and Don’t Pack Light: Essays

By Helen Ellis

In these twelve gloriously comic and moving essays, Helen Ellis dishes on married middle-age sex, sobs with a theater full of women as a psychic exorcises their sorrows, gets twenty shots of stomach bile to the neck to get rid of her double chin, and gathers up the courage to ask, “Are you there, Menopause? It’s Me, Helen.”

The Turnout

By Megan Abbott

Bestselling and award-winning author Megan Abbott’s revelatory and mesmerizing new novel set against the hothouse of a family-run ballet studio.

What Strange Paradise

By Omar El Akkad

From the widely acclaimed, best-selling author of American War, a new novel--beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving--that looks at the global refugee crisis through the eyes of a child.

ARTS & CULTURE

MADE IN MISSISSIPPI

Arts School graduate heads back to Brookhaven to kick off tour

BY JULIA V. MILLER PHOTOS SUBMITTED

OOne of Mississippi School of the Arts’s own is putting together the final plans to kick off her first tour beginning right here in Brookhaven.

Destiny Stone, a 2015 graduate from the vocal discipline, will be performing Thursday, September 30 on the first leg of her Made in Mississippi Tour. Stone released her first song her senior year at MSA, and since then has released more than 25 original songs as an independent artist. Her most recent song, “If Love had a Home,” released June 11. “For the tour, I will definitely be performing original music,” Stone said. “I do covers, and covers are fun, of course, singing something everyone knows. But I really enjoy singing my own music because I wrote it for me. If I sing a Whitney Houston song, they didn’t write that song for me, they wrote that song for Whitney. Or if I sing a Michael Jackson song, or if I sing a Stevie Wonder song. Those songs were written for those artists. I really like singing my own songs because those songs are written for my voice.” The song writing process for Stone always starts with the music first before adding her lyrics. She tries to cover a variety of topics in her music from things that frustrate her, anger her, or make her sad to love songs or things that make her feel on top of the world. “I don’t consider myself to be a gospel singer, but my faith definitely comes into my music,” she said. “One of my favorite songs is called ‘99’,” and it’s based on the story where Jesus is telling about how the shepherd had 100 sheep and lost one. He went to go find it even though he had 99 more. I understand we’re human beings and we feel different emotions, so I try to tap into all of it.” Stone’s primary instrument is the piano, but she also picked up guitar in college. “I like to say I play one and a half instruments because I don’t play guitar as well as I play the piano,” she said.

MSA Roots

As the 2021 alumni of the year, Stone had the opportunity earlier this year to reflect on her time at MSA in preparation for giving the commencement address during this year’s graduation ceremony. “One of the things I mentioned in my speech is not only have you accomplished regular courses, whether it’s biology or your math courses or English courses, you also have to do your discipline courses,” she said. “It taught me how to study. It taught me how to be a leader. I think I already had natural leadership abilities, but it really brought it out more.”

Ironically though, Stone was not immediately interested in attending MSA as a 10th grader, but her mother insisted it was the right opportunity for her teenage daughter.

“I didn’t want to leave my friends. I’m sure a lot of people probably have that initial thought, but my mom really wanted me to get exposure to different people and different experiences. Once I figured out she wasn’t going to budge I decided I might as well just hop on the train because she’s not going to change her mind.”

Now, eight years later, Stone couldn’t be happier her mother pushed her to go. She was able to create enduring relationships with other artists, and even learned about the college she would go on to attend. During a meeting with Suzanne Hirsch, MSA’s executive director, Stone outlined her goals for the future, and her primary goal career wise was to be a songwriter.

“I still wanted to do music, but I didn’t want to do the traditional classical music degree,” she said.

Hirsch told her about another MSA student who had attended Catawba College in North Carolina, and as it turned out, it was the perfect fit for Stone.

Made in Mississippi

Stone first remembers performing when she was just 5 years old, and she put together her first show at age 15. Now, she’s learning the ropes of planning a three-day tour throughout Mississippi. After Brookhaven, Stone will be traveling on to Mississippi State University and then her hometown of Holly Springs with The S Band.

As an independent artist, she doesn’t have financial backing from any record label, so she’s had to learn other ways to finance the tour. With each of her stops, she was able to find a sponsor to help offset some of the costs associated with touring.

“As an independent artist, I have to get really creative with how I do things,” she said. “I contacted over 20 people to be sponsors, so I’m always learning to just not be afraid, to just go for it. The worst thing they can do is say no, and I’ll never know if they might say yes unless I ask.”

