Marshall Ramsey

What you feed your mind is as important as what you feed your body — both have a direct impact on your body and your health. If you consume conspiracies, negativity and seek out trauma, it’ll manifest and affect your “health.” I put health in quotes because mental and physical health are all just that — health. It’s all wrapped up in one big ol’ burrito called you. You can be strong physically and yet break down if you consume the wrong thoughts. So seek gratitude. Look for what is going right in your life so you can have the energy to fix what isn’t. That’s a much better strategy than harping on the negative all the time. While I understand complaining and worry can give you short-term hits of dopamine (like so many addictions, they aren’t a sustainable long-term strategy. Keep a small notebook and jot down three things that are going right in your life. Be grateful. Say thanks for them. Then move on from there. Exercise, stretch, pray, meditate — just do. And take that gratefulness out into the world. Give until you feel like you can’t anymore. Chase trauma from your body once and for all.

Change your mind and change your life.

Last night, Amy and I watched a 9/11 documentary on the History Channel. It showed events at the World Trade Center from the perspectives of multiple New Yorkers who were filming the attack. While it was horrific to watch all the death and destruction again, we sat there transfixed to the TV. It’s important to grasp the depth of evil, horror and pain that day caused. Because if you don’t understand it, you don’t have an appreciation for what happened next.

Out of great evil and pain came incredible heroism.

As most were running away from burning towers (for good reason), a group of brave souls were running toward the them. First responders — firemen, police, paramedics, clergy — were thinking of something bigger than themselves as they started the long climb up the stairs of the towers.

Then all Hell broke loose. The towers collapsed. Of the 2,977 victims killed in the September 11 attacks, 412 were emergency workers.

But that didn’t stop even more first responders from continuing to run towards the rubble in hopes of finding survivors — even in light of a new danger. When the towers collapsed, the air was filled with toxic dust. According to a Sept 11, 2019 CBS News article, it is estimated that 400,000 people (not all first responders) were exposed to the toxins released into the air. Since then, more than 2,000 have died of 9/11-related illnesses.

The darkness and fear of September 11, 2001 blanketed us like the poisonous ash falling from the sky.

Yet out of the darkness, rays of light began to appear.

Story after story emerged about heroes who had sacrificed themselves to help others. Other stories of good began to surface. Americans, in shock, gathered together in prayer, held candle-light vigils for the victims — even Congress joined together in a rare moment of bipartisanship when they sang “God Bless America” on the Capital steps. We raised money for 9/11 charities, thanked a policeman or fireman (now that we realized they’d run into a disaster to save us), flew flags because of what they stood for and got to know our neighbors better. From the ashes of Hell bloomed a beautiful flower. We briefly woke up from our selfish slumber and thought of someone and something bigger than ourselves. The sheer terror of that day led to glimpses of what makes us legitimately great — we stared down Hell with love.

We woke up September 12th to a changed world.

It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows. As we watched the rest of the documentary, I thought about the nearly two decades since. The saying “United We Stand” and “Let’s Roll” seem almost like they belongs in a museum. Wars, more attacks, the Great Recession — Hate and fear have crept up again. We are a divided nation and so many have slinked into the comfort zone of tribes. People in power use our fears to their advantage. I have hope, though. When pushed into a corner, our goodness comes out. We saw it in the days after September 11th. We saw it after Hurricane Katrina. When things get bad, we get good.

United we stood.

As I plodded off to bed after a rough day, that gave me a little bit of hope.

I just walked through my kitchen. The wallpaper is gone. So is the little TV. The highchair is missing, too — the little man who was sitting in it 18-years ago is now a sophomore in college. Kids who were born on that horrific day are now eligible to serve in the military. 

A generation has now fought in the war on terror.

Our innocence died on that day as we watched in horror as men and women died right before our eyes. Their crimes? They just went to work. 

How I remember it all so well.

