More information on the Telluride Gondola

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies.

Related Posts
The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies.

I bought this Speedway one-sheet on ebay back in 2000 and had it archive-mounted and framed. It cost me an arm-and-a-leg and it’s been a burden to move around the country, but I can’t bring myself to get rid of it.

One of the first Sunday Sign posts, the historical marker at Elvis Presley’s Tupelo birthplace, commemorated the anniversary of Elvis’ death. It’s only fitting to revisit that sign on the King’s birthday.

I snapped these next few pics at the Continental Club in Austin during a Bluebonnets’ show in late July 2010.

Related Posts

Sunday Sign: Birthplace of Elvis Presley

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies

Whether you’re buying Christmas gifts for family and friends or food items for a holiday party, there’s almost always a local option. Support your community.

“Cheap” comes with a price. The seemingly insatiable desire for cheap, throw-away products have cost American jobs.

“Cheap,” over-processed, preservative and chemical laden foods play a huge role in the epidemic of chronic diseases and obesity.

You get what you pay for.

Is “cheap” really worth the price?

A delegation of four Indians from a tribe west of the Rocky Mountains came to St. Louis in the Fall of 1831 seeking a “Black Robe” to come and teach them the Catholic faith. Two of the four died in St. Louis due to sudden illness, one died on the journey back home. Only one of the braves returned to his people.

Over the course of the next 9 years, a total of four Indian delegations traveled to St. Louis requesting a “Black Robe.” The last group, represented by Iroquois who lived among the Flatheads and Nez Percês, was successful.

In 1840, Peter DeSmet was assigned to be a missionary “Black Robe” to the Flatheads and other Indian tribes in the Northwest. He covered an estimated 180,000 miles in his travels throughout the western United States until his death in 1873. More details about Peter DeSmet’s missionary work are available in this biography.

A wooden structure was constructed on the site of what is today known as the Basilica of Saint Louis on June 24, 1770. The cornerstorne for the present church was placed on August 1, 1831, the same year the Indians arrived from the Rockies. The church was ultimately consecrated on October 26, 1834 and designated as a Basilica by Pope John XXIII on January 25, 1861.

The story about the Indians seeking a Black Robe is paraphrased from this account I found on the wall in the vestibule of the church, with a bit more detail from this biographical entry on Peter DeSmet.

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies.

Montrose is located in the southwestern quadrant of Colorado, in the Uncompahgre Valley, in lands originally populated by the Ute Indians. White settlers arrived in the Valley in the 1870s but could not legally settle the area until the Ute Indians were relocated to a reservation in Utah. Montrose was officially designated a “town” in 1882 (the original name was Pomona). Source: Official Website of the City of Montrose, CO.

Montrose is centrally located between Telluride and Gunnison and skiers often choose to fly into Montrose and drive to nearby Telluride, Crested Butte or other popular ski areas.

I’m a big fan of Montrose. You can walk anywhere (sidewalks abound), dogs are welcome and everyone appears to be into health and fitness. In other words, typical Colorado.

Montrose has the feel of a quaint small town.

But you’re also likely to run into some wildlife if you’re walking or jogging in city parks.

Since Montrose is in the high desert, the winter snows are actually fairly light (according to my brother), especially relative to the nearby mountains.

Downtown features a variety of really cool sculptures, highlighting the wildlife native to the area.

I’ve had several very good meals in Montrose. I’ll be doing separate posts (in coming weeks) about a couple of my favorites. But here’s a teaser:

I had this  nice tiramisù at Damiano’s on E. Main St. in Montrose last January.

Cafe 110 is my favorite place for breakfast in Montrose. Love, love, love it.

Montrose isn’t the most beautiful city in Colorado, but it’s a nice, friendly small town.

Sheree, Allison & Melanie (L to R)

Useful Links

City of Montrose Official Website

The road itself was built by American soldiers under the leadership of General Andrew Jackson, following the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. The military road was completed in 1820 and shortened the distance between Nashville and New Orleans by some 200 miles.

Although the road was intended to support military movements, it quickly became the gateway for settlement of Northwest Alabama and Mississippi.

The road, which is largely still intact, crosses the Tennessee River in Florence and passes through Sheffield at Jackson Hollow. The road continues along what we know today as Atlanta Avenue and Columbia Avenues in Sheffield and enters Tuscumbia on Dickson Street. This log cabin sits across the street from its original location along Jackson’s Military Road and served as a stagecoach stop.

