Julie’s 41 with two teenagers and she’s alone and scared, not to mention devastated. A neighbor ended up with her husband. The road to love and happiness: what a brutal road.

Count her among the ranks of souls who trudge forty miles of bad road, a road that leads to the City of Love & Marriage. Make a misstep and the road detours across the tracks to a dingy place known as Divorceville. And then the road splits for good.

I wasn’t clueless to how Julie felt and I knew she wasn’t alone.

The divorce rate in America for the first marriage is 41 percent. The divorce rate for the second marriage is 60 percent. The divorce rate for the third marriage is 73 percent. (divorce rate.org)

Few people divorced when I was growing up. Now it’s epidemic. What happened? Plenty of experts point to plenty of reasons: the dwindling influence of religion, the fact that divorce is more socially acceptable, an increased awareness of what constitutes an abusive relationship, and some point their finger at unrealistic expectations going in.

Some believe people are losing the ability to flat-out care for one another in this self-centered world. Others believe people have a hard time realizing what true love is.

I have a hunch the arrival of sitcoms and movies that extolled a me-first attitude got the divorce bus rolling. Whatever the reasons statistics and facts can’t convey divorce’s affect on a person’s psyche. While it is a relief to escape a person who’s become a torment you walk away with battle scars.

If you have never experienced divorce I assure you nothing’s more difficult than untangling your life and mind after a relationship goes astray. And once you are divorced? Well let’s hope you no longer love your ex. People who do say it’s worse than losing a loved one to death. “At least you know,” said one miserable fellow, “that your wife is gone forever if she passes away and no one will ever share her as you did. Knowing your ex-wife is married to another man. That hurts bad.”

A long time ago I made the mistake of marrying a woman I had taught in college. She pressured me into it. Whatever magic we shared died. I don’t know think we really loved each other; we just loved the idea of love. She was 24 and I was 29 and if you added our ages together you got 13.

I moved out and dropped out of life. Starting over is not fun and when friends ask about you and your wife it’s embarrassing. In time a friend, Jerry, upbraided me for not being more social and he insisted I come to his birthday party at a place called Fanny Teague’s, one of the old beach clubs in vogue back then. His invitation was in fact a command. Nervous, unsure of myself, and afraid, I went. People were dancing near the birthday party, which sat at a long table. Jerry beckoned me over. They were having a big time, drinking and laughing and it was all couples. Everybody knew everybody it seemed except me.

Jerry ordered me a drink. I took one sip and looked out across the dance floor and there was my ex-wife to be in the arms of another man. I left.

Divorce was a speed bump in the road, and while it jolted me I found the highway much smoother once I accepted a basic fact: I am not meant to be married. Divorce for me was a salvation. It freed me to learn the way I was meant to live.

People who go through divorce say it can warp you or make you stronger. I suggest it also makes some of us smarter. As the years roll by you witness the divorces of friends and you shake your head, “Whew, they are about to walk forty miles of bad road.” And yet how often I see them rush into another marriage only to repeat the cycle again.

In my cabinets is a coffee mug with an inscription: Marriage Is The Main Cause Of Divorce. Hard to discount that declaration. You cannot get divorced if you don’t marry. Forget the big diamond ring. Run like Forrest Gump.

But marry people do for many reasons. Often that first love in high school leads to the altar. Such was the case with a fellow from Sumter, South Carolina, who married his high school sweetheart. He was just a dreamer and she was a dream. Well the dreaming died violently. It so happened this poor fellow was driving by his house one afternoon running a work errand when he saw his best friend’s car in the driveway. Of course he was curious. He parked out of view and slowly made his way to his home through woods edging his backyard. Spying through the sliding glass patio door off his bedroom he confirmed his worst fears.

He called his brother and told him to come at once with his gun. The brother came but had the good sense to leave the gun home. A fight ensued. Soon the couple divorced and best friends were no more. Stories like this are sad. It so happens they are common, common as pine trees lining a Georgia backroad to Waycross.

Excluding a handful of friends and married couples in my family I have known comparatively few solid marriages. I say comparatively few because the divorced outnumber the married. (See the stats above again.) As I wrote earlier many divorced people marry again but it often proves to be a remake of the horror movie they starred in earlier. I’ve known more than a few women who quickly remarried just to put a roof over their head. For them marriage is an economic survival strategy. The strategy frequently backfires.

What compulsion leads to this destructive behavior? I believe the die is cast for some of the heartbroken early on. They set out on the road when they are young and easily bruised. The heart has a fragile GPS system and early love gone wrong destroys their emotional navigation. They are cursed with a bad start.

Many of the divorced tribe try too hard to prove to the world they are marriage material. A compulsion to get it right next time consumes them. It proves to be a tough journey. There’s a fundamental obstacle to overcome. Some folks just aren’t marriage material. Eventually that message gets through … to some.

A few more observations … Some people are too lazy to live free and clear on their own and they become serial knot tiers. It comes down to stereotyped sex roles sometimes. To wit the male chauvinist who thinks he should not cook and hence cannot cook. He needs a servant. To wit the woman who comes up short when it’s time to pay the bills. She needs a breadwinner. And then there are people whose identity comes from attaching themselves to others for the wrong reasons. “Hey look at my woman,” gloats the old goat with a trophy wife on his arm. “No hey, look old goat, you’re living in symbiosis like the clown fish and the anemone.”

The anemone receives protection from polyp-eating fish, like the Butterfly Fish, which the Clown Fish chases away. The anemone then gets fertilizer from the Clown Fish’s waste matter. Both are happy as clams. As for the old goat he better keep a fat wallet close by.

Some nights I go to dinner alone. When I do I make it a point to watch married couples. More often than not they eat in relative silence. Few words they share. I suppose they are talked out by the years. And jaded by the years too. Many honest women will confide that their love life is over … unless of course they have a secret admirer and some do. One woman would get her lover to do her grocery shopping. After work she would tell the husband she had to stop by the grocery store. She’d head to her lover’s place, have some fun, and go home with the groceries a happier woman. Complacent husbands be forewarned: it’s way too easy for your wife to have a paramour. And of course husbands play their own games.

Now having written so much negative-but-realistic stuff about the great institution of marriage I do believe it is a good way to live. It’s just that for too many people it doesn’t pan out (See reasons above). A good old boy I know captures the essence of the issue in a thick southern drawl.

“Tom, when I first saw the gal who would be my wife, man she was prettier than a speckled pup, but not long after our second anniversary she made me crazier than a sprayed roach.”

Crazy is right and it only gets crazier when lawyers get into the mix with their fancy edicts and papers. For many the only thing to do is to run like Forrest Gump from the institution known as marriage. Run fast from divorce’s property-dividing, friend-splitting ways. Resist the urge to “get it right next time.” Listen to Lewis Grizzard’s advice: “I don’t think I’ll get married again. I’ll just find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.”

Lewis, however, did marry again. By the time he left the green earth of Georgia the boy had walked 90 miles of bad road. It’s too bad he didn’t live long enough to write a book about marriage. I’m sure we would have gotten some great laughs from his ability to turn tragedy into comedy.

As for me, I’d love to write that folks marrying today can look forward to 40 miles of beautiful road but the statistical trends say just the opposite. Maybe it’s time to redefine marriage. I’ve heard talk about “contractual” marriages that are up for renewal on a yearly basis. When the anniversary rolls around, couples renegotiate their terms and either sign up for another year or part ways. I’m sure attorneys think contractual marriages are the way to go: for a fee of course.

We live in an era where a lot of traditions and conventions are under attack. Is it time to abolish marriage? Even an old veteran of the marital wars like me thinks that’s a bad idea. I have a suggestion however. Make it more difficult to enter into marriage and make it a two-year process. That window of time will give a lot of couples a chance to discover they really aren’t in love. And if couples aren’t happy let the divorce be quick. Dissolve the marriage in two weeks but always look out for children’s interests first.

In Erich Segal’s corny novel and movie Love Story a line ascended to fame for a bit. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” John Lennon was more realistic: “Love means having to say you’re sorry every five minutes.” Love, I say, ought to mean never having to hire an attorney in a perfect world but we’re far from a marriage utopia.

As for Julie, I saw her the other day with a new fellow. She was laughing and seemed happy. I hope she is. I hope too that she doesn’t feel compelled to prove she’s marriage material and end up dragging herself down another forty miles of bad road. I like a laughing Julie a heck of a lot more than a crying Julie, and I bet her kids do too.

About Tom Poland

A Southern writer, Tom Poland’s work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. He’s published five books and more than 500 magazine features. In 1996, Reckon magazine published his literary feature, "Deliver Me from Leviathan," on James Dickey. Excerpts were published in The World As A Lie–James Dickey, the Dickey biography by Henry Hart. The University of South Carolina Press has published three of his books, most recently, Reflections of South Carolina, now in its third printing. For six years, Tom worked as a scriptwriter and cinematographer, working primarily along the South Carolina Lowcountry and its barrier islands. While filming on a primitive barrier island one evening, fog rolled in trapping him overnight. That experience led to his novel, Forbidden Island, and the mythical Georgialina. Currently, he’s working on two nonfiction books. A Lincolnton, Georgia, native and University of Georgia graduate, he lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Read more at www.tompoland.net Favorite Quotes On Writing and Creativity: Writing is a kind of smoke, seized and put on paper. —James Salter I never wanted to be well rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. —Harry Crews

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Hickman: News coverage in the U.S. of the recent French and Greek elections framed both as rejections of economic austerity but immigration was also important as an issue. The parties of the far right performed well. So is this intense anti-immigrant sentiment actually a Europe wide political phenomenon or is it something constructed for news audiences?
Downs: This month’s elections in France and Greece were, first and foremost, about budgetary discipline and austerity measures prompted by Europe’s currency and debt crises. They followed a rather frenzied 15 months of political instability that saw incumbents tossed or resign from office in Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy, and Spain. Belt-tightening reforms are massively unpopular, with general strikes and street violence accompanying voter volatility at the polls. Anxious and unhappy electorates are vulnerable to populist appeals, and some entrepreneurial party leaders have indeed exploited voter fears—including those about foreigners—for electoral gain. This is not a media concoction, and it is not limited to France and Greece. Nor is it particularly new. Instead, it is a phenomenon that has appeared in different guises and to varying degrees across the continent for decades.

Hickman: So why does it seem new in the news coverage?
Downs: Understand that the May 6 election in Greece saw Antonis Samaras’ center-right New Democracy party come in first (although dropping 14% from its previous vote share), but it doesn’t have a clear path to power. Coalition bargaining is underway. Most observers note that the surprise showing in this election was by Golden Dawn, a nationalist far-right party that entered parliament for the first time ever with 21 of the assembly’s 300 seats. Opponents accuse Golden Dawn of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and attacks on foreigners. The issue of immigration is especially salient because the majority of illegal immigrants entering the European Union do so through Greece. Golden Dawn’s trademark salute and modified swastika logo draw criticism for being Nazi-like (although the party denies any connection). In isolation, a party garnering a modest 7% of the national vote may not appear especially menacing, but in a multiparty system such as Greece’s (where no single party won more than 19% of the popular vote) even the smallest legislative groups have influence.

In the French presidential election, voters punished incumbent Nicholas Sarkozy in a rather clear and damning appraisal of his leadership on the economy. Sarkozky attempted to woo voters from across France’s various rightwing camps, including the National Front. He failed, and Socialist candidate François Hollande rode a wave of anti-incumbent protest to victory. The National Front, one of Europe’s longest surviving far-right anti-immigrant parties, captured an unprecedented 17.9% of the first round vote, which may alarm observers as you rightly point out. However, the Front’s presidential candidate (Marine Le Pen) didn’t actually make it into the second-round runoff as her father (Jean-Marie)succeed in doing a decade ago. For perspective we need to note that the party’s “strongest ever” first round showing this year is only 3.5% better than its performance almost a quarter century ago in the 1988 election. We shouldn’t, therefore, overly dramatize the fortunes of France’s far right this year, as they actually don’t represent too great of a departure from what we’ve been observing for some time.