Amy and I watched it in our kitchen. We had been squabbling over something stupid and as I turned around, I noticed black smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center. I told her to come over and look. Right as she did, the second hijacked plane plowed into the other tower. I looked over at our one-year-old son and wondered what kind of f’ed up world he’d now grow up in. We watched as papers floated surreally to the ground. Soon people jumped behind them. Suicide by splattering on the pavement was preferable to burning to death — all on live TV. 

Eventually I pulled myself from the little TV and headed downtown to the Clarion-Ledger. We had a few old-style TVs around the newsroom and a group of us watched in horror as the second tower collapsed into a billowing cloud of toxic dust. Then as the second tower fell, I drew my cartoon of the Statue of Liberty. As I was drawing, the Pentagon was hit. Then Flight 93 became the first battle where we fought back. Let’s roll! 

We didn’t know what was next. 

I remember driving home that day. As airplanes were landing, people were driving 50 mph on the interstate (they don’t do that if there is snow) . Gas was $1.35 a gallon at Pump-In-Save where the Volkswagen dealership is now. I still have my American Flag magnet that was on the back of Amy’s van. I have a yellowed copy of the flag that The Clarion-Ledger printed. My “United We Stand” eagle head cartoon (my favorite all-time cartoon) seems like an antique now. 

A couple of years ago, we were on the ferry riding out to the Statue of Liberty. As the boat pulled up next to the dock, I looked at the statue and realized it was the same exact view as my cartoon from 9/11. Memories of that day flooded back to me. Later in the day, we went to the 9/11 Memorial Museum. 

My sons looked around at the crumpled artifacts (two of my three kids were born after 9/11). There was the crushed firetruck. They saw the steel beam cross that survived. The stairwell where a group of people survived the collapse. Your heart sank as you went down into the museum. I looked around at possessions of some of the thousands of victims. It was a child’s toy that triggered me — it looked like the one my youngest son had just flown with on our flight to New York.  

Tears streamed down my face as I openly wept. 

What I had tried to avoid for so many years finally came crashing down on me. The people who died that horrible day now had a face and a name. 

I thought of them as I walked through the kitchen tonight. It’s where I first got to know them. 

All I can say is this: Bless them and their families. Bless all the first responders. Bless our country. 

And bless our lost souls.

It was a hot, clear September day with temperatures hovering in the upper 90’s — a rarity in Knoxville, Tennessee. Dad smiled as we drove toward the University of Tennessee, his alma matter. He was from nearby Maryville and had graduated from UT in 1959. The man’s blood ran orange. My blood was about to boil from the heat.

Dad maneuvered our 1963 Pontiac Catalina, Big Red as we called it, to the Ag Campus. That’s where we’d park and take the shuttle to the stadium. At least that was our plan. We saw the hoard of people and looked back at our car. We joined the herd and headed to where you picked up the shuttle.

We were all in now.

It was my first UT football game. Neyland Stadium had just been enclosed and now sat 98,000 orange-clad fans. I’m not sure anyone was ready for the resulting crush of fans because shuttles were few and far between. One pregnant lady said she was going to fake labor to get a ride quicker. My dad said he was going to use me to get on a bus.

“I’m 12, dad. It won’t work.”

“Well fall down and pretend to pass out.”

We pushed like salmon swimming upstream toward the stadium. When we finally made it, we watched as the Georgia Bulldogs and the Tennessee Volunteers warmed up. (Considering it was 98 degrees, they should have been plenty warm.) I looked around at the stadium with awe. Neyland soars 14 stories into the sky. The noises, the sights and the smells lit up my senses. By the end of the first quarter, they had run out of Coke. By halftime, there was no ice. By the third quarter, the Vols led the Bulldogs. It was very, very hot.

My dad asked me if I was having fun. I nodded. Hell yeah I was having fun! Tennessee had the game in hand until Vince Dooley put in a freshman running back named Herschel Walker — who promptly ran over Bill Bates.

Georgia won the game and then went on to win the National Championship. But the loss didn’t discourage me. My blood was turning orange.

I leaned over and told Dad, “I am going to school here.” Six years later, I did.

That was September 6, 1980 — 39 years ago to the day I will be receiving an UT Alumni Professional Achievement Award a few hundred yards away in the student center.

