Atlanta State Capitol in Georgia

Wed - April 27th

Capitol building with another Confederate hero out front. If you zoom in and squint, you can see the new statue of Gov./Pres. Jimmy Carter in the corner of the building. Below is a close-up, so you can actually see it. The Capitol was segregated for most of MLK's life. In 1968 when the funeral procession for Martin Luther King Jr. passed the Capitol enroute from Ebenezer Baptist Church to Morehouse College, Governor Lester Maddox forbade lowering the flag. The Secretary of State had it lowered anyway. Jimmy Carter was the next Governor. In his inaugural address he said that the "time for discrimination is over..." and he hung a portrait of MLK in the Capitol. The name of the street where the funeral procession traveled was later changed to Martin Luther King Memorial Drive. When Coretta Scott King died in 2006 she was the first woman and black person to lay in state in the Capitol.

We should have a few legislators like this now. They budgeted one million dollars for building the capitol and they made sure it came in under budget in 1889. They had a granite quarry right here at Stone Mountain, but went out of state for stone against the wishes of many angry citizens, because it saved them over $200,000. In 1958 the citizens of Dahlonega, Lumpkin County, Georgia (home of the nation's first gold rush in 1828) panned for gold, donated coins, nuggets and jewelry to gild the dome with gold leaf. They brought the gold to the Capitol by wagon train in a chest that was once owned by a Georgia signer of the U.S. Constitution.

AT & T commemorated the installation of the 100 millionth U.S. telephone in 1967 by giving special phones to all 50 governors and connected them for a call from President L.B.J. Now people are giving up their land lines. I wonder how many there are now.



This is the Poppy Lady. Moina Bell Michael is the originator of the Flandersield Memorial Poppy Nov. 9, 1918. She would probably be amazed to see what she started and that it is still going on.

I always swore I would never turn into an old fart, but seriously, is this fad ever going to pass?

Granny Tarra

Trivia of the day:

The Appalachian Trail begun in 1922 and completed in 1937 links 15 states from Springer Mountain, Georgia to Katahdin, Maine 2,100 miles away. Every year about 100 hikers travel the whole journey taking 4 to 6 months.