Where's the beef?

I stopped by a favorite fast food chain to try their Salad 2.0 the other day. As I waited behind another car, I heard a loud voice from the customer at the drive-up window. Interested in what was happening, I turned down my Itunes just in time to hear the guy in front of me turn down his radio, and I had a pretty clear sound. I was stunned when the guy let loose with a ten-letter curse word.

An elementary school graduate I thought to myself! The conversation (probably very one-sided continued), but then the car with the angry guy pulled away and the car that turned down its radio to hear pulled forward. As he received his food I pondered what could make the first guy that angry. The only conclusion I could come to was they must be out of his favorite salad dressing!

As radio man pulled out from the drive-up window in record time I noticed angry car had circled in an attempt to further express his dissatisfaction with the level of service gotten from a minimum wage employee. Letting loose with an uncharacteristic 12-letter curse (eighth grade) the car sped off as I received my order, again in an uncharacteristically short time.

What could make the guy that mad at a hamburger place? No ketchup? Maybe he had ordered a burger with no pickles, but there were pickles on it. I just can't imagine what could happen that would make somebody that mad.

Southern Rock

Fifteen years ago I wrote an article on Southern Rock for a regional magazine. In it I made the claim that "all rock is Southern Rock" because the roots of rock and roll were truly southern, and its something of which the South should be proud. Little did I know that this would be one of the most controversial statements I ever made.

Well, I am not a musician or involved in music in any way other than being an avid listener and consumer, as my Apple Itunes account will testify. After our CD player broke in our car at the time, my wife realized that the one thing worse than listening to me sing-along with a song was listening to me sing a capella.

Anyway, back to the origin of rock and roll in the South. Later known simply as rock or rock music, rock and roll evolved from a combination of country (mostly honky-tonk), blues (boogie-woogie) and jazz (be-bop and rhythm and blues) music. John Lennon once said "If you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it Chuck Berry." Berry, although closely associated with Chess Records in Chicago, spent time in New Orleans (jazz), Memphis (blues), and St. Louis (where he awed crowds playing an occasional country song). If you prefer Bill Haley and the Comets as the originator of the genre, they were a western swing (a form of country music) band that occasionally added blues to the line-up. Think it was Elvis? He was born in Tupelo (MS) and moved to Memphis. Elvis combined his country upbringing with Beale Street Blues to get his early sound, but also added an element of gospel which the other performers didn't. Fats Domino? New Orleans with a heavy jazz and boogie-woogie influence.

The name Rock and Roll as it applies to music predates the formation of the genre and dates back to the 1920's, but the music it referred to was significantly different than rock and roll of the 1950's. At the time it was normally known as "race music," graciously renamed by Billboard in 1948 to rhythm and blues. Earlier references appear, but they tend to be a euphemism for sex.

Another element of rock and roll that is rarely mentioned is the invention of the solid-body electric guitar in California in 1946 (commercially available in 1950, the date frequently given). Before this, electric guitars were acoustic guitars amplified  to the point where they could be heard when combined with drums and a piano in jazz.

Don't let the term rockabilly fool you. A Memphis sound that combined elements of rock and roll with country music it is distinct from early rock and roll.

Extend the Blue Ridge Parkway!

As you enter the Smoky Mountains on U.S. Highway 441 just past Cherokee, North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Parkway comes off to the right. From here it travels 469 miles to Front Royal, Virginia, through some of the prettiest land on the eastern seaboard. About every 10 years my wife and I decide to revisit the Blue Ridge, for a good hike and to take some scenic pictures. The names stay with you...a memorable night in the Peaks of Otter Lodge (milepost 86) after camping for a week, a stop a Brineger Cabin (milepost 239), a preserved piece of Blue Ridge history.

