Horticulture and Gardening Books in the Gift Shop
State Botanical Garden of Georgia
Athens, GA
April 6, 2021

Two Views of U.S. 23 through Jackson

Two Views of U.S. 23 through Jackson
Jackson, GA
March 12, 2003

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I don't get to do this as often as I would like anymore, but years ago I would grab my camera, hop in the car, and go for meandering drives down the back roads of Georgia, stopping often to take pictures of whatever interested me along the way.

For as long as my archive of pictures and my interest and motivation hold out, a couple of times each week I'll be posting some of my favorites of the images I made back then.

Throwback Thursday: Scott and Me, 1982

This picture of my cousin Scott and me was taken in the den of my grandmother's house in Tucker in 1981 or 1982. Scott and I both went to Berkmar High School by then; I'm pretty sure this was taken when I was in ninth grade and he was in eleventh. We were still close at that point: I saw Scott every day at school, and we got together most weekends either at my house to play Wizardry on our Apple II or his house to "jam" (he played drums and I played guitar; I was naïve enough back then to think of what we did with our instruments in his garage as "jamming," but "making an unholy noise" is probably more accurate). This was some months, maybe even a whole year, before we formed our short-lived high school band, Voyager, with Roy Smith, whom we met in Coach Wilson's World History class. Roy played drums, I played guitar, and Scott played bass and keyboards and sang (but, because we didn't have a P.A. system, you couldn't actually hear him singing). Every song we played (except the few that we wrote) Scott or my guitar teacher Desi showed me how to play. I didn't realize this at the time, but I had—have—terrible ears and very little musical ability. If somebody showed me where to put my fingers I did okay, but my ability never really rose above that basic level of knowing where my fingers go. It still hasn't, and though I still noodle around on guitar every once in a while, I still can't really play anything that Scott or Desi didn't teach me.

Scott's shirt says "I Love Real People." He got it (if I remember correctly) at a taping of the TV show "Real People" when his family made an epic drive across the whole country, from Georgia to California, a few months earlier. My shirt says "Junkyard Dog" and features a drawing of a bulldog. I didn't get it at a taping of anything; it probably came from Treasure Island. Or maybe Richway. In any case, whether this shirt really had anything to do with the University of Georgia—a possible connection about which I was completely clueless at the time—I don't know, but people seeing me wearing it often assumed it did. They also incorrectly assumed I knew more (which is to say, anything) and cared more (which is to say, at all) about UGA and college football than I actually did.

Behind us on the wall of Granny's den were the family pictures that I think of as having always been there. The topmost picture on the left is my brother Jeff and me. That picture was taken just after my mother had to get my hair trimmed down to a crew cut after my cousin Catherine tried to give me a haircut in 1971, an incident I heard about all the time when I was growing up. As you can see, my hair eventually grew out.

Blue Door and Green Door

Blue Door and Green Door
Lexington, GA
March 7, 2003

* * * * *

I don't get to do this as often as I would like anymore, but years ago I would grab my camera, hop in the car, and go for meandering drives down the back roads of Georgia, stopping often to take pictures of whatever interested me along the way.

For as long as my archive of pictures and my interest and motivation hold out, a couple of times each week I'll be posting some of my favorites of the images I made back then.

Books at Betty's Country Store

Books at Betty's Country Store
Helen, GA
June 28, 2017

Unlike my pictures from the past few Tuesdays, this one is not actually a bookstore. Many small stores and gift shops have book sections, and I love looking through them and seeing the regional and local-interest books, and the self-published books of various quality from folks in the area. I also have a weak spot for any place that justifiably calls itself a "country store," and this one in Helen, GA, is a pretty darn good one. (They had both Brach's chocolate stars and Blenheim ginger ale, and that's enough to prompt me to call a place "pretty darn good.")

Our cats, intrigued by stuff outside

Our cats, intrigued by stuff outside (probably birds and squirrels, but Hale-Bopp said she's pretty sure she saw a hippopotamusauras.)

Lexington, GA

NuGrape Soda and Green Door
Lexington, GA
March 7, 2003

* * * * *

I don't get to do this as often as I would like anymore, but years ago I would grab my camera, hop in the car, and go for meandering drives down the back roads of Georgia, stopping often to take pictures of whatever interested me along the way.

For as long as my archive of pictures and my interest and motivation hold out, a couple of times each week I'll be posting some of my favorites of the images I made back then.

Audio Books: Another Book Post

There are some books I claim to have read—several by Bill Bryson; pretty much everything I say I've read by David Sedaris; Daniel Pinkwater's brilliant The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death—but really haven't, at least not strictly speaking. Because I listened to them as audio books.

Chances are I've listened to them several times, in fact. I'm sure I've heard Bryson's A Walk in the Woods and Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day five or six times each. Charles Kuralt's Charles Kuralt's America is one of my favorite books; I've listened to it several times, and I've also actually read the printed book—the audio version is abridged, and I wanted to see what I was missing—but I prefer the audio version. It's not that I'm too lazy to read and would rather have Kuralt read his own book to me, it's just that he does it so well.

Many years ago, when I had a regular corporate job and a daily commute, I listened to a lot more audio books than I do these days. There were a lot of really good productions of middle-reader and young adult novels of the kind I then aspired to write, some of which I still have. Because they are mostly on cassettes, it's a lot harder to listen to them now, but someday when I have more time and more energy, I'm going to digitize them to make it easy to hear them whenever I want.

