Have I mentioned that I love movies? Gosh, I sure do! With my interest right now in older movies, I spend quite a bit of time perusing the schedule for Turner Classic Movies in an effort to discover older films that I may have missed. As I wrote in an earlier post, in my younger days I didn’t like the films of Laurel and Hardy but appreciate them now, and I’m wondering what else I’ve missed. It’s fascinating to me that a movie which is fifty, sixty, seventy years old or older can be brand new to someone who’s only seeing it for the first time—even if the fashions, styles, and technology are all obviously dated.
One such film is “Sunset Boulevard” from 1950, which a friend and former co-worker turned me onto recently. I knew about the film but never really had an interest in watching it; what I fool I was! TCM showed it early during their 31 Days of Oscar programming in March, and my friend was lamenting that she was out of town the night it was running and would miss it. So I took it upon myself to record the film to my DVR with the intention of putting it onto a DVD for her. To paraphrase my friend, it’s a sharp and smart movie to say the least. Actually, I think this movie is pure genius. That a film about a down and out screenwriter (William Holden as Joe Gillis) who is treated better after he dies than when is he alive, and a disposable silent movie star (Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond) who’s all but forgotten by a Hollywood system that hasn’t necessarily changed for the better, ever got made in the first place is the $25,000 question; it doesn’t expose the dark undersides of 1950 Hollywood, but it’s not a flattering picture either. Some odd real life twists in this movie. Swanson’s butler is played by Erich von Stroheim; in one scene he’s running a movie projector as Gillis and Desmond are watching one of her silent films. The film: 1929s “Queen Kelly” starring Gloria Swanson and directed by von Stroheim--and this in a film that’s lamenting how silent movie stars had been forgotten by that time. An excellent film, right up to the end where Gloria Swanson looks straight into the camera and utters the oft misquoted line, “All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close up.” This one has quickly moved up in the ranks of my favorite films.
Lately I’ve been watching a lot of Jimmy Cagney movies. My interest in his films was kindled a few months back when I recorded “Picture Snatcher” from 1933. Cagney usually played the gangster or thug type character, and he played them well. Though many of the characters he portrayed early in his career were violent types, Cagney brought a sense of class and calm composure to these roles, almost as if these violent men understood the value of making their intended victims live in fear before the coup de grace. “Picture Snatcher” was a bit of a change, as he played an ex-con who tries to go legit after being released from prison by taking pictures for a newspaper. At one point he sneaks a camera into a prison in order to photograph an execution, something that actually occurred in 1927 when Tom Howard, a crime photographer in Chicago, secretly photographed the execution of Ruth Snyder in Sing Sing Prison.
Today for lunch my fare is chicken fried chicken (which seems repetitively redundant) and Cagney’s 1931 breakthrough film, “The Public Enemy.” Cagney had played a few roles in the two years leading up to this one, but “Enemy” was the one that put him on the map. Originally, co-star Edward Woods (no relation to the legendary B-movie director Ed Wood) was cast to play the lead role of Tom Powers that Cagney would go on to play. In the film Cagney and Woods play two childhood buddies who go from being juvenile delinquents to big-time players in the bootleg beer business during Prohibition. Most people are somewhat familiar with this movie—the scene where Cagney shoves a grapefruit into Mae Clarke’s face appears in this film. There are two scenes I find humorous in this movie. First, during the opening credits, there was a time when instead of listing a cast of characters movies would open up with the actors themselves appearing with the name of the character they played next to or underneath their image. When Cagney makes his appearance in the credits, he grins at the camera and makes a punch-like motion with his right hand. I’m sure in 1931 everyone interpreted it as him throwing an imaginary punch; to me it looks like a vaguely obscene and suggestive hand gesture. But as my friends would be quick to point out, I’m a little “off” anyway. The other scene comes about twenty minutes into the film when Cagney and Woods, flush with money after their first real successful heist, are being fitted for new suits. The tailor taking measurements is quite fey, grabbing Cagney’s upperarm and stating, “Oh, what a muscle!” I’m surprised that character even made it into the final cut as production codes at the time prohibited effeminate male characters. By way of degrees of separation, Robert O’Conner, who plays the Irish bootlegger Paddy Ryan, also appears in the aforementioned “Sunset Boulevard” as Jonesy, the older guard at the Paramount gate, which was his last film role.
Another Cagney movie I’ve enjoyed watching lately is “White Heat.” It was made in 1949 and was Cagney’s first gangster role in a decade. He made eleven movies during that ten year period, “Yankee Doodle Dandy” being perhaps the most memorable of those. The script for “White Heat” is supposedly based on Ma Barker and her criminal family. Cagney plays a gangster with a mother complex who takes the rap for a crime to protect his mother and the location of a large amount of stolen money. While in prison a mole planted there by the police tried to befriend him in an attempt to find out where the money is. The two of them break out of prison and Cagney hooks up with his old gang in order to steal the payroll at a chemical company. Cagney finds out his friend is a police detective in the middle of the robbery, by which time the place is crawling with “coppers.” He escapes the payroll office and finds his way to the top of a chemical tank, where police, obviously not concerned with setting off a huge explosion, open fire on him. As the flames caused by broken chemical lines surround him, he looks up and yells, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” about the time the chemical tank explodes. The film is almost fifty-six years old but it still holds up well after all this time. An excellent script, and the storyline moves along very well. And I can’t wait to get home this afternoon as I set my DVR to record two more movies of his this afternoon: “Angels with Dirty Faces” and “The Roaring Twenties.”