This isn’t just about France and Greece. Parties stigmatized as rejectionist and anti-immigrant can be found throughout Europe. They defy easy classification, so we should be wary of too quickly and too simply labeling them. Terms such as “neo-fascist,” “neo-Nazi,” “extremist,” and “radical” are too frequently bandied about and are all too often misapplied. What we do know is that parties capitalizing on voter opposition to immigration have scored recent successes in Switzerland (Swiss People’s Party), the Netherlands (Party for Freedom), Finland (True Finns Party), Hungary (Movement for a Better Hungary) and beyond. Even in countries where the electoral systems make it difficult for small parties to win legislative seats, we still find niche parties competing (for example, the British National Party in the United Kingdom and the German People’s Union in Germany).

Hickman: Then where should we be looking for an explanation?
Downs: Public opinion surveys routinely show that Europeans rank immigration among their top five most pressing concerns. There is also evidence that voters often see the issue of immigration intertwined with trends in unemployment, crime, cultural degradation, and terrorism. We also know that voters supporting pariah parties in Europe often do so not because they themselves are racist and xenophobic but because such parties appear as vehicles to express a range of “anti-“ sentiments (anti-incumbent, anti-EU, anti-bureaucracy, anti-tax). Appeals to identity, sovereignty, and tradition resonate with these voters. When parties on the outer edges of European democracies can mix anti-immigrant rhetoric with other forms of populist rejection, they produce a potent electoral cocktail. Our media haven’t constructed these phenomena, but media filters do excessively simplify and sensationalize them. Europe isn’t descending into some new form of its old darkness; instead, it is struggling with how best to tolerate (or combat) the intolerance that exists in all open societies.

Hickman: If it is Europe wide, then is it also something common to all of the wealthy liberal democracies?
Downs: This is absolutely the appropriate follow-up question. I think we would be dead wrong to conclude that European countries have a monopoly on popular angst over immigration. Again, this isn’t “New Europe” simply going back to being “Old Europe” at the first sign of economic malaise. Instead, we can observe similar debates here at home in the US, in Canada, and in Australia, New Zealand and other liberal democracies. One of the terms we often hear in these countries is “welfare chauvinism”—where years of affluence and economic expansion facilitated generous forms of social security, only to have taxpayers turn against groups receiving those benefits now that budgets have contracted. There’s ample evidence of such backlash across all democratic systems.

I think it’s important here to distinguish between anti-immigrant sentiments and anti-immigration preferences. They’re both present across democratic systems, but they can mean quite different things and shouldn’t always be used interchangeably. The former really refers to a rejection of groups of people for who they are, how they look, and whom they worship. Such rejection can imply racism and an inherent belief in the superiority of one group over another. The latter, however, refers to opposition to immigration policy and need not necessarily constitute an illiberal rejection of others. Reasonable people can disagree about whether to increase the numbers of immigrants admitted to a country or the criteria for doing so. In democracies where legitimate debate over immigration policy is suppressed and those who oppose greater openness are demonized, there is a tendency for radicalization.

Hickman: Why are we observing simultaneously intense anti-austerity messages and intense anti-immigration messages now? Does the Left have a monopoly on anti-austerity sentiment and the Right on anti-immigration sentiment?
Downs: People are uncertain and angry. Whether in reaction to “change” or “integration,” citizens fear the loss of security. If Europeans are told they must endure lower wages, higher prices, and fewer benefits in order to save their common currency, then it would be surprising to witness anything other than public outcry. Austerity means that economies are shrinking, and competition for increasingly scarce resources reinforces group identities, reawakens stereotypes, and increases the appeal of those offering easy solutions. If the size of the economic pie is shrinking, and there are more (and different looking) people sitting around the table wanting to share your diminished slice of that pie, then the sentiments likely to ensue are predictable.

We should not see any side of the ideological spectrum, Left or Right, as laying exclusive claim to angst. Actually, if you look at public opinion surveys and national election studies, you’ll find that far-right parties are drawing some support from disaffected leftists. Likewise, rightists often join leftists in opposing austerity packages, albeit for different reasons (i.e., rightists are worried about threats to sovereignty, reduced national greatness, and increased governmental intrusion in the market).

Hickman: Am I wrong in thinking that all this echoes the sort of general economic and social crisis that Europe experienced in the 1930s? Should that be read as ominous or have I watched too much History Channel?
Downs: If I must confess, I watch that channel, too…and there is nothing necessarily wrong with embracing the vigilance that derives from historical understanding. That being said, wouldn’t you think we’d bridle at European observers invoking the American Civil War every time racism or intolerance rears its head here in the South? And wouldn’t we roll our eyes (or worse) if Le Monde, The Times, or Der Spiegel interpreted recent debate rhetoric by Republican presidential hopefuls in South Carolina and Florida as echoes of earlier eras?

Hickman: Well I suspect that some Americans might be nodding in agreement rather than rolling their eyes at the kinds of parallels you suggest, but I take your point. Not every contemporary event reprises something from the past. How should we understand what is happening now?
Downs: Protracted economic downturn heaps pressure on incumbent governments and too often turns people against groups at society’s margins. That’s happening now. But this isn’t Europe of the interwar period. The continent’s financial woes don’t rival those of last century’s Great Depression, and we don’t have a country at Europe’s heart (e.g., Germany) suffering under the weight of humiliating international sanctions as was the case from 1919-33. The safe money today is on Europe’s now mature democratic political cultures and institutions to withstand the kind of periodic challenges that might have more easily destabilized it in the past.

To be sure, there are some real concerns and we have already witnessed some tragic events…most notably the killing spree last July in Norway by a man bent on driving the perceived evils of multiculturalism from his country. Yet, unlike Europe of the 1930s, there is little worry that democracies will fall victim to overthrow or internal deconstruction by domestic foes plotting radical change. Instead, established democracies could find themselves witnessing a gradual erosion of core values and group protections if mainstream parties are tempted into outbidding the extremes on issues such as immigration in order to stay in office. That would be, to use your word, ominous enough.

Hickman: With the exception of the French, Europeans have rather limited modern historical experience of dealing with large number of immigrants who do not share some ethnic affinity. Has the debate about immigration changed conceptions of national identity? Are Europeans getting worse rather than better at dealing with immigration?
Downs: Here I might just quibble with you a bit on the question’s premise. True, the French have a long tradition of allowing non-Europeans into the country and in many cases granting them citizenship. However, they’re clearly not alone. West Germany pioneered guest worker programs in the 1950s-70s, bringing in large numbers of presumably temporary laborers (primarily Turks). Although not on the same scale, the Dutch, Belgians and Swiss made similar arrangements. I think here also of Britain, which has seen substantial increases in its foreign born population (originating primarily from former colonies in such places as India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, and Kenya). Germany and others also absorbed large numbers of asylum seekers from the east during the early 1990s, including those fleeing conflict in the Balkans. What’s really changed in Europe is the ease with which persons admitted to one EU country can now access life in any of the other EU member states. The elimination of internal border controls means a very open intra-European immigration system; however, worries that non-European immigrants will move at will throughout the continent have given policymakers incentives to heighten the walls around Europe.

The persistence of immigration as a troubling issue for Europeans means that they have yet to achieve any kind of policy consensus or to reconcile their various competing identities with the expectations of a multicultural society. Are they getting worse at dealing with immigration? Certainly not, if the point of comparison is Europe’s not too distant history. The present struggle is, paradoxically, a product of the progress Europeans have made during the last 60+ years…having advanced to become net receivers of immigrants, European countries now wrestle with the practical consequences of a new openness.

Hickman: I should ask the same question about Americans. Are we getting worse rather than better at dealing with immigration?
Downs: There’s a great political cartoon that I saw some months back that perhaps captures our own dilemma. The cartoon shows the feet and base of the Statue of Liberty inscribed with the famous words of Emma Lazarus: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” Below that plaque, the cartoonist has added a modern update, “Note: Some restrictions may apply.”

Are we getting worse in this country at dealing with immigration? That’s a tough one. On the one hand, we owe our origins and the richness of our diverse culture to immigration. It is a core element of our character and national story, and it is one that we routinely celebrate. I see its living legacy every day in Atlanta. We’d be wrong, though, to characterize the “land of immigrants” storyline in romanticized simplicity and lament the loss of a bygone era when peoples from across the globe landed on our shores and pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps. Sadly, intolerance and exclusion are also part of our national narrative. Nativist movements have appeared throughout our own history, variously targeting immigrant groups for opposition. So, it is a bit illusory to talk of the halcyon days of immigration in this country.

What generates so much debate for Americans today is not immigration per se, but illegal immigration. The scale of such illegal immigration (estimated to be between 7 and 20 million persons) makes it a huge political and policy challenge. Because of our federal structure, we can see state-level efforts to deal with illegal immigration; to illustrate, we can recall the recent passage of controversial laws here in Georgia as well as in Arizona and Utah. Such localized solutions are less frequently observed in Europe.

Some would argue that Americans outperform Europeans on immigration because “at least we don’t have anti-immigrant parties here.” Perhaps, however, I can leave you with something of a “what if” counterfactual… If the United States were to reform its electoral system and adopt some variant of proportional representation (as is commonly found in Europe), would we not soon see the emergence and electoral success of one or more anti-immigrant parties? Our two-party majoritarian system tends to subsume and dilute such sentiments within large parties that gravitate around the ideological center. Replace that system with one that grants seats in proportion to votes won, and American politics might quickly begin to resemble what we see in Europe. We’re likely not inherently more welcoming or more tolerant than our European counterparts; politically, our system simply inhibits the success of organized intolerance.

Watching the news of recent events in Europe, we should be careful not to dismiss what we see. Even though our respective political systems produce different dynamics, we share common policy challenges. The opportunity for some mutual transatlantic learning is great.

About John Hickman

John Hickman is associate professor of comparative politics at Berry College in Rome, Georgia. His published work on electoral politics, media, and international affairs has appeared in Asian Perspective, American Politics Research, Comparative Strategy, Contemporary South Asia, Contemporary Strategy, Current Politics and Economics of Asia, East European Quarterly, JOunral of Third World Studies, Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Political Science, Review of Religious Research, Women & Politics, and Yamanashigakuin Law Review. He may be reached at jhickman@berry.edu.

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Well, to be honest, as a neighbor tells it, Lynn Tilton is responsible for the rescue of the paper mill in Gorham, NH because her father came to her in a dream and said that taking the two million dollars from the settlement of her sex discrimination law suit and retiring early was the wrong way to go.

Lynn Tilton, Chief Executive Officer, Patriarch Partners

Lynn Tilton herself says:

One night, on vacation in Costa Rica, she woke suddenly. “I was laying there in this hotel room, and I saw my father and my Mayan teacher very vividly,” she explains. “They said this was not what was planned for me. I said, ‘Why did I go through this path, to empty myself out of any needs or material longings, only to be sent back to New York to be a businessperson?’ And the answer was: You’re not capable of leading until nothing can hold you back. Get your ass back to New York. So I got up in the middle of the night and left.”

So, she founded Patriarch Partners in 2000 and claims,

Since its inception, Patriarch, through its managed funds, has bought more than 150 companies, and in so doing has saved over 250,000 jobs. Patriarch’s platform includes a broad range of industrial concerns including Dura Automotive, American LaFrance, Denali, and MD Helicopters, in addition to iconic American brands such as Rand McNally, Spiegel Catalogs and Stila Cosmetics. Under Ms. Tilton’s leadership, Patriarch has become the largest woman-owned business in America with companies in its platform employing more than 120,000 employees.

Does Ms. Tilton have a gripe? Not about Willard. After all, it was his ilk that provided the incentive to do something else and prove him wrong. She’s pissed as Obama.