(Why the four books in the picture, you may be wondering, when I didn't name any of them specifically in this post? Well, for one thing they are all books I remember enjoying very much. The Madeleine L'Engle book, A Wind In The Door, which came second in the sequence that began with A Wrinkle in Time, is perhaps my favorite of her books (though I would actually rather read it than listen to it; I think I only listened to this audio book once). The Neil Shusterman book, The Dark Side of Nowhere, is one of the things Anna and I listened to on the drive home from our honeymoon, so I have very fond memories of it. But most importantly, they were in a cabinet in my office and were easily accessible; I didn't have to root around in the garage or that funky storage space under the stairs to find them.)

St. James A.M.E. Church

St. James A.M.E. Church
Arnoldsville, GA
March 7, 2003

* * * * *

I don't get to do this as often as I would like anymore, but years ago I would grab my camera, hop in the car, and go for meandering drives down the back roads of Georgia, stopping often to take pictures of whatever interested me along the way.

For as long as my archive of pictures and my interest and motivation hold out, a couple of times each week I'll be posting some of my favorites of the images I made back then.

Two-Story Barnes & Noble

Two-Story Barnes & Noble
Buford, GA
October 20, 2020

I love a bookstore with an escalator! (Or stairs...the second floor is really the important thing.

Danger Current On
Douglas, Georgia
September 27, 2002

* * * * *

I don't get to do this as often as I would like anymore, but years ago I would grab my camera, hop in the car, and go for meandering drives down the back roads of Georgia, stopping often to take pictures of whatever interested me along the way.

For the next few weeks I'll be posting some of my favorites of the images I made back then.

Last night, while scouring a 2GB external hard drive for one specific image out of the twenty-two years worth of stuff I have archived there, I stumbled on this picture I made eighteen years ago.

Holy heck! Who is that young(ish), not-gray-hair-having guy pretending to read Homer?

It's me!

It WAS me, anyway--eighteen years ago. *sigh* I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. I WISH! (With apologies to Bob Dylan, and the Byrds too, since I'm more familiar with their version of that song.)

Receding Statues and Columns
Vines Park
Loganville, GA
April 28, 2021

The Story Shop III

The Story Shop III
Monroe, GA
March 23, 2019

The Father is a Puppy

Taking the Coronavirus pandemic as an excuse not to, I haven't gotten my hair cut in close to a year. I like having long hair and am going to let it grow for at least couple more months (even if it is driving me crazy), but I admit it is kind of wild and sometimes floppy. This afternoon Jessica looked at me and said, "I hate to say it, but you look like a poodle."

I laughed and said, "Yeah, I know. When I push my hair back over my ears like this, it does kind of flop around like doggy ears, doesn't it? It either needs to grow out enough so I can get it in a pony tail, or I need to get a haircut."

Without missing a beat, Elyse said, "You need to get a haircut."

(Below is a "selfie" I took this morning at Stone Mountain. As soon as I looked at it--hours before Jessica informed me of the fact--I recognized that I looked a little dog-like. I wasn't wearing the hat when Jessica saw me; I think the hat adds even more to the Shaggy Dog appearance.)

My Anxieties Have Anxieties: Another Book Post

I don't know how old I was when I first read Peanuts. I'm pretty sure it was sometime back in fourth grade, maybe even third, when I started my relationship with these books.

And for me, Peanuts was always about books. I'm sure that for years I was not even aware it was a daily comic strip, probably didn't even know what that meant—but I knew the books. "A Charlie Brown Christmas" was on TV for the first time two years before I was born and had become a seasonal staple by the time I was in fourth grade, but I don't remember seeing it when I was a kid, or seeing any of the other Peanuts TV specials that had been produced by the time I was in fourth grade—but I knew the books.

I've been collecting them, the books, for more than forty-five years. I don't actually have that many—forty-two: I just turned around and counted them—but they are precious to me.

Not everyone cared for Peanuts as much as I do, of course. Al Capp, creator of the "Li'l Abner" comic strip and a generation older than Peanuts creator Charles Schulz, once famously characterized the kids in Peanuts as "...mean little b*stards. Eager to hurt each other." Maybe Capp had a point, but he didn't seem to appreciate the fact that this made them all the more real as kids and as human beings, and that it made the moments of truth and beauty they revealed, either by transcending the inherent melancholy of life or by accepting it, all the more beautiful.

"Life is rarely one way, Charlie Brown," Linus says to his friend as the two lean against the brick wall where they do all their philosophizing, "You win a few, and you lose a few."

"Really?" says Charlie Brown, who—at least in his own perception—has never won a thing in his life, and—again, at least in his own perception—probably never will. "Gee," he says in the last panel, his mouth in the beginnings of a hopeful smile, "that'd be neat!!"

That hopeful smile makes Peanuts wonderful.

The Story Shop II

The Story Shop
Monroe, GA
March 23, 2019

The Cats in Jessica's Room

Jessica just texted me this picture of Halle-Bop and Nosfuratu on the flowery reading chair in Jessica's room:

In the Therapist's Waiting Room

In the Therapist's Waiting Room
Lawrenceville, GA
April 16, 2021

The Story Shop

The Story Shop
Monroe, GA
March 23, 2019