Georgia Gazette

I'm Tom Patton, and this is Georgia Gazette. On today's edition, the year 2000 stayed budget, the governor's multi-pronged health care reform package, and a bill that could give Georgians more time to vote all move forward in the General Assembly, plus the growing number of Spanish-speaking families now calling Georgia home, and the gravity of celebrating 100 years of physics, stay with us. The slow pace of this year's session of the Georgia General Assembly picked up considerably this week, as lawmakers worked to meet the deadline for getting a bill out of the chamber where it was first introduced. James R. Groves reports on this week under the gold dome. This week saw a number of important bills make it out of one chamber and into the other. One of the first things the Georgia House did this week was to approve a $13 billion state

budget for the next fiscal year. The spending plan includes money to give pay raises to teachers and other staining employees and to pay for the second phase of the governor's property tax cut. But it also contains money for a number of projects, some of them fairly costly and individual lawmakers home districts. The practice of funding pork barrel projects drew the ire of House Republican leader Bob Irvin of Atlanta. This process is wrong. You know it's wrong. You do it. You go along with it because you know that right now it's the way things work. Democrats defended the pet project saying they amounted to just 1 percent of the entire budget for next year. The Senate will use the House plan as a template for its own spending proposal. A conference committee will iron out any differences during the final days of the session. House members also voted to give all of Georgia's legislators and other top elected officials

pay raises. The bill would increase lawmakers salaries from $11,000 to $16,000 a year. If the measure gets through the Senate it would be the first pay hike for legislators in 12 years. Key pieces of Governor Roy Barnes' health care reform package cleared a few major hurdles this week. Lawmakers in the Senate voted to create an advocate's office for consumers having problems with their insurance. The bill was introduced in the Senate by Decatur Democrat Connie Stokes who said an advocate will give Georgia's a voice and disputes with their insurance companies. The insurance department really does not have the time to look at what we are talking about looking at. They are regulating the insurance companies and you are really focused on that, how they are doing business, if they are doing what they are supposed to be doing and working on those types of proceedings, plus all these other areas, then they really do not have the time to look at this just from the consumer's perspective. The House, meanwhile, gave approval to a bill that would make managed care companies

liable for some of the medical decisions they make under the bill disgruntled patients could appeal their case at the expense of an HMO and once the appeals process has been exhausted, patients are then free to sue. In other action, a bill that would let police confiscate the cars of prostitutes, customers got unanimous approval in the Senate as did a measure to increase the fines for drunk drivers and drug offenders. And that's a brief look at some of what Georgia lawmakers accomplished this week in Atlanta. I'm James Argroves. For a more in-depth look at this week under the Gold Dome, listen to the legislative report with James Argroves, Friday evenings at 6.30 on this Peach State Public Radio Station. While the Georgia General Assembly labors away in Atlanta, commentator Kathy James remembers the time she spent as a page in the Alabama State Legislature. I think the oddest thing I did as a child was to serve as a page in the Alabama State Legislature. It was odd for me because it was decidedly glamorous in comparison to daily life on the farm.

My father was elected State Representative from our district sometime in the late 70s. He ran as a Democratic common man, and that he was. He dressed in a sky blue polyester knit suit and cowboy boots. Drove off in a Subaru Station wagon with oxidized paint on the hood and parted in front of the Alabama State Capitol, between a Lincoln Continental and a Cadillac. From my perspective in the pages section, the legislative floor looked like Wall Street. A board of names and colored lights beside each one ran up to the ceiling at the front of an enormously overwrought room of swag draperies and scarred wooden banisters. My dad's seat was somewhere in the middle, and he had a pretty good view of things as they unfolded down front. Some of the legislators had a funny way of sparking into life. It happened when the television cameras appeared, and then you'd see a half-dozen man. I don't recall any women who resorted to this tactic. Who checked their hair, straightened their ties, and rushed the podium at the front of the house chamber as soon as the cameras lit up.

