Best of Georgia Gazette

Thank you guys. I'm Bruce Dorton and this is Georgia Gazette coming up on today's program, The Best of the Gazette. Revisit the future of medicine thanks to the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, that

future is now. We care because we have to live here through most of our lives, you know, and we don't want it polluted and trashy. We made a group of North Georgia school children whose interest in the environment continues to have a measurable impact on their community. Plus an interview with Savannah Historian and Jazz Eficionato Buhonstein, all that and more ahead on today's Georgia Gazette, but first the news from National Public Radio. Good afternoon and welcome to Georgia Gazette, I'm Bruce Dorton. On today's edition, The Best of the Gazette, Susanna Capeludo takes us to the Medical College

of Georgia where television makes it possible for doctors to treat patients who aren't in the same room or even the same city they are. Find out how someone named Bob is helping young children learn to read? Revisit Savannah's historic Jazz scene with Buhonstein, plus up to the minute sports happenings on sports talk with Herb White, and as always, Kim Dernan will help you plan your week ahead with the Arts Calendar. Georgia Gazette, it's a radio magazine, enjoy it, then pass it on. NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Shore recently visited Athens where he talked with W.U.G.A.'s Mary K. Mitchell about the media and the current political climate. In the final chapter of your 1977 book, Clearing the Air, you said that TV had created a national seance, and that when the fascination of the seance, Paul's, America I Am Confident will come back from Dreamland, seeking an old-fashioned answer from an old-fashioned reporter

to an old-fashioned question, what's the news? Has the fascination worn off since that time and have people come back to ask that simple question? No. It's gone all the other way. It was a wonderful line. I wanted to finish that book up beat because a lot of it was downbeat, and so there was a very nice line which I managed to sell to myself, but there's no reason to think that people want to know what's the news. People really want to know what's O.J. is doing. The topic for your public speech here in Athens recently was, forgive us our press passes. Why all the media bashing? Do you have answers yourself to that question? I think the reason for all the media bashing is that people no longer view the news media in general, by which I mean the press and radio and television all put together, no longer view them as serving the public purpose. The season now is being rather self-interested and self-sustained and very busy trying to earn money by manipulating the public instead of by serving the public, and the public has

gotten on to that. In your opinion, what effect will the blurring of the line between news and entertainment have on journalism? Well, the blurring of that line has had an effect on journalism in that it means that people frequently are unaware of what they're doing. For example, ABC on one occasion managed to do a simulation of a spy handing some brief case over to a Soviet spy and all of that, and they did it by reenacting it. Without quite realizing the difference between what a reenactment is and what the reality is. And so they become caught in the grip of this Hollywood mentality, which we're trying to show you what things are like, is just as good as showing you the reality with the result that they often confuse the public about what the reality is. And I think that to a large extent, many people after many, many years of television, especially of television, are no longer clear what's real and what's not real.

Well, at what point do we reach information overload and surpass the ability of the public to assimilate and digest all these sources? Well, information overload might be a problem. The problem here is disinformation overload. Yes, it's true that we have so many different ways now, especially in the cybernetic age of delivering information. And there is a threat that somehow people will not be able to absorb all the information available to them. But that's not what I'm talking about. What I'm talking about is what happens when people fill the heads with things which are either trivial or just not so. In a commentary that aired earlier this week, you described an appropriations compromise that cut energy assistance to the poor and elderly in order to fund a Marine Visitor Center in Oregon. You characterize this action as a kind of symbol of the Gingrich Revolution. In the long term, what do you think the public and press reaction will be to this form of revolution? Well, the public and press, the press reaction and the public reaction aren't the same. And that's what complicates things because I don't think that the public follows the press

very much anymore. It used to be that a series of editorials and responsible newspapers, a series of statements on radio and television might guide public opinion. But I think the public is almost as much turned off on the news media as it is on government. With the result that what you see in the papers or here on radio and television are not an accurate guide to what public reaction will be. And so everybody sits around waiting to see what public reaction is. And some of the indications are that some elements of the Gingrich Revolution are not going as well with the public as they rather count it on it doing. For example, they suddenly realize that maybe the public, everybody assumed the public was very much against welfare and wanted to get rid of welfare and wanted to get rid of the welfare of bombs and cheats and teenagers having children and putting them on welfare. And so it was generally assumed that anything you did to welfare would be all right with the American majority. It turns out not to be true.