Brookhaven’s show is being sponsored by the Brookhaven Tourism Council, and other sponsors of the tour include MSU’s Black Student Association and Holly Springs Tourism Bureau. Tickets will go on sale August 2 at destinystonemusic.com.

ALL ABOUT THE BLUES

MMississippi’s rhythm and blues heritage is usually thought of in terms of sound and musical performance, but a new interactive art exhibition in Brookhaven has added a visual element, as well.

“‘The Mississippi Garden of Rhythm & Blues’ is a collection of Mississippi artists who have come together expressing the different ways that they feel and the different things that they feel from Mississippi blues artists and the history. They took that and they have transferred it into wonderful, beautiful pieces of artwork,” said organizer visual artist Derek Covington

Smith. The interactive art exhibition is presented by The Little

Yellow Building art studio in Brookhaven and hosted by The

Mississippi School of the Arts. The Little Yellow Building is the creative studio of Smith, a Mississippi native who moved back to his hometown of Brookhaven in 2018. Smith originally opened his studio to teach, but during COVID, he quickly shifted to working with contemporary Mississippi artists to create virtual exhibits. “MSGR&B” is the third show the Little

Yellow Building has produced and the first physical one.

Separated into three parts, the show explores some of the places and players of the Mississippi Blues movement and its effect on Mississippi’s visual artists today.

“We have ‘The Soil,’ and it represents all the places and the things that made up ‘the making of the blues,’” said Smith “We have ‘The Roots,’ which are all the blues artists and the influence that they have given. And then we have our influence,

‘The Blooms,’ what happens when artists are inspired by the lives and the music and the next generations.”

The exhibit invites guests to use their smartphones and learn about the music and history behind each work of art.

Author Claire Ishi Ayetoro provides narration.

“We invite you to experience what happens when Mississippi visual artists are under the influence of Mississippi’s rhythm and blues heritage,” Smith said. “Bring your headphones and a smart device to discover the world behind the art.”

The show features work from 31 visual artists from all across the state and will run until Aug. 13. The exhibit is open weekly,

Thursday to Saturday 2-8 p.m. and is open to the public.

For more information, visit TheLittleYellowBuilding.com.

ARTS & CULTURE

A NEW HOME

Singer/songwriter finds inspiration as she settles into Brookhaven

BY BRETT CAMPBELL PHOTOS SUBMITTED

SSinger, songwriter and multiple-instrument musician Avery Landrum has only lived in Brookhaven for less than a year, but has found the city to be one of the most welcoming she’s ever been.

“I’ve never been in a community where as soon as I got there people really welcomed me, and said, ‘You’re a musician, let me help you out,’” Landrum said. “It’s super inclusive and it feels like we’re one big family.” Landrum, 19, and her boyfriend moved to the Home Seekers Paradise from St. Francisville, Louisiana, in September 2020 to live with her mother. “My mom met somebody out here and we moved out here with them,” she said. “My mom is a traveling nurse and they’re in Colorado right now, so we’re watching the house and the dog.” Landrum said she has been playing music and writing songs for her entire life, and wrote her first song at age 7. Starting with piano, she has taught herself to play several instruments, including guitar, soprano and baritone ukulele, mandolin, bass and drums.

“I also played trombone in high school band,” she said. “But I don’t count that because I didn’t teach myself.”

“I was lucky enough a few times to go to one or two (music) lessons, and would benefit a lot from, like, one guitar lesson,” she said.

She plays by ear, and learned a lot from practicing with a book of chords.

When she performs gigs — like she did recently at The Shack at 550 and the Overbrook Songwriters Festival — it is usually just her and her guitar, sometimes adding a ukulele.

“I do a lot of classic rock, basically — stuff by The Eagles, Red Hot Chili Peppers (my favorite band) — all the good stuff,” she said.

Living just a few minutes’ drive from downtown, Landrum said she would love to see more “cool shops,” venues for live music and art, like the murals by local artists Don Jacobs and Derek Smith. Landrum is a people person who loves to talk. “I think Brookhaven has been such a good opportunity for me and I don’t think I’ve ever been around so many good people,” she said. “If you see me on the street, come up and talk to me and I’ll talk to you for an hour.” Though her passion displays itself primarily through music, Landrum says she will probably attend Copiah-Lincoln Community College with a goal to be an English teacher. “I love to read, and I love to write and my songwriting and English go handin-hand,” she said. “And you know change starts with education.”

FORGING THEIR OWN PATH

FOR MANY, THE PATH TO BECOMING A DOCTOR IS LONG AND DIFFICULT. THESE TWO FORMER BROOKHAVEN HIGH STUDENTS CHOSE A PATH LESS TRAVELLED.

