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.

Big Doings in Small Fannin County

I warn you that this post will be lengthy.

Back in October I published a post that poo-poo’d the idea that the local powers that be in Fannin County would be vindictive against those who criticize them. I may have spoken too soon. A recent incident involving the publisher of a local paper and the chief judge of the Superior Court has attracted quite a bit of media attention and started to make me rethink whether Fannin County is safe for civilized people.

Here’s the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s version of the story:

Torpy at Large: Pushy journalist makes 

news when judge pushes back

By Bill Torpy (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

If Mark Thomason is an identity fraud artist, he’s a bad one.

Thomason and his lawyer, Russell Stookey, were arrested in Blue Ridge in North Georgia on charges of identity fraud and making false statements. Thomason is a known troublemaker — he publishes the Fannin Focus, one of the county’s three newspapers. That’s right, Fannin County, population 22,000, has three (3!) print newspapers AND a news blog.

The felony charges against Thomason go back to a year-old fight he’s waged with the local Powers That Be, one that started with a prosecutor and a judge casually tossing around a racial slur in open court. What got the publisher tossed in the pokey last month was his insistence to get his hands on bank records to show Superior Court Judge Brenda Weaver (who is not the judge in the racial slur episode) used public funds to pay a court reporter when she shouldn’t have.

Thomason first tried using the Open Records Act to come up with documentation. When that didn’t work, he got inventive and used a subpoena from ongoing litigation to demand the records from a bank.

Whoops! Thomason soon found himself stopped by police on a highway, handcuffed, strip-searched not once, but twice, forced to sleep overnight on a concrete jailhouse floor, and then tested for drugs not once, but twice, since his release.

The story has gone national, with First Amendment and newspaper groups saying his treatment represents an attack on Freedom of the Press. It’s David getting ‘cuffed by Goliath.

Thomason, who started his newspaper two years ago, is bemused. “If anyone wanted to commit ID fraud, the last thing they’d want to do is to file public records discussing it,” he said.

It seems Judge Weaver has gotten her robes all bunched up because Thomason is pesky and aggressive and has bothered the heck out of her and other local officials.

Weaver told the AJC’s Rhonda Cook she resented Thomason’s continuing attacks in his weekly newspaper and what he was saying around town.

“I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned,” said Weaver, who called the questioning of her spending a “vendetta.”

If Thomason was twisting the process by using a subpoena to get the bank records, it seems an odd way to access the judge’s operating account to, say, buy stuff on Amazon. No, his intention was to write about how the judge used taxpayer dollars.

It all started last year when a prosecutor casually mentioned a racial slur as the nickname of a witness in a case before Appalachian Judicial Circuit Superior Court Judge Roger Bradley, who was Weaver’s colleague. Someone called Thomason about it and he started digging.

Thomason got a copy of the transcript, but it did not include other people (like two Fannin sheriff’s deputies) who used the slur, as he had been told by people in the courtroom.

The publisher demanded court reporter Rhonda Stubblefield turn over a tape recording of the proceedings. She wouldn’t. He sued her to get it. She slapped him with a $1.6 million defamation lawsuit.

Ultimately, yet another judge ruled the court reporter didn’t have to turn over the tape and Stubblefield dropped her defamation suit. But late last year, Judge Weaver stepped in and approved paying the court reporter $16,000 to cover her legal expenses, even though emails show at least one Fannin County administrator was uncomfortable with public money being spent to aide a private individual.

Weaver said she didn’t want the court reporter to be out all that money in attorney’s fees. And you certainly wouldn’t want an attorney to go unpaid. The court reporter’s attorney, Mary Beth Priest, is now a judge alongside Weaver.

Things get cozy in small towns like Blue Ridge.

For instance, the prosecutor who brought up the fraud charges against the newspaperman is District Attorney Alison Sosebee. When she got out of law school, she got a job as a law clerk — for Judge Weaver. And when she got her first lawyer job, it was with the firm of veteran attorney George Weaver, the judge’s husband.

Judges using the criminal justice system to settle a score or shut someone up could run afoul of the state’s Judicial Qualifications Commission, which investigates wrongdoing. (In fact, Bradley, the judge in the racial slur case that started all this, resigned this year as the JQC investigated him.)

A JQC spokesman said he couldn’t comment on the situation.

Incidentally, Judge Weaver is the JQC’s board chairman. Georgia’s legal community is, in essence, a small town.

