Sidebar: What is the Georgia Land Trust, and What Does It Do?

What is the Georgia Land Trust?

By Robin Ford Wallace

One of the matters addressed by Katherine Eddins, executive director of the Georgia Land Trust, at the June 4 meeting she conducted at and about the former Preserve at Rising Fawn was what the land trust is and what it is trying to accomplish.  Since ambiguity on that point may well be at the root of some of the confusion swirling around the trust’s intention to sell the Preserve land to developer Royce Cornelison (see related article), the Planet here outlines what Ms. Eddins said on the subject.

“We are not a government,” she repeated at the Thursday meeting.  Rather, she said, GLT is a private nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization with a staff of 15 employees and a 12-member board of directors.  The land trust derives its income from soliciting checks from its donor pool, doing contractual work for other land trusts, and applying for grants, she said.

As for what GLT does:  “Our mission is to protect land for present and future generations,” said Ms. Eddins.  The object, she explained, is to preserve land in a rural condition to safeguard water quality, wildlife and other environmental concerns.  To quote from the trust’s website, galandtrust.org:  “Our focus on forests and farm land and rivers and streams is to create green corridors with clean water and air and fertile farmland.”

The Georgia Land Trust recently announced it now has a quarter-million acres under such protection and has been proclaimed an accredited land trust by the Land Trust Accreditation Commission, which at the meeting Ms. Eddins clarified was “a real prestigious thing.”

Ms. Eddins said that of the 250,000 acres the trust protects, the greatest concentration, or about 75 percent of the land, lies in this area, much of it in Dade, Walker and Catoosa counties.

But the way the land trust protects the land is not by owning it.  Rather, explained Ms. Eddins, the organization’s main tool is the conservation easement, a legal arrangement whereby a private landowner may keep, use and pass his land on to his heirs.  The easement spells out restrictions on what he may do with the land, with the object of protecting its conservation value; but by signing it the landowner may save money on estate, income and property taxes.  The land trust proposes to sell the Crook land to Cornelison subject to such an easement.

Presently, the land trust has in effect over 700 of these conservation easements, said Ms. Eddins.  Working farms account for a lot of the land, she said, though the trust has also concentrated on areas along streams to protect water supplies.

  Protecting water quality was one element in the trust’s decision to buy the Johnson’s Crook land out of bankruptcy, said Ms. Eddins.  The Crook is a “recharge area” for the local drinking water supply, she said, as well as rich in caves, natural beauty, and rare or endangered plants and probably also animals.

So the trust exists to protect land “for present and future generations”; but in the case of Johnson’s Crook the proposed sale would seem to limit that naturally to present and future generations of Cornelisons.  When the trust acquired the Crook land, there was talk of public foot trails that would connect it to Cloudland Canyon and even Chattanooga.  At the Thursday meeting, however, whereas Ms. Eddins was not ruling it out, her only reference to any such public access was “probably, maybe, a trail option.”

In any case, the Planet asked Ms. Eddins after the meeting for whom or what the Georgia Land Trust was ultimately protecting the land.  Her answer:  “For the bats.  For the nature.  For the habitat,” she said.  “There are other things other than humans.  They need a place, too.”

As far as public benefit, she said, there is the consideration that protecting the Crook helps ensure clean drinking water for Dade County.  But otherwise, she concluded:  “There are endangered plants, there are endangered animals, there are caves.  They don’t need the public to be as they are.  They have an innate worth that is not about money.  It’s about nature and beauty and honoring that.”   

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Land Trust Discusses Sale of Former Preserve At Rising Fawn To Second Developer

Royce Cornelison of P&C Construction is the developer the Georgia Land Trust proposes to sell its Johnson Crook acreage to.  Cornelison already has 2300 acres under conservation easement, knows how private-sector conservation works, and would be "a good steward of the land," says the trust.   

Land Trust Discusses Sale of Former Preserve At Rising Fawn To Second Developer

By Robin Ford Wallace

It is true that the Georgia Land Trust is negotiating to sell the 1800-odd acres it owns in Rising Fawn’s Johnson’s Crook to a developer, and it is also true the developer will likely build houses there.

But not enough houses to amount to what is called a subdivision – much less a development – and in any case not in such a way as to offend either the land trust’s environmental requirements or the sensibilities of the neighbors.

That was the message at a June 4 meeting conducted by Katherine Eddins, GLT’s executive director, at what was once the Mill Creek Clubhouse of failed development The Preserve at Rising Fawn.  Invited were the press, politicos and neighbors who had watched the Preserve morph from local land boom to interstate bank fraud, as well as the few individual landowners who retained property at the Preserve when the smoke had cleared.

“You can still protect the land and have a few houses,” Ms. Eddins told these assembled concerned parties at the Thursday meeting.

