Christmas in Fannin County

Well, it’s Christmas in North Georgia. There is a festive feeling in the air. The local radio stations are playing Christmas carols. The town of Blue Ridge has had its Christmas decorations up since Thanksgiving. The Blue Ridge train (quite a tourist attraction) is decorated with Christmas lights and features Santa Claus as a conductor. The parking lot at Walmart has been busy for the last few weeks. The local churches have had their Christmas concerts. Manger scenes sit in front of many of the churches, and Christmas lights decorate many houses, even those along country lanes. You see your fair share of ugly Christmas sweaters and cars decorated with reindeer antlers and Christmas wreaths.

Christmas reveals how charitable and giving folks are around here while at the same time revealing how much poverty there is in this area. The local chapter of the Marine Corps League had its gift drive for Toys for Tots, and the response was overwhelming. The League is now busy distributing gifts out of the same building that houses the food pantry—and believe me, there are plenty of kids in Fannin County who would not have much of a Christmas if it weren’t for the efforts of the League and the amazing generosity of the more fortunate around here. As for the food pantry, it has been unusually busy for the last couple of weeks as needy folks and families come in to get food for the holidays. Churches, businesses, civic groups, schools and just plain people come by almost daily to drop off food donations to replenish the larder. Even the local bowling alley had a food drive for the pantry. Thanks to some generous contributions, needy families and individuals will receive a ham for Christmas dinner.

As I have noted before, Christmas is celebrated around here more traditionally and less secularly than what I was used to in Pinellas County. People wish other “Merry Christmas” more freely. The local radio stations do not hesitate to play religious Christmas carols, and local businesses do not mind putting a reference to Jesus’s birth in their advertisements for fear of offending someone. That’s only true for the local businesses. The Christmas displays and ads for the big grocery stores and national chain stores convey the same bland “happy holiday” message that we have become used to in this politically correct, God forbid we should offend anyone, do you need a safe zone? world.

I wish someone would explain to me how we got to be this way. We talk about diversity so much in this country but I question whether we truly practice it. It doesn’t seem very diverse to me to suppress references to Christmas, Kwanza, Ramadan, Hanukah and other seasonal celebrations by religious and ethnic groups for fear of offending other groups. It seems to me that makes us less diverse and more vanilla.

My first thought was that the reason Christmas is celebrated more traditionally here is because this is the Bible Belt, and we have more Christians in Fannin County. As it tunes out, that’s not true. According to 2010 census data, 63.1 percent of the folks in Fannin County self-identify as Christians and 36.9 percent are in the category “None” which includes atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular.” (Interestingly, there are only 6 people in Fannin County out of a population of 23,753 who said they belonged to some religion other than Christian.) Nationally, 70.6 percent of people identify themselves as Christian, 5.9 percent as belonging to a non-Christian faith, and 22.8 percent fall in the None category according to the Pew Research Center. 

That means we have less self-identified Christians and more self-identified non-Christians in Fannin County than the national average. And yet religion is more open and obvious here, and there is a greater religious undertone to the Christmas season than I experienced in Florida. Perhaps local Christians are more emboldened or maybe those in the None category more tolerant.

Whatever the reason, I find that I enjoy the Christmas experience here more than I did in Florida. It may have something to do with the fact that it’s cold outside and there always is a possibility of snow around this time of year. Having grown up in the north and spent five years living in Germany, I associate Christmas with cold and snow and chestnuts roasting over an open fire. But more than that, it also has to do with the fact that it feels more like the traditional Christmases of my youth when I was less jaded and cynical.

With that observation I will close the way I have done in my past Christmas posts:

“Christmas in Dixie” by Alabama

By now in New York City, there's snow on the ground
And out in California, the sunshine's falling down.
And, maybe down in Memphis, Graceland's all in lights
And in Atlanta, Georgia, there's peace on earth tonight.

Christmas in Dixie, it's snowin' in the pines.

Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight.

It's windy in Chicago, the kids are out of school.
There's magic in Motown, the city's on the move.
In Jackson, Mississippi, to Charlotte, Caroline
And all across the nation, it's the peaceful Christmas time.

Christmas in Dixie, it's snowin' in the pines
Merry Christmas from Dixie, to everyone tonight.

And from Fort Payne, Alabama
God bless y'all, we love ya.
Happy New Year, good night,
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas tonight.

To which I would add:

And from Mineral Bluff, Georgia
God bless y'all, we love ya.
Happy New Year, good night,
Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas tonight.

I Photograph a Coyote

I think it’s official: winter weather has arrived in Fannin County. I started writing this post yesterday at 6:30 in the morning. The outside temperature was 14 degrees. The day before the morning temperature was in the 20’s, and it did not get above the low 30’s all day. I had to wear my Radar O’Reilly hat to keep my ears warm. As I anticipated, winter sucks.

Thankfully, the cabin is a warm refuge when it is cold outside. Most of the time we heat it using a small wood stove. The way the cabin is configured the stove keeps the kitchen and living area comfortable. The bedrooms are another story; they stay cold. Our walk-in closet takes it to another dimension—you can hang meat in it. But that’s okay since I don’t spend much time in the closet. You don’t have to when your clothing choices are which t-shirt and which pair of jeans to wear. As for the bedroom, I don’t mind if it’s cold as long as I can sleep under a pile of blankets. In fact, I prefer it that way. What is not so much fun is getting out of a warm bed on a cold morning.

I’ve done a scientific study. It measures the effects of room temperature on a person’s ability to handle bladder pressure when snug in a warm bed. My data demonstrates that there is an inverse relationship between the two: the colder the room temperature the more a person will resist the urge to get out of bed to pee. If I extrapolate the numbers there is a theoretical point at which it is so cold in the bedroom that you would rather wet the bed or explode than leave your snug cocoon. Fortunately, it has not gotten that cold here. I’m thinking of doing another study on the effects of a cold toilet seat on bodily function. I’ll keep you posted.

On another note, there are a lot of coyotes in Fannin County. You hear them howling at night. I even managed to photograph one on the trail camera I put up in the back five acres. It was a pretty healthy looking coyote. I posted a photo on Facebook and some suggested it was too big to be a coyote. I did a little internet research and found out that coyotes average between 21 to 24 inches tall at the shoulder, between 3.6 to 4.4 feet long from nose to tail and weigh between 20 and 50 pounds. It’s hard to judge from a photograph but the coyote in the trail cam photo appeared to be well within those parameters.

I also discovered there is a wolf/coyote crossbreed called a coywolf and a rare dog/coyote crossbreed called a coydog. Coydogs are rare because the mating cycles of dogs and coyotes do not match. (Interestingly, humans are the only mammals who do not have a mating cycle. Males want to mate 24/7/365. That explains a lot). I’m not enamored with the names coydog and coywolf. I’d rather they were called dogotes and wolfotes though I suppose there is a chance that one could confuse them with types of pastas. At any rate, I do not think the creature captured by my trail cam was a coydog or a coywolf.

I suppose it’s no surprise that there are a lot of coyotes around here considering how sparsely populated the county is. Given the number of coyotes you would think they would be a bigger problem than they are. I’ve heard a couple of accounts of henhouse raids being attributed to coyotes but my impression is that they are less bothersome to humans than bears and deer. They may get into unprotected trash every now and then but they seem to leave people alone for the most part. However, coyotes prey in deer, and they can have a significant impact on local deer populations according to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. Maybe that’s the reason coyotes can be hunted year round in Georgia.