On a journey to the heart of darkness and futility.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Bragging rights
In a change of pace, I’m high fiving myself this morning. Normally I don’t do such things in an attempt to keep my ego in check. It’s not that an ego is a bad thing; it is what drives you and make you want to do your best. It becomes a problem when it starts imposing itself on or interfering with others. So I try to keep myself on a steady keel, proud of the things I’ve accomplished so far in life but maintaining a “So, what have you done lately?” perspective on things. Braggadocio and/or trash talking just aren’t my style.
In a few days will be my second wedding anniversary, though we’ve known each other for almost twenty years and had lived in sin for nearly five years in a de-facto marriage by the time we got around to formalizing it. It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years already; the time has really blown by. We just helped some very good friends of ours celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary this past weekend. For me it’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since I was a part of their wedding; it feels like it was just a few months ago!
I’m a bit of a traditionalist by nature. So as our second wedding anniversary approached, I began checking into what gifts are customarily given for the second anniversary. As it turns out, cotton and china are the traditional gifts. Some of the ideas that I found online for cotton included tablecloths, monogrammed towels, placemats, none of which sounded like creative ideas for a present. Actually, some of the ideas were just horrible. They say it’s the thought that counts, but I wanted to avoid falling into the same gift-giving pit my father often found himself in. My dad had an innate knack for finding the perfect inappropriate gift; his personal favorite was the dreaded toaster oven. I didn’t want to find myself in that mine field as the prospect of sleeping on the couch is not an appealing one.
With cotton striking out I began looking at my options for china as an anniversary gift. When my wife and I were making wedding plans a couple of years ago, we had picked out a china pattern for our wedding. We were both older than the norm for being first-time nuptial exchangers, with both fathers already having passed away, and handling almost all the wedding planning and expenses on our own. It’s not as though our surviving parents would not have helped us with expenses if we had asked, but there comes a point in your life where you just don’t go to your parents asking for money. Even though we had found a china pattern that we both really, really liked, the money was not there to purchase it. One of my wife’s co-workers, though, gave us a “starter plate” as a wedding gift; it may not sound like much, but the price of just that one plate would make most folks scoff at the idea of paying the cost just for a single plate.
Which brings me to yesterday. With just a few days to go before the anniversary I used my lunch hour to hunt for a set of china that I had found online. Normally I avoid going to the mall, but my quest for a set of china took me there. The first store I went to had the set I was looking for, but it was only a three setting set. I’m no expert in place settings but I knew three would not be enough. They had another set with a pattern that I liked, but they didn’t have at least the five settings I was looking for. The saleslady was very helpful and said they could order it, but it would be five to seven days before they received it. The ramifications of being late with an anniversary present were very clear to me; a night on the couch loomed in my future and suddenly that toaster oven was looking like an acceptable fall-back option.
The saleslady suggested checking out another store in the mall for the china pattern they didn’t have, which turned out to be a good call. I found the china section very easily in the second store, and the pattern I had spotted at the first store was also available here and at the same price. With no salesperson immediately available to help me, I began looking at other sets that were on display. A blue willow wood set caught my eye, as my grandparents had a very similar set when I was growing up and often ate dinner at their house on that set. But it was a fifty-piece set of china with a pastel colored floral pattern, a light blue border trim, and platinum edging that caught my eye. It was Noritake’s Rothchild pattern and no matter how many other china sets I looked at, I kept coming back to them. There was something about them that I really liked but couldn’t put my finger on it, but I was soon to find out why. Few decisions in my life were as clear as this one was.
I loaded the box into my van and headed back to work. Given the size of the box, it would have been difficult to sneak into the house much less wrap it up without raising suspicions. So the better angels of my nature decided that I would give my wife her gift a few days early, me not being clever enough to find a way to bring a sizable box of china into the house without being detected but smart enough to know better than to leave it in my van.
My wife beat me home from work, as usual, last evening. She had been in a panic because she thought she lost her cell phone at work. Turns out it had fallen out of her belt clip in our daughter’s bed that morning when she was dressing the child. With her spirits suddenly raised, it was clear the time was right to present her with the china set. I asked her to follow me out to my van, where, after apologizing for not coming up with a more creative way to give the present to her, I opened the side door to reveal the box of china. From her reaction I knew I had chosen wisely. We took the box inside to check out its contents, make sure nothing was broken, and to get an up close look at the pattern. It was then that my wife also noticed something familiar in the pattern, and she went down the hall to retrieve the single “starter plate” we had received two years before. Returning to the living room she held the starter plate up to me; it was the exact same pattern as the set I had just given her. I had unknowingly selected the wedding china we so very much wanted two years earlier. What are the odds of that? Perhaps it was meant to be; had the first store I had gone to had the number of settings in the pattern I liked there I would’ve gotten that set. But they didn’t. And now I’ve given my wife an eight setting set of the wedding china we wanted as an anniversary present, and I couldn’t be any more pleased as to how things worked out--not to mention our daughter wants to use the new china for a tea party.
