25 Things About Georgia
These daze, there is more media than messages. People need things to write about. One popular theme, at least in itp/otp, is lists about life in Georgia. A web facility that should know better, thought catalog, recently put out 25 Things You Need To Know About Georgia.
25TYNTKAG was written by Jeremy Populus Jones. He seems to be the CEO of something called GAFollowers. (@GAFollowers on twitter) From the fine print: “GAFollowers was created on a “strength in numbers” foundation, finding a creative way to use free online social networking sites to strengthen the “bond” between people in Georgia to help better form this state. … GAFollowers is one of the largest twitter accounts in the state of Georgia that spans nearly every corner of the region.”
These lists about Georgia life usually have a few common comments. There is the heat, the bugs, the traffic, the multiple Peachtrees, and southern accents. They seldom mention the shameless corruption, religious mental illness, rampant obesity, or racial pandemonium. Lets take a look at 25TYNTKAG. Mr. Jones will be in blue, and Chamblee54 in green. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
1. The weather here is just as inconsistent as your ex-girlfriend. Not really. It gets cold in January, hot in July. Your ex-girlfriend is staying out of this.
2. We call all interstates in Georgia, “The Highway”. Most people use the number.
3. Only in Atlanta is everything named “Peachtree” without a single tree with peaches around. Peachtree is all over OTP.
4. Terio and Honey Boo Boo were born and raised here. You couldn’t do this without google. Terio is a chubby kid who dances. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
5. “Knuck if you Buck” is the song we will always get hype to no matter the age. Yuck.
6. White girls wear Nike shorts with big t-shirts covering their shorts. (How many can you spot?) Maybe there was a sale on big t-shirts at Walmart.
7. Zaxbys is what you eat. The TC comments said this is not accurate. They mentioned a certain spelling challenged company, that specializes in overpriced chicken sandwiches. At least the son of Mr. Zaxby doesn’t run off potential customers with his big mouth.
8. We call it a “rag” not a “washcloth”. Do people up north say a woman is on the washcloth?
9. Going outside at anytime during the summer instantly guarantees a minimum a 7 bug bites. This is mostly true. Who is counting?
10. In Georgia when someone ask, “Where you from?”, people usually reply with a county not a city. In Atlanta, when you say “Where are you from?” it is almost always somewhere outside of Georgia.
11. The speed limit is 65 mph but if you’re not going at least 80 mph you’ll be ran off the road. This is also true on surface roads. In hilly Atlanta, there are few places to pass on two lane roads.
12. In Georgia it’s not a shopping cart, it’s a buggy. Do people really say shopping cart? At Kroger it is a bascart. The stores have a bascart corral.
13. We get more inches of pollen in a week than inches of snow in a full year. Pollen season hits in early spring. It is rough for many people. The rest of the year gets relatively little pollen. There is a good ice/snow storm every ten years or so. This one is probably true.
14. You say Georgia, we say Jawja. Others say George-ah. To untrained ears they sound the same.
15. Sweet tea is our water. Very few people wash cars with sweet tea.
16. The night has been a success if you ended up at Waffle House. This is especially true if you are scattered, smothered, and covered.
17. In Georgia it’s necessary to look at the weather before picking out an outfit. A reason not to do numbered lists. Just think of what you have to say, write it down, and hope it is not copyrighted.
18. We pray that we get snow during the winters. The people who pray for winter storms are merchants. They have an inventory of batteries, milk, ice, and eggs to sell.
19. We are the creators of, “Turn Up”. You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.
20. Here in Georgia white girls can twerk. No Miley Cyrus. Ditto reaction to number 17. What was PG thinking of when he decided to do this post?
21. You will usually be 30 minutes away from just about every destination that you’re heading to. 22. There’s a Waffle House in walking distance of every Waffle House. These two have been combined, for obvious reasons. Do people proofread these lists before sending them out?
23. Any dark soda is simply called “Coke”. Many say Cocola, without the second syllable.
24. We pronounce it “Atlanna”. Whatever. Sometimes the second t is audible, sometimes not. It definitely is not the ATL, except to radio shouters.
25. Braves, Falcons & UGA are the teams we really care about. Tech fans may disagree. Ditto taxpayers, who don’t care if Rankin Blank gets a new stadium.
We’re All God’s Children
It was September, 1976, in Athens, Georgia. Someone decided to open a disco downtown. On opening night, there was a crowd. People wanted to know, would men be able to dance with men?
The owner was said to be a redneck, who would not allow such things. Finally, the party got started. At some point, same sex couples started to dance together. The owner shut down the music, and stood in front of the crowd with a microphone. He said a few words that did not please anyone, and there was an uneasy silence. Then, out of the back, came one voice.
We’re all God’s children.
47 years later, we are still struggling. People try to solve problems, big and small, with name calling. If you don’t have the correct opinion about this or that, then you are a terrible person. We seem to forget the one basic truth: We’re all God’s children.
We don’t know who said WAGC that night, 47 years ago. If I had to guess, I would say that it was an African-American. Much of the name-calling today is about skin color. If you do not say what people want to hear, you will get called racist. You are deemed worthy of hatred and abuse. Your humanity is taken away from you. You are no longer one of God’s children. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. This is a repost.
