Saints and a Snow Day

This post has little to do with life in Georgia but it has a lot to do with being retired. When you’re retired you have time to follow your whims and fancies. This is particularly true when you live in a place that has an occasional snowfall followed by black ice that causes every organized activity within 100 miles to be cancelled and strands you at home for two or three days.

With that as background, during the last snowfall I started researching the lives of several Christian saints. My research was not entirely random. The church I go to has 16 chairs which bear the names of 16 saints in needlepoint. We’re talking some really obscure saints with names like Anselm, Cuthbert, Swithun, Etheldreda, Chad, Botulph, and Alpherge. I was curious about what these saints did that led them to be needlepointed on the back of chairs in a small Episcopal church in the middle of southern Appalachia. One thing led to another, and I decided to write a little booklet on these saints just in case someone else wonders who these saints are.

As I did my research I noticed that many saints are patron saints meaning that they are recognized as protectors or guiding spirits of certain nations, places, crafts, activities, occupations, animals and even natural phenomena. Some of the things that saints are patrons of are curious, humorous or downright bizarre. For instance, St. Alphege is the patron saint of kidnap victims, and St. Edmund is the patron saint of torture victims, pandemics and wolves. Pandemics? Wolves? Since when do wolves and pandemics need a guiding spirit? The lawyer in me wondered whether there was a possible heavenly jurisdictional conflict between Alphege and Edmund in the case of a kidnap victim who is tortured.

This piqued my interest, and I started to explore all the things that one could be the patron saint of.

There is a large category of patron saints who oversee occupations, activities or situations. Some of these have fairly narrow areas of responsibility. For instance there are patron saints for charcoal-burners (St. Alexander of Comana), arms dealers (St. Adrian of Nicomedia), fireworks makers (St. Barbara), flight attendants (St. Bona of Pisa), brush makers and basket makers (St. Anthony), bird dealers (St. John), bar tenders (St. Amand), ice skaters (St. Lidwina) and medical record librarians (St. Raymond of Penyafort). Even pawnbrokers have a saint—St. Nicholas of Myra.

Accountants and bankers have a saint (St. Matthew). So do astronomers (St. Dominic and St. Chad), doctors (St. Luke), pharmacists (St. James the Less, St. Cosmas and St. Damian), engineers (St. Joseph), journalists (St. Francis de Sales), librarians (St. Jerome), nurses (St. John, St. Agatha, and St. Raphael), philosophers (St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Justin), radiologists (St. Michael), scientists (St. Albert the Great) and writers (St. Lucy). But there are not, apparently, any saints for politicians, stockbrokers or IRS employees.

St. Cecilia watches over organ builders. I guess piano makers are out of luck. St. Paul takes care of tent makers. When’s the last time you met a tent maker? St. Giles is the patron saint of spur makers. How’s that for a narrow niche? What are there, eight spur makers in the world?

Then there is St. Malo, the patron saint of pig-keepers. For the life of me I cannot find the connection between pig-keeping and St. Malo but if you’re a pig-keeper I suppose it’s comforting to know that you have a patron saint. Imagine Malo’s reaction when he received his job assignment after passing the pearly gates? “Pig-keeper? You got to be kidding me. That’s how I’m rewarded for all my saintly efforts on earth?”

Servicemen of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces have a patron saint (St. Barbara) as do soldiers of the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers (St. Eligius) and Italian prison officers (St. Basilides). Those are pretty darn specific saint assigments. I was almost expecting to find a patron saint for left-handed fast food workers who work at the Dairy Queen in Blue Ridge.

Saints Barbara and Eligious, by the way, are multi-talented saints. Barbara is also the patron saint of miners, artillerymen, military engineers and firemen, Italian marines, architects, builders, foundry workers, mathematicians, geoscientists and stonemasons. Eligiusis is also the patron saint of metal-workers, jewelers, mechanics, taxi drivers, farriers, harness makers, numismatists, veterinarians, farmers, farmhands, and husbandry. Barbara and Eligious are the utility infielders of sainthood—they can play any position and protect any cause or occupation. If I’m ever in trouble and can’t remember the name of the saint for my exact predicament, I’m going with Barbara and Eligious.