Pages divided legislators into two categories. Those who tipped well and those who didn't. If a good tipper turned on his or her page light, the boy pages would make a mad scramble to get there first. If you were lucky, the legislature would walk to the pages bench and pick out the lucky air and runner. I was usually one of the older kids on the bench, so I always had a better shot at being picked out of a lineup than competing with athletic-legged boys and pants and flat shoes. I'm sure some things got accomplished by the legislature, some of it even good. I was at the age and height to simply be overlooked and completely. Like most adults, the men and women of the house acted under the illusion that we children had neither eyes nor ears. The first time I met Governor Fob James, he was serving his first term in that office about 20 years ago. He hadn't yet evolved into the political dynamo who reinstated the chain gang years later. He gave me the usual politician smile and ask, how are you without waiting to hear reply? I shook his hand in the same office I'd stood in years earlier when a then-walking governor

George Wallace asked me the same question. He didn't wait for a reply either. As Governor Wallace posed for a photograph with me, he kept squinting like he had an awful headache and he was ready for us to get the hell out of there. I remember thinking, this guy looks tired. My mom still keeps the photo on her wall. Being a legislator's wife gave my mom a prestige that being a farmer's wife did not. Perhaps her most cherished possession came when she had kidney stones. The second year I served as a page in the state house. The stones themselves were put in an aspirin bottle to keep as a souvenir, something the rest of the family found repulsive and fascinating at the same time. But the stones didn't compare to the dozen red, velour-covered plastic roses sent to her by none other than Governor Fob James. They were spread out in a magnificent spray amidst luscious green plastic leaves and set in a white pedestal bowl.

The attached card read, warmest personal regards. And it was signed by the same man who would someday challenge the state Supreme Court over the ten commandments. Every visitor and every nurse who graced the doorway of her hospital room knew who sent those roses. They became reason enough for my mom to sit up in bed and point to them whenever a new visitor came in. When Governor James went out of office years later, those roses were still proudly displayed on my mom's dresser. They outlasted the kidney stones in the aspirin bottle. Kathy James is the cultural affairs director for a Carrollton's Department of Parks and Recreation. The number of Spanish-speaking workers and their families living in Georgia is growing at such a pace that concerned experts and community leaders met recently to discuss the impact

this rapid change in population is having on communities. What they found is that on many levels, the state is not prepared to help local governments meet the challenges this population shift is bringing. Susana Capeludo reports. What attracts thousands of Hispanics to Georgia each year is its booming economy. Workers are needed in carpet factories, chicken processing plants, and on construction sites. Latinos have been more than willing to fill these blue collar jobs. Many decide to raise their family in this state. A small group of second and third graders is learning English at Centennial Elementary School in Gainesville. Their native language is Spanish, but each day they spend 50 minutes of intensive English instruction with Margonnical. This year I have 35 children that I work with, and 32 are from Mexico, one is from El Salvador and two are from Vietnam.

Nickel says she has seen the number of Hispanic students increased dramatically over the past few years. When the school opens seven years ago, 25% of the 600 students were Hispanic. Today that ratio is 42% says principal Shirley Whitaker. We wish that we had more teachers who spoke Spanish, because the children really don't give us that much of a challenge. They learn quickly, but being able to communicate with parents is probably the most challenging part. The school has set up a parent's center with a full-time bilingual teacher who helps with communication between teachers and parents. The school's newsletter is also bilingual. And while the language barrier can be overcome with interpreters, there is also a cultural barrier school officials often face when dealing with new parents, says Judas Beasley, the Gainesville school system's assistance superintendent. It's more likely that the mother has just come from Mexico of a five-year-old would feel

less comfortable about turning that child over to strangers for the majority of the day. There's more of a, there's more of a nurturing, there's more of a family cohesion. And it's difficult break, and the idea of taking it seriously that the child is supposed to be at school every single day is not something that's part of what they're accustomed to doing with their very young children. The influx of Hispanics is also felt in the medical sector. Jane Carr oversees public health clinics in 13 North Georgia counties. She says the clinics are doing their best to serve this rapidly-growing population. They're playing catch-up, I guess you might say, in trying to get the staff trained. For example, in Habersham County, we had four people on that staff in the last three months who've been to school to learn Spanish because if the phenomenon there seemed

to just last year, it became really obvious that we were seeing the big increase in Hispanic people in Habersham County. Serving the growing Hispanic population has also put a financial strain on the clinic says Carr, many of the patients she says are undocumented and therefore don't qualify for Medicaid, and that means less money to work with. In our health departments in the state, we don't turn anybody away due to inability to pay. So when they come and ask the services, we have to try to provide those services with the limited resources that we have and the stress on that is getting bigger and bigger. And yet we're getting no more funding as this population increases. Carr and others would like to see the state be more proactive, but experts say the state is all but ignoring the needs of its Hispanic population.

Jim Gordon is a sociologist at the University of Georgia. There's really no statewide initiative that, at least that I know of, that's geared at the needs of this population and it's really kind of left to the local communities to deal with and local communities don't have the lion's share of the tax base to deal with it. The problem may only get worse. Hispanics could soon outnumber African Americans in Georgia, says Dr. Rusty Brooks, a professor at the UGA Fanning Institute for Leadership and Community Development. Given that fertility rates among African Americans are declining, fertility rates among whites are declining, whereas Latino fertility rates tend to be higher than those two population subgroups. And given this influx of Latinos who are migrating in for jobs, I would think that somewhere around between 2010 to 2015, Latinos in the state of Georgia could easily surpass the numbers of African Americans in this state.