Jackson’s Military Road has always been part of the mise-en-scène of my life.  My maternal grandmother grew up in Sheffield near the site where the road entered Sheffield. When I was a child, my great grandparents lived in a small, white-shingled house one block off the original route, which today is known as Jackson Highway. This house is less than a mile from 3614 Jackson Highway, a legendary music destination.

My paternal grandparents lived in a small, limestone rock house alongside the old Jackson Military Road in Franklin County. As a child, I heard the story of the Jackson Military Road more times than I can count. In the early 2000s, there was a dispute in the making over the request of a property owner in the Frog Pond community (where my grandparents lived) to close a portion of one of the county roads that followed the original Jackson Military Road route.

It’s unlikely that anyone who lives in the Shoals area goes more than a week without traveling a stretch of the old Jackson Military Road. Tourists and travelers passing through the area will also likely drive along or across the original route.

Photo via the Wikimedia Commons

Music fans will be familiar with Jackson Highway through the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio®, where artists like The Rolling Stones to The Staple Singers, Bob Dylan, Rod Stewart, Bob Seger and Lynyrd Skynrd recorded some of their most critically-acclaimed work and biggest hits.

Others, like Cher, didn’t have huge commercial successful with their Jackson Highway recording experience.

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature on The Ben Franklin Follies

Useful Links

Jackson’s Military Road Marker

Muscle Shoals Sound Studios®

Henry County, Missouri is in west central Missouri. I spent a couple of hours in Clinton, the county seat, in August 2010, where I enjoyed a nice sandwich and cake at The Ben Franklin Coffee House on the town square.

Benjamin Franklin would be proud to know that the Henry County Public Library has an excellent public library, according to several sources, including this one maintained by the Henry County Courthouse.

As the sign indicates, Henry County was originally named for Virginia statesman William C. Rives. After Rives changed his political affiliation from Democrat to Whig, the county was renamed for Patrick Henry (in 1841). I was curious about Rives and the political flip-flop, so I did a bit of research.

According to this biography on a Tulane University web page, Rives had initially supported then-President Andrew Jackson’s “attack on the national bank and his nullification policy.”  Rives began to align with the Whigs in response to the Democrat Party’s move to a hard-money currency. The official Congressional Biography gives more detail on Rives government service. Rives served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and as the U.S. minister to France (under several presidents), among other positions.

Interestingly enough (but perhaps not surprising, given his blueblood family pedigree), Rives was expelled from the College of William and Mary for “an affair of honor.”

A few more tidbits about Henry County, Missouri:

• Henry County lies in area ceded to the United States by the Osage Indians under the 1808 Osage Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Fort Clark.
• The town square in Clinton is the largest town square in Missouri.
• The county was settled by pioneers from Tennessee & Kentucky in the 1830s and Germans in the 1850s.

The Henry County Historical Society appears to be an excellent resource for more information on the community.

The Sunday Sign is a regular feature of The Ben Franklin Follies.

I was fortunate to grow up within 15 miles of Helen Keller’s childhood home.  The story of how Helen Keller moved from  darkness and silence to language, communication and the Presidential Medal of Freedom is so commonplace there that many do not realize the significance of what happened April 5, 1877, when the 7-year-old Helen Keller learned the word W-A-T-E-R.

Over the years, I’ve attended several live performances of The Miracle Worker on the grounds of the Helen Keller home in Tuscumbia, Alabama. I’ve run by the home on many more occasions. I never pass by the Keller family home in Tuscumbia without experiencing a tingle of awe at the dedication and commitment of Anne Sullivan and the courage and intelligence of Helen Keller.

I think my desire to pursue a Ph.D. in Communication grew out of some inherent appreciation for communication that I learned or absorbed from my experiences as a child in Colbert County, Alabama, where I learned about Helen Keller. And there’s another connection (or “thread”) that stems from my initiation into Delta Zeta Sorority, which supports many philanthropic efforts to aid the speech-and-hearing-impaired. I have more to share about this, but I will save it for another post.

This week’s Sunday Sign post is dedicated to the “First Lady of Courage,” to communication, to teachers, and to symbolic signs like the historic water pump in the backyard of a home in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies.

This week’s Sunday Sign pays homage to my alma mater, Russellville High School, home of the Golden Tigers.