With the result, they now have to revise some of their welfare plans and put back the idea of providing some cash benefits after a certain time to welfare mothers, which is precisely the opposite of what they were planning to do. What they're trying to do in the Gingrich Revolution is carry out what they believe. They mean they want a big victory last November and they think that that victory validated all the things that they wanted to do. And sometimes you find out that the public has validated some of the things you want to do, but not all. And then you have to sort of begin to roll back a little bit because it doesn't go down well with the public. Do you think some of that response is also coming from the public about the issue of zeroing out public broadcasting in this country? Well there, we hope and pray, right? If you and I talk about the future of public broadcasting, we're not sort of totally disinterested people in discussing this. What does seem to be true, at least I gather, from people in NPR who know more about this than I do, is that it's been quite an avalanche of mail and messages coming from people

on the supporting public television and public radio. And it is somewhat surprising to the people on the House side and to Senator Pressler on the Senate side who thought that this will again be an easy thing to do. It's turning out not to be so easy. So we're a Gingrich once talked of zeroing out public radio and television. He seems not to talk about that so much anymore that may be cuts but not maybe not total abolition of it. So I mean there's a big campaign going on even as we speak on the subject and I wouldn't want to predict except it has been quite heartening that more people like what we do and care about what we do than I thought. What might your personal defense of the public broadcasting area be? Well part of this I draw from Newton Minnow who used to be chairman of the Federal Communications Commission during the Kennedy administration. And something like this I have spent many years working in Europe where it is quite a

customary thing that there are many things which are called public and supported as public. You have in Germany almost every large city has an upper house which is supported with tax money and art galleries and symphony orchestras and television. I mean in Britain the BBC which was a first in television was all public television. There wasn't any television but public at one time. Now there is commercial and cables come in and all the rest of it. But generally speaking there is an idea that the word public is not a bad word. It's really a good word that it is nice to be able to go to Disneyland or Disney World but it's also nice to have public parks. It's great to be able to buy books in bookshops. It's also great to have public libraries. The whole function of the word public is a sense of what the community does in order to maintain facilities and services that people that will not work for themselves.

I mean most of what happens is public is because they don't reach vast audiences. They are not meant to reach the lowest common denominator and by virtual wall that frequently will not pay for themselves. And therefore the public said but we value this and we value having public attributes. I'm including the endowment, the endowment arts and humanities as well. And so what I really think is before we sort of go back to sort of a barbaric every person for himself and herself and so on that we think that over these past couple of centuries we've built up a certain sense that things that our public are good for the whole community and should be protected. Thank you for talking to us. We appreciate it. Pleasure. Susanna Capeludo is an award winning features producer and a frequent story contributed

to National Public Radio, her piece on new diagnostic and treatment technology being pioneered at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, first ran on Georgia because at October 14th of last year. The system combines video technology and medicine and as Susanna tells us telemedicine as it's called is designed to link rural Georgia with major medical centers in our state. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. I did. Fine. How are you? Good. Can you see us all right? Uh-huh. What's your name? Linda Johnson is sitting in front of two television monitors in a small examination room at the Tri-County Health Clinic in Warranton. On one monitor she sees herself. On the other she sees Dr. Jack Lesher or dermatologist in Augusta. Do you know what we're doing here today? I think I do. Okay. I got a good idea. Well, it's our understanding you have some sort of skin problem. Mrs. Johnson and Dr. Lesher are separated by more than 50 miles, yet they can see and

talk to each other almost as if they were in the same room. The images are being transmitted through fiber optic lines and copper wire. Dr. Lesher remote controls the four video cameras and Mrs. Johnson's examining room. Two of the cameras take in the patient and the room. The third camera is used to focus closely on things like skin lesions. But it is a fourth camera that makes Georgia's telemedicine program unique in the country. Laura Adams, the telemedicine coordinator, explains. With a series of adapters, this camera can be attached to virtually any scope. Here you see it attached to a microscope. This is the same camera that we would attach to the otoscope and ophthalmoscope that's located on the wall. You can also attach this camera to an indoscope, a sister scope, a bronchoscope. So a patient in Dodge County Hospital 130 miles away having an indoscopy procedure to look into their stomach. A consulting physician here at the Medical College of Georgia can see that view that and

