As I thumbed through Ken Murphy’s Jackson book, I was initially confused at the photo for Millsaps.  While I was a student there, the observatory wasn’t used often.  Occasionally, a campus-wide email would announce that the observatory would be open for viewing some lunar/ stellar/ otherwise spacey event, but I never managed to show up.  And when I think of Millsaps, my iconography of the college revolves around other structures:  the Christian Center, the Academic Complex, the bell tower.

I didn’t understand Ken’s reasoning behind the observatory being the representative image of the college.  But, since I have an English degree from Millsaps, I thought.

At the risk of sounding too metacognative, I thought about all of the thinking I did while I was there.  [Metacognative:  thinking about one’s thinking.  A word I learned at Millsaps.]  One of the texts I read my freshman year was Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” (thank you, Dr. Wilson) in which the philosopher challenges the idea that seeing something means it is absolutely true.  When the poet John Milton met Gallieo, Milton’s understanding of what is versus what he could see was expanded beyond his own failing eyesight (thank you, Dr. Page).   Despite my status as a WASP male, I was able to read and understand writers like Alain Locke (thank you, Dr. Smith) and Toni Morrison (thank you, Dr. MacMaster) and Palo Frerie (thank you, Dr. Middleton).  I was introduced to Eudora Welty’s writing, and her stories have stuck with me like a kind memory (thank you, Dr. Marrs).  With my minor in secondary education, I was given insight into the way students learn best (thank you, Dr. Schimmel, Dr. McCarty) and how to effectively transmit instruction to them (thank you, Dr. Vaughn, Dr. Garrett).  I learned to see both broadly and tightly, to make connections between ideas and people that, at first glance, might be worlds apart.  There is only one story that’s been written over and over and over again, and that story is the weird journey of humanity (thank you, Dr. Miller).  So many of my professors forced me to think about things I had never considered, to look at things in a way that wasn’t easy or natural for me, and to understand that my view of the world isn’t the only way of seeing things.

It turns out, Ken was right.  Observatories allow us to look beyond ourselves, to see what we normally wouldn’t be able to, just like Millsaps did for me.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. 

Written by Richard D. deShazo, MD, a Billy S. Guyton Distringuished Professor, and professor of Medicine and Pediatrics at the University Medical Center. Dr. deShazo hosts a weekly radio health and wellness show on MPB stations throughout the state called “Southern Remedy”. 

We came to Jackson and the University of Mississippi Medical Center after having lived in many other locations; including Washington, DC, Denver, CO, Birmingham and Mobile, AL, as part of my career as a physician educator, administrator, and researcher. The first thing we noticed about Jackson was the extraordinary hospitality of strangers we received at almost every turn. My wife was startled when she was tapped on the back by a stranger in the grocery store while she was searching for a grocery item. When she turned, fearing she was going to be accosted as would have been the case in other locations, she was met with a big smile from another customer who said, “Honey, can I help you find something? I have been shopping here forever.” This was something we had never experienced. When we visited churches, we felt welcome in every one immediately.

One of our initial roles was to recruit new faculty to UMC, and during the time I was a department chair here, we assisted over 60 new families in coming to Jackson to serve in various medical roles at UMMC. Their experiences were always similar to ours, and we never feared sending them into the community for a sampling of what life was like here because they were always pleasantly surprised.  It was easy to recruit people to jobs at UMMC once we got them here to see what a great place Jackson is to live.

As each day goes by, we discover new, interesting things about Mississippi. The convenient location and the hospitality and diversity of folks in the Delta, the pinelands, the coast, and of course, the greater Ole Miss community in the northeast are unique to our state. As the saying goes, our family was not born in Mississippi, but we got here as soon as we could.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com. 

The following article was written by Jerry Mitchell and published on August 2, 2014 in the Clarion-Ledger.

Photography by Ken Murphy

In a day where many prognosticators regard bookstores as forgettable relics and e-books as the unstoppable future, one bookstore is defying the odds and publishing its own $75 book.

