Collinsville girls take first ever Alabama HS Basketball State Title

   To paraphrase ML King Jr. I did not get to the promised Land with them yesterday but they went ahead without me and Got There in Birmingham Alabama at ten am in the morning EDT. Well that was tip off. The collected the trophy with Great joy about 11:30.

    I was across the Ga line a ways passed Rome but got connected online.

     They've been contenders now for about three years but never could get out of the regionals in Jacksonville. Been a lot of drama just seven miles away with archrival Sand Rock but their phenom graduated last year, Kirby Deeboard. They lost to Cold Spring but we beat CS this year.

   Victory Celebration today at 1:30 Central from Collinsville High School down the Cemetery Ridge where my Mother of the class of 1940 is buried, to Don Chicos downtown in front of the Babdist church where she was Baptized.

   I am very proud of these girls, Britney, Abbey, Hadley, Tyla, Caroline, the Akins Furniture girl, Russ Beene's niece Kayla and the rest.

   Russ beene, a wordsmith was shortwinded but did share this: " It would've been good, inspiring for you to see those girls on their run. The teamwork, the sacrifice, the way they supported each other."

    Callie Kilgro played last year.

      These girls redeemed unfinished business of Adrian Ashleigh and Miss Attitude Beth Templeton in 97 who went to Bham and came home empty except for great memories. These 2020 girls got the job done.

   I admit I was a little tore up when the final buzzer sounded.

    My intent is to share some notes I took as the game was played. For posterity and color commentatin. So check back


   6 to 3 early for the Cvl girls. Tatum just missed a three

•  tied at six with 2 something in first. Started off good . Tatum just drained a three, the future of the progam.....Cold Springs is southwest of Cullman on the Tuscaloosa side of 65

•  Caroline Brannon in the game. A new look 13 to 9. Ellison girl hit a trhee from downtown Bremen. 14 13 them on a steal Neely Ellison. We don't like her. Akins through some furniture in the Hoop to give us a lead after one

• three point clinic West vs Hamilton

• 
  

 20 tie 455 left in first half

•  28 24 cvl at half Their neely ellison hit a threewithcouplesecond to go .

•  ·  Akins checked out with nose bleed. West forthem just hit a three. We up but fading from nine point lead. 38 32, three minute cold spell for us. Rivera just hit. We up by 8.

•  We up by ten. We got to stay loose and calm. Tatum girl is impressive. I'm gonna send her to Young Harris if she wants to go

•  Tatum traveled in the lane. Ebeth Hill cuts to six with four to go

•  four fouls on west 422 to go

• •  Hamilton hits a big one, a Three, Announcer in the ARena loved it.
• •  full court pressure. I'm nervous

•  Tatum under basket hits two. Neel responds for last years winner

•  · 
   238 seven point lead

• •  · Rivera gt0ot lay up and foul. The Franchise comes through in the clutch on offense 50 to 40. Tatum has 11

• 2:04 away for first girls trophy ever. Big time like Larry Dutton in 75

•  · https://tinyurl.com/v86ynj6
  

Super Tuesday and other Carnivals

   It's coming March 3 and a Lee Atwater primary in South Carolina this Saturday. Atwater once said it was his dream every time  a voter goes behind the curtain below the Mason dixon line he has a choice between a black democrat and a white republican. Given the overwhelming base in the SC Primary he has a version of that dream come true and in other instances exactly that on the ballot.

     Yet SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, nor the Honors program at U Bama , nor the good christian folk in the Southern Baptist convention can see the implications for the unraveling of America's thinning fabric.

    I have talked about this before and if you need a primer, a reminder consider the blog on this page of DEC 27 on the SC 4th.

    Last night I had an intense conversation with a progressive Baptist friend about how it is all playing in Alabama. We kinda ended up yearning for some way a United Dem Party could come out of their convention with Andrew Cuomo but that likely aint gonna happen. Cuomo could have the Dems behind him and brawl with Trump better than anybody; and possibly sway enough of the Catholics in Wisconsin which it seems electoral college is gonna come down to.  (see recent article in NYbooks.com).

    And I have engaged a 100 comment chat in 24 hours about amendment one on appointed school boards in Alabama. But not many of those good people, on the whole articulate with their point of view, have the time or disposition to read for themselves or strongly encourage their local school board members to read the grand recent history of Alabama by Ed Bridges, or get a better understanding of how we got to the Age of Trump with Jill Lepore's magnificent recent history of America, These Truths.

     Lepore chapter on the influence of Eagle Forum's Phyliss Schlafly could help some voters in Georgia, Hall county in particular, Home of Clemson's Deshaun Watson and SBC fundamentalist senate candidate Doug Collins better understand this moment.