provide guidance on that. By early next year, there will be 59 telemedicine sites covering the state's least populated areas. The new statewide system is the brain child of Dr. Jay Sanders with the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. He has spent the past 27 years developing telemedicine. You know, we are so incredibly advanced in terms of our ability to care for patients, our knowledge about disease processes, yet our ability to actually deliver that knowledge to the patient at a reasonable cost with quality is in a horse and buggy era. Sanders says soon all patients in rural Georgia will have access to almost any medical specialty. It is his hope that once telemedicine establishes itself fully in Georgia, it will entice primary care physicians to once again set up practice in small towns. All physicians are trained in major academic medical science. During their training years, they have access to every type of sub-specialty colleague

and every type of high technology. And then we cut that educational umbilical cord and we send them out to the real world, and particularly the real world of the rural community, where they have access to neither. What telemedicine does is literally retie that umbilical cord. For the patients at the Tri-County Health Center, telemedicine is a welcome alternative. Lisa Lotter-Harris lives in Crawfordville. I live all 60 miles from Augusta. I would have to go to Augusta, where now I came here, I only had to come 19 miles. So it helps me out going down there and I don't drive. My husband has to drive me, and he's not feeling well, so it worked out great for us. And I hope it helped a lot of other people that have to do a lot of traveling, you know. Others like Linda Johnson don't feel as comfortable. It was weird. It was so weird about it. Talking to a TV.

I mean, it was weird for him to see through the TV lady. That's amazing. Do you think it works, do you think it can do diagnosis? I think so. I think there's good for people that can't travel to a dermatologist, they could just get it right over the TV. I mean, weird. Doctors who have been using the system say most of their patients relax once they get used to seeing themselves on television monitors. Dermatologist Dr. Loretta Davis has been using telemedicine for two years. I think any doctor would rather have the patient right up and close, and that's just easier. I think people like that personal contact. But if you're looking for an alternative, it's hard to beat this. They can see you, you can see them, see you do talk, and it is personal, except for the fact that you can't touch. But soon, even touching a patient should not be a problem for doctors using telemedicine. Dr. J. Sanders. We are developing what is called a telepresence hand. This is not virtual reality.

This is a true telepresence in which from an electronic standpoint, we will lay what we call an electronic hand on that patient's abdomen at the remote site. And a physician back here at the medical college will put his hand into that electronic sensor here, and he will literally feel that patient's abdomen a hundred miles away, a thousand miles away. That's called telepresence. We're working with Georgia Tech. So the ability to palpate, the ability to touch will literally be available to us. There is no extra charge for patients who see a specialist via telemedicine, just the standard doctor's fee. And so far, Medicaid, Medicare, and Blue Cross Blue Shield have already accepted the new technology. For Georgia Gazette, I'm Susanna Capeluto. Dr. Hugh Kenner is one of America's most prominent literary critics.

However, for his contribution to the book series Portraits of American Genius, Kenner chose to explore the career of a man who was not a literary figure. Chuck Jones, director of animation at Warner Brothers Studios from the 1930s to 1962. Kenner's book is called Chuck Jones, A Flurry of Drawings, a Dr. Kenner's spoke last year with David Bryant of Member Station W.U.G.A. Well, who are some of the characters that he is responsible for? The roadrunner, Nikoyote, he was totally responsible for them. There's an amorous sort of skunk named Papi Lippur, and he's responsible for him. He did a lot of the bug spannies, he did a lot of the quirky pigs. He did, but he calls the ultimate bug spanny, which is Billy for Bugs, in which Bugs takes

a long throne in Abikotim, comes up in the bullring up Madrid, and finds himself confronting a bull that doesn't like him being there at all. That's a Jones. The strange thing at Warner Brothers was that the firms were a lot of two directors who were personally responsible for every frame. I think it's still they had autonomy. Yeah, he's direct. Total autonomy. They also had total responsibility. I mean, they were the ones who got fired if the top brass didn't like it. Well, it's the only place in the whole of cinema where that so-called Alturthia, we really applies. One man was really in charge. They ended up with three directors, but directors having to produce maybe 25 a year among them would have at any time 10 going at once.

That necessarily meant, I suppose, that there was a level of collaboration between the three directors who all had autonomy for their own projects. According to your book, the character of Bugs Bunny was actually handled in different shorts by different directors in different times. What effect on, say, the character of a character like Bugs Bunny did that bouncing around between directors? That's very interesting. For example, the Bugs Bunny of Chakzons never took action unless he was affronted. He had to be lost. He was not out making mischief. He was out eating a carrot, and if people insisted on pestering him to death, he finally went after them. But that was unique to all the Jones Bugs Bunny's alike out. Nobody else has saw it. OK, a rabbit. No one got here. What's up, Jack?

