Are these asters? I always think of them as asters. They’re blooming now, along with pansies. My sense of the seasons developed in the upper Midwest, and I find blooms outdoors this time of the year just plain strange.

Prediction:* when they log the votes tonight, the turnout will have been LOW and Saxby the Sleeze will get the voter’s nod, thanks to the rural vote, or alternatively because of the low urban turnout (your choice).

* Yeah, we went to vote. No line; a steady flow of voters, but no line. Remember 4 Nov? We waited an hour. BTW, we voted on four runoff elections, two of them judges….

Hint, hint….

Today I added two blogs to my list of RSS feeds: by Paul Krugman (part of the NYTimes), and by Janet Van Fleet.

Krugman you probably know, the guy who just received the Nobel in Economics. I may get aggravated by him and cut him from the list sooner rather than later, though. He’s super-Keynesian, and that may get to me. Of course, you could argue that learning more about macroeconomic theory is not a bad idea, and Krugman’s certainly a good place to start!*

Janet hails from a different part of the world, spatially and conceptually. She’s an sculptor, designer, and artist who lives in Vermont. Check out her web page here, and her blog here. There’s a lovely, wry sense of humor incorporated into her pieces…. It’s a long story how I met her, and the short version is via The Guru.

* Interesting summary of Krugman’s work/position by the Nobel people linked here.

The light was crappy and I had the iPhone, yet you can get some idea of the delightful decorations on this residential retaining wall in our neighborhood….

What does this juxtaposition mean?*

As I was preparing the photo for this post, an interview with a recovering alcoholic (NPR’s Alex Cohen talking to her dad) began (I frequently listen to the WUNC stream). I was also thinking about a book review by Roger Scruton (TheObserver and Guardian) that I had just finished reading, of Kingsley Amis’s Everyday Drinking (2008), with three short books he wrote on drink/drinking published together. Notes Scruton:

The famous hangover scene in Lucky Jim is complemented here by a philosophical chapter on the hangover that is one of the great English essays of our time. Kingsley dismisses the run-of-the-mill cures that you can find in any newspaper, since they omit ‘all that vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure that makes a hangover a [fortunately] unique route to self-knowledge and self-realisation’.

I can’t say that I’ve ever been aware of a hangover as having a “vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure” or that it is a “unique route to self-knowledge and self-realisation.” Live and learn!

* Aha! I have a theory! [The answer is:] ’Tis the season to be jolly!

On this day in 2004 we drove to my cousin’s for T-giving, over near Chelsea, home of Jiffy mixes!

Think southeast Africa, in the 1970s–90s, with upheavals, informal militias and less-terrifying times. The following bits are from an autobiography of a woman who grew up in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia when they arrived), Zambia, and Malawi; her parents had emigrated there from England, apparently seeking adventure. The book is Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra (Bobo) Fuller (2001).

There is only one time of absolute silence. Halfway between the dark of night and the light of morning, all animals and crickets and birds fall into a profound silence as if pressed quiet by the deep quality of the blackest time of night. This is when we’re startled awake…. This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn, nor is it the middle of the night, but it is the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply, when their guard is dozing, and when terrorists (who know this fact) are most likely to attack. (p.131)

I concur with the special non-sounds just before dawn, except for some birds that get going very early, and some predators that are still trying to get a meal before light arrives. Still, much is silent.

On her first date with the guy she marries eleven months later, they camp out on the lower Zambezi River, with a cooler kindly packed for them by her young man’s friend.

We set up the tent, make a fire, and then open the cold box to reveal Rob’s idea of a romantic meal for a beautiful woman: one beer and a pork chop on top of a lump of swimming ice. (p.291)

The tenters ended up awake all night listening to the predators passing by—including a lion and a leopard—so it wasn’t quite as silent as she had observed previously….

Fast read, pretty good. Mostly from her childhood point of view, in the moment, although obviously written in her adulthood.

Sorry, no oysters in this picture; they’re stashed in bellies!

Tonight we had the great fortune to be standing around a woods fire as the sky gained darkness and the cold enveloped us. What a grand time!