“Look, I am the largest female business owner in this country,” she says, coming out from behind the rack in a Herve Leger gown. “I own 74 midsize businesses, and Obama has not once called me into the White House on these issues.” More offensive, Tilton claims, as a female stylist reaches into the bodice of the dress to plump up her cleavage, the president has borrowed language from her articles. “I mean actually lifting pieces,” she says. “Literally, I can give you paragraphs. I got like twenty e-mails after his speech, when he was like, ‘We need to be innovators and the makers of things.’ ”

Doesn’t she know imitation is the sincerest form of flattery? Or that great minds think alike? Or that in the current climate, failure gets more respect than success?

Maybe Tilton is a bit flamboyant. As New York Magazine reports:

“My job is to make men better men,” Tilton often says, and that includes teaching lessons to the ones who try to hold her back. Like Claudio Gemme, the CEO of Ansaldo Sistemi Industriali, a producer of electric motors and generators, who failed to treat Tilton with proper respect when she first came to tour the soon-to-be-bankrupt factory in Genoa in 2005.

“He was like, ‘In Italy, we like-a the women,’ ” she says. “ ‘We like-a them in the bedroom. We like-a them in the kitchen. Not in the boardroom.’ I’m thinking, I’m going to buy this company, and I’m going to fire these arrogant men.” A week later, at the bankruptcy auction, when Gemme, who had been at the company for 32 years, failed to provide essential paperwork, Tilton grabbed him by the knot of his tie and, in a boardroom full of people, shoved him against the wall. “You’ve showed me no respect and no appreciation,” she hissed. “Today I can give your company away. So when I say ‘Step right,’ you step right. When I say ‘Step left,’ you step left. Do you understand that dance?” Then she stormed out.

“She’s got balls,” a trustee said.

Gemme loosened his collar. “Three.”

“Now we get along great,” Tilton says with a laugh. “He loves me. He would marry me in a second.” Gemme, she says, was afraid Patriarch would sell the company for parts. But with their backing, she says, Ansaldo Sistemi Industriali has turned back to profitability. For his part, Gemme confirms that “everything happened exactly like Lynn says it did,” and mentions that they now have a marketing slogan that stresses “the power of three: ‘Innovation, Intellect, and Integrity,’ ” and a new logo, an A with three balls.

Lynn Tilton is into basics. The Gorham paper mill has been converted from producing newsprint to making toilet paper.

But while demand for other paper products was dropping, U.S. tissue consumption was on the way up, increasing an estimated 7.2% between 2001 and 2011, according to Vertical. And tissue has another advantage for domestic manufacturers: Unlike other paper, tissue paper isn’t economical to ship from overseas because of its bulk.

Hoping to tap that growing market, Patriarch Partners LLC, a New York private-equity firm, bought the Gorham mill in May 2011, paying $2 million, according to county deed records. Patriarch said it plans to invest $60 million in the mill, including paying for special machines to craft fine tissue.

No thanks to Willard. Though, given his penchant for claiming other people’s success, he might well want to associate himself with the tigress from the Bronx.
I’d like to see him try.

Past and future are meeting in the New Hampshire and Maine north country.

Asset managers are now a permanent feature of the American pulp and paper industry. NewPage is owned by Cerberus Capital, the notorious buyout giant chaired by Bush 2 Treasury Secretary John Snow and J. Danforth Quayle. Verso Paper, once the coated paper division of International Paper, is an Apollo Management portfolio company. Georgia-Pacific was acquired by Koch Industries in 2005. PE firm Madison Dearborn bought Boise Cascade in 2004, then sold its paper and packaging business to Aldabra 2 Acquisition, a “blank check” company created for the deal by Terrapin Partners.

/…/
The Old Town Fuel & Fiber mill, sixty miles downstream from Millinocket, was acquired by Tilton’s Patriarch Partners in late 2008 after its previous investor, Red Shield, went bankrupt. She revamped the old pulp mill to produce bio-butanol, a jet fuel derived from wood waste, and she flew up for a tour, cameras for her Sundance Channel reality show trailing along as she rhapsodized about woman-power and rebuilding American industry.

About Monica Smith

Monica Smith writes Hannah's Blog. Born in Germany, she came to the United States as a child, living first in California, then after an interval in Chile, in New York. Married to a retired professor at the University of Florida, where she lived for 17 years, she moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 1993 and now divides her time between Georgia and New Hampshire. (New Hampshire, she says, is always interesting during a presidential election.) She and her husband have three children and five grandchildren. Ms. Smith says she "learned long ago that I am not a good team player when I got hired at the Library of Congress, fresh out of college with a degree in political science and proficiency in four foreign languages, to 'edit' library cards and informed my supervisor that if she was going to insist I punch the clock exactly on time, my productivity was going to fall from being the highest to being the same as everyone else's. The supervisor opted to assign me to another building where there was no time-clock. After I had the first of our three children, I decided a paycheck wasn't worth the hassle."

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That seems unfair. Let me re-phrase it. Can a candidate wishing to robo-sign teapublican legislation to return us to some mythological Don Draperesque vision of America win against this incumbent president?**

Man, those early sixties were good times. When everyone was happy, white, middle class and smoked. The women were valium-laced and the men were drunk. And why not? The bomb was going to kill us anyway.

There were some good things. Not so many people or cars. Neighborhoods were safe for kids to play. People visited each other. Phone calls were important and brief. Photos were special. The air was clean. The difference between a poor man and one well-to-do was only a thousand dollars. The store on the corner was owned by the person who worked in the store on the corner. We believed what people said on television.

And then we found out. What they said on television was not true. Everyone wasn’t happy. Nor white. And certainly not middle class. Our schools were not equal. Our society wasn’t fair. Each small town was a fiefdom of power, corruption and meanness. Smoking was an addiction that killed you and they sold it to us anyway. Diet drugs didn’t keep you skinny. Booze didn’t help anything. Our parents loved in the American way, but mostly saved the good stuff for themselves. And the war just went on and on and on. And people kept dying.

With all do respect to Beaver, Opie and Willard, I’d rather we didn’t go back. Every step forward was measured in somebody’s blood. And really, we haven’t gone that far.

The Rambler candidate of the old establishment Republican party, Willard Mitt Romney, appears to be the nominee – it is his turn. It took Romney more than $100 million to beat Santorum, Gingrich, Bachmann, Perry, Huntsman, Cain and Paul. When Santorum dropped out, Romney had only won four primaries by 50% or more – Massachusetts; Virginia (only Paul and Romney were on the ballot); Puerto Rico; and Washington, DC. Hardly a mandate. People don’t seem to like him. Must take after his dad.

You can’t pick up a paper or watch the news these days without learning of a new poll that makes this race seem close. How can that be? You have an unpopular candidate surrounded by the same advisors spewing the same talking points on policy that got us into the biggest mess of our lifetimes. Over and over again we are promised that we need to have more faith. We need to believe in the markets. We need to set the markets free. That the corporations know best. The bigger they are the more they know and we couldn’t possibly understand. That is why the government shouldn’t regulate them. The markets will take care us just like they always have. But first the corporate owners, the unimaginably wealthy, need a little more money. Just lower the tax rates a bit more. The poor would just waste it and the middle class don’t know they don’t have it. Another tax break and the rich will quit being scared, come out of their vast mansions and trickle on us.

Have enough people forgotten what it was like to live during the Bush years and what they did to us to give them four more years? The same advisors, the same talking points, the same sabres rattled, the same promise of trickling on us. How can a any voter expect the outcome to be different?

These people lied to us for war. They used our love for this country to enrich their friends, squander our wealth, waste a generation and kill many tens of thousands of people.

Have the Republicans found enough people to vote against their interests or is it possible there are that many voters who are just unwilling to admit how wrong they have been all along?

Sounds implausable, doesn’t it? It was less than four years ago that a one-term senator named Barack Hussein Obama took the nomination from Hillary Clinton and went on to beat John McCain. Of course, people like Barack Obama.

* For simplicity, the most recent candidate Mitt Romney was used. Were all versions of candidate Mitt Romney used, a more accurate lede would be: “Can a candidate who goes both ways on old women, working or unemployed, regardless of immigration status, country of origin, ethnic background, or religion; science, torture, war, banking regulation and or the future of the world, win the presidential election?” And that shouldn’t be correct.

As to the specific positions that the most recent candidate Mitt Romney takes:

• He is not anti-woman. Along with the trees in Michigan, he reportedly likes women. He simply believes they should work unpaid in their homes and should not have control over their bodies – instead, asking their husbands. In the case of a single woman, they should ask their church for guidance about body issues and such.
• Nor is he anti-black. He just believes people of color should trust their state and local government to protect their rights and that businesses and schools should be colorblind. If there’s discrimination, anyone should fix that in the voting booth.
• Nor is he anti-senior. He just believes that all of us should work more years before we get to become seniors and then be ready to live on less, while paying more, a lot more, for healthcare.
• Nor is he anti-sick. In fact, he really would like more sick people. That will make the free market work more efficiently and bring the cost of healthcare way down. Until then, sick people should save their money and be more responsible.
• Nor is he anti-worker. He just likes to fire people. And he doesn’t think we need a living wage – the markets can determine that much better.
• Nor is he anti-unemployed. He just thinks they should get a job and unemployment benefits are keeping them from finding one (they should have saved their money). And that we don’t need another government program that gets people back to work. That won’t create permanent jobs. The best thing for our economy would be for it to hit bottom. That’s when the free market will work best. Once we lower the tax rate for the rich, raise the bottom tax rate and get rid of all the regulations, everyone will be working and working and working. Once everyone has been foreclosed on, housing will take off again.
• Nor is he anti-poor. He knows they are taken care of. That there are government programs for the poor and if those programs don’t work, he’ll fix them.
• Nor is he anti-immigrant. He just thinks it is better for them to come here legally, unless they were fleeing Castro. And that anyone here without documents should have their property seized and be deported. If they have children who speak English and are willing to fight in our wars and survive, those children should be allowed to apply for citizenship.
• Nor is he anti-gay. Not since prep school. He even had a gay person on his staff for a while. He just doesn’t believe they should have rights protected under the Constitution.
• Nor is he anti-Muslim. He just wouldn’t hire a Muslim to work in a Romney administration because there are not enough Muslims in the US to worry about pissing off.
• Nor is he anti-education. He just would get rid of the Department of Education and let the states take care of teaching our children. They know best.
• Nor is he anti-union. Oops. Yes, he is. He believes that workers shouldn’t be allowed to organize and he recommends companies with union workers use bankruptcy to reduce their obligations for pensions and wages.
• Nor is he anti-peace. He just thinks we should go back into Iraq. Stay in Afghanistan. Help in Syria. Keep Iran for nukes by any means necessary. Ditto North Korea. The “Soviet Union” is our biggest enemy. And that Jesus is coming back to Missouri.
• Nor is he anti-environment. He just believes that the free markets will protect our air and water from pollution. That we should open more federal lands, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling but wind farms off the Cape is bad. That oil companies can self-regulate.
• Nor is he anti-science. Except that he is against Newt’s moon base plans, he just believes the typical Republican evolution is a theory, no proof we caused the climate change, etc.
• Nor is he anti-Wall-Street-reform. Oops, again. Yes he is.
• Nor is he anti-Geneva-Convention. Ditto.
• Nor is he anti-world. He does like Israel and Canada.

One footnote on the footnote, once I subtracted registered voters of each alienated group, all that was left for Romney was .01%, which may just be enough to win.

** Romney’s vision does not include the progressive and higher taxes on the wealth, or the regulated financial industry we had during the sixties. Not to suggest this is a Goldwater vs. Kennedy rematch. Paraphrasing Lloyd Bentsen: Mitt Romney is no Barry Goldwater.

