captions and cutlines

Elder Lee Frazier, B. Williams? Thirty three years later I don't remember...

Flomaton, Alabama

Coolidge, Georgia

mottos and slogans

We believe in Expertism. We will spend vast sums of money with experts for a bag of magic words.
How many people in my City could cough up its slogan?
How many people could cough up that slogan with a straight face?

The State of Alabama has three slogans:
1. Share The Wonder
2. Alabama the Beautiful
3. Where America finds its voice

They don't have the farcical-nonsensical foundation of the wildly successful "Virginia is for lovers" slogan.

Thank you Alabama.

State mottos tend to be more idealistic. Mottos start in Latin. Few are understood.

Audemus jura nostra defendere

Concrete Andy

Sure, the Metropolitan Museum has a lot of statuary, but do they have the concrete Andy?

route 321

Gadsden County, 1980

"If we are to keep democracy, there must be a commandment: Thou shalt not ration justice"--Learned Hand

house for sale, goodle days

Where have all the five-thousand dollar houses gone?

One day about twenty-five years from now,
When we've all grown old from a-wondering how,
Oh we'll all sit down at the city dump,
And talk about the Goodle Days.--John Hartford

Post, post South Carolina

the Washington Post is not a happy place for the Clintons today
Zipper Trouble
Cards From a Worn-Out Deck
Staying the Coarse
The Race Turns to Race
Stop Them Before They Co-President Again

Highgate Cemetery

And God said: Go down, Death, go down,
Go down to Savannah, Georgia,
Down in Yamacraw,
And find Sister Caroline.
She's borne the burden and heat of the day,
She's labored long in my vineyard,
And she's tired--
She's weary--
Do down, Death, and bring her to me.--James Weldon Johnson

don't ask

Molasses Junction, Florida

M. Revelateur, on entering the black cabinet, was startled to discover his space had been appropriated for other uses.

North Florida Concrete

Cumberland Island, Georgia

the parishioners have all moved

occupation

tobacco in bloom, Figsboro Road, Franklin County

1) destroy industry and agriculture
2) decapitate leadership, silence opposition, disenfranchise populace
3) change place names
4) establish olfactory, auditory and vehicular irritants

big stick

Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, "Speak softly and carry a big stick - you will go far." If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting, and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words, his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power.
September 2, 1901 Teddy Roosevelt

day of rest

United Pentecostal Holiness (thankyou John Mason)

Gaffney, SC

things I love about the south. Live oaks, marshes and the Peachoid.

In 1981 the Peachoid was awarded the "Steel Tank of the Year" award by the Steel Plate Fabricators Association. The artist for the project was Peter Freudenberg, the engineer the Harwood Beebe Company. The tank was fabricated by Chicago Bridge and Iron. The tank belongs to the Gaffney Board of Public Works.

The Peachoid has a capacity of one million gallons (water or peach juice).

globalization

Stopped in Kannapolis NC. In 1960, 23,000 people worked at Cannon's Plant #1.
Pineapple man owns the Mill property now. People overseas have the jobs.

good fences?

tomato crew-boss, Gadsden County

I wonder what Lewis Lapham thinks about S.2454, Securing America's Borders Act?

Hey Lewis! Where does the ruling class weigh in on this one? What does the RC think about the 17 guest workers that live down the street in a one room apartment? How do we count these folks for the census? Is this a way for the RC to import a new underclass?

Note to guest workers. If you want to improve chances of North American citizenship, marching with an American flag is the best approach.

========================================
(from the bill)

(a) Tucson Sector- The Secretary shall--
(1) replace all aged, deteriorating, or damaged primary fencing in the Tucson Sector located proximate to population centers in Douglas, Nogales, Naco, and Lukeville, Arizona with double- or triple-layered fencing running parallel to the international border between the United States and Mexico;
(2) extend the double- or triple-layered fencing for a distance of not less than 2 miles beyond urban areas, except that the double- or triple-layered fence shall extend west of Naco, Arizona, for a distance of 25 miles; and
(3) construct not less than 150 miles of vehicle barriers and all-weather roads in the Tucson Sector running parallel to the international border between the United States and Mexico in areas that are known transit points for illegal cross-border traffic.

slowly

How long will it take to cut the three acre front yard of the motel with a pair of fingernail scissors?
I am finding out.