I mean, they could be a growing majority minority. Brooks warns that if state officials don't start dealing with this population trend soon, Georgia could face difficult racial problems, especially in the event of a major downturn in the economy. And I think we need to be out in front of that thing, anticipating that potential problem and making sure we head off any kind of problems that might emerge from competition on a human crop might emerge that all the Latinos tend to be primarily illegal immigrants and we've got to get them out of the state. Well, that's not necessarily true. There's a lot of native Latinos in the state now. They're not all illegal immigrants in the state. And the minute we have some sort of economic turnaround and competition for jobs becomes very keen. You know, there is a strong potential that there could be a much more significant kind of socioeconomic clash among whites and blacks and Latinos that we have now. So far Latinos have no political voice in Georgia.

There are no Latino representatives in the state legislature or on county commissions. And experts say until leaders hear from their constituents, they're likely to just ignore the needs of Hispanics in this state. I'm Susanna Capeluto. You probably, unless you're a scientist, never think about physics. Yet, physics is arguably a part of every aspect of every day life from switching on a light to driving a car. This has been a century of physics, scientific discoveries ranging from the airplane to the electron have all been part of the physicist's realm. Next week, the American Physical Society will hold its century celebration with lectures and demonstrations all around Atlanta, highlighted by a keynote address titled The Universe in a Nut Shell by Stephen Hawking. Joining me now is Dr. Brian Schwartz, director of Centennial Programs of the American Physical Society. Dr. Schwartz, why are you celebrating a century of physics? Well, it turns out that the American Physical Society, which is the leading society of research physicists in the world, was founded in 1899 in New York City, and almost everyone agrees

that this was a century of physics. The century started with Albert Einstein and his famous E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. E. squared in special relativity, and then it went through the discovery of the atom, discovery of the particles in the nucleus, and plot the mechanics, the transistor, the laser. And now, in fact, we begin ending the century with the physicists of the people who really developed the World Wide Web and parts of the internet, so we've had a profound effect on the lives of ordinary people during the century. Tell us a little bit about your particular discipline. How is it that you go about making physics fun? What happens is most people don't realize that their whole life is governed by physics. Motion would be impossible without physics. Almost everything around you, light, sound, all that involves physics. And so what we decided to do is at least celebrate the century of physics and begin picking some topics that people can easily relate to. For example, the physics of music, the physics of art, the physics of dance.

In fact, we even have a discussion on the physics of beer. Let's talk a little bit about some of these individual events and a couple of these that really struck my eye because, first of all, it is spring, spring, training is underway, and there's a session that you have that's called the physics of baseball. How does physics insert itself into the national pastime? Well, the question you can ask yourself is, what happens when a bat hits the ball? What is the process that takes place? Actually a ball is moving at physics. When the bat hits the ball, the bat exerts a force on the moving ball, a force when it acts on a moving ball changes its direction. And the question you might want to ask is, how come Mark McGuire hit 70 home runs this year? Was it the lively ball? Was it simply his strength? Was it extraordinary luck? And so what we analyze, and there's a physicist named Richard Brandt at NYU who analyzes the physics of baseball, and he's going to be giving a talk at Cytrek Museum. His talk is open to the public, free.

Anybody can attend. And then the one that you mentioned, the physics of beer. Well, it turns out that really the physics of beer has to do with foam, and it had this foam arise. What is the chemistry, physics, properties of foam? Most people think a foam is a little bit of Coca-Cola and beer, but also sponges are really something like foam. Even bread when it's rising is something like foam. One of your other sessions is the physics of Star Trek, and that comes to mind because of one of the very famous lines uttered by the chief engineer, Mr. Scott, to Captain Kirkwin. He said, Captain, you cannot change the laws of physics. Yet Star Trek was famous for doing just that. How do you bring that all into the realm of physics? Well, there's a very good author physicist named Lawrence Kraus, who's a chair of the department at Case Western Reserve, who has written a couple of books on the physics of Star Trek. And the question people want to ask is, could you move faster than the speed of light? Can you beam somebody up, Scotty, and things like that?