   Collins was interviewed yesterday on Ga NPR Political Rewind show. You can listen online or go to their facebook wall and read my unflinching comments about Collins, Trump and Ga Baptists.

    Not to mention this morning conflagration with South Carolinians some of whom Ive known since 4th grade. Otherwise good people only one of them was of the disposition to read Tom Edsall, the Audacity of Hate , few days ago in ny times. As one of them said why waste time on an elitist hit job.

     Maybe you will take the Edsall challenge. He gets to the guts of how SC's Lee Atwater and Carroll Campbell through Karl Rove and the complicity and buttress of the Bushes got us marinated for the ascendancy of Trump.

     The Bible Says to Fight the Good Fight. I am reading Marsh and Tuttle's Can I get I get a witness on the great agitators and peacemakers of the 20th century who were John the Baptist like working for the Kingdom and the great promise of the Civil rights movement. 

     But the Devil and Trump and reactions to Obama with noise of Fox news and other distractions have got us in a very troubling Fog.

    I'm getting weary; about fought out.

Did the Bama SBC and GOP learn anything from Calpurnia

   If  Rick Lance of the Bama SBC didn't know Calpurnia upstaged Atticus on Broadway this last year. And somebody forgot to get word, somebody among Bama's righteous Baptists didnt get word to Tommy Tuberville, bradley byrne, Sessions and Roy

    Below on this blog you see a piece about Paul Finebaum's friend David Remnick on Trump and Race. All these pretenders to the Party of Judge Frank Johnson  have to be aware most of the human beings who play SEC football are black folk who have extended families. And Donald Trump thinks most of them are SOBs and thinks even less for the Hispanics invited to the state to work in the chicken plants and nursing homes.

   And Rick Lance and Rick Burgess sit on the porch as struck mute as the 8 white ministers to whom Martin Luther King Jr  sent the letter from the Bham Trail while marketing the tourist industry of civil rights era in bama.

     The politics of race can get entangled for sure, but if Rick Lance and Tommy don't know anybetter by now, Harper Lee's great friend Wayne Flynt and of course Bryan Stevenson are just a phone call away.

          The honors program at Bama, Living Democracy at Auburn which has an 8 year history with Collinsville Alabama and counting; the David Matthews center for Civic Life at Montevallo all have the capacity to engage the GOP senate candidates and let's see if Trump Butt lickers are the way forward.

    Bama greats Hardy Jackson, Frye Galliard have been commenting on facebook. They recognize the vacuity of this bunch of rascals who fell off the cabbage truck.

   And Methodist minister's son John Archibald. Let's get SEC commish Greg Sankey in this conversation and Nick Saban and do justice starting with young black men who play football in the SEC

      https://www.al.com/news/2020/02/the-legend-of-six-white-men-of-a-certain-age.html 

   Or google Archibald on the six white men at al.com

    

How Trump week played in Dixie with \SEC football and Bama |Senate race

  Forgive the imminent typos as I left the hsoue without my reading glasses.

   Paul \finebaum, a Jew and Ut \grad  of the \sec network a few years ago was profiled n New Yorker magazine. Last week \trump poliotics entangled him as right wing media yellowhammer News snared him in a dust up with \Auburn football coach Tommy tuberville on matters of \Trump and religion, Sec commish Greg Sankey can't dodge this one like |Riochard |Shelby dodged \trump implying Heisman trophy winner derrick henry  was anSOB,

    Long story short NYorker   editor David Remnick wrote a  scorching piece you can google about \trump, Limbaugh and \Race. It gets to the guts of the matter invoking the venal legacy of Lee \atwater. See my blog of Dec on SC 4th district and read the works of Joe Crespino, Darren \grem and \randall \balmer; and \garry Wills if you seek verification of \remnick;s assertions. Also Jon Meacham on the Soul of America.

     Southern Baptists are the religious political culture of the \south. I know cause my Daddy was a preacher in that tradition and Marshall \frady the same who began explaining \george \wallace in the 60s. His Daddy was a preacher.

    The South for all its fits and spins got locked in that white tribe with the fundamentalists takeover of the \sbc and I can give you chapter and verse. Joseph Oneill got that right in the ny review of books in december when the talked about the political choir.

    So here we are with Baptist Lindsay \graham having sold his soul to the trump Devil and James Lankford too juvenile to understand the deeper soundings of his heart.

   As anybody paying attention knows there was a plethora of opinion pieces last week about the corrosion of the Republiocan party. Here is a vain hope that local school board trustees across the south will as alleged examples of education, start reading and thinking beginning with Remnick, and if not that maybe Jeremy Pruett of N\e \alabama consider the \tuberville mess and see if there is a way forward cause if local grassroots folks dont start thinking ; well there goes the neighbord even \sec football cause \trump and his minions are hellbent on FUBAR