That bookstore is Lemuria, which is releasing a 183-page photo book about Mississippi’s capital city this week.

If there is another bookstore in the U.S. going into the high end of publishing like this, Richard Howorth, past president of the American Booksellers Association, doesn’t know about it.

Decades ago, some bookstores did dabble in publishing, he said. City Lights bookstore in San Francisco became a publisher. So did the Beehive in Savannah, Ga.

But that was before department stores gave way to mall stores and then to megastores and ultimately to online bookstores, such as Amazon.

John Evans was born in 1950 — 14 years before Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.

In his early 20s, he spent much of his time buying records and books in his native Jackson. “I didn’t have much direction,” he said.

After Be-Bop Records opened in 1974, he decided to take his own shot at a business, he said. “I thought I might as well open a bookstore.”

He began writing book publishers and asking his friends to suggest books to order. Soon, sales representatives filled his small apartment.

Lemuria (named after the mythic civilization) was born, he said. “I formed the company two weeks after I was 25.”

By 2002, it had become such a beloved independent bookstore that when author Elmore Leonard decided to hold seven book signings in North America, Lemuria was one of them.

The fall of the economy and the rise of e-books began to devastate bookstores. In 2011, Borders closed its remaining 400 stores.

To survive, many bookstores moved beyond books to sell all sorts of other merchandise, and some even embraced e-books. Evans loved physical books, and that’s what he stuck with, he said. “I saw all that as opportunity to say, ‘We are a real bookstore, and we will live or die by that.’ “

Looking for ideas to rebrand Lemuria, Evans read “The New Rules of Retail” by Robin Lewis and Michael Dart.

In that book, authors suggested retail in 2020 might look most like Apple, with a product created, produced and marketed by the same company.

Would there be a way, Evans wondered, of producing a product that neither Barnes & Noble nor Amazon could sell? If so, that could become a way to redefine Lemuria, he thought.

Not long after, photographer Ken Murphy contacted Evans to get his opinion on whether he should do a sequel to his successful book that featured photos on Mississippi.

In studying that book, Evans noticed only a few photographs from the capital city and suggested to Murphy there was more of a need for a photo book about Jackson than a second statewide book.

They eventually decided to do just that, he said. “I didn’t want it to just be a book of photographs. I felt like there needed to be a photographic plot, a stream of consciousness.”

For the next year, Evans juggled his two jobs of running Lemuria and editing the photo book. “From a cash flow perspective, it was difficult — cash flow and having the energy,” he said.

The printing, including a planned second printing, cost six figures.

While Evans remained busy, something happened in the book industry.

Over the past year, the sales of hardcover books rose 9.5 percent, and the sales of e-books fell 0.5 percent, said Howorth, who once taught Bezos at a class for prospective bookstore owners. “That helps to explain why Amazon’s stock is down 10 percent. We’re reaching a plateau.”

Jamie Kornegay, owner of Turnrow Books in Greenwood, praised what Lemuria has done and said he hopes it becomes a model for what others can do.

He sees his job as the battle to preserve the physical book, he said. “If we cede e-books to this generation, that’s it.”

Evans doesn’t believe he retains as well when he sits and reads at a computer. “I think the jury is still out on how memory works,” he said.

He sees many in this new generation favoring the tactile over the virtual. “My best young bookseller is choosing to read physical books,” he said. “They’re real.”

By the time Evans arrived in May at the Book Expo in New York, word of what his little bookstore in Mississippi had done had spread.

Some booksellers told him it was a great idea.

He shot back, “It’s a lot of work.”

Evans believes the physical book will not only survive but endure.

“Yes, a physical book takes a little more effort, but the opportunity you have to read a physical book is about as pleasurable as any experience you can have,” he said. “It’s irreplaceable.”

Contact Jerry Mitchell at (601) 961-7064 or jmitchell@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @jmitchellnews on Twitter.

Jackson: photographs by Ken Murphy is available now for purchase. To order a copy, call Lemuria Books at 601.366.7619 or visit us online at lemuriabooks.com.