I’m Hugh Hollowell, and I’m writing, preaching, publishing, and community organizing.
Current projects:
I’m the editor of a weekly newsletter about beauty, self care and sometimes, cats, called Life is So Beautiful. You can learn more, and subscribe to it here.
I have a team of folks whose patronage provides the funding to cover my side publishing projects. They get various perks, such as weekly bonus essays. You can learn about that here.
I’m also a community organizer with Working Together Mississippi, where I help faith communities build the capacity to act on issues that are important to them.
I’m the pastor of Open Door Mennonite Church, a progressive & inclusive faith community in Jackson, MS
I have been blogging since 2003, most recently about building a good life in the Deep South.
AND my wife and I run a small-scale kitten rescue org, called Purr and Pounce – you can see hi-quality cute kitten content on our Instagram page.
About Hugh
My family has lived in Mississippi for over 200 years, and I grew up in the North Mississippi hill country. I lived in Memphis TN in my 20’s, and then moved to Raleigh, NC, where I ran a faith based non-profit that focused on homelessness from a harm-reduction perspective. Eventually, I burned out, but here are some lessons I learned about how to take care of yourself when your world is on fire.
I then returned to Mississippi, and currently live in the Fondren neighborhood of Jackson, MS, with my wife, six five chickens, and two four(!) spoiled cats. I dream of a better South and a better world for all of us.
Disagree with me? That’s fine. I’m fighting for your liberation, too.
Khakis over jeans, sour over sweet, cats over dogs, and coffee over tea. I don’t have a plan.
If you want to get in touch, go to this page.
Ways to read this blog
I think the best way to read any blog is via RSS ?, and the RSS feed for this site is here. I also syndicate this to Threads, Mastodon, BlueSky, and Tumblr.
If you enter your email below, you will get an email every Saturday morning with a link to every post I have written that week.
Blogging Philosophy
This is an attempt to explain the quirks and biases of the author of this blog (that would be me). Not all of them, obviously, or even most, but enough for you to hopefully understand what is going on.
I have been blogging since 2003 and have watched blogging shift from “blogging” to “content creation”. I don’t desire to create content – I desire to blog. So…
- This website exists at the intersection of public and private. Opinions expressed here are mine, and I don’t speak for other people or organizations.
- This is a blog. It will house small writing, short essays, quotes I like, and links to things I want to share.
- There will be images only when they are pertinent to the post.
- A paragraph can be a post.
- I don’t measure traffic. No stats, no visitor logs. This protects your privacy and my integrity.
- Comments are welcome, but this website is mine, and if I wouldn’t let you say it in my living room, you won’t say it here.
- I still write longer essays, but that is no longer a service I provide for free. Instead, I write weekly essays for the people who pay to support my writing. You can learn more about that here.
- I bring my whole self to this site, and to life in general. There is no branding here, no topic, no theme. My inner life is chaotic and diverse – expect this site to be equally so.