Dispatch From An American Roadside

 

An American roadside in Madison County, Georgia between Comer and Carlton. Photo by me, September 2026.

Last weekend the weather was ideal with overnight lows reaching forty-eight degrees at home and afternoon highs only in the lower seventies. There was a bright blue sky and the golden light had that cinematic California quality that occurs here in the fall. 

We were out in Madison and Oglethorpe counties, an area I particularly like for its fields and woods, on the last weekend of September. The area is known for the former country estate of singer and actor Kenny Rogers, covered bridges and rock quarries, some abandoned and some active. 

The poster for the film Breaking Away starring Dennis Christopher, Dennis Quaid and Daniel Stern. It was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for Best Screenplay.

The area, east of Athens, makes me think of the 1979 film Breaking Away which featured a scene where the main characters, townies known as The Cutters, swam and sunned on the rocks in an old quarry. The film was a coming of age tale centered around the American class system, friction between locals and college students and the changing of America in the 1970s. 

Breaking Away was a critical and commercial success and was nominated for five Academy Awards and won for Best Screenplay. It lost the Best Picture category to a lesser film in Kramer VS. Kramer and was nominated among Norma Rae, Apocalypse Now and All That Jazz. Imagine a time when serious films were made for adults, people read books, dressed better and that was the late 1970s. Imperfect as those times were, they were better than today.

Looking back and comparing it to modern life in the United States, we did not understand nor appreciate how well we had it in the seventies. The big shift that would set the country on the path we are on today of runaway capitalism through deregulation, attacks on public education and wider class divides was only two years away in the form of Ronald Reagan. The election and the breaking away from the American dream through responsible governance that came after this movie created the debt we are paying for today and the decaying society in which we live.

I write this as a non-partisan: If only the country had made a better decision in sticking with President Carter. If only... 

The film's success spawned a television series based on it for the fall season of 1980-81. Though the film was mostly shot around Indiana University and Bloomington, the 1980 ABC television series starring Shaun Cassidy was shot in Athens/Clarke County and at the University of Georgia. The local quarries and the traditional college campus of U.G.A. made it the perfect location with better weather and there was no discernible difference in how the film and show appeared on screen.

Breaking Away the ABC television show 1980.

 

Breaking Away the ABC television show 1980. Filmed in Athens.

Despite the star power of Shaun Cassidy, known at the time for his role on The Hardy Boys and his singing career, the show was short-lived and was canceled after only eight one-hour episodes. While the film is still remembered and highly regarded, the magic of the movie did not translate into a successful television show and became a forgotten afterthought. The ratings were so low that the eighth episode was never aired by the network.

I watched the show when it aired, but I was only seven years old and all I remember is it being mentioned in my house that it was shot in Athens. That memory stuck with me as at the same time there was a big hit show on CBS that was set in Georgia and the first five episodes were filmed on location, that show was The Dukes of Hazzard. 

Today, people remark on the film and television industry in Georgia and how popular the state became over the last two decades, but it was actually in the 1970s thanks to the efforts of Burt Reynolds and then Governor Jimmy Carter that Hollywood started coming here for productions. Burt was a big believer in the state and filmed many movies here.

Shaun Cassidy on the cover of Dynamite Magazine Issue 77.

Part of the accompanying article in Dynamite Magazine promoting the Breaking Away television series.

Two shows in Georgia and two very different sets of boys, one was a group of townies finding their way as outsiders in a university town and the other was a pair of down home and uncomplicated outlaws outsmarting the bumbling law. Whatever was in the air in America in 1980 that was poisoning its mind, it chose the outlaw boys. It is likely blasphemous to many of my generation, but Breaking Away was the greater show and represented my home state better. I watched the Dukes for the first three seasons and as a young country boy at the time there was plenty of entertainment with the fast cars and stunts, but as a young gay boy too, Shaun Cassidy in short shorts and on a bicycle in Breaking Away was way more appealing. I had harbored a secret crush on Shaun since his time on The Hardy Boys.

Dominique Dunne in Breaking Away.

The show also featured Dominique Dunne in four episodes. She played the role of an Italian speaking university student who becomes intertwined with The Cutters. Her character had a more prominent part by the last episode and her acting had improved. On the night of November 4, 1982 and after her breakthrough role in the summer blockbuster Poltergeist, at the age of twenty-two, she was murdered. Her death was due to strangulation by an ex-boyfriend in the driveway of her West Hollywood home. She was the daughter of writer Dominick Dunne, sister of actor Griffin Dunne and the niece of writer Joan Didion.