About Lee Leslie

I’m just a plateaued-out plain person with too much time on his hands fighting the never ending lingual battle with windmills for truth, justice and the American way or something like that. Here are some reader comments on my writing: “Enough with the cynicism. One doesn’t have to be Pollyanna to reject the sky is falling fatalism of Lee Leslie’s posts.” “You moron.” “Again, another example of your simple-minded, scare-mongering, label-baiting method of argumentation that supports the angry left’s position.” “Ah, Lee, you traffic in the most predictable, hackneyed leftist rhetoric that brought us to the current state of political leadership.” “You negative SOB! You destroyed all my hope, aspiration, desperation, even.” “Don’t you LIBERALS realize what this COMMIE is talking about is SOCIALISM?!?!?!” “Thank you for wonderful nasty artful toxic antidote to this stupidity in the name of individual rights.” “I trust you meant “bastard” in the truest father-less sense of the word.” “That’s the first time I ran out of breath just from reading!” “You helped me hold my head a little higher today.” “Makes me cry every time I read it.” “Thanks for the article. I needed something to make me laugh this mourning.” “If it weren’t so sad I would laugh.” "... the man who for fun and personal growth (not to mention rage assuagion) can skin a whale of bullshit and rack all the meat (and rot) in the larder replete with charts and graphs and a kindness..."“Amen, brother.”

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“People have said ever since I came down here, I look healthier and I’ve been healing faster,” said McConnell, the powerful Senate president pro tempore who resigned from a job he loved to take over for disgraced former Lt. Gov. Ken Ard, who was sentenced March 9 on ethics charges.

In December, a rare tick bit McConnell on the neck. He didn’t think much of it. Unfortunately, the tick injected a virus into his bloodstream. McConnell then got asthma after a concrete-pouring project. But the drug to treat the asthma interacted so negatively with the tick virus that McConnell ended up in January in an intensive care unit on the verge of congestive heart failure.

As he was trying to heal, Ard’s shenanigans came to light, causing enormous pressure on McConnell. On one hand, he’d spent more than 31 years building seniority in the Senate so he could be the policy power player that he’d become. But on the other, he knew what the state Constitution really required.

“It would have been easy for me to get the doctor’s excuse that I needed to step down as president pro tem — the stress and everything,” the Charleston Republican said in an exclusive interview this week.

At most, some of his friends advised, manipulating Senate rules and the Constitution to avoid becoming lieutenant governor wouldn’t be news for long.

“I told them it may be a two-day story for y’all, but it will be an everyday story for me when I had to look at myself in the mirror. How can I ever come back to the Senate floor and talk about constitutional compliance and I did the talk but wasn’t willing to make the walk?”

He added, “Constitutions shouldn’t be twisted into something that they’re not and you shouldn’t try to circumvent them, go around them or reinterpret them for your benefit.”

Today, there’s a new Glenn McConnell filled with a new vitality and energy. Yes, he’s still healing. And sure, it’s frustrating to not be able to interject policy and political views as he’s presiding over Senate debates. But a lot of the pressure is off.

“I’m not going to say I’m having fun,” he said. “I will say I am enjoying now what I’m doing. And now that the stress is off of me, I’m able to get more focused.”

McConnell has become an impassioned advocate for the state’s Office on Aging, which is part of the lieutenant governor’s office.

“I have become enthusiastic about my new duties in trying to ensure seniors of South Carolina have a bright future and that the taxpayers of this state know we’ve used best business practices and the best judgment to deal  with the problem of improving the track record” of the office.

When he took over, more than 8,000 seniors were on waiting lists to get services from rides to doctors’ appointments to meals to home-based health care. McConnell has lobbied the Senate to restore operational funding for his office in the new state budget — and to add $5 million to the Office on Aging. The move should save money by allowing seniors to get the help they need for a fraction of the cost of being put in a nursing home, he said.
“We don’t have seniors signing up on waiting lists to get in nursing homes,” he said. “They want to stay home.”

Over the next months as McConnell hits the road to talk about aging issues across the state, many will wonder whether he’s going to try to keep the job he never sought — whether he’ll run for lieutenant governor, or even governor.

“I haven’t even opened an account,” he’ll tell you. When pushed, he’ll reflect on what he’s learned this year: “I’m just not going to rule out anything. I learned this year — you don’t know what you’re facing. You take it as it comes and you make a decision based on what’s before you.”

One thing is for sure. We can use a few more Glenn McConnells in Columbia.

About Andy Brack

Andy Brack is a syndicated columnist in South Carolina and the publisher and a columnist for StatehouseReport.com. Brack, who holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, also publishes a twice-weekly newsletter about good news in the Charleston area, CharlestonCurrents.com. A former U.S. Senate press secretary and reporter, Brack has a national reputation as a communications strategist and Internet pioneer. As a communications strategist, he's recently worked with the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Charleston School of Law. Brack received a bachelor’s degree from Duke University. He, his wife, two daughters and Simon the Wonderdog live in Charleston, S.C.

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Polls had always shown the amendment had majority support, and across the country, even the most progressive states — think California — have tended to pass such measures.

But the amendment passed by an even larger margin than projected, 61 to 39 percent. And given that a blue-trending state like North Carolina has now gone against the national trend of states accepting gay marriage, the question remains: What happened in North Carolina?

Here are some quick takeaways from the amendment battle:

1) IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH TO CHANGE THE CONSTITUTION

On May 8, just over 20 percent of North Carolina’s registered voters cast a ballot in support of the amendment — the lowest support of any amendment that’s passed in Southern states. To put it another way, 14 percent of North Carolina’s population decided the fate of all of the state’s families.

How did that happen? It started in June 2011, when a Republican state legislator was accidentally caught on a live microphone telling GOP lawmakers they needed the amendment to “get their ground game working” for November 2012. The embarrassing admission that the amendment was about turnout and politics and not morality forced Republicans to offer a compromise — which enough Democrats accepted — of moving the amendment vote to the primary.

Moving the vote helped Republicans defuse the scandal and may help Democrats this November. But it likely doomed chances of defeating the amendment: Primary voters tend to be older; nearly 50 percent of early voters on May 8 were 60 or older, the demographic least sympathetic to gay marriage and civil unions. In primaries, groups with established turnout vehicles — like evangelical churches — also have a ready-made advantage.

2) THE POWER OF CONFUSION

Supporters of the amendment benefited greatly from confusion about what the measure actually does. An April 2012 poll by Public Policy Polling [pdf] infamously found that only 36 percent knew it would ban both gay marriage and civil unions; another 27 percent admitted they didn’t know what the amendment would do, and a striking 10 percent actually thought it legalized gay marriage).

This was significant, because that and other polls [pdf] found that a majority of North Carolina voters supported civil unions, as in other states. In 2006, Arizona voters defeated a proposition that prohibited both gay marriage and domestic partnerships, like the N.C. amendment does. A bill focused just on gay marriage passed in Arizona two years later.

Pro-amendment groups like Vote for Marriage NC knew this, which is why they focused all of their campaign messaging around the dangers of “same-sex” unions. Many media outlets went along, slow to grasp the broader consequences of the bill and describing it largely in the shorthand of only gay marriage — a bias that benefited pro-amendment forces.

The focus on gay marriage alone also drowned out the work of scholars like UNC’s Maxine Eichner, which broke ground in documenting the unintended consequences of sweeping anti-domestic partnership bills.

3) A DIVIDED NORTH CAROLINA

In the end, just eight counties — four centered around the Triangle progressive stronghold — voted against the amendment. This map from WRAL in Raleigh tells the story:*

True, those counties — defined by cities and college towns — are where more than a quarter of North Carolina lives, which is the reason anti-amendment forces focused on mobilizing their base in these areas.

But the amendment found support in counties that were older, less urban and less diverse. Democratic consultant Gary Pearce sees the other key fault line as decisive: faith.

As he wrote before the vote:

If you live in a city, you might miss [the influence of evangelical Christians]. And it’s not that opponents of the amendment aren’t religious. Some surely aren’t “churched,” but those who go to church tend toward a belief system that emphasizes fairness and tolerance. “Fundamentalists” care more about order, tradition and morality. This moral conservatism runs deep in North Carolina’s political DNA. You have to understand that to understand what’s apparently about to happen.

Conservative evangelical groups — with support from GOP uber-donor Art Pope — had been rallying their church base around an anti-gay marriage/civil union amendment for nearly a decade. The 2010 Republican capture of the N.C. legislature finally gave amendment supporters the opening they needed, and a lower-turnout primary election was tailor-made for an election where having a reliable and easy-to-mobilize base could guarantee victory.

4) A GALVANIZING MOMENT

North Carolina’s amendment passed by a larger margin than expected, but given the odds in its favor, it’s remarkable it didn’t win by a larger margin.

Anti-amendment forces, under the umbrella of the Coalition to Protect NC Families, built a formidable operation and remarkable coalitions in a short period of time.

Especially notable was the leadership of Rev. William Barber of the NAACP — only the second state chapter to take leadership on such an amendment fight (California was the other). Barber joined the fight early and rallied African-American ministers and communities statewide, the NAACP’s efforts complemented by organizing help from groups like All of US North Carolina.

The anti-amendment campaign faced the inevitable tensions and dilemmas, and a loss always invites second-guessing: How much of the message should focus on the amendment’s attack on gay families, the amendment’s clear target, versus the collateral damage to non-gay couples, a message with broader appeal? How much to focus on mobilizing sure supporters versus “persuadables” in the middle? More money for TV ads or grassroots organizing?

What the anti-amendment campaign definitely created is a stronger network of groups who have now gone through a bruising battle together and will emerge stronger to tackle future challenges, like the November elections.

Indeed, a law that was designed to pump up GOP turnout has ironically helped energize, coordinate and strengthen work among progressive groups in North Carolina, something which blogger (and Institute for Southern Studies board member) Pam Spaulding says will have impact far beyond Amendment One:

Building the coalition — assembling the diverse partners involved in this battle has been quite a handful, and it has paid off in dividends. The social justice infrastructure that has grown and been extended and is highly visible now — this can have lasting political repercussions for progressive politics in North Carolina — and that helps the equality movement nationally in the end.

* Here’s an even better map by Jay Cagle showing the varying level of support among NC counties:

About Chris Kromm

I am executive director of the Institute for Southern Studies, a non-profit media, research and policy center based in Durham, North Carolina.

I'm also publisher and contributor to the Institute's publications Facing South online and Southern Exposure magazine, winner of the National Magazine Award, two George Polk Awards, and other honors.

I have appeared on over 300 TV and radio broadcasts for commentary on Southern politics and current issues, including American Public Media's "Marketplace," CNN "Live," C-SPAN, Democracy Now, GRITtv, KPOJ Portland, Minnesota Public Radio, Mississippi Public Radio, NPR's "All Things Considered," Public Radio International's "To the Point," WAOK Atlanta, WBAI New York, WRAL TV North Carolina, WRNO New Orleans, WUNC North Carolina's "The State of Things" and XM Satellite Radio.

I contribute regularly to The Huffington Post, and my reporting and writing have also been published in The Durham Herald-Sun, The Hill, The Independent Weekly, The Nation, The Raleigh News & Observer, Salon and other publications.

My work focuses on leading high-impact projects that link media, research, policy and community participation strategies to promote equity, democracy and sustainability.

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However, the S.C. Press Association distributes this column, and neither they nor I want it to be a weekly partisan rant — there’s far too much of that in both our national and state politics already.

That said, this column is about one thing: the corruption of the Republican leadership in the S.C. House of Representatives.

Yes, that’s harsh. And, yes, at least in a sense, it’s partisan. But what they have just done with so-called “sales tax exemption reform” is, in fact, completely corrupt – and it should be labeled as such.

Put simply, the sold out – totally. They looked at the corrupt, rancid, special-interest driven tax system and voted to continue it – and worse, they voted to do so at the expense of our children.

First the facts. Our current state tax code has almost $3 billion in sales tax exemptions,  i.e., special-interest tax breaks. That’s $3 billion a year , every year, in revenues we could use to do all the things we need to do in this state, from responsible tax cuts to vital investments in education and infrastructure..

And while some of these exemptions are at least theoretically defensible, most are simply the result of the “vending-machine” style corruption that’s so common these days in Columbia: a special interest group hires a lobbyist, he or she deposits their money in the incumbent reelection machine, and out pops the legislation at the other end.

