Steve Martin
There is a form letter floating through the intercourse now. It is a letter that Steve Martin used to send to his fans. (The letter was recently immortalized at Letters of Note.)
He …that is Stephen Glenn “Steve” Martin (born August 14, 1945) … has moved up in correspondence with his adoring fans. Mr. Martin now gives out business cards, with the message “This card certifies that the holder had met Steve Martin and found him genuinely friendly”. What a wild and crazy guy!
This is becoming one of those really really modern days here. Listening to a djmix with a Lady Gaga song, drinking coffee out of a Mcdonalds plastic cup, and writing a tribute to Steve Martin. What a day! Oh, before we forget, there is the story about the drive in theater on I85 that was showing “Father of the Bride”. One day, the h fell off the marquee, and the title of the movie became “Fater of the Bride”. Good times.
The story of Steve Martin and PG began one night at the Great Southeast Music Hall. PG got tired of hearing how great the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was, and decided to see a show. The show started when some guy in a white suit came out with a banjo. John McEuen stood next to him, and kept falling into the microphone stand and saying “this guy cracks me up”.
Steve Martin, the white suit guy, said that he paid somebody five thousand dollars for a joke. He then took this arrow, with a coat hanger wire attached to it, with a shape for his head to fit in, and put it on. That got a laugh, but not worth five thousand dollars. There was another gag…”do you mind if i smoke, no do you mind if i fart”. That got a slightly bigger laugh.
In those days, you could not sell alcohol in public on sunday night in Georgia. To compensate, the Music Hall sold children’s tickets for the sunday night shows. Mr. Martin was not used to having children in the audience. “Hey kid I gotta joke for you. There were these two lesbians…”
The show went over well with the Nitty Gritty crowd. However, it is doubtful that anyone thought, this is the beloved entertainer of our generation.
Mr. Martin was not through for the night. At one point, the NGDB moved to the back of the stage, and a smarmy lounge lizard, in a white suit, came on stage. While the band played “The girl from Ipanema”, Mr. Martin sang about the girl with diarrhea.
This was one of the last shows that Steve Martin did as an opening act. (He did return to the Great Southeast Music Hall. Once, he did a week with Martin Mull, called the Steve Martin Mull Revue.) Within two years, he was a guest host on Saturday Night Live, and a certified wild and crazy guy. A couple of years later, he was famous again as “The Jerk”. Steve Martin had arrived.
This is a repost. The pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. The animated dentures are from chattering teeth. The check is in the mail.
Why We Call Football Soccer
The world cup is about to start. It is by far the largest sporting event in the world. And, despite what you hear in this country, they play football (futbol), not soccer.
In the 19th century, the english wrote the rules for something called association football. This was different from rugby football. Somehow, soccer, a nickname for association, became the name of this new sport. When the pastime spread from the upper crust schools to the working class, it became known as football. It made sense, being a sport where you kick the ball with your feet.
In the USA, there was another sport called football. It involves beer and steroids. The ball only gets kicked when it is time for a commercial. For some reason, when association football became popular here, the name soccer stuck.
PG thinks soccer is a terrible word, for a pretty good sport. All those guttural noises sound bad in the mouth, like something is caught in your throat. Maybe, if the sport had another name north of the Rio Grande, it would be more popular. As it is, soccer is popular as a kids game, but strikes out as a spectator sport in the lower 48. UPDATE Nine years later, the Atlanta United routinely sells out Mercedes Benz stadium today. The venue had not been conceived in 2010.
There was even a joke on laugh in once. It may be field hockey to you, but it’s soccer to me. If you get that, the social security office will be open at the usual time tomorrow.
A young man named Jordan Griner was the designated driver June 19, 2010. After dropping the last passenger off, he was crossing West Peachtree Street at 17th. A lady was driving north on West Peachtree, ran a red light, and smashed into Mr. Griner. . The lady had a blood alcohol content of .229, well above the legal limit of .08. The lady is in a world of trouble, and the man is dead. Mr. Griner worked in the Governor’s office, so the case got some attention.
There is a lot of talk about drinking and driving, as there should be. People should not drive when they are intoxicated. As long as alcohol and automobiles are used, this is going to be a problem.
