I grew up by the Mississippi River, and I would swim in that as a kid.

I once paddled a canoe the length of the Mississippi River all the way from Itasca to New Orleans.

I've always been fascinated by the Mississippi River and the way of life in these small river towns.

Almost 70 percent of U.S. ag exports travel the upper Mississippi River and the Illinois waterway system.

I wrote some of the worst poetry west from the Mississippi River, but I wrote. And I finally sometimes got it right.

Most of the locks and dams on the upper Mississippi River system are over 60 years old and many are in serious need of repair and rehabilitation.

Coming from a town of 30,000 people on the Mississippi River, having 'Queer Eye' in 2003 through 2007 when I was in high school was really important.

Finally, the ecological health of the Mississippi River and its economic importance to the many people that make their living or seek their recreation is based on a healthy river system.

I live by the sea, but the body of water I have the most feeling about is the Mississippi River, where I used to row and skate, ride on the ferry in childhood, watch the logs or just dream.

Barge traffic on the Mississippi River represents the most efficient, most cost-effective, most environmentally sound means of transporting commodity goods from this region of the country to market.

When I visited the Water Institute's Baton Rouge offices overlooking the Mississippi River, I couldn't find a drop of the charged politics that drives so many environmental conversations in Washington.

In the underlying bill, I think the authors of the legislation, those in support of it, understand the use of the Mississippi River. Yes, there is commercial navigation on it, and there will be tomorrow.

If you write a book about a bygone period that lies east of the Mississippi River, then it's a historical novel. If it's west of the Mississippi, it's a western, a different category. There's no sense to it.

There's an undeniable tradition of sexism in this country that ties into the move westward by people of European descent and different ways of looking at Manifest Destiny on the west side of the Mississippi River.

Yet, in 1850 nearly all the railroads in the United States lay east of the Mississippi River, and all of them, even when they were physically mere extensions of one another, were separately owned and separately managed.

I like to make movies on the west side of the Mississippi River, and a lot of times, the movies I direct have horses and big hats in them and get called westerns, but that's okay. I used to resent that, but I don't anymore.

One of the first things I did as a new Member of Congress was help form a bipartisan Mississippi River Caucus so we could work together from both the North and the South in order to draw attention to the resources that are needed along the Mississippi River.

When I made 'Who Needs Pictures,' my first album, I had been west of the Mississippi River one time in my life, and that was in fourth grade. We traveled to California for vacation and stayed with some friends of my parents. It was culture shock, and it was different.

As founder and co-chair of the upper Mississippi River Congressional task force, I have long sought to preserve the river's health and historical multiple uses, including as a natural waterway and a home to wildlife, for the benefit of future generations of Americans.

I was attracted to black music for the same reason that I loved those old Irish ballads. Both were social statements of sorts, and both were indigenous to their respective cultures: Ireland, where my father had grown up, and towns like St. Louis along the Mississippi River, where I was growing up.

I wrote a story about a man who is orphaned during the 1927 Mississippi River flood in Louisiana, and he's on the banks of levee, and he's starving. And there are other people starving, too. And he's so desperate, he's seven years old, that he finds a pig that's been abandoned. He kills it with a hammer, and he drags it back.

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