One warm August evening, cloaked in darkness, a group of people toppled Elberton’s Confederate monument. The next day, they buried it. Anti–Confederate activists? Politically-correct terrorists? Nope. It was August 14, 1900. Elberton, like many Southern towns in the 1890s, wanted to honor the Lost Cause. It also wanted to promote its new granite industry as …Continue Reading »
Russell Johnson, the actor who played the Professor on “Gilligan’s Island,” died on January 16, 2014, at the age of 89. He only played Professor Roy Hinkley for three of his 89 years, but he will be forever known as the handsome fellow in the white shirt and khakis, with the blue boat shoes, who …Continue Reading »
The news this week that the Atlanta Braves are leaving downtown Atlanta when their lease expires at Turner Field after the end of the 2016 season made me think about the Braves teams I grew up with. Ted Turner may have called them “America’s Team,” but for most of their time in Atlanta before 1991 …Continue Reading »
Halloween is this week, and as the days grow shorter and the evening shadows lengthen, it’s time for a good ghost story. I’ve been a fan of them all my life. One of my earliest and scariest memories of Halloween is listening to the Disney album, “Chilling, Thrilling Sounds of the Haunted House.” We also …Continue Reading »
Jefferson and Hamilton: The Rivalry That Forged a Nation. By John Ferling. Bloomsbury, 2013, 436 pp., $30. There’s an old saying that the only new thing in the world is the history you don’t know. To the casual observer, the Tea Party that rose up in opposition to President Barack Obama’s policies in 2009 might …Continue Reading »