Ms. Eddins had called the meeting amid consternation about GLT’s rumored intention to sell the scenic Crook land, which it had acquired from Tennessee firm Southern Group, whose attempts to develop it had culminated in scandal and jail time, to yet another developer.

Ms. Eddins identified the new developer as Royce Cornelison, founder and president of P&C Construction, and she confirmed that the land trust is in fact negotiating with him on a deal whereby he would buy the Crook acreage. 

But she specified that Cornelison will be subject to a conservation contract that would require him to keep most of the acquisition in a rural condition.  “Our interest in the land is to make sure the land is not developed,” said Ms. Eddins.

She specified that so far no such deal has been finalized.  “There’s no sale pending,” she said.  “We don’t have a contract yet.  We’re hoping to but we don’t have one yet.”

Cornelison was on hand at the meeting to answer questions, and  he confirmed that he had already bought a smaller property at the former Preserve including a standing horse barn and the ruins of a larger clubhouse that was never completed, which he said he and his outdoorsy sons intended for private use.  “We’ll probably fix it up as a retreat, for the family, and to lease it.” 

As for new development, Cornelison said plans are still hazy but that he may consider building replacement homes where such had already been started.  “We may [or] we may not sell some lots there and build some houses there,” he said.

Limited building, confirmed Cornelison and Ms. Eddins, would not violate the terms of the proposed conservation agreement. 

But for the most part, said Cornelison:  “What you see is what you get.”  Not much would change.

“Primarily, we like it like it is,” he said.  “I like nature.  My boys like nature.” 

The family would use the land for hunting and fishing, and possibly for cattle, he said. 

Questioned after the meeting, Cornelison said that’s what he does with the approximate 2300 acres he already has in conservancy with the land trust at other locations.  “We farm it.  We have cattle.  We do timbering some, but we don’t clear-cut unless it’s a property that like the tornado’s damaged,” he said.

Ms. Eddins had earlier explained that limited timbering is also permitted under the terms of a typical conservation easement, subject to no-harvest zones in sensitive areas such as creek banks.

And she explained that such conservation easements with landowners are GLT’s primary tools in its preservation work.  “We specialize in helping the private sector protect land,” she said.

Ms. Eddins said that the federal government grants substantial tax breaks to landowners for giving up the right to develop their acreage.  “It’s a way to incentivize the private sector,” she said.

Asked about that incentive, Cornelison said that the conservancy benefit was a long-term and complicated one to claim but that he isn’t going into the red with the Angus cattle operation he runs on his other easements.   “It don’t make a fortune by any stretch of the imagination but it does make a little money,” he said.  

Ms. Eddins said that her group had discussed gifting the Crook acres to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources but that DNR had declined because it didn’t have the budget to maintain the land.  Neither, she said, does the land trust.  In fact, she said, GLT needs funds from the proposed Cornelison sale to pay off a loan of more than a million dollars it took out to facilitate its conservation work. 

She did not disclose what price, if any, is being discussed for the acreage.

Ms. Eddins said GLT couldn’t afford simply to donate the land to some other preservation group such as the Southeastern Cave Conservancy Inc. (SCCI), which she said her group is still working closely with to protect the myriad caves that lie beneath the Crook.  “Anybody we gifted it to, we’d need to get some foundation money from,” she said.

That would have been a consideration even with the DNR, she added. 

Anyway, she said:  “We want whoever ends up with this property to be a good steward.” 

That would knock out groups like the SCCI, she said, because:  “They don’t have deep pockets.  They can’t step up to pay $5000 to fix a dam.”

Ms. Eddins said she felt Cornelison would be a good steward.  “He’s here because I called him and asked him, would you please consider helping us out,” she said.

Dade Executive Chairman Ted Rumley, present at the meeting along with the  county’s district commissioners, questioned whether selling the land might incur repercussions from the banks that had donated foreclosed Preserve lots to the conservancy. 

Ms. Eddins said probably not; that though the trust was deeply grateful to the banks, their donations had been mutually beneficial. 

“When they gave us the land, it wasn’t a total gift,” she said.  “We accepted all the liability, and the liability was more than the value of the land.”

Now, she said, her group had solved liability problems well enough to obtain title insurance and was actively working on acquiring other Preserve parcels, as well as on fixing another potential legal issue, the Preserve’s currently inactive property owners association.

Attending the meeting additionally was Frank Hughes, a representative of Chattanooga’s Cornerstone Community Bank.  Cornerstone, like other banks, foreclosed on multiple Preserve lots after the housing market crash of 2008-9 revealed the on-paper-only nature of what had looked like robust sales there.  

But Hughes clarified that Cornerstone was not one of the banks that donated land to the conservancy.  Cornerstone still retains 80 to 90 Crook acres, he said, and:  “We’re going to sell it.”

Hughes said his bank was entitled to sell to any interested buyer for any purpose but that he was here to support Ms. Eddins and  the land trust.  “Anything that she does helps the area and helps the market,” he said.

