October 7, 2011 Dog lip morning

Today I woke up with soft white dog lips on my right eyelid.  I'm going to tell Arlene and she's going to be jealous.
Dogsitting TaraAnne is kind of like having therapy for a week...and Tara is a therapy dog after all.

I've been thinking a lot about "The Song of the Chattahoochee"  by Sidney Lanier, since the book I'm working on right now now has the title of "Chattahoochee Dead."  I love the way that poem sounds and will probably put it in the book, maybe on the cover as well.  Anyway, here are a few lines from it...

Out of the hills of Habersham,
Down the valleys of Hall,
I hurry amain to reach the plain,
Run the rapid and leap the fall,
Split at the rock and together again,
Accept my bed, or narrow or wide,
And flee from folly on every side
With a lover's pain to attain the plain
Far from the hills of Habersham,
Far from the valleys of Hall.

Now, if you're not from Georgia you'd have no way of knowing that this poem is about the Chattahoochee River, a lovely river that runs from north Georgia south, joins with the Appalachacola and Flint Rivers and travels further to the gulf of Mexico.  It was dammed up in the 1950s to create Lake Lanier, a huge 600-mile shoreline lake more or less shaped as a "Y."  Of course, ol' Sidney Lanier would never know his river would be dammed up since he died
in 1881.  Anyway, Habersham County is a more northen county and is located at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountain chain and is therefore, quite hilly as Georgia goes. I think the tallest point in Georgia is just at 5000 feet.   Hall County is the next one below Habersham, subsequently less hilly and as one goes south in Georgia, the more flat the terrain.  Told from the viewpoint of the river, this poem flows like the water to the "lover" plain, which begins the piedmont area of Georgia...the area to which all rivers and roads converge as means of transporting people and goods to the seaports south.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a history/geography lesson, only a part of a poem I particularly like.  But then, there's another thing I love...the sound of words.

Okay.  If you're going to be in the area of Dahlonega tomorrow, Saturday Oct. 8, come see me at 2:00 at the Yummie Yogurt and Coffee Cafe at 21 N. Grove St.  If you can't find it, just stand in the middle of the street and yell.  Dahlonega is so small that you will be shown the way to it by somebody.  If you come by and tell me you saw this announcement on my blog (or facebook) I'll give you a free Auraria Dead book.

Dahlonega is an interesting place, aside from its tourist town facade.  Not to bore, but the Smith House has preserved some of the gold mines that run all over under the town.  By this I mean you can see first hand how the goldmines looked by doing the little Smith House tour before you eat a pretty interesting lunch there.

Today I hope everybody gets rich in something.
Melody