Sorry for the late post; we spent the day in Athens! Our visit to the dead people was incidental to Other Events. This cemetery is within UGA’s limits, and is a popular place for picnicking, sunning, and the like. We just took a few photos and kept going.

Driving through a place, and maybe stopping and walking around a bit, you get an impression of what the place is like now, and something of its past. A year ago, we were walking around Greenville, PA, in the northwestern part of the state. My overwhelming impression was of a community undergoing economic and demographic contraction, yet trying to keep the downtown from total disintegration.

What wasn’t apparent, of course, were little historical details, such as who wandered into this long-standing and still-operating restaurant on the main street downtown. Fortunately, we have the vast resources of the internet, which says that the inventor of a parachute (like a funky umbrella) used by WWI pilots, lived here and worked as a coal miner. It seems a good bet that he visited the Majestic* once or twice.

* Not to be confused with the Majestic Diner, on Ponce, here in ATL, which has been open since 1929 and serves a mean breakfast.

Lake Clara Meer’s levels are nearly two feet below normal full. That’s low.

So we have a Pres-Elect (already with his first press conference successfully conducted), and he’s already announcing appointments/hirings (or at least Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff). Since he’s not in office, how do they get paid and out of what budget? I assume there’s some mechanism for this, but I haven’t heard mention thereof.

BTW, have you noticed that the more formal media is now calling him Mr. Obama? Even though he’s a Senator. Protocol JCB & I assume….

Many of the still-standing old houses across the countryside are empty. Many more are now gone, leaving a few tall trees and abandoned vegetation, unless the house site has been bulldozed and turned into pasture or field or pine plantation.

Serendipity dragged us out of the house to drive a triangle in the central Georgia Piedmont. We made a beeline to just west of Athens, then commenced our wander. We scrutinized the Georgia Atlas, and chose the smallest roads that we hoped were paved, since the unpaved roads are pretty dry and dusty in this drought….

We dropped south to Eastville, crossed the Apalachee River at North High Shoals (ex-textile mill town), meandered down to Bostwick, and scooted into Madison. Madison is famous for its lovely residential antebellum architecture; accounts vary on why the Union army didn’t burn the town, as they did many others, when they marched through on their way to Savannah in 1864.

From Madison, we turned west. You have your choice of four parallel routes. The newest is Interstate 20. The old highway it replaced is US-278 or the Atlanta Highway. That one superceded the Dixie Highway. The oldest road, following an Indian path, is the Hightower Road. Hightower is a corruption of the same Cherokee word that Etowah is. Additionally, it is possible the Hightower footpath followed a Late Pleistocene megamammal trail.

Hencequently, we set off along the Hightower route, but it disappears frequently. We went through Dorsey and Rutledge, through Social Circle (where we thought of Nell, whose maternal ancestors lived here, I think), and on to Jersey. I had never noticed Jersey on the map before. West of Jersey we found the historic Gum Creek Court House (they use four words), high on a well-mown hill. Then we did a little detour down and up the Haynes Creek valley (well on the sides of it), then found the Hightower Road again, and followed it over to Norris Lake. Never had heard of Norris Lake. Looks like some places here are second homes, like an old resort community with some architecture upgrades.

We crossed the Yellow River and immediately encountered sprawl, more precisely, the Georgia International Horse Park, which was built for equine and mountain biking events during the 1996 Olympics. From there we were in suburbia, and we made a beeline for home, looping around the north side of Stone Mountain.

We didn’t take many photos, but here’re a few:

* Sorry to get your hopes up, Marquis, but this isn’t about a bike race….

We figured there were about 200 people in line (including at the voting booths) when we arrived at 9:10 am. Folks were pretty quiet, reading or doing stuff with iPhones. I only heard one person talking on the phone. I love our polling place at the Ponce library; there were discard magazines and books set out for those in line to browse!

It took about an hour to get to the voting booth. Long ballot, with 3 amendments, multiple judge slots (most unopposed), and miscellaneous homestead exemptions (by locale). I went over the summary carefully to make sure the electronic machine (apparently) was registering what I intended. We didn’t walk around to the opposite side of the building to see if the line was longer or shorter when we left.

So, with all the early voting (both absentee and in-person) can we really call this Election Day? Maybe Polls-Close Day? Or Ballot-Counting Day?