The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, an organization devoted to curing spinal cord injury by advancing research and improving the quality of life for individuals with paralysis, recently awarded a grant to Mississippi State University’s T.K. Martin Center for Technology and Disability to help clients with paralysis.

The $17,733 grant is a part of the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation’s Quality of Life Grants program, which it awards to nonprofits that support individuals living with paralysis. The grants are part of a cooperative agreement with the Administration for Community Living, which is a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

MSU's T.K. Martin Center will use the funding to provide pressure mapping technology throughout Mississippi, which allows clinicians and individuals with paralysis and their families to see the impact of changing positioning aids, cushions and completing pressure relief strategies, which can aid in cushion and seat selection for wheelchairs and vehicles such as four wheelers, tractors and boats, a release from MSU says.

For more information about the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation, visit ChristopherReeve.org. For information about the T.K. Martin Center, visit tkmartin.msstate.edu.

USM Receives Grant for Cookbook Digitization Project

Jennifer Brannock, curator of Rare Books & Mississippiana at The University of Southern Mississippi, and Andrew Haley, a USM history professor and food historian, recently received a $10,400 grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council via the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom for a project to digitize and transcribe Mississippi community cookbooks.

In 2018, Universities Libraries at USM joined an international effort to explore ways to share English-language culinary resources. The group included the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Boston University, the Wellcome Collection, the University of York, the University of Brighton, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the University of South Florida. Despite delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the digitization effort should be finished by October 2020, a release from USM says.

As part of USM's Community Cookbook Project, Haley and Brannock began collecting Mississippi cookbooks, including ones that churches and community and civic groups published, in order to preserve them. The two collected more than 1,000 cookbooks from across the state, the release says.

Haley also uses USM's Culinary Collection, which includes nearly 8,000 cookbooks, to study the role of Mississippi foodways, which refers to the cultural, social and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. Additionally, Haley visited remote parts of the state to share stories about Mississippi's culinary traditions and to encourage people to donate their unused cookbooks to the Community Cookbook Project.

To view some of the digitized and transcribed cookbooks, search USM's Digital Collections at https://digitalcollections.usm.edu/. For more information about the Mississippi community cookbook collection, email Brannock at [email protected] or call 601-266-4347.

JSU to Serve as Emergency Polling Place

The Hinds County Board of Supervisors and the Hinds County Election Commission recently announced a partnership with Jackson State University to provide two polling locations on Election Day on Nov. 3 in the event of an emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

JSU has offered the Lee E. Williams Athletics and Assembly Center and the Mississippi e-Center on its campus as polling locations. Previously, JSU’s Precinct 49 has been in the Student Center, but that has changed this November to the AAC, where students and the public will vote.

Students who are registered to vote will also help manage the Election Day poll worker center, a release from JSU says. The university will have 50 poll workers at the AAC on Election Day in the event of emergencies. The students will help run the facility and assist the Hinds County Election Commission on Election Day.

The Election Commission will provide personal protection equipment at precincts, including wipes, gloves, face masks, shields, Lysol spray, hand sanitizer and disposable pens for each voter. The commission will also provide extra voting machines to the busiest precincts.

Absentee voting will begin Sept. 21 at the Hinds County Circuit Clerk’s office in Raymond or the downtown location.