Big Yellow Taxi

I'm not sure anyone would consider Pascagoula, Mississippi paradise. The locals talk about the heat and humidity of the summertime, which I assume is a longer summer than most of us are used to. They say the mosquitoes and deer flies are awful.

In that case, maybe Joni' Mitchell's song does not apply directly. But they paved over something here and left a lot of unused asphalt. These are photos across the street from each other in Gautier, Mississippi - one town west on US 90 from Pascagoula.

Am I being unjustly judgmental? The South has so many of these sites that to me are a blight. They are never going to look better unless somebody "invests" money in them and returns them to nature. But that's never going to happen. So they will continue to degrade and be an eyesore.

The upside of this post is it allows me to share two of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs. "Big Yellow Taxi" is straight forward in its meaning and apropos of this post "Both Sides Now" is a song to me that is both haunting and elusive. Enjoy.

Epilogue. Two items. First, in case you pronounced “Gautier” as “GO-tier” the correct pronunciation is “go-SHAY.” Yeah, me, too. Second, the photos above are about five miles inland from the Gulf. The places look blown out because they were - by Katrina in 2005. The storm surge in that area was 35 feet (at the beach) but came inland for miles and miles. I am in Biloxi now and it looks like a brand new city - with a Golden Nugget, and Harrah’s and a Margaritaville. I guess they got rid of the law that casinos needed to be on the water?