Thomas (Tom) Morgan Hometown Realty, Inc. GMAC Real Estate

On Saturday, Nov. 22, 2008, McComb residents ushered in the Thanksgiving season with a celebration at Community Parks Apartments. The day was filled with music, food, and fun. There were face painting and bicycle giveaways by the Mayor's Youth Council, horse rides conducted by the Big Brothers Riding Club, a house fire evacuation demonstration by the McComb Fire Department, a jumping dome, a basketball competition, and Wii games. Special acknowledgements go to the City of McComb, Mayor Zachary Patterson, the McComb Community Relations and Tourism Bureau, the McComb Recreation Department, the McComb Fire Department, and Ashley's Tires and Rims, with additional thanks to Community Parks Apartments, Walker Chapel FWBC, New Life Fellowship, 24^th Street COC, DJ and Emcee Aaron Tullos, and Mr. Charles Ashley (music management). We're all looking forward to another great time next year! Be sure to check out the MySpace links of the performers pictured! More photos can be viewed online at www.photoworks.com/members/tmorgan100. (Click on "View all" to see albums not pictured on the first page.

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Castro Coleman and Highly Favored

Face painting by the Mayor's Youth Council

Zach Patterson and Chyra

Guitarist with The Static Band

On Saturday, November 15, 2008, Southwest Mississippi Christian Outreach Ministries (COM) will hold its first ever McComb Antique Show, Appraisals and Auction fundraiser. This promises to be a huge event attracting antiques lovers from all over the region.

Location: McComb Event Center, 1221 Parklane Road, McComb, MS (see map on the SWMSCOM website).

Registration: Begins at 8 AM the day of the auction.

Pre-register by bringing your items (one or two items) to SWMSCOM. (Avoid the lines!)

Appraisals: 9 AM-1 PM. $15.00 entrance fee. (You may bring two items.)

Auction: 1 PM-4 PM. No entrance fee. Lunch will be served for $5.00. Ten percent of all sale proceeds will go to SWMSCOM. Additional donations are accepted and appreciated. You may also donate by PayPal on the website. Parking is limited. SWMSCOM will not be responsible for unloading and loading of merchandise. Cash only. Hope you can come!

McComb resident Nelsen Adelard will be headlining the second annual Camellia City Festival, sponsored by the McComb Community Relations and Tourism Bureau, on November 1, 2008, at Edgewood Park in McComb. The festival began last year when McComb native Bo Diddley visited the town and was honored with a Mississippi Blues Trail marker. This year promises to be a great event, as there many terrific musical performances scheduled.

Nelsen is a superb singer/songwriter and is an immense talent on the guitar, piano, and harmonica. Nelsen's upcoming performance at the Camellia City Festival comes on the heels of the release of his fifth solo album, South by Southwest, which describes Nelsen's musical journey from Los Angeles to McComb. The CD debuted a few weeks ago at number 39 on the Roots Blues Chart.

Adelard released his latest CD on his own new label: Blue Track Records. He tells of how he came up with the name: "Well, I wanted to start my own label. Right when we were thinking of moving down here, I was thinking, okay, we'll base it down in Mississippi, so I started thinking of, you know, my life, wanting to be on the right track, being in a positive direction. I'm thinking, well, Blues-I'm on a Blue Track. Because it's McComb, and it's got that [railroad] theme, all of a sudden it just came together for me." As to his plans for further recordings on Blue Track, Adelard says, "My next concept album that I'd like to do is to find a Blues guy from Mississippi that's never been recorded, or either a native who hasn't been recorded in thirty years, or something like that, and do an album with that person. Right now I'm doing research on it."

At the Camellia City Festival Nelsen will be accompanied by Baton Rouge musicians who recorded with him on his latest CD, Greg Worley on drums and James Slaughter on bass, and he will also have a guitar player who plays with all of them regularly, Elvin Killerbee from Big Al and the Heavyweights. "He's a really, really good guitar player. It's gonna add a nice flavor to the gig," Adelard says.

Adelard, a Connecticut native, was born into a musical family. "My mom was a singer. Her mother was a singer in vaudeville, and on my dad's side, both his parents were jazz dancers, so I grew up with music all the time. My mom taught me to sing harmony when I was five years old." His parents always played a lot of different music, including Louis Armstrong, "but a lot of Southern music, I grew up thinking was just music," Adelard said. "I didn't think of it in terms of being North or South or whatever. My mom used to have a 45 of Hank Williams doing ‘Jambalaya,' and I can remember singing it when I was barely able to stand up and sing! So I grew up with a mixture of Southern Roots."