Also supporting Ms. Eddins were the Lookout Mountain neighbors who had earlier watched doings at the Preserve with worry.  “I have total faith that Katherine is going to do the right thing,” said Lookout’s Nona Martini.  “Everybody’s happy that what they look down is not going to turn into some subdivision.”

But Dade Executive Ted Rumley, questioned after the meeting, said that the future of the Crook now seems solidly residential.  “They will build houses,” he said. “There’s no doubt.  That’s what they do.”

Dade County Executive pauses after the meeting at the Johnson’s Crook grave of Eugene Johnson.  The Crook’s latest contretemps started when Johnson sold the Crook to developer Southern Group, setting off a chain of events that ended in an FBI investigation, bankruptcies and a federal trial.  Johnson himself died in the middle of the scandal, of injuries sustained in a single-vehicle automobile crash.

But he said the number of houses must necessarily be limited – 50 to 75, say – by the difficulty of percolating septic tanks in the Crook.  “This is not an unknown place to the Environmental Division of the State of Georgia,” he said.

Tax-wise, said Rumley, those houses will be a boon to the county, as will the return of the 1800 acres to the tax rolls, even under a conservancy reduction.  “It’s better than zero,” he said.

Nevertheless, said Rumley, he had had high hopes of earlier talk of public access, and a foot trail that would link the Crook to Cloudland Canyon State Park    “Personally, not speaking as a government official, I would like to see where everyone could enjoy it,” he said.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Dade County Festival of Life

Kelly Moore poses with her family in this shot from the Festival of Life's Facebook page.  This year's festival will benefit the Moore family directly as they struggle with overwhelming medical bills, 

Saturday’s Dade Festival of Life To Benefit Local Individual Battling Cancer

By Robin Ford Wallace

            Dade is a county that takes care of its own.  This weekend, the county will put a slightly different spin on that tradition with Saturday’s “First Annual Dade County Festival of Life,” a music and family-fun event in New Salem to benefit a county resident battling cancer.

            Dade “First Lady” Diane Rumley, one of the festival’s organizers, developed the idea after spearheading last year’s local version of the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life.  Raising money for cancer research was wonderful, she said, but with friend and neighbor Kelly Moore quietly battling cancer for her life – and accumulating overwhelming medical bills in doing so – Ms. Rumley as well as other Dade citizens felt the need for something more up-close-and-personal.  Thus they set a date for a fundraiser, reserved the New Salem Community Center, and began lining up attractions.

            Well, besides being neighborly, Dade also has a rep for being musical – anybody ever heard of an act called the Forester Sisters? – and pretty soon the thing had snowballed into a full-blown country-style hootenanny.  Besides the Forester Sisters, scheduled acts include AoK, Wil Martin, the county’s favorite Dade County Boys, and let us not omit the First Lady’s First Gent, “Executator” Ted (“The Boss”) Rumley, Dade County’s own guitar-pickin’, bluegrass-singin’, joke-crackin’ barrel-of-fun-slash-head-of- government.

            A schedule of live music is available at the festival’s website, dadecountyfestivaloflife.com.

            Other events include a cornhole tournament and raffles for quilts, a donated gun safe and two decorative cornhole boards.

            The Dade County Festival of Life will be held between 11 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. this Saturday, April 5, at the New Salem Community Center.  If you can’t come, you may still donate online at the website – http://dadecountyfestivaloflife.com/donate -- or by check directly into an account set up for the purpose at the Bank of Dade.  Here’s the address:  Attn:  Joan Hixon, FBO Kelly Moore, Bank of Dade, P.O. Drawer 9, Trenton, Ga.  30752.  Make checks payable to Kelly Moore.

            For more information, you may leave a message at the website or call Cindy Cross at (423) 710-5885.  The Festival also has a Facebook page.

            As the name indicates, organizers expect the Festival of Life to become an annual tradition, to benefit a different local individual each year.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net 

March 15 Georgia Land Trust Party Old Home Week For Players in Preserve Saga

The scenic Waterwheel House was the site of a March 15 gala to celebrate the Georgia Land Trust's acquisition of the beautiful Johnson's Crook acreage that was once called The Preserve at Rising Fawn 

March 15 Cocktail Party Old Home Week For Preserve At Rising Fawn Players

By Robin Ford Wallace

The Georgia Land Trust, with local hosts Richard Rothman and Nona Martini, both of Lookout Mountain, threw a bluegrass-and-cocktail shindig at failed development the Preserve at Rising Fawn on March 15 to celebrate its ownership of much of the Preserve acreage.

But though the trust acquired another 40 or so acres in donated Preserve lots at the end of last year, Katherine Eddins, executive director of the conservancy, said the Ides of March gala was intended more to thank all parties involved in the acquisition of the Johnson’s Crook land than to announce anything new in the project.  “We’re exactly where we were,” said Ms. Eddins.