The very end of the seventies and the early eighties were a pivotal time along the American roadside in how we got to where we are in 2026. It was if we straddled a double yellow line and were faced not with which direction to go, but on what side to step. There is a valuable lesson that needs to be learned, I am not red nor blue and neither are you.

Carlton, Georgia. Photo by me, September 2026.

 

We stopped in Carlton and browsed in the detritus of times of gone. It is a place you can in the middle of a Sunday afternoon straddle the double yellow line and ponder your direction.

Photo by me, September 2026.

 

I like coming here and it was the first time returning since last February.

 

The countdown cover of David Atlanta Magazine. Photo by me, September 2026.

Way out in Carlton, upstairs in one of those old buildings, ninety-five miles and on a good day an hour and forty minutes east of Atlanta, was this framed enlarged cover of David Atlanta Magazine. It was an odd find as David is a gay magazine as if that might not have been obvious from the half-naked man staring at his own crotch on the cover. It was the final issue from 1999 and that fluctuates in my mind from being two days ago to twenty-seven years ago. It was funny to see, but it was not something I could ever imagine wanting. The Barbie doll behind it was a nice pairing. I wonder if those items came out of the same house in Ansley and whatever happened to the queen who owned them? 

Dennis Christopher from Breaking Away. Photo by Andy Warhol and included in his book Andy Warhol's Exposures.

Perhaps, he is watching Breaking Away and pining after Dennis Christopher, who was rather cute in the seventies and was once an assistant to the legendary Halston before his big acting  break.

Piano rolls. Photo by me, September 2026.

 

Player piano rolls were stacked high on a shelf next to a yearbook from 1979. I was surprised to learn that QRS still manufactures piano rolls. Clarinet Polka must be exciting. Wringle Wrangle by Fess Parker was rather catchy. 

The jukebox from my last visit here when it was playing Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue was gone. Whatever played in the background from a stereo was from the seventies. Is it not funny that so many across generations love the music and movies of the seventies? I firmly believe that the seventies were the peak of American culture and freedom. You have to wonder why the country was so dissatisfied then with President Carter and made that fateful, impatient step that set up everything today. Are Americans capable of regret and have we lost the clarity of hindsight through the numbing haze of nostalgia?

Photo by me, September 2026

 

Photo by me, September 2026

 

Outside along the road and under that California quality light, the funky and the junky collection was piled. An old Bluebird bus rusted rested under an oak. The bus may have once served to ferry tubers and rafters on their way to the nearby shoals of the wild Broad River. That river is one of the few and last free-flowing rivers in the state. It was during the 1970s, when the country was becoming concerned about the natural environment, that the river was protected the same as how Jimmy Carter helped protect the Chattahoochee River.

Watson Mill covered bridge. Photo by me, September 2026.

A handful of miles away, two and a half if it matters, is the South Fork of the Broad River and surrounding it is Watson Mill State Park. We stopped in as we had last February to walk. It was a masterpiece of an early autumn day and people fished, picnicked, walked and practiced photography. All of us shared what we had in common, the steps of responsible governance made to preserve this scenic landscape the year I was born in 1973. The covered bridge built in 1885 was restored that year and you can still drive across it today.

Photo by me, September 2026.

Photo by me, September 2026.

Photo by me, September 2026.

The bridge is the oldest of Georgia's covered bridges and is the centerpiece of the park that covers over 1,100 aces of protected land across Madison and Oglethorpe counties for the enjoyment of campers, hikers and nature lovers. If America lacks the clarity of hindsight in modern times, at least we had the foresight in the seventies to do right in terms of preservation. Much of what we enjoy today in terms of historical places or nature came from the spirit of the seventies before the wrong step was made on the American roadside.

In the summer of 1979 and two days after Breaking Away was released in movie theaters around the United States, President Jimmy Carter entered the Oval Office and made a sobering speech live to the nation on the night of July 15^th.  He was behind in the election polls to Reagan, former President Ford and Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy. His lead from the previous winter had faded.

Carter spoke for thirty minutes about the path of self indulgence, over consumption and how materialism was undermining the country's confidence. He said his speech was a warning and that the country needed to take the first steps toward true freedom. Carter balled his fist and said, “The people are looking for honest answers, not easy answers.”