Most days I can’t remember where my car keys are, but I know exactly where our two seats are. I found them the last time I went to a UT game. This Saturday, I’ll be taking my 12 year old to the game. But we’ll be sitting in much more posh seats. We’ll be sitting in the skyboxes, not where Dad and I sat nearly four decades ago.

It will be fun to watch my youngest son’s reaction to everything. I know he’ll catch every detail – The band, the team, the cheerleaders and the crowd. And if he looks closely enough this Saturday, he might see his late grandfather’s spirit sitting next to us.

The stars twinkled above me but I didn’t see them. The asphalt was uneven and I didn’t feel like scraping the skin off my face. So I plodded along, looking at my feet and trying desperately not to trip. I was grateful for the darkness — I could creep along clumsily in relative anonymity. No one would see me and say, “That poor man is dying.”

No one would ever confuse me with an athlete.

Music pumped through my headphones, their lyrics lifting my soul up toward the heavens. My knee hurt a little — I didn’t stretch well and all my car time lately has made my back tight. At my age, I need to be stretching nearly as long as I run. The clocked ticked past 5 a.m. as I talked to my maker. Yesterday I had talked to hundreds of bright students about dreams, resilience and making a difference in peoples’ lives. I prayed that I could live up to my words. Then I prayed a prayer of thanks that I had the opportunity to have another day. It’s that blank canvas that we’re given every single morning. Our effort is the brush strokes. Our attitude is the color palate we use. What we do with our art is how we can chance someone’s life for the better.

A car came up from behind so I quickly moved out of the way. I never turn the music up so loud that I can’t hear traffic. Also, headlights give me a little warning. Other than nearly being run over by the paper delivery person (and then cussed out by her) a couple years ago, I don’t have much problem running in my neighborhood at 5 a.m.

I ran straight ahead, past obstacles and my own natural inclination to call it a day. Then I looked at my watch and headed home. I pushed myself up the final hill as I tried to meet God halfway. I know He’s with me the whole way, but the whole faith without works thing rattled in my sleepy brain. Pushing through fatigue is the toughest thing for me. My breathing was labored but strong. My pulse sat at 160 as I finished.

Running is a time for me to think, reflect and express gratitude. It strengthens my heart and my soul. A lone dog barked off in the distance while an alligator slipped beneath the surface of a nearby creek. The sun began to win its daily battle with the dark. I made it home tired but grateful.

My mileage was logged. My daily run was complete. All is good.

Thanks be to God and my tired legs.

“I hope we get some rain,” I thought as looked at the National Hurricane Center’s evening forecast. Katrina had grown into a monster storm, nearly the size of Texas, but it was heading to the east of us. Orange Beach, Alabama was in the Cone of Uncertainity’s crosshairs. “We’ll be on the dry side.” I thought.

I was so damned naive about tropical systems back then.

Then I saw Jim Cantore pointing at the Treasure Bay pirate ship casino and the coast and saying, “Look around, this will never look the same again.”

Jim was right.

As you know, Katrina went further west. It clipped Louisiana before slamming into Mississippi. The entire length of the Coast was obliterated by the storm’s 30ft. surge. New Orleans sank beneath the water pouring through compromised levees. Here in Jackson, well, we had high winds and rain for nearly 12 hours.

I was in the newsroom when I heard that there was water on the second floor of the Beau Rivage casino. That was around 10 a.m. — and that was the moment I knew the Mississippi Gulf Coast would never be the same again. The storm’s eye and huge wind field battered Hattiesburg and Laurel as it headed toward Jackson. It turned right and passed just to our east. I drove home around noon and a trip that should have taken 25 minutes took and hour and a half. I had an interstate sign fly off its posts and toward my car. Two trees nearly crushed my car. Thankfully I had a full tank of gasoline — that would come in handy down the road.