Four Rules
This is a double repost. Historic pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. This was written like David Foster Wallace.
“The Four-Way Test of the things we think, say or do” features the logo of the Rotary Club. The four rules are simple, on the surface. Is it the TRUTH? Is it FAIR to all Concerned? Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS? Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?
The Four Way Test was written by Herbert J. Taylor. In 1932, Mr.Taylor took over the bankrupt Club Aluminum Company of Chicago. Trying to revive the company during the depression, Mr. Taylor wrote a code of ethics, that would be the basis for the company’s actions.
Many said that the four way test was not practical for the business world. The balancing of integrity and ambition can be daunting. It was said that “This emphasis on truth, fairness and consideration provide a moral diet so rich that it gives some people “ethical indigestion.”
PG maintains that fair is a baseball hit between first and third base. Sometimes, the umpire makes the wrong call. In the “real world”, the different points of view in a dispute make rendering a fair judgment a difficult task, if not an impossible one.
There is a story about the revival of Club Aluminum. “One day, the sales manager announced a possible order for 50,000 utensils. Sales were low and the company was still struggling at the bankruptcy level. The senior managers certainly needed and wanted that sale, but there was a hitch. The sales manager learned that the potential customer intended to sell the products at cut-rate prices. “That wouldn’t be fair to our regular dealers who have been advertising and promoting our product consistently,” he said. In one of the toughest decisions the company made that year, the order was turned down. There was no question this transaction would have made a mockery out of The Four-Way Test the company professed to live by.”
How did the sales manager learn of the intentions of this buyer? Was he tipped off by one of the “regular customers” who feared competition? Was this “regular customer” lying? Many inspirational stories leave out crucial details.
As it turns out, Club Aluminum did sell enough product to emerge from bankruptcy. “By 1937, Club Aluminum’s indebtedness was paid off and during the next 15 years, the firm distributed more than $1 million in dividends to its stockholders. Its net worth climbed to more than $2 million.”
Club Aluminum cookware was cast, not spun. It is heavy, and is a prized collectors item today. As for the Club Aluminum company “Standard International Corporation bought it in 1968. Regalware made and marketed Club Aluminum for a while, but went out of business in the mid-1980s. The brand name was eventually obtained by the Mirro Company.”
This is a repost. Philosophy and rules for living is always a crowd pleaser. Whether or not you practice what you preach is beside the point.
There is a story above. A company, facing bankruptcy, turned down a huge order because of concerns about how the product would be resold. Today, this seems quaint. Today, the moral thing to do would be to take the order, keep your factory busy, and not worry how it was going to be resold. While some pretend that moral rules are unchanging, the truth is that they do change with the times.
This reminds PG of a story from his days as a blueprinter. With ammonia developed prints, every print is fed by hand, and you have the option to adjust the speed of the machine. Slower prints mean less background, which to some is a higher quality print. (This is not an issue with digital printing. Some change is indeed progress.)
The company PG worked for was affiliated with a small, family run company in a neighboring city. This company was run by an old fashioned lady, who insisted on adjusting every print to get the perfect background. This was different from the company PG worked for, which ran large jobs for the big city market. To his customers, quality meant getting an acceptable print, DELIVERED ON TIME. Who had the higher standards? Maybe that is a question for the customer to judge.
These thoughts are for you to use. They were articulated by a man named Don Miguel Ruiz. They are called the The Four Agreements .
PG does not claim to live up to these ideals. Number two is especially tough for him. The main thing is to try, and to always do your best. This is not about what you believe or think, it is about what you do. This is about you. If you fall short in some way, work on improving yourself, instead of looking at someone else. This is about you.
agreement 1–Be impeccable with your word – Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
agreement 2–Don’t take anything personally – Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
agreement 3–Don’t make assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
agreement 4–Always do your best – Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
What Ben Franklin Really Said
It is a popular line. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The credit, or blame, for this gem is assigned to Ben Franklin. Did he really say it? What was he talking about?
The good news is that Mr. Franklin did say these words. (Here is the text.) What follows was written by a lawyer. Prepare to be confused.
“The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him. So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.”
Mr. Franklin was writing on behalf of legislators who wanted to assess a tax. The quote is used by tax hating conservatives. The modern conservative wants to send a hundred thousand troops to a conflict eight time zones away, and pay for it with tax cuts.
Another article tells much the same story, but with a couple of twists. There is a google gimmick that shows how often a quote is used. The BF quote was little known until the twentieth century.
The techcrunch article introduces a dandy word for the rampant misuse of quotes. The word is contextomy. This explanation is from Matthew McGlone of the University of Texas at Austin.
“‘Contextomy’ refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning, a practice commonly referred to as ‘quoting out of context’. Contextomy is employed in contemporary mass media to promote products, defame public figures and misappropriate rhetoric. A contextomized quotation not only prompts audiences to form a false impression of the source’s intentions, but can contaminate subsequent interpretation of the quote when it is restored to its original context. …”
The spell check suggestion for contextomy is contentment. This is a repost. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
Quoting James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin has become a star on facebook, thirty five years after his death. People love to quote him, and post artsy pictures of his face. Over the past year I have seen three Baldwin memes that required action. Once you start to research, there is no telling what you are going to find.