When you enter an intersection, you should look to see who is coming. If you see a car driving too fast, heading in your direction, wait for it to go through. Especially in midtown Atlanta, at 4 am Saturday.
There used to be a yellow brick apartment building at 17th and West Peachtree. This was the residence of Margaret Mitchell (Mrs. John Marsh). One afternoon, Mrs. Marsh met a friend at the Atlanta Woman’s Club, on Peachtree Street. After a few cocktails, Mr. and Mrs. Marsh left the Woman’s Club, intending to go across the street to a movie. Mrs. Marsh stepped in front of a taxi, and into eternity. Tomorrow is another day.
A developer had plans for the triangle of land between West Peachtree, Peachtree, and 17th. He tore down all the apartment buildings on that block, including the one Margaret Mitchell called home. The deal fell through for the developer, and the corner of 17th and West Peachtree is a vacant lot. The developer should have looked to see what was coming.
This is a double repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”, and the chamblee54 collection.
The Nightclub
A picture turned up on facebook the other day. It was a flyer for a rock club at 2581 Piedmont Road called The Nightclub. The facebooker said “Found on the Strip Project’s page! I THINK the year is 1975…but…T Wesley Dean, can you help with this? Thermos played there”
Broadview Plaza had a strange design. It was at the corner of Piedmont Road and Lindbergh Drive, about a mile north of the park. BP was one of the first shopping centers built in Atlanta. BP was built on the site of Mooney’s Lake … “a summer swimming hole off of Morosgo Drive in Buckhead that was in business from 1920-58.” The design was unusual, having a row of stores facing Morosgo Drive, connected to a larger group of stores by an escalator. The downstairs portion was home to the Great Southeast Music Hall. The Nightclub was in the upstairs part, next to the escalator.
Peaches Records and Tapes was just getting going in 1975. PRT was a huge facility at the base of heartbreak hill on Peachtree. Rock stars put hand prints in cement in front of the store. One of the hand prints proclaimed DARRYL RHODES IS GOD. Mr. Rhodes, backed by the Hahavishnu Orchestra, performed at PRT Halloween 1975. Mr. Rhodes had a big time playing his shit hits. (fecal dyslexia is rough) Shoplifters had a productive evening.
What does this have to do with The Nightclub? One afternoon, Peaches had a flyer on the checkout counter. The handbill had a coupon for free admission to the Roger McGuinn show. PG went to this show. Jim McGuinn was the front man for the Byrds, before he changed his name to Roger. The show was fun to watch, with “Chestnut Mare” and “Lover of the Bayou” remembered 44 years later. Before doing “Eight Miles High,” Mr. McGuinn strapped on a guitar with christmas tree lights in the body. The lights flashed when the corresponding string was picked.
A few days later, Miles Davis was scheduled to play. Someone was going to take his parents to see the show. When they heard that Miles had gone electric, they decided not to go. PG wound up with one of the extra tickets. Then Miles Davis decided not to perform that night. The substitute was Thermos Greenwood and the Colored People. Yes, that was the name of the band. The players, all white men, painted their faces different colors. The guitar player was green, the drummer was silver, and the bass player was red. TGATCP played what they called “cigar music.”
The Nightclub soldiered on for a while, and went out of business. This is what bars do. PG did see one more show upstairs. Spirit played there Halloween 1977. One celebrant wore a Richard Nixon mask, with prison stripes. PG improvised a beekeeper costume. A drunken young lady asked PG what his costume was. “Are you going to catch bees in the men’s room, you freak? Before Spirit came on stage, someone sitting near PG, said that the band was demanding their money before they went onstage. Spirit put on a rousing show. They’ve got a line on you. Pictures for today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Midtown
The neighborhood along Peachtree Road has always been a great place to be a freak. For a long time it didn’t have a name. It is north of downtown, between Piedmont Park and Georgia Tech. Sometime in the early eighties, people started to call it Midtown, and the name stuck.
In the time after the War Between the States, this area was a shantytown called “Tight Squeeze”. It evolved into a pleasant middle class area. In the sixties, hippies took over. The area was known as the strip, or tight squeeze. Many stories could be told.