According to the internet sources I read, hunting coyotes is not easy. One source says that coyotes are “one of the most difficult of all animals to hunt, more challenging than deer, bear, turkeys and waterfowl combined.” They typically hunt at night and rest during the day. Sounds like hunting coyotes in the winter involves a lot of sitting around in the dark freezing your ass off. I’m not sure the effort is worth the reward though several websites indicated that coyote pelts have value and coyote meat can be eaten. These websites say that coyote meat tastes like dog, and I know that several cultures, including Native Americans, relished dog.

Over the past couple of years I’ve written about my issues with deer, bear, moles and groundhogs. Now I know that I have at least one coyote using my property as a thoroughfare. It’s kind of cool being in a place where wildlife isn’t just something you read about in a book or only see at a zoo.

Winter Cometh, Winter Sucketh

Fall is over in these parts, and we’re on the cusp of winter. The trees have lost most of their leaves, and fallen leaves lay like a thick carpet in the woods. We’ve had a string of mornings when the temperature was in the low 30’s, and I’ve had to start a fire in the wood stove to chase the chill from the house. In the morning the dogs run out for a quick pee and then run right back in to settle next to the woodstove. Sweaters and flannel shirts have come off the shelves, and my flip flops have been relegated to a back corner of the closet. There is a chill even in the afternoon air, and there’s talk of snow in the near future. You just know that winter is right around the corner.

When you hear the word “winter” it brings to mind the holidays and those fictional winter scenes where the kids go to grandma’s house for hot chocolate and cookies, and the grown-ups sip hot toddies and rum flips next to the fire. In your head you hear Nat King Cole crooning, “Chestnuts roasting by an open fire. Jack Frost nipping at your nose.” It sounds so cozy and comfortable, warm and fuzzy, doesn’t it? Well, that’s all bullshit as far as I’m concerned. At least the warm, comfortable and cozy part is. If you haven’t guessed by now, I’m not looking forward to cold winter weather.

This will be my fourth winter in North Georgia. The first one was exciting, the second one was so-so and the third one was barely tolerable. I can already tell that this one will suck. Now that the novelty has worn off I realize that I hate being held prisoner by cold weather for an entire season. Thank God I didn’t decide to retire to some place like North Dakota or Wisconsin.

I’ll grant you that cold weather is a nice change of pace when experienced in limited doses. A weeklong ski trip is great. A short visit to someplace cold gives you a chance to wear your sweaters and knit cap. There’s a certain enchantment to sitting in front of a fire on a cold evening sucking on a pipe and sipping a fine scotch while musing on weighty matters. Seeing your breath on a frosty morning is fun for a brief interval. But when you have to deal with cold weather on a daily basis for four months it loses it attraction and is simply an ordeal.

I’m 50 percent Danish. You would think that with my Danish blood I would relish cold weather. I probably would if I could spend it like the Vikings did in a warm hall with a roaring fire drinking mead and eating greasy meat while groping blond Valkyries with large brass breastplates. At least that’s how I picture it. It probably wasn’t like that in real life, and I suspect that Norsemen thought the same thing as I do about winter—it sucks. I’d be willing to give the fantasy version a try this winter but I know I’ll never convince Meredith to wear a metal breastplate on a cold day. I suppose the comparable experience for a guy would be to walk around with an ice tray in your shorts.

As a long time Florida resident I am used to the idea that all you have to do to leave the house is don a pair of shorts and a t-shirt and slip on your flip flops. Try that in cold weather, and you’ll freeze your nuts off. When you want to leave the house on a cold day you have all these decisions to make. Can I get by with a sweater? Do I need to wear gloves? Scarf or no scarf? It’s a pain in the ass I tell you.

There’s so much about cold weather that is inconvenient, inhibiting and painful: icy windshields, cold fingers and toes, dribbling snot, fogged glasses and frozen earlobes to name a few. Moreover, I find cold weather to be a libido killer. Schlepping around in flannel pants, a sweatshirt and furry bedroom slippers doesn’t help you feel like the virile stud muffin you are especially when Willy and the Twins have become Tiny and the Peanuts because of the cold. Overcoats and parkas are not exactly sexy women’s wear unless you’re into blimps and barrage balloons. When’s the last time you saw an Eskimo pinup calendar?

I suppose the solution is to find time this winter to go someplace warm for a while—someplace where men can be men and women are identifiable. Maybe I’ll call it my Free Willy Tour.

The Super Moon

The recent super moon got a lot of attention around here. It was in the papers, and people were talking about it. I guess that shows that folks living in a rural area pay more attention to nature because they’re closer to it. Or it could illustrate that there are a lot of retired people here with time on their hands.

When I first heard about the super moon all I could think of was Kim Kardashian’s ass pressed against a plate glass window. I suppose that says a lot about my natural inclinations. If there’s a choice between taking the high road and taking the low road, I inevitable head for the low road.

By coincidence, about the same time as the super moon was the topic de jour I saw a commercial featuring Niki Minaj who, like Kim Kardashian, also has an incredibly large ass. A true gluteus maximus, as it were. Apparently, there are a lot of people who have a thing for big butts. I don’t get it myself but to each his own. Which brings me to my point. If you like women with huge heinies you should visit North Georgia. There are asses around here that you could sell ad space on. They should have to display a wide load sign in public. Some are so big they deserve their own area code. 

It’s not that asses here are fatter than elsewhere. I assume there is a human limit on butt size—a kind of badonkadonk terminal velocity—though Kim Kardashian and Niki Minaj make me wonder. I also do not believe that North Georgia has cornered the market on humongous booties. There are plenty of Bertha Butts everywhere. Just go to an urban mall, and you’ll see what I mean.

No, I think what truly distinguishes this place from, say, Florida is that there are a lot less tiny butts here. In Florida you can count on encountering a nice ass on a fairly regular basis; here, not so much. I attribute this to (a) the fact that we have an older population and (b) any woman who has an attractive ass usually gets it out of here as soon as she can. So the problem really is that the fat ass to tiny ass ratio is higher in North Georgia than in many other places. How’s that for an analysis of ass metrics? If this was an economics textbook I’d insert a chart here to graphically illustrate my point.

It is probable that some will find this discussion demeaning and sexist. To be fair, this is not the place for young stud muffins either. You see a lot of overweight and out-of-shape men with big bellies and bad haircuts around here. Not by coincidence, they are often in the company of a fat-assed woman. It’s our version of a twofer.

I guess the point of this rumination is that North Georgia is not the land of young, attractive people. Fannin County will never be confused with South Beach. The people here are very nice, they do not dress weird, they love God and country and they are normal by conventional standards but if you want to be around people who will stir your libido, this is not the place to be.

On another and probably safer note, I had to wear a suit for three days in a row last week. This is notable because it is only the second, third and fourth time I’ve worn one since I retired. By my calculation that’s about once every 288 days. I’d like to get my suit wearing down to, say, the periodicity of Halley’s Comet but this was an instance when duty called.

The occasion for my suit wearing was a thing they do here called Teen Maze. They take ninth and tenth graders from the local high school and run them through stations where they learn about the consequences of bad choices. There’s a pregnancy station, a sexually transmitted disease station, a car crash station, a drug and alcohol station, etc.