And what he does is he examines very carefully what laws of physics are in play, which might allow you to do that, or which might not allow you to do that. And so he gives a very popular talk. Usually all the Trekkies come. I invite all the Trekkies at the Beathletheater downtown, open to everybody, free of charge. So get rest, come on down, and enjoy the physics of Star Trek. Why should people care? I mean, intellectually, people know that there is physics involved in almost every aspect of everyday life, everything from baseball to light bulbs. But why should we care? In addition to working for the American Physical Society, co-ordinating this event, I'm also a professor of physics at City University of New York, actually, Brooklyn College. And I love to teach students, in fact, I love to teach adults, I usually teach them in the evening. And it turns out it's interesting how people live their lives and never really realize how much their lives are governed by physics. I do a lot of things with sports, and I do a lot of discussion of like car crashes. People can really understand, after understanding, a little bit of physics, how important the

seatbelt is. For example, a body in motion, one of the famous Newton laws, remains in motion, unless acted on by a force. So if you're sitting in a car, the car crashes, the front of the car may stop, but you're in motion, you're a body sitting in the car in motion. You will continue to move forward if you're not restrained by a seatbelt, and then crash basically into the dashboard. And now there's a second crash, the car crash, now you crashed into the dashboard. But that's not the only crash, and that's not the final crash, because your brain did not yet stop moving, and your heart did not stop moving, and it goes crashing into your cranium or your heart into your chest wall. It turns out, after my physics course, nobody will not wear a seatbelt again. And again, what's so fair about physics is, it doesn't care if you're rich or poor, doesn't care if you're black or white, doesn't care if you're younger or old, it doesn't care if you're nice or not nice, the laws of physics take over. If you're a body in motion, you will remain in motion.

Now you've mentioned several events, and without going through a whole litany of where things are going to be, all of that information is available on your website. Right, the best website will be www.physicsfestival.com. A century of physics will run in Atlanta, March 16th to the 26th. You'll find a complete rundown of events on the website Dr. Schwartz talked about, and all events, including this Stephen Hawking lecture, are free and open to the public. I'm Tom Patton, and still to come on this edition of Georgia Gazette, Savannah Turns Green, what would St. Patrick's Day and the anniversary of the Girl Scouts, plus Savannah, after midnight,

a literary guide that goes beyond the garden of Good and Evil, don't go away. There are some changes in the way St. Patrick's Day will be celebrated in Savannah this year, most notably along the waterfront, and joining me now is Gordon Varnado, director of the Savannah Waterfront Association, Gordon, what's going to be new in Savannah for St. Patrick's Day? Well, after a lot of discussion, it actually started in 1992. The City Council has decided to go along with the concept of having the St. Patrick's Day on the River Festival be a festival zone, that is, it will be enclosed, there'll be controlled access, there'll be seven access points at the bottom of the ramps leading down to the river street, and there people will be checked for, you know, anybody would be bringing in skateboards or roller blades or weapons or that type of thing that may be dangerous

to the festival, and there'll be an opportunity for them to purchase, they are at the access point, a 21 band, that would be a wristband indicating that they were 21 years of older and would be able to purchase alcohol and drink alcohol outside. What seems to have been a real problem in the past times, a lot of underage drinking and a lot of excessive drinking, and so what we're shifting and trying to do this year differently, we want to turn what I've described and has been described as a disorganized and disorderly and dangerous situation into a safer, nicer and more enjoyable festival. Cleaner festival, we've got to clean up crew that's going to try to keep things clean for everybody, we've got three entertainment stages, we've got some 30 different bands lined up to play all throughout the festival, it's a big stretch for us, our budget is

way beyond anything we normally do, but this is something that the Convention of Vista's Bureau, the City of Savannah, a lot of the people in the tourism industry had felt as though the St. Patrick's Day celebration on River Street was getting a little out of hand, and so the Waterfront Association is implementing a series of recommendations in regards to alcohol sales and regards to controlling the access and regards to the wrist bands, the sound permits, all the different things that would shift and make this a festival instead of just sort of an organized event that happened almost by itself. There had originally been some reluctance on the part of some of the merchants all in the Waterfront to have the festival gated and to charge admission, have they all pretty much come around now to think this is going to work out just fine? Well what happened in that case Tom was there was originally the plan and the recommendation was to charge admission so that anyone who came through the gates would pay a fee to

come down to the River Street area and several merchants felt as though that might be unfair to the people who were coming to shop at their stores. So the shift was made that they would not be an admission charge, but that the alcohol consumption by underage drinkers and so forth was the main issue and so the 21 bands were brought into the being that persons under 21 would not be able to consume alcohol and the idea would be that those people who are over would pay the $4 for the 21 band almost the form of a cover charge to help pay for the entertainment and the festival activities. Will people have to buy a band for each individual day that they attend the festival or will ride due for the day? There will be different color bands for each day except for Monday which is a free day. That's Friday Saturday and Sunday there will be different color bands and then Tuesday and Wednesday is St. Patrick's Day itself and the bands will be green of course time