After the flower children moved on, the area went into decline. Gays started to move in, with the battle cry “Give us our rights or we will remodel your house.” Developers, worshiping the triune G-d of location, location, location, began to smell money. The neighborhood became trendy, then expensive, then more expensive. The freaks with money remain. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
There is a nifty webcam up now. It shows the progress of a high rise going up now at 12th and Peachtree in midtown. The location of the camera itself is not certain, with the speculation centering on 999 Peachtree, two blocks south on Tenth Street.
A glance at the image reveals a curve in the road, between the two glass boxes under construction. Atlanta does not have wide, straight boulevards extending to the horizon. It is said that Atlanta did not build roads, but paved the cow paths.
People of a certain age will remember this area as the strip. The tenth street district was a neighborhood shopping area, up until the mid sixties. At some point, the old businesses started to move out and the hippies moved in. For a while, it was a festive party. Soon enough reality returned, and the area went into a crime filled decline.
The 999 complex is the neighborhood story in a nutshell. Before 1985, it was a block of small businesses. There was a hardware store, with the peace symbol set in tiles in the sidewalk. On Juniper Street stood the Langdon Court Apartments. They were named for PG’s great uncle Langdon Quin. Ru Paul used to stay there. He would sit out on a balcony, and wave to the traffic going by.
Across the street was a chinese restaurant, the House of Eng. A staircase on the side led to the Suzy Wong Lounge. Behind the building was an apartment building. It was one of the residences of Margaret Mitchell, while she wrote “Gone With The Wind”. She called it “the dump”, which was fairly accurate. The museum on that site would have amazed her.
PG went to the House of Eng for lunch one day in 1985. He noticed that he was the only customer in the house, at 12:30 pm on a weekday. After finishing his lunch, PG knew why.
At some point, it was decided to build a high rise there. Heery was one of the equity partners, along with a law firm and an ad agency. The building was designed by Heery (duh).The ad agency folded before the building opened, followed within a couple of years by the law firm. Heery was sold to a British company. PG does not know who owns 999 Peachtree now.
This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. The building, at 12th and Peachtree, is finished.
Stacey Does It Again
Stacey Abrams went hardcore bless-her-heart in the New York Times yesterday. The opening line was a doozy. “In the mid-1960s, when my father was a teenager, he was arrested. His crime? Registering black voters in Mississippi.”
This is news, to anyone who has been following Ms. Abrams. Her campaign bio does not mention this incident. Nor does at least one article from Mississippi. Google is little help. The arrest story may turn out to be true. Why it is only turning up six months after the election?
PG asked the readers at GeorgiaPol if they knew anything about an arrest. There was an illuminating response. “Being obsessed with Stacey Abrams, you might have missed some of these other Georgia stories: – Georgia governor postpones Los Angeles trip as film industry protests … ” The pundit listed seven more news items. None of the items concerned an arrest for voter registration.
The New York Times did not fact check the article. Ms. Abrams dropped a few more whoppers into the order, to go with the fries and Pepsi.
“Although “exact match” lacks the explicit racial animus of Jim Crow, its execution nonetheless betrayed its true purpose to disenfranchise voters of color. Georgia’s secretary of state held 53,000 voter registrations hostage under exact match last year, 70 percent of which came from black voters, who made up only around 30 percent of Georgia’s eligible voters.” (Voters are registered by the counties, not the state.)
“We demonstrated the immensity of the problem, yet opponents to voting rights responded with the specious claim that increased turnout was somehow proof that no suppression had occurred.” (No link was provided, to show who made this claim.)
“The state’s top elections official, former Secretary of State Brian Kemp himself — functioning simultaneously as the scorekeeper, referee and contestant in the gubernatorial election — was caught revealing to supporters that he was “concerned” about record absentee ballot requests from voters of color.” (Votes are counted by the counties, not the state.)
“Across the country, voter purges employ an easily manipulated “use it or lose it” rule, under which eligible voters who exercised their First Amendment right to abstain from voting in prior elections can be booted off the rolls.”