One of the stations is a courtroom where the students learn the penalties for the types of crimes that hormonally laden teenagers might commit: DUI, vehicular homicide, rape, stalking and sexting (which, believe it or not, is quite a problem in these parts). The hope is that learning the consequences of a bad decision will deter them from making one.

I was asked to participate in the courtroom scenario as the public defender. The prosecutor was played by a newly retired district attorney from these parts, and the judge was played by a real-life juvenile court judge. I know next to nothing about Georgia criminal law, the Georgia juvenile justice system or being a public defender so I was pretty clueless. If the common perception of a public defender as being ignorant and incompetent is true, then I was perfect for the part. Given the depth of my ignorance I’m not clear on why they felt it so important that the public defender be portrayed by an attorney. You can teach a monkey to begin every other sentence with the words, “Your honor.” But at least I looked sharp in my suits. Folks expressed amazement that I cleaned up so well since I usually look like Paco the pool man or Mr. Greenjeans. My response was, “I told you I used to be somebody once.”

I think we did what we were supposed to do. The kids came to our station smiling and joking. After I did a crappy job pleading for mercy and the judge sentenced them to hard jail time, suspended licenses, curfews, fines, penalties and extended probation they left our station with grim faces. Fundamentally our job was to scare the shit out of them, and I think we accomplished that. Certainly I did. If I were in their shoes I would be scared of committing a juvenile crime if I believed the public defender was as ineffective as I was.

The two juvenile crimes that caused the students to pucker the most were vehicular homicide and the rape scenarios. In Georgia, if you’re 17 or older and charged with those crimes you are tried as an adult, and if you’re convicted you serve time in the big boy prison where the watchword is protect your ass at all times. Can you say, “Squeal like a pig, son?” Furthermore, it’s not uncommon for 16 year olds to be tried as adults in Georgia. As for statutory rape, in Georgia 15 year olds are presumed to be incapable of consenting to sex, and it doesn’t matter whether they look 30 years old and have multiple ID’s corroborating the fact. If you’re 17 and the girl is 15 you’re fucked, so to speak.

As I watched the guys when the judge was talking to them I wondered how much of the rape message was sinking in. I’m pretty sure the threat was enough to convince some of them to keep it in their pants. It was certainly enough to get me to swear off sleeping with 15 year olds from now on. But I’m also pretty sure that for some of them it was a hopeless cause. At that age a lot of young males are little more than heat seeking missiles. Their synapses are no match for raging hormones. Sadly, when Mr. Willy is on the hunt judgment ceases, and primal urges control the show. I know that describes me at that age.

But if the threat of criminal penalties didn’t deter them, the STD station may have. It consisted of graphic photographs of the effects of the various STDs on the body. Not good. Definitely not good. It’s entirely possible the images alone were enough to cause some of the kids to swear off sex for life and become priests and nuns. I anticipate a drastically lowered birth rate in Fannin County.

As if the photographs weren’t enough, the kids had to spin a wheel which randomly assigned them a sexual disease. Then they received a slip of paper that described the effects of the disease. Stuff like: “You have contracted syphilis. In two years your dick will fall off and you will go mad. In five years you will dissolve in a cloud of dust like a vampire exposed to sunlight. There is no cure. Have a nice day.” It was like getting the go to jail card in Monopoly but much worse.

So there you have it. I live in the land of fat asses and sexually repressed high school kids. When you think about it, those are two complimentary characteristics. 

I Learn About Invasive Species

Not too long ago, my Master Gardener (MG) group, the North Georgia Master Gardeners, held a two day workshop on invasive species that threaten the North Georgia ecosystem. Yeah, I know, it’s not exactly Debbie Does Dallas stuff. More like Japanese knotweed does Georgia.

I attended the workshop even though I cannot identify more than eight native plants or shrubs. I’m okay on vegetables but not so hot on the other stuff. In my defense, a lot of plants and shrubs look the same, and you need an incredible memory and an eye for fine detail to differentiate them. The fact that ninety percent of them are harmless and will make absolutely no difference in my life reduces my urgency to know what the bush next to the porch really is. I mean, when’s the last time you heard on the five o’clock news that a Drooping Leucothoe or a Dwarf Fothergilla robbed a bank, ran a stop sign and killed a mother of four or committed welfare fraud? I figure it’s enough to recognize which plants have thorns or give you a rash. Please don’t let the MG’s know about this. They would probably strip me of my trowel and drum me out of their ranks.

There’s a chance I would have attended the workshop regardless, but the truth is that I was compelled to be there. You see, I agreed to be a vice president of the group months ago, and it was only later that I learned I was in charge of organizing educational programs. That was in the fine print in the bylaws. As a result, when we got the opportunity to have this workshop I was automatically the MG in charge. That’s MGIC for you with a military bent. Anyway, I couldn’t very well not attend.

I was glad I went, I think. I learned that there are many, many invasive species—animal, plant, insect and disease—that threaten North Georgia’s native species. Now I can recognize three or four invasive plants. As for the rest (and there are a lot of them), I’m clueless. The only way I’m going to identify the other invasive species is if they’re wearing a name tag or are in the custody of an INS agent. But, hey, at least I’m aware that it’s an issue. I’ll never be able to look on a beautiful sylvan scene again without wondering how many illegal aliens, er, I mean, undocumented plant visitors there are.

Many of the invasive species come from Asia, and their common names of show it: Chinese privet, Japanese honeysuckle, Japanese climbing fern, Japanese stiltgrass, Chinese tallowtree, Chinese wisteria, etc.

I have to admit to having a certain prejudice against things oriental. Maybe I read too many war histories when I was young but I’m still angry over Pearl Harbor, the Bataan Death March, the Rape of Nanking, kamikaze attacks and Iwo Jima. Diversity training be damned, I just don’t trust the little bastards. They’re still eating with sticks, for God’s sake. You’d think that by now they’d realize that food stays on a fork a lot better than it does on a stick. As far as I’m concerned, the only things good that came out of the Orient are Chinese take-out food, pad thai, the Nissan 240Z, Casio watches and ben-wa balls. So I hope that there are gardeners in China and Japan who are having workshops on invasive species with American names like the American beetle, U.S. poison ivy and Yankee nettle. Serves the sneaky bastards right.

The workshop was taught by the Invasive Species Coordinator for the University of Georgia’s Center for Invasive Species and Ecosystem Health. (With a name like that you’d think the center was larger than the Pentagon.) She was very knowledgeable, and fighting invasive species is her cause. The short version of her message is that invasive species out-compete native species causing the native species to die which brings an end to the ecosystem and then we all die. Well, that may be a little overstated but her message was more doom and gloom than uplifting or optimistic.

My first thought was let’s do something about it. But when she told us about the number of acres affected by the problem, I realized the enormity of the task. Take kudzu, the vine that ate the South. By one estimate there were 227,000 acres of kudzu in southern forests in 2010, and it is spreading at the rate of 2,500 acres a year. And that’s only the numbers for forests. There’s an estimated 500,000 acres of kudzu in non-forest areas. But that’s peanuts compared to Japanese honeysuckle. In 2010 there was an estimated 10.3 million acres of Japanese honeysuckle in southern forests spreading at the rate of 65,000 acres a year. Holy invasive species, Batman! That’s more than the number of new people who signed for Obamacare this year. From now on I’ll never stand still in the woods for fear of being steamrolled by honeysuckle. It will take more than a few Master Gardeners with a squirt bottle of Roundup to tackle the problem. I guess she had a reason to preach doom and gloom.