In a few days will be my second wedding anniversary, though we’ve known each other for almost twenty years and had lived in sin for nearly five years in a de-facto marriage by the time we got around to formalizing it. It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years already; the time has really blown by. We just helped some very good friends of ours celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary this past weekend. For me it’s hard to believe it’s been a decade since I was a part of their wedding; it feels like it was just a few months ago!
I’m a bit of a traditionalist by nature. So as our second wedding anniversary approached, I began checking into what gifts are customarily given for the second anniversary. As it turns out, cotton and china are the traditional gifts. Some of the ideas that I found online for cotton included tablecloths, monogrammed towels, placemats, none of which sounded like creative ideas for a present. Actually, some of the ideas were just horrible. They say it’s the thought that counts, but I wanted to avoid falling into the same gift-giving pit my father often found himself in. My dad had an innate knack for finding the perfect inappropriate gift; his personal favorite was the dreaded toaster oven. I didn’t want to find myself in that mine field as the prospect of sleeping on the couch is not an appealing one.
With cotton striking out I began looking at my options for china as an anniversary gift. When my wife and I were making wedding plans a couple of years ago, we had picked out a china pattern for our wedding. We were both older than the norm for being first-time nuptial exchangers, with both fathers already having passed away, and handling almost all the wedding planning and expenses on our own. It’s not as though our surviving parents would not have helped us with expenses if we had asked, but there comes a point in your life where you just don’t go to your parents asking for money. Even though we had found a china pattern that we both really, really liked, the money was not there to purchase it. One of my wife’s co-workers, though, gave us a “starter plate” as a wedding gift; it may not sound like much, but the price of just that one plate would make most folks scoff at the idea of paying the cost just for a single plate.
Which brings me to yesterday. With just a few days to go before the anniversary I used my lunch hour to hunt for a set of china that I had found online. Normally I avoid going to the mall, but my quest for a set of china took me there. The first store I went to had the set I was looking for, but it was only a three setting set. I’m no expert in place settings but I knew three would not be enough. They had another set with a pattern that I liked, but they didn’t have at least the five settings I was looking for. The saleslady was very helpful and said they could order it, but it would be five to seven days before they received it. The ramifications of being late with an anniversary present were very clear to me; a night on the couch loomed in my future and suddenly that toaster oven was looking like an acceptable fall-back option.
The saleslady suggested checking out another store in the mall for the china pattern they didn’t have, which turned out to be a good call. I found the china section very easily in the second store, and the pattern I had spotted at the first store was also available here and at the same price. With no salesperson immediately available to help me, I began looking at other sets that were on display. A blue willow wood set caught my eye, as my grandparents had a very similar set when I was growing up and often ate dinner at their house on that set. But it was a fifty-piece set of china with a pastel colored floral pattern, a light blue border trim, and platinum edging that caught my eye. It was Noritake’s Rothchild pattern and no matter how many other china sets I looked at, I kept coming back to them. There was something about them that I really liked but couldn’t put my finger on it, but I was soon to find out why. Few decisions in my life were as clear as this one was.
I loaded the box into my van and headed back to work. Given the size of the box, it would have been difficult to sneak into the house much less wrap it up without raising suspicions. So the better angels of my nature decided that I would give my wife her gift a few days early, me not being clever enough to find a way to bring a sizable box of china into the house without being detected but smart enough to know better than to leave it in my van.
My wife beat me home from work, as usual, last evening. She had been in a panic because she thought she lost her cell phone at work. Turns out it had fallen out of her belt clip in our daughter’s bed that morning when she was dressing the child. With her spirits suddenly raised, it was clear the time was right to present her with the china set. I asked her to follow me out to my van, where, after apologizing for not coming up with a more creative way to give the present to her, I opened the side door to reveal the box of china. From her reaction I knew I had chosen wisely. We took the box inside to check out its contents, make sure nothing was broken, and to get an up close look at the pattern. It was then that my wife also noticed something familiar in the pattern, and she went down the hall to retrieve the single “starter plate” we had received two years before. Returning to the living room she held the starter plate up to me; it was the exact same pattern as the set I had just given her. I had unknowingly selected the wedding china we so very much wanted two years earlier. What are the odds of that? Perhaps it was meant to be; had the first store I had gone to had the number of settings in the pattern I liked there I would’ve gotten that set. But they didn’t. And now I’ve given my wife an eight setting set of the wedding china we wanted as an anniversary present, and I couldn’t be any more pleased as to how things worked out--not to mention our daughter wants to use the new china for a tea party.