In the case of sales tax exemptions, the system has become so rotten that we actually exempt $2.7 billion a year, while we only collect $2.5 in sales tax. It’s like Swiss cheese, where there is more hole than cheese.

Things have gotten so bad that everyone who looks at this objectively agrees that something must be done. Numerous studies have been commissioned — by the SC Chamber of Commerce, citizen groups, and even the Legislature itself – and they all came to the same conclusion: eliminate some sales-tax exemptions.

In 2010, the Republican leadership appointed a Republican-dominated Tax Realignment Commission (TRAC), and they proposed eliminating close to $1 billion in deductions each year. Many considered this wimpy when compared to the $3 billion in existing deductions, but it was a start.

Then the lobbyists and special interests went to work, massaging legislators and calling in the favors they think they are due based on their campaign contributions. They all had one goal: getting their exemption protected, looking out for themselves.

When the Republican House leadership finally got around to introducing a bill this year, this $1 billion had been reduced to only $220 million – less than a quarter of what the Republicans’ own TRAC recommended

And as bad as this was, it got even worse, much worse.

The lobbyists and their legislator allies kept putting exemptions back in, until the final bill that passed the House last week by a 63-39 vote had less than $11 million in exemption cuts.

A lousy $11 million – that’s only 5% of what was originally proposed by the Republican leadership just a few weeks ago in their already disgustingly weak bill with $220 million in exemption cuts.

$11 million in cuts out of $3 billion in existing exemption – that’s 0.00003%.

Republican Rep. Bill Taylor, who helped draft the original proposal said it was so bad that, “If you [the special interest group] showed up, you got your exemption.“

And at the same time this was going on, the House cut another $665 million from mandatory education funding – this on top of the 25% cut education has already taken in this state over the last four years,, the biggest cut of any of the 50 states.

It was a sleazy sell out by the Republican leadership in the House at the expense of our children.

And that’s not politics. That’s corruption.

About Phil Noble

Phil Noble is a businessman from Charleston and he currently serves as President of the South Carolina New Democrats, an independent reform group started by former Gov. Richard Riley.

Noble is one of the leading experts in the US and internationally on the Internet and politics. Noble is the founder of PoliticsOnline and its affiliated company Phil Noble & Associates, an international public affairs consulting firm. Noble is a veteran of over 300 political campaigns and public affairs projects in 40 states and 30 countries. He has worked to elect the head of state in 15 countries.

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What’s interesting is that although Georgia is the twentieth largest state, it is second in number of courthouses. Only Texas has more. Without doubt, Georgia has a reputation for having some of the more beautiful and historic courthouses in the country.

In the smaller, rural counties the courthouse reigns as the area’s indisputable architectural gem. It’s the county’s ultimate power symbol too: the incontestable seat of power. Few structures provide a more powerful focal point for good behavior than the courthouse. Violate the law and the courthouse may be your personal Waterloo.

In 2002, I traveled to many towns while working on a book about the history of Worker’s Compensation insurance in Georgia. I interviewed a lot of lawyers and not surprisingly I visited a lot of courthouses. Most are gems. Just about all of them serve as imposing reminders of where true power resides. One hundred thirty-two Georgia courthouses are listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Lincoln County’s courthouse stands among them.

Lincoln County Courthouse (Photo: Keith Hair)

We came by today’s courthouse in a series of phases. When legislation carved Lincoln County from Wilkes County in 1796, the act stipulated that county commissioners select a site for a county seat and build a courthouse there. The 1796 act further directed that elections and court sessions first be held at Joseph Stovall’s house.

Lincolnton, settled near a spring then called Founders Spring, was named the county seat around 1800. The first court in Lincoln County was held in the old Ferguson House, which afterwards became the Dozier Hotel. When Lincolnton was designated the county seat, a stone courthouse was built. Later, on March 2, 1874, the legislature approved Lincoln County’s loan of $12,000 for building a new courthouse. That two-story courthouse rose from Lincoln County soil and served the people until 1915 when the present courthouse was built. An architectural website states that Little, Cleckler Construction Company built the current brick and stone structure and that architect G. Lloyd Preacher designed the building. The cost of construction for building the Neoclassical Revival courthouse was $24,340.

Neoclassical Revival architecture by the way is “defined by a commanding facade with a full height porch, its roof supported by classical columns. The columns are often fluted and the capitals are usually ornate Ionic or Corinthian. The Neoclassical Revival is also symmetrical with its entry centered and flanked by a balanced array of windows. Curved, flat roofed porticos are seen occasionally.”

Neoclassical Revival has been prominently used for public buildings and banks, institutions where people anticipate a bit of gravitas or dignity. Getting divorced, filing a deed, and condemning a man to the gallows quite rightly deserve a degree of solemnity. It wouldn’t seem as judicial would it to receive a life sentence while standing before a judge in a mobile home.

As you’d expect being the seat of power, county courthouses see their share of drama and life-changing decisions. Thus the courthouse plays a prominent role in Southern literature. Take Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird. Hollywood went to great pains to recreate the courtroom for Atticus Finch in the Monroe County, Alabama, courthouse for the film version of To Kill A Mockingbird. And that most southern of writers, William Faulkner, referred to this omnipresent symbol of power in Requiem for a Nun using grandiose words.

“But above all, the courthouse: the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming in the center of the county’s circumference like a single cloud in its ring of horizon, laying its vast shadow to the uttermost rim of horizon; musing, brooding, symbolic and ponderable, tall as cloud, solid as a rock, dominating all: protector of the weak, judicate and curb of the passions and lusts, repository and guardian of the aspirations and hopes.”

In 1984 John Grisham witnessed the disturbing testimony of a 12-year-old rape victim at the De Soto County courthouse in Hernando, Mississippi. A Time To Kill resulted.

For certain, courthouses serve up a mix of stories, plots, and memories. I have an unusual collection of memories centering on the hometown courthouse. Not long after I joined the staff at South Carolina Wildlife, a blonde secretary with few rivals when it came to good looks asked me where I was from. I knew that she worked stints as a model and had appeared in television commercials. “Well,” I told her, “I doubt you ever heard of where I’m from. It’s a small town in eastern Georgia by the name of Lincolnton.”

“Oh yes I have,” she exclaimed. “A man named Homer Legg married me there at the courthouse when I was just a teenager.” After a few second’s pause she added, “I had to get married.” She was divorced when I came to know her but Homer Legg’s ceremony had legitimized her and her sons.

On another occasion the scenario repeated itself. Another woman told me Legg had performed her marriage. She too had to get married. Lincolnton, being the first town you come to on Highway 378 from South Carolina became a haven for “girls in trouble” as the old expression went. The Lincoln County courthouse apparently was the destination for young unwed South Carolina mothers back in the 1960s.

Growing up I knew nothing of all that child out-of-wedlock business. I knew one thing, though: the courthouse impressed me, intimidated me even. First of all I found its size to be mammoth. It was the only building in Lincolnton visible from three miles away on the Augusta Highway where I grew up. Even now, driving toward Lincolnton, if you know just where and when to look, the courthouse reveals itself on the horizon as you approach where Mr. Henry Partridge’s sawmill once stood. Look quickly and you’ll see the courthouse dome peek over the green tree line.

Second, the place struck me as the site for serious matters. As a boy whenever I entered the building I got the notion that I was in a sacred, powerful place. It always intimidated me to go into that place. I knew it was the last stop a fellow would make before landing in jail. Do something wrong and you’d pay a price.

In 1972, I got a chance to participate in such serious matters. Despite my 1970’s era long hair and a pair of John Lennon spectacles and bad taste in clothes I was chosen as a jury member and then in a bigger surprise chosen as its foreman. The case we heard involved that of a man who had been caught robbing lake homes. He was in the process of rifling through a cabin when he saw its occupants driving down the lane leading to the cabin. He dropped his loot and scurried away from the cabin. The occupants realizing they had been robbed, called the law, and the law found this fellow walking down the road with a rifle scope in his back pocket, a piece of loot he forgot to ditch.

That riflescope did him in. We found him guilty. And then the judge told us this fellow had already served two terms for burglarizing lake homes and we’d have to determine how many years he’d serve without parole. He could serve a minimum of one year or a maximum of twenty. After three ballots we were nowhere near agreement so we added all three ballots and averaged them out: seven years without parole.

Not all courthouse memories are so serious. Eddie Drinkard’s fondest memories of the courthouse were when Vern Sturkey, the custodian/janitor, would take several kids up into the clock tower. “We’d go up some stairs in the dark. There was a small square that would open so you could see out above the houses and trees. There was always one condition, we had to be out before the next time the clock struck. It would burst your eardrums or so we were told and we were not taking any chances.”

That experience, said Eddie, was pretty cool when you were seven to eight years old. “Also,” he said, “if you were lucky enough to have a pair of roller skates (the metal kind with a key to tighten it onto the soles of your shoes) we would skate on the concrete around the monument in front of the courthouse. Sort of a 60’s version of Roller Derby!”

Eddie said too that he would always remember doing business with Mr. Ben Ross whose office was upstairs just before going into the courtroom.

—

“Going into the courtroom.” That phrase has a negative tone to it if you are on the wrong side of the law. But that’s why such buildings exist: to dispense justice, sort out disputes, maintain records, and in general bring an orderly way of life to the people in the county. And you could say with authenticity to add an element of beauty as well.

Atop Lincoln County’s courthouse, one that will be 100 years old in 2015, sits a cupola with a green patina like that of oxidized copper. Green metal roofing matches the cupola. The deep red bricks contrast with the four white columns. Those red bricks came from Lincoln County clay. Out front fly the state and national flags. Between those flags stand the county’s memorial to local veterans of four wars who made the supreme sacrifice. Those men fought that we can be free, that we have the right to make laws and see that justice is served. They died so that you can use the courthouse and judicial system to redress grievances and wrongs.

Thus do we have courthouses all over Georgia. These grand old buildings house the scales of justice, which generally do their thing in a just and impartial manner. On the absolute top of our courthouse you’ll find a weathervane. “Justice is often the wind that blows the criminal to his punishment” goes the old quote. This stately old courthouse has long blown justice to criminals while doing its share to contribute to Georgia’s legacy as a state known for its alluring seats of power. Beauty, history, justice, social conventions, and architecture: they all come together and they all reside at many a courthouse in Georgia.

About Tom Poland

A Southern writer, Tom Poland’s work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. He’s published five books and more than 500 magazine features. In 1996, Reckon magazine published his literary feature, "Deliver Me from Leviathan," on James Dickey. Excerpts were published in The World As A Lie–James Dickey, the Dickey biography by Henry Hart. The University of South Carolina Press has published three of his books, most recently, Reflections of South Carolina, now in its third printing. For six years, Tom worked as a scriptwriter and cinematographer, working primarily along the South Carolina Lowcountry and its barrier islands. While filming on a primitive barrier island one evening, fog rolled in trapping him overnight. That experience led to his novel, Forbidden Island, and the mythical Georgialina. Currently, he’s working on two nonfiction books. A Lincolnton, Georgia, native and University of Georgia graduate, he lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Read more at www.tompoland.net Favorite Quotes On Writing and Creativity: Writing is a kind of smoke, seized and put on paper. —James Salter I never wanted to be well rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. —Harry Crews

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Science says no, but court officers not reassured.

If real-life technology solved crimes as easily as the methods seen on “CSI” and similar TV shows, there’d be a lot more convictions for criminal offenses in the U.S.

“CSI,” which Nielson says consistently draws more than 10 million viewers a week, takes fans to a world where forensic investigators obtain damning evidence with lightning speed, using tools and methods that sometimes aren’t actually available.

Investigators cannot lift fingerprints from blades of grass or obtain conclusive DNA test results in just a few hours, even though both have happened during episodes of “CSI.”

This disconnect between TV drama and reality has led some judges, prosecutors and journalists alike to be concerned about something they call the “CSI effect.” They worry that jurors may have unreasonable expectations about the quantity and quality of evidence available during a trial, and may be voting to  acquit when what they see falls short.