BY JULIA V. MILLER PHOTOS SUBMITTED

The traditional path to becoming a doctor is arduous. Four years of medical school. Three years or more of residency. Countless long nights, tests to study for, and anatomical terms to memorize. But for some medical students, they choose to take a path just a bit longer with a goal of ultimately earning both a medical degree and PhD.

Two former Brookhaven High School students chose to take the path less travelled and enroll in the University of Mississippi Medical Center’s MD/ PhD program, which required them to suspend their medical training after three years to switch gears and focus on medical research. Hannah Rice Turbeville, a 2009 graduate of Brookhaven High School, just graduated from the program this spring before transitioning to an ENT residency at the University of Michigan. Jamarius Waller, who spent his first two years of high school at BHS before transferring to join the class of 2011 at Mississippi School for Math and Science, has just entered his final year. Both Turbeville and Waller began doing research in undergrad, and as they began looking into medical schools learned there was a way to keep that part of their minds active on top of completing the traditional doctor’s educational path.

“What [the program] really does is it gives you options,” Waller said. “It gives me options to do things that just an MD wouldn’t be able to do, specifically in the realm of branching out in discovery.” For many doctors, he explained, once you get into a field of medicine, you tend to stay in and focus on that field. With his PhD completed and the accompanying research background, he will maintain some freedom to branch out and discover. “ It gives me options to do things that just an MD wouldn’t be “I didn’t know how much I loved discovery until my last couple years of undergrad. I always thought it was doctors that were the ones who make medications, but it’s really the researchers who take that step out on the ledge,” he said. “You get the ability to step out and do things that aren’t even remotely in your field, but because you have the training of a PhD you have the required prerequisites to take risks that other people able to do, can’t.” specifically in the For Turbeville, the research component has allowed her to use more of the creative side of her brain. realm of branching “The thing that really cinched it for me was meeting out in discovery. with the current MD/PhD students after my MD/PhD interview, and they just really felt like the kind of people

Jamarius Waller I wanted to surround myself with and become like,” she said. “They were this really neat blend of people who are committed to patient care, but they also had this creative side they got to explore in graduate school. Getting to come up with your own question and figure out how to get to the answer just sounded very exciting to me. I had no idea how I was going to put the two of

those together into a career. I just knew that this was the group of people I needed to be in, and this is the place I needed to be at.”

Studying preeclampsia in rats

Both Waller and Turbeville ended up doing research on preeclampsia in pregnant rat models. Turbeville looked at the long term effects preeclampsia has on both the mothers and the offspring.

“For years and years and years, it’s been thought that preeclampsia really ends when you deliver the baby, and that’s really been prescribed as a cure for preeclampsia,” she said. “If a woman becomes too preeclamptic, we deliver the baby. She gets better. Everything’s over, right? Well, some of the more recent evidence is showing there are some health risks that exist 20, 30 years after that delivery for the mother and the baby.”

She began her work by looking at the kidney functions of rats after having one or more preeclamptic pregnancies, and then shifted her focus toward the effects on the offspring of preeclamptic pregnancies.

“It’s been shown that children delivered from preeclamptic pregnancies show higher blood pressure earlier on in their lives as compared to children born from normotensive pregnancies. I looked at seeing if we could use a therapeutic, mainly sildenafil, which is commonly known as Viagra to improve that blood pressure increase, improve that future kidney function as they age. The spoiler alert is that no we were not able to do that using Viagra, but it was an interesting study that allowed me to look at the different aspects of kidney function, blood pressure, vascular biology.”

As for Waller’s research, he primarily looked at ways to help prevent medicinal treatments from

crossing the fetal-placental barrier, basically working to ensure the medicines given to treat the mother are unable to cross over and affect the unborn child.

“Ours was a big, long protein that helps drugs stay in the circulation for longer,” he said. “We used different combinations of therapeutic peptides in combination with our drug delivery vector in order to find different ways to treat pre-eclampsia. We kind of had the idea that if we used this large drug delivery vector we could attach it to smaller molecules and test to see how well they worked.”

For Waller and his team, they did ultimately get the result they were hoping for, but they learned sometimes that’s not quite enough.

“I thought the point was to discover, but the point is to discover in a way that is more effective than what already existed. That was eye-opening to me in my final year of writing my dissertation,” he said. “My mentor said this is great but it may not go anywhere because it’s not that much better than what already exists. You didn’t make a groundbreaking discovery even though you did get a couple publications out of this.”