According to Chinese philosophy, the motto of the Tiger is, “I Win.”

Although I don’t buy into the astrology thing, it’s interesting that, according to Chinese astrology, the musical instrument of the Tiger is the trumpet.

I am a Tiger.

Related Posts

The Sunday Sign

This week’s Sunday Sign describes this small section of the Berlin Wall on display outside the Social Science Building at Kennesaw State University.

As the sign indicates, the piece of the Berlin Wall was gifted to Senator Chuck Clay (Georgia) by the Checkpoint Charlie Museum in Berlin in honor of Senator Clay’s grandfather, General Lucius D. Clay of Marietta, Georgia.

General Clay served as the military governor of Germany from 1945-49 and is credited with “engineering the Berlin airlift, breaking the Soviet blockade of Berlin in 1948-49.”

One of the really cool aspects of living in Tuscaloosa, Alabama during the 1990s was the opportunity to experience the emergence of a German community in West Central Alabama as the Mercedes-Benz plant was built and put into operation in Vance. In 2000, I was fortunate to be asked to write the copy for a 16-page booklet about the 5-year anniversary of Mercedes in Alabama.

Daimler AG continues to expand its operations in Tuscaloosa.  The presence of this German corporation in Alabama has made a huge and positive impact on Alabama, not just economically but also educationally and culturally, through positive management practices and civic-minded philosophy.

I visited  Germany in March 2001. It’s a beautiful country with beautiful people. Would love to spend more time there.

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies.

Links

The Newseum has a very detailed section dedicated to The Berlin Wall.

Official Air Force Biography of General Lucius D. Clay

This week’s Sunday Sign on The Ben Franklin Follies  is dedicated to the Komen Race for the Cure.
More than 16,000 people ran or walked in the Komen Alabama Race for the Cure this year. I ran my first Komen Alabama 5K in 2002. I’ve also previously done the 2009 and 2010 Komen Alabama 5Ks. It’s amazing and inspirational, so see so many breast cancer survivors, fights and supporters come out to raise money and awareness. The level of volunteer support is also amazing.

I always get a teary-eyed several times before, during and after the run itself because I really, really hate cancer and what it does to people.

My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer 13 years ago, when she was 52 years old. I am so blessed that the treatments were successful and she’s been cancer-free for many years.  She had to go through the full regimen of lumpectomy, chemotherapy and radiation. The treatments lasted for more than 18 months. Mom had an estrogen-receptor negative form of breast cancer, so the Tamoxifen regimen (which was just coming into use at the time) was of no benefit to her.

Mom scheduled her radiation treatments on Thursday afternoons so the worst nausea would hit on the weekend—she did that so she wouldn’t have to miss school. She was a teacher and she was dedicated.

Mom stayed active and shifted her healthy eating habits into high gear. She ate fresh fruit all the time, especially grapes and strawberries. Mom is the only person I’ve ever known to go through a full regimen of chemo and never lose her hair.

I lost my beloved grandmother to cancer in July 1982. She had been diagnosed with breast cancer in the late 1960s, when treatments were less sophisticated. Mastectomy and radiation were the main options then. I’m not sure if she was given chemotherapy in the 1960s.

Just before Thanksgiving 1978 my grandmother was told her cancer had returned. She’d found a lump in her neck, just above the shoulder area. Her prognosis wasn’t good. The doctors spoke in weeks or months, not years. She was placed on an intensive chemotherapy regimen this time, followed by radiation. Mema lived almost four years. She had good days and bad days. She stayed active and lived at home until the last couple of days. I spent the night with her every chance I had, even after I left for college. I learned so much from my mema, from the beginning until the end—She could do anything. Lillian Aycock is probably the wisest person I’ve ever known. Cancer took her life away in her 60th year.

I hate cancer. I’m proud to support efforts to find cures for breast cancer and every other form of cancer.

But I want more than a cure.

I want to prevent cancer because I think cancer should be rare, not a common occurrence.

It seems to me that cancer has proliferated since the 1950s. I blame a combination of environmental contamination, the proliferation of chemicals in our environment (including our food and water), a shift to industrially-produced, processed foods, physical inactivity and excessive weight.

The pervasiveness of chemicals is probably the main contributor. If a person has a healthy immune system, our bodies can fight off a lot of diseases. But we are exposed to so many chemicals from so many sources that our bodies simply can’t keep up.

