SHERMAN AND I IN SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

Arrived in Savannah, Georgia just a few mintues ago and sought out an internet cafe. I'm on the second floor of a building in old Savannah, in a place called BOBA'S, in the market district. Remember that BOBA'S name. Lots of windows around me and artists' studios all up and down the hallways. I passed two closed internet cafes just walking around the block to find this open place.

Humid, overcast a little, and tornados to the west of me in the direction I'll soon be heading. I'm ready to head home after a stop in Dayton and Carbondale, Illinois. I spent too much for my motel in St. Augustine last night, $77 dollars. I'll go north far enough to touch North Carolina then move west. I really don't want to spend the money to go all the way north into Massachusetts. I can see the cost rising as I enter the current play season for Americans who can afford to play. No more $30 dollar motels in that region. Think how expensive Nantucket would be? Ouch! I'm just not a rich American, and I won't use unsecured (by my own money) credit cards and go into debt. Besides, I miss my little inexpensive and comfortable life at home.


THE BAD THIN'K'G ABOUT MEMORIAL DAY

Celebrating the sacrifice of veterans is a two edged sword. The emotion that people can work up for the dead soldier is exactly the same emotional complex that leaders leverage to get young men to go off to die in the next war.

We're a manipulated country. THEY, whoever the powers that be are, manipulate our emotions to make us buy cell phones, to get expensive cosmetic surgery, to go off to war, to use underarm deoderant, to buy our presidents and to shave our legs (yours, not mine). I see us as a nation of robots, working and playing by the book of advertized capitalism.

The only answer is to guard the emotional circuits. Don't play, shut down and watch, a sober variation of turn on, tune in and drop out. Any other option and you're one of the manipulated. Evolution keeps ticking along in the emotional circuits, and we either take charge of those circuits (as much as possible) or they run us. So, it pays to be intellectual. If we're not intellectual then we're one of Limbaugh's ignorant ditto heads. Of course, to be that way, means to not be one of the popular ones. Cool and calculated people are not appreciated for what they are.

Study, study, study. Learn about the rise of consciousness in the human animal. Go into a library and punch up the subject heading of "consciousness". There you'll find all the best work. There is no more convincing argument for the relativity of belief, for evolution and for human falibility than a study of consciousness.


WINNER OF WORST DRIVER CONTEST

So far, in all my trip, I've never met worse drivers than Floridians. They go constantly 10 to 20 miles over the speed limit, tail gate on the highway, zip in and out of lanes like so many mad bees. In Miami, I felt my mortality approach on every hand. New Orleans is a close second, but that city is not the whole state. I'm talking about the whole state of Florida, east coast worse than the west coast.


BUSH PLAYS THE MEMORIAL WAR CARD

Three days and three speeches. Ain't that a little much? The Rove-robot, Bush, sure knows how to use the war dead to play on American sympathies to try and improve his image. Don't forget, he's responsible for all the deaths. Not you and not me. The only way that we and America become responsible for the Bushmess in Iraq is if we elect him or if he gets reappointed by his Supreme Court.

Well, I've had lunch, which also got me my entre to this computer. I'm going to walk around in Savannah a little bit, then head on up I-95 a bit further before heading west to my home and wonderful little wife. Where will I next pop up, I wonder?


OGLETHORPE (added after my return home)

Sir James Oglethorpe had a home in Savannah and one further into the Georgia colony which was a penal colony, if you recall your history. So there I stood in a Savannah square, looking at a plaque dedicated to Sir Oglethorpe who played a big hand in developing Savannah and Georgia. Whether or not it's true, in our family, we have a history which says that Oglethorpe is in our family tree because my dad's mother's dad's family name was Thorp. My middle name is Thorp. The story goes that we became Thorps by small steps, first dropping the "gle" to become O'Thorpe, then dropping the "O" to become Thorpe and, finally, casting off the silent "e" to become the Thorp family. Doesn't every family have a similar famous one in its lineage?