Uncle Herschel and Furman's Confederate commencement speaker

I Have recently blogged about Mary Beth Stuckey commencement speaker at Furman for her class of 2013 also a product of Prestonwood Baptist church in Dallas a Flaming christian nationalist congregation in Dallas Texas.

    Like the Randy Newman song,Rednecks, Aliie Beth came in dumb and come out dumb too. Now she has embraced with Lara Trump and others the Trump line on Cracker Barrel. See great piece at Baptist News Global on the same subject, a site that recently named Allie Beth and her straight arrow opposition empathy.

    As the line goes in Road to Perdition, It's all so effing hystrrical. Witness the dance yesterday online of Uncle Herschel and Trump dancing to YMCA making the Barrell Americna again.

    This opinion is much more substantive if you read the BNGlobal piece.

    I was in the Cracker Barrel yesterday. I called on the manager. He said it was mcuh overblown and like the two transgender if there are that many in South Carolina, He was not aware of any Barrels getting the work over. Still dark with Mallo cups in the merchandise area and a fireplace.

   On occasion Cracker Barrel has been a sacred place for me.A few years ago at the Ft Payne Barrel I had a brief but delightful conversation with Alabama's Randy Owen on the writer Ron Rash . And in the mid nineties my Dad and I stopped in the Cracker Barrell in Kennesaw Ga after a CBF gathering in Atlanta. I t was registering with me his Baptist witness and his friendship with the great ones Randall Lolley, Bill Sell Self and Stewart A Newman. I started crying. I said Daddy, I'm Messed up. He said I know, but not so loud.  

    My Grandfather Jordan on Mommas's  side  was  a Lincoln Republican and his Father skirmished for the Union in North Alabama. See Howell Raines on the North Alabama Union fighters and also see my blog about the home guard threatening to kill a distant ancestor on Lookout Mtn. He hid out over a bluff you could see from the family front porch I lived in for thirty years on Hwy 11 where Dietrich Bonhoeffer came up the road in 1931 

Guest blog from Arkansas Kidney doctor on Health science

 We are witnessing in real time a dismantling of science and medicine unprecedented in our history. I’m referring to policy and funding attacks on premier institutions which promote and protect the health of every American. Especially the young, elderly and otherwise vulnerable. The CDC, NIH, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, NCI, and other organizations.

The agencies tasked to do the highest level scientific research, develop medicines and vaccines, and promote public health strategies to protect all.

As a physician I know people who work at these places. They are the best and brightest we have. Until recently, everyone… supported and benefited from their work over the past half century. Times have changed.

Bacteria and viruses are the most non-discriminatory entities on earth…  Cancer also. They do not care about gender, ethnicity, political affiliation, where or if you worship… what you believe… or if you’re a butcher, baker, candlestick-maker. They simply infect and kill with no regard.

And now we have a number of top scientists and heads of these agencies placed in the untenable position of making policy decisions based not on science but on political whim and pressure.

I encourage you to ask anyone who spent a life studying and practicing anything related to science…  medicine, for example… I don’t know of any reputable physician regardless of partisanship who supports the policies being promoted by our current Department of Health and Human Services as led by Robert Kennedy… Zero scientific training. Unintelligent, unserious, dangerous. His policies left unchallenged will harm your friends and family.

There’s a lot of political disagreement in our nation. This is the most nonpartisan issue imaginable. Funding cuts, anti-science policy, and the wanton dismissal of premier scientists and public health experts…. places all in danger equally.

People of conscience sometime have to pick a hill on which to die… No one should perish unnecessarily on a hill of imminently treatable and preventable infectious disease or cancer. Take a moment, think… do you really want to live with medieval medicine based not on science… but superstition? Put pressure on your elected officials to correct policies which could be the ultimate killing field.

Fish camps in Upstate SC and nearby

 Friends gonna cross state lines in the Buick this afternoon tocheck out a celebrated fish camp in North Georgia I have heard a lot about.  From there hope to check out the Flounder in Spartanburg SC and the Caro Mi in Landrum. Ca Ro Mi not exactly a fish camp but the trout has great reputation.

    Hoping to get some perch with my all you can eat catfish this afternoon. Perch for sure at the Flounder; my late brother the Sweet Jim Willie was a fan. I think Hush puppies at both places and I will try to onion rings. Cracker Barrel has good catfish, but nothing like th fish camp experience.  I liked Brannon's in Gaffney but that was fifty years ago. And thicketty mtn had a camp but it burned down. So at least four, maybe five by Christmas and I will be reporting, co come back.

   Moe's on Stone Avenue n Greenville has good catfish and collards but they do bbq and other things as well. But no complaints about the fish and tartar sauce is good 

    Continuing August 19:  Leatherwood was an adventure indeed, authentic, hardscrabble, the real deal. Industrial fan near the counter as AC was out. They were true to their word, all you could eat. Ambience worth the trip but will not be going back soon. Slaw was good but nothing special about the fish other than the variety. Met a pretty girl trying to find directions, Sweetheart but I'm not 25 anymore and didnt want to scare her.

    I found the way to the Flounder in Spartanburg and a place called the House in Greer but neither are all you can eat. May try to negotiate a Sampler platter. Going to Cap D in Anderson SC today for senior day and hoping for kind price on third piece of fish to go with the the two piece special.   Been a while for Cap D's. It gets the job done. Miss the one in Ft Payne Alabama. Like Krystal hamburgers getting harder and harder to locate.