I'm hunting rabbits. It's rabbit season. Oh. Rabbit season. I'm in the lock. Well, no. As a matter of fact, I haven't even seen a rabbit yet. And what was the difference between Jones's approach to the cartoons and the approach of the other directors at what distinguished him? What makes him the one that you take interest in? Well, he had a different consumption of character. He never, he was not interested in people who simply make mischief. He was always interested in reactors. People who have suddenly had it up to here. That's the last straw. Now I use my secret weapon. Then his notion of the character was always some aspect of himself. Probably a period he said was, was Chuck Jones at the age of 18, thinking that every girl he met would fall in love with him. Ah, a little darling, it is love at first sight, is it not?

No. Raleigh Coyote was Chuck Jones, who if we put a screwdriver in his hand became dangerous. He was a man who could not fix anything around the house and I can see his wife nodding front of him when he said that. And so on. They were all aspects of himself, so that there was a coherent character going on behind the house six minutes. Then an incredible literacy of a man. This man is constantly quoting things out, who are quoting them correctly and they're not, well, he quotes in connection with the Coyote. The Coyote is a fanatic, a fanatic is defined by George Sandhiana as a being who redoubles his outfit when he has forgotten his objective. Took me a while to find out.

Perfect description. I took me a while to find out, but it isn't Sandhiana. I think it's obvious that his cartoons are formed by some level of literacy. Oh, yeah. I just saw one in which Daffy Duck continually gets his head blown off by Elmer Fud and it's because, as he says, it's a pronoun problem because Bugs keeps luring him into making mistakes with his pronouns and Daffy realizes that he can't quit making them. He isn't just quite fast enough to keep up with the flow of pronouns, he's one pronoun behind. It's true, Doc. I'm a rabbit, all right. Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home? Shoot him now! Shoot him now! You keep out of this. He doesn't have to shoot you now. He doesn't know how to shoot me now. Like a man that you shoot me now. It's worth noticing that they're not money-possible for me to eat for a six-minute cut.

Let's run through that again. Okay. Would you like to shoot me now or wait till you get home? Shoot him now! Shoot him now! You keep on with this. He doesn't have to shoot you now. Ha! He doesn't have to shoot me now. So shoot me now! Well, since we're talking about Bugs Bunny, how is it that Bugs Bunny got his name? Bugs got his name when I won a brother's staffer by the name of Hyderway, whose nickname was Bugs Hyderway, asked a studio designer back in the 1930s to design him a bunny. And this man did an anthropomorphic bunny and it came back and I see the paper, they were Bugs, B.U.G. are supposed to be Bugs, Bugs is money.

If Chuck Jones had asked for it, it would have been Chuck's money. Also, Bugs was the name of the man who commissioned the original drawing and somehow someone had been genius to realize that that was the perfect name for the rabbit and they became calling him that. Well, do you have a favorite character, a favorite Jones character of all his many creations and collaborations? I think I'm partial to Peppie LePueh, he's given the no-ness of a situation which is very simple, it's always something that isn't a skunk, it's usually a female black cat. Somehow accidentally it gets a white stripe painted on its back and that's enough for Peppie. He's convinced that this is his future partner and then the whole center part of the firm is Peppie moving in for the kill and the lady resisting him in various ways and then there's a climactic episode.

This is, I can't imagine an art form more constricted than that. It has almost no room for variation. As Jones said one of the big problems was every time we did one, we had to think of another way to get a white stripe on that cat's back. The other production house you think of readily when you think of cartoons is Disney. Now would you characterize the difference between a Warner product got it by Jones and a Disney character? Of course, Disney, they were not terribly interested in character whereas the Warner Brothers people were greatly interested in character. Donald Duck has no character. The only thing Donald Duck does is throw tantrums. Although as Daffy Duck he's very much a character, he's absolutely anarchic, I mean determined to dominate the environment by hooker crook. And now then, eager young space cadets, here is the course we shall pursue to find Planet