I find it interesting and gratifying that brewers have at least six patron saints: Amand, Arnold of Soissons, Augustine of Hippo, Boniface, Luke and Dorothea of Caesarea. With all those patron saints looking over brewers, how can you explain a beer like Old Milwaukee?

The legal arena is well represented with St. Yves (lawyers), St. Thomas More (lawyers and court clerks), St. Nicholas of Myra (judges and lawyers in Paris bar; also pawnbrokers and archers—go figure), St. Genesius (attorneys, barristers and lawyers), St. Ivo of Kermartin (judges), St. John of Capistrano (judges) and St. Catherine of Siena (jurors). Genesius, incidentally, is also the patron saint of actors, comedians, clowns and theatrical performers of all kinds, which kind of makes sense.

It’s good to know that there is a patron saint for difficult marriages and separated spouses (St. Edward). I best he’s a busy little saint. On the more positive side there are also saints for engaged couples (St. Agnes), married women (St. Monica), mothers (St. Anne and St. Monica), fathers (St. Joseph), housewives (St. Anne and St. Martha), widows (St. Frances of Rome), singles (St. Andrew) and old maids (St. Andrew). Alas, I could not find a saint for desperate bachelors needing a date or middle-aged men having a midlife crisis.

Health issues are well represented: cancer patients (St. Peregrine Laziosi), eye disorders (St. Clare of Assisi), eye trouble (St. Lucy), headaches (St. Theresa of Avila), poisoning (St. Benedict), rheumatism (St. James), skin diseases (St. Anthony), snake bites (St. Hilary of Poitiers), sore throats (St. Blaise), stomach disorders (St. Timothy), abdominal pain and appendicitis (St. Erasmus), angina sufferers (St. Swithbert), heart ailments (St. John), arm pain (St. Amalburga) and bacterial disease and infection (St. Agrippina). St. Scholastica is the patron saint of convulsion in children (but not convulsions in adults?). It strikes me that there are a whole lot of ailments, like irritable bowel syndrome, persistent sexual arousal syndrome and restless leg syndrome, that don’t have a patron saint. Whoever hands out the saint assignments better get busy.

I was happy to learn there is a saint for desperate situations (St. Jude Thaddeus). I wish I had known that long ago. There is a saint for lost articles (St. Anthony of Padua). Good to know the next time I lose my keys.

Believe it or not, there are three saints whose job it is to provide protection against mice: St. Gertrude, St. Servatus and St. Ulric.

As far as I can tell, while there are procedures for determining whether a person is a saint in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches (not true in the Anglican Church), there is no official process for designating a saint’s patronage. It appears that a saint become the patron saint of something by popular acclaim and tradition. So it seems to me that if you’re feeling left out because your occupation, ailment, situation or status has no patron saint, you can simply pick a saint and make him or her your patron saint.

If that’s the case, then I’m torn between St. David and St. Swithun. David is the patron saint of Wales. His symbol is a leek which is also the national symbol of Wales. His best-known miracle is report­ed to have taken place when the ground on which he stood rose up to form a small hill when he was preaching to a large crowd. One commentator observed that it is difficult to "con­ceive of any miracle more superfluous" in that part of Wales than the creation of a new hill. I like leeks, and I find the concept of superfluous miracles interesting.

St. Swithun lived in the ninth century in England. His best known miracle was restoring a basket of eggs that workmen had maliciously broken. He appeals to me because as a trial attorney it often occurred to me that my job was to put the eggs back together after someone else had broken them. A long-held superstition declares it will rain for forty days if it rains on his feast day. I guess he was the Punxsutawney Phil of his day.

There you have it—patron saints in a nutshell. I bet you can’t wait until the next snow day when I have time to research some other arcane subject.

The New Year

Well, the holidays are over here at Fort Yacavone, and a good time was had by all. Both boys managed to make it here for prolonged periods. Jake's girlfriend flew up from Orlando the day after Christmas and stayed with us for several days.
 

