legally blonde wrote:
I find that Soooooooo hard to believe, really, how are you going to prove that! you can't.
and it is funny what many of you call quality of life ratings:
good looking cheerleaders, chefs at high end restaurants, and temperatures.
I hardly think of these things as ways to measure quality of life when I am fairly positive that wealth, access to healthcare (Mississippi was rated last in dental health behind Puerto Rico), education (49th or 50th, graduation rates (47th) and support networks probably have the most prominant impact on the quality of life for the average person. NOT who has the best chef in town. please don't make me choke.
If you go back and reread this thread, I think you'll find that the prevailing tenor of posts was: Mississippi is a hell-hole: too hot for running, too fat for its own good, with nothing that might be conceivably called a redeeming quality. Barbaric and uncivilized, in a word.
I offered a couple of counterexamples, simply as a way of beating back hoary old cliches that really ought to have been retired by now.
I don't spend much time thinking about the restaurants and rarely eat at them--except when I'm confronted by people whose posts suggest that they'd be stunned by the news.
But let me throw it right back at you: apart from what you've read on line, what is your factual and experiential basis for making claims about "the quality of life for the average person" in Mississippi?
I've lived and traveled widely in the state for the past seven years. I've taught at the University of Mississippi during that period; I've spoken with dozens of undergrads and grads about their families and their lives. I've had a kid in local day care for the past three years. I'm interracially married--not an average thing in Mississippi, but by no means singular--and my wife and I socialize with a wide range of people, including the increasing number of black faculty members who seem quite taken with, and surprised by, the quality of life in contemporary Mississippi. I participate in many races put on by the Memphis Runners Track Club, the Tupelo Running Club, and the Mississippi Track club out of Jackson. I'm not bragging, just describing what I'm bringing to the table by way of relevant experience.
Dental health: All I know is, my dentist, Walker Swaney at Oxford Dental is the equal of any of the dentists I dealt with back in Manhattan, and the endodontists I ended up having to see in Tupelo and Southaven were terrific as well. The only difference between Swaney's office and the Manhattan dentists is that Swaney and his staff are incredibly friendly, caring, and solicitous, and they're a little more proactive, trying to head off future problems at the pass rather than waiting for them to manifest. My wife's experience with another local dentist has been the same. As for the average person's encounter with Mississippi dentistry: I can't know. I do know that in seven years, I've almost never seen the sort of gapped-toothed hillbilly that the statistic might lead some to imagine.
Education: We all know these statistics. My stepdaughter spent four years at the local HS and felt it was slightly behind the Dallas schools, but she did OK on her ACT and is now a sophomore at UM, doing just fine. To some extent, low educational attainment in Mississippi is racialized--the black Delta schools don't work very well--but that's only a partial truth. Certainly the black students at Ole Miss are competitive with their white peers. I'm on the front lines and know this first-hand.
Support networks: Mississippi is nothing if not one huge support network. That's one of the most striking things about the place. Mississippi leads the nation in per captita charitable giving. That's partly a function of people tithing to their churches, but it's also a function of the incredible neighborliness--transracial neighborliness, I should add--that governs life here. People from all walks of life are constantly holding "drives" to raise money for one good cause or another, including specific families in need.