The trust has not yet worked out a conservancy plan for the land, she said, nor completed any arrangement for public access, though anyone wishing to see the Crook may apply by email for permission (katherine@galandtrust.org).

The Georgia Land Trust bought 1200 Preserve acres out of a bankruptcy sale last year, later acquiring more land in donations from banks that had foreclosed on it.  Ms. Eddins said the trust now holds about 1800 acres in all at the Crook and is finalizing the acquisition of 16 more on which it had retained a 120-day option at the time of the sale.  Meanwhile, she said, it continues to solicit additional parcels in donations.

“Once we figure out what we have, then we’ll start the process of figuring out how do we best protect it,” she said.     

Guests were encouraged to show up early to observe the beauty of the land in early spring, but the Ides party was also a good opportunity to observe some of the lead players in the Preserve’s long and convoluted saga. 

The gala was held at the Waterwheel House, once used as a Preserve clubhouse, now a rental property belonging to Debbie Johnson, widow of Eugene Johnson.  It was Eugene Johnson who originally sold the Crook land to developer Southern Group, retaining a mortgage on much of it.  When Dade County in 2009 threatened to seize Preserve land for unpaid taxes, it was Johnson who stepped in and paid the county to protect his investment.  Later, quarreling with the developer, Johnson periodically – and rather publicly – threatened to foreclose. 

Eugene Johnson died in an automobile accident in May 2010.  Now Debbie Johnson, after settling lawsuits brought by Johnson’s adult children as well as by Dade Magistrate Judge Joel McCormick, a former Southern Group employee and investor, owns parcels of Crook real estate including the Waterwheel House, which fronts on a scenic waterfall.  Ms. Johnson rents the site out as a venue for weddings and other special occasions – such as the Ides party.

Ms. Johnson attended the celebration, as did Georgia Land Trust Development Director Bobby Davenport, who in January 2012 spearheaded the conservancy’s first bid for the Crook land.  Dade County, by then attempting to collect another couple of years’ backlog of real estate taxes, had arranged a special auction exclusively for Preserve acreage.  Davenport attended that sale and bought for the conservancy – or thought he had bought – much of the same Preserve acreage the trust acquired last year. 

 That 2012 tax sale was invalidated, and Davenport’s check returned, when it emerged that Southern Group had transferred the land to TAS Properties, a sister corporation with the same ownership, and that TAS had declared bankruptcy a few days before the sale.

John Deffenbaugh, District 1's current member in the Georgia House of Representatives, now up for reelection, talks to party host Richard Rothman.   

 Also attending the party was Rick Jahn, trustee for that TAS bankruptcy case.  TAS had originally sought Chapter 11 reorganization protection, proposing during subsequent court proceedings a transfer of the land to yet another corporate entity.  But that sale was never approved, and after months of delays in which the legality of the Southern Group/TAS land transfer was debated, the case was converted to Chapter 7 bankruptcy, with Preserve assets to be liquidated to repay creditors. 

Thus it was Jahn – incidentally, the second trustee assigned to the case – who did finally arrange the sale of the Crook acreage to the Georgia Land Trust for $1.2 million in 2013, delivering to Dade its half-million dollars in accumulated back taxes and penalties, with the balance going to the three banks that were Southern Group’s other main creditors.

Jahn said he is still in the process of selling off to individual buyers smaller pieces of the Preserve that he retained from the Georgia Land Trust sale.  He said it was his responsibility as trustee to get as much for the property for creditors as he can, and that like an individual landowner he is allowed to spend money on improvements in order to get a better price.  For example, he is installing a septic system to make the old 1990s-built fishing cabins off Newsome Gap Road saleable.

“I’ve got a good bit of money still on hand,” said Jahn.  “I can afford a little septic system.”

Jahn said he has sold some lots and houses but still has three of those five older cabins for sale.

 Another chore Jahn is tidying up is replacing the Preserve’s property owners association (POA).  An older POA had thrown a further plot twist into the Preserve story by sending out letters in 2011 and 2012 demanding years of back membership fees assessed on individual lots – many of which were by now long-foreclosed and in the possession of banks – and by filing liens on the lots for nonpayment. 

Another politician who attended the Preserve party was Lamar Lowery (center), a once and would-be future Dade County commissioner.  Lowery is shown here with wife Kathy and, on the left, New Salem Fire Department and Friends of Cloudland Canyon volunteer Tom Pounds, who was clearly fascinated by the speeches.

Jahn explained that though that POA now seems to have subsided into history, and that in any case buying from an official bankruptcy sale erases many title and lien problems, he and the land trust still feel it prudent to address the POA issue.  “It’s been inactive, but theoretically the lots that have been platted could be assessed a fee every month even though nothing’s ever happened,” he said.

Jahn said the process would involve calling a meeting of the present owners, electing officers for a new POA and formally unseating any old ones.