on St. Patrick's Day. I understand that they are estimating smaller crowds this year because St. Patrick's Day actually falls in midweek is that what you're expecting as well? This was one of the reasons why we wanted to try this this year that St. Patrick's Day fell in the middle of the week and therefore if we're going to try something new this seemed to be an opportunity to do that. You've mentioned in general several of the events that are going to be going on, what don't you be a little bit more specific about some of the activities that you have planned along the riverfront? Okay, no. Friday evening we kick off the first night of entertainment with the swinging medallions with the very popular group here in Savannah and they'll play Friday night, Tensley Ellis is playing Saturday night, then Tuesday night the swinging medallions come back on again the night before St. Patrick's and we have seven nations which is a real good Celtic band that will play on St. Patrick's Day night and in us first in all those different days we have a lot of other good entertainment both from out of town and local people and then for the first time we're doing in the sense of some sort of interactive activities

with these climbing walls that it seemed to be real popular at other festivals where patrons could go and scale these walls and I guess sort of compete with each other that they are doing some type of physical activity and everybody thinks that that's sort of a fun thing to do. Jordan Varnado is director of the Savannah Waterfront Association Gordon, thanks very much for taking some time to join us. Thank you, Tom. Now not everyone celebrates St. Patrick's Day by painting the town green. Georgia Gazette commentator Mark Thomas says, for him March 17th is a day of somber remembrance. My good friend Jason didn't celebrate St. Patrick's Day this year. Actually, Jason never did. He dreaded it. It was a holiday that must be endured he once told me. He didn't share his birthday with the Buccanele of St. Patty's Day depressed him greatly. It was a perverse reminder that time was ticking down. We became fast friends 11 years ago a week before St. Patrick's Day. I had just returned from a three year stay in Israel.

Jason had just started school at the Savannah College of Art and Design. We both needed money. If you ever need a job in a hurry, you'll find one on River Street that particular week. We met at one of these uncovidate jobs that only the desperate are insane would take. Qualified on both those counts, our job was to pedal vats of green beer and hawk some t-shirts for what was to become a seven day eternity. When I came to work that first thing, Jason immediately sensed that I had some serious doubts about pulling off this gig. I mean, who wants to work in the middle of a party? The first words Jason said to me were, hey dude, how's it going? We might as well get drunk. I must admit, when any unfamiliar white guy greets me with, dude, I'll worse yet, bro, my antenna go up. I have to wonder if this person is for real or what? Under more banal sober circumstances, it would have taken a lot of digging, say to China to find out if Jason was for real, but when two people get totally smashed for seven consecutive days, they really get to know each other.

Jason was like Dennis Miller crossed with Howard Stern. You either loved a guy or hated him, ignoring him was next to impossible. Someone once said that life is a card game, you play the hand you're dealt. Jason got dealt a rotten hand, but he played it magnificently, bravely. When Jason was seven, he fell and smacked his forehead. The bruise had developed only got worse. Jason's physician had the uninvibolt task of telling his parents that Jason suffered from hemophilia and hereditary bleeding disorder. The cuts and bruises that you and I swab over with alcohol and forget about were life threatening for him. To make matters worse, Jason eventually received a blood transfusion contaminated with HIV when he was 18. His dream of being a husband and father was destroyed. Still, this thing keeps Jason from living his life. He never backed down from a fight, beat with a drunk and some bar or with a meter made on Broughton Street. But what I like most about Jason was his utter disdain for BS. His whole life was predicated on cutting to the chase.

Jason didn't have time to dilly dally. He gave a lot too. He gave me the confidence to write. Any more on can write, dude. He told me. He got me to finally read Stephen Kang and Dean Coont. As much as he disliked phoniness in people, he made me a fan of all those newspapers specializing in alien invasions, two headed cows, and apocalyptic comments. I even started reading comic books again. The last time I saw Jason was New Year's 1996, I was stationed on the 10th floor balcony at the Dissoda Hilton, trying to be festive. Jason was at his apartment across the street. He was too sick to deal with people that night, yet he waited until midnight to wave at me. I'm certain now that Jason knew he was waving goodbye. He died shortly thereafter. Well, St. Paddy says almost here again. Happy birthday, dude. Come and hit her, Mark Thomas, lives, and writes in Savannah.