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Idiots Deluxe
I live in a college town, and for a college town, there sure are a lot of stupid people living here. Now, this isn’t going to turn into a rant against students and the poor choices they sometimes make. To be honest, students are a double-edged sword—they bring a lot with them, and add to, the town, but on occasion they don’t make the best of neighbors or local residents. If I didn’t like this town and gown arrangement, I could’ve moved away many years ago. But you can’t fault students entirely for the bad choices they make or their lack of driving skills. After all, part of the reason they’re here is to attend the university in an attempt to turn water into minds. For many, their time here is their first real taste of independence from their family. Making bad choices should be part of the learning experience as well.
Today, the stupidity comes from the university itself. The institution has been engaged in a five-year capital fundraising campaign in an effort to raise $500 million, a modest sum compared to other schools, such as Vanderbilt, Duke University, and the University of Pittsburgh, who have set their sights on $1 billion or more. Our school now finds itself in year three of its five-year mission, seeking out new worlds and new civilizations, to boldly beg for money where no man has begged before. And our prime directive to date has yielded only sixty percent of the total amount the university would like to raise. Clearly, the alumni have not ponied up like it was thought they would.
So what does a school do when the alumni give you the brush off? Turn to the faculty and staff instead! That’s right, today kicks off the faculty and staff phase of their capital campaign, which I think is a gutsy move to make and very timely too, as I watched Titanic last night for the first time in quite a while and there are many comparisons between the two. Like the ship, the capital campaign’s stern is rising into the air and the faculty and staff will now play the role of the lifeboats.
This is a gutsy move on the university’s part because of salary issues on campus. Your relative importance to day-to-day operations is inversely related to your salary. Those who keep the campus going and looking nice get paid squat, at or just above the poverty line; and to be paid at that rate in the South means you’re not making that much money to begin with. Those on campus who could disappear like Judge Crater with no impact on the campus’ daily functions are the ones making the nice six-figure incomes. Then there are those of us who are crammed in the middle, not doing too badly salary-wise but squeezed by perpetual increases in insurance premiums, pathetic annual raises, losing four percent of our gross salary off the top to pay into a retirement system, and paying to park where we work (can you believe that nonsense?). This place is the only employer I’ve worked for where you can get a raise and end up in worse shape financially.
To solicit money from the faculty and staff is a novel idea, but perhaps it would’ve been better to enact such an effort from the beginning, not halfway through when it looks like you’re turning to your B-list for funds with just a hint of controlled desperation. Besides, asking for money from people who are living at the poverty line or dealing with two percent salary increases being coupled with ten percent insurance premium increases, is a recipe for failure. And as an alumnus of this university, I’d have to say thanks for the ulcers and all the hassles with my financial aid, but my time here wasn’t important enough to give you any more free money.
Today, the stupidity comes from the university itself. The institution has been engaged in a five-year capital fundraising campaign in an effort to raise $500 million, a modest sum compared to other schools, such as Vanderbilt, Duke University, and the University of Pittsburgh, who have set their sights on $1 billion or more. Our school now finds itself in year three of its five-year mission, seeking out new worlds and new civilizations, to boldly beg for money where no man has begged before. And our prime directive to date has yielded only sixty percent of the total amount the university would like to raise. Clearly, the alumni have not ponied up like it was thought they would.
So what does a school do when the alumni give you the brush off? Turn to the faculty and staff instead! That’s right, today kicks off the faculty and staff phase of their capital campaign, which I think is a gutsy move to make and very timely too, as I watched Titanic last night for the first time in quite a while and there are many comparisons between the two. Like the ship, the capital campaign’s stern is rising into the air and the faculty and staff will now play the role of the lifeboats.
This is a gutsy move on the university’s part because of salary issues on campus. Your relative importance to day-to-day operations is inversely related to your salary. Those who keep the campus going and looking nice get paid squat, at or just above the poverty line; and to be paid at that rate in the South means you’re not making that much money to begin with. Those on campus who could disappear like Judge Crater with no impact on the campus’ daily functions are the ones making the nice six-figure incomes. Then there are those of us who are crammed in the middle, not doing too badly salary-wise but squeezed by perpetual increases in insurance premiums, pathetic annual raises, losing four percent of our gross salary off the top to pay into a retirement system, and paying to park where we work (can you believe that nonsense?). This place is the only employer I’ve worked for where you can get a raise and end up in worse shape financially.
To solicit money from the faculty and staff is a novel idea, but perhaps it would’ve been better to enact such an effort from the beginning, not halfway through when it looks like you’re turning to your B-list for funds with just a hint of controlled desperation. Besides, asking for money from people who are living at the poverty line or dealing with two percent salary increases being coupled with ten percent insurance premium increases, is a recipe for failure. And as an alumnus of this university, I’d have to say thanks for the ulcers and all the hassles with my financial aid, but my time here wasn’t important enough to give you any more free money.
Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Out and About
Did a little traveling recently; it was just a short trip to Macon in central Georgia. By coincidence, as I was getting some things ready for the trip I threw in one of the discs from my Simpsons Season Seven boxset into my DVD player and ended up watching the episode where Bart gets a fake drivers’ license and rents a car. They opt on visiting the World’s Fair in Knoxville, which ended some twelve or thirteen years prior, but when they’re discussing beforehand where to go, Nelson the bully says, “I always wanted to visit Macon, Georgia!” Synchronicity, or did I subconsciously play that particular episode?
The trip itself was to attend a regional meeting of a student organization I’ve been affiliated with for the past fourteen years since my technical college days. Fortunately it rained on Saturday. Yes, I said fortunately. The inclement weather forced a change of plans and a tour of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame was the new order of the day. While browsing the displays for the blues, big band, and swing musicians, I happened to discover that the bandleader/trumpeter Harry James was from Albany, Georgia. “Harry James is from Georgia?!?,” I asked to nobody in particular. “Why didn’t I know that??” My apparent lack of knowledge lowered my self-esteem as a musician. I had been on the hunt for Harry James recordings for months with no success. Had it not rained I would have never have found Harry James CDs in the Hall’s gift shop. When I mentioned to the lady behind the counter how much trouble I had finding any of his music, she mentioned that the Hall has the same problem; their distributor occasionally can get their hands on them, but the usual state of affairs are that his CDs constantly on backorder. In hindsight I should’ve done a more thorough search of their CD offerings to see if there was anything else there that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere.
I can’t say that I’m a well-traveled person outside the state of Georgia, even though I’ve spent at least some time in a majority of the states east of the Mississippi. But it occurred to me on this most recent trip that I’ve traveled to and explored almost every part of the state of Georgia. History is a subject that I love, and much of Georgia’s history and heritage is rural and agrarian. And much of that heritage is out in the open on almost any given country road in the state—that is if you’re able to recognize it. Abandoned and ramshackle homes and sharecropper shacks, some better than one hundred fifty years old, dot the Georgia landscape; what I thought of as junk as a child I now see as an antiquing opportunity. As silly as it sounds, I would love to take a few weeks off and travel around the state, photographically documenting sights as I went—sort of a modern day Jack Delano. By way of explanation, Delano was a photographer for the Farm Security Administration during the 1930s. He documented images of daily life and buildings in the state of Georgia and elsewhere in America. His photographs, like some of these on this web page, depicting the ravages of the Great Depression brought its impact to the doorstep of every American at the time, and still serve to remind us of those harsh times.
There are many places in the state that I never tire of visiting. Conversely, there are some locales that are not worth the effort, such as Atlanta, where most of its history can be found buried under feet of concrete and asphalt and where you can drive ninety miles per hour on the interstates and still be passed like you’re standing still. No thanks! It’s too bad that people think Georgia is Atlanta and Atlanta is Georgia, because as cities go, the ATL is a POS. There are plenty of much nicer places to see than metro Atlanta. For example, most of the coast of Georgia is worth traveling to, especially the barrier islands.
One of my first trips to the coast was to Jekyll Island, and I fell in love with the place the instant I arrived. It was really the first time I had experienced the jungle-like landscape you find on the island. Jekyll is also one large state park, and Georgia, much to its credit, has limited development to a total of one-third of the island. Worth seeing are the buildings that comprise the Jekyll Island Club, established in the 1880s by wealthy northern industrialists and bankers as a haven to escape the harsh northern winters. For nearly sixty years people such as the Carnegies and Rockefellers vacationed (and cut business deals) on Jekyll until World War II brought an end to the club. Many of the cottages they built (which are more accurately described as mansions) are still standing; the clubhouse itself is in operation as a hotel which I would love to stay at but it’s just too damned expensive. The Holiday Inn on the southern part of the island is nice, being built in amongst the palm trees and other native flora; it lends a nice native touch to the place.
Cumberland Island, down near the Georgia-Florida border, is a federally protected national seashore. With there being only minimal development on the island, you can get a very good idea of how it looked when the earliest settlers arrived in the area many centuries ago. Following my first trip to Jekyll I returned home and searched out books on other locations along the coast that I could explore. It was eleven years from the time I put Cumberland on my “to-do” list until the time I finally set foot on the island, and it was worth every moment of waiting. Huge oak trees draped in Spanish moss (which is not really a moss), wild horses, a thick undergrowth of plants and flora just a few feet off the park service roads…the whole place is absolutely beautiful. When my wife and I were there a few years ago, we hiked most of the day and only saw a handful of people during our time on the island. They only allow a limited number of people on the island per day, so it’s best to make reservations with the National Park Service beforehand. Now that I’ve seen Cumberland, Sapelo Island is now on my “to-do” list. And I can guarantee you that it won’t be eleven more years before I go back to Cumberland.
