Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, The Mustard Seed, a community for adults with developmental disabilities, has made changes to its annual Christmas in July event for 2020. The event, which usually allows visitors and residents to paint Christmas-themed ceramics together, will instead have grab 'n' go bags with supplies to paint ornaments at home.

For $100, Christmas in July participants will be able to pick up a bag from The Mustard Seed's Flowood or Madison porch pick-up locations. The bags will contain four bisque ornaments, ceramics paint and paintbrushes. Participants must return their painted ornaments and supplies to one of the pick-up locations by the end of the month, after which Mustard Seed staff will glaze and fire the ornaments and contact participants to pick up the finished product.

Learn more about the Christmas in July event here.

Groundbreaking for Museum to Market Trail

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and other officials will host a groundbreaking ceremony for the new Museum to Market multi-use path on Tuesday, July 14, at 3 p.m. The ceremony will take place at the southern end of the Mississippi Farmers Market.

In 2011, the City of Jackson received a $1.1 million federal grant through the Mississippi Department of Transportation and the Central Mississippi Planning and Development District to construct the planned walking, running and biking trail.

The Museum to Market Trail will include construction of 2.14 miles of new multi-use path or replacement sidewalk from the Mississippi Farmers Market on High Street to the Mississippi Children’s Museum on Highland Drive. The $1,579,850 project also includes a new pedestrian bridge over a creek and the conversion of an abandoned railway into a compliant 10-foot wide multi-use path from Spengler Street to Laurel Street.

The Federal Highway Administration and the Mississippi Department of Transportation funded the project.

Residents can follow the progress of the project on the museum trail Facebook page.

MDAH Launches Virtual Reality App for Grand Village of the Natchez Indians

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History has partnered with TimeLooper, a design firm that serves public lands, historic sites, museums and educational institutions, to create a virtual reality application that allows viewers to see the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians in Natchez, Miss., as it appeared in 1730.

MDAH administers the Grand Village site, which contains three prehistoric Native American mounds and a museum. The Natchez Indians inhabited the site as early as A.D. 1200, a release from MDAH says. The site became a National Historic Landmark in 1964 and the museum opened in 1976.

The application features representations of structures that MDAH created using archaeological findings and descriptions that French colonists who observed the Natchez ceremonial mound site when it was occupied wrote, the release says. The TimeLooper app also allows viewers to see a representation of the home of the Great Sun, the hereditary chief of the Natchez.

MDAH's program also shows the Temple Mound, the sacred place where the Natchez leaders conducted important ceremonies and people brought offerings of food to honor their ancestors. Viewers can also see wooden birds that topped the roof of the temple, which French colonists described in their accounts. Information about the 1729-1730 Natchez war with the French, the Old Temple Mound, other Natchez structures and the ceremonies that took place on the central plaza are also part of the application.

The virtual reality program is available to users at no cost. The TimeLooper app is available on the Apple App Store and Google Play. For more information, visit the MDAH website.