As a felony trial judge in Ann Arbor, Michigan for the last two decades and one of only seven U.S. judges with a Ph.D. in judicial studies, Judge Donald H. Shelton decided to find out if there is truth to this myth. At this year’s American Academies of Forensic Sciences conference in Atlanta, he presented his findings to a jam packed room.

He’s been studying the so-called “CSI” effect for the last five years, searching for clues about what jurors really expect in the courtroom.

What he has found, he said, is surprising.

Prior to being selected to be on a jury, 1200 potential jurors in Wayne County, Detroit were surveyed about their television watching habits, their expectations about evidence they might see  in seven different hypothetical case scenarios, and whether or not they would demand to see scientific evidence before voting to convict in 13 hypothetical case scenarios.

The study found that almost 60 percent of those surveyed expected to see some kind of scientific evidence in every criminal case, more than 40 percent expected DNA evidence to play a part in every criminal case, and more than half expected fingerprints in every criminal case.

Additionally, more than 70 percent of jurors anticipated DNA evidence in a murder case and 88 percent expected this in rape cases.

“These are big expectations that the prosecution will present some kind of scientific evidence,”  said Shelton, one of only a few U.S. judges who also holds a Ph.D. in judicial studies, at the conference earlier this year.

This expectation softens when  jurors hear eyewitness testimony.

“Jurors are more likely to find the defendant guilty than not guilty even without scientific evidence if there is testimony from the victim or other witnesses, except in rape cases,” said Shelton.

“Jurors still believe eyewitness testimony,” he said. Rape, however, is the one crime where eyewitness testimony is least likely to guarantee conviction in the absence of DNA or some other type of forensic evidence. Jurors expect DNA in rape cases.

Real or not, the “CSI” effect is discussed in law school classes and addressed in courtrooms  by both attorneys and judges, according to longtime University of Georgia Law School professor Ron Carlson, who has been studying the issue since 2005.

“The notion is that the prosecutors feel that jurors, unless they see a lot of CSI type testing, they’re not going to convict,” said Carlson.  “They want to see somebody in a white lab coat, maybe even bringing some test tubes into the court room. And if I were trying a big case, that’s probably what I’d give them.”

Some jurors may have those  expectations, but according to  Shelton’s study that can’t be blamed on watching “CSI.”

“There were no significant differences in the propensity or reluctance of jurors to find a defendant guilty based on whether they watched CSI-type programs,” he said.  “CSI is not a significant factor in those expectations or demands from jurors.”

Instead, he said, a broader “tech effect” in popular culture may have whetted appetites for evidence that looks “scientific.”

“Ordinary people know or at least think they know more science than they learned in school,” he said.

Even though Shelton’s study pretty much dispels the notion that “CSI” watchers are letting the guilty go free, “that myth has become reality,” he said.

Carlson said that judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys are taught to give juries special instructions in closing arguments – telling them they can convict a defendant without mountains of  “CSI”-like science.

He said he had commended one federal court judge in Macon, Georgia for the attention he lavishes on the “CSI” effect, and on dialing back jurors’  evidence expectations.

“He feels it’s an important enough factor that he gives the jurors special instructions,” Carlson said. “And I encourage judges to think about doing that.”

Shelton’s study is not powerful enough to sever the link between jurors’ devotion to “CSI” and  their behavior in the jury room.  In Carlson’s view, anecdotes speak louder.

In a recent case in New Jersey, for example, prosecutors had what they thought would be an open and shut case. A woman was assaulted in the presence of two or three eyewitnesses, and crime scene investigators collected – among other things —  a half-eaten cheeseburger from the defendant very close to the scene of the crime.

Because they had so much  eyewitness and circumstantial evidence in the case, prosecutors didn’t request a lab test for DNA on the cheeseburger. But after they voted to acquit the defendant, jurors said they had freed him because DNA from the cheeseburger was not presented as a means of linking him to the scene of the crime.

Similar cases routinely play out across the country, Carlson said.

Whether CSI is to blame when jurors set aside common sense, or whether there is some other cause,  judges and attorneys must work to make sure that jurors have realistic expectations about forensic evidence in the court of law.

About Jessica Luton

I'm a graduate student in UGA's Health and Medical Journalism program. Previously, I was a reporter for a small, community newspaper for three years. I write about health and wellness, technology, crime, politics, food and so much more.

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The museum at dusk. Photo by Timothy Hursley

Crystal Bridges Museum is the brainchild of Alice Walton, 62, youngest daughter of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart. The art alone in the museum has been estimated to have cost $445.4 million. The works are beautiful, from pre-Revolutionary War art to Andy Warhol’s Dolly Parton and Chuck Close’s portrait of Bill Clinton. Cost was not a factor in founding the museum, as Alice Walton’s wealth is estimated at $21 billion, among the top ten wealthiest in the USA. She spent liberally.

Then there’s the building design itself, a stunning production of the world-famous Montreal architect Moshe Safdie. Its 120 acres are nestled in a ravine 10 minutes from downtown Bentonville. The museum is a series of several buildings totaling 200,000 square feet connected at right angles, with a stream flowing underneath. Looking down on the ravine from the fourth floor entrance, the copper-covered roofs remind me of a beetle. Some 3.5 miles of trails surround the site.

Alice Walton’s whole idea was to collect only American art. She’s done a good job. Museum people are surprised she would locate a museum in mid-America. But if her goal was unthinkable years ago, it works now: to make Bentonville a destination site for art lovers. She gets our vote, as we thoroughly enjoyed the visit, and hope to return again later on.

Dolly Parton by Andy Warhol

No one on the Crystal Bridges staff will talk about the cost. But the construction cost was estimated at $50 million alone. Not only that, but the museum has a support system the envy of many museums: an endowment of $800 million from the Walton Family Foundation. That is among the largest of any museum in the country.

Visitors especially like another feature: “Your admission has been paid by Walmart,” the guides tell you. Walmart itself gave a $20 million grant so that visitors would not be charged $10, as originally planned.

Once inside, what do you see: several tastefully-designed galleries, with plenty of room to display the art. There’s a Revolutionary War era portrait of George Washington, the giant-size Rosie The Riveter by Norman Rockwell, and then a plethora of famous American artists, from Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, Asher Durand, Thomas Hart Benton (for whom Bentonville is named). Altogether, there are 440 works on exhibit, and another 800 in storage to come out to emphasize different phases of art from time to time.

Rosie the Riveter by Norman Rockwell

The museum opened on Nov. 11, 2011, some two years behind the original schedule. Many of the art works were on public display for the first time, since they were bought from private collections. Some individual pieces cost from $20 to $68 million each.

Crystal Bridge’s mission statement is simple: “We invite all to celebrate the American spirit in a setting that unites the power of art and the beauty of landscape.”

Here’s a “Thank You” to all who shop at Walmart. You enabled the founder’s daughter to give the United States this wonderful museum.

* * *

IT’S NOT EASY to get to Bentonville, population 35,000 in Northwest Arkansas. You might fly into Fayetteville or even Bentonville, but it’s costly. You also have two other airports with direct flights within two hours, Tulsa, Okla., and Branson, Mo.

About Elliott Brack

Elliott Brack is a native Georgian and veteran newspaperman. He published the weekly Wayne County Press for 12 years; was for 13 years the vice president and general manager of Gwinnett Daily News, and for 13 years was associate publisher of the Gwinnett section of The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. He now publishes, in retirement, Web sites on Gwinnett County, http://www.gwinnettforum.com, and Georgia news, http://www.georgiaclips.com.

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How often we drive along giving no thought to the road we travel. And more often than that we give no thought to how the road got its name. In my case, I’m often forced to learn why or how a road got its name. Generally it makes for interesting reading. Over the years I’ve profiled several highways for magazines. Some of these profiles have worked their way into books. All the roads you’ll note have numeric names: Highway 378, Highway 17 the coastal byway, and Highway 76 a road that crosses South Carolina from the Peach State to the Tarheel State.

Profile a road and you had better learn how it got its name. I don’t particularly like numerals as road names although the iconic Route 66 is hard to beat. I prefer roads with names that have character and color, names like Hollywood & Vine, Bourbon Street, and Blue Ridge Parkway. Not only do good stories underlie such appellations, they teach us something about ourselves.

The ways and reasons we name roads surely say a lot about us. And as you’ll see we don’t always give our choices careful consideration. Would you like to live on a road with a humiliating name? Wouldn’t you prefer to live along a byway that has a connection to culture and history, something that’s a point of pride?

My road-contemplating journeys through Georgialina, that blended land of Georgia and South Carolina, consist of two types: magazine “road trip” assignments and book pieces. Now and then I’ll stumble across a great road name and intersection as a matter of work and pleasure reading. Years ago I worked on an assignment for the Aiken Chamber of Commerce. Over there you’ll find an unforgettable intersection: Whiskey Road and Easy Street. It’s said to be one of the country’s most photographed road signs.

Down in Albany, Georgia, Lonesome and Hardup Roads make quite an interesting intersection. And over in Story, Arkansas, (I am not making this up as Davy Barry says) you’ll find Farfrompoopen Ridge … the only road that leads to Constipation Ridge. How would you like to live there!

For certain literature serves up more refined and memorable road names. Close by we have Tobacco Road. Erskine Caldwell set his 1932 novel, Tobacco Road, in the country several miles outside Augusta. Set during the worst years of the Great Depression Tobacco Road centers on a hardscrabble family of white tenant farmers, the Lesters. Like other small Southern cotton farmers the Lesters got caught in the crosshairs of major change. Industrialization robbed them of a livelihood and migrating to the city was all they had left. Otherwise they were stuck on Tobacco Road but it had an arresting name at least.

Unknowable roads from literature prove memorable too. James Dickey’s description of a road in Deliverance evokes memories of the days when many roads were concrete sections separated by tar. Come the sizzling southern summer such roads turned into a tarry, sticky mess with mirages aplenty shimmering like puddles. I remember those roads well. I’d sit in the back seat of Dad’s Plymouth feeling the rhythm of the concrete sections beneath the wheels. A pleasant rocking would lull me to sleep but if sleep didn’t come it was fun watching the old road’s centerline wiggle, meander, and snake along. And then there were those mesmerizing mirages. Dickey traveled such a road.

“At an intersection we turned off onto a blacktop state road, and from that onto a badly cracked and weedy concrete highway of the old days—the thirties as nearly as I could tell—with the old splattered tar centerline wavering onward. From that we turned onto another concrete road that sagged and slewed and holed-out and bumped ahead, not worth maintaining at all.”

That road by the way, based on maps, some sleuthing, and with what I know from Dickey, must have been up near the Cleveland, Clermont vicinity. Those old roads are about gone now; replaced by asphalt, which contains crude oil, a curse in many ways today as we all know.

Concrete, asphalt, or dirt the fact is we have colorful road names down here. They run the gamut from the good to the bad and the ugly. Some names prove memorable; some ascend to literary fame, and some are memorable because of other roads they cross. Some are utterly forgettable. During the Clinton presidency a sign at a crossroads over this way got a lot of attention. Clinton was in one direction; Prosperity in another. It made for a chuckle or two.

And how about fruit trees for naming inspiration. It seems we just can’t get enough of some names. How many towns in Georgia have a Peachtree Street? Lincolnton, Georgia, does. And in Atlanta the joke goes that half the streets in Atlanta are named Peachtree. “Peachtree” alone refers to Atlanta’s main street but something like 71 streets in Atlanta have a variant of Peachtree in their name … Peachtree Avenue, Peachtree Valley Road, and so forth.

In the United States, we name most streets after numbers, landscapes, trees (in my community all streets are named for trees or groups of trees … Southgrove, Northpine, Southoak and so forth). We give streets the surname of an important individual too but that is subject to change. Nothing like an assassination to generate a flurry of street renaming.

We name roads too because of family land connections. Down in the Double Branches community of Lincoln County—my homeland—Poland Road caught my daughter Beth’s attention when she was in college at Virginia Tech. I took her photo standing in front of the green-and-white sign. I’m sure she had fun with that photo.