My house was spared except for a little minor damage. Many of my friends weren’t so lucky. And God knows the people on the Coast suffered. First from the storm and its immediate after effects. Then it was from being pretty much ignored by the national media as the man-made tragedy in New Orleans horrifically unfolded on live TV. Katrina was an equalizer — poor, rich and middle class all wandered around like zombies as casino barges and rotting chicken sat where their homes once were. At one point when I was down at Camp Coast Care working, 50% of the people who came in were in shock — and this was in DECEMBER!

Today, there are people on the Coast who are still struggling with long-term trauma caused by Katrina. While I contend the folks on the Coast are among the most resilient around, it is also important to realize how much long-term damage Katrina actually did. PTSD comes in many shapes and sizes — and I am sure there are people self-medicating their way through each day because of what they lost.

I used to go to Sunday school a lot as a kid but I’ve never seen the Good Book come to life any better than I did after that storm. People of all faiths came to Mississippi to help the recovery process. I always said that organizations who had a plan didn’t after that day. No one could prepare for the scale of the destruction. But volunteers came in and filled in the gaps.

After one trip to the Coast, my priest and I stopped at a convenience store north of Wiggins. I looked at the knick knacks for sale at the counter and spied a snow globe that was the same as one I had seen half buried in the muck. While I like my stuff, it was at that moment I was reminded that it is just that — stuff. Standing where six people had drowned also reminded me of what truly is important in life.

The response to Katrina was when I understood what is special about the people of Mississippi. The giving spirit of so many served as a balm for all Katrina took away.
I’ll leave with this one story. I asked one home owner about an old truck that laid battered and rusted in a yard. “Was that one of your old antique trucks,” I asked him. He shook his head and said, “No, the best we can tell, Hurricane Camille sucked it out to sea in 1969 and Katrina brought it back.”

P.S. We got rain although I don’t know if my grass ever got wet. The rain that did fall blew sideways. My trees did the hula and I pray to God I never see another storm like Katrina again.

The Mayans said the world would end on December 21, 2012. Well they sure blew that one. But the world has changed rapidly. Everything just seems out of synch. 

This is a time of great disruption.

Think about how much our lives have changed in a relatively short amount of time. My grandmother was born in 1905. When she was a little girl, she watched men string electric lines to her town. She saw men go from riding horses to walking on the moon. When she died in 2000, the internet had started disrupting everything.

I am convinced that sociologists will look back at now like they do the Industrial Revolution. Industries and institutions have been completely wiped out by the internet. Digital data and its transmission have collapsed borders and shrunk the world. How we consume news, music and movies has changed. And in terms of jobs and society, it has been both beautiful and bloody. The Mayans said the world would end in 2012. I think 2007 might be a better year.

Why 2007? That’s when the iPhone was introduced and right behind it: social media. 

Like gas poured on a fire in a fireworks stand, social media has caused change to occur even faster. Then a year later, the Great Recession exploded our economy. We worked harder for less (if we were working at all) Then the very institutions that were there to provide stability failed us. By 2009, the only thing we had to cheer for was when a plane crashed in the Hudson and no one died. Finally someone in charge didn’t screw up. Nice work, Sulley. 

I was talking to a friend today about this. There is so much depression, anxiety, suicide and addiction today. I started to wonder why. It might be because we live our lives connected to a screen (like right this second). Humans can’t evolve quickly enough to keep up with the rapid changes being thrust upon them. Our brains aren’t like microchips that are tied to Moore’s law (the principle that the speed and capability of computers can be expected to double every two years, as a result of increases in the number of transistors a microchip can contain.) We can’t keep up physically and mentally. My guess is that because of that, people are in a state of perpetual unease. 

That unease is caused by being in constant fight or flight mode. The tiger is always trying to kill us now. The cortisol pumping through our bodies is wearing us out. And we are self-medicating. We are addicted to opioids, food, drugs, sex, shopping, alcohol, gambling — all because we’re constantly chasing a dopamine fix.

I’m not sure what the answer is. Prayer, meditation, exercise and yoga all help. Medication helps to an extent. We can’t got back to the 1950’s or become luddites. But we have to figure out how to unplug and unwind. We need to reconnect with our core values and rebuild the institutions that are crumbling around us — not cheer their demise.