X. Starting for where we are, we go 33,600 turbo miles do up. Then, west in an astro-art deviation to here, then following the great circle seven radial looms south by down east, by astro-astrobo to here, here, and here, then by space naviga compass to here, here, and then to here, and here, by 13 point straddle cumulus bearing four million light years and us to our destination. Now do you know how to reach Planet X? Oh sure. Duke and his book Chuck Jones, A Flurry of Drawings, is published by University of California Press, and he spoke with W.U.G.A.'s David Bryant. You're listening to the best of Georgia Gazette, I'm Bruce Storton. Well, the news today is filled with negative stories about children from committing crimes to killing each other, so it's our pleasure to rerun this piece by Melinda Ware of Member Station W.U.G.A. and Athens, about a group of schoolchildren in rural Franklin County

who are making a difference in their community. The kids are known around the area as swamp kids, swamp being short for solid waste management plan. They've almost single-handedly brought the county into compliance with a state law that mandates each county in Georgia will have in place by 1996, a plan to substantially reduce the amount of solid waste going into their landfills. And whichever way you go with disposal, you still got to implement the collection system either way, because you've got to collect it somehow to dispose of it. In the commissioners of Franklin County, Georgia, listen attentively to Katie Norris, as she speaks. Norris is one of the local experts on solid waste management. What's surprising about this scene is that Norris is only 13 years old. Existing waste amount. It's the very front, page W-14, this is the first section in there. A couple of years ago, Katie and 11 other students in the gifted program at the Franklin

County middle school were given an assignment to study the local landfill. The classmates calculated how much waste was in the landfill. They figured out ways to reduce the waste, and they bombarded state environmental protection division officials with questions. Teacher Alice Terry says it was soon obvious her students were on to something important. We kept calling with questions that after the third question, and we got an, I don't know, the kids asked, you know, has nobody else asked these questions, like how much does a pine of oil weigh? Because we had to take numbers out of the waste stream. We had to know how much a pine of oil weigh. And they said, well, no, nobody's asked, because I guess they're just making, you know, they were just guesstimating, whereas these kids wanted the numbers. They wanted the exact amount. It turns out Franklin County had no written plan to reduce landfill waste, even though state law requires one, and no plan the students discovered meant the county was in danger of losing out on a substantial amount of state money.

County officials told the students such a plan can cost up to $18,000 to develop. The students offered to do it for the cost of their research. One year and $6,000 later, Franklin County had its plan. It was as thick as an Atlanta phone book and state approved. Larry Sparks is with the Georgia Mountains Regional Development Center, an agency that reviews county solid waste plans for state approval. I was really surprised that a group of students, this young, were able to pull this together in the amount of time they did, and they really had a good feel for the concept. Once they got into it, they kind of got their questions answered and sort of laid out a plan of attack, and they really went at it in a very expeditious manner, I thought. Based on the way we reviewed the plan and the response that we got back from the state in terms of the completeness of it, I would rank it up in the top, you know, like the

top third of the plans that were submitted in our area. Franklin County's 10-year plan spells out in detail how the county can eventually reduce the solid waste going into the landfill by 25%. And county officials say that in the first year the plan was implemented, the amount of solid waste being dumped there dropped 7%. They say the drop in solid waste is in part the result of increased landfill fees and better recycling in the county. But the students involvement in county environmental issues did not stop with their plan. They've been responsible for five new county ordinances, including regulations against litter, private dump sites, and yard waste in a landfill. They still attend commission meetings, then they make frequent presentations about ways to reduce waste to civic and school groups around the county. Teacher Alice Terry says the swamp kids have been persistent. The adult consultant has been hired to write the waste plan, she says.

The outcome may have been different. And they would have taken the plan and shelved it, in my opinion. It would have been written, it would have been approved, and we don't have the state government down our back anymore, we did what they wanted to do. But then they would have become absorbed with potholes in the roads and people complaining about their dirt roads needing gravel, and they would have gotten consumed with the problems of the moment, the crisis oriented problems, rather than the long term problems that are going to snake up on us in society if we don't address them and we don't correct them. So that's why I think the kids have been effective, is because they're still bugging the hell down. The swamp kids are getting lots of national attention for their work. They won a National Environmental Award and were honored by Vice President Al Gore at a White House ceremony. And recently, three of the students went to New York, where they appeared on the Phil Donahue show. Fourteen-year-old Lee Vandever and the other swamp kids are proud of what they've accomplished.

And she says, they definitely planned to stay involved in the landfill project. Because I think, like Katie said, we care, you know, we care other than, you know, just let's go in there and get our money right the waste plan and get. We care because we have to live here through most of our lives, you know, and we don't want it polluted trashy. This winter, a major part of the swamp kids plan is scheduled to begin in Franklin County, a rural recycling pickup program modeled after one in North Carolina. As for the students, some say they're going to devote their extracurricular time this year to more traditional pursuits like band or cheerleading. But all agree, the swamp kids' experience has had a large impact on their lives. Many point to their newly acquired public speaking skills. One says she wants to become an environmental lawyer, and the others say they've learned that what they do can make an impact on their community. For Georgia Gazette, this is Melinda Weir.

