RITUAL SACRIFICE
Thank you Flagpole for focusing attention on John English's thought-provoking installation on Georgia lynchings.
But your reviewer suggested lynching in Georgia is a thing past, an historical stain on a society that has improved with time. I wish it were so, but I don't believe it.
I witnessed a "lethal injection" in the Georgia state prison at Jackson on October 25, 2001, and the mixture of revulsion, despair and fear that I felt for our society that night is identical to what I feel whenever I thumb through the several illustrated books on lynchings we have in the UGA Libraries' Georgia Room, where I work.
I was a police/court reporter when I got out of college. I've seen a gunshot victim lying in a gutter full of blood and had my fill of fatal traffic accidents. I've interviewed a medical examiner over a woman's raped, shot and strangled corpse that lay stretched out stripped and vulnerable in a morgue, and I've studied the pictures of murder victims introduced into evidence by prosecutors in murder trials. If you're normal, I think, you never get "used to" images of death.
But in my memory of that execution, or looking over those lynching photos, it's not the bodies, nor my imagining the dying pain that preceded them that bothers me most. It's the living.
It's the lynchers and/ or their neighbors crowded into the photo to assert their supporting roles, to register their participation, their alliance with, a scene in which the victim is on display for a community's "justice." It's exactly what I saw in the death chamber at Jackson, with the guards and the wardens and state "correctional" officials all standing at "parade rest," hands clasped behind their backs and shoulders squared, around the death chamber gallery, looking on as my friend - a good man with his own irreversible crime to account for - was strapped down and poisoned, in our community's most modern version of human sacrifice.
That's all the evidence I need to know that community murder - call it vigilantism or lynching or whatever - is alive and well, and very much a part of present-day Georgia I live in. It's dressed up with "due process," and garnished with reams of legal authority, yes. But it's still just a killing: an occult murder that mimics what it professes to expel. But Georgia's "modern death penalty" makes other ritualized, group-bonding manias like snake-handling seem quaint.
And as a tool for the aspiring fuhrers among us, it's always been a priceless asset.
However, if you need more reasoned, objective evidence about this connection between lynching and capital punishment, I suggest Eliza Steelwater's recent book, The Hangman's Knot: Lynching, Legal Execution, and America's Struggle with the Death Penalty (or see the author's website: www.hangmansknot.com).
Another thorough and thoughtful exploration of this connection between capital punishment and ritual sacrifice can be found in Thomas Laquer's excellent London Review of Books essay "Festival of Violence," available in its entirety on The Guardian's website: http://books.guardian.co.uk/lrb/articles/0,6109,374423,00.html.
In closing, here's a pertinent passage from Laquer's essay: "Some people in this country can imagine a secure moral order only if it is somehow underwritten by these exercises in death. Most people would want, on first impulse, to cause as much pain as possible to those who cause pain to their loved ones."
"It is the work of civilization to mitigate such impulses, to acknowledge that this sort of sacrificial violence is no longer necessary to sustain the social compact...
"Human sacrifice is not what keeps a pluralistic society together and it is time that some American politician said as much."
Skip Hulett
Athens

COME ON, PETE
I think this statement in the Flagpole [City Dope, Feb. 18] is a real misrepresentation of the tone of the HBNA meeting in question: "Meanwhile, everybody seems to assume that the lower income residents of the Prince Rondavel are toast. Theirs is the misfortune to live in affordable housing. Nobody at the Boulevard meeting spoke up for them except to joke when asked how much time the Rondavel residents have: a day after the project passes."
First of all, Prince Rondavel residents asked the question in the first place. They didn't need someone to "speak up for them." They also made other comments through an interpreter that drew laughter and applause.
Second, the Flagpole piece implies a callousness by the attendees that, in my opinion, did not exist. Come on Pete.
Mark Johnson
Athens