Chemicals are tested for safety in isolation, rather than in terms of interactions with other chemicals and other environmental factors. Safety is based on short-term exposure, not lifelong chronic exposure.

This approach to human health must change.

I can’t avoid exposure to all chemicals but I try. And I try to keep my body in a condition that it can repair damage due to chemical exposure.

In the meantime, I’ll keep doing what I can to support research for a cure. And keep fighting to retain (and expand) environmental rules and regulations that do something to protect us from the onslaught of chemical exposure.

And I want to say thanks to Ford Motor Company and other businesses that support the Komen Race for the Cure and other cancer research and prevention causes.

Built in 1990, the Squam Bridge isn’t an historic covered bridge. But it is significant because it represents the idea and values of the residents of Ashland, New Hamphsire.

Rather than replace an existing condemned bridge with a modern, 2-lane steel bridge, the citizens of Ashland opted for a traditional wooden, one-laned structure. Most of the $200,000 needed to build the bridge came from 500 donors, but bake sales and other simple fundraisers also contributed the money needed to build the bridge. It’s just a guess on my part, but I expect the wooden structure cost a whole lot less than a 2-lane steel bridge.

I visited New Hampshire once—for about 65 hours—in April 2009. I was already in love with New Hampshire before I arrived. And I loved the state even more after my brief visit. I had hoped to move to New Hampshire, but timing and circumstances (I felt I had to follow through on a prior commitment) kept that from happening. Someday, perhaps.

The Sunday Sign is a weekly series of The Ben Franklin Follies.

Links

Squam Bridge — New Hampshire

I’d been driving for what seemed like forever through scrubby West Texas. It occurred to me that the original settlers probably named this place “Happy” as a marketing or psychological exercise.

Think Erik the Red and Greenland.

Not sure how successful the town fathers were with the name. Wikipedia says the 2000 census showed a population of 647 people, with 267 households and 182 families. Am I missing something or does this mean that some families have more than one household?

This bank sign is the only sign I found with the town name on it and I wasn’t about to turn around and go back to the town sign along the highway.

Town Motto: “The town without a frown.” How’s that for branding?

Apparently, there’s a film from 1999: Happy, Texas that’s set in the town. I haven’t seen the film. I don’t expect I will.

This post is part of a continuing weekly series on The Ben Franklin Follies: The Sunday Sign. Click on the tag: Sunday Sign to view other posts from this series.

Runners in the Helen Keller Festival 5-mile run passed by this school sign near the halfway point of the June 2010 race.

The message provided a nice boost to my spirit as I ran past that very hot, humid morning. A few days later, I drove by with my camera and snapped several pictures of the sign.

Helen Keller’s words remind us that we can choose to soar. We don’t always choose our circumstances, but we do choose how we respond to those circumstances.

Don’t sleepwalk through your life. Don’t creep along in trepidation or resignation. Choose to soar.

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies.

The week’s Sunday Sign commemorates Waggoner’s “Great Swindle” to save the Bank of Telluride.

On August 30, 1929, Charles D. Waggoner set out for Denver with a Robin Hood type of plan to save the Bank of Telluride. The swindle worked long enough for Waggoner to obtain a half-million dollars from the New York City banks and use these funds to pay creditors of the Bank of Telluride, which left funds for the Bank’s depositors. The swindle saved the townspeople but Waggoner’s swindle was uncovered and the Bank of Telluride was closed.

Time magazine provided a contemporaneous account of Waggoner’s swindle, published in the magazine’s September 16, 1929 issue.

In 1939, Waggoner told a newspaper, The Daily Sentinel, that he knew what he was doing. “I would rather see the New York banks lose money than the people of Telluride, most of whom had worked all their lives for the savings which were deposited in my bank.”

I’m not condoning Charles D. Waggoner’s swindle. What he did was illegal. But the difference is that Waggoner was charged and served time for his fraud.

This past Thursday, the Jefferson County Commission approved the overall “talking points” of a negotiated settlement with Wall Street investment banks, led by J.P. Morgan. Without a settlement, County bankruptcy was inevitable. If the settlement is finalized and approved by all the controlling parties, perhaps County bankruptcy will be avoided. The details and history of the Jefferson County sewer bond debacle has been well documented by others.

