05/30/2026
Next month, I’ll wrap up the tenth interview in Jefferson, Iowa, for the upcoming The What’s Good Project: Jefferson series. I thought I should explain a little more about how WGP started and where all it’s been.
In 2018, I started asking folks to tell me what’s good where they live. This was my attempt to learn from courageous folks doing the thankless work of making their often underestimated communities better places to live. With that, The What’s Good Project was born. Bonus was getting to make art about these stories, which ultimately shifted my default way of thinking.
(I’ve always been a glass-half-empty kind of person.)
To date, three dozen people from thirteen communities in Iowa (my current home), Mississippi (my original home), and Arkansas have taken me up on this offer, which has resulted in over 80 paintings.
Seven years in, and themes of what folks value have become visible.
Places like the Northwest Mississippi Herald office in Water Valley, Mississippi, that gave a retired Long Island transplant a weekly column so she could meet her new neighbors.
Or the literal and proverbial tables in the stories of working through conflict. Like the backroom of a coffee shop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, or the front room of the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner, Mississippi.
Or the family farm in Rolling Fork, Mississippi, that houses retired horses, including one called Linda Blair for her theatrics, and whose owner can only bear to be away for five days before her heart starts to break.
It’s been really gratifying to learn, and re-learn again and again, that places that support relationships tend to be the most valuable places in town.
You can learn more about the places I've visited at the WGP website, link in comments below.