Savannah is Georgia’s oldest and perhaps most beautiful city, and was the first planned city in America. The square & tything layout used by James Oglethorpe in 1733 is still very much present in the downtown area and is said to have been the model upon which Washington, D.C. was based. Though many of the structures in the downtown area date from the nineteenth century there are some that date back to the eighteenth century, though fire and time have caused those to dwindle in number. There are a number of squares throughout the downtown area and they are a sight to behold. Large oak trees draped in Spanish moss are wonderful to experience, and the benches that can be found in most of the squares allow folks to sit and stay for a while. Perhaps two of the more “famous” squares are Chippewa and Monterey Squares. Chippewa was the location in the movie “Forrest Gump” where Tom Hanks sits on the bench and tells his story for most of the movie. There are no benches located on the outside of the squares, as depicted in the movie; rather, the bench he’s sitting on was fiberglass and installed by the movie crew. The bench itself can be found in the Savannah History Museum. Monterey Square is the location of the Mercer House, made famous by the murder that occurred there and the subject of John Berendt’s book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” I knew the Mercer House had been a private residence, but I was surprised to find that the house is now open to the public. That’s certainly on my agenda the next time I visit the city. The bird girl statue featured on the cover of “the book” was moved about a decade ago from its original home in Bonaventure Cemetery (another beautiful locale worth setting aside a few hours to explore) to the Telfair Museum of Art.
There are plenty of other places in Georgia worth seeing. The city of Madison, with its main street lined with stately, nineteenth century homes, is someplace I almost always make sure I detour through on my way to south or central Georgia if I can. The story goes that during his march through the state, Union General William T. Sherman spared the town from the torch because it was so pretty. And I would like to thank him for his wise decision. The mountains of North Georgia are always worth traveling to, especially during the spring and fall. There are an abundance of hiking trails to be found, and by estimate I’ve only hiked a third of them. It's a little depressing to think of how many hours and miles I've hiked in the mountains and to find out I've only covered a third of them! Oh well, that means there are two-thirds of the trails left for me to explore. The Raven Cliff Falls trail is one of my favorites; the 2.5 mile trail is a popular day hike destination, and I usually try to get there about ten o’clock in the morning, hike the trail to the end, make the short climb up the side of the cliff’s rock face, eat lunch on top of the falls, and then hike back out. So what am I doing here?!?! Thinking about all these interesting places to visit makes me want to call in to the office as being too well to work!
The trip itself was to attend a regional meeting of a student organization I’ve been affiliated with for the past fourteen years since my technical college days. Fortunately it rained on Saturday. Yes, I said fortunately. The inclement weather forced a change of plans and a tour of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame was the new order of the day. While browsing the displays for the blues, big band, and swing musicians, I happened to discover that the bandleader/trumpeter Harry James was from Albany, Georgia. “Harry James is from Georgia?!?,” I asked to nobody in particular. “Why didn’t I know that??” My apparent lack of knowledge lowered my self-esteem as a musician. I had been on the hunt for Harry James recordings for months with no success. Had it not rained I would have never have found Harry James CDs in the Hall’s gift shop. When I mentioned to the lady behind the counter how much trouble I had finding any of his music, she mentioned that the Hall has the same problem; their distributor occasionally can get their hands on them, but the usual state of affairs are that his CDs constantly on backorder. In hindsight I should’ve done a more thorough search of their CD offerings to see if there was anything else there that I haven’t been able to find elsewhere.
I can’t say that I’m a well-traveled person outside the state of Georgia, even though I’ve spent at least some time in a majority of the states east of the Mississippi. But it occurred to me on this most recent trip that I’ve traveled to and explored almost every part of the state of Georgia. History is a subject that I love, and much of Georgia’s history and heritage is rural and agrarian. And much of that heritage is out in the open on almost any given country road in the state—that is if you’re able to recognize it. Abandoned and ramshackle homes and sharecropper shacks, some better than one hundred fifty years old, dot the Georgia landscape; what I thought of as junk as a child I now see as an antiquing opportunity. As silly as it sounds, I would love to take a few weeks off and travel around the state, photographically documenting sights as I went—sort of a modern day Jack Delano. By way of explanation, Delano was a photographer for the Farm Security Administration during the 1930s. He documented images of daily life and buildings in the state of Georgia and elsewhere in America. His photographs, like some of these on this web page, depicting the ravages of the Great Depression brought its impact to the doorstep of every American at the time, and still serve to remind us of those harsh times.
There are many places in the state that I never tire of visiting. Conversely, there are some locales that are not worth the effort, such as Atlanta, where most of its history can be found buried under feet of concrete and asphalt and where you can drive ninety miles per hour on the interstates and still be passed like you’re standing still. No thanks! It’s too bad that people think Georgia is Atlanta and Atlanta is Georgia, because as cities go, the ATL is a POS. There are plenty of much nicer places to see than metro Atlanta. For example, most of the coast of Georgia is worth traveling to, especially the barrier islands.