The big investment firms that planned and executed the Jefferson County Sewer Debt refinancing deal made out like bandits in the deal. The refinancing scheme wasn’t technically illegal but it was sold to officials (in Jefferson County, and elsewhere) as a positive, with no downside risk.  Many of the elected officials involved (and some of their local cronies) have been convicted of taking or paying bribes and/or illegal kickbacks, in relation to this and other government actions. To my knowledge, the investment banks haven’t faced any criminal charges and only two lower-level investment bank employees are dealing with civil investigations by the SEC. Sure, they’ll write off a bit from the settlement, but the individuals who planned it have already received their big bonuses. And the loss will be written off and further reduce the already-minimal federal taxes the investment firms pay.

Wall Street and the “big” financial industry continues to ride high in the aftermath of the 2008 crash. The rest of America (and most of the rest of the world) continues to pay the price for the swindles—some legal, some illegal. These financial scams are destroying the wealth of the middle and working classes in the United States. The laws, regulations and policies that favor the financial industry are at least partly to blame for the budget debts and overall deficit of the U.S. Hedge fund managers pay little tax on the fees they receive for managing the funds, while workers pay very high rates of tax on earned income. Politicians still bow at the altar of investment banks.

In 2011, small banks continue to fail, big investment banks and big commercial banks are bigger than ever (and still to big to fail). History repeats itself, only more so.

Telluride, Colorado is one of my favorite places. The old mining town is best known today for its skiing but it’s really a cool place with lots of interesting history. Telluride has a unique mountain vibe that comes from the meshing of ski-bum hippie attitudes with a small-town community relationships (and all the values that fall in between the two).

The Sunday Sign is a weekly feature of The Ben Franklin Follies. Links to more Sunday Sign posts are here (or simply click on the Sunday Sign tag at the bottom of this post).

Related Posts

Sunday Sign: Geology of the Telluride Valley

Links

Forbes magazine (Feb. 14, 2011): New laws stroke hedge fund managers

Looting Main Street by Matt Taibbi for Rolling Stone (March 30, 2010)

Loophole for hedge fund managers costs billions: 2007 Report by Randall Dodd for Economic Policy Institute

FDIC Failed Bank List: Bank Failures since 2000

Bachus is Wall Street’s Man in Jefferson County: Business Week, May 26, 2011

Southwest Colorado Heritage

Telluride Historical Museum

Oka Kapassa is the Chickasaw phrase for Cold Water. And it was the name given to Spring Creek in Colbert County, Alabama.

In the Cherokee language, the march is known as “nu du hi du na tlo hi lui.” The Trail Where They Cried. Today, we call it the Trail of Tears.

This weekend (September 9 & 10, 2011), Spring Park & Tuscumbia was the site for Oka Kapassa: Return to Cold Water Native American Festival. I wasn’t able to attend but I’m using this week’s “Sunday Sign” post to share a bit of the history about the Trail of Tears and my home area of Northwest Alabama.

There are actually two signs, both found in Spring Park, Tuscumbia, Alabama, at the site of the Big Spring.

One sign provides historical background and the other is the text of the dedication speech by Branko Medenica, who designed this statue dedicated on Friday, September 19, 2003. According to Mr. Medenica’s speech, the 8-foot-tall statue is an Indian woman, cast in bronze. The Woman is holding a baby and has one hand resting on a cross, marking the burial of a loved one who died while marching on the Trail of Tears.

The statue represents Hope, Inner Strength & Courage. The Native Americans who endured the Trail of Tears and resettled in the Oklahoma Territory demonstrated great inner strength and courage during the “forced removal.”

Although the forced removal was an official action of the United States government, many Americans shared kinship with, and showed kindness to, the Native Americans as they made their way west.

The people of Tuscumbia, Alabama were singled out by Creek Chief Chilly McIntosh. Chief McIntosh said: “The citziens of Tuscumbia have treated us like brothers and our helpless women were furnished by the good women of the town with clothing….As long as our nation remains upon this earth, we will recollect Tuscumbia.”

My maternal great grandfather’s great grandmother was a Cherokee. That would be my great, great, great, great grandmother (I think). I am proud to be connected in this small way to the Cherokee people.

Sculptor Branko Medenica has strong ties to Alabama. I look forward to visiting his other bronze sculptures in the coming months, especially the statue of Jesse Owens—I travel near that site about once each month and have it on my “short list” of nearby sites to visit.