In addition to teaching the workshop, she gave an evening lecture where the community was invited. The lecture compressed all the bad news into a one hour talk. I almost felt sorry for the people who attended. They expected a nice little talk on plants only to be told there’s a possibility our ecosystem will collapse because of invasive plants. You could almost hear the people thinking, “Fuck me. Who knew?”

The evening lecture was so well attended that I got to thinking that the MG’s should sponsor a lecture series about topics that would take peoples’ minds off their petty problems: “Thank you for coming tonight. I hope you can attend our next talk on the high probability of a species-ending asteroid strike in the very near future. Other lectures in the series include talks on what happens to humanity when the Yellowstone Caldera erupts, nuclear proliferation, and viruses that threaten human existence.” The lectures would be an opportunity for the MG’s to hand out membership information inviting people to join our merry group. Come and join us if you want to be permanently depressed. Oh, and here’s the number for the suicide prevention line.

So now I’ll have to add invasive species to the list of things to worry about. Whoever said that ignorance is bliss got it right. Sometimes it’s better to bury your head in the sand, particularly if it’s on a Caribbean island and there’s plenty of rum punch.

The election, sorghum flat bread and a forest fire

Fannin County participated in the election in a big way. Of 14,684 registered voters, 11,924 turned out to vote. That’s 81.2 percent. While turnout figures for this election are not yet available, Fannin’s County’s voter participation figure easily beat the nationwide averages in 2008 (62.3%) and 2012 (57.5%).

I suppose that’s predictable in a county where it’s not considered a political statement to fly the American flag, they’re not ashamed to say the Pledge of Allegiance, everyone stands respectfully when the National Anthem is played, and everyone knows the words to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA.” Around here people honor our military and those who have served, view the United States as the land of the free and the brave and think that all lives matter. They believe in doing their civic duty, and voting is one of those duties.

It helped that that there are lot of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” in Fannin County—folks who believe that Washington, the liberal media and the egg-sucking intellectual establishment have overlooked or forgotten the concerns and problems of the average working Joe. And you know what? I’m okay with that. If you don’t like it, go live elsewhere. I’m sure you’ll fit in fine among the left-leaning wingnuts in California or one of the other blue states. Oh, and by the way, on your way out the door you can kiss my ass.

This is Small Town, USA, and there are a lot of other places just like it across the country. These are the places that the liberal media, big city elites and Hillary Clinton look down upon as being backward, unsophisticated and ignorable. The reason I know there are other places like this is because Small Town, USA, just rose up and taught the elite establishment a lesson.

Predictably, Trump got 9,622 votes or 81.79 percent of the vote in Fannin County. Hillary only got 16.32 percent (1,920 votes) and Gary Johnson got 1.89 percent (222 voters). Everyone around here is wondering who the hell the Gary Johnson voters are. If they are to the right of the local Tea Party Patriots they probably live in the woods, carry muzzle loading rifles and wear buckskins. If they are to the left of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren they undoubtedly wish to remain anonymous.

Being on the conservative side of course I was pleased with the results of the election but it was for more than just policy reasons. If Hillary had been elected there would have been a run on guns and ammunition even worse than when Obama got elected the second time. Ammunition would have disappeared as quickly as wide screen televisions during a Detroit riot. I’m okay in the gun department but my ammo supplies are low. I meant to stock up before the election but never got around to it so I was kicking myself on election night. You can’t be too prepared. You never know when the revolution is going to start or the Cubans will invade or there will be a zombie apocalypse. Now I can take time to replenish the arsenal.

I guess I’m a little bit of a prepper. Some of my time up here is spent trying to learn the old way of doing things. Not only am I interested in such things from a historical standpoint but some day it may be good to know how they did it before electricity and supermarkets. For example, I’m learning how to make leather britches beans. These are air dried string beans that will last through the winter. To reconstitute them you have to boil them for a while. I’ve spoken to an older woman who knows the old ways. She remembers leather britches beans fondly from her childhood and says that when they are boiled with an old ham bone they are tasty. I talked to others who say they are taste like old shoe leather. I guess I’ll find out.

Along those lines, I grew a couple of rows of sorghum this summer. Think of a smaller version of sugar cane. Like sugar cane, the pithy core of a sorghum stalk has a high sugar content—as much as 16 or 17 percent. The old timers used to squeeze the juice out of the stalks, boil it down and make sorghum molasses. They still do. In fact, Blairsville, just to the east of us, has an annual sorghum festival.

Sorghum also produces seed heads with hundreds of seeds. Sorghum grain is one of the top five cereals in the world on the basis of production tonnage behind corn, rice, wheat, and barley. I harvested and winnowed the seeds, and now I will experiment with the grain. Just last night I made some sorghum flour by grinding the seeds in a coffee grinder and used the flour to make roti (also known as chapatti), an Indian flat bread. It wasn’t bad. I think it’s outrageously cool that I can grow an easily usable, edible grain.

Meanwhile, for the last month Fannin County has been on fire. The Cohuttas are a mountain range on the side of Fannin County, and there has been a forest fire raging in the Cohuttas for several weeks. It’s called the Rough Ridge fire, and the latest estimates are that it covers 6,000 acres. We have had an extremely dry summer, and all of North Georgia is in severe drought conditions. It hasn’t rained on my property for almost two months.

When the wind is from the west there’s a smoky haze in the air and the unmistakable smell of smoke. The satellite photo on this page shows the smoke from the Rough Ridge fire drifting south towards Atlanta from Fannin County. We live close to where the North Carolina/Tennessee line meets Georgia.

When I drive into Blue Ridge on Highway 515 there is a panoramic view of the Cohuttas. The other day there was not a cloud in the sky but over the Cohuttas there was a huge plume of gray smoke drifting off to the north. It reminded me of Mordor and Mount Doom from Lord of the Rings. I suppose that’s another reason to stock up on guns and ammo when you can. You never know when you’ll be attacked by Orcs and Goblins. The hell with swords, spears and arrows. I’m making my stand with high velocity hollow points.

So there you have it. I live in the land of deplorables, patriotism, conservatives, and forest fires, I can grow my own grain and make my own bread and I’m prepared to handle civil unrest, zombies, invading Cubans and Orcs. Who can ask for anything more?

I Am Not Dead

No, I’m not dead. I didn’t suffer a horrible injury and lose the use of my typing fingers—all two of them. I haven’t fallen into a catatonic depression that prevents me from communicating with the outside world. I just haven’t written any posts to this blog in some time.

There are reasons for this. One is a lack of inspiration. Let’s face it, North Georgia is not the most exciting area in the world. Visiting Fannin County is not on any thrill seeker’s bucket list. People come here for rest and relaxation, to commune with nature, to watch deer gambol happily in the fields, to see the seasons come and go—if they wanted excitement they’d go somewhere else. While communing with nature and watching the seasons come and go may be good for the soul, they don’t make great fodder for an entertaining blog. To make this blog remotely interesting, I need to see or experience something that has a dash of oddness, a smattering of quirkiness or a bit of the unusual.

Sad to say, not much that is odd, quirky or unusual has happened around here lately. Fact is, life in Fannin County has gotten somewhat boring. What once passed for eccentric or noteworthy has become normal and expected. What was once idiosyncratic is now commonplace and humdrum. Finding subject matter to write about is becoming harder.