“I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do.” This item is from a 1966 article that Mr. Baldwin wrote for The Nation. “One is in the impossible position of being unable to believe a word one’s countrymen say. “I can’t believe what you say,” the song goes, “because I see what you do”—and one is also under the necessity of escaping the jungle …”
“The song goes” is what the memes leave out. Ike Turner wrote the song. The Ikettes sing “I can’t believe…”, while Tina goes “agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh.” Ike knew about being a no-good man. Tina looks a lot better in a short skirt than Mr. Baldwin did.
“I’d like to leave you with one more short quote from James Baldwin, “Whoever debases others is debasing himself.” This is from a June, 2020 video about racism. This quote is from Letter from a Region in My Mind, a 1962 essay in The New Yorker. “Letter…” clocks in at 22,114 words. Mr. Baldwin could crank out the word count.
“Letter…” covers a lot of ground. The “debase” quote comes in after Mr. Baldwin describes a visit to Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam. Soon, Mr. Baldwin starts talking about race in the United States. One quote stood out: “But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.”
“By this time, I was in a high school that was predominantly Jewish. This meant that I was surrounded by people who were, by definition, beyond any hope of salvation, who laughed at the tracts and leaflets I brought to school, and who pointed out that the Gospels had been written long after the death of Christ. … My best friend in high school was a Jew. He came to our house once, and afterward my father asked, as he asked about everyone, “Is he a Christian?”—by which he meant “Is he saved?” I really do not know whether my answer came out of innocence or venom, but I said, coldly, “No. He’s Jewish.” My father slammed me across the face with his great palm, and in that moment everything flooded back—all the hatred and all the fear, and the depth of a merciless resolve to kill my father rather than allow my father to kill me—and I knew that all those sermons and tears and all that repentance and rejoicing had changed nothing.”
“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” This quote proved more difficult to chase down. It does not appear in any of Mr. Baldwin’s work. The earliest mention appears to be behind The New Yorker paywall. “During his wanderings, Baldwin warned a friend who had urged him to settle down that “the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” There is no link to a source.
The New Yorker article is cited by Lithub, which is then cited by New Transcendentalist. “These Timely James Baldwin Quotes … ,” from Bustle, credits the quote to “a 1957 letter to Sol Stein.”
Sol Stein “attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he served on the Magpie literary magazine with Richard Avedon and James Baldwin.” We don’t know if Mr. Stein was the one who made David Baldwin slap his step-son. A paywalled article, about the correspondence between Mr. Stein and “Jimmy,” does not mention the “place in which I’ll fit” quote.
The WaPo article did have a mind-blowing quote. “In the introduction to the book, Baldwin would ponder his influences: “When one begins looking for influences, one finds them by the score. … the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church, something ironic and violent and perpetually understated in Negro speech…” I saw this quote in 1976, in a college textbook. At the time, I thought this was an amazing quote. It stayed in my mind until the next life changing detail came along, not to be thought of again for forty six years.
Chamblee54 has written about Mr. Baldwin before. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” UPDATE: @QuoteResearch Replying to @chamblee54 @HilalIsler @lithub “It appeared in a 1957 letter from James Baldwin and Sol Stein reprinted in “Native Sons” (2004) edited by Sol Stein. I am planning to create a QI article on this topic” @QuoteResearch “Please get over the notion, Sol, that there’s some place I’ll fit when I’ve made some ‘real peace’ with myself : the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it. You know and I know that the ‘peace’ of most people is nothing but torpor” … James Baldwin to Sol Stein UPDATE: I was writing a story about Flannery O’Connor. I wanted to quote this post, but could not find the link. Neither google nor duckduckgo would show me this post. I had to go to the chamblee54 archive, and scroll through October 2022 until I found the post. This is a repost from 2022.
The Uterus Collector
This is a repost from 2020. … “Georgia prison … performs questionable hysterectomies” The story of “the uterus collector” was the clickbait sensation for a few days. Fresh outrages have taken its place in the shiny object machine. Just how many detainees at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC) had hysterectomies? Estimates range from “one or two” to “at least seventeen”.
The story broke with a report from Project South. The whistle blower was Dawn Wooten. video video Ms. Wooten, a single mother of 5, worked at ICDC, until her hours were cut, after a dispute about Covid-19 infection. As is the case with many workplace stories, there are conflicting accounts.
The focus of the complaint is inadequate safety measures, taken with regard to Covid-19. “Priyanka Bhatt, staff attorney at … Project South, told The Washington Post that she included the hysterectomy allegations because she wanted to trigger an investigation to determine if they were true.”
If ICDC did not have the resources to provide adequate safeguards against Covid-19 infection, how are they going to have the resources to provide hysterectomies? These ladies were detained over immigration issues, and many will eventually be deported. “Even on the lower end of the cost scale, a hysterectomy can cost thousands of dollars and both ICE and the private companies that contract with the agency to oversee its detention centers notoriously provide dangerous and substandard medical care to cut costs and maximize profits.”
