This is a great poem that I first read at turnea’s site: Totally Like Whatever.

I didn’t give any of the other poems a read. Maybe because the home page creeped me out too much.

As you know, I like to use my net connection to travel to places I may otherwise not go. Since I do it so often, I thought it would be nice to try and make my travels a regular feature. It being a new concept, I am open to travel ideas.

This week’s travels didn’t take me very far geographically, but instead, back in time. Our first stop in the Gull Reef Club Time Machine is Savannah, somewhere between 1939 and 1941.

~The Living in Savannah scrapbooks consist of photographs taken by Armstrong Junior College students for a Contemporary Georgia course in 1939-40 and 1940-41. Both albums are part of the Florence Powell Minis collection housed at the Lane Library.
Living in Savannah, Volume I
Living in Savannah, Volume II
I searched through all the pictures in both of these volumes trying to find my house - to no avail.

Our next stop is another Armstrong Atlantic University sponsored creation.
~Artwork of Savannah was published in 1893 by the W. H. Parish Publishing Co. of Chicago. Armstrong’s copy is a part of the Florence Powell Minis Collection housed at the Lane Library.
Artwork in Savannah, The Digital Collection.

Tonight’s final stop takes us to the UGA sponsored Vanishing Georgia Project.
Vanishing Georgia comprises nearly 18,000 photographs. Ranging from daguerreotypes to Kodachrome prints, the images span over 100 years of Georgia history.
My specific search was on ‘Savannah.’ There are a number of interesting results. (Note: you will need to scroll to image #13 before you start seeing the Chatham County/Savannah pics).
~Vanishing Georgia, Savannah

Well, I hoped you have enjoyed your little journey through time. See ya next week.

Well I promised I’d let you beachcombers know how jury duty went and while I may fulfill promises slowly, I always fulfill them.

Notes and thoughts from jury duty:
9am
Moved fast so far. Short security line. Took the stairs to the 2nd floor (you’d be amazed how many people take the elevators in this building. Really, people, it’s only 6 floors total).

Everyone congregating in the hall under the ‘jury assembly’ signs hanging from the ceiling. Only a few minutes before we are ushered into another room. Large, blue, lots of seats. CNN on TV. Odd - they told us we couldn’t bring newspapers, but CNN is ok. (Here I wrote in my notes, “Nxt 2 me % proof?” - I have no idea what that means.)

Thoughts as I sit watching CNN:
-Wonder if this place is wired for cable?
-Can I change the channel?
-What is that box?
-That wire certainly looks like a cable wire.

The guy sitting next to me is named Spencer. He does something with boats. Owner? Navigator? Something on the river. Tan, younger, more southern Tony Blair looking.

Woman who ushered us into room starts intro speech. Highlights:
-10 minutes on the definition on reserved parking and the penalties for occupying the elite’s pre-paid asphalt square.
-voter registration drive (she told us that if we weren’t registered to vote that we could do so while we were there. )
-confiscate cell/pager & not get back! (Yes, that’s right. The lady told us that if a cell phone, pager, watch or other technical device interrupted proceedings, the Court could take our device away and not give it back. Total BS if you ask me. The Court can’t simply confiscate your personal property indefinitely. Illegal seizure and due process violations abound).

Film. Very patriotic. I love America. I love jury duty.

Assigned numbers, I am 39. There are about 45 people here.

9:50, break. (A break and we’ve only been there 50 mins. Getting my first glimpse of life as a government employee).

10am
Returned to room & forced to sit in number order. So far so good - not have to sit by perfume lady. Leader lady passes around checks for $10. Tells us there is one case pending before Judge Brannen. Calculating odds. 12-14 out of 45. Eh.

Wait. Read book. Watch some CNN.

1034am
Leader lady comes in & says we’re on stand-by. Juror asks if case was going to settle. She claimed she didn’t know. I’m smelling a dismissal. Dismiss me. Dissmiss me. So sleepy, want to go home.

Someone has a cellphone on in here! Doh!

Snoring guy next to me is starting to gross me out. Damned assigned seats.

1050am
Oh joy. Another break.