The biggest problem with the Blue Ridge Parkway is that it takes 4 hours to get there from our house in Cherokee County, Georgia and the Blue Ridge Mountains are just minutes away. I think that extending the Blue Ridge Parkway further south, through the remote area west of Murphy, crossing into Tennessee above Farner, then picking up the "Cohutta Loop" west of Ducktown. Now in Georgia, the loop represents old Georgia Highway 2 as it travels through remote sections of wilderness, packed with scenic views and unusual names (Hell, Potatopatch Mountain), like the current Blue Ridge Parkway.

I would think that this road would end in Eton, coming down from the Cohuttas on the old CCC Road to Eton (just north of Chatsworth if your looking for it on a map).

What a great North Georgia spring

Because of the unusually cold North Georgia winter, our springtime is shaping up to be one of the most beautiful in years. Jonquils (okay, daisies anywhere outside the state), which during warm winters bloom in mid-February, have been delayed until mid-March. Forsythia, which recently have been blooming in the third or fourth week of February started to bloom during the ides of March (ides is the 15th day of March, May, July, and October, and the 13th day of other months).

Delayed only a couple of days, the Bradford pears are already covered in white and the ornamental cherries that are so popular in Macon and Conyers have those distinctive pink flowers. Now on the first day of spring Pam and I are anxiously awaiting the azaleas of many colors, white and pink dogwood, and the yellow pine pollen that endears itself to no one.

Spring is a time of renewal. Pam and I renew our love of the north Georgia mountains which we don't get to visit as much as we like during the winter. We renew our love of hiking, not only in the mountains, but on distant battlefields like Chickamauga or closer ones like Allatoona Pass. We check on new exhibits at attractions like the Georgia Aquarium and Rome Area History Museum. We also reach out to old friends simply to say "How ya doing."

Where in the world is Waynesboro, Georgia

Okay, I don't expect the average American to know where the town of Waynesboro, Georgia is, but I would think that the New York Times and Time magazine should, or at least be able to find it on Google maps. On Tuesday, President Obama made news by announcing a multi-billion dollar loan to the Southern Company to help build two new reactors a the Vogtle plant in Waynesboro, 25 miles south of Augusta. The Georgia location made sense for many reasons, mostly because Georgians are willing to accept the plants and need the jobs.

The New York Times simply referred to Plant Vogtle as being in the Augusta vicinity. Okay, I'll buy that, but they could have been a little more clear in my mind. Time Magazine, however, identified Plant Vogtle as being outside Atlanta. Well, Waynesboro is about 175 miles from Atlanta, so I don't think of it as "outside Atlanta." I have to give them a little cred, however, since they did correctly identify the plant as The Alvin W. Vogtle nuclear power plant.

Vogtle, an Auburn alumni, joined the Army Air Force during World War II and served with the Mighty Eighth. He was shot down over North Africa and spent most of his time trying to escape from various German POW camps. After the war he continued his education, joining Alabama Power after it had formed the Southern Company with 3 other Southeastern power companies. He worked his way through the ranks to become President and eventually, CEO of the Atlanta-based company. Vogtle's claim to fame may elude most people. He was the inspiration for Capt. Hilts "The Cooler King," Steve McQueen's in the movie The Great Escape.

When Forsyth County, Georgia became nationally known for two marches led by Hosea Williams, some people flew to their maps, then erroneously identified the central Georgia city of Forsyth as the location of the marches, not aware that the state had both a city and a county of the same name. All I would say to the people that can't get the geography right is that we are the State of Georgia, not the foreign country, and you really should know better.

A simple "by the way" to Time and the New York Times. Georgia Governor Sonny Perdue has absolutely nothing to do with chickens, except as part of his vet practice.

Global warming? - not in north Georgia

When global warming was a hot topic, the announcement of average annual temperatures was a heralded event. So when the National Climatic Data Center announced the 2009 average temp. for the United States on Friday, January 8, 2010, one might think that the interest would at least be piqued. Key "annual average temperature" into Mr. Google news and the first article that actually deals with this subject is from London and is focused on the high cost of "warmists." When global warming proponents (I do like the term warmists) beat us over the head with 14 years of warming (1995-2008) they should also be glad to tell us that the last two years have been so close to normal that the difference is a statistical one (in other words, you probably don't feel it).