My grandfather, a Navy combat veteran and aeronautical worker, age fifty-six that night and one year older than Carter, would have sat on his large plaid sofa in the living room of his Victorian house in the country two houses from mine. He would have leaned forward, sipped coffee and watched his wood cabinet Zenith television in silence. By the time President Carter ended his speech by saying we needed to work together and that we cannot fail, my grandfather would have nodded in agreement.

That same summer, his mother, my great grandmother, would travel the American back roads to Georgia for a rare visit from Decatur County, Tennessee. I was six years old and waiting to start first grade that fall. It was the last childhood summer that I had true freedom before I understood what school meant. It was a time of eating fresh cut watermelon at our picnic table and avoiding being stung by the aggressive yellow jackets. The only memory I have of my great grandmother is of her standing in my front yard and saying how pretty and green our grass was that day under the hot sunshine. 

In 1976 Andy Warhol was hired by The New York Times to photograph then Presidential candidate Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn. He flew to Plains in southwest Georgia. Just consider Andy Warhol in Plains for a few moments. It was a different time, it really was. Photo from the book Andy Warhol's Exposures.

Fall came, the light would have been beautiful and I entered school. My great grandmother died that fall and I never saw her again after that day in my front yard, but that was also for the first time ever, I saw something I had not seen before. My father sat at our picnic table in a side yard under a tulip poplar outside my bedroom window, buried his head in his hands and cried. 

The 1970s were over and my grandfather supported President Jimmy Carter until the end. In the next election, the country chose easy answers. Carter misjudged the will and stomach of the American people. No President has been honest since. 

The false myth about Carter spread in the subsequent decades was that he was weak as if being President was a masculinity contest. The truth was that he had the strength and courage to be honest. No sitting President since from either side of the double yellow line has ever dared to do that again.

 

The early fall light in Georgia woods similar to the ones I grew up playing in. Photo by me, September 2026.

If only... 

Vintage Shame

 

Flowerland on Price Avenue in the Cobbham neighborhood of Athens known for its interesting sign messages. Photo by me, September 2026.

The early 1990s are so still so prevalent in this year's fall fashion once again and I am not opposed to that except for pleats and boxy pants. The colors are something I am glad to see and most of the styles too. I picked up a new pink flannel shirt at J. Crew in the clearance section over the weekend. I am ready for flannel, sweater and barn jacket weather. Now if I could only feel as young as I did at eighteen in 1991.

Loafing in Athens over the weekend, a common occurrence, I thought about my work in progress novel and changes and inspiration. I have taken a writing break during the month of September to think and I have been out of state a lot and that made writing anything more than notes impossible.

 

The beautiful Seney-Stovall Chapel built in 1885 in Athens on Milledge Avenue. If you have ever seen the 1986 documentary Athens Inside/Out then you have seen this building when it was in a great state of disrepair. It was featured prominently in the documentary and R.E.M. performed inside it for the film. Photo by me, September 2026.

Stopped in Mother Lode on Baxter for the first time in a year or so, not my favorite store, and browsed. It is one of those “vintage” places where most of the merchandise is okay if you are a UGA student looking for an ironic Halloween costume or believe early 1970s interior design was the height of home decor – something I do not believe. I fondly remember the seventies, but not for most of the decor. When I hear someone say "vintage", I gag the same as I do when I hear "curated" or "bespoke." All of it is one long miserable smug pose.

 

Cutthroat from Shame

The soundtrack for the weekend was the album Cutthroat from one of my favorite bands, Shame. They are a South London post-punk band who have been around since 2014. Their third album, Food for Worms released in 2023, is my favorite from the band. Cutthroat came out a year ago this month and I am only recently getting around to listening to it. Shame on me.

It is an odd album drawing references from Blur, early Depeche Mode, Slint, Nirvana and of course Gang of Four. The chorus of the song Plaster reminded me of Weezer, who were good for an album or two in the 1990s. There is still plenty of scorching pleasure and fun in the album, but I cannot say I am enjoying the glossy and sometimes auto tuned production. The album is all over the place and is less cohesive compared to earlier albums. Some will argue that is growth, the band is maturing and blah blah blah, but it reminds me of Interpol who lost their way with their fourth album. I still love the band and look forward to hearing what turns up next from them.

The songs I like are Packshot, Spartak, Quiet Life, Axis of Evil, Plaster and Cutthroat. Lampiao is so terrible that I never want to hear that song again. I like six out of twelve songs and the rest are forgettable.