Another reason I haven’t written any posts is because I’ve been busy doing other things. Among other things, I worked on a fundraiser for the local homeless shelter, organized a two-day workshop on invasive species, tilled under my summer garden, painted my pole barn and went on a five day camping trip with the men’s group from my church. I’ve also written several anti-Hillary columns for one of the local newspapers. (Now there’s a subject that provides a writer with plenty of material. You can view my columns at http://fannincountygazette.blogspot.com/ if you are interested.)

I’ve written about a camping trip with the St. Luke’s Men’s Group (SLMG) before. It’s not a young group—I’m the baby of the group if you can believe that. Our camping trips resemble a reunion of veterans of the Great War.

We do these camping trips once or twice a year. I think the object of the trips is to build comradery and fellowship or maybe it’s just to get away from the wife for a few days to fart and scratch freely in the presence of other men who are farting and scratching freely.

This year we went to Appletree Campground in the Nantahala National Forest near Topton, North Carolina. It is remote. There is no cell phone reception. To use your cellphone you have to leave the campground, drive a few miles down the road to a fire station, stand on the northeast corner of the porch, face east and stick your thumb up your ass. That’ll get you one bar of reception. Perhaps it’s not the best place for a bunch of older men to go. The EMS response time is measured in days, and the nearest big hospital is probably in Chattanooga.

The men in the SLMG are great guys. All of them have held highly responsible jobs before retirement so they bring some accomplishments to the table. But, as I said, even though they are remarkably spry and energetic, they are not spring chickens. Many of them are hard of hearing so conversations around the campfire at night when they can’t see each other’s lips are interesting. (Phil: “What do you think about predestination?” Harry: “What? I’m not going anywhere.” Tom: “What about my hair?” Bill: “Well, I think the nation’s going to hell.”)

Like most gatherings of men, there is a lot of bullshitting at these camping trips. Bullshitting is a technical term. It describes the social interaction among men in a group, and it consists of an endless stream of antidotes, reminiscences, opinions, one-uppers, jokes, first person adventures, and outright lies usually fueled by alcohal. No useful or meaningful information is ever conveyed when men are bullshitting. If you’ve ever followed a men’s foursome around a golf course you have a pretty good idea of what bullshitting is.

My theory is that bullshitting serves the same social function among a group of men that picking nits off each other serves in a band of chimpanzees—it reinforces group ties. It’s an innately human phenomenon. It probably has its roots in the days when early man sat huddled around the campfire trying to entertain themselves and not think about the loud rustling noises out in the brush.

The highlight of the camping trip was the hike that most of us took the first day. It was intended to be a three-miler. It turned into a five and a half hour, 7 and 1/2 mile Bataan Death March. We started out at mid-morning full of good cheer and bonhomie looking like the seven dwarves in retirement. By the time it ended and we straggled into camp we looked like we had crossed the beach at Peleliu.

The problem was a crappy trail map and a poorly marked side trail. The trail map looked like it had been scrawled by a drunken and dyslexic pirate. All it was missing was a cross with the words “Here be treasure.”

There came a point when we realized we must have missed the side trail that would have taken us back to camp. By then we had climbed to the top of a long ridge, and the side trail was a couple of miles back. We should have turned back, but this group is nothing but optimistic. So we decided to truck on.

A mile or so later, after we descended a long, steep and narrow trail to a poorly maintained forestry road, it began to dawn on us that we really had no frigging clue where we were or where we were going. At that moment every one turned into Lewis and Clark. Guys were consulting compasses and GPS devices trying to determine which way was north. I think one of the guys was channeling Hiawatha and trying to use the sun to figure out where north was. It was a little disturbing when they came up with different conclusions but they eventually worked it out. I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel all that confident in a direction that was worked out as a consensus judgment. Of course, knowing which way is north is of no practical benefit when you don’t know which direction your home base is. But we all felt better for it. If we were going to die on the trail, at least we do so with our heads facing east in Indian fashion.

Several of the guys spent an inordinate amount of time bending over an old trial map disagreeing on where we were. I think they finally worked out that we were still in North Carolina. Actually, they did better than that. They narrowed our location down to an area only slightly smaller than the King Ranch.

Not that it mattered much. To go back meant climbing back up a long and steep trail and walking several miles. No one was up for that. We optimistically thought forging on would get us back to camp quicker and easier. I can’t remember why we came to that conclusion. Why did we think the road would take us to where we wanted to go, much less be shorter and easier, when we didn’t know where we were? I favored following the road but for another reason. I figured there was a greater chance they would find our bodies on a road rather than in the woods.

The terrain on the downhill side of the road was thickly wooded and dauntingly steep. There was no way we were going to make it down that way (not to mention we had no idea where down led to). If we weren’t going to retrace our steps, the only real option was to follow the road and hope that it led somewhere.

So we trudged and trudged and trudged. We knew we had to descend to get anywhere but the road refused to do that. It would go down a little and then go up a little. One of the group had an altimeter, and he started calling out the elevation every few minutes. It was like being in a bad submarine movie: “Three hundred feet and holding, Captain.” Spirits and energy were lagging.

At one point during this long and tiresome march someone began taking stock of how much water and food we had. I think it came out to three breakfast bars, an apple and five bottles of water. We were cautioned to drink sparingly and save the food for an emergency. I began having visions of the Donner Pass party. Fortunately, I had my little .380 pistol with me and was prepared to use it if we descended into cannibalism.

Finally, at long last, the road began to slowly descend. Two of us moved out ahead of the group. As we rounded a bend there, by God, was our campground. Talk about dumb luck.

Needless to say, that was the end of our hiking forays for that camping trip. The rest of the time we sat around the campfire with our drinks of choice in our hands trying to have a conversation. With this group that’s a challenge all by itself. 

Watching the Olympics

Like many of you I’ve spent the last two weeks watching the Olympic. In fact, I watched more of the Olympics than I have in a long, long time. You can do that when you’re retired.

They were not as exciting as in the good old Cold War days when the USSR, East Germany and Cuba—those commie bastards—were our hated rivals, but these Olympics were pretty good compared to the last couple. Maybe I feel that way because I had time to watch more of the coverage this time around.

I’m not sure we appreciate how talented the athletes are, particularly the winners. I saw a Facebook post the other day that suggested that each Olympic event should include a contestant who is just an average schmoe to give us a frame of reference.

It’s actually a good idea when you think of it. It has the added advantage of injecting a little humor into the Olympics. I’d like to see the average American male attempt the pole vault or shot putt. Better yet, I’d like to see some celebrities compete in some of the events, particularly those loud mouthed celebrities that I dislike immensely. I’d pay good money to watch Rosie O’Donnell on the uneven bars or the balance beam. I’d love to see Michael Moore try to cram his fat ass into a kayak for the men’s single slalom event. It would be my dream see Debbie Wasserman “If My lips Are Moving I’m Lying” Schultz compete in women’s boxing.

This got me to thinking that what we really need are some Olympic events taken from reality. It would make the Olympics more relevant for average schmucks like you and me and bring a little more excitement to the games. Let’s face it, events like team diving, synchronized swimming, the 10 meter air rifle contest, team equestrian jumping, archery and rhythmic gymnastics are not going to bring you screaming to your feet.