Coincidentally (or maybe not), my great grandfather, Ollie Aycock—the one whose great grandmother was a Cherokee Indian—was a farmer in Franklin & Colbert County, Alabama from the early years of 20th century until his death in 1967. During his life as a farmer, Ollie Aycock acquired several thousand acres of land in Franklin & Colbert Counties. After his death, this land was divided between and among his children (and grandchildren). Oka Kapassa, or Spring Creek, which ends at the site of the Big Spring (in Spring Park, Tuscumbia) flows through the land that my parents inherited.

The annual Trail of Tears Commemoration and Motorcycle Ride begins in Chattanooga, Tenn. and ends in Waterloo in Lauderdale County, Ala. (just across the Tennessee River from Tuscumbia). This year’s ride takes place on September 17-18 (2011).

For what it’s worth, it’s not a coincidence that I chose the Trail of Tears to commemorate on this date, September 11, 2011.

Links

Trail of Tears Commemoration and Motorcycle Ride

Early History of Colbert County, Alabama

Early Settlers in Colbert County, Alabama

Education Key Element of Oka Kapassa Festival — Times Daily

Trail of Hope

Related Posts

Other “Sunday Sign” Posts from The Ben Franklin Follies

Spring Park Farmers Market Update

Sunday Sign: Petrified Lycopod Tree Stump

Spring Park Farmers Market

My First White Christmas (in Colbert County, Alabama, of all places)

I ran across this historical marker in Florence when I was in town for a rain-barrel workshop at the Lauderdale County Extension Office.  The sign is on street corner of Veteran’s Drive (near “downtown”) as you turn into the extension office parking lot. It’s also the site of the Florence-Lauderdale Coliseum.

I’m a history buff but my interests are on topics other than the Civil War. I have no love or admiration for the “old South.” And, as best as I’ve been able to determine, none of my male ancestors fought in the Civil War (at least none in my direct lineage). They certainly weren’t slave owners.

Before coming across this sign, I’d never heard of Brigadier General Daniel Ruggles so I did a quick search to find out some information about him. Turns out he’s a native of Massachusetts but married into a wealthy Virginia family. According to this source from the University of Notre Dame Archives, Ruggle is best remembered for commanding a division at the Battle of Shiloh. I remember visiting the Shiloh National Military Park when I was a child and have that on my list as a nearby historical site that I want to visit again. The Shiloh battlefield and park is less than 50 miles from where I grew up and where my parents still live. I’ve passed nearby probably 50 times in the past 8 years, but was always en route to somewhere else and never had time to make the detour to visit again.

Links

Times Daily article on Civil War-era military history of Northwest Alabama

University of Notre Dame Civil War Archives: Daniel Ruggles Report (1862)

Battle of Fort Henry, Tennessee

National Park Service: Fort Donelson National Battlefield

List of Historical Sites in Florence, Alabama

Related Posts

Each Sunday, I post a photo of a historical marker or sign that I came across. Check out all The Ben Franklin Follies: Sunday Sign blog posts here.

My inner lawyer geek  wanted to visit The Old Courthouse, site of the Dred Scott trial. The case has a convulated procedural history but, in a retrial in 1850, the St. Louis Circuit Court declared Dred Scott and his family to be free. Ultimately, the Supreme Court rendered a decision in the case that is a huge black mark on the freedom and liberty protected by the U.S. Constitution. I’ll dedicate a separate post to my visit to The Old Courthouse.

I discovered this memorial sign dedicated to Joseph Pulitzer  in the sidewalk at the entrance to The Old Courthouse, the site where Pulitzer purchased the St. Louis Dispatch at a public auction.

I love this description of Pulitzer: “Passionate devotee of the cause of liberty—Liberty of action, of opinion, of government.”

The Sunday Sign is a weekly series where I share a photo and a bit of information about a historical marker or similar sign. Links to other Sunday Sign posts can be found here.

The earliest movies I can remember seeing in a theatre are Georgy Girl and Bonnie & Clyde. My parents took me with them to see those movies when I was about 4 or 5 years old. Neither film is what you’d call a “kids flick.” I’m pretty sure I’m the only person who can say they saw both of those films at a theatre as a 4 or 5 year old.