Ranking their albums from best to worst:

Food For Worms (2023)

Songs of Praise (2018)

Drunk Tank Pink (2021)

Cutthroat (2025)

Jimmy In Saigon

Still from the film Jimmy In Saigon.

When the Vietnam War ended I was two years old and for most of my life there has been a continuous stream of Hollywood movies, documentaries, video games and books produced about that war. Though, it does seem that in recent years the United States media fascination, appetite and hangover from that war has waned as my parent's generation dies off. My generation, Generation X, was too young to be drafted into the war or remember much about it from first hand experience and many members of my generation were not even born, instead we experienced it vicariously through entertainment, school education and personal family histories.

The U.S. failure in Vietnam seemed to be the war that was always in the background somewhere at the edge of the dinner table or always on the screen through the eighties, nineties and 2000s haunting the American conscious. With that much saturation and consumption of a war I thought I had heard, read or seen every angle on Vietnam possible.

I was scrolling through documentaries one evening last week and decided to take a chance on an unfamiliar title. It was a quiet documentary reminiscent of the type that aired on the PBS Independent Lens series in the early 1990s. It was not flashy, punctuated with dramatic music at every turn of the plot or littered with quick jump cuts or drone shots that pollute modern documentaries with worn out style over substance. With my attention captured, I realized I had not heard every story out of Vietnam. I am not certain there is another unique story that has been told like the one laid out in the 2022 documentary, Jimmy in Saigon.

Filmmaker Peter McDowell returns to the late 1960s and early 70s to tell the story and delve into the mystery of his eldest brother, Jimmy, who he only knew in death and family silence.

Jimmy dropped out of college after his junior year, was drafted and survived his tour of duty in Vietnam. He made it back home, something sixty-thousand American soldiers did not. It was during his time in Vietnam that Jimmy changed and possibly accepted or discovered who he was. He returned to the United States, but instead of staying, a man who was lost returned to Saigon not as a soldier, but as a civilian. A man full of youthful idealism shed his suburban, upper middle class family in Champaign, Illinois to live immersed in South Vietnamese society.

But why?

He could have easily been a ghost at the edge of the dinner table or staring back at us from a war zone on a screen, but he is not. Through the process of storytelling we view Jimmy's early life through family home movies. We see his family snapshots too and ones he took during his life in Vietnam. He is very much alive in the film visually and through a voice actor reading his letters to friends and family. I got the impression that one day, Jimmy was going to write a sprawling novel based on his life and if not, then he was going to have some fun stories to tell.

 

Still from the film Jimmy In Saigon.

Though impossible to get the full picture of the person Jimmy was or may have become, the film fits together enough pieces to form a portrait of why this story and man is so unique and compelling. Through decades of passed time, a war, differing cultures, changing attitudes, some lingering prejudices and fragments of recollections by those who knew the young man in Saigon we understand what happened and who Jimmy was.

To answer the 'but why' it took opening old wounds of a delicate family history which reveals an even more delicate secret. Halfway through the film comes the big reveal and when it comes I give immense credit to the filmmaker for his honesty. His mother at one point says, “but to have all that come out now, um well, I don't know what I can do. I can't do anything. I do think, I'll probably die.”

This is a film not only about what we hide from others, but from ourselves.

Jimmy in Saigon is currently streaming for free on Tubi.

 

Of Course, Warhol

 

This week I watched the first two episodes of the HBO docuseries Bring Me The Beauties: A Model Cult. I am eager to see how they conclude the series in the third episode and what is left out as plenty has been left out in the first two episodes which have focused a little too much on the former model John Hoyt, a.k.a. Hoyt Richards, and his perspective on the cult Eternal Values run by Frederick von Mierers, a.k.a. Freddy Meyers from Brooklyn.

Mierers was a social climbing fraud who died of AIDS in 1990 at the age of forty-three in Manhattan. After plastic surgery and illness, he looked to have been much older like an orange candle that had been lit, allowed to melt for a time and blown out before becoming a puddle of wax. His cult combined aliens, healing gemstones, tanning beds, poor interior decorating choices, fraud, a god, astrology and sex, which all cults eventually devolve into, including Times Square hookers and dildos on Fifth Avenue. There was also a lake house on Lake Lure in the mountains of western North Carolina, which too, seemed to have been designed by unicorns on acid.

There is much poor taste and poor decision making on display in 1980s New York in this series than you would find in a small town gay bar in Kansas.