I propose that the host country for the Olympics be allowed to create a limited number of events that are representative of the location where the games are being held. For instance, in Rio they could have had the 100 meter dysentery dash where the contestants have to run to a porta-potty after drinking the water. Another event could have been the timed wallet heist. The winner is the person who gets his or her wallet or purse stolen on the streets of Rio in the shortest time.

If the Olympics were held in North Georgia there are several contests that could be featured. I’d like to see the 10 pound chitlin toss where contestants compete to see how far they can throw a 10 pound box of frozen chitlins. A 4 x 100 meter relay with a live chicken would be exciting. One problem is that we may have difficulty finding anyone around here who has a 100 meter tape measure. This is still a feet and inches place.

How about the stationary boiled goober jump? The object of the contest is to see how far a person can jump from a sitting position when a bag of hot boiled peanuts is spilled on his or her lap. Another good event would be the yellow jacket triple jump contest where contestants compete to see how far they can hop, skip and jump backwards after stepping on a yellow jacket nest.

If the Olympics were held here I’d like to see a Toccoa tubing slalom contest. In this event blindfolded contestants have to tube down the frigid Toccoa River in an undersized inner tube. The first person to arrive at the finish line after navigating the rocks, shallows and backwaters and enduring having their ass immersed in 50 degree water for three hours is the winner.

What if the Olympics were held in an American city where there has been rioting? You could have the 50 meter large screen television snatch and grab where the contestants have to run 50 meters, leap through a broken storefront window, grab a 50 inch large screen TV and return to the finish line.

Another relevant event would be the 100 meter police barricade hurdles. It’s like the 110 meter high hurdles but with police barricades and tear gas.

Then there’s the K9 steeple chase where the contestants have to run through back yards, around clothes lines and garbage cans and over fences with an angry police dog at their heels. The contestants would certainly be motivated to do their best.

Of coure, any sort of contest where tasers are involved would be highly entertaining. I’d certainly stay up past my bedtime to see the finals. Unfortunately I can’t think of any way to work tasers into a sporting event.

If the Olympics were held in Chicago you could have the 40 yard dead man’s carry where Democrats compete to see who can carry the most dead voters to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton.

Imagine if the Olympics were held in an ISIS controlled area. You wouldn’t want to miss the 50 meter suicide vest walk where last year’s winner will not be returning to defend his title.

I’m sure you can think of other events that would be suited to where you live. The possibilities are endless, and the events certainly would be a lot more entertaining than some of the existing Olympic events.

Turning to an entirely different subject, I have done my best this year not to bore you with news from my garden, but I think a brief update is in order. So far the garden has been relatively pest free. I’ve suffered no deer, mole, rabbit or groundhog damage and just minimal insect damage. I’m not saying that I’ve won the war on garden terrorism. In fact, I believe that nature is just biding its time and gathering its forces for an all-out assault next year. Nature’s sneaky and persistent like that. I’ve learned that eternal vigilance is the price of good produce. And in case you’re wondering, I profile. If it’s furry or has six legs I’m taking it out with extreme prejudice.

It’s been a challenging gardening year here in North Georgia. There has not been a lot of rain this summer, and they tell us we are in a severe draught. Still, I have managed to harvest about 200 pounds of string beans and enough pickle cucumbers for Meredith to tell me to stop bringing them into the house. That’s how I know that I’ve grown enough.

My peppers like the heat and are producing enough for Meredith to freeze and pickle many jars. The tomatoes are doing okay, and Meredith has canned quite a bit of sauce. Earlier in the summer I had some really big cabbages, and I hope to have a large fall crop. I’ve got a large crop of potatoes and butternut squash. My corn was are a little stunted from lack of rain but I grew enough so that we had fresh corn for a couple of weeks and Meredith was able to freeze some for later eating. My leeks did great, and my okra is producing dependably. I won’t know how my sweet potatoes fared until the plants die in the fall and I dig up the tubers.

So there you have it—the garden crop report for Fort Yacavone in North Georgia. For more details watch the agricultural report on RFD TV. While you’re there check out the Mollie B Polka Party (shades of John Candy in “Plains, Trains and Automobiles”) and reruns of Hee-Haw and the Porter Wagoner Show featuring a young and full-figured Dolly Parton. Which reminds me. I may grow melons next year.

Tubing the Toccoa River, or Boy My Balls are Cold

The Toccoa River runs through the heart of Fannin County dividing the county in two. Fed by mountain streams, it flows north towards Tennessee exiting the county at McCaysville on the Tennessee line.

The Toccoa is dammed by the Blue Ridge Dam. The dam, which was built by the TVA back when Franklin Roosevelt was President, is smack in the middle of Fannin County and forms Lake Blue Ridge. Lake Blue Ridge has two claims to fame: it is the highest in elevation of all the lakes in the TVA dam system, and it is also the southernmost home of a fish called the Walleye.

The name “Toccoa” is from the Cherokee term for “where the Catawbas lived.” The Catawbas are a Native American tribe. North Georgia was the home of the Cherokees before they were kicked out by white men in 1840. Given the meaning of Toccoa, it would appear that some Catawbas lived in the middle of the Cherokee land at one time.

Curiously, the Catawbas are Siouan-speaking tribe but the Cherokees speak an Iroquoian language. The two languages are as different as Portuguese and Romanian. This makes me wonder. If telephones had been invented back then would you have had to press one for Cherokee and two for Catawba? On weekends did Cherokee couples go out for some Catawba food? Did unattached Cherokee braves want to hang out along the Toccoa because they heard the Catawba chicks were loose?

Back to the Toccoa River. It has two names. At the Tennessee border it becomes the Ocoee River. Same river, different name. I have yet to find an explanation for why that is.

One of the attractions around here is tubing the Toccoa. There are several small companies in the area that make money renting tubes to people and transporting them up river to float down the Toccoa. So it was that a couple of Saturdays ago I found myself accompanying Meredith, her brother and his wife and daughter for a tubing trip on the Toccoa.

I had reservations about going. I’m just not good at extended family outings. I have a tendency to become curmudgeonly. I suspect that’s due to all the conviviality and good cheer that usually accompanies such affairs. It grates on me. Maybe it’s the Italian in me. A large family dinner in an Italian family is considered a bore unless a shouting match breaks out.

Despite my misgivings, I decided to go along on the tubing trip. The drill should be familiar to you if you ever went tubing. You go to the end point, select a tube, then the tubing company drops you off upstream so you can drift back to the end point. It’s a pretty simple business model. They probably don’t study it at Harvard Business School.

The first thing we had to do was select our tubes. There were two choices: tubes with a bottom and tubes without a bottom. That’s when the guy in charge of handing out the tubes casually remarked that the water temperature that day was 51 degrees.

51 degrees! That’s a setting on a refrigerator. It is not a proper temperature for a river that I am about to go tubing in. I spent 37 years living on the Gulf of Mexico. I refuses to go swimming in the Gulf unless the water temperature was at least 85 degrees. According to the hypothermia tables, it takes 10 to 15 minutes to lose dexterity in 50 to 60 degree water if you have no protective clothing. Exhaustion or unconsciousness occurs in 1 to 2 hours, and death occurs in 1 to 6 hours. While I thought it unlikely I would lose consciousness or die, I was concerned about the possible loss of dexterity. I had visions of coming out of the water with claw fingers and never being able to type or play the bass guitar again.