There are some concerns about Dawn Wooten. “… Wooten described how she repeatedly complained to staff leadership before she was demoted in early July from working full time to an on-call position, where she was only offered a few hours a month — a move she charges was retaliation for speaking up and demanding stricter medical safety protocols. She has worked at the facility for three years in three separate stints as a licensed practical nurse …” The Protect Whistleblower Dawn Wooten gofundme has grossed $101,471, by the time this feature was written.
AP had a story, with a variety of headlines. If you go into the details, you see this: “The AP’s review did not find evidence of mass hysterectomies as alleged in a widely shared complaint filed by a nurse at the detention center. Dawn Wooten alleged that many detained women were taken to an unnamed gynecologist whom she labeled the “uterus collector” because of how many hysterectomies he performed. … Amin (Dr. Mahendra Amin, gynecologist accused in complaints) told the intercept, … he has only performed one or two hysterectomies in the past three years.”
“Some people who have worked with detainees at Irwin have questioned some of the allegations in the Project South complaint. Paul Alvarado, a local immigration attorney, told Insider that he was “very, very skeptical” about the allegations of unwanted hysterectomies. Alvarado estimated that he’d been to Irwin representing clients more than 100 times.”
“I’ve never heard of any sort of medical mistreatment from the clients, and I’ve represented hundreds of clients from Irwin, so it came as a shock to me when I read it,” he said. He said that while clients might complain about delays and other issues inherent to the immigration system, he hadn’t been made aware of OB-GYN concerns.”
“I’ve been an immigration lawyer for 24 years. I’m a huge proponent of immigration reform,” he said. “I’m an advocate for the rights of these undocumented aliens, and I’d be the first to get to the podium and scream if something smelled fishy — but I have not heard of any of this.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. UPDATE Hospital where activists say ICE detainees were subjected to hysterectomies says just two were performed there
The Prodigal Son
Luke 15, also known as The Prodigal Son, appears in the second half of this narrative. The titular phrase does not appear in the King Jimmy text. The story is a parable, that is, a made up story to teach a lesson. Those who say every word of the Bible is true somehow miss this detail.
The Prodigal Son is a popular story. It is well known, and speaks of forgiveness. Some unkind people say that Christians like to be forgiven, and do not like to forgive. There is plenty of evidence for this observation. Lets just say that lots of people don’t want to take responsibility for their actions. If your pie in the sky hero to forgives you, then you can have a cleaner conscience.
PG was at a memorial service once. The guest of honor was a leather wearing pagan. The minister, who had met the deceased one time, told the story of the Prodigal Son. It made PG feel better.
The forgotten character in this story is the older brother. He was faithful to his father, stayed at home and helped out, only to see his wayward brother welcomed back with joy. The father never killed a fatted calf for the elder brother. Maybe the elder brother deserved it more. Sometimes, life is not fair. Some say this is more than a parable. Maybe it is three units of bull.
Luke 15 1 Then drew near unto him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him. 2 And the Pharisees and scribes murmured, saying, This man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them. 3 And he spake this parable unto them, saying, 4 What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? 5 And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. 7 I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance. 8 Either what woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? 9 And when she hath found it, she calleth her friends and her neighbours together, saying, Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost. 10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of G-d over one sinner that repenteth. 11 And he said, A certain man had two sons: 12 And the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living. 13 And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. 14 And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want. 15 And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat: and no man gave unto him. 17 And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee, 19 And am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. 20 And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. 21 And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. 22 But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet: 23 And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry: 24 For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry. 25 Now his elder son was in the field: and as he came and drew nigh to the house, he heard musick and dancing. 26 And he called one of the servants, and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said unto him, Thy brother is come; and thy father hath killed the fatted calf, because he hath received him safe and sound. 28 And he was angry, and would not go in: therefore came his father out, and intreated him. 29 And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment: and yet thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my friends: 30 But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. 31 And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. 32 It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found. Text for today’s story is from Bible Gateway. Here is a commentary on The Power of Parable . Here is a discussion about this parable. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Cross Keys
Mr. Bear “Speaking of obscure, do you remember the location of a restaurant downtown called the “Cross Keys”. There’s a photo of it in the Georgia State Library archives, but no notation of its location other than it appears to be near a big Gulf Oil lighted sign.”chamblee54 “I have seen that picture. There is a historic brass marker near Ashford Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry. Apparently there was some kind of trail crossing there called Cross Keys. Full disclosure: I went to Cross Keys High School. Nobody ever talked about what Cross Keys was. Google is not much help, except for an 1862 Battle of Cross Keys in Virginia.” This is a repost.
Some helpful person sent a couple of links, and soon PG was learning about Cross Keys… the militia district, not the school. Apparently, Cross Keys was centered around the intersection of Ashford Dunwoody and Johnson Ferry. The crossroads is a doozy… the two major thoroughfare are combined into a hundred yard stretch of asphalt, only to be separated again at an overworked red light. Both roads run between Peachtree and I-285. One goes through pill hill, and the other leads to Perimeter Mall. None of this was going on when the Post Office was built in 1846.