One of my first trips to the coast was to Jekyll Island, and I fell in love with the place the instant I arrived. It was really the first time I had experienced the jungle-like landscape you find on the island. Jekyll is also one large state park, and Georgia, much to its credit, has limited development to a total of one-third of the island. Worth seeing are the buildings that comprise the Jekyll Island Club, established in the 1880s by wealthy northern industrialists and bankers as a haven to escape the harsh northern winters. For nearly sixty years people such as the Carnegies and Rockefellers vacationed (and cut business deals) on Jekyll until World War II brought an end to the club. Many of the cottages they built (which are more accurately described as mansions) are still standing; the clubhouse itself is in operation as a hotel which I would love to stay at but it’s just too damned expensive. The Holiday Inn on the southern part of the island is nice, being built in amongst the palm trees and other native flora; it lends a nice native touch to the place.
Cumberland Island, down near the Georgia-Florida border, is a federally protected national seashore. With there being only minimal development on the island, you can get a very good idea of how it looked when the earliest settlers arrived in the area many centuries ago. Following my first trip to Jekyll I returned home and searched out books on other locations along the coast that I could explore. It was eleven years from the time I put Cumberland on my “to-do” list until the time I finally set foot on the island, and it was worth every moment of waiting. Huge oak trees draped in Spanish moss (which is not really a moss), wild horses, a thick undergrowth of plants and flora just a few feet off the park service roads…the whole place is absolutely beautiful. When my wife and I were there a few years ago, we hiked most of the day and only saw a handful of people during our time on the island. They only allow a limited number of people on the island per day, so it’s best to make reservations with the National Park Service beforehand. Now that I’ve seen Cumberland, Sapelo Island is now on my “to-do” list. And I can guarantee you that it won’t be eleven more years before I go back to Cumberland.
Savannah is Georgia’s oldest and perhaps most beautiful city, and was the first planned city in America. The square & tything layout used by James Oglethorpe in 1733 is still very much present in the downtown area and is said to have been the model upon which Washington, D.C. was based. Though many of the structures in the downtown area date from the nineteenth century there are some that date back to the eighteenth century, though fire and time have caused those to dwindle in number. There are a number of squares throughout the downtown area and they are a sight to behold. Large oak trees draped in Spanish moss are wonderful to experience, and the benches that can be found in most of the squares allow folks to sit and stay for a while. Perhaps two of the more “famous” squares are Chippewa and Monterey Squares. Chippewa was the location in the movie “Forrest Gump” where Tom Hanks sits on the bench and tells his story for most of the movie. There are no benches located on the outside of the squares, as depicted in the movie; rather, the bench he’s sitting on was fiberglass and installed by the movie crew. The bench itself can be found in the Savannah History Museum. Monterey Square is the location of the Mercer House, made famous by the murder that occurred there and the subject of John Berendt’s book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” I knew the Mercer House had been a private residence, but I was surprised to find that the house is now open to the public. That’s certainly on my agenda the next time I visit the city. The bird girl statue featured on the cover of “the book” was moved about a decade ago from its original home in Bonaventure Cemetery (another beautiful locale worth setting aside a few hours to explore) to the Telfair Museum of Art.
There are plenty of other places in Georgia worth seeing. The city of Madison, with its main street lined with stately, nineteenth century homes, is someplace I almost always make sure I detour through on my way to south or central Georgia if I can. The story goes that during his march through the state, Union General William T. Sherman spared the town from the torch because it was so pretty. And I would like to thank him for his wise decision. The mountains of North Georgia are always worth traveling to, especially during the spring and fall. There are an abundance of hiking trails to be found, and by estimate I’ve only hiked a third of them. It's a little depressing to think of how many hours and miles I've hiked in the mountains and to find out I've only covered a third of them! Oh well, that means there are two-thirds of the trails left for me to explore. The Raven Cliff Falls trail is one of my favorites; the 2.5 mile trail is a popular day hike destination, and I usually try to get there about ten o’clock in the morning, hike the trail to the end, make the short climb up the side of the cliff’s rock face, eat lunch on top of the falls, and then hike back out. So what am I doing here?!?! Thinking about all these interesting places to visit makes me want to call in to the office as being too well to work!
Monday, March 06, 2006
It's a WHAT?!?!
Some filler while I work on some new stuff for the three of you who actually read this nonsense. Today's feature is a little jewel from the Prelinger Archives, an early 1960s commercial for a really stupid idea for a toy--a hat with an arm on top with streamers that kids were supposed to swing around their head. As one reviewer on the site states: "Whiplash a Go-Go!" Looks like the kids in the commercial are having seizures. Just a bit of warning: I first saw this a couple of years ago and still can't get the damned music out of my head. Enjoy!http://www.archive.org/details/swing_wing
Friday, March 03, 2006
Off on a rant
I really didn't want to inject anything political into my blog. I'm a self-professed progressive/liberal, but more of a moderate than at the extreme; the occasional email messages from my more conservative friends degrading/demeaning Democrats don't really phase me at all. I know where I stand and am secure with my beliefs, but I'm also open to other interpretations of politics and opinions. It's not below me to vote for a Republican if I feel they're the better qualified candidate.