The point of the three years of research was not to specifically get a yes on their hypotheses. Instead, it was to learn how to be effective scientists from conducting research, to writing grants, and to submitting to scientific journals. For many of the doctoral students, their field of research while obtaining a PhD does not translate to their ultimate career. Neither Waller nor Turbeville had any interest in the OB-GYN specialty despite choosing to study a disease that is most closely related to that field.

“I was hesitant about doing pre-eclampsia research because I wanted to do internal medicine or pediatrics initially,” Waller said. “I was like if I don’t want to be an OB GYN there’s no need in me doing this. One of my mentors told me it’s not about what your research is, it’s about learning how to do research and how to do research effectively. If you master that, you could have not gotten a single publication, but you’ll be a great scientist.”

Turbeville agreed stressing that the people you surround yourself with is more important at that stage.

“It should be based on the mentor that’s going to give you the best training and best mentorship you can find,” she said. “And that may be in a field that you won’t have

interest in once you finish your PhD, so I picked a mentor who could not only teach me to be a good scientist, but who could teach me how to build that with education and mentorship and leadership within my field.”

Studying through a pandemic

For both of them, their education was also augmented by the unique situation of being medical scientist students in the midst of a global pandemic. Neither of them are experts in epidemiology or virology, but there were lessons they were able to glean watching scientific discovery play out in a very public way since the onset of COVID-19.

“America has watched the scientific process unfold from start to finish,” Waller said. “I think it throws people off.”

He went on to explain that in research you initially start with a hypothesis. There is a limited amount of data to go off of, so the scientist makes an educated guess based on the most likely scenario.

“Similar to the mask situation,” he said. “At the beginning, you didn’t really need it because it may not be respiratory, but as you learn more, things change. Your actions change.”

Watching other scientist communicate with the public has taught Waller strategies that he will tuck away for further in his career.

“I have an understanding of how to convey things outside of the medical field. I’ve observed how things have been conveyed,” he said. “I’ve really learned that you have to find creative and informative ways to tell people about what you’re doing and why it’s good. And be honest about the limitations of the science because all science has limitations. I’m keeping it in the back of my head because I know in five or 10 years when I’m deep into it, I’ll have to get some information out to either my patients or just the public in general.”

For Turbeville, on the other hand, the experience was humbling and helped her empathize with those who were confused about the science behind different directives and suggestions.

“To a certain extent, a lot of us with a science and research background became the spokesperson or interpreter of some that information for our friends and family,” she said. “I was having to look at the data, look at the things I was reading, and really work to understand them as well. So, if someone with the level of education I have, not saying I’m an expert yet, but I have quite a lot of education, and I’m still struggling to understand or figure out that yes or no, what’s the real takeaway here, how much more of an issue is someone with much less science education having interpreting that same information.”

Next steps

Waller still has one year left before he graduates, and he will be spending that time getting as much clinical experience as he can and applying to residencies. He plans to continue working in the space between medicine and research, and his goals in the future include working in internal medicine, and ultimately, he’d like to move into cardiology, so that he can work to create a better understanding of cardiovascular diseases at the molecular level.

“Cardiology is such a field that is so tepid because changing things can be life or death because the heart is so critical,” he said. “I really want to fill the gap to understand the molecular level that causes the diseases to happen.”

This route in research often takes much more time, but he hopes it will lead to better solutions. He gave an example of a new heart medication that was initially created for diabetics, but they found out through clinical trials that it works really well for heart failure. He explained that this is how a lot of new medicines are made.

“We don’t know how it works, but it works,” he said. “I kind of want to have a better understanding of the

mechanism of things, so that you can not only make better treatment but counter certain effects before they happen.” Waller is also interested in introducing youth, especially underrepresented youth, to the idea of research. “I feel like so many kids are interested in scientific discovery, and they’re like I don’t know what to do with this,” he said. “I love to find things and discover things, but how do I make money out of that, how do I make a career out of that. I just want to try to open it up to as many people as possible.” Waller also added one of the many perks of an MD/ PhD program is that they are usually fully funded meaning those who graduate don’t carry those exorbitant student loans with them. “ Getting to come up with your own question and figure As for Turbeville, she has settled on otolaryngology (better known as ENT) and began her residency this summer. When it was first suggested to Turbeville that she might pursue this specialty, she was skeptical. “I was like I don’t think that’s out how to get the for me,” she recalled. “I think they’re way too smart. I don’t answer just sounded know that they would look twice very exciting to me. I at someone who did as poorly on the head/neck part of gross had no idea how I anatomy as I did.” was going to put the But a friend of hers wore her two of those down, and from her first day of shadowing the ENTs at UMMC, together. she felt an immediate connection. Hannah Rice “They were just really welcoming in how they reacted with each Turbeville other and with the staff that worked in the office and with their patients,” she said. “It was very collegial. It was like everyone was on the same team, and the team’s goal was to benefit the patient. It didn’t feel to me that there was any ego at play. Everyone wanted to work together for the benefit of the patients.” Turbeville also hopes to stay in research to some degree, and she believes the University of Michigan will foster both the rigorous training for surgery as well as providing the space to explore some of the unknowns, whether that is looking for better understanding of how the inner ear works to finding better, more effective treatment plans. • MARKET ANALYSIS • CONFIDENTIAL • NO COST • NO OBLIGATION