“Historical records provide that the militia district of “Cross Keys” was established in 1827 and continued to be referenced as such at least as late as 1951. Prior to 1827 the only Federal post in the region was known as “Cross Keys,” and subsequently, “Old Cross Keys,” when the post moved to near current City of Chamblee just prior to Sherman’s March. … The area was increasingly settled by farming families during the first quarter of the 19th century. As land concessions were signed with the Creek (Muscogee) Nation between 1818 and 1821 more land was made available via grants to European settlers. While the mascots and symbols of “Indians” at Cross Keys High School are culturally inaccurate and reflect garb and headdresses of nomadic tribes of the mid and far west, it is a fitting and ironic tribute to the Muscogee Native Americans who long thrived on the same land. … The area remained primarily an agricultural community until the acquisition by the United States Army of a large tract of land in heart of the district in July of 1917. This tract became Camp Gordon, an infantry training and artillery cantonment. Part of that original 2,400 acres later became a Naval Air Station at the current site of Peachtree-DeKalb Airport.”
“There was a Cross Keys post office as early as 1846, when the postmaster was James A. Reeve.” A marker at Johnson Ferry and Ashford Dunwoody Road in Brookhaven gives this history for Old Cross Keys: “Ante-bellum crossroads settlement & post office, James Reeve (1792-1852) Post Master & merchant. Prior to 1864 the Post Office was removed to a point between Chamblee and Doraville where, name unchanged it was known as Cross Keys Post Office. To distinguish the one from the other, this place was called Old Cross Keys & was cited in Federal dispatches, maps & reports of military operations here in 1864. At this point, a brief contact was made between the marching columns of Dodge’s 16th and Schofield’s 23rd A.C. July 18, both enroute to Decatur from Chattahoochee River crossings.”
“Samuel House was one of the early settlers of this area, arriving in 1830. In 1850, he built a brick home that is now part of the Peachtree Golf Club. General Sherman spent the night at the home on July 18, 1864 and described it as “a brick house well known and near old Cross Keys.” … The name Cross Keys is referenced in Civil War records. Special orders from General James McPherson on July 16, 1864 instructs “The fifteenth Army Corps, Major General John A. Logan commanding, will move out from its present position at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow on the road leading to Cross Keys, following this road to a point near Providence Church, where he will take a left hand road (sometimes called the upper Decatur road, and proceed on this until he reaches Nancy’s creek, where he will take up a good position on each side of the road and go into bivouac.”
Major General William T. Sherman also issued orders on July 18. At the 15:00 mark of this lecture, the speaker quotes a dispatch to Gen. James Birdseye McPherson. “I am at Sam House’s, a brick house well known, and near old Cross Keys … a sick negro is the only human being left on the premises … we are eleven miles from Atlanta, five from Buckhead, and the signboard says ten miles to McCaffrey’s bridge and eleven to Roswell.” Four days later, Gen. McPherson was killed, in what is now East Atlanta Village.
There is little indication about why this area was called Cross Keys. In 1827, this was the middle on nowhere. “The symbol of the “crossed keys” itself traces to early Christian representations of the “keys to the Kingdom of Heaven and Earth” famously offered by Jesus to Peter according to Matthew 16:19.” The phrase Cross Keys does not appear in the verse.
No one seems to know much about the Cross Keys restaurant. The GSU picture is dated November 8, 1951. A postcard gives the address as 237 Peachtree Street, and has the address of a CKR in Nashville. The Nashville restaurant is mentioned in a WSB-TV film from May 13, 1963. “African American students protest segregation at two restaurants in town. … a white doorman outside the Cross Keys Restaurant. African American students march on the sidewalk … where police forcefully push the demonstrators away and let white people through the crowds.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Two articles were quoted in this post: Going way back to Cross Keys. Every few years I tell story of name, ‘Cross Keys,’ so our community doesn’t forget. The second story has a comment by Mr. Bear. Several links in this story no longer work.
Gender Cultists Forget
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There’s nothing ‘homophobic’ about the word ‘homosexual’ – gender cultists forget …
@OldRoberts953 I wrote this for @spikedonline about the use of the word homosexual –
Will Iranian-Saudi détente bring Hezbollah closer to the Kingdom?
STOP USING SEPARATORS, START THIS FELDENKRAIS-STYLE TOES MOBILITY
ABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It’s Blisteringly …
Thursday Debate Breakdown: Coleman Hughes vs. Jamelle Bouie on Color-Blindness
Live from the Table: Philip Bump Debrief with Michael Moynihan, Mike Pesca Eli Lake
California Passes Law Requiring Men To Sit When They Pee
A Very Important Post About…. Laughing in the Face of Absurdity I can’t believe I ….
A Scientist Explained Why Mary Todd Lincoln’s Behavior Was So Strange
10-Minute Guided Meditation for Beginners with a Buddhist Monk – Part 1
When People Cease To Believe in God, They Do Not Believe in Nothing, But in Anything
Don’t Join the Book Burners. Don’t Think You Are Going To Conceal Faults by …
Oliver Anthony Responds to the Burning Man Drama
Andrew O’Hagan joins D. Treisman to discuss “An Actor Prepares” by Donald Antrim
68 Terms That Describe Gender Identity and Expression Medically reviewed by …
Why The Free Press Exists, in Three Stories – do Americans still want real journalism?