And in Blue Ridge, the newspaper and its publisher are the talk of the town. Thomason’s divorce record and failure to pay child support have surfaced.

And there’s a deep divide on what people think.

Take Sheriff Dane Kirby, who took the publisher into custody: “I do not have a lot of confidence that what is printed in the Fannin Focus will be the truth.”

Or Blue Ridge Police Chief Johnny Scearce, who has played softball with Thomason: “He’s done my department fair. In two years, his paper has grown pretty popular. He’s pretty aggressive. He’s more detailed. He goes after it.”

And now they’re going after him.

Even the Drudge Report covered the story:

'Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act

will inhibit every citizen from using it.'

A North Georgia newspaper publisher was indicted on a felony charge and jailed overnight last week – for filing an open-records request.

Fannin Focus publisher Mark Thomason, along with his attorney Russell Stookey, were arrested on Friday and charged with attempted identity fraud and identity fraud. Thomason was also accused of making a false statement in his records request.

Thomason’s relentless pursuit of public records relating to the local Superior Court has incensed the court’s chief judge, Brenda Weaver, who also chairs the state Judicial Qualifications Commission. Weaver took the matter to the district attorney, who obtained the indictments.

Thomason was charged June 24 with making a false statement in an open-records request in which he asked for copies of checks “cashed illegally.” Thomason and Stookey were also charged with identity fraud and attempted identity fraud because they did not get Weaver’s approval before sending subpoenas to banks where Weaver and another judge maintained accounts for office expenses. Weaver suggested that Thomason may have been trying to steal banking information on the checks.

But Thomason said he was “doing his job” when he asked for records.

“I was astounded, in disbelief that there were even any charges to be had,” said Thomason, 37, who grew up in Fannin County. “I take this as a punch at journalists across the nation that if we continue to do our jobs correctly, then we have to live in fear of being imprisoned.”

Thomason and Stookey are out on $1,000 bond and have a long list of things they cannot do or things they must do to avoid going to jail until their trials. On Thursday, for example, Thomason reported to a pretrial center and was told that he may have to submit to a random drug test – a condition of the bond on which he was released from jail last Saturday.

Alison Sosebee, district attorney in the three counties in the Appalachian Judicial Circuit, and Judge Weaver say the charges are justified. Weaver said she resented Thomason’s attacks on her character in his weekly newspaper and in conversations with her constituents.

“I don’t react well when my honesty is questioned,” Weaver said.

She said others in the community were using Thomason to get at her. “It’s clear this is a personal vendetta against me,” she said. “I don’t know how else to explain that.”

But legal experts expressed dismay at the punitive use of the Open Records Act.

“To the extent these criminal charges stem from the use of the Open Records Act undermines the entire purpose of the law,” said Hollie Manheimer, executive director of the Georgia First Amendment Foundation. “The Open Records Act is the vehicle by which citizens access governmental information… Retaliation for use of the Open Records Act will inhibit every citizen from using it, and reel us back into the dark ages.”

Another expert said the charges against attorney Russell Stookey may also be unfounded. Robert Rubin, president of the Georgia Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said it was wrong for the grand jury to indict a lawyer who “is using the legitimate court process for a subpoena to get records relevant for his case.”

It began with a racial slur in court

The dispute grows out of a March 2015 incident involving another judge who is no longer on the bench. Judge Roger Bradley was presiding over several cases and asked the name of the next defendant. The assistant district attorney announced next up was “(Racial slur) Ray.” Bradley, who resigned earlier this year, repeated the slur and also talked about another man whose street name started with the same slur.

Thomason asked for the transcript after he was told courtroom deputies also used the slur.

But the transcript only noted that Bradley and the assistant district attorney used the word.

According to Thomason, the court reporter told him that it was “off the record” when others in the courtroom spoke the word so it would not be recorded in the transcript. He asked to listen to the audio recording, but his request was rejected.

In an article Thomason quoted the court reporter as saying the slur was not taken down each time it was used.

And then Thomason asked Stookey to file paperwork with the court to force the the stenographer, Rhonda Stubblefield, to release the recording.

Stubblefield responded with a $1.6 million counterclaim against Thomason, accusing him of defaming her in stories that said the transcript she produced may not be accurate. Two months later a visiting judge closed Thomason’s case, concluding that Thomason had not produced evidence the transcript was inaccurate.