Frederick preyed on the gullible, young and allegedly intelligent people who graduated from Ivy League schools,  came from posh families and a few models of both sexes. They were preppy clones and undoubtedly each had copies of The Official Preppy Handbook from 1980 under their pillow. Frederick used the models and their connections to further recruit more members to worship his messages spread from piles of teal and pink throw pillows in the 1970s and 80s. The goal was money and power for himself, of course. And trips to Studio 54 too.

Given the time period, the social climbing, Manhattan and the connection to Studio 54, I said to myself that Andy Warhol must have been connected to Frederick von Mierers in some way. As much as a star fucker and as connected as Warhol was to anyone with money, glamour and some sleazy people too, he had to have known Frederick in some capacity. I grabbed my copy of The Andy Warhol Diaries and began to search.

My copy of The Andy Warhol Diaries. June 2026.

It did not take long.

Wednesday, May 9, 1979

The Du Point twins came in and Brigid told them that Freddy von Mierers had called and put out of the word that he was going to send the police after them if they didn't return his two sweaters. They turned bright red, and she told them not to come around anymore since they steal. Dropped Rupert (cab $4).

It is interesting that he referred to him as "Freddy" and not Frederick. Freddy was his real name. Warhol was not dumb and I wonder if he knew all or part of Freddy's less than aristocratic background from Brooklyn? It is also possible that Warhol was friendly and familiar enough with him to call him Freddy and not by the more proper Frederick. Freddy was also knowledgeable enough to check Warhol's Factory in his search for the Du Pont twins who were socially connected to Warhol.

That was the only mention in Andy's diaries. He loved to gossip in them and to find only one mention of Frederick von Mierers would suggest that he was not close to him or was around him briefly. Warhol as odd as he may have been was not one to join a cult, but he did get into healing crystals in the mid 1980s. He mentioned them several times and referred to them as “Harmonics.”

On Tuesday, December 18, 1984 there was this one funny entry:

Ran into one of those kids from Harvard in the sixties, one of Edie's friends, I can't remember his name. And I showed him my crystals and told him about crystal power and he was just standing there with his mouth open. He said he couldn't believe that someone as smart as me would start believing in crystals after I made it all through the sixties and everything and laughed at all the hippie stuff and that this is just the recycle of it. But really it's not the same, and you do have to be positive, not negative.

Warhol did a lot of rationalizing and had peculiar habits, but at least he was not a cult leader in the 1980s. 

Cult leader Frederick von Mierers on Hard Copy.

For more on the Eternal Values cult you can watch the original early 1990s Hard Copy tabloid show report which is partially used in the HBO docuseries. Back at the time, everyone considered Hard Copy, A Current Affair, Inside Edition and all those other syndicated afternoon tabloid shows to have low journalistic standards. In retrospect, they produced hard-hitting reporting when compared to what passes for news today at the local and network level. 

The March 1990 story on the cult in Vanity Fair.

And you can read the original Vanity Fair story, East Side Alien, from March 1990 that was the first to expose the cult.

The Internet Is A Bad Neighborhood

 

On a recent road trip coming northward out of Sarasota we detoured to Jacksonville. After the time in Jacksonville we were in an awkward spot to get home to northern Georgia. If only using the interstates to travel it would have meant going out of the way westward on I-10 to I-75 or heading north on I-95 to I-16 in Savannah and then getting on I-75 in Macon. Logistically it made no sense. I decided the old fashioned way of studying a map and choosing back roads was the better option and would be more interesting. Off we went across the Okefenokee Swamp in southern Georgia zigging and zagging through Waycross, Alma, Hazelhurst and many other towns. It was a fun drive, with no traffic and no stress. I would do it again and maybe change it a little to see new towns unseen.

I am still attempting to visit every one of the one hundred and fifty-nine counties in Georgia which is the second most to Texas in the number of counties. I do not have many left as I have visited well over a hundred of them. On this trip I added Bacon, Appling, Jeff Davis and Dodge counties to my total. I feel like I have been to more counties in this state than the politicians that claim to represent it.

 

On the drive I kept thinking about simpler and saner times. Country roads have a way of stripping away the man-made artifices, modern technology and information overload and the troubles of the world that really have no direct bearing on my life. The roads passed through the endless pines, the green fields, by the barns, over the creeks, rivers and swamps and by houses large and small. I like to think of the countryside as reality and cities as artificial bubbles.

The American flag at rest on Broad Street in Monroe, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.