The last item was a spectacular show of sophistry. The First Amendment mentions religion, press, speech, assembly, and petitioning the government. Yesterday, logicians at GeorgiaPol and facebook contend that not voting, and keeping your registration, is covered by the right to free speech. If Stacey says so, it must be so. This is what some people like to argue about.
The uncritical adoration of Stacey Abrams by the press is part of the problem. She receives little of the scrutiny that most politicians face. If Ms. Abrams is going to grow as a leader, she needs to be taken seriously. This includes questioning her rhetoric. Don’t expect The New York Times to cast the first stone. The yankee media adores poor widdle Stacey, and her sad tale of having the election stolen through “malfeasance, misfeasance and mismanagement.” Will long suffering Georgia voters continue to feel the magic?
Chamblee54 has written about Stacey Abrams too many times. Pictures for this celebration are from your big government buddies at The Library of Congress.
Jean D. McKinnon
The first picture in this episode is a family portrait of the Quin family in Washington Georgia. The nine surviving children of Hugh Pharr Quin are sitting for the camera. Mr. Quin had joined the Georgia State Troops of the Army of the Confederacy at the age of 16, and after the war went to Washington to live with his sister. Mr. Quin was in the church choir of the First Methodist Church when he met the organist, Betty Lou DuBose. They were married January 22, 1879.
The original name of Mrs. Quin was Louisa Toombs DuBose. She was the daughter of James Rembert DuBose. His brother in law was Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a man of whom many stories are told.
In this picture, Mrs. Quin is holding the hand of her second youngest daughter so she will not run away. This is Mattie Vance Quin. She is my grandmother.
After the Great War, Mattie Vance Quin was living in Memphis Tennessee, where she met Arthur Dunaway. Mr. Dunaway was a veteran of the war, and was from Paragould, Arkansas. On July 23, 1922 her first Daughter, Jean, was born. This is my mother.
Mr. Dunaway died in 1930, shortly after the birth of his son Arthur. There were hard times and upheaval after this, with the family settling in Atlanta. There her third child Helen Ann Moffat was born on December 12, 1933. This is my Aunt Helen and my mother’s best friend.
Jean lived for many years with her mother and sister at 939 Piedmont, among other locations. She joined the First Baptist Church and sang in the choir. She got a job with the C&S bank, and was working at the Tenth Street Branch when she met Luther McKinnon. He was a native of Rowland, North Carolina. They were married October 6, 1951.
They moved into the Skyland Apartments, which in those days was out in the country. Mom told a story about Dad taking her home from Choir practice, and going home on the two lane Buford Hiway. There was a man who went to the restaurants to get scraps to feed his pigs, and his truck was always in front of them. This was a serious matter in the summer without air conditioning.
Soon, they moved into a house, and Luther junior was born on May 6, 1954. This is me. Malcolm was born May 10, 1956, which did it for the children.
The fifties were spent on Wimberly Road, a street of always pregnant women just outside Brookhaven. It was a great place to be a little kid.
In 1960, we moved to Parkridge Drive, to the house where my brother and I stay today. The note payment was $88 a month. Ashford Park School is a short walk away…the lady who sold us the house said “you slap you kid on the fanny and he is at school”.
In 1962, our family followed the choir director from First Baptist to Briarcliff Baptist, which is where my parents remained.
In 1964, Mom went back to work. She ran the drive in window at Lenox Square for the Trust Company of Georgia until it was time to retire. She became a talk radio fan when RING radio started, and was a friend of her customer Ludlow Porch. She gave dog biscuits to customers with dogs.
During this era of change, Mom taught me that all people were good people, be they black or white. This was rare in the south. She later became disgusted with the War in Vietnam, and liked to quote a man she heard on the radio. “How will we get out of Vietnam?””By ship and by plane”.
Eventually, it was time to retire. Her and Dad did the requisite traveling, until Dad got sick and passed away February 7, 1992. Mom stuck around for a few more years, until her time came December 18, 1998. This is a repost.