How redistricting trial could redraw Georgia’s political map
What Men Are For When Lone Ranger masculinity bottoms out
ABC Tried to Bury This James Baldwin Interview. Four Decades Later, It’s Blisteringly …
Debating History, Media, and Politics | Glenn Loury & John McWhorter | The Glenn Show
Former Eagle Hugh Douglas’ son killed in crash outside Atlanta
[ __ ] ~ [ __ ] ~ history in color ~ nazbol ~ lynching
aswan3 ~ alex swan ~ breath ~ breathwoek ~ diacritics
katie ~ peloton ~ sol reader ~ cop city ~ cop city
juneteenth ~ dilbert ~ congress districts ~ rico
turnip truck ~ mambo #5 ~ j 3:16 ~ a’s ~ ram dass yt
wilkie ~ heroin ~ mama dragon ~ Xaviant Haze ~ marta
glenn/john ~ n-wrod ~ [ __ ] ~ wtf ~ ta-nahesi coates
repost ~ marion stokes ~ turtle ~ turtle ~ part one
virgin suicides ~ c13 ~ Introduction to Reality ~ meher baba ~ emma loving
gravitas ~ ram dass ~ wilkie ~ turtle ~ turtle
this commentary is a bit of britishism about the eternal question, what do we call ourselves. This is the moment I felt the need to copy: “Worse still, we now have the whole LGBTQetc alphabet to contend with. Amusingly, you will sometimes see individuals described as being ‘LGBTQ+’, or even describing themselves as such, for instance, as ‘an LGBTQ+ man’. Can you be all of those things at the same time? This is a bit like describing a cow as ‘a cow-horse-chicken-window-volcano+ bovine quadruped’.” The author likes “homosexual.” With 10 letters, and either four or five syllables, homosexual is to long for casual use. The pronunciation can be clunky. Rest assured, someone will come up with a new expression, that dare not speak its name. – It keeps getting longer. I’m no seeing 2SLGTBQIA+ (2SpiritLesbian GayTrans BisexualQueer/Questioning IntersexAsexualPlus) by the time you get through saying all that it’s time to say goodbye! – Maybe we should just say “alphabets” In current vernacular, an alpha man is the macho-toxic masculinity bastard. OTOH, a beta man is the politically correct, passive bitch. Many of us have a healthy dose of both alpha and beta ~ @mwgarbett I’ve taken a brief break from twitter besides a few snarky posts and replies but I’ve been meaning to post about our area’s big 3 WTF are we doing? and it may surprise you that #1 is the new Fulton County Jail. Which, honestly, dwarfs #copcity and #MARTA in WTF? Let’s discuss. /1 ~ “there remains a considerable amount of uncertainty beyond Day 3 on the track of the storm.” ~ this one is slipping under the radar. Emory Healthcare has dropped Christmas Eve as a paid holiday. This will be offset my making Juneteenth a paid holiday. ~ Manuel Esteban Paez ~ @FaithfullyBP “According to the state of Georgia, buying $11.91 worth of glue can land you on a RICO indictment, if the glue is used to protest the police.” -@JoshuaPHilll But they won’t charge police who murdered Tortuguita—shot 57 times, unarmed, hands up. – @chamblee54 Tortuguita had a rifle, that he bought – @pixfiber Are you suggesting that justified the 54 bullets through him with his arms in the air? – @chamblee54 I am not sure about either 54 bullets or arms in the air i am a resident of Dekalb County, where the facility is located. I never heard any of those things about Turtle before. I could could look it up, but my gut sense is that it is not true. this whole thing stinks 1/2 – @pixfiber On that we agree. I read it from several sources I consider reliable, but I’d love to find out what you might discover – @chamblee54 for one thing, i seem to remember there is no body cam of the shooting. I really don’t want to look into it. this is a discouraging subject, and i have the sense that the facility is going to be built no matter what – @pixfiber My reaction is exactly opposite: brutal assassination and prosecution/persecution of citizens for exercising their rights isn’t something we can afford to look away from. Neither is authorities going ahead in spite of huge public outcry, “no matter what.” – @chamblee54 i was been following this since before it became a national story i have known about the prison farm literally all my life i know that Turtle did have a rifle in his possession – HE WAS NOT UNARMED – @pixfiber My information is different. I’d appreciate a source to follow up. It still does nothing to justify any of it. – @chamblee54 you have access to the same google i do … this might be a good time to try duckduckgo, if it has not imploded yet … hiking at the prison farm was on my to-do list for years. sadly, it is too late now … – @pixfiber You took your move to strike from “but he owned a gun” to “he was armed” and when source was requested, shifted to “look it up yourself.” I didn’t ask for advice on search engines, just a factual basis. You won’t blame me for taking your suggestion with a hefty grain of salt. ~ i am serious about one thing… while america’s problem of color persists … both racism, and the dim witted efforts to fight racism aka wokeness … the endless talk about this malady is BORING ~ while america’s problem of color persists … both racism, and the dim witted efforts to remedy racism … the endless talk about this malady is BORING ~ I googled “gsv mission statement” This is what came up: “Our mission is to create a world in which ALL people have equal access to the future and we believe that scaled innovations in the delivery of education and workforce skills are critical to achieving that end. … The ASU+GSV Summit, co-founded by Michael Moe and Deborah Quazzo, began in 2010 with a collaboration between Global Silicon Valley (GSV) and Arizona State University (ASU).” ~ @BabaRamDass Alchemy of the Heart by @davidstarfire delivers a powerful musical meditation that honors @BabaRamDass deep connection to music while also providing listeners with a tool to bypass the thinking mind & be welcomed with open arms into Soul Land. ~ @MediocreJoker85 Son: Dad, have you seen my sunglasses? Dad: No, have you seen my dad glasses? ~ This is a repost from 2017 ~ “Worse