So, Ms Jaime, is there anything that would prejudice you in this case?
Yeah, waiting two freakin’ hours in a windowless room. My hatred for the system is blinding.

1110am
Plea!! Huzzah. Free to go home.

You have been chosen to join the Justice Squadron, 8 a.m. Monday at the Municipal Fortress of Vengeance.

Hell yeah, baby. I got called to jury duty. I get to serve tomorrow. Despite having been a registered voter since 18 and working for lawfirms for the last 6 years, I have never been requested to serve my fellow citizens in such a fashion*.

So what to do you think it will be that will get me kicked? Being a paralegal? Owning AD? Asking the judge ‘what’s this jury nullification I hear so much about?’

I’m bringing a notebook and will report back to you beachcombers when I am done.

The suggestion box is open for ways to make tomorrow fun. }:)

“The trick is to say you’re prejudiced against all races” -Homer Simpson.

*I realize neither my voter registration status nor my occupation factor into my selection to the jury pool.

Tomorrow evening America’s Debate will be hosting one of it’s semi-regular chats. Mike posted an announcement about it here. Info on how to access the chatroom is here.

Even if you are not a member you are welcome. We don’t debate in these chats like on the forum. Most of the time they are quite fun and rather silly. If you have time, stop by and say hello.

Do any of you remember that Sesame Street episode where the muppets are singing the Beatles’ song “Let it Be” but change they change the words to sing “Letter B”?

That was a good one.

This debate at AD, Another “unfortunate accident, reminded me of when I worked in a defense firm up in Illinois. We had this one client charged with, among other things, fleeing and eluding. His version of the story was classic.

Me paraphrasing him/police report in stupid criminal voice:

Well, I was driving down the highway, and I see a police car coming up behind me real fast with his lights and sirens going and all. And I thought he had to get somewhere fast, so I sped up to try to get out of his way. But he wouldn’t go around me. So, I kept going faster so he could get where he wanted to be, but then I saw a whole bunch of police cars. And I couldn’t go no where. So I had to stop…

Some people certainly do stupid, irrational things they are scared, don’t they?

I put up a few new links today and noticed that my descriptions of everyone’s sites have disappeared. Mike claims they did when he upgraded the WordPress software. Could be. I tend not to be that observant when it comes to stuff like this. So is life…

Anyway, the new links are:

America’s Debate Resources - a directory of member-submitted links covering a broad range of topics related to news, government, and political debate. Big duh to me. How did I forget to put this up sooner?

Divine InnerBitchin’ - luck of the draw on pingomatic’s last 100 submissions led me to Ms. Flynny’s page and I haven’t left since. She is a charming writer with a delicious sarcastic side.

Gut Rumbles - I found this blog linked off Ms. Flynny’s site. This is not blog-lite.

Dizzy-Girl I mentioned this site previously. It’s back up now. If anyone is keeping a scorecard, I found Gennie’s site through GutRumbles.

All three of these folks are southeast coast bloggers also. Yay, geography!

It appears the “emergency” appropriations bill has finally made it’s way to the Senate, along with the attached Real ID Act of 2005 that I first referenced here.

I wrote to both of my Senators the following:

Hello Senator _______________-

I hope you are enjoying a beautiful spring in D.C. It’s been lovely here in Savannah.

I am writing you today regarding the upcoming Senate vote on the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Action; more specifically, the House amendment attached to it entitled the ‘REAL ID Act of 2005.’ I have a few concerns regarding this Act and I hope you have an opportunity to address them.

My first concern is privacy. A number of news articles have surfaced recently entailing mass identity theft from private database companies (See: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7475594/ and http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,147887,00.html for examples). There are no assurances in the Act, as written, regarding the protection of personal identity information. What is especially onerous is the provision that a person’s social security number must be submitted in order to receive a driver’s license. Identity theft is becoming all too easy. Please do not allow the Senate to assist identity thieves by forcing the placement of all of our personal information in one location. I hope you have never had the misfortune of having your identity stolen. I had it happen to me and it resulted in the loss of time and money. I can only imagine how much worse it would have been had the thief been able to obtain my social security number also.