The main thing I remembered about Georgy Girl was the theme song, which I still love. Bonnie & Clyde was a bit more memorable, mostly due to the graphic violence. In particular, I never forgot the scene where Blanche Barrow (played by Estelle Parsons, who won the Oscar® for Best Supporting Actress)  is shot in/around the eye. I finally saw Bonnie & Clyde again in the mid-1980s and have it on DVD now. I’ve watched Georgy Girl several times as an adult. I love Georgy Girl and Lynn Redgrave was perfect in the lead role.

I also saw The Gnome Mobile at the Roxy around the same time. Still my second favorite Disney movie (101 Dalmations is my favorite Disney movie, even though I didn’t see it until I was an adult). I didn’t believe in gnomes but I liked to imagine a gnome would magically appear whenever I was in the woods, which was often during my childhood years. Spending time among the great Redwood forests of the Pacific Northwest is near the top of my “bucket list.”

My hometown of Russellville, Alabama wrapped up the annual Watermelon Festival last night. I didn’t make it to the festival this year but there’s always lots of great music on Saturday afternoon and evenings. I hate that I missed it.

Official Trailer for Bonnie & Clyde:

Trailer for Georgy Girl:

The Gnome Mobile

Each Sunday, I post a photo of a historical marker or similar sign and share something about that place that makes it special. Links to my other Sunday Sign posts are here.

This is the fifth post in my weekly series, the Sunday Sign. Click here for other Sunday Signs  on The Ben Franklin Follies.

I was spending the night with a friend the night the TV announcers came on to inform us that Elvis was dead. I still remember it vividly. My friend’s mom was quite distressed.

A petrified confier tree from the dinosaur era is also on display.

Related Posts

Links to all of my Sunday Sign post can be found here or by clicking the tag “Sunday Sign.”

I paid my first visit to Telluride on August 2, 2010 and fell in love with the town. Most people know Telluride for its skiing and music festivals, but Telluride is quite different than some of the other popular ski areas.

Telluride was established as a mining town, so it has a long history that predates commercialized skiing and tourism. There’s a strong community of locals who’ve built their lives in Telluride and care deeply about preserving the town’s eclectic nature and have a commitment to sustainable living.

Telluride is located in the San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado, about 50 miles from Montrose, where my brother and his family live.

This is the third post in my weekly installment called the Sunday Sign. More here:

Sunday Sign: Byler’s Old Turnpike

Sunday Sign: Capulin Volcano National Monument

The Byler’s Old Turnpike historical marker is located at the intersection of Franklin County Road 68 and State Route 99 (also known as County Line Road) at the Franklin County/Lawrence County line in northwest Alabama.

I learned some fascinating history about Byler’s Old Turnpike (and Lawrence County) during my visit last Wednesday to Kinlock Monument and Kinlock Falls in the Bankhead National Forest. For example, sections of Byler’s Old Turnpike followed the old “buffalo trail” in northwest Alabama. The buffalo trail refers to the route the Indians followed into Tennessee to hunt buffalo after buffalo became extinct in Alabama. When Alabama achieved statehood in 1819, one of the first legislative actions by the Alabama legislature was to declare Byler’s Old Turnpike an official state road.

I’ve driven by this marker probably 30 times in the past two years. I always intended to stop and read it but I never did, until last Wednesday. I’m glad I spared one minute to stop, read and take a photo.

Get out and look around. There’s so much history to explore within 100 miles of wherever you live.

This is the second in a weekly series that I started last Sunday (July 17). Look for a new photo of an historical marker, monument or statute each week.

Useful Links to Lawrence County History

Lawrence County, Alabama: Alabama History Online maintained by the Alabama Department of Archives and History

Historical Maps of Lawrence County, Alabama: Database maintained by the University of Alabama

Capulin Volcano National Monument, New Mexico: July 31, 2010

I like to take pictures of historic markers and signs of places I visit. This is the first installment of a weekly post that I’m calling the Sunday Sign. That’s a sign that you should look for these posts each Sunday. The signs will be (mostly) from historic places, landmarks and monuments that I visit. If something strikes me as worth sharing, I may occasionally throw in a humorous or perplexing sign.

Don’t expect any particularly detailed description to go with the sign. As it happens in this instance, I have a slide show of photos from my visit to Capulin Volcano National Monument posted to my Posterous blog. Click here for video and more pictures from my visit to Capulin Volcano National Monument on July 31, 2010.

]]>