He comes to us from Member Station WSVH. What are you reading after midnight? If you think John Barron's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Needle is the last word on this coastal city, then think again. New anthology provided the first literary guide to Savannah that people across the country indeed throughout the world have come to love through Barron's bestselling book. Literary Savannah is a compilation of fiction, memoir, poetry, and letters by 37 noted authors spanning more than 200 years. Whether from Savannah or merely passing through, these writers together paint a colorful portrait of a city steeped in history and atmosphere. Covered a cover host's engine, Flynn went to Athens this week to talk to Patrick Allen, the editor of the anthology. Literary Savannah is part of a series of books that we're doing which will be literary guides, literary portraits of southern cities.

It's the first in the series that Hill Street Press is doing. With the approach we've tried to take, it's really to let the quality of the pieces speak for themselves rather than sort of trying to gerrymander them into very specific themes. So we've taken kind of a light approach and just done things chronologically. What emerges from that seemingly sort of arbitrary arrangement are lots of different themes and lots of different visions of the city. But it's really the pieces themselves speaking about the city rather than the editors trying to force things to come out which aren't already there. So tell us who you've got in the collection. I started at the very beginning of Savannah's founding with James Oglethorpe. He wrote a book called An Account of Caroline in Georgia which I think was really a sort of glorified tourist pamphlet trying to get people to come to Savannah like the idea of naming a dismal country, Greenland. He tried to make Savannah sound a little bit more hospitable and habitable than it may

have been at the time. That's called An Account of Caroline in Georgia from 1732. And I progressed through important early documents, Jikeli, the Yamakram Mikko, or Chief. And the origin, the legend of the people which he recited on Savannah's first square. And then John Wesley, the first sermon that he preached in Savannah called On Love, a little bit ironic given the fact, given the circumstances under which he left Savannah. There are slave narratives in the book. There is a letter from Georgia, Washington, Travel, Memoirs, Poetry, Memoirs of Life on Plantations. And then some sort of ephemeral documents, for example, a letter that will you make Peace Thackery wrote on one of his lecture tours in Savannah. And we progress all the way up through modern times and of course Johnny Mercer knows Savannah collection would be complete without Johnny Mercer.

The piece that I used is from unpublished autobiography. And he writes in it that he never published a song, never wrote a song about Savannah. Because he really felt too much pressure, which is ironic, there's this four-time Oscar winning songwriter who couldn't write about his own hometown that he knew so well and loved so well. Now, there are some big names, that's Conrad Aiken and Flannery O'Connor and Julian Green, the American French author. Do you have anything, an excerpt from the book? Well, you have to have the book, John Baren's Midnight of the Garden of Good and Evil. I used, from Midnight of the selection in which John Baren is coming to Savannah for the first time, he's describing it as a driving into a garden and meeting the people there. I think it's the most atmospheric piece in the book. You've tried to attain a balanced view of Savannah, not all the excerpts are laudatory. Some of them paint Savannah in a more ambiguous line, don't they?

I think so. We've heard so much about Savannah from the news, probably because of John Baren's book, that we think of it as a city that's entirely of made up of beautiful 18th century drawing rooms with fine furniture and genteel hostesses, giving little crackers with conserved on them. Like any other large city, a port city, an old city, that isn't the entire, that isn't entirely true. I have pieces in the book, which give sort of a history of the underbelly, if you will, of Savannah, Tom Coffee, who was a journalist in Savannah. The piece of his I used is called Gambling, Liquor and Vice, which pretty much says it all about the piece. And then perhaps not any sort of criminal element, or any sort of sinister element, but Mark Stebman wrote in a lion's share, which is a story cycle, a piece called Kate, which shows a sort of lower middle class, Catholic vision of life in what Savannah is called,

one of the little squares, in other words, not one of the grand squares, but the story takes place in Warren Square. And it's a story of this very struggling blue collar family. Of all that's in here, do you have a favorite piece? Well, one of the things I actually had difficulty in finding when I was researching the book war accounts of this life in the Civil War, and one of the ones which I included just because I thought it was so remarkable, such a remarkable vision of Savannah, was Jay Madison Drake's memoir of his life in a prison camp in Savannah called Fast and Loose in Dixie. It has a wonderful, long subtitle. But he found life in Savannah absolutely sweet. He said, to take it all in all, our sojourn in Savannah was pleasant, far better than we expected, and my recollections of the place are of an agreeable character. Many a time afterward I regretted leaving it.