still, we now have the whole LGBTQetc alphabet to contend with. Amusingly, you will sometimes see individuals described as being ‘LGBTQ+’, or even describing themselves as such, for instance, as ‘an LGBTQ+ man’. Can you be all of those things at the same time? This is a bit like describing a cow as ‘a cow-horse-chicken-window-volcano+ bovine quadruped’.” ~ This is a repost from 2021. Glenn and John continue to do bi-weekly shows, now hosted by glennloury.substack.com. Racism continues to be a convenient distraction, with numerous advantages to unscrupulous individuals. It gets more boring every day. ~ I just got back from walking to LAF. This requires the cooperation of the weather, my left foot, my right knee, and my L5S1 disc. I am grateful ~ the suppressed history of American banking : how big banks fought Jackson, killed Lincoln, and caused the Civil War ~ villanelle dream fuck ~ have you ever noticed how the criticisms that both mainstream US political factions make about their opposition tend to be cartoonish exaggerations and whole cloth lies with little or no grounding in reality? – It’s the strangest thing. Since 2015 Democrats have been insisting that Trump’s election would spell the end of American democracy and would turn the United States into a Nazi dystopia with goose-stepping brownshirts rounding up minorities for concentration camps. On top of that they began insisting that Trump is a secret agent working for the Kremlin and that Vladimir Putin was secretly operating as the de facto president of the United States. – On the right side of the aisle it’s even more ridiculous. They’re constantly babbling about a hostile takeover of the United States by socialists and communists, as though the Democrats are anything other than the same garden variety neoliberal capitalists that Republicans are. The more extreme factions prattle on about satanic plots to legalize child molestation, turn children transgender and make everyone eat bugs, which Americans will be powerless to resist because their guns will have been confiscated and their mandatory estrogen jabs will have made them too soft and feminine to fight back. – It’s just ridiculously bogus drama queenery from both sides, but they push it anyway, day after day, year after year, each year with more sensationalist melodrama and hyperbole than the year before. They do this for a couple of reasons, the first being that if they started criticizing each other for the actual things they are actually doing, people would start to notice that there’s not much meaningful difference between the two parties in terms of actual governance. If Americans started to notice that the US government behaves more or less the same way regardless of which party is in power, the illusion of the two-party puppet show would be shattered, and empire managers would lose a crucial means of social control. – Secondly, both parties criticize each other for fictional offenses because criticizing each other for their actual offenses would draw attention to just how evil they both are in real life. The warmongering. The starvation sanctions. The ecocide. The soaring authoritarianism. Making their citizenry poorer and poorer so their donors can get richer and richer, and then destroying social safety nets and imposing crushing austerity on their poverty-ravaged populace. Facilitating a mind-controlled dystopia in which everyone is brainwashed by propaganda to align their thoughts, speech, labor, actions and votes in accordance with the will of the powerful. – The basic, mundane, ordinary status quo is a waking nightmare that should make us all scream in terror; the only reason we don’t is because we don’t notice it, and the only reason we don’t notice it is because we’re used to it. We’ve never known anything besides this abusive dystopia, so we’ve got no perspective on what a healthy society would look like and how very, very far we are from it. But if someone was transported from an alternate universe where human civilization was functioning in a healthy way, they would fall to their knees and bawl at what they saw here. – They make up fictional horrors because they don’t want you looking at the real ones. They don’t want you looking at the suffering of the homeless on the street. At the working poor flailing in endless toil unable to get their heads above water and relax for a minute. At the families in nations like Venezuela, Syria, North Korea and Iran struggling to obtain food and medicine because of imperial economic warfare. At the emaciated bodies of Yemeni children. At the shredded corpses of drone bombing victims. At the inconvenient facts behind the horrors in Ukraine. At Julian Assange languishing in a maximum security prison for the crime of good journalism. At the indoctrinated masses marching blindly to the beat of the imperial drum while being trained to believe they are free. At the biosphere we depend on for survival being poisoned and fed into the machine of global capitalism. At the nuclear holocaust dangling over our heads by an increasingly tenuous thread. – Those are the real horrors. Not the imaginary ones the politicians and propagandists train you to fixate on, but the real ones they train you to overlook. The mundane horrors. The everyday horrors. The horrors we were born into, and got used to over time. – Stop focusing on the threat of some future hypothetical dystopia and pay attention to the dystopia we’re living in right now. That’s where the real tyranny is at. And that’s what the real tyrants work continuously to prevent us from noticing. The more they can keep us shaking our fists at imaginary problems, the longer they can keep us from solving the real ones. ~ Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library ~ selah
Schmoozing My Religion
This is a repost from 2009. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library Abraham Piper sold twentytwowords to some terrible people, who ruined it.