North Georgia folks probably don't have a problem telling you its colder because we didn't see normal temps - we were 4 degrees Fahrenheit below normal in December, 2009, and that's a little more than statistically significant. A large portion of the center of the country was 8 degrees Fahrenheit below normal last month. In Atlanta, this has been the coldest start to January since 1869, when records were first kept.

I do believe that global warming is occurring. I just have never been sure why, I don't know if its a short-term or long term change, and nobody has proven to my satisfaction that the CO2 theories of the warmists are scientifically sound. Remeber the "ozone hole" whose growth could destroy mankind? Guess what - it reached its peak in September, 2006 and has been shrinking since. Right now its about the size it was in 1992.

The warmists have arguments that sound logical, but are they really reasonable? One example Al uses is the melting of the icebergs in Alaska. Thunder Bay (now Glacier Bay National Park), has receded some 20 miles since the start of the 20th century (a fact Mr. Gore presented in his book. Well, the ice levels in Glacier Bay have been receding since it was explored in 1790, a half-century before the advent of fossil fuel and a 100 years before its use could be considered common.

In November, 2009 160mb of emails from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia that showed the CRUs efforts to disseminate information that only supported the CO2 theory of global warming. The emails were then uploaded to Realclimate.org, where the file stayed for about 2 hours until it was removed. Researcher and author Kim Cobb wrote "CRU e-mails are an embarrassment to climate science in general." In America, only FoxNews seized on reporting the event and ran multiple stories on "Climategate." Furthermore, the results reported by the CRU can not be duplicated from the raw data available and the CRU has refused to release the "climategate code." (code is programming).

My wife and I have lived in Cherokee County for 17 years and have always been able to get out after a snow storm until we got 2 inches of the white stuff on Thursday, January 7, 2010. Because of the extended cold, when the rain from the start of the storm froze, it made our road impassible until the county salted it on Saturday. Now one storm doesn't mean global warming is history, but 24 months is a significant statistical anomaly that may force the warmists to rethink their claims.

Your speed is...

Driving around north Georgia, there has been a noticeable change on the landscape. Some communities have created speed signs with radar guns in them to tell you what a policeman would see if he were pointing his radar gun at you. One city, Roswell, actually flashes the speed if you are doing more than the posted limit.

Speeders may not like these, but law-abiding folks probably do - a gentle reminder to "Slow it down" as the Roswell police have been trying to do, seemingly unsuccessfully, for years. I must admit, I do speed - a little anyway, normally no more than 5 miles over the speed limit, with gusts up to 10 over as my wife likes to say. So when my speed is gusting while passing one of the Your speed is signs, its time to back off on the accelerator.

Another great thing about these speed guns is it gives us a place to test our speedometers. It may not be easy when the roads are crowded, but early in the morning you will be able to see your exact speed. Then, the next time somebody comes up on your butt, you'll know that you are doing the limit (or 5 mph over).

Georgia has passed a new super-speeder law that increases speeding fines across the board, up to $400 extra if you are caught doing 85 on a four lane highway. This will keep more people within the legal limit without a doubt. With the economy the way it is the quickest way to change bad habits is through the wallet (or pocketbook, as the case may be). A law-enforcement friend has told me that at least initially, when the law goes into effect in January, 2010, some departments are intending stricter enforcement. Some cities have already begun stricter enforcement. According to the Gainesville Times, the police are already out citing drivers for speeding infractions and trying to slow down cars in general.

Now if your a "5 mph over" guy like me you may want to check your speed the next time you go past a radar gun speed sign, not because you will get a super-speeder ticket but because of the stricter enforcement. And if you are in the super-speeder category, the next time you get stopped and fined for speeding watch for a second bill mailed to you from the state. This will be your super-speeder fine.

Before you ask, the super-speeding money (estimated to be $32 million in 2010) is tagged to support trauma care in the state.