We did the types of things that we usually do on the property when given enough time:

• Jake figured out how to bolt stout steel bars to the front loader of the tractor so we now have forklift capacity. This was used immediately to carry some six feet long, two feet wide logs down to the lower pasture to be added to the backstop of the handgun range I am constructing.

•  I found some old scrap iron and made iron targets to shoot at. Jake and Mike helped me weld the chains on them.

• The boys helped me build an enclosed and covered bench that is eight feet long, four feet wide and five feet high complete with a shingled roof to be used for sitting, laying or sleeping in front of the outdoor fire when it’s windy and cold. Think of a fancy lean-to. It was immediately christened the rack shack a/k/a the love shack.

• The boys and I along with Jake’s girlfriend spent a day shooting the arsenal in the lower pasture. We discovered that copper-jacketed .308 and 30-06 rounds will punch a clean hole in quarter inch iron plate but .223 ammo does not. Now I need to find some more scrap iron to remake my iron targets.

• We hiked up to a couple of local waterfalls one day. We brought a chunk of salami, some big wedges of cheese, a long baguette of French bread and a bota bag full of red wine and ate a simple lunch sitting on a large rock near one of the falls using my hunting knife as a cutting/serving tool. It was tres chic though I need to practice on my aim with the bota bag.

• Just for entertainment’s sake, the boys made a mortar out of an old pipe and some tubing capable of shooting a sand filled soda can 200 feet. I think they used my patch of kale as a target. They used up all my black powder in the process. Fortunately it’s easy to buy black powder in these parts.

We also did the traditional things we do for Christmas.

• Mike gathered mistletoe and holly from the property to decorate the house. Unlike last year he did not have to shoot the mistletoe out of the upper branches of an oak tree with his 12 gauge. The boys found some low lying mistletoe that they were able to reach by Jake lifting Mike in the tractor bucket.

• As we always do, we put up and decorated the Christmas tree the afternoon of Christmas Eve while consuming multiple eggnogs that contained more bourbon than eggnog. It’s never a problem going to bed early on Christmas Eve in this house.

• The traditional Christmas day dinner of ravioli and braciole was prepared and eaten and then agonized over as the heartburn set in afterwards. It’s the combination of rich tomato sauce and hearty red wine (Chianti and Spanish Rioja) that gets to you. I wouldn’t have it any other way—it’s part of the Christmas tradition.

Unlike the last two years, the boys did not have time for their annual squirrel hunt. The weather did not cooperate. That’s good because there are still two unskinned squirrel carcasses in our freezer from last year’s hunt. The boys were supposed to skin them this year but never got around to it. I think they plan on making squirrel skin coozies or maybe a squirrel skin hat. Does anyone know how long a dead squirrel will last in a freezer?

Now the new year is upon us, and immediately we’re facing a winter storm warning with the threat of up to five inches of snow, black ice, temperatures in the teens and twenties and 15 mile an hour winds gusting up to 30. Whether it actually gets that bad remains to be seen. After the poorly forecast 2015 Atlanta snow storm that stranded hundreds of thousands of motorists the weather channels and government agencies are not taking any chances and are forecasting the worst. I’ve already received email alerts that activities are being cancelled.

Mind you, only two and a half inches of snow fell in the 2015 snow storm and some in these parts refer to is as a blizzard. Imagine what would happen if the area got a real blizzard with significant accumulations of snow. The more fundamental churches probably would see it as a sign that the Apocalypse is upon us.

Whatever happens, I’m prepared. I’ve got gallons of gas in reserve for the generator, diesel for the tractor, three tanks full of propane for the gas grill, over a chord of wood for the wood stove, a can of white gas for the camping stoves, two freezers full of food, eight months of dried food in the basement and plenty of ammunition. And that’s just the standard emergency reserves here at Fort Yacavone. I’ve also got some good books to read, writing I need to do and some projects in the workshop. So let the storm come. I’m ready to ride it out.

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.