Abraham at twentytwowords wrote… “When I asked about churches last week, some of you reminded me you’re not Christian.So…Non-Christian readers, what (non)religion are you?” That is 23 words. The original premise of twentytwowords was that all posts would be 22 words or less.
PG answered the original post “home churched”. He decided to answer the follow up question. Unlike most of the others to answer, PG wanted to keep this under 22 words.
There probably is not a religion that PG could fit into without a lot of shoehorning. Atheist is out, because PG suspects that there is a God. What form she takes is a matter of dispute. As for belief, PG questions that belief is the optimal approach to God.
Agnostic sounds like something you would blow out of your nose. Judaism is a party that PG is not invited to. Buddhism makes some good points, but PG is awfully occidental. As for Christianism, PG sees Jesus in the words and deeds of his believers … not a pretty picture.
As for the Christian obsession with life after death, PG feels pity and disgust. This is not a good focus for a religious practice, nor does it excuse verbal abuse. PG has ideas about life after death, but they are waaay over 22 words. Finally, PG decided to sum up his God-thoughts in 22 words.
1. My beliefs are my business. 2. Practice>belief. 3. God probably exists. 4. God does not write books. 5. Jesus has nothing to do with life after death. This is 24 words. Three words need to go. Part 4 states that God does not write books. This implies that God does, indeed, exist. Part 3 can be eliminated, and the answer reduced to 21 words.
Was Mae West A Man?
August 17 is birthday 130 for Mary Jane “Mae” West. Of course, she died in 1980, so the party is off. PG saw a note on facebook, and made the comment “She was rumored to be a man.” One right click google search later, this post started to take shape. This is a repost.
There is a blogspot site, maewest.blogspot.com. It is still published. Five years ago there was a post, Mae West: Penis Rumors. It seems as though Miss West liked to say, to the press, “When I die, you are going to be very surprised!”
A hollywood gossipmonger had a story, Was Mae West … A Man?! Much of her information comes from the tasteful findadeath site. The story here is that Mae West died in 1950, and the death was kept quiet. Her brother made appearances in her place, until the final death in 1980. This would have been quite a feat, considering that John Edwin West died in 1964. That doesn’t stop people from talking.
“…the real Mae West died somewhere around 1950, give or take a couple years, and rather than let the show stop, it was announced that not Mae, but her brother, died. Of course, the brother then became Mae West and carried on until November 1980. If you look carefully at photos from around 1950 on it definitely looks like a different person not to mention the big hands and masculine features, bone structure, etc. I may not have all the details 100% correct but I would almost put money on the fact that the ‘Mae West’ ‘who died in 1980 had a weenie!!”
The hands were mentioned by Raquel Welch. The two were in Myra Breckinridge, the first movie Miss West had made in 27 years. (Miss West appeared on Mister Ed in 1964.) Miss Welch appeared at a film festival in 2012, and had stories to tell.
“When I went over to say hello to her (one day) I said, ‘Hi, it’s Raquel, remember?’ She sort of extended her hand to me and I went to kiss the ring and one false fingernail painted silver fell to the floor. I looked at the hand and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m getting a vibe.’ I really think she’s a man! At this point in her life all bets are off and you’re not going to be able to doll it up that much. I would say it’s pretty accurate that she resembled a dock worker in drag.” …
“I had this beautiful dress and it was black with a big white ruffle around the neck and a black velvet hat … Apparently Mae got wind of the fact that I was wearing this exquisite dress and I went to the studio that day for our scene together. I got coiffed, got my hair done and went to the closet to get the dress and it wasn’t there. I asked my dresser what happened to the dress and she said, ‘It’s been confiscated. Mae does not want you to wear that dress. You can wear the red dress that you wore in the last scene!’ … Welch was so outraged that she stormed off the set and refused to return until the dress was back in her closet. … “For the scene, we never appeared in a two-shot together. She left after she did her lines and I had someone off-camera reading her lines and I had to pretend she was there.”
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Intellectual Bulimia
One of the touted TED talks in the weekly email is Color blind or color brave? It is by Mellody Hobson, a POC in the investment business. It is the standard call to talk more about race. Talk, talk, talk, and talk some more. The word listen is not used.
At the 3:13 mark, Mrs. Hobson makes a remarkable statement. “Now I know there are people out there who will say that the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity, right?” (Yes, this is a TED talk.) It is possible that someone has said that. There are also people who say the earth is flat.
PG asked Mr. Google about this. The top two results are about the TED talk. The third result is an article in Forbes magazine, Racism In America Is Over. It is written by John McWhorter, one of the “black guys at Bloggingheads.tv.” Dr. McWhorter does say racism is over, sort of. The problems that remain are a lot worse. Too much food for thought, for a population with intellectual bulimia.
There is a quote in the Forbes article that is pure gold. “When decrying racism opens no door and teaches no skill, it becomes a schoolroom tattletale affair. It is unworthy of all of us: “He’s just a racist” intoned like “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!””
There are a lot more results. PG is getting tired of looking. If you want to see for yourself, google “the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity.” Except for a rogue title editor at Forbes, almost nobody has said that. This is a repost. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
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