Today a friend of mine forwarded to me a news story that Congress will soon ask for yet another raise in the nation's debt ceiling, this time to $9 trillion. That would make the fourth such increase in the past fives years. This is tantamount to someone asking their credit card company to increase their spending limit because they'd rather have that than actually trying to control their spending and stick to a budget. It makes me very angry that the future of the nation is being mortgaged away by those in power. To give you some idea of how much money that is, the median income in the U.S. per the 2003 census was $65,093. It would take you 13,826 years at that payrate to earn $9 trillion. But I guess that when you elect as president a half-wit asshat who has run every business he's been affiliated with into the ground, you should expect his bad fortune to become your bad fortune. I made this analogy to a friend of mine, and I'll repeat it here: The U.S. has become some down-on-his-luck Vegas gambler hoping that his luck will change and he'll hit the jackpot and pay off all his gambling debts. Instead, he just digs himself deeper into debt. It's just a matter of time before the Chinese (who own most of our debt) come and break our kneecaps.
I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore! Sorry, I'll stop ranting now and get back to writing tales.
Today a friend of mine forwarded to me a news story that Congress will soon ask for yet another raise in the nation's debt ceiling, this time to $9 trillion. That would make the fourth such increase in the past fives years. This is tantamount to someone asking their credit card company to increase their spending limit because they'd rather have that than actually trying to control their spending and stick to a budget. It makes me very angry that the future of the nation is being mortgaged away by those in power. To give you some idea of how much money that is, the median income in the U.S. per the 2003 census was $65,093. It would take you 13,826 years at that payrate to earn $9 trillion. But I guess that when you elect as president a half-wit asshat who has run every business he's been affiliated with into the ground, you should expect his bad fortune to become your bad fortune. I made this analogy to a friend of mine, and I'll repeat it here: The U.S. has become some down-on-his-luck Vegas gambler hoping that his luck will change and he'll hit the jackpot and pay off all his gambling debts. Instead, he just digs himself deeper into debt. It's just a matter of time before the Chinese (who own most of our debt) come and break our kneecaps.
I'm mad as hell and not going to take it anymore! Sorry, I'll stop ranting now and get back to writing tales.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
That's sooooo trendy
I’m not much into pop culture. In fact, I’d have to say I’m a bit contemptuous of pop culture. Recently I subjected myself to an episode of Entertainment Tonight, and after watching thirty minutes of that insipid crap, I concluded that a more appropriate title for the show should be Lobotomy Tonight. Honestly, who cares if Brad and Angelina take their adopted child out on the streets of
That’s not to say that I’ve always thought that way when it comes to pop culture. In my younger, more impressionable days, Nike shoes were all the rage and my brother and I wanted nothing more than a pair of shoes with the identifiable swoosh down the sides. Our family was not rich, by any means, but my brother and I eventually got our Nikes, our solution for acquiring the shoes being rather unique and a tale best left unspoken.
These days MP3 players seem to be all the rage. I love music and all, but for the longest time I just couldn’t see me shelling out the money Apple wanted for their popular iPods, especially after reading horror stories of iPod batteries (which are not replaceable by the consumer) failing after only a year’s worth of use. So, as I did with DVD recorders, I decided to wait assuming that the popularity of the iPod would result in other companies putting their own MP3 players on the market and drive down prices. This is a rare instance where I guessed correctly.
Eventually I shelled out hard earned money for a 512 megabyte player, which has worked out well so far. True, MP3 players are trendy, but they’re portable and I can listen to music just about anywhere. Some people call that rationalizing; I call it a good excuse. It does everything I need it to: play MP3 files, listen to radio stations, and it can be used as a jump drive as well. And 512 megabytes will allow me to load about one hundred songs on the device, which is more than I can listen to in the course of a week. One of the things in the back of my mind when I bought the player was my car, which has a radio/cassette player installed (how 1980s!). Rather than fumbling with tapes or hooking up my clunky CD player, all I have to do is connect the player up to the cassette adapter and voila! One hundred songs ready at my disposal.
My player gets most of its use when I walk to and from my car at work. The university I work for seems to conveniently place most of its parking at least a quarter mile from the nearest building. All of my hiking guides to
Currently my player is loaded up with an odd combination of music. Those who know me might be surprised to know that only half of the music I’ve loaded is rock music. The remainder of the tunes are either Celtic inspired, Zydeco, or Big Band and Swing tunes. It's an odd combination, I know, and I always fear that I'll lose my player and someone will find it, see the assortment of music that's on there, and will experience some kind of psychological trauma. True, there are mornings when heavier music is required (usually those are Mondays), but on a sunny, spring morning there are few things better than gliding across campus while listening to Glenn Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade.” The Andrews Sisters’ music is also effective in getting me in a decent frame of mind for work. On a side note, I think I’ve found Patti Andrews’ phone number online. I’d love to call her and tell her how much I like her music, but that’s tempered by lack of desire to interrupt her privacy. Just about every morning I pass someone else who has their earbuds installed as they listen to their players as well. While I don’t think I’m the only person who has big band music playing in their ears, it’s probable that I’m definitely in the minority. But what else is new?
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