Stand for Something, Communicate It
The pandemic upended everything about our daily lives, from how we learn to how we shop; how we dine to how we work; and how we communicate and receive information to how we think about the world. As consumer demand inundated the supply chain, a labor force flush with stimulus cash contracted. Businesses and organizations fundamentally changed their operational models to adapt to this increasingly complex marketplace. With more consumers getting information from their digital devices than ever, many companies have been forced to make a digital transformation long embraced by larger brands.
Jacksonville Quilt Show—Artful Fabric Creations
Today’s quilts are works of art, as appropriate on the wall as on a bed or as a pop of intrigue in the living room. Contemporary fabric artists have embraced the traditions of the past, created new patterns, found new techniques to express themselves in diverse ways, and incorporated a full spectrum of options to yield stunning outcomes.
Of Ships and Shears
Jacksonville is a vast city—the largest incorporated city in landmass within the contiguous United States—and it’s also a complicated city, as Jacksonville Historical Society CEO Alan J. Bliss likes to say.
“It’s complicated, it’s authentic, and it has many stories,” he shares on the lecture circuit in any given week, visiting business and civic groups from early morning to evening and spreading the word about Jacksonville’s Bicentennial, an occasion which the citizens of Jacksonville are encouraged to commemorate, celebrate, and elevate during 2022.
Restoring Debs Store
A huge piece of local history is being resurrected in downtown’s Eastside neighborhood, just north of TIAA Bank Field. The Debs Store and the Davis Rooming House next door (now razed) were built by Edward D. Mixson in 1913. The red-brick, neighborhood grocery store on the corner of 5th Street and Florida Avenue was opened in 1921 by Lebanese immigrant Nicolas Debs and closed 90 years later in 2011. Debs Store was a part of the fabric of its community and the Debs family a staple. Nicolas’s sons, Nick and Gene, knew nearly everyone who walked into the store, and once they both passed away, the family made the difficult decision to shutter it.
Jacksonville’s Bicentennial Year is Here
We live in a city whose location we did not select, that we did not design or build, dependent on technologies that we did not invent, speaking languages that we did not create. And yet, the city is now ours. Our daily lives transpire in a place that we have inherited. That makes us just like the people of every other city, although we (and Jacksonville) are different from other cities. It also makes us the stewards of Jacksonville’s future.
A City’s Bicentennial Only Comes Around Once
In 2020 protests over the tragic death of a Black man named George Floyd at the hands of a white policeman reignited a long-running national debate over the significance of Confederate monuments in public places. Some discussions widened to consider the names of schools, streets, parks, and even a city itself. Suggestions for renaming Jacksonville have included Jaxson, Duval, Cowford, and even Durstville, after Fred Durst, lead vocalist for the local band Limp Bizkit.
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