Why The War Between The States Was Fought
Recently, Mr. Trump said something stupid about the War Between the States. After his comments began to filter into the marketplace of ideas, people began to react. There was a good bit of self righteous talk about how bad the Confederacy was. Maybe it is time for another point of view. This feature will have minimal research. Mostly, PG is typing things he has heard and thought. It is possible that some items will be incorrect. The reader is encouraged to do their own research. Comments are welcome.
When the colonies declared independence in 1776, nobody knew how things would turn out. First, Great Britain needed to be defeated. After that, the Articles of Confederation went into effect. “Under these articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. Congress was also given the authority to make treaties and alliances, maintain armed forces and coin money. However, the central government lacked the ability to levy taxes and regulate commerce…”
This arrangement was not working, and the Constitutional Convention was called. Originally, the CC was going to revise the Articles of Confederation, but wound up throwing the whole thing out, and creating the Constitution. This document called for greater federal authority. The issue of what powers to give to the states, and what powers to give to the central government, was contentious. It remains controversial to this day.
Had any group of antonymous states formed a federal union before? Usually, such a union is the result of a conquest, with one of the states ruling the others. It is unclear whether such a union had been attempted before, or how successful it was. When the “founding fathers” created the constitution, they probably did not foresee how it would play out. The current system, with a massive central government cat-herding the 50 states, would have been laughed off as a dangerous fantasy.
So the states start to have disagreements. One of the things they disagreed over was slavery. Yes, this was an important factor in the unpleasantness to come. Slavery also influenced a lot of the economic conflicts. The North wanted high tariffs to protect industry. The South wanted low tariffs, so they could sell cotton to Europe. There were many other ways for the states to not get along.
Finally, in 1861, the disagreements became too big to ignore. The south seceded, and the War Between The States began. The Confederate States of America was a looser union than the United States. The thought was that the states were more important than the federal union. Mr. Lincoln disagreed. (One popular name for the conflict was Mr. Lincoln’s war.) Many people say that Mr. Lincoln was not especially concerned about the slaves, but wanted to keep the union together.
How does slavery enter into this? Imagine the conflict over states rights vs federalism to be an open tank of gasoline. The lit match that was thrown into that tank was slavery. When the winners wrote the war history, it sounded better to say that the war was fought to free the slaves. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This was a repost.
May 6, 2019
May 6is a day in spring, with 35% of the year gone by. It has it’s fair share of history, some of which did not turn out well. In 1861, the Confederate Congress declared war on the United States. In 1937, a German zeppelin named “Hindenburg” exploded while trying to land in New Jersey. In 1940, Bob Hope did his first show for the USO, somewhere in California.
Roger Bannister ran the first sub four minute mile, on May 6, 1954. The current record is 3:43.13 by Hicham El Guerrouj on July 7, 1999, with a party with Prince to celebrate. Since most track meets now use 1500 meters, the mile record is obsolete.
On this day, Georgia executed two notable prisoners. In 2003, Carl Isaacs was put to death. Mr. Isaacs was the ringleader in the 1973 Alday family killing, in Donalsonville GA. Five years later, in 2008, William Earl Lynd was poisoned by the state. This was the first condemned man to die after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution by poisoning was constitutional.
Taurus is the sign for those whose blood starts to pump May 6. Included are:
Maximilien Robespierre (1758) Sigmund Freud (1856) Rudolph Valentino (1895)
Orson Welles (1915) Willie Mays (1931) Rubin Carter (1937)
Bob Seger (1945) Tony Blair (1953) PG (1954) George Clooney(1961)
To make room for these folks, someone has to die. For May 6 this would mean:
Henry David Thoreau (1862) L. Frank Baum (1919) Marlene Dietrich (1992)
This repost, written like H.P. Lovecraft, has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
04-30-1992
Doug Richards is an Atlanta tv news reporter. He writes a blog, live apartment fire. He was on the scene twenty seven years ago. There was a riot downtown. Mr. Richards had a bad night.
PG was working in the Healey building that day. He ran an RMS, or reprographic management service, in an architects office. He had a blueline machine, ran jobs for the customer, and had free time. PG did a lot of exploring, and enjoyed the various events downtown. On April 30, 1992, there was an event he did not enjoy.