My second concern is that this Act appears to be yet another unfunded federal mandate passed onto the states. This Act forces the states to foot the bill and the burden of the work, and at the same time, increases the central authority of the federal government. I realize we have an immigration problem in this country and this Act intends to curb that. It is a flawed, misguided solution, however. Our immigration problems are at the federal level. Please do not pass those problems off on the states because some of your fellow representatives in Washington are too scared/beholden to supporters/passive to deal with the issue federally.

I encourage you to not sign any appropriations actions that include mandates on the states on how to issue driver’s licenses.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

With kind regards,

Jaime _________
P.O. Box 10303
Savannah, GA 31412

I’m not going to encourage you to write to your Senators. You know when to do the right thing or you don’t mind getting spit at. Either way, I’m not your mommy and I’m sick of the government thinking it is too. Write or don’t. I don’t care. It’s only your identity we’re talking here.

-And spare me the lecture on using a Fox News link, I have some of the reddest, party yes-men men as my senators and I wanted them not to write me off as a left wing loon (shudder to think…).

This is only a test.

Old houses manifest their former owners in unpredictable ways. This weekend, we learned that our wildly overgrown azalea and cleyera bushes probably hadn’t had a decent trimming in at least 25 years. We certainly hadn’t done any since moving in nearly two years ago. This was further evidenced by our finding old pulltabs deep within the bushes’ stump clusters (I’m not sure if there is a scientific word for that area where all the thick branches come together in shrubbery but that’s the place I mean).

We found a lot of things while doing yard work these last two weekends. Included in the junk in our yard: reading glasses, spark plugs, nails and screws of all varieties, bits of linoleum, bits of ceramic, bits of glass of varying size and color, scrap metal, roofing material, little girl’s hair beads, bands, and barrettes, rope, string, partial dog leash, chewed gum, newspapers, styrofoam plates and cups, plastic bags, plastic Easter eggs long ago hidden and never found (ok, so actually Mike found those and threw them at me…jerk), flower pots, a bucket, bubble wand, bottles, pens, washcloth, balls of many sports, decorative work that had long ago fallen off our fence, coal, bricks, cinder blocks, Skin So Soft container, and a Mr. Clean floor cleaner bottle. I have no doubt I am forgetting something.

The yard cleaning also seems to have aroused the curiosity of our neighbors. Mike told me that he spoke with one of our older neighbors who remembers a lot about the area. He told Mike he remembers the bushes of our house being wild and needing cutting for the last 30 years. That helped me understand the interested peeks we were getting all day. We are the people who are making the neighborhood’s scary-looking, overgrown house into something more palatable. In fact, we met one of our neighbors from a few houses over whom we had not met before. He stopped over to tell us how great things were looking. Shortly after that, our next-door neighbor thanked us for cutting back the bushes. I’m not sure if we should be flattered or embarrassed.

We didn’t come away unscathed, however. Cutting back such a quantity of old growth aroused the wrath of the sand gnats that had been making those bushes their home for thousands of generations. I have so many bites on my arms and face I look diseased. Yes, face. That’s right. These vile little creatures bite you in the face. At least mosquitoes have the decency to suck your blood in less obvious places.

So why does it hurt like mad when a gnat takes a meal from your arm or, even worse, your scalp? The secret is in the mouth parts. Sand gnats dont just puncture your skin like mosquitoes do. Instead they rip it open using sharp cutting teeth located on the mandible. After inserting two sharp, sword-like blades into the skin as anchors, the sand gnat uses the cutting teeth to rip up the skin and get the blood flowing. As if that werent enough, the gnat then squirts a chemical into the open wound to inhibit blood clotting. The tiny pool of blood that forms is then sucked up through a straw-like structure called the proboscis. Georgia DNR

Ew. Well no wonder it feels like my skin is crawling. Nothing more fun than using hydrocortisone like it’s lotion. All in all, the bites are a badge of honor for me. My yard is looking better and I haven’t had to shovel snow since February of 2001. I’ll take two sand gnats seasons a year over one Chicago winter anytime.

Speaking of which - for those of you who know my sister, wish her a happy birthday. She is 26 today.

Mike has been busy coding his new Rebate Center. This will be a very useful resource for anyone who uses rebates. Read all about it at his site and keep checking there for updates.

