Old Crop, New Crop
February 4, 2009 I was in North Carolina a couple of months back with a bunch of Extension guys. At dinner one night, the conversation turned to where each of us went to school, and they were surprised to find that I attended Ole Miss. I guess the assumption is that most Mississippians in this industry attend Mississippi State. Anyway, one said, “I’ll bet you’re the only Ole Miss graduate in this business.” My reply was: “I ain’t even the only Ole Miss graduate in our office.”
For almost two years, I’ve been next door to Drew Harris — an Ole Miss grad — who has become much more of a friend than a co-worker. So it’s with a great deal of regret that I have to tell you that Drew is leaving us to join Rhea & Kaiser Marketing Communications. His leaving is the bad news. The good news is that he will be working on the Bayer CropScience account, so I’ll be seeing him regularly.
Drew has spent most of his time on our sister publications — Cotton International and Cotton International Annual — and his work has been extraordinary. As for Cotton Grower, Drew’s crowning achievement is “Drew’s Half Acre.” I could dedicate this whole column to “Half Acre.” If you’ve kept up with his trials, tribulations, successes, failures, accidents, breakdowns, etc., then you know my words can’t do it justice.
But at the same time, I take pleasure in welcoming Anna Mullins and Beck Barnes to our staff. Anna is on board, and Beck will be joining us in time to begin work on the July issue. More on Beck then …
Anna is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of The University of Memphis. She has undergraduate degrees in Political Science and English, and a Masters in Creative Writing. She was a communications intern at the National Cotton Council and taught English composition, fiction writing and literature at the U of M for six semesters.
On Anna’s first day, I asked her to proof some of my copy and it came back bloody with red marks. I couldn’t have dumped ketchup on it and made it look worse. Anna is an English major, and I can’t diagram a sentence. A gerund might as well be a groundhog. And grammatically incorrect sentence fragments are something I use all of the time for emphasis. Let me say. Anna is no fan. Of sentence fragments. This could get interesting. Without question, it will be fun.
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Anna Mullins
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