The day before, a jury in California issued a verdict. Four policemen were acquitted of wrongdoing in an incident involving Rodney King. The incident had been videotaped, and received widespread attention. The verdict of the jury was not popular. The dissatisfaction spread to Atlanta.
Sometimes, PG thinks he has a guardian angel looking over him. If so, then this thursday afternoon was one of those times. PG went walking out into the gathering storm. He was a block south of the train station at five points, when he saw someone throw a rock into a store front. The sheet metal drapes were rolled down on the outside of the store. PG realized that he was not in a good place, and quickly made his way back to the Healey building.
A group of policeman were lined up in the lobby of the building, wearing flack jackets. One of the police was a white man, who was familiar to workers in the neighborhood. A few weeks before the incident, he had been walking around the neighborhood showing off his newborn baby.
There was very little work done that afternoon in the architect’s office. Someone said not to stand close to the windows, which seemed like a good idea. Fourteen floors below, on Broad Street, the window at Rosa’s Pizza had a brick thrown threw it. There were helicopters hovering over downtown, making an ominous noise.
There was a lot of soul searching about race relations that day. The Olympics were coming to town in four years, and the potential for international disaster was apparent. As it turned out, the disturbance was limited to a few hundred people. It could have been much, much worse. If one percent of the anger in Atlanta had been unleashed that day, instead of .001 percent, the Olympics would have been looking for a new host.
After a while, the people in the office were called into the lobby. The Principal of the firm, the partner in charge of production, walked out to his vehicle with PG. The principal drove an inconspicuous vehicle, which made PG feel a bit better. PG took his pocketknife, opened the blade, and put it in his back pocket. It probably would not have done him much good.
PG usually took the train downtown. As fate would have it, there was a big project at the main office of redo blue on West Peachtree Street. That is where PG’s vehicle was, in anticipation of working overtime that night. The principal drove PG to this building. PG called his mother, to let her know that he was ok. The Atlanta manager of Redo Blue talked to him, to make sure that he was not hurt.
If PG had not gone back downtown the next day, he might not have ever gone back. He was back at the West Peachtree Street office, and was assured that it was safe to ride the train into town. The Macy’s at 180 Peachtree had plywood nailed over the display windows. A gift shop in the Healey building had a sign in the window, “Black owned business”. Friday May 1, 1992, was a quiet day.
This is a repost. The events of twenty seven years ago are mostly forgotten in Atlanta. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Confederate Memorial Day
Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia. It is an ancient question…how to honor the soldiers from the side that lost. They were just as valiant as the Union Soldiers. Considering the shortages of the Confederate Armies, the Rebels may have been just a bit braver.
The issue of Federalism is a defining conflict of the American experience. What powers do we give the Federal Government, and what powers do we cede to the States? The Confederacy was the product of this conflict. The Confederate States were a collection of individual states, with separate armies. This is one reason why the war turned out the way it did.
This is not a defense for slavery. The “Peculiar institution” was a moral horror. The after effects of slavery affect us today. Any remembrance of the Confederacy should know that. This does not make the men who fought any less brave.
It is tough to see the War Between the States through the modern eye. It was a different time, before many of the modern conveniences that are now considered necessities. Many say that the United States were divided from the start, and the fact the union lasted as long as it did was remarkable. When a conflict becomes us against them, the “causes” become unimportant.
The War was a horror, with no pain medicine, and little that could be done for the wounded. It took the south many, many years to recover. The healing continues in many ways today. Remembering the sacrifices made by our ancestors helps.
This is a repost from CMD 2010. Pictures are from the The Library of Congress.
Was The Election Really Stolen?
One misty four twenty morning, PG was looking for something to post. He looked to 042018, one year ago. He found Stacey And Stacey. The story is repeated below. It was the first time PG paid attention to Stacey Abrams. It would not be the last, unfortunately.
Since that nightmare election, PG has wanted to assemble his thoughts about Ms. Abrams. Many people see her as a hero. PG does not. Stacey Abrams has a talent for publicity. Certain parts of the media adore her, and report her antics uncritically. Would Ms. Abrams would be a competent Governor/Senator? That is a good question.
PG wrote about Ms. Abrams, and the nightmare election, several times.