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PAST & PRESENT

BROOK-HEAVEN

Anecdotes of the early 20th Century in the Homeseekers’ Paradise

BY BRETT CAMPBELL PHOTOS SUBMITTED

BBrookhaven historian Matthew Ard collected much information and published many articles of the area’s past and residents. His writings are in the possession of the Lincoln County Historical and Genealogical Society, which has shared their contents with the editors of Brookhaven News Media. The following information comes from a Jan. 9, 1958, article published in The Lincoln County Advertiser, entitled “Old Homes and Interesting Folks in Brookhaven Recalled by Many.”

“Well do we recall Mr. and Mrs. S. J. Carpenter whose home in Brookhaven was the old Warren, later the Bloom, home on the high embankment on the West side of the railroad at the overhead bridge and more recently demolished when many made a scramble for the large antique bricks which had been made many years ago at the Seavey Brick Yard.

“The Carpenters likewise moved north where Mr. Carpenter died, Mrs. Carpenter living for many years at the Hotel Chatham in New York City. Well do I remember the night when with Ellen Johnson, now Mrs. Sherry Kane, we were being driven down Park Avenue in Mrs. Carpenter’s limousine with her liveried chauffer at the wheel to the Metropolitan Opera where the Met’s liveried doorman assisted us out, and Ellen whispered to me, ‘If Brookhaven could only see us now!’”

“Dr. Van (Watts), our local Will Rogers of that day and still a legend often quoted for his witty and pungent sayings during his long legislative career when represented this section in our state legislature. In those days the candidates often held joint debates arguing their position on questions of the moment from the same platform. It was at one such debate that [Page Abi Cohn while] asking for the audience’s votes remarked that his life was an open book.

“It then came time for Dr. Watts to speak. I can see his long, lanky form unfolding as he arose to answer Abi with, ‘Aye, aye, ladies and gentlemen, his life is an open book, but it’s written in Hebrew, and who in heck can read it?’”

In referring to an unnamed man who was dying, Ard wrote, “Brother Purser, the father of the late R. W. Purser, long affiliated with the Mississippi Power and Light Company and before that with the locally owned electric plant, was our Baptist Minister here, and he called on the departing brother, who informed him that he was not afraid to (die), that in fact, he had seen the chariot a coming!”

At the time, “there were but two automobiles owners in town … O. B. Brown of Pearlhaven and Hiram Cassedy with his one seater Maxwell, and whose home was the present Brookhaven Funeral Home.” One woman was sure the dying man had not seen a chariot at all, but one of the two automobiles come to cart his body to the funeral home. This good brother did depart shortly afterwards and the funeral in the old Baptist Church was one for the book, and the talk of the town, for one reason it was the first funeral in Brookhaven in which other than white flowers were used. This was just 50 years ago, in 1907.”

“As I have written, I have thought of many others, people as well as anecdotes, some of them interesting and highly amusing, as for instance the old time Brookhavenite who years ago making his first trip to New Orleans, was asked when he returned as to where he had stopped in the Crescent City and replied, ‘I reckon it must have been the Push Hotel as “Push” was printed on the door!’ He was ever after known as ‘Push’ – this nickname having followed him to his grave.”

These stories were included in an article which – despite its name – was intended as a listing of recipes to be included in an upcoming cookbook and the names of contributors to that book. “The new edition could have the distinction of incorporating not only the best of the old recipes of these old Brookhaven residents but, in a number of instances, those of their daughters, granddaughter and great granddaughters as well. This could further incorporate the top recipes of your weekly Cook of the Week feature – a combination both unique and hard to beat.”

Ard concluded the article by saying he would be glad to do anything for the betterment of Brookhaven, “for you can write me down as one who loves BrookHEAVEN, as the boys in uniform referred to our town in the late world war.”

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