We selected the tubes with bottoms. I don’t know about the others but I was thinking that the thin fragment of vinyl across the bottom of the tube might provide some insulation and keep my butt dry. Nope.

The other feature about these tubes is that they had a small inflated hump at one side to provide a back or head rest. As events would prove, the purpose of the hump is more of an aspiration than a reality.

After selecting our tubes we piled into a van and were driven to the drop off point where we entered the water and started the adventure. It was at this point I discovered that the tubes were designed to carry emaciated runway models, small children, dwarfs and anorexics. They were not intended to float a six foot one, 200-plus pound man comfortably down the stream. Imagine a limp strip of bacon hanging over the mouth of a coffee cup. That’s pretty much what I looked like once I sat in the tube. My legs hung off one side, my upper body projected over the other side, and my ass drooped in the middle. Because of my weight my tube sat lower in the water and my butt sat deeper in the river.

Any thoughts of a dry ride were quickly dispelled. It took less than 30 seconds for 51 degree water to slop over the side of my tube where it was trapped in the middle by the vinyl bottom of the tube. If you want to replicate the experience try dropping ice cubes down the front of your shorts. Major shrinkage will occur. Harry and the twins were not happy. And if Harry and the twins are not happy you can bet your ass that I’m not happy.

Because my legs hung over the side of the tube into the water they acted as a sea anchor, slowing my progress and causing me to face upstream. I spent ninety percent of the time traveling backwards down the river. This got old pretty quickly. There’s a reason sight-seeing busses have forward facing seats. It’s much more interesting to watch the sights approach you than it is to see them disappear behind you.

Not that it mattered much from a sightseeing perspective. The inflated protrusion on the tube that was supposed to be a back rest or a head rest was neither. In my case it was simply a large inflated lump somewhere in the middle of my back. When I lay back in the tube I discovered that I was facing the sky. In order to actually look where I was going (or in my case where I had been because I was always facing backwards) I had to crane my head up. It didn’t take much time for that to cause major neck fatigue. I spent most of the trip staring at the sky.

The Toccoa is a shallow river with a mild current. There are large rocks in it. Some of them project above the surface; others are just below it. Because I was floating backwards and facing the sky I couldn’t see the rocks to avoid them so I kept running into them and getting hung up. The fact that my butt was riding deeper in the water only increased the number of rocks that I could run into. This was, literally and figuratively, a pain in the ass.

Every time I ran aground on a rock I had to attempt to shove my way clear. This usually resulted in another splash of frigid water on my privates. The constant struggle to get free of rocks slowed me down considerably. It didn’t take long for my tubing party to get well ahead of me. This meant that I had to spend an inordinate amount of energy awkwardly using my arms as paddles to catch up with them. It was a really hot day, and all this exercise made me start to sweat. It’s a curious sensation to have your ass in a deep freeze while the rest of your body is sweating.

All rivers have eddies and backwaters. The eddies and backwaters are sections of the river where the water slows or even flows backwards. For some reason I kept drifting into these eddies and backwaters. When that happened I would have to do more arm paddling to get back in the current flow. I started to wonder whether the trip was an allegory of my life.

There were the large, low hanging branches over many stretches of the river. Because I couldn’t see where I was going I kept drifting underneath them. I didn’t mind that. At least they were something to look at other than the sky. And then someone warned me to watch out for snakes dropping out of the branches. Oh great. That’s all I needed to make the trip truly memorable. On the positive side, there was no way a kamikaze snake could surprise me since I was always looking upwards.

I was very happy when we finally arrived at the end of the trip and I could get out of the river. I don’t want to scare anyone away from enjoying a tubing trip down the Toccoa if you’re ever up this way. The rest of my party had a great time I’m told. But I’ll be honest with you. If I ever get another invitation to tube the Toccoa I’ll pass. I’d rather try to pass a kidney stone than go through that experience again.

I Read the News Today, Oh Boy!

If you like reading a daily newspaper—an actual, hold it in your hands, printed on newsprint newspaper—with your morning cup of coffee Fannin County is not the place for you. We’re too small to have a daily paper and too far from a major metropolitan newspaper to get any coverage.

The closest big daily paper is the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It is a major metropolitan newspaper with national and state news as well as news from the Atlanta area. (Fannin County is not part of the Atlanta area—thank God!)

I do not subscribe to the Journal-Constitution nor read it for a couple of reasons. First, the news from Atlanta is confusing to me. Metro Atlanta covers nine counties, and each of them has its own government and sheriff’s department. Within those nine counties are a number of separate cities, and each of them has its own government and police department. I never lived in Atlanta so I have no idea where these counties and cities are in relation to each other. When a news report refers to some place in Metro Atlanta I’m clueless of where it is. To me, Atlanta is the place two hours south of me where the traffic sucks.

But more than that, the news from Atlanta is boring. It’s always the same: road construction, traffic delays, murder, mayhem, government incompetence and waste and the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Falcons. I don’t care about anything of those things as long as they stay in Atlanta and away from here. I feel that way about a lot of things.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press is the only other metropolitan newspaper that has a presence here. I’ve seen a couple Times Free Press mailbox receptacles around here so I guess some people subscribe to it. Chattanooga is located just under two hours northeast of Fannin County in another state. The news of Chattanooga is even less relevant to me than the news from Atlanta. I doubt whether 99.9 percent of the news from Chattanooga is relevant to anyone anywhere, even to people in Chattanooga. The only two meaningful events in Chattanooga in the last 150 years are the terror attack on a recruiting station last year and the Battle of Lookout Mountain in the Civil War. Chances are that it will be another 150 years before something meaningful happens there.

For local news in Fannin County you have to rely on the three local weekly newspapers and word of mouth.

The fact that Fannin County has three weekly newspapers is rather amazing considering that Fannin County has less than 25,000 residents. You would think that with three newspapers Fannin County residents would be well informed about the doings of their local officials. If they’re relying on the newspapers for their news that’s probably not the case.

There’s only one newspaper that does any real investigative journalism or is willing to publish articles that are genuinely critical of the local establishment. That’s the Fannin Focus. Unfortunately, the Focus is small and doesn’t have the resources to cover all the stories that need to be covered.

The oldest and most well established paper, The News Observer, has the broadest coverage of local news of any of the local papers. But a lot of that “news” is stuff like little Johnny wins the sixth grade spelling bee and Elmer Johnson received his Ace Mechanic Award. It might be interesting if you know little Johnny and Elmer Johnson but it’s not exactly the type of information you need to know to decide whether your local government and judiciary are doing a good job for you.

The News Observer does cover local government…in a fashion. Unfortunately it’s the newspaper of the Fannin County establishment, and it goes out of its way to minimize or overlook the peccadillos and mistakes of local officials. It certainly avoids criticizing them, and in at least a couple of instances it actually covers up for them. I believe one of the reasons for that is because it has been designated by local officials as the official legal organ of the county. That means that all legal advertisements and notices must be published in the News Observer. I suspect the News Observer treats local officials with kid gloves because it doesn’t want to lose that lucrative source of revenue.

The third paper, the Fannin Sentinel, also is limited and rather bland in its coverage of local officials. Its reports are factual but there is no investigative journalism or critical commentary when local officials screw up.

If you only read the News Observer and the Fannin Sentinel you might confuse Fannin County with Mayberry.