Panhandle

In 1975 me and Jimmy biked across Florida, most of it. Broke down in Holmes County. It was summer, very hot. The Chief of Police was worried about us. He in his cruiser, windows rolled up. We on foot. No bicycle riders breaking down in his town. He followed us, escorted us at 3 mph, to the West edge of Bonifay.

names

Pictured above, my landlord, Mr. Ford Larkin. I don't know the mule's name.

Courtesy of the University of Tampere

Regional and Ethnic Names:

? The South: Billy Bob, Jimmy Jack, Johnny Joe, Mary Lou, Sarah Anne; Bubba, Buford, Beauregard

? Black southern names of the late 1800s: Pearl, Ruby, Vaseline, Oleomargaret

? Current (primarily) Black names: LaVonne, LaToya, LeVar, Latrell, Aloicious, etc.

? Caricatured Black names: Rastus and Liza, Sam(bo), Tom, Toby

? Rural or 'hick' names: Elmer, Homer, Jud, Lester, Clem, Roy, Hank, Jethro . . .

politics

In VA we have an ongoing gubernatorial race. No, those aren't the candidates above but might as well be. Last night there was a televised debate, let's be charitable and say that the debate was helpful, bottled up it would make a good emetic.

There is a third candidate running as an independent. He seems to be the straight talker of the three. Natch, he was excluded.

piling on...

Michael Brown's new place of employment? I am terrified that Brownie might be hired as Slabtown's traffic engineer. The post has been vacant for over a year.

how long?

These children are from Florida but they bring the NOLA youngsters to mind. How long are evacuated families going to be away from home? The airport is supposed to be reopen soon, the port of New Orleans as well. There is talk of the French Quarter being open for Mardi Gras.
What about the people?

where are they now?

I made the picture but lost the names. Failure to memorize, failure to annotate.
This photo dates from 1977, taken outside the Superdome
Where are these guys? Are they still musicians?
Did they survive the water, the wind, the twenty-eight intervening years?

day of rest

hope

I don't buy lottery tickets, but I am not immune to hope. I plant trees and imagine them succeeding, providing habitat for generations.

I am particularly susceptible to short-term hope. I look at an image and think, yes! It is good! I will eat, I will buy Sophie a new collar.

And so it was with this image. An author who I particularly admire was hunting for some live oak imagery, a row of oaks.

The Artists and Curators scoff, "it has already been done".

It's lucky the world wasn't created by an Artist?

"I am gonna to make Me some continents and put them in a vast sea of urine."

"I'm gonna make Me some animals and cut them up into sections."

In the end the job was killed.

Hope lives.

inflatable chicken

Traffic tripled on my website the other day.

I wondered who was looking, dug through the log file and found 689 requests between 8:00 and 9:00 A.M. for a photo of an inflatable chicken.

Discovered by Chicken Fetishists? Dug a little further and found a URL.



There are thousands of communities in Internet land, my bandwidth and image were being used not by Chicken Fetishists but by a Gamecock Fan, alias gatorhater
(Name of USC's rooster mascot, "Cocky").

Is there a requirement that mascots be insipid? UVA's mascot, the CavMan, would seem to bear that out...

his own man

I think about Mr. G when I drive through the back country.

He didn't have consumer goods. Didn't have a car, an electric range, didn't have anything digital.

He had a house, a wood stove and a broom (Mr. G liked to keep his yard swept).

He knew who his friends were. He knew what he had to do everyday.

He stopped voting after Kennedy got shot.

The Church ladies didn't like Mr. G., he wouldn't live as they thought he ought to, he refused to clean up.