Last April, Stubblefield dropped her counterclaim because, her lawyer wrote, it was unlikely Thomason could pay the award if she won.

The next month, however, Stubblefield filed paper work to recoup attorney’s fees even though last last year she was cut a check for almost $16,000 from then-Judge Bradley’s operating account.

“She was being accused of all this stuff. She was very distressed. She had done absolutely nothing wrong,” Weaver said of the judges’ decision to use court money to cover Stubblefield’s legal expenses. “She was tormented all these months and then had to pay attorneys’ fees. And the only reason she was sued was she was doing what the court policy was.”

Stubblefield’s lawyer, Herman Clark, said in court Stubblefield was asking for the money from Thomason or his attorney so she could replace the funds taken out of the court bank account. Clark said it was unfair to expect taxpayers to pick up the cost.

To fight Stubblefield’s claim for legal fees, Stookey filed subpoenas for copies of certain checks so he could show her attorneys had already been paid. One of those two accounts listed in a subpoena had Weaver’s name on it as well as the Appalachian Judicial Circuit.

Weaver said the identify fraud allegations came out of her concern that Thomason would use the banking information on those checks for himself.

“I have absolutely no interest in further misappropriating any government monies,” Thomason said. “My sole goal was to show that legal fees were paid from a publicly funded account.”

At this point I should let you know that I occasionally write a column for the Fannin Focus.

The latest news is that the District Attorney, Sosebee, is dismissing the charges against Thomason and Stookey:

District Attorney Asks to Dismiss 

Indictment Against Publisher and Attorney

By R. Robin McDonald (Law.com)

An attorney for the publisher of a North Georgia newspaper said she will ask to expunge his arrest and seal felony charges against him after the district attorney who secured the indictment moved Thursday to dismiss the case.

Ashleigh Merchant—who with husband, John, is representing publisher Mark Thomason pro bono—said Thursday that she was ‘shocked” and “very happy” by Appalachian Circuit District Attorney Alison Sosebee’s surprise decision to ask that felony charges against Thomason and Hiawassee attorney Russell Stookey be dismissed. The charges stemmed from efforts by the two men to obtain bank records for the county operating account of the circuit’s chief superior court judge, Brenda Weaver. Thomason is the publisher of the Fannin Focus.

“I think they were under pressure from the media and public scrutiny,” Merchant said. “There has been a large public outcry.” But Merchant cautioned that Sosebee could still object to sealing the indictment or expunging Thomason’s arrest. “And even if you get it expunged,” she said, “it’s never really gone.”

Thomason agreed with Merchant’s assessment. The publisher was arrested June 24 after he was pulled over by the county sheriff on the town’s main highway. He secured his release with a $10,000 bond. His bond conditions also barred him and his reporting staff from the county courthouse because the alleged crime victim was a sitting Superior Court judge.

"Unfortunately, a dismissal does not counteract the harm or the experience that Mr. Stookey and myself have had to live through,” he said. “I feel like, from this point forward, Mr. Stookey will always be known as the lawyer who committed fraud, and I am the journalist who was arrested.”

Merchant also vowed that once the charges are formally dismissed and the case is closed, she intends to file public records requests to discover “what communication there was between the DA and the courts and the county commissioner’s office” on the matter. Right now, those records are exempt from the state’s open records laws because the investigation has not concluded. “Mark wants some answers,” she said. “I think the public wants to know how this happened.”

Stookey could not be reached for comment.

Sosebee filed the motion to dismiss just two weeks after a Pickens County grand jury charged Thomason and Stookey with identity fraud, attempted identity fraud and making a false statement to a public official.

Richard Winegarden, a senior superior court judge who was assigned the case after Weaver and her two colleagues on the Appalachian Circuit recused, will have to sign off on Sosebee’s motion to dismiss the charges.

Until he does, Sosebee—who once served as Weaver’s law clerk and who was a law partner of Weaver’s husband until she was elected district attorney—said it would be inappropriate for her to comment.

Obviously I'm very disappointed that something like this could happen in my adopted home. I feel like the guy in the new suit who has just been crapped on by a large bird.

I guess it shows you that no place is free from abuses of power. It was so bush league of Weaver and Sosebee to think that their actions would go unnoticed and they could get away with something like this. I suppose that's the problem with the insularity of rural and small town life--you tend to forget there's a wider world out there. Hey guys, when are you going to realize that you're not in Kansas anymore?