PETE, COME ON
I read your statement "Our Chamber is doing everything it can to promote an Athens that is inhospitable to this treasure [of a] town... " [City Dope, Feb. 11] Where in the world did the FP get the idea that the Chamber is inhospitable to music, fun, education, culture, football and general business activity that can generate tax revenue in order to support the infrastructure and all the exciting things that happen in Athens? Yes, our Governor is the invited speaker at the "Taking Care of Business Evening" hosted by Atlanta Gas Light Company Thursday, Feb. 19, and Mr. Drayton McLane, Jr., Chairman & CEO of the Houston Astros and President of one of Athens' largest employers, McLane Group, is the featured speaker at the Feb. 24 Annual Meeting.
I hope you can attend both these functions as a member of the Chamber and share leadership concepts with our members and these two excellent speakers.
You mentioned Mr. Stipe; here is an idea that needs his and FP support. Will you ask Michael Stipe to sponsor a series of concerts to raise funds for the development of safe ramps on both sides of the "Mur Mur" trestle so as to remodel it into a functioning bicycle path from east Athens to downtown? That is a worthy project that the commissioners have not been able to fund. As it is now, the trestle is a white elephant and an environmental and safety hazard.
Si Trieb
Athens

CROSS
Monday afternoon [Feb. 16] at 2 p.m. I was stopped in front of The Grit for failing to yield to a pedestrian in the crosswalk. I was unable to see him due to the oncoming traffic and cars in the left lane (I was in the right lane), but I almost hit him. I feel that this is an example we should all be aware of.
I have been that pedestrian in front of The Grit many times, in front of the Daily Co-op, and many other places that don't have the luxurious easy-to-see "state law - yield to pedestrians in crosswalk" signs. I have had to wait almost five minutes to cross, and when I finally do it is actually more liking running for my life.
You never think it is going to be you, you think that those signs are there for other stupid people, but they are there for all of us. Everyone should simply get used to just slowing down in their cars wherever they see those signs or any crosswalk for that matter, whether or not they actually see someone trying to cross the road.
As I drove by the crosswalk, I saw that the cars in my left lane were in fact slowing - not to turn left - but because someone was standing in the middle of the road waiting for them to slow down. He had made it through the oncoming lanes and was entering the lane next to me - looking startled as I drove by seemingly unaware of his presence (albeit with my foot on the brake).
As I received my ticket, I thanked the officer for being there, telling him that I, too, have almost been hit along Prince Ave. He received the compliment well and let me know, "that's what we're here for."
I have been told by a patron of The Grit who was there for lunch Monday that apparently ACC Police were taking turns putting on a sweatshirt in order to look like an ordinary citizen and were crossing the street in front of The Grit, while another officer was waiting across the street in a car ready to chase the violator. I find it humorous how ACC manages to create a public awareness about these new signs for increased public safety, create revenue for the city, and waste everyone's time/money all at once.
I do not know if my citation involved one of these situations or not, because of course I'm sure ACC officers weren't the only ones crossing the street that day. Maybe there is a better way to create an awareness about yielding to pedestrians. These tickets are $75 each.
Andrew Reissiger
Athens

NOWHERE TRAIL
While running the other day I noticed another area of bulldozed red clay where trees once stood. This seems to be a regular occurrence in the Barnett Shoals area, but this one on Snapfinger Road drew my attention more than any other because it was in my neighborhood. The signs for the development make it sound nice, especially the "riverside greenspace" and "walking trails." How ironic that they are marketing the very thing that they are destroying. The walking trail that I have run so many times used to cut through the woods near the river. Now it will have town homes and a parking lot lining one side. The runoff will surely hurt the river, and the construction cannot benefit the deer whose tracks I saw in the red clay.
I have always cared about the environment, but thought that people who acted emotionally distraught over the environment were overly dramatic. But I can honestly say that I was overwhelmed on my first viewing of the destruction of this small sanctuary near my home. I was so drained that I ended my run and walked home slowly.
Tony Paramore
Athens

ELECTION MESS
The Florida election mess was an embarrassment to our country. Unfortunately, a nightmare replay of the Florida fiasco might be coming our way. New computerized voting machines, which are set for use around the country in November, are not designed to produce a trustworthy recount.
And most states are refusing to demand a simple solution to this problem, which is that all machines produce a paper record of votes cast.
We should do everything in our power to avoid a Florida replay. If a paper trail of computer ballots will do the trick, I say let's do it.
Cat Holmes
Athens