Among those current owners, and also present at the Ides party, were representatives of the Southeastern Cave Conservancy Incorporated (SCCI), on hand to give attendees tours of the caves in Johnson’s Crook.  The SCCI is now the owner of one such cave, Lost Canyon Cave, and is partnering with the land trust toward comprehensive conservation of the Crook area.

It was cavers’ concern for the environmental impact development would have on the cave-riddled Crook land, together with the stack of liens for unpaid taxes at the county courthouse, that in 2009 drew the interest of a local newspaper reporter – who was also present at the gala – to the Preserve.  An Atlanta couple attending the Ides party said they had invested early in the Preserve, lost contact with the Southern Group as the financial situation went south, but managed to keep up with developments there through the years via the local newspaper’s investigation. 

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service later made their own investigation, resulting in the May 2012 arrest of two Preserve principals, Southern Group partner Josh Dobson and bank loan masseur Paul Gott III.  Dobson and Gott were found guilty on federal wire fraud and money-laundering charges at a Chattanooga trial last April and are scheduled for sentencing at the end of this month after a long series of continuances.

At issue in the trial was the Southern Group’s Ponzi-esque no-money-down, no-monthly payment scheme for selling Preserve lots.  Prosecutors said Gott and Dobson, by slipping down payment money up front to “straw buyers” who in many cases never saw the lots, and certainly never planned to build on them, deceived banks into parting with $45 million in loans. 

The loans were secured only by the lots, mostly two to three acres and often without access to roads, electricity or public water, which had nevertheless been valued at $100,000 to $250,000.

In exchange for allowing the developer to arrange loans in their names, lot “buyers” were promised exponential profits when the developer bought the lots back.   Meanwhile, the developer promised to make monthly loan payments.

But when the housing market collapsed over the 2008-2009 period, lot sales stalled, income sagged, Southern Group stopped making the payments and the straw buyers were on the hook themselves.  Several testified at the trial that they had met financial and personal ruin as a result.

Lending officers also testified about the millions lost by their banks in the Preserve scheme.

Sentencing for Dobson and Gott is scheduled for 10 a.m. on April 29 at the federal courthouse in Chattanooga.  Court papers filed by Summers & Wyatt, the law firm retained by Dobson for the post-verdict phase of proceedings, refer to a sentencing guideline for the applicable counts as 188 to 235 months, which is to say up to 19 ½ years.

But the court papers were filed in support of Summers & Wyatt’s request for a “downward variance” of the guideline because:  “It does not differentiate between an individual running a Ponzi scheme and an individual like the defendant who was a land developer and trying to keep his business afloat while reinvesting the money he was earning back into the land.”

The pleading asserts:  “Dobson relied on others in the mortgage, banking, and real estate industries and did not set out with an intention of defrauding anyone.”

Dobson and Gott have remained free pending sentencing.

Neither at the 2013 trial nor in subsequent proceedings have either prosecutors or defense attorneys mentioned the two previous projects – Long Island Overlook in Alabama and The Cumberlands at Sewanee in Tennessee – in which Southern Group sold lots via a similar program, for developments that similarly did not materialize. 

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Recreators in brightly-colored plastic boats enjoy the lake at the former Preserve.  Bankruptcy trustee Rick Jahn says that he's sold off some of the Preserve's existing cabins, which were not included in the land trust's acquisition, but that others remain up for grabs  Jahn says buying from a bankruptcy sale erases most of the title and lien problems that may have discouraged earlier attempts to market the properties.

Dade County Board of Education

Morgan Bradford (left) is honored for her participation in the school system's mentoring program.  Presiding is Cherie Swader (right), interim superintendent. 

Board of Ed Invites All To Take Superintendent Search Survey; But Good Luck With That

By Robin Ford Wallace

Monday’s Dade County Board of Education meeting was short and routine, but the board did adopt the 171-day school calendar presented at a work session last week by acting Schools Superintendent Cherie Swader. 

That means three instructional days will be added back into the 2014-15 scholastic year, a step toward restoring the full 180 Dade students enjoyed – or not, according to individual temperament – before the state began the series of funding cuts that have put local public schools over the financial barrel.

Board Chairwoman Carolyn Bradford reported that brochures had been sent out and advertisements posted online in the system’s search for a new superintendent.  Ms. Swader is interim head of the system as a permanent replacement is sought for Shawn Tobin, whom the board showed the door rather abruptly in February.   

Ms. Bradford also said the board had posted a “Superintendent Search Survey,” in which all are invited to furnish their input, at the B of E’s website, www.dadecountyschools.org.

“That’s basically where we’re at right now,” said Ms. Bradford.
The school system's website says the survey is open until March 21, but The Planet made two stabs at accessing it and found that earlier, it was described as currently unavailable, while today it was listed as closed as of March 18.  