Stacey and Stacey ~ The battle of fair street bottom
Politically Relevant ~ Georgia voter registration
Why Did The 1956 Legislature Change The Flag? ~ Brian and Stacey
We were lied to ~ Rally At The Capitol Turns Nasty
The Problem With Stacey 2015 Edition ~ The Problem With Greg Palast
Brian Kemp was the worst Republican Gubernatorial candidate in many years. Ms. Abrams was much more appealing. Mr. Kemp made a political mistake when he did not resign as Secretary of State, after he won the Republican primary. If he had done so, the voter suppression uproar would have been much less potent.
The truth is that the counties register voters, and count the votes. The SOS office plays a limited role. Unfortunately, the truth does not make a good campaign issue. Voter Suppession™ was demagogued into submission by Stacey Abrams, and the clickbait media.
Ms. Abrams screamed Voter Suppession™ every chance she got. It was her main campaign issue. The clickbait media knew a good story when they smelled one. Racist Republican Rascal Steals Election In Honey Boo Boo Land!!! If you are not as outraged as your neighbor, then you must be a racist. Threatening to call someone the r-word is a powerful campaign tactic.
After the election, PG was looking for something. He stumbled onto The New Georgia Problem. It was a 2015 article about The New Georgia Project, a voter registration organization that Stacey Abrams fronted. NGP had a lot of problems. Ms. Abrams did not look good.
Among other things, NGP workers were poorly trained. A lot of their registrations were thrown out for being illegible and incomplete. This was also a problem with many voter registrations in the 2018 election. While the “exact match” law got all the attention, many of the registrations were thrown out for being illegible and incomplete.
The infamous AP story about 53,000 rejected registrations came out a month before election day. PG saw this, and realized that whatever was said could not be believed. The AP story was quoted as gospel. Few challenged the findings, even though the only documentation offered was “An analysis of the records obtained by The Associated Press.” Soon, Greg Palast put his hat on, and contributed to the noise and confusion. Discerning voters like PG just wanted it to be over.
Did Brian Kemp steal the election? It is possible. Mr. Kemp is no paragon of virtue. Georgia’s election machines are notoriously insecure. However, many of the wild-eyed charges leveled by Ms. Abrams have never been proven. Nobody has ever said how deleting voters-who-do-not-vote targets people of color. In the end, Brian Kemp will serve a term as Governor, and Stacey Abrams will make noise about it. As someone said about the New Georgia Project, “It’s a glaring example of what makes people sick about politics.”
Until Thursday, PG had been in blissful denial of the Georgia Governor’s election. Except, that is, for the clown car antics of the republicans. The Democrats had Stacey Abrams, aka black Stacey, opposing Stacey Evans, aka white Stacey. The Republicans are almost certain to win in November, even with a certified idiot like Casey Cagle.
The happy ignorance was interrupted by facebook on thursday. A FBF posted a link to this article, Statement by the Metro Atlanta Chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America on the vulgar hit piece against member Anoa Changa. The vhp, posted by the notorious white supremacists at WABE, was titled Atlanta Activist Uses Russian-Backed Media To Spread Message. It seems as though a local activist, Anoa Changa, utilized a Russian owned broadcast outlet to spread her message. This was news to PG, as well as the 99.9% of the population that never listens to Sputnik.
PG did not see what was so horrible about the WABE piece, and was prepared to ignore it. Then he saw something in the article. “Changa helped lead a protest last year at the progressive Netroots Nation convention drowning out the speech of Stacey Evans, a Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia. Changa and the other protesters chanted “trust black women.” Evans is white, while her Democratic primary opponent Stacey Abrams is black. Changa supports Abrams.” A bit of research turned up a video, Protesters Harass Stacey Evans Candidate Gov. Georgia Aug 12, 2017.
This incident was noted on facebook. “Yup, don’t see what the problem is. Was Evans run out of town? Silenced? Is she still in the race?” “I fully support activists of color disrupting any centrist white person running for office. Stop ignoring the fundamental power dynamic in play because of white supremacist patriarchy.” “Good luck winning the election”
Others are grossed out by this type of behavior. Is this what happens to people running for public office? To be shouted down in public forums, and say “this is what democracy looks like.” Maybe smells like is more appropriate. Maybe we are not mature enough to allow the luxury of free speech. Maybe an election campaign is a time to shout down your opponent … and call those who do not applaud your playground-bully tactics a racist.