And I think it shows a lot about a city's hospitality that a prisoner of work can say that about his former place of captivity. Particularly as they on several occasions tried to dig tunnels out of the prison camp. Yeah, it was a real sort of keystone cops kind of life there at the prison camp. The first attempt to escape, they dug within one foot of the inside of the marine hospital wall so that they couldn't escape, they were discovered. They promised never to do it again. They immediately started digging out again, and a cow fell in the tunnel. The second time they got out, they got this time outside the walls, but then a cow fell into their escape tunnel. And they just kept plugging away, and it was sort of a keystone cops kind of life for them there. Taking all these excerpts together, is there anything that is quintessentially civilian? To answer your question, what is quintessentially civilian is a sort of accumulation of influence? Savannah is a poor city, which I think is an important point.

So many people from all over the world have come through Savannah. Some against their will, it was a large slave trading center early on. And so what is really fascinating to me about Savannah is the accumulation of influence, both bad and good, and that's sort of evidenced in the architecture or the architecture of a metaphor for that. I mean, there's so many influences, Italian, French, English architecture, and you see that in the people, their customs, the oldest Jewish population in the northern hemisphere are in Savannah. It's a slave trading city. It's a city that has lots of modern industry. It's just, I guess, the thing that's interesting to me about it is the fact that it's this poor city that sort of stands apart from the rest of America in a way that certain cities do, New York City, for example, New Orleans, are sort of, are of America, but not really of America.

I think that's true of Savannah, too. Patrick Allen, thank you very much. Thank you. This is where a Savannah is published by Hill Street Press in Athens. The Girl Scouts of the USA are 87 years old this week, and we all know about those famous cookies, but you may not know that the founder of the Girl Scouts was born in Savannah, Georgia. And joining me right now is Catherine Keena, whose program manager at the Juliet Low Birthplace. Catherine, thanks very much for joining us today. Oh, thanks for calling. Let me just start asking how did the Girl Scouts of the USA come into existence? Well, on a fateful day, I'll start with the short answer. Juliet, Gordon Low, arrived back in Savannah in early spring, 1912. She called her cousin, who was also a native Savannah, said, come right over. I've got something for the girls of Savannah and all America and all the world, and we're going to start it tonight. She had been living in England, was a widow, really felt like her life was kind of amorous, but she met at a luncheon, was the lunch partner of a gentleman named Robert Baden Poli.

You may know him now as the founder of the Boy Scouts when he was asked if girls could be members, too. He said, sure, why not? But when he had his first rally at the Crystal Palace, 6,000 girls showed up, and so he realized he'd have to have a separate unit for the girls because he put it, he couldn't have girls traipsing about over the country after his boy Scouts. So he got his sister involved in going around to the girls initially, and still in England, the girls called themselves Girl Guides, kind of a separate movement name. Juliet Low had a Girl Guide company way off it with very poor hill girls in Scotland. She first, they had to be financially solvent, so she arranged for them to sell eggs to local country houses, and also to learn how to spin, and she sold their wool down in London. But then she also had two Girl Guide companies in London. She liked it so much, she decided it was something for the American girls.

So in January 1st, 1912, she got on to the Arcadian sales back to the United States. And she was a whirlwind of recruiting. She recruited girls all over Savannah by March 12th, which is our official founding day. She put it this way. She said, we've got something big here, so they decided they'd better write their names down. And they wrote down the names of 18 girls that day. It exploded into popularity with girls, not just here in Savannah, but all over the United States girls began doing things from very ordinary things like tying knots to what, that time was extraordinary. Girls were flying airplanes and running telegraphs and camping outside intense and running and horseback riding and doing all kinds of things, any kind of activity. So how has scouting changed over the years since 1912? Well, I think fundamentally it's still the same. If you ask Julia, why should my daughter become a Girl Scout?

She answered, because it is fun, and that's why girls are still Girl Scout. The parents and the adults in the world love Girl Scouting and loved it then because of the moral and ethical values, because of the self-reliance and because of the skills and leadership, but not just leadership that leaves people behind as a leadership that encourages a girl to bring along her troupemates and her friends to their best ability also. What would someone see if they came to visit the Julia at Low House in Savannah? The Julia at Low birthplace is a family home. We have it decorated as it was approximately in 1886, so you'll see the house that Julia at Low lived in as she was growing up, her grandmother's house, the house she was married from. Then we also have a Girl Scout history exhibit and we have a number of classrooms where Girl Scouts come and do program. We have about 75,000 visitors a year of those about 15,000 or Girl Scouts who come and troupe to spend a whole day with us or even more than that, doing all kinds of program,