When President Carter died in 2024 I watched his funeral. Some of my motivation was a sense of obligation since he was, like me, a son of Georgia, but mostly it was admiration that made me watch. Carter's presidency has felt like the end of simpler and saner times in part because it was the end of the 1970s and also because of the person he was, the son of a South Georgia farmer. His funeral was more than his own, it was the funeral of the last vestiges of simpler and saner times in America and decency too. I would like to think that one day this country will be sane again, but that would require both sides reversing their charge to the extreme ends of politics and returning to where some of us live in the middle. I have no hope of it happening. I love this country, am proud of it, but I think we are fucked by both sides who are too blinded by their smugness and self righteousness for the foreseeable future and perhaps the remainder of my life. It did not have to be this way.

 

"Nor had topsawyer's rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselves to Laurens County's gorgios while they went doublin their mumper all the time." - James Joyce writing about Dublin, Georgia on the opening page of Finnegans Wake. 

 

Dublin, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.

 

Dublin, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.

Dublin, Georgia. Photo by me, April 2026.

I recently stopped in Dublin, Georgia in Laurens County for the first time. I had a good dinner in their pleasant downtown. The restaurant was busy, people were out on the sidewalks in the evening and it was good to see another small Georgia town's downtown thriving. 

 

Monticello, Georgia. Photo by me, 2026.

Monticello, Georgia. Photo by me, 2026.

Later, before making the final leg home we stopped in the square of Monticello. It is another small Georgia town with a downtown that thrives. I have watched several sunsets in the past few years from that square on my way back from other places. The back roads seem to take me through there no matter from where I was coming. There is something so peaceful and calming about that square at sunset. The world feels okay there.

I have noticed this many times, but in small towns life still feels sane and normal for the most part. There is a great divide between small towns and the cities much like American politics. It is in cities and large suburbs where people ignore out of fear or complacency the crazy, the bad manners, incompetent drivers, dangers and the growing incivility of American life. Small towns are where the life and the country I knew growing up still exists in large part. It is weird for me to feel this way as it requires me to admit that I was wrong for decades of my life when I thought cities were better.

I wish American cities were cleaner, safer and more polite, but they are not and it should not be tolerated or accepted and yet it is. Is it apathy by the citizens, the local governments and police? Yes and it is up to them to take responsibility and solve those problems. In bad neighborhoods people say to look the other way and are told to mind their own business. Looking the other way is cowardly and shreds any sense of community which leads to bad neighborhoods. If taking care of one's community is not minding one's own business and is not in one's own best interest then nothing is.

Somewhere near Milledgeville, Georgia John Cougar Mellencamp's Small Town played on the radio. I sang along. I thought about my mother, she was a huge Mellencamp fan. The world was okay on that back road and in that reality. 

 

Me on the beach in Sarasota, Florida. April 2026.

 

With that written and after walking miles around a lake on Monday, I am putting my long form blog, Notes from Rabbit Tobacco Field, on indefinite hiatus. I am deep into writing my next novel and I do not have the spare mental capacity to keep writing long form posts for a blog. I have to concentrate on novel writing.

Another reason, is that I do not desire for my blog to become what I disliked about the men of the previous generation who talked back to the television news and complained about everything. I notice the men of my generation do it on Facebook or other social media and I find it negative and annoying. I do not want to contribute to that type of discourse on the internet nor waste my time consuming it.

Also, I have been pulling back my time from the internet in general. My use of the internet for any purpose has declined significantly over the last year. I spend very little time on the internet surfing or browsing as if I have seen the end of the web and it is suffocated with bots and AI. The web I started with in the mid 1990s that was human, cool, interesting, filled with originality, was mostly friendly and not so commercial is dead and has been for a long time. The greatest invention for the average person in my fifty plus years of living was ruined. It did not have to be this way. The internet became the ultimate bad neighborhood.

Finally, I like my privacy more than this blog. The internet's influence on society and the current politics are enough to make a person become a misanthrope and to be thankful for the gates that we have control over.

This website is not dying, but changing and will still serve as my primary outlet for my books. I will keep posting periodic updates about my next novel.

Thank you for reading,

Chris M. Vise

 

Dispatch: Accent In My Pocket

Sometimes the world is so flat it feels like you could slip free of Earth's gravity and slide off. Early February on the road. Photo by me, 2026.

