At a recent JFP/BOOM staff retreat at the Mississippi Museum of Art, each attendee wrote his or her superpower on a big paper leaf to form our collective-strength āOrienā tree (thanks, Kellogg Foundation, for the idea). Then, staff photographer Trip Burns and investigative reporter Anna Wolfeāwho enjoy writing poetryātook the words and turned them into this staff poem that reflects our shared purpose and individual strengths, and then read it at our next staff meetingāblowing us all away. As we celebrate the paperās 12th birthday this week, we offer this as our gift to Jackson. Thank you for inspiring us all these years. And cheers to Trip and Anna for this amazing poem that reflects your talents and the staffās shared passion for our community.
āDonna Ladd, CEO and editor-in-chief
Present Leaves
Weāre connecting our paper, printed with ink and bound with metal staples, from our fingers to our readersā eyes.
Weāre conversing with words and thoughts and ideasāstrung together in our own unique order, using language that our readers understand.
Weāre exploring ideas with designs and plans, with reflections of study, with displays of life, for our audience to see.
Weāre observing what goes on around us, what we filter in, what we recognize, what we revealāto be our truth, the truth, so that people can pick up our paper and have a look.
Weāre explaining things weāve seen and heard, places weāve been and yet to enter, people weāve met and yet to meetāwords yet recorded, pictures yet taken, interviews yet givenāpressed and polished, sent out, beamed outāto make something weāve yet created.
Weāre seeing shapes in the ordinary, symbols in the complex, humor in the absurd, drama in the everydayāour truth is intertwined with our stories collected and organized, hand-made if you count all the typing and mouse-clicking.
Mouse-clicking and mama-ducking. Our leaders have a cool, motherly calm. Our leaders hone creativity, let it thrive. Our leaders are in each of us as we raise each other up, cultivate the eclectic.
Our empathy sets each and every one of us into individual persons. Where did you come from? Who do you think you are? How have you made your way to this dayāthis day now? Thousands of days? Millions of hours? A multitude of sunsets and closing hoursāand here you are, with your stories and experiencesāof what youāve seen, what youāve heard, what youāve been taught, what youāve learnedāon your own, to this moment, unfolding now.
Your curiosity gets you there. Sets you off, gleans the right questions. Sometimes tough ones, never answered ātil nowāonly due to your tenacity, persistence, resourcefulness.
Your intuition is yours and yours alone, built up time after time, at once born with and discoveredāfrom danger and caution, from fear and anxiety, from mystery.
Our collaboration is achieved by meeting each other in the areas of our work, sending messages back and forth, coming to agreements, submitting to responsibilities, adding and subtracting, adjusting the size and scope of our assignments, and finally, when the equation has been balanced, and all the parts are fused together, to make what comes in from many go out as one.
Your imagination is yours and yours alone, created with your own feelings, from your own emotions, from your own lifeāso that you can project an idea into the future and meet it there.
The readerās perseverance in the day-to-day routines of living is our perseverance. We travel all over though dispatches and journeys on the groundāthese are our interactions with the outside world, the world we are a part of, the city we reside, the state we live in, the streets that surround us.
All the people we knowāstrangers, customers, readers, owners, artists, politicians, leaders, elders and youthāthese make up the real diversity.
A problem-solver can be described as any one of us hereāhow will this work youāll ask? How can we get this done? How will it all turn out?
Popular speech tells us that we must find a solution. You donāt reach a solution, you reach a compromise because thereās room to meet. You find a solution. Not that itās lost, but that itās yet to be seen.
With passion for words and pictures, for stories and histories, for colors and shades, we make not only a physical copy of our collected pieces of the week, but transferred into digital markers of this time and placeāwith these we make something.
Something that is read at a table, or in a restaurant, in a museum, and a bar, in houses and apartments, at schools and offices, in bathrooms, on phones, on tablets, on lighted screensāin their hands, at their fingertips.
Weāre personable as a group and look out for the one person it takes to look at our work. The intimacy of it, the publicity of it.
What comes in from many goes out as one. We do that by connecting people and inspiring them to action.
We do that to make it better.
āTrip Burns and Anna Wolfe, based on Orien Leaves, created by staff members, Sept. 3, 2014