Still to come on the best of Georgia Gazette? Nope. We discover the Bob books, a colorful little set of books designed to help young children learn to read. The city itself has produced some enormously important jazz figures right to the top of my head comes to the great lyricist, Johnny Mercer. From our very first Georgia Gazette, Savannah Jazz historian, Boo Hornstein talks about the music and the city he loves. Plus story telecom and deity returns with her tale of the peanut man. Those stories and more coming up on the best of Georgia Gazette. Although this next story ran just a week or so ago, it quickly became one of our favorites as producers Sid Hoskinson and her young daughter Rick Lee show us learning to read has never

been easier. Thanks to the Bob books. The Bob books are a series of decidedly modern reading primers created in 1976 by former teacher Bobby Lynn Maslin. Bob. I couldn't find books that I really thought would be that had great stories as well as teaching the skills. And also I didn't find books that I thought were really easy for those young children. So I began to take blank paper and sit down with a child and work on the books. And that's how Bob books developed really with children. Bob's husband John illustrated the books. He says they have definitely evolved over the years. They used to be in a sandwich bag once. Right. The first ones were sent out in sandwich bags from the grocery store. And now they're in brightly colored boxes. If you pick yellow and blue.

When you picture in the first set, 12 little books that are in red and green and blue. I think in yellow. This bunch of little books all spread around. You mentioned the paper. We did on purpose use heavier quality paper for these little hands. And the books are also a very small size for the little hands on purpose. And the paper is black and white, it's a black ink on a white paper. And the reason is so they can color the pictures if they want to. Or the parent or teacher can use a reward system of letting them color it after they finish reading. And also the characters, the first characters in the books are drawn in circles and squares and triangles and so on. These children are learning about those shapes at this time and so we made them on purpose so children can draw the characters themselves.

My first thought upon examining the first set was it can't be this easy. But my five year old daughter Rickley seemed to be entering that window of reading opportunity. So one night we sat on my bed and I introduced her to the Bob books. This is a book. You read it. Okay, well why don't you open it up and we'll see what's in there. The first book of the first set is called Matt. Okay, this says beginning sounds for book one. This is book one. Do you know what that letter is? M? M. Is it a capital M and a lowercase M? Do you know what that is? There are four letters or sounds and there's a little picture next to it. Like the first one is a moon and right next to it there's a capital M and a lowercase M and you say to the child what's the first sound you hear when you say moon and they go through M and A and T and with those four sounds and the sight word on they can read

this whole book. And do you know what this letter is? Off. And what's this picture of? Sun. Sun. And what is the sound that an estimate? Each Bob book set comes with a one page teaching guide and invaluable tool for parents. It tells you how to use the books. But Bob says there are some things parents should be careful not to do. Don't push too soon. And also be very careful not to criticize, not to be critical, be positive, give the children positive reinforcement. And you know what these words are? The end.

The end. Did you read the whole book? Yeah. Did you read the whole book by yourself? Number two we need. You can't possibly want to read any more, can you? I want to. Set one is called the Bob Books. Set two more Bob Books and set three even more Bob Books. And Bob and her husband say they're working on a new set called Bob Books Plus for children who finish set one but aren't quite ready for set two. In addition to the books each set also contains two finger puppets to cut out and the little stage for finger puppet performances. The Bob Books are published by Scholastic and Rickley will be the first to tell you, they work. I think I'm good at reading now. You do. Uh-huh. I'm gonna do this one now. With Rickley the Reader, I'm Sid Hoskinson. I'm Bruce Dorton and I'm sitting here with Dr. Julius Hornstein that is known as Boo