 

The tail end of January and the beginning of February was two weeks on the road, sometimes dirt roads, of the south. It was the winter thaw for the mind collecting new sights, sounds, scents, tastes and discarding the mental plaque of the previous year. I wore my accent when needed, gave nods of indifference to strange politics of strangers and found myself shooting the shit in the middle of the road with locals. I wandered for hours through another history museum, watched water flow and listened to the birds in the trees. There was lots of bad coffee in gas station travel cups too. Some of the experience might end up in a book or maybe in a blog post. I thought a lot about the death of an old best friend between the mile markers and the hash marks on the speedometer. I wanted one more stupid teenage argument with him for the fun of it. This is how life and death go as the inseparable pair that they are.

Columbus, Georgia. Photo by me, February 2026.

I came home to bulbs waking up from winter and sat behind my desk. It was time to get back into the rhythm of writing my next novel.  

Golly gee. Tell me about them lyrics son. You are one pontificating rascal, that's what you are.

Somewhere I was in a bookstore and noticed in the prominent displays by the door a stack of poetry books with the bedraggled face of the hammy actor Matthew McConaughey. He is the actor/renaissance man who straight guys of my generation have crushes on and secretly wish they were. As you can tell by the sepia toned cover photo Matthew is a man with deep thoughts with his half open shirt and is surely in the running for a Pulitzer. Poems & Prayers is exactly the book that the world does not need, but it is what it gets. Traditional publishing is on a mission to destroy and humiliate itself in the most shameless ways. I hope he publishes a cook book next. Maybe something called Corn & Coca-Cola.

I read this Atlantic piece on Rod Dreher. It was interesting as the writer attempted to portray Dreher as some noble romantic fighting to save the soul of Western culture from Budapest, but instead he seemed miserable in a fantasy world of his own making. I have only read a few pieces by him over the years, though I have known about him for a long time, and Dreher is a peculiar one. The slipping in of the line by the brilliant and highly regarded atheist Richard Dawkins about him being a “cultural christian”, which I am familiar with, is intellectually dishonest with the usage of “declared” as if it were some major proclamation from on high (it wasn't) and it is very troubling for the use of “ally” (it is laughable to suggest he is, since Dreher is anti-science) and there is zero context given. I remember Dawkins saying that remark either in a debate or interview and it was not a grand gesture as it was a reference to how he was raised during his childhood without a choice on the matter. I respect and agree with Dawkins more than I ever could with Dreher. The tone of the article seemed to be a weird attempt to launder the ideas of Dreher and position him for future shadowy political influence in the United States.

Most of Carlton, Georgia. All five of these storefronts are occupied by this one antique store. Photo by me, February 2026.

One day well east of Athens in Madison County near the Elbert County line we stopped in the tiny community of Carlton clinging to life next to the train tracks. It is the kind of place you have to pull off the main road and intentionally seek out or you would never have a reason to pass through. Few people do as evidenced by the population change from 1900 to 2020 that was a loss of fourteen people in one hundred and twenty years down to two hundred and sixty-three. I find it charming that communities like this have managed to survive safe from Atlanta's sprawl. I remember when places like this were the norm in North Georgia outside of metro Atlanta in the 1980s.

Photo by me, February 2026.

This is the kind of place you have to dig, maybe get a little dusty and you will be rewarded. Two buildings down to the left next to the post office is a local branch of the Hell's Angels. I suppose they will not bother you if you do not bother them.

Photo by me, February 2026.

You do not know the smile and warm feeling I had when this jukebox played Don't Make My Brown Eyes Blue by Crystal Gayle. I skipped by like the small child I was in 1977 when my mother would play this record on our living room stereo which was near the same size as this jukebox. 

Photo by me, February 2026.

A cat strolled through on its rounds as I flipped through a copy of the photo book Warhol and Friends.

Photo by me, February 2026.

It was digging paradise where prices are rough ideas. 

Athens, Ga. Photo by me, February 2026.

 

Athens, Ga. Photo by me, February 2026.

Another day I attended a festival in downtown Athens and tried to shake loose a ghost. That old best friend of mine who recently died lived there in the early 1990s while he attended UGA. He went off to New York afterward to work in historic preservation. Athens of the '90s was a different place from the Athens of today, kind of like most of the state. It was one of the hot music scenes at the time like Seattle.

This is REM performing live in their hometown at the 40 Watt (pictured above) in 1992.

 

And so it goes... 

Me. February 2026.

on the road with an accent in my pocket chasing those sunny days.