Adelard began his professional musical career playing in nightclubs as a teenager. "I was very fortunate," he said. "When I turned eighteen, the drinking age turned eighteen. I started playing guitar when I was fourteen, so I had played for four years--and I was in a professional band, playing three or four nights a week when I was eighteen. Part of the scene at that time was Blues. The major guys from Chicago, like Muddy, Buddy Guy, James Cotton, Junior Wells-all those cats were traveling on campus at the time. Blues was very big. A generation before--if I talk to someone who's in their sixties--they'll tell you what was on the campus at that time, in maybe the early sixties, was jazz. A lot of those cats are into jazz. Anyone who went to college between the early to late seventies listened to the Blues. We would do openers at a college mixer in Connecticut [Yale, U Conn, and others]. You'd pay four bucks to get in, and The Nelsen Adelard Band would open for Muddy Waters. So we'd play-I'm talking like a gymnasium!

"My first epiphany, as far as the Blues--I was probably fourteen or fifteen- and a friend of mine had B.B. King's Live in Cook County Jail, and he said ‘You need to hear this guy.' He put those first couple of songs on, and I got shivers up my spine. Although his guitar playing was great, it was his voice, and how earnest he sang. It wasn't like anything I'd ever heard. He was really telling people, instead of just singing a song. He lived the blues-he still does."

Speaking of shivers up your spine, that's just you'll get when you put on Nelsen's latest CD, South by Southwest, and listen to the track "Sweet Home in McComb." Nelsen tells of how that song came to be: "I moved down here, and I bought a beat-up old upright piano, and I started to write songs on that. When I write, I write on different instruments, like I'll pick up an acoustic guitar, and I'll play for a couple of days on that instrument, and it inspires me to write different tunes-same thing with an electric guitar. But piano inspires me in a different way, so there are several songs on the new album that were really inspired by playing this beat-up old piano, and one of them was ‘Sweet Home McComb.' I'll tell you how I got the idea for that: I was heading up North to play some gigs up there-I had been here maybe about a year-and as I'm driving up and I hit what was probably the Mason-Dixon line, I tell you-I swear to you-I started to feel a pain-now I know . . . because I started to feel a twinge in my heart, like ‘What am I doing? Why am I leaving?' I know I had business to do up North, but it was the weirdest thing. When I came back down through Pennsylvania, and I started coming back down South, I started feeling better, and when I crossed the Mississippi line, I was like ‘All right!' I've lived all over the place, and I've never felt that kind of emotion connected to a home."

Nelsen is indeed a great salesman for the city of McComb. "I want to get involved with the local people here, because I think this is a great town. Personally I think it's a great place for tourists to come down and see what the real South is like. It's a very hospitable place-really friendly people. Anybody that I have come down here-I had a lot of friends come down from LA, and they wanted to spend a weekend or whatever-they loved it, man! I'd drive them around town and show them the downtown area, and they fall in love with it--everybody. Even my band members from Baton Rouge, when I had them come up for a rehearsal one time, my bass player and drummer, they were like ‘Oh, man, this is the kind of place I want to retire in.' So everybody admires the town when they come for a visit, and I want to draw more and more people to the town, at least as tourists."

Nelsen has his own vision for the Camellia City Festival, as well: "I'd like to see it be a two-day festival, and make it into a Blues Festival, so that people from Europe come, or people from up North come down and spend two or three days in McComb to see the different acts. They do this up in the Delta, you know." Nelsen emphasizes how a major musical event like this would draw people in, and they will stay at our hotels, eat at our restaurants, take in the scenery, and check the place out. "A two-day Blues and Jazz Festival, even if it's just like Jazz Fest is down in New Orleans-it's not just jazz-it's everything. I would like to see [the Camellia City Festival] build, and after a number of years, start to get some headliners that used to live here, like Kent Dykes [of Omar and the Howlers], and maybe bring in somebody like Buddy Guy. I think it's something that we can shoot for--maybe we have to crawl before we walk--but I think that would be a great idea. And I'd love to try to help-anything I can do to help put that together."

To learn more about Nelsen Adelard and his music (and to see full-length video performances!), please visit www.nelsenadelard.com . To see the lineup for this year's Camellia City Festival, go to www.discovermccomb.com .

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On October 11, 2008, Bob Higdon completed his "Courthouse Quest," a 150,000-mile motorcycle journey in which he rode his BMW motorbike and visited every courthouse in every state in the continental U.S.! The trek to 3,069 courthouses took him five years and three days, from September 28, 2003, to October 11, 2008.

Autographed T-shirt commemorating the event.

Bob Higdon, right, receiving a memorial gift from Shane Smith.