everything from older girls learn how to dine and girls who are sort of junior high school age, learn how to do tea and have manners and girls learn how to sculpt Julia at Low with a fine sculptor and painter. They learn how to spin and weave like the first Girl Scouts in Scotland or they learn about corsets and clothing of the time, so you might see girls doing activities all over the site. As we stand here pretty much on the threshold of the next millennium, do you see any big changes that might come down the way for Girl Scouts in the 21st century? Well, you know, it's funny. If you read back in 1937 their annual report, they had just changed from being in khaki uniforms to green uniforms in the late 20s and in the 30s they said, we are so proud of our gray greenness of today, but in the 21st century we may very well be wearing purple uniforms, but it's not what we appear like and what we do, but what we believe in and

who we are. So I think those beliefs, those values are going to hold true through the 21st century and through the 22nd century and well on into time. What are they going to be doing? I bet your Girl Scouts would go to space. Now there is also still a very active movement pretty much worldwide, isn't it? Yeah, 8.5 million girls worldwide, the largest organization serving girls and women in the world. It's called the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and pretty much anywhere in the world you go, you're going to find members of Wags. Now in some of the old communist block countries, before the Iron Curtain, they were founding members, like the Alessuania, like those and they are reestablishing Girl Scouting, but I understand even countries like China have become interested in becoming Girl Scouts and becoming members. The Northwest Georgia Girl Scout Council has a project called Georgia to Georgia, which is helping to establish Girl Scouts in Georgia, which was part of the Alps over the Union.

So there are many, many exciting things yet to do. Absolutely. Catherine Keane is the program manager at the Juliet Lo birthplace in Savannah. Catherine, thank you very much for taking time to talk with us today. Thank you Tom. So you're not Irish and you're not going to make it to Savannah for St. Patrick's Day, but you're still in an Irish frame of mind nonetheless. Well, Pete State Music Director Winston King has some musical suggestions guaranteed to keep you in the mood. Here's my first tip for having a fun and successful St. Patty's Day. First, do not play any music from the Titanic's soundtrack. This will only make you sad and ejected and wanting to jump into the Great Big C. Instead turn to a band known as the Great Big C, these four Canadian fellows, like any true blitted Irishman, really know how to mix the good with the bad. Tonight, Pat Murphy died from the Great Big C's rant and war album release last fall on

Sire Records. In addition to being proficient singers, guitarists and drummers, the band's members are also accomplished on the bazooki, tin whistle, accordion, and bones. All the better to bring a new finlander approach of English, French, Scottish, and Irish sounds to traditional amends like this one. Great Big C is also well versed at St. Patty's Dance Tunes and the occasional Irish drinking song. So you think you're not quite up to that kind of vigorous Irish chess beating? You want something a little kinder, a little cooler, a little more familiar?

How about some classic AM gold? That's right. It's pretty woman. Who to think it? But a group called Celtic Passion went out and captured Roy Orbison in the wearing of the green. The CD is surprisingly reasonable, especially since some of Orbison's tunes are hard to recognize, making this CD a great one with which to impress and dupe your friends. And finally, no St. Patrick's Day would be complete in 1999 without a little hip hop Irish fiddle. I lean Irish, made her name is a tried and true light think fast Irish Fiddler, whose

latest release on Sony Classics is a total twist on the traditional Irish sound, playing with studio musicians from around the world. She infuses the old melodies with new life, vig for a kiss and Langstrom's pony become Gemma, when Kongas, Columbus, and Rainsticks are at it. I lean Irish with a selection from our new CD Crossing the Bridge, for Georgia Gazette, I'm Winston King. And that's going to do it for this edition of Georgia Gazette. Our program was written by Sid Hoskinson and produced by Melissa Gray, Susanna Capeluto,

and St. John Flynn, with additional help from member station WSVH in Savannah. Our engineers were Aaron Allen and Art Sweat. Join us next week when Georgia Gazette takes you back to Savannah, where the government's proposed new Harbor deepening project is stirring up more than just silt. And then last minute tax advice, Friday April 9th at noon, our tax experts are back to answer your most taxing questions live on the air. If you have questions or comments about today's program, pass them along by email, the address is Gazette at gpp.org, or send a letter to Georgia Gazette, Care of Peach State Public Radio. 264th Street, Northwest Atlanta, Georgia 30318. I'm Tom Patton, thanks for listening, I hope you'll tune in next week and every week for Georgia Gazette. Support for Georgia Gazette comes from West Point Stevens, the name behind Atelier Mar-Tex, Mar-Tex, Utica, Stevens, Lady Pepperell, and Valox.

Georgia Gazette is a public affairs presentation of Peach State Public Radio. I'm Tom Patton, I'm Tom Patton. You