Some names prove unforgettable because of the sheer poetry of their name. Edisto Island’s Botany Bay Road falls into that class and if you go to my website (www.tompoland.net) you’ll see a gorgeous photo of Botany Bay Road, a classic scene from the South.

Of course roads names can stir up controversy. A few years back a debate took wings in Terrell County down Dawson, Georgia, way over the name of a road, Chain Gang Road. The local NAACP chapter president felt the name had racial undertones. Really? I’ve seen many a white fellow on chain gangs picking up trash. The last I read the commission down there voted 3-2 against renaming the street. The expense to residents was one reason given for keeping the name the same. Think of all the changes that would have required. You’d have to get a new driver’s license, new bank checks, new insurance documents, new address sign, and on and on.

The name could be worse I assure you. Up in Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina, you’ll find Sewer Plant Road. Now how would you like to live on that quaint avenue? Try selling your home if you live on Sewer Plant Road. “Jack, I like your house but I think the asking price stinks.”

Of course, certain people covet exotic or glamorous road names for the old god the greenback dollar. Some folks believe naming a street a fancy name such as Othello Way adds 10 percent to a home’s value. Naming streets in pricey exclusive neighborhoods isn’t done lightly. It brings up an interesting experience I had. Several years ago I worked on a big project with a major realtor. The point man in the project was a whiz so we were told. Anything he touched turned to gold. Up in North Carolina he had developed an ultra-expensive development, one of those ballyhooed gated communities. Well, what to name this newest suburban site of palatial homes?

When it came time to name the development and its streets he decided to give it a French feeling. That would be great marketing he reasoned. He looked at a map of Bordeaux, France. Soon he had his streets all bearing majestic names, the names of wines. Imagine the elegance of telling people your new, chic address.

“Bob I hear you bought a new four-story home, a veritable mansion.”

“Why yes I did, John. Make an appointment to see me and the missus at 14 Château Haut-Brion and we’ll try out some Brie and Beaujolais.”

Of course humanity is adept at nicknaming a road based on common sense. Georgia State Road Route 47 runs right by my home in Lincoln County. Though it cosigns with U.S. Route 221 at Pollard’s Corner in Columbia County, we refer to it as the Augusta Highway because that’s where it leads. I’d like to think the people in Richmond County refer to the cosigned Routes 221 and 47 as the Lincolnton Highway because that’s where it leads for them. Alas at some point it becomes Washington Road.

I’ve always loved the fundamental name for “road” itself in France and Italy. The French use rue and the Italians use via. How well I remember my confusion on Via Flavia in Rome one summer when I could not find my hotel.

Over here we use road, street, avenue, boulevard, and so on to identify routes. It’s the local twist or reason that causes some roads to possess embarrassing names or controversial names such as Chain Gang Road. Well I can assure the good folks over in Terrell County things can get worse.

To wit, a few names of streets from outside the South. Up in Traverse City, Michigan, you’ll find Psycho Path Lane. Over in England in South Yorkshire there was a Butt Hole Road, eventually renamed Archers Way by the harassed and humiliated households along its route. Up in Heather Highlands, Pennsylvania, there’s a Divorce Court.

Some roads’ names are obvious … White Rock Road comes to mind but many are not. In Lincolnton in the 1960s people often referred to Sunrise Drive as Mortgage Avenue because of all the new brick homes going up. Tell an outsider to head over to Mortgage Avenue and he’d be lost.

These days when my travels bring me across a road with an unusual name I make a mental note to check it out. Such was the case with Sewer Plant Road. Ought to be a good story there I thought. Maybe I’ll write a column on how and why roads get their name. Well let’s consider that column done and as for the unfortunate folks up in Fuquay-Varina, why not get the local politicos to rename the road Fresh Water Lane if it doesn’t raise a stink or prove too draining. It might just prove a bit easier for folks up that way to sell their home and for sure will look better on their checks, drivers license, and other vital documents. Or as the realtor-developer did they could name it after a wine, a cheap one in this case. Maybe Mad Dog Drive will do or if a bit of class is required they can try Boone’s Farm Boulevard. That, I’d say, ought to make them happy. Anything beats Sewer Plant Road.

About Tom Poland

A Southern writer, Tom Poland’s work has appeared in magazines throughout the South. He’s published five books and more than 500 magazine features. In 1996, Reckon magazine published his literary feature, "Deliver Me from Leviathan," on James Dickey. Excerpts were published in The World As A Lie–James Dickey, the Dickey biography by Henry Hart. The University of South Carolina Press has published three of his books, most recently, Reflections of South Carolina, now in its third printing. For six years, Tom worked as a scriptwriter and cinematographer, working primarily along the South Carolina Lowcountry and its barrier islands. While filming on a primitive barrier island one evening, fog rolled in trapping him overnight. That experience led to his novel, Forbidden Island, and the mythical Georgialina. Currently, he’s working on two nonfiction books. A Lincolnton, Georgia, native and University of Georgia graduate, he lives in Columbia, South Carolina. Read more at www.tompoland.net Favorite Quotes On Writing and Creativity: Writing is a kind of smoke, seized and put on paper. —James Salter I never wanted to be well rounded, and I do not admire well-rounded people nor their work. So far as I can see, nothing good in the world has ever been done by well-rounded people. The good work is done by people with jagged, broken edges, because those edges cut things and leave an imprint, a design. —Harry Crews

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“I guess you people are wearing black armbands down there today,” Dad’s client snickered. “No,” Dad responded, “but maybe we should.”

The sadness that so devastated those who admired, loved and depended on Dr. King wasn’t universally shared, even in Atlanta, Georgia, King’s hometown. While the city appeared an island of calm compared to other cities in the South during the civil rights years, there was much resentment felt toward King by many in Atlanta and its suburbs. King’s advocacy for those wishing to rise from the lower rungs stirred fear and hatred. Some parents were only too happy to share such animosities with their children. “My father really hates Martin Luther King,” an elementary school classmate said one day in the mid-60s, pointing to a magazine with King on the cover. People were not shy about spreading their venom. Their spite would grow worse if one had the temerity to calmly disagree with them. As long as black people remained on the bottom, always subservient, then life for the hateful and misguided could move along unimpeded. At least that’s the way they acted.

In April ’68 Gary Granger was the evening deejay at WQXI-AM, Atlanta’s top rock and roll station which, despite its majority white audience, played a lot of soul music. Young Atlantans picked up on the music of Motown, Muscle Shoals and Memphis as well as the sounds from Liverpool and California. Granger says the man “who built WQXI,” Kent Burkhart, was particularly focused on black music as well as on the city’s growing black population. Burkhart was certain local white kids about Granger’s age would be dancing to black music. And why not? The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had covered songs by Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye and the Isley Brothers. The music stirred passions and compelled desires to hear even more. The playlists at WQXI-AM in mid-60s Atlanta allowed both ears and minds to open up. Quite naturally, also hitting the airwaves behind a WQXI mic was Martin Luther King, Jr..

As an aspiring deejay and radio producer not even out of his teens, Granger worked with King on the public affairs programs which aired Sunday mornings. At the Atlanta premier of Dr. Zhivago (’65), Granger, to his amazement, saw King standing alone near the popcorn machine. Rushing over to shake King’s hand and say hello, Gary said his girlfriend, Mae Mitchell, was in the theatre and he’d be right back with her for introductions. King said he’d love to meet her but by the time Gary and Mae returned to the lobby, King was surrounded by people. Seeing the couple waiting to get with him, King gave them a little sign. Granger said King “held his hand to his ear as if holding a phone, which meant that I should call him.”

On April 4, 1968, Granger was attending radio class for his 1st Class Radio License when the announcement of Dr. King’s death was made over the intercom. Immediately there was a standing ovation by the students, all but Granger, who thought of King the leader and visionary and of King, his friend. “I took my books, Granger remembers, “left and never returned.”

Maria Saporta can relate to the hurt and anger felt by Granger. She was twelve-years-old at the time and quite familiar with Dr. King’s work. Her parents were active in the civil rights movement and she considered Martin and Coretta King’s oldest child, Yolanda, to be her best friend. Maria and Yolanda both attended Spring Street Elementary School and would see each other away from school, often spending the night together at the King home.

In 2007, upon the death of Yolanda King, Saporta wrote in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about their friendship. On one memorable evening, Maria stayed behind in the kitchen after supper, talking with Dr. King as the great man dried the evening’s dishes. Yolanda chided Maria, reminding her she was supposed to be visiting her, not talking with Daddy. That was a great night for Maria Saporta. Despite her many accomplishments as a journalist, she remembers that evening as the highlight of her life. “I still tell my friends,” she said recently.” that my peak moment was at eleven-years-old.”

In her book, Burial For A King , Rebecca Burns provides a thorough and moving account of how Atlanta responded to King’s murder. Burns’ achievement with her book is in how she conveys the care, in ways large and small, that was taken to see Atlanta, from the city government and beyond, provided King with the honor he so richly deserved. But not everyone in Atlanta, just as with Gary Granger’s classmates, mourned the loss of King. Burns writes of how the Saporta family, after hearing the news of the King assassination on the radio, decided to go out for dinner. The news had hit hard; the family was drained, with no energy for preparing a meal. As the Saportas walked out of their apartment, they saw a neighbor on the elevator whooping it up with friends.”Martin Luther King has been shot!” the neighbor shouted to the Saportas. “We’re going out celebrating.”

Recently I asked Maria Saporta if the neighbor knew her family and the Kings were friends. She thought he didn’t and concluded ,”I think his assumption was that everybody was feeling happy that night. And I think we were in such a state of disbelief that we did not respond. I know I never spoke to him again. I’m not sure if he ever figured it out.”

Laugh About It, Shout About It… As the Saportas walked away from their apartment building across from the Georgia Tech campus, car radios were blaring the news of the King assassination. Also likely heard up and down North Avenue were the sounds of “Mrs. Robinson” by Simon and Garfunkel. Just one day before, the duo’s Bookends album was released. Among the younger teachers in our Junior High who voiced support for King and the civil rights movement, especially since the school was now integrating, were naturally enough, fans of Simon and Garfunkel. There was one English teacher, perhaps just as bored as we were with past participles and such, who devoted class time to discuss “7 0′Clock News/Silent Night,” the last track on Simon and Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album, released in fall ’66. The teacher explained how they gently sang the first verse of the Christmas carol twice, while in the background a simulated radio news report voiced over by disc jockey Charlie O’ Donnell is heard. The song fades as the newscast becomes louder with reports of America engaged in anything but peace, heavenly or otherwise. One of the reports concerns the efforts by Dr. King to lead an open housing march in Cicero, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Our teacher’s comments hardly made for a polemic, but some of us understood where she was going with her comments just as she hoped some of her thoughts would stick in our heads. But for most of the students, it was more likely “Mrs. Robinson,” a single from Bookends, that resonated. It was an effervescent and witty song, even with its recognition of despair and longing for simpler times when heroes such as Joe DiMaggio could enchant while pursuing a long fly in Yankee Stadium.

In a New York Times column published the day after DiMaggio’s death, Paul Simon wrote of meeting “The Yankee Clipper” a few years after the release of “Mrs. Robinson.” DiMaggio was bewildered over the lyrics Simon had fashioned.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you
What’s that you say Mrs Robinson
Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away

Upon first hearing the song, DiMaggio wondered if he could sue Simon. But in an Italian restaurant where DiMaggio was dining with friends, Simon walked over and introduced himself. Finally, a chance to discuss the song. Their conversation was cordial, according to Simon, even though DiMaggio had some questions.

“What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why you ask where I’ve gone. I just did a Mr. Coffee commercial, I’m a spokesman for the Bowery Savings Bank and I haven’t gone anywhere.”

I said that I didn’t mean the lines literally, that I thought of him as an American hero and that genuine heroes were in short supply. He accepted the explanation and thanked me. We shook hands and said good night.