Acting Superintendent Swader said the system’s numbers guru, Doug Eza, will be in town this week to work on a system budget for the upcoming year.  He will appear at the board’s regular meeting at 6 p.m. on April 14 to go over the budget.

Also scheduled to appear at a 5 p.m. work session before the April 14 meeting is Tony Cook, facilities director at the state B of E offices.  Cook is to advise the Dade system on obtaining funds to replace its ailing heating and air conditioning system.

Ms. Swader conducted ceremonies honoring student speech award winners and participants in the school system’s mentoring program.

After an unusually brief executive, or closed-door session, the board approved the hiring of one teacher and several substitute teachers.

Ms. Swader as previously requested by at-large member David Powell, provided resale or so-called “blue book” value for a school car she wishes to replace:  $4,796 resale, $3431 trade-in.

The car and one other, now used for staff travel, were originally bought for driver’s education, a program the school system later decided it could not afford.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Trenton City Election

Lowery Wins City Election

     Turnout at special elections is generally nothing to write home about but Trenton's election Tuesday for a replacement city streets commissioner may have set a new low.  Even with several days of advance voting, only 109 Trentonians drifted in to participate in democracy.
     The city's Cindy Robertson confirmed today that the final vote was Tommy Lowery, 41; Don Taylor, 35; and David Moore, 33.
     Tommy Lowery, a veteran commissioner of the Dade County government, will take his seat at the next Trenton City Commission meeting on April 14.  He will serve out the unexpired term of Greg Houts, who resigned in August.  
      David Raines was originally slated to replace Houts, running unopposed in an earlier special election appended to the regular Trenton elections in November; but he died three days before that election. 
robin ford wallace

Artist’s Books To Remain on Display at Dade County Library

by Robin Ford Wallace

At his March 14 lecture on artist’s books at the Dade County Library, artist Bob Dombrowski exhibited a suitcase that appeared on his Manhattan doorstep a day or two after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. 

There’s a story behind that Samsonite. The artist’s loft where he lived with his partner, Mary, was quite near the fallen towers, paranoia was rife, and Mary feared that the suitcase might contain a bomb.  Out in the street with it, she urged. 

Dombrowski himself was thinking, free luggage; and besides, the cops were pretty twitchy these days.  What would they do to a man who ran out into the street and dumped a suitcase?

Two guests were trapped with them in the tiny loft by the city’s lockdown, and they had their own takes on the suitcase as well as on the effect the attacks of that fateful September day would have on the current of history. 

Six months later, Dombrowski had the idea of asking each participant in the suitcase saga to write an account of it.  These four short narratives he compiled and bound into one of the small artist’s books he has been making for decades.

The Suitcase, with its four entirely different but entirely compelling accounts of that day in Manhattan, has the distinction of being among the more readable artist’s books Dombrowski had produced or collected.  He explained that artists traditionally pushed the envelope with the small, self-produced volumes.  One contained only punctuation marks, and another had a rock for a front cover.

A sampling of artist’s books will remain on display at the Dade County Library, which partnered with the Trenton Arts Council to sponsor the lecture and a workshop on making artist’s books the next day.   Both were well attended. 

TAC and the library produced the event with the help of a grant from Georgia Council for the Arts.

     robinfordwallace@tvn.net

  

Depot Diner Opens Under New Management

Owner Brenda Boggs at the new Diner

The Little Diner That Could:  Depot Diner Opens Under New Management

By Robin Ford Wallace

The Depot Diner, located right at the heart of Rising Fawn, the recognized center of the known universe [see writer’s column below], no doubt broke a few hearts when it closed in December.  Besides franchise food at the truck stop on the I-59 exit, there was no other restaurant in town.

But those in Rising Fawn who hunger may now once again be fed.  The Diner has reopened under new management, and unless you absolutely cannot get by without having your table bused by someone in spurs with loaded six-shooters strapped to both thighs, you might even think it’s better now than ever.

“The only problem I’ve had is keeping up with the ordering,” says Brenda Boggs, who bought the Diner lock, stock and barrel from the McBryar family – Eddie AKA “Cowboy,” Charlotte and Treva – and has spent the last couple of months cleaning and refurbishing it.

Ms. Boggs, looking perky in her new hot-pink Depot Diner T-shirt – the back depicts a “Little-Engine-That-Could”-style steam locomotive – opened on March 8 in what she planned as a “soft opening.”  There was nothing soft about it.

“I wanted my people to get into the groove,” said Ms. Boggs.  “That didn’t work out well because they slammed us right out of here that Friday night.  People just kept coming.”

Ms. Boggs shows off the back of the Depot Diner T, which features a Little Engine That Could motif.

Ms. Boggs didn’t try to change the Depot Diner’s name – “It’s on the roof,” she points out – but she made some menu changes.  Most noticeably, patrons can now have breakfast at any time – no cracks about “scrambled eggs in the Renaissance,” please – but short orders are the order of the day Tuesday through Saturday for lunch and supper.  Short orders include big, generous burgers and other sandwiches available with sides including hand-cut french fries and deep-fried green beans Ms. Boggs says the crowds are going wild for.

