Publisher's Commentary
The song says it all    Lately, I have not been able to get a particular Motown classic out of my head and now I think I might understand why.  The song, titled "What's Going On" is of course about love, confusion and all of those things that make youth such hell when we are going through it and so wonderful to remember as we get older. We also, as we get older, relate these times to other events in our personal and professional life.  And right now, I think this song with its themes of hope and confusion is a perfect fit for what I judge to be a confusing yet hopeful regional and a national economy.
  On the one hand, I understand that manufacturing expansion, new locations and industrial prospects are at an all time high. Local economic developers are telling me that they are almost frantic in showing sites to prospective companies and that the companies are, for the most part, good strong companies with a need to be located in this market area. One person even told me that he is so swamped that he had trouble keeping all of the different companies straight in his head and was forced to refer back to his notes before returning phone calls.
  At the same time, I am seeing a disturbing number of plant closures and downsizing. Cana, Inc., in Carollton has announced that they will shut down that productive facility because of a downturn in their primary customer base. In Durant, Greif Brothers plastic injection molding company has also announced that it will close leaving an additional 80 people unemployed in a county already devastated by the loss of Durant Electric Company. As I write this column, the Dow was continuing a downward slide, the NASDAQ was leading the Bull charge and the Fed seems to be anticipating additional rate hikes.
  I wish I were either an expert or a soothsayer and could predict even a little of the future, but right now I don't think even Jeane Dixon could write an accurate forecast of the next  year. I am convinced, however, that there will be tremendous movement in the manufacturing sector in the next two years.  At this juncture, we need to be paying very careful attention to keeping what we have and at the same time ... recruit, recruit, recruit. I really would prefer to be humming along to something like the Beatles' "Good Day Sunshine" instead of "What's Going On".
  On a personal note, I'd like to take a moment to recognize a dear friend who died on February 21 - Emma Knowlton Lytle, 89, of Perthshire in Northwestern Bolivar County.  Emma was a well-known artist and sculptor. Many knew her from her Black Baptismal paintings for which she became famous. Last year the statewide press recognized Emma, again, for giving her documentary film titled "Raising Cotton" to Ole Miss.  Her silent film contained footage of plantation life during the thirties in the Delta.  She was one of a kind and our families were close friends literally for almost 100 years.
  Emma was born in her family home in Perthshire. She was raised in that area and went to Sweet Briar College in Virginia and graduated Cum Laude from Radcliffe College in Cambridge, MA in 1932. From there she married her first husband, Jack Humphreys of Greenwood, the grandson of Governor Benjamin Grubb Humphreys who died in 1940. Emma later married Stuart Lytle and lived in Illionois from 1948 - 1966 raising three children.  Because of her mother's illness, the family moved back to the Delta in '66 and it was at that time that she became seriously interested in painting.
  On Thursday, February 24, many people gathered in the yard of Emma's grand old 2-story 100 year old home, to celebrate her life.  A black gospel choir from a nearby church sang very quietly and peacefully during the ceremony. Several of her lifelong friends as well as her children and grandchildren who came from as far away as Massachuests, New York, and Virginia, read poems and spoke about Emma during parts of the ceremony. And as I stood there on that beautiful pre-spring morning, it occurred to me that with Emma's passing so to comes the passing of an era for me personally, in that the Delta that I have known throughout my life is quickly ending. The grand old families with all of the old Southern charm and lifestyles that once populated our region of the state are slowly disappearing.
  After the yard ceremony, all in attendance moved to the nearby family cemetery where Emma's ashes were lowered by her son into her resting place. Back