Stacey Abrams And Stacey Evans had a discussion of the incident. Stacey Evans condemned the protest. Stacey Abrams did not. “I do not believe that you silence those who feel they are voiceless, because the minute we do that we are no better than those who tell people they can’t kneel in protest.”
Anoa Changa is far from voiceless. She is not going to be silenced by waiting until someone else is through speaking. To compare this abusive protest, to pro football players and the national anthem, is ridiculous. Stacy Abrams has no business being Governor of Georgia. This is a repost. Pictures for this paranormal panorama are from The Library of Congress.
Lewis Grizzard
In the time between 1980 and 1994, if you lived in Atlanta you heard about Lewis Grizzard. Some people loved him. Some did not. He told good old boy stories about growing up in rural Georgia. Many of them were enjoyable. He also made social and political commentaries, which upset a few people. This is a rainy sunday morning repost, with historic pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
PG had mixed feelings about Lewis. The stories about Kathy Sue Loudermilk and Catfish were funny. His opinions about gays, feminists, and anything non redneck could get on your nerves. His column for the fishwrapper upset PG at least twice a week.
In 1982, Lewis (he reached the level of celebrity where he was known by his first name only) wrote a column about John Lennon. Lewis did not understand why Mr. Ono was such a big deal. PG cut the column out of the fishwrapper, and put it in a box. Every few years, PG would be looking for something, find that column, and get mad all over again.
The New Georgia Encyclopedia has a page about Lewis, which expresses some of these contradictions. “If Grizzard’s humor revealed the ambivalence amid affluence of the Sunbelt South, it reflected its conservative and increasingly angry politics as well. He was fond of reminding fault-finding Yankee immigrants that “Delta is ready when you are,” and, tired of assaults on the Confederate flag, he suggested sarcastically that white southerners should destroy every relic and reminder of the Civil War (1861-65), swear off molasses and grits, drop all references to the South, and begin instead to refer to their region as the “Lower East.” Grizzard also wore his homophobia and hatred for feminists on his sleeve, and one of the last of his books summed up his reaction to contemporary trends in its title, Haven’t Understood Anything since 1962 and Other Nekkid Truths (1992).
In the end, which came in 1994, when he was only forty-seven, the lonely, insecure, oft-divorced, hard-drinking Grizzard proved to be the archetypal comic who could make everyone laugh but himself. He chronicled this decline and his various heart surgeries in I Took a Lickin’ and Kept on Tickin’, and Now I Believe in Miracles (1993), published just before his final, fatal heart failure.”
As you may have discerned, Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. met his maker on March 20, 1994. He was 47. There was a valve in his heart that wasn’t right. The good news is that he stayed out of the army. At the time, Vietnam was the destination for most enlistees. The bad news is that his heart problems got worse and worse, until it finally killed him.
Sixteen years later, PG found a website, Wired For Books It is a collection of author interviews by Don Swaim, who ran many of them on a CBS radio show called Book Beat. There are two interviews with Lewis Grizzard One was done to promote My Daddy Was a Pistol and I’m a Son of A Gun. This was the story of Lewis Grizzard Senior, who was another mixed bag.
PG found himself listening to this chat, and wondered what he had been missing all those years. The stories and one liners came flowing out, like the Chattahoochee going under the traffic slogged perimeter highway. Daddy Grizzard was a soldier, who went to war in Europe and Korea. The second one did something to his mind, and he took to drinking. He was never quite right the rest of his life. His son adored him anyway. When you put yourself in those loafers for a while, you began to taste the ingredients, in that stew we called Lewis Grizzard.
PG still remembers the anger that those columns caused … PG has his own story, and knows when his toes are stepped on. The thing is, after listening to this show, PG has an idea of why Lewis Grizzard wrote the things that he did. Maybe PG and Lewis aren’t all that different after all.
Chamblee54 
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