On Sunday and Monday, Ms. Boggs serves meat-and-three-style plate lunches.  “Bama Side, Larry’s and Geneva’s are all closed on Mondays,” said Ms. Boggs.  “I want to drive them down this way.”

She advises diners to come early on plate-lunch days because so far the chow has run out before the doors have stopped swinging every time.

The Depot Diner opens at 6 a.m. Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. on Saturday and 8 a.m. Sunday.  It closes at 7 p.m. every day but Wednesday, when everything in Rising Fawn including the post office and the hardware source (both, incidentally, important local hubs for the free and unfettered flow of information) closes at noon and Ms. Boggs realized in short order she might as well, too. 

“I found out in a heartbeat Wednesday wasn’t a good day,” she said.  Two Rising Fawn churches host Wednesday night suppers, she said.  She didn’t want to interfere with that and in any case figured it was the universe’s way of telling her to take a load off.  “Wednesday is going to be a me-day,” she said.

Ms. Boggs has never run a restaurant before but says she grew up in the environment:  “My mother was a restaurant manager as far back as I can remember.”  She employs a staff of six – “Three cooks, two waitresses and Amanda.”

Amanda, Ms. Boggs’ general factotum and Jackie of all trades, worked with her at Memorial Hospital, where Ms. Boggs was formerly a licensed phlebotomist.

Ms. Boggs invites all to come in and check out the new Depot Diner seven days a week. 

The Planet can recommend the cheeseburger.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net      

 

Dade County Board of Education Meets Tonight at 6 p.m.

The Dade County Board of Education holds its regular March meeting this evening at 6 p.m.  Like other governmental entities that are financed by tax dollars – in Dade, 75 cents of each property tax dollar goes to the school system – the B of E is required to operate transparently and its meetings are thus open to the public.  As a matter of practicality, though, the meetings are long, agendas are packed, and the public rarely takes the board up on the invite.  And on such occasions as the public does, the board has invoked internal guidelines decreeing that it will listen but not respond to public input. 

Nevertheless, the regular March meeting of the Dade County Board of Education is at 6 p.m. tonight in the board building in front of the high school on Highway 136 East.  Readers may reach the B of E at (706) 657-4361.

Fire on Fox Mountain

Sunday’s showers might have put the kibosh on a few wildflower hikes but for the Georgia Forestry Commission it was a case of gentle drops from heaven.  With a fire on Lookout Mountain barely controlled that day, the GFC reported to Rising Fawn on Friday evening as a landowner’s burning of timbering debris on Fox Mountain raged out of control into a full-scale forest fire.  The boys in khaki were still at it on Saturday afternoon when these pictures were taken.  “It was a pretty rough night,” said one.

The rangers said local volunteer fire departments including the Rising Fawn squad had assisted.  Over 100 acres were affected.  The helicopter below, which belongs to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, was deployed to drop flame-retardant chemicals on the flames.

    

Photograph by Jerry Wallace

Writer's Column: Welcome to the Center of the Universe

Writer's Column

_____________________________________________________________________

Welcome to the Center of the Universe!

By Robin Ford Wallace

My college friend Vivian O’Dell and I reconnected recently via the miracle of Facebook.  We hadn’t seen each other since 1980 but she sent me a friend request, I responded, and by July 2012 we were sitting on my front porch catching up. 

Viv had dropped in for a visit since she was back in the States anyway for various events connected to her work at CERN, the nuclear research facility in Switzerland.  You may recall it was that month that CERN and associated facility Fermilab announced they had isolated the Higgs boson, the so-called “God particle,” which allows for the existence of the universe.

I’m not kidding.  I’m still not precisely (OK, not even vaguely!) sure what the hell the Higgs boson is, but my old pal Viv – Dr. O’Dell now – really was one of the physicists who tracked it down, and now she was sitting in the porch swing at my house on a dirt road in the Rising Fawn metro area, telling me all about it.

Vivian said she divided her working life between Fermilab, the American particle research laboratory near Chicago, and Geneva, where CERN had installed the Hadron Collider, the largest and most powerful particle accelerator ever built.  Viv and the other physicists had used the collider to isolate the God particle, but it hadn’t all been smooth sailing:  Protestors had filed a lawsuit in Hawaii to stop them before they and the Hadron destroyed the universe.

“They claimed we were going to make black holes that were going to suck up the world,” explained Vivian. 

Viv & crew were doing nothing of the kind, she sniffed; the protestors were crackpots, and the only reason the scientists took any notice is they worried the negative publicity might endanger their funding.  And in the end, the case had gone quietly away.  The judge threw it out because he had no jurisdiction over Geneva, much less the outer edges of infinity. 

