Snow in Athens and Atlanta, 2014: still on the grid

(Athens, GA, January 10 2011)

Here in the south people don't take to snow particularly well. That's why we live where we do, even northern transplants like myself (I've lived in Georgia since 1976). When friends from Oxford, Mississippi report snow in Faulkner country, that's real weather news. 

In the metro areas of Atlanta, two inches of snow and roads topped with black ice are reason enough for days of Atlanta TV station instilled panic (with advertising breaks). Each southern snow emergency is different, according to when people begin to panic: when the snow hit in mid-afternoon, on a workday, the blame game began early. The traffic pile-up was either GDOTs fault, or the governor's, or whoever-is-in-charge-of-the-road salt.  

In cold and snowy reality, on radio talk shows the southern folk who like to picture themselves as hardy and self-sufficient Dan'l Boones weren't prepared for the eventuality .... of not getting home in time for dinner. Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed found himself on the Today show pointing out the video that was showing more that 2,000 stranded vehicles (and many drivers) on the interstates was from outside the city limits -- a case of the snowstorm's political NIMBY effect. Later, Governor Deal bit the bullet and accepted partial blame for the lack of preparation, in hopes the backlash wouldn't bite into his re-election hopes next fall.

To be fair, the interstates were indeed a mess, without much surface preparation, and school kids spent the night in buses or on gym floors. Some motorists actually braved WALKING in the cold and snow, which must have been a novel experience. And the miles and miles of the interstates' gently-sloping roadbeds created a roller coaster for motorists, creating real gridlock of seemingly unending endurance. 

Still: for two days and counting I have yet to hear anyone admit they shoulda stayed home on Tuesday, or made any alternate plans for "a light dusting and more south of the city." In 1981 the Snowjam that ground the city to a halt for days -- stranded suburban motorists, downtown commuters, and included massive power loss throughout the city -- was a truly unexpected event that, as it happened, struck on a workday afternoon. By 5 o'clock that afternoon, people bedded down in the Trust Company Bank lobby in Five Points with no hope of getting home.

Apparently every generation of middle-managers and junior executives and SUV moms has to find out for itself what a southern snowfall can bring. 


Until the lights go out in Athens due to snow, I'm sucking on the power grid with no pretense of hardihood or self-sufficiency except the ability to read a book until the light fails, and with tuna-fish sandwiches to sustain me. After that, there's a leftover long winter's nap from the holiday season around here somewhere. There's beer in the fridge for later. I think I'll put "A Charlie Brown Christmas" back on the box for a spin and enjoy warm thoughts, until the temperature (projected: mid-50s today) melts the last of the snow.

Burroughs: "Art, like R.E.M. sleep, is a biological necessity"

“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.” 

― William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads

Jed Birmingham's Reality Studio is a ever-deepening vault of William Burroughs-related literature and images. It would be unfair to classify such collected scholarship for fans exclusively, but at this date the experience is as close to a trip to Burroughs' creative bunker as the internet allows. The resulting maze of Burroughsian idea and theory, control and abandon, fact and conspiracy is not for the faint-hearted or the casual browser. 

Here by way of introduction to his interview with WSB, William Weiss sketches the 70-year-old author at the time of The Place of Dead Roads (1984). Guns, films, CIA plots, time and space, and the proper use of mace are all under discussion: "Nothing worse than a weapon that fizzles.”

The full interview, uncollected from The Cleveland Edition and published 1984, is posted here with photos taken at the interview by Abe Frajndlich. Here's Weiss' original excerpted introduction.



William Burroughs smokes Players and manipulates them with a hand that is thin and pale and missing the last terrible joint of the fifth digit. We’re drinking coffee and talking and eating almond pastries around a glass-topped table in a room full of rich, soft couches, objets d’art, books… sun’s in the morning window. His presence is attentive and genuine, though his eyes sometimes sweep about furtively in response to questioning. When he wants to emphasize a point, the orbs fix and stare into you, searching: “Do you understand, dear?”

He is 70. In a league with Swift, Orwell, Huxley. I feel like Sweet Pea applying for a sorceror’s apprentice vacancy.

In 1977 he taught a class in screenplay writing at the Naropa Institute, a Buddhist college in Boulder, Colorado. He taught us all he dared of time, synchronicity and carefully measured self-confession — handfuls of that “unutterable earth.” “Time is that which ends” or “Art, like REM sleep, is a biological necessity” or “The only thing worse than a cop lover is a cop hater” and so on and so on, sitting there, unfathomable, an alien blitzkrieg.

But now we talk about his work with Laurie Anderson on her haunting Mister Heartbreak album… about .357 magnums and 9mm handguns… about the possibility of Soviet missile bases being built on the border if the U.S. abandons Central America… soon we’re into crossbows and machetes… I suggest that a sabre is the ideal weapon for slashing… he reminds me when using mace to be sure of proper pressurization and always spray directly in the face. “Nothing worse than a weapon that fizzles,” he drawls.

It’s his latest book, The Place of Dead Roads, that I’m after, a strange and wonderful novel whose protagonist — Kim Carsons — journeys through time and space exploring possible avenues of mutation and shooting it out with the shits of this planet, who want to keep the Great Illusion rigged for their own diabolical insect purposes. As a western, Roads is tough and dusty, and Kim gunfights his way into your heart. As satire, it is a well-conceived stage where many of Burroughs’ most characteristic reproaches of Western Civilization achieve formidable delirium hilarity.  ....