Ironically enough, “Mrs Robinson” reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on the first week of June ’68, the week that another hero, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, not even two full months after Martin Luther King, Jr was buried at South-View Cemetery in southeast Atlanta.

Train In The Distance… On his first solo album after finally splitting with Art Garfunkel, Simon delivered “Peace Like A River,” a song that all at once is weary, determined and beautiful. An evocative melody serves as a powerful setting for the quiet resolution conveyed by Simon.

You can beat us with wires
You can beat us with chains
You can run out your rules
But you know you can’t outrun the history train
I’ve seen a glorious day

On the evening of the last full day of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke from a Memphis pulpit of the glory he had seen. Even as he doubted he would live to experience the great days ahead, he knew they were coming. King said God had taken him to the mountaintop where he saw the history train pull into the station. He acknowledged his fears and his hopes to the nearly 2,000 people gathered at the Mason Temple.

Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop. And I don’t mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And he’s allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know that we as a people will get to the promised land. And so I’m happy tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.

King was in Memphis on behalf of striking sanitation workers; 1300 black sanitation workers treated by the city no better than the garbage they were hired to collect. While adding his support in Memphis, King had even more pressing things on his mind. There were doubts and struggles with the Poor People’s Campaign he had recently launched. There too was his opposition to the Vietnam War, which he termed “an unjustified, cynical and hopeless slaughter of poor people of color.” Yet the plight of the striking workers in Memphis weighed heavily on his heart. The sanitation workers were kept down not only by discrimination, but also low wages and dangerous working conditions. Applying his Road-to-Jericho philosophy inspired by Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, King felt called to help others even when it put him in harm’s way. Relating the parable to a Memphis audience, King said, “That’s the question for you tonight…. The question is not, ‘If I stop to help this man in need, what will happen to me?’ ‘If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?’ That’s the question.”

As King proclaimed the lesson of humanity on the Jericho Road, James Earl Ray, following and stalking King, was on his way to Memphis. Making his destination on April 3, Ray learned where King and his party were staying. The next day Ray checked into a room at a boarding house across from the Lorranie Hotel. Ray took his high-powered rifle, aimed and fired, exercising his hatred to take down the man who extolled dreams of peace and brotherhood.

That brutal moment in our nation’s history remains agonizing. It haunts us. Just last year, on April 11, forty-three years and one week after the assassination, Paul Simon released his So Beautiful or So What album. On the album’s intense title song, Simon recalls that painful late afternoon in 1968.

Four men on the balcony
Overlooking the parking lot
Pointing at a figure in the distance
Dr. King has just been shot
And the sirens long melody
Singing Savior Pass Me Not

Earlier in the song, Simon sings of telling his kids a bedtime story. A happy ending? “Maybe yeah or maybe not,” he explains.

You know life is what you make of it
So beautiful or so what

A cultivated and erudite man, King knew of the beauty that was God-given and that which graced works of arts and even common labor. There should be no “so what” as we go about our lives, no matter what position we fill. Before a group of Philadelphia junior high students, he spoke of a blueprint for life in which a deep belief in one’s own dignity was foremost.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: here lived a great sweeper who swept his job well.

… Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are.

The humble approach conveyed by King was truly no surprise to those who knew him. The Nobel Prize winner was just as happy to share life’s lessons with middle-schoolers as he was to meet with presidents, theologians and other leaders. Late for an important meeting at his office in Atlanta, he’d stop to talk with the janitor. On a walk to lunch that should have taken five minutes or less, it might have been 30 minutes or more before King made it to the restaurant since so many people wished to speak with him. Writer and activist Michael Harrington said, “If you wanted to talk to him, he was going to take time to talk to you. That’s just the way he was, that was his nature.” Eleven year-old Maria Saporta, best friend of King’s oldest daughter, found that to be true, as did Gary Granger and Mae Mitchell, who joined Dr. King for a private meeting, the one he promised them. King was on to the spirit of the thought Paul Simon came upon: To make life so beautiful requires a lot of deeds, big and small.

I’ve Reason To Believe We All Will Be Received… Late June, 1979. Another hot week in Southwestern Tennessee with highs in the 90s. My boss, Marvin Segraves, and I, both holding regional titles with Peaches Records and Tapes, were on another road trip, this time checking on our Memphis location. It was a well-run and profitable store. No sweat, even with the heat and humidity. Visit the label guys and radio stations. Chat up the workers at the store. Check out the town. One of those days had gone particularly well. Lunch at Buntyn’s. Dinner at Rendezvous. In between, trips to Graceland, Beale Street and rides along the Mississippi. Marvin and I were driven around town by the Memphis Store Director, David Baker. One of the store’s managers joined us. On the way back to our hotel, the manager said, “I’ll show you where we got King.” Absolute silence… Ten-twenty seconds later Marvin spoke up. “Listen, you know Jeff and I don’t think that way, and neither does David. What you said makes me sick. Don’t talk like that around me again.” Enough said, for the moment at least. Who knows what thoughts the guy fostered in the years ahead?

On “Train In The Distance,” from his 1983 album, Hearts And Bones , Paul Simon discerned a world where such contempt is rare, even nonexistent.

The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly
Into our hearts
And our brains

That would be a world where brave people would not be taken down for doing right, for seeking the so beautiful . And it surely wouldn’t be a world where people thought to be friends would side with hatred; those friends in worse shape than so what. They’re just so sad.

Author’s Note : Many thanks to Maria Saporta, Gary Granger and Bud Cochran for sharing their memories for this story. Recommended books on the subjects covered here include Burial For A King by Rebecca Burns, Going Down Jericho Road by Michael K. Honey, Bearing The Cross by David J. Garrow, King Came Preaching by Dr. Mervyn A. Warren, and Paul Simon, A Life by Marc Eliot. What Is Your Life’s Blueprint ? is from the estate of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

About Jeff Cochran

Jeff Cochran worked in advertising at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution for 27 years before accepting a buy-out in the Summer of 2008. In the seventies/early eighties, he handled advertising for Peaches Records and Tapes' Southeastern and Midwestern stores. He also wrote record reviews for The Great Speckled Bird, a ground-breaking underground newspaper based in Atlanta.

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I recently served on a panel at the 64^th Annual Conference on World Affairs that was titled “How Liberals Think,” a question I’ve pondered as long as I can remember. Beyond the classic dictionary [New Oxford American Dictionary] definition, “open to new behavior or opinions and willing to discard traditional values; favorable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms; and (in a political context) favoring maximum individual liberty in political and social reform,” let’s address it as the more fundamental question: Which side of history do you want to be on?

I want to be on the side of the American Revolutionaries. Not the conservatives who sided with King George.

I want to be on the side of Lincoln and the abolitionists. Not the conservatives who were willing to spill their countrymen’s blood to preserve their ability to enslave their fellow man for economic gain.

I want to be on the side of the 21st Amendment that repealed Prohibition, not with the conservatives who passed the 18^th Amendment that created it.

I want to be on the side of the 19^th Amendment giving women the right to vote, not the conservatives who opposed it.

I want to be on the side of scientific fact, not with the conservatives who, 85 years after the Scopes “Monkey Trial” in Tennessee, just passed legislation in the Volunteer State weakening the teaching of evolution.

I want to be on the side that advocated entering World War II, not the conservative isolationist obstructionists who delayed it.

I want to be on the side of The New Deal that created social insurance so we would never again face bread lines and destitution, not the conservatives who opposed Social Security.

I want to be on the side of the Interstate Highway system, not the conservatives who opposed infrastructure spending.

I want to be on the side of The Great Society, which expanded social insurance to create Medicare. Not the conservatives who opposed it.

I want to be on the side of the Environmental Protection Agency, not the conservatives who opposed protecting our air and water from pollution.

I want to be on the side of self-determination, not the conservatives who traded guns for hostages to sidestep Congress and fight an illegal war in Central America resulting in the Iran Contra Scandal.

I want to be on the side of welfare reform, not the conservatives who would allow the poor to starve in the richest country in the history of the world.

I want to be on the side that opposed the Iraq War, not the conservatives who lied and ginned up evidence to push us into Iraq.

I want to be on the side of Ben Franklin who said, “Those who would sacrifice freedom for security deserve neither.” Not the conservatives who created The Patriot Act.

I guess all that makes me an Eisenhower-Nixon Republican/FDR-LBJ Democrat. Eisenhower built the freeways, and warned against the military/Congressional/industrial complex; Nixon opened China and created the EPA. FDR saved the world (despite the isolationist Republican Congressional and business leaders who wanted no part of WWII), and created social insurance; LBJ fought for civil rights and enhanced social insurance with the creation of Medicare.

Republicans used to be communitarians like Reagan and Eisenhower, but neither of them  could get through primaries now. They’re not doctrinaire enough. I don’t even recognize the Party of Lincoln, and wonder what a life long Republican thinks of what has become of the Grand Old Party.

Here’s what Thomas Mann, of the nonpartisan Brookings Institute, and Norman Ornstein of the very conservative American Enterprise Institute write in their new book, It’s Worse Than You Think: 

However awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become a insurgent outlier, ideologically extreme, contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime, scornful of compromise, un-persuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science, and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

By the way, I don’t have much patience for the Democrats as a party either. I guess I am an independent.

The entrenched, monied interests in Washington prosper when they keep us yelling at each other instead of at them. It is a great diversion. If we ever discover that so many of us who think we disagree actually agree, the game will up for them. But in the meantime, they promote the bickering and sniping, and hope they can keep us thinking the other side is unreasonable and even evil. The fact is we are mostly a centrist country whose common interests greatly outweigh our differences, but don’t tell anybody.

About Jon Sinton

Jon Sinton is an Atlanta-based serial media entrepreneur and writer. He was the founding president of Air America Radio, and currently syndicates The Mike Malloy Show (based in Atlanta), GRITtv with Laura Flanders, and Ring of Fire with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Mike Papantonio and David Bender.

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Give and take. In the natural order of events, the giving comes first. However, self-centered people don’t perceive that. Perhaps that’s why classical economic theory starts from the assumption that trade and exchange is initiated by demand. This is nonsensical, since it is not possible to demand what doesn’t already exist. (It might be noteworthy that ExxonMobil has been running an ad to promote fracking for natural gas by asserting that “all it takes is the idea” to have enough energy “for a hundred years”). This misordering of events (which comes first and which comes second) apparently persists in the thinking of many people and presumably accounts, for the common injunction that it is up to the buyer to be wary of what he buys and to know what he’s getting — another logical impossibility. We can’t know before we experience. We can only expect and what we expect is not necessarily what we get.

All of these fine distinctions rely on the ability to perceive time as a linear process and remember the sequence of events. That is, it requires a sense of time and not everyone has that. Some people have no sense of past, present and future being distinct entities. They exist in an ineffable present where expectation and experience are one big muddle around an unstable center. It’s no wonder such people are discombobulated and insecure and want nothing more than that the familiar stay the same. Change is a disaster for them.

How can you take turns when you don’t know what time it is? How can you delay gratification when there is no future? How do such people even function? By responding to prompts and following their basic instincts –like a dog getting into its cage, regardless of whether it’s in the garage or on top of the car. If they thought about it, they’d know better.

About Monica Smith

Monica Smith writes Hannah's Blog. Born in Germany, she came to the United States as a child, living first in California, then after an interval in Chile, in New York. Married to a retired professor at the University of Florida, where she lived for 17 years, she moved to St. Simons Island, Georgia, in 1993 and now divides her time between Georgia and New Hampshire. (New Hampshire, she says, is always interesting during a presidential election.) She and her husband have three children and five grandchildren. Ms. Smith says she "learned long ago that I am not a good team player when I got hired at the Library of Congress, fresh out of college with a degree in political science and proficiency in four foreign languages, to 'edit' library cards and informed my supervisor that if she was going to insist I punch the clock exactly on time, my productivity was going to fall from being the highest to being the same as everyone else's. The supervisor opted to assign me to another building where there was no time-clock. After I had the first of our three children, I decided a paycheck wasn't worth the hassle."

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