Higdon's friend Shane Smith had told him that if he would save the Pike County, Mississippi, courthouse for last, Smith would have a special celebration for him at Smith's house in McComb. So that's just what happened! Motorcycle companions from all over North America greeted Higdon at the courthouse where photographs were made. Then everyone rode to Smith's house for a special flag-raising event to mark the occasion. Smith had always wanted a large flag and flagpole in his yard. A friend of his told him there was a thirty-foot-tall flagpole available from the old downtown McComb McDonald's Restaurant. After buying a flag from "the flag store" in Jackson and preparing the surface and raising the pole near the front of his house, Smith and his friends were ready for the special event.

Career high-mileage motorcyclists at the event: L to R, Tom Loftus of Fairfax, VA: 1,085,000 miles; Ardys Kellerman of Lexington, TX: c. 900,000 miles; Dave McQueeney of El Segundo, CA: 1.5 million plus miles; and Lyle Grimes of Westwego, LA: 1,170,00 BMW miles, plus 216,000 Brand X miles. At the time of the event, Bob Higdon was just a couple of thousand miles shy of the Million Mile Mark.

Friends stood at attention while Vietnam veterans Rick Williams of Macomb, Illinois, and Melvin Dye of Summit, Mississippi, raised the flag for the first time, with The Star-Spangled Banner playing over the outdoor speakers. For the rest of the evening, friends and acquaintances told stories, gave recognitions, and celebrated over pork loin, gumbo, shrimp etouffee, and thin-fried catfish.

Rick Williams, left, and Melvin Dye, raising the flag.

The Dedication Plaque

The flag as seen in a motorcycle mirror.

More photos can be viewed online at www.photoworks.com/members/tmorgan100. (Click on "View all" to see albums not pictured on the first page.

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Katie Swinney, Donor Recruitment Representative for United Blood Services, spoke recently to the Kiwanis Club of Pike County about the community blood program in Pike County and the impact blood donation has on people's lives.

Katie Swinney with Kiwanis Club of Pike County President Shelton Davis

Swinney began by explaining the local community blood program. "United Blood Services is the sole provider of blood for Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center; we also provide 100% of the blood for Walthall County, Field Memorial, and Beacham Memorial, and we supply blood to seventy other hospitals throughout the state of Mississippi, western Alabama, and Louisiana. I myself am responsible for twelve counties in Southwest Mississippi and two parishes in Louisiana. I've met the most wonderful people in McComb. It's such a wonderful community, and we're proud to be a partner with Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center and the other hospitals in our network."

"In Mississippi, every day it takes 300 blood donors just to meet our patient needs. That's not to have a supply on the shelf in case of emergency-that's just to meet needs. And we currently don't meet that. We currently import blood from our network of blood banks, which covers nineteen states. Per capita, Mississippi is the most charitable state, but we just can't get anybody to roll up their sleeve and give the gift of life. I think it's a lack of education on our part, and also just getting the information out there, asking, and really encouraging people and letting people know the need. Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center's annual usage is over 5,000 blood and blood products. The need here is huge, and we are working closely with organizations such as Kiwanis and other service organizations. We work through our schools, our churches, anything and everybody possible-we work with them to try to encourage people to give blood. The number one reason people say they don't donate is that they've never been asked. Through education programs like this, and through our schools, and encouraging early donation and lifelong donation, we are able to make a dent, and help supply what we need for our hospitals here."

Swinney next told of a blood assurance program that United Blood Services offers to businesses, clubs, and organizations. "If twelve-and-a-half percent of their active population give blood, or if that number of units is collected, we cover that organization for a period of six months," which means that in the event that a member of the covered group uses blood, United Blood Services reimburses the cost not paid by insurance to the hospital for that individual. For twenty-five percent participation, the group gets a year of coverage.

As an example of the blood assurance program, Swinney told of a man in Vicksburg for whose son United Blood Services is about to conduct some blood drives. "His seventeen-year-old son was diagnosed with leukemia, and this gentleman had donated at International Paper. That covered his son for the blood he will be using. This man had never donated blood before, and someone said, ‘Hey, will you come donate blood today,' and he said, ‘For some reason, I said sure! You never know when my family could need it.' And now his family needs it. United Blood Services is able to cover that huge financial burden on his family because he decided to go ahead and donate blood and help us supply the needs of that day, in that community."

Swinney told of the huge need for more donations: "We use blood to treat cancer patients, during surgery, to treat trauma-there are a multitude of uses. Every day our researchers are finding more and more uses for blood and blood therapy, transfusion therapy, to improve the quality of life, save lives, and make an impact in the community."

As a special incentive to come out and donate, United Blood Services has a promotion from September 15 through December 31, in which everyone age eighteen and older who donates with United Blood Services is entered into a drawing to win a 2009 Toyota Corolla LE or a seven-day cruise!

For blood donation guidelines and other information, including a posting of area blood drives and how you can sponsor a blood drive, please visit www.unitedbloodservices.org or www.bloodhero.com.