So the bottom line is that I don’t think reading the local papers is enough to keep fully informed of what is really happening in Fannin County. That being said, this is a small community. It seems like ninety percent of the people in Fannin County are related to each other in some way or went to school with each other. Everyone knows someone who knows something. Word gets around quickly in Fannin County. It’s like there’s a bush telegraph that communicates all the local rumors, scuttlebutt, gossip and dirty laundry faster than a 24 hour news network.

It amazes me when I talk to everyday people in Fannin County how much they know or intuit about local officials, government and local affairs. Many posts ago I commented that one problem with living in a small community is that if you act like an asshole it doesn’t take long for everyone to think you’re an asshole even if you’ve never met the person. That’s the Fannin County bush telegraph in operation.

My hypothesis is that in a small community like Fannin County word of mouth is at least as effective (and perhaps more so) in communicating information about local affairs as newspapers and local television news are in more populous areas. Studies show that most people are not really well informed and usually base their opinions and political choices on incomplete and sketchy information. In that regard, I suspect that thanks to the bush telegraph people in Fannin County have access to just as much incomplete and sketchy information as people elsewhere.

I guess that means that people in Fannin County know as little about local public affairs as people elsewhere. The good news is that we probably don’t know any less. In other words, we’re no more ignorant than the rest of the country. I think that’s a good thing but I’m not sure.

A Dose of Reality

Fannin County has been in the news lately, and not in a good way. If you read my last post you’ll know that the chief judge of the Appalachian Circuit (which includes Fannin County), with the connivance the district attorney, got the publisher of one of the local weekly newspapers and his attorney arrested. The judge’s name is Brenda Weaver and the district attorney’s name is Alison Sosebee. The publisher is Mark Thomason, and his attorney is Russell Stookey. Thomason publishes the Fannin Focus. It’s the only local paper that does real investigative journalism and is willing to be critical of the local establishment. I occasionally write a column for the Fannin Focus.

The charges and arrests were clearly unjustified and an act of pure vindictiveness on the part of Weaver. Weaver got pissed off at Thomason because Thomason “questioned” her honesty in the Fannin Focus. She was actually quoted as saying, “I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned.” As Steve Martin would say, “Well, excuse me!”

The facts are that Stookey subpoenaed court bank records relevant to a suit Thomason is involved in. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds but Stookey was attempting to obtain proof that the Weaver used court funds to pay a private litigant’s attorney’s fees. Weaver went to her buddy, Sosebee, and convinced her to get a grand jury to indict Thomason and Stookey on charges of identity theft, attempt to commit identity theft and making false statements about a public official. Sosebee, who is relatively new to the D.A.’s job, used to clerk for Weaver and was employed for a while with Weaver’s lawyer husband.

The identity theft charges were based on the premise that Thomason and Stookey were somehow stealing the court’s identity by obtaining the court’s bank records which, incidentally, are public records of public funds. The false statement charge was based on the fact that the subpoena suggested that Weaver may have unlawfully authorized the payment of a private litigant’s attorney’s fees—an issue which was not only germane to Thomason’s lawsuit but was also the subject of a couple of critical articles in the Fannin Focus. Thomason contends such a payment violates state law.

You do not need to be an attorney to realize that the charges are total bullshit. The requested records are public records. If the subpoena was improper the appropriate procedure would be to move to quash the subpoena. If there was sensitive information in the records the proper procedure would be to move for a protective order to redact the sensitive information.

How, you may ask, did Sosebee manage to get a grand jury to indict Thomason and Stookey on these bullshit charges? I’m no expert on grand juries but, as one news article put it, you can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. It seems obvious that Weaver lost her cool and with the connivance of Sosebee lashed out at pesky Thomason. Really a dumb move for someone who is supposed to be so smart.

When news of the arrests got out there was a shit storm of outrage from news outlets and journalist’s organizations both inside and outside the state. Hell, even the Drudge Report ran a piece on the incident. All the news reports were extremely critical of Weaver’s attempt to muzzle Thomason. Some of the reports quoted lawyers versed in criminal law as saying the charges were unwarranted and unjustified. The Atlanta Press Club, Georgia First Amendment Foundation and Georgia Press Association and other journalist organizations demanded that the charges be dropped. The Georgia chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists made a complaint to the Georgia Judicial Qualifications Commission (JQC) about Weaver’s actions.

Oh, guess what? Weaver is also the head of the state JQC.

It is clear that Weaver and Sosebee did not anticipate this tidal wave of criticism. Two weeks after Thomason and Stookey were arrested and in the face of overwhelming criticism Weaver requested that Sosbee drop the charges. Sosebee dutifully filed a motion to drop the charges. To me that’s just further proof the charges were unwarranted to begin with. I mean if Weaver and Sosebee really believed that a crime had been committed don’t they have some obligation to proceed with the case?

But the saga continues. There is a hearing tomorrow on Sosebee’s motion to drop the charges. Apparently that is unusual in and of itself. From what I’ve read the standard procedure in Georgia is for a judge to grant a prosecutor’s motion to drop charges automatically without the necessity of a hearing. Obviously, Weaver is not going to preside at the motion hearing. Well, maybe that’s not so obvious around here.

What’s more, Stookey has said he does not want the charges dropped. He is outraged at the assault on his reputation and wants to go to trial on the charges to prove his innocence. Thomason is happy to have the charges dismissed.

The hearing on motion should be interesting. Sosebee will be arguing strenuously to have the charges dropped because she wants to avoid the humiliation of having it shown that she brought bullshit charges, and Stookey will be arguing for the opportunity to defeat the charges in front of a jury. I think the odds are 50-50 that Sosebee will send one of her assistant district attorneys to cover the hearing rather than show up herself. Thomason believes that there will be a crowd of press are the hearing, and the last thing Sosebee wants to do is answer questions or try to justify the charges. She has clammed up on the advice of the state prosecutors’ association.

Thomason has been talking about suing Weaver and Sosebee for deprivation of his civil rights. I presume the claim would be that they violated his First Amendment right of free speech and freedom of the press and his Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable seizures. I suppose there are some state law claims such as false arrest, malicious prosecution and abuse of process that could be alleged also. I’m not sure how far any of these claims will get. Thomason will have to overcome strong defenses such as judicial and prosecutorial immunity.

For me this has been a strong dose of reality. I have been painting a picture in these posts that Fannin County is this idyllic place of rural bliss and tranquility where small town values reign, people are friendly and the discord, abuses and evils of contemporary America happen elsewhere. I guess I was being naïve and overly romantic.

The root of the problem, as I see it, is that persons in power in the local establishment do not understand that Fannin County is no longer the remote, rural county unconnected with the larger world that it was 20 or 30 years ago. Back then they could do things and get away with it without being subject to scrutiny.

A prime example of this is that last year a judge and a prosecutor used the N-word in open court. Thomason reported on the incident in his newspaper much to the embarrassment of the court and prosecutor. Regardless of how you feel about using the N-word, smart people—particularly those in public office—simply do not use the word in this day and age. (Incidentally, that incident and Thomason’s reporting of it is the genesis of the present controversy but that’s a story for another day.)

A few posts ago I poo-pooed the idea that I could get in trouble for writing columns critical of the local establishment. Now I’m not too sure.

I’ll tell you one thing. Having never lived in a small town I find the local politics and political machinations fascinating. I’m trying to understand them. I feel like Margaret Mead exploring the culture of Samoa. I just hope I don’t run into a tribe of head hunters and end up in some local stew pot.