Hornstein. And author and we're going to talk about a book he's written called The Sights and Sounds of Savannah Jazz. But let me begin by thanking you very much for taking time and being with us here at Peach State Public Radio. It's a pleasure. I was almost a pioneer of public radio in a sense and down a little on Mike work from time to time with the affiliate in Savannah WSVH. We hear a lot about jazz in different parts of the country, the New Orleans style jazz, certain types of jazz out of New York and out of California. What about Savannah Jazz? What makes it Savannah Jazz? The city's history in jazz goes back quite a long way and I think that of course the genesis of jazz out of the American south would sort of point I think to the urban experience and the rise of cities obviously like New Orleans and Memphis and Savannah and maybe Charleston

and the cities had a long long history in jazz. But I think that if there is a Savannah style per se it probably came in somewhere around the end of the second world war when something that is referred to is straight ahead type jazz, maybe somewhat of a variant of the Bob music that was played back in the 40s by Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and others was incorporated in the music and not only the music but the lifestyle of Savannah people. Tell us the names of some of the more famous jazz musicians that came out of Savannah. It's really very, very impressive. I became president of coastal jazz which is the jazz society in Savannah and got into this. And first of all the Great Cornettus King Oliver died in Savannah very tragically back in 1938, totally destitute working in a pool hall and totally unmoaned and virtually unwept.

But the city itself has produced some enormously important jazz figures right to the top of my head comes the Great Larissa's Johnny Mercer who also was a fine singer in his own right. And beyond that, Trummy Young who played Trombone with Louis Armstrong, Kaiser Marshall also was one of Armstrong's drummers and played with Fletcher Henderson. James Moody, the Great Kenneth Saxophoneist, was born in Savannah. Ben O'Reilly who was the loniest monk's drummer for many, many years is a Sivanian and just on and on Shaheves Shahab who in Savannah was Edmund Gregory is considered by many as one of the best baritones Saxophone foam players in the world. So I don't think it would be going too far out on a limb to say that Savannah perhaps has produced more significant jazz figures, major, major jazz figures than with the exception

in New Orleans than as any city I think in America. You mentioned King Oliver and then you mentioned Louis Armstrong and there was a connection between the two. Yes, there was. Oliver was of course Armstrong's mentor and Armstrong followed him to Chicago. Armstrong left King Oliver, went to New York and in a sense Oliver followed him to New York and then he ran into a dispute with as jazz figures frequently do over money with the owners of the Cotton Club and decided that the money offered to him wasn't enough and sadly he was replaced by a gentleman known as Duke Ellington and Oliver went out on the road very, very unsuccessfully. His health was terrible and he fell out of luck and fortune in Spartan Berkshire Carolina in 1937 which is the year I was born so it's six in my mind and he called the gentleman in Savannah who passed away a couple of years ago Frank Dillworth and said he was in trouble

and Dillworth came to Spartan Berks, picked him up, brought him to Savannah, got him medical attention, found him a place to live and for the last sad year of his life he lived in Savannah and died in a boarding house on the corner of Gaston and Montgomery streets and Armstrong had met him a couple of times at least one time in Savannah and actually when he died Mr. Dillworth called Lewis and Lewis made the arrangements to have his body sent to New York where he was buried. How were you involved in the jazz community? I was a founder of the Coastal Jazz Association, we put this together about 12 years ago, seven or eight of us and it has grown into an organization of some three or four hundred members and I became and 19, see my memory isn't so good at all, I can't remember for sure but I think around 1990 I became the president of Coastal Jazz and did that for three years

and was involved across the board and the doings of the Jazz Association and also the production of the very fine Savannah Jazz Festival that we do annually. Now besides the sights and sounds of Savannah Jazz in your book what else is included in it? It is in a sense Bruce I use the jazz as a metaphor I think for just the experience and growing up in one of the most beautiful and alluring and charming cities I think in all of America I have lived in, oddly people are amazed at this, I live in the house I was born in and I've never been away from Savannah more than a month of my entire life. So the town is really a part of me, so the stories deal for instance with Tibery's a Pavilion which really was a great great Pavilion that was at Tibery Island and predates me I can certainly say that because there was a train that ran to Tibery and all of the

great bands Tibery was almost the last of the stopping points in the East Coast tour of the great musicians for all practical purposes there wasn't a Florida for commercial or tourism purposes and Tibery's was so all the great bands played there so some of my research has led me into digging up information about the train and the bands that played there and some of the characters that particularly around Tibery that have migrated or infiltrated over the years and that's almost a legendary little community all of its own. Every town, every type of music from classical to country has its share of characters of people that when you think of jazz or when you think of something and you think of one of the characters in that particular field you think of this individual or those individuals tell me a couple out of Savannah.

I certainly think immediately coming to my mind is a wonderful pianist by the name of Ken Palmer. I actually dedicated the book to Kenny Kenny I guess ironically passed away on the same day that that Dizzy Gillespie died and in a way and I framed that up by thinking to myself and in another story saying that Gillespie was a worldwide ambassador of jazz. He was known all over the universe for his as love of the music in his artistry and in Savannah Kenny never left Savannah. He was a local guy through and through but an extremely talented pianist very very good and another one who comes to my mind is a saxophonist by the name of Willie Draper and Draper was just simply fantastic. Many people who really know jazz going back over the years say that Draper was as talented as a musician as the city of Savannah has ever produced.