Mike adds ‘consumer advocate’ to his online merit badge vest.

Here is a fantastic tune by one man band, America’s Debate moderator, and my friend, quarkhead: Home. This will touch anyone who has gone off to war in Iraq or knows someone who has…so pretty much all of us.

This week, Savannah Mayor Otis Johnson took a bold stand against violence in our community.

“I’m singling out the African American community because that’s where the victim’s (sic) are and that’s where the perpetrators are” WSAV, 04.08.2005

Woah. When similar comments made by Bill Cosby first hit the media, I was a bit surprised. To hear your own Mayor call out local leaders like this surprised me even more. While I will never agree with Mayor Johnson on everything, I have so far been impressed with his overall performance as mayor. I would certainly vote for him were he to run again.

If you would like to hear the mayor’s entire speech, you may do so here WSAV, Real Audio clip.

On a lighter note, the City of Savannah’s website offered amusing results in my search for a full text link of the speech. I searched on “news” and here is what I got:

The Savannah curse lives on - may we never change!

Random Bar Joke Generator

How many times did you click? Heh.

As the weather warms up and our thoughts turn to backyard bbqs, allow me to impart to you a slightly useful but mostly trivial bit of information - all styrofoam plates are the same.

I came by this knowledge during my first summer home from college. I needed a temporary, yet well paying, job to pay for my expenses (read: party supplies) for the following school year. Not being a fortunate daughter, I didn’t have anyone to give me a cushy job sitting around on my ass in the air conditioning.

Instead, I landed a gig at a local factory that made styrofoam plates and meat trays. I worked 7pm to 7am, on an alternating 3 days on, 2 days off, 4 days on, 3 days off schedule. The best part about that schedule is that working nights beat the heat of the day in the non-airconditioned presses. The pay was good enough that it kept me going back for the three months of summer vacation.

I came away learning a few things too…beyond the plate thing, which I’m getting to…I learned that I shouldn’t get snobby and look down on people just because I was getting a higher education, but I also realized I had to finish it or else be subject to a lifetime in someplace like the styrofoam factory. It reinforced my knowledge that good people exist at all income and intelligence levels. It began a lasting fascination with factory lines and production (I just love Made In America, squeeee!). And yes, I learned that all styrofoam plates are the same.

The styrofoam came into the press area of the factory in gigantic rolls of plate-thick sheets. The rolls weighed a ton or so and were dangerous to be around. These rolls sat on one end of the press and were fed into the long machine. The rolls then went through a high heat mold that impressed the plates into the styrofoam. The pressed foam was then fed into the noisy, scary, plate punch where the plates were punched out of the styrofoam, dropped into precisely numbered stacks, and the waste dropped into bins beneath. My job was to stand at the end of the plate punch, catch the stacks of plates as they dropped off the punch conveyor belt, place the stacks into plastic bags, seal the bags, and place the bags in boxes on a crate.

The bags and boxes were designed for various plate sellers, from the expensive, Hefty brand to generic, grocery store brands. Once we filled our quota for a certain company, we changed our bags and boxes to the next company’s and continued filling them with the same styrofoam plates that the last company got. The only difference between expensive styrofoam plates and cheap ones are the bags.

Not being very interested in displays of the_ Pope’s body, I opted to go internet traveling.

Across the Atlantic, on nearly the same latitude as Savannah, is the city of Essaouira, Morocco. It seems that our latitude is really the only things we have in common. Essaouira seems like a lovely city, but I’m not certain I’d ever want to travel there. For one thing, they speak French and Arabic, and I don’t. Plus, all the women in the pics I found were wearing hijab. I couldn’t determine if westerners were welcome to go without.

Essaouira’s beach looks nothing like Tybee. Apparently when the tide goes out, the beach gets huge. It is also very flat, no dunes in sight. There doesn’t seem to be much vegetation either.

I found a few galleries that captured the city in general, the old city and mixed pics of the city.

I ended on this gallery, Essaouria la bleue. It’s in French but the theme is obvious - blue. I really enjoyed this gallery. The blue offsets what looks to be an otherwise very brown city.

So does googling for anything Moroccan get one on a Homeland Security watch list?