Screen Door, Okra, or Thicket?

What do you call a magazine about Alabama? It’s tricky: you’ve got to find something that doesn’t alienate a particular group, something that says “Alabama” in an evocative, clever, and poetic way, and that looks good on everything from a magazine cover to a subscription card to a T-shirt. Easier said than done. For example, here are a few of our early working titles, with parenthetical analysis: Yellowhammer (too affiliated with Alabama football, already used by other companies around the state). Red Clay (it stains). Screen Door (it slams). Okra (sounds like a food magazine). Camellia (too feminine). Cotton (too past). 22 (clever…we’re the 22nd state…but too obscure). The list goes on.

In fact, the list made by Paul Crawford and Paul Halupka, who have helped us from the earliest stages figure out what this magazine should look and feel like, was so long the day we met at V. Richard’s Market in Birmingham that I freaked out a little. SO MANY CHOICES! But as Paul Halupka (affectionately known as “The Other Paul”) started reading them off, we quickly honed in on a few. Blackberry. Picket Fence. We kept going. And then we hit Thicket. And we stopped and looked at each other as if to say, “Yeah.”

Thicket was really the flip side of a title I had played around with for weeks: The Clearing. Because as you probably already know, Alabama means “I clear the thicket” in Choctaw. I was exploring the “clearing” idea: a magazine where we could clear space and sit down and talk about things. But The Original Paul and The Other Paul went with the Thicket side: the network of connections, the entanglements, the Native-American, French, Spanish, black, white, Hispanic, jumbled-up, wonderful culture of our state. It sounded cool. It had energy. And it looked even better when we created a logo and slapped it on a mock-up cover.

So that’s the story of the title. From emails and chats over afternoon beers and opinions from friends and neighbors to finally a list of hundreds of names in a big black notebook opened on a table at a coffeeshop in the summertime—it’s what we landed on. Landed in. Landed in the Thicket.

Posted by Julie Keith

How Bob Riley is not like Jesus Christ.

Jesus was a terrible politician. So says Dr. Glenda Curry, an Episcopal priest in Birmingham who sometimes leads Governor Bob Riley’s weekly bible studies. “The things Jesus said made some people so angry they wanted to kill him,” Rev. Curry points out. So how is it that Bob Riley, whose initiatives are so driven by his Christian faith, can be such an effective politician?

In “Riley’s Last Stand,” a story featured in the premiere issue of Thicket Magazine, we explore the line Riley walks between the personal ethics that inspire his greatest political battles and the expediency and political horse-trading Riley’s willing to engage in to win.

His ability to walk that line was evident in his push to reform the state’s tax code, aligning himself with the teacher’s union against his own Republican base. Five years later, he takes the teachers head-on in a battle against their closest allies in the Democratically-controlled legislature.

“In order to make progress – progress, not perfection – he’s probably compromised with the AEA and Paul Hubbert because he knew ultimately, he’s making progress in disrupting a corrupt system," Rev. Curry says. In short, she adds, “Honest guy, but he is a politician.”

Though they may share similar views on tax reform, Bob Riley and Jesus Christ have a very different political success rate.

Posted by Atticus Rominger

Lee's World of Magazine Launching

Hold your socks boys and girls because I just ordered the UPC code for Thicket!!! No I’m not lying! I GOT TO ORDER THE CODE!!! Okay, it may not sound sexy to you but the UPC code is what allows the scanners at the bookstore to know how much to charge. It’s the 9 digit bar code looking thing. Has to be there. No choice and such. It also tells the retail outlet that it’s okay to wait 9 months to pay you. Ha ha ha. That’s UPC CODE humor.

For those of you reading this who might think perhaps my job at Thicket is less important, I should remind you that me and my codes are friends to scanners all over the world. Scanners LOVE US!

Though I am the 2nd shortest member of Thicket (Jason Wallis, the photographer, is shorter), I stand tall in the launching of this magazine. I HAVE THE CODE. Next up: THE BUSINESS LICENSE….YOU GO BOY.

Posted by Lee Hurley

Holley Camp, on Alabama Agriculture

This week my family and I went to the farmers’ market on Finley Avenue in Birmingham. We bought two pounds of walnuts for $2. Three pounds of carrots for $1. Forty ounces of honey for $8. Leaving, my nine-year-old asked, “Mama, how can the farmers make a living?” It’s a troubling axiom of modern society that we pay very little to those who labor to feed us.

“Farming has changed completely in our lifetime,” Alabama’s Commissioner of Agriculture, Ron Sparks, says. “Our state farmed 19 million acres fifty years ago. Today we farm 9 million. The average farm is about 210 acres. The average age of a farmer is 55 years old. And the income they make is ridiculous. We’ve got to find a way to show our farmers that they can make a profit.”

From my four years of interviewing chefs and farmers around the country, I’ve come to believe that the local-sustainable food movement will save us. It will save our farmers when we agree to pay a bit more for food without pesticides, chemical fertilizers, hormones, or antibiotics. And it will save consumers when our health thrives without those elements in our bodies. Food grown as nature intended: it sounds too simple to be called salvation.

“If we can change the way the food system currently works, we can radically increase the demand for locally, sustainably grown produce,” says Edwin Marty, director of Jones Valley Urban Farm in Birmingham. “Consumers, for the most part, don’t realize that it’s their choice.”

It’s a powerful choice—and one on which most of us can agree. The terms red and blue, bandied about in politics, don’t really define us; individuals are much more complicated than that. But buying food grown in Alabama, keeping dollars in Alabama, appeals economically to us all, across the political spectrum. As the Senate debates the Farm Bill this week, now is the perfect time to let our senators know we want to support sustainable farmers. “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” wrote Brillat-Savarin. Tell me from whom you buy it, and we will learn something just as dear.

Posted by Holley Camp