I've been talking with Boo Hornstein, Dr. Julius Hornstein, better known to his friends and neighbors as Boo about his book Sites and Sounds of Savannah Jazz, The Gaston Street Press. Boo thank you very much. It has been a pleasure talking to you and I want to thank you very much for coming in being with us on Peach State Public Radio and we wish you all the best with you working if I ever get to Savannah I'll look you up, thank you Boo Hornstein. Hi I'm Kim Tiernan with a look at events in your area for the coming week. For fans of symphonic music the Savannah Symphony conducted by Philip Greenberg presents a free concert in Forsyth Park in Savannah Saturday night at 730. The Columbus Symphony welcomes pianist Lee Luvisi for a performance featuring Brahms

second piano concerto as well as Beethoven's seventh symphony. The concert is Saturday night at 8 and the three art theatre in Columbus. On the lighter side the Brooks string quartet, also known as the Unstrung quartet, is at the Ritz Theatre in Brunswick Saturday night for a concert beginning at 8. For Broadway fans Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music is presented by the Clayton State Theatre tonight into Maronite at Spivey Hall, performance begins at 815. Broadway at the Grand is the title of the program at the Grand Opera House in Macon tonight into Maronite, Michael McGuire and Mary Gordon Murray perform solos and duets from Broadway hits in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Grand Opera House. In other arts events the Vuka Dance Troop will perform at the Morton Theatre in Athens tonight at 8 at the dinner theatre in Warm Springs, Georgia. The Roosevelt National Arts Society presents Franklin and Harry tonight and Maronite.

And finally the Lounds Valdosta Arts Commission is holding its 8th annual Candlelight Buffet Arts Show this Monday from 7 until 9 at the first state bank downtown Valdosta. If you want more details concerning these listings or if you would like to contact me about future events in your area please call 1-800-654-3038. For Georgia Gazette, I'm Kim Tierney. Cuban-born storyteller Carmen Dede is a regular commentator for NPR's Weekend All Things Considered Chauso contributes to Georgia Gazette. And tell stories in schools around the state, here is one of our favorite stories. Mangos and Magnolias Speak is an ugly word.

I was 12 years old and I didn't like it anymore then, then I do now. I particularly didn't like the red haired tormentor who taunted me with it, moments before she had been my best friend. I'm not, I'm an American. Speak came the swift reply. Shamed an angry, I left my bike on the driveway and went back towards the garden in search of my father and his earthy wisdom. Red-faithed and teary-eyed, I unleashed years of frustration that's a right of passage for most, if not all, immigrant children. I ended with, and puppy, I'm not really Cuban because I'm growing up in Decatur, and I'm not American because I don't look like them puppy, and I don't talk like them, and you are not like them, and I trailed off as my neck and face grew hot. My father, the eternal gardener, looked at me intently for a few moments, then began.

Do you know what grafting is? Huh? Grafting, you know, that's when you take a branch from one tree, and you put it into another tree, and it grows. You mean two trees grow together? Yes. Puppy, what does that have to do? Just a minute. When we took you from Cuba, you were like a young mango tree, torn out by the roots. Oh, Puppy, listen to your Puppy. You could have withered and died, instead you have been grafted into this southern town, and you don't know it yet, but you are an amazing hybrid, a tree that gives forth both mangoes and magnolias. As a smile swept across my face, my puppy touched my chin and said, and Camita, you don't have to stop eating the fruit to smell the flowers.

And that's our program for this week, Production Help, provided by Susanna Capeludo, Sid Hoskinson, James Argroves, Mary K. Mitchell, David Bryant, and Melinda Weir. Coming up next week, Georgia Gazette remembers President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who died 50 years ago this week at the Little White House in Warm Springs, Georgia. That story and much, much more all yours for the hearing next week on Georgia Gazette. I'm Bruce Dorton, I hope you enjoyed today's program, have a good day, and a good week. If you have questions or comments about this program, write to Georgia Gazette, Peach State Public Radio, 1540 Stewart Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia, 30310. You can call us at 1-800-654-3038, or you can reach us online. Our email address is printed in your program guide preview. Georgia Gazette is a public affairs presentation of the Peach State Public Radio Network.