Still, I was awed.  I’d never known anybody before who had even been accused of tearing holes in the fabric of reality.

And really, if you had known Vivian back in the day, you wouldn’t have thought she was the type, either.  We met at the University of Georgia in 1970-something, when we were teenaged hippies majoring in English.  She had long blond hair, I had long brown hair, and between us we knew every song Bob Dylan ever wrote.

During those years, Viv and I took one of those epic summer trans-America road trips young people used to make routinely as a rite of passage, the way the kids now upgrade their smart phones.  It involved waitress jobs in New Mexico, a lot of camping, and a beat-up VW van we named – of course we did! – Dylan.  Here is (some of) a song we wrote about Dylan the van, to the tune of “A Four-Leaf Clover.”

“His horn sounds at sunset

And sometimes at dawn;

His lights work to show us

The road that we’re on.”

We also wrote a long, mournful road song to the tune of “500 Miles” when we were reading Hemingway’s Islands in the Streams:

“All the hero’s sons are dead

And he’s had three chicks in bed.

It’s got fi-ive-hundred pages, all in all.”

Once, stuck in El Paso waiting for some mechanical work to be done on Dylan, we wandered through the parking lots – El Paso was mostly parking lots – looking for something to eat.  We saw what we thought was a signboard for a fast-food place and paused in front of it, reading the menu.

Back then, drive-through windows, though already rife in Texas, had not made their way to the Southeast, so when the “signboard” suddenly spoke up, asking to take our order, we were both astonished.  “What manner of being are you?” we asked it.  And:  “Do you come in peace?”

We were just a couple of goofy liberal arts types!  There was no absolutely no indication Viv was any more scientific than I was.  But after I graduated, apparently, she found her true calling, changed her major to physics and basically never left academia.  When she finished her undergraduate degree, she kept studying and eventually earned a Ph.D.  After that, she didn’t go into teaching, just kept pursuing her research, and she must have been pretty good at it because she ended up on one of the two Higgs boson teams in Geneva.

So!  That’s the story Vivian had to tell me after 30-odd years:  She’d figured out how the universe worked and stuff.  What I told her in return was:  “I, er, write for a small weekly newspaper in Dade County, Georgia.”

Well, what else could I do?  There was no point pretending to be dead; I’d already set out canapés.

Vivian (with motorcyle) and me (on porch swing) in Athens in 1976, and reunited on my porch here in summer 2012.  The old pics are from my sister Laura's treasure troves.

It was all fairly humbling, but when I told the story to one of my neighbors, he said, “Well, if the two of you walked into the local Ingle’s, who’s the one everybody would recognize?”

He probably said it to make me feel less like a subatomic particle my own self but it gave me some comfort.  Viv might have sussed out quantum physics while I was still puzzled by instant pudding, but I know where most of the black holes are in Dade County.  As the local reporter, I know more about it than I do about any other place, more than I imagine is strictly healthy sometimes; yet I’m always discovering something new.

Anyway, this is my little acre of the universe.  I like it here.  It’s my place and I maintain it’s about as good as any other.

I’ve noticed people tend to think where they live is somehow less important, even less real somehow, than other places.  Businesses in Chattanooga say, “Of course we’ll bring in someone from Atlanta for the work, so you know it’ll be professional”; whereas when I lived in Atlanta they would fill in the same blank with “New York” or “Los Angeles.”  When lots of times, someone local would clearly make a better job of it.  I see that happen in Dade all the time!

This geographical inferiority complex is probably to some extent due to simple humility:  People, modest about their own place in the universe, naturally think the important events of history must be happening elsewhere – that “where it’s at” is not where they’re at.

  But where people think it is, in fact, “at” is not at all clear.  Someplace bigger, maybe, somewhere far away, and especially –this is weird – someplace on television.

When I was a kid, I myself had the idea that what I saw on the flickering tube was more real, more correct, than what went on at my house.  The perfect families in their perfect clothes who always worked out their problems by the end of the half-hour episode were the normal ones, the ones doing reality right, while we clumsy Fords, with our smells, our noises and our squabbles, were freakish and disappointing. 

            In fact, just about everything on television is glaringly fake!  Not just the talking horses, secret witches and extraterrestrial uncles I watched then, now called “classic” TV, and not just the preternaturally wise parents and perfect children of the old family shows that made us all feel like slobbering inbreeds; but the skylines behind newscasters, the laughter after one-liners, the food in restaurant commercials – practically everything and everybody that goes before the television camera gets replaced, revamped or slimed up with goo to make them shine.  Who would think they could get lipstick on our good-ole-boy Southern pols?  But it happens.

Still, I’m always reading articles about the excitement generated when some soap opera actress from 20 years ago (“Who?”) agrees to come to Chattanooga to address a women’s group, or some local guy manages to propose to his girlfriend on a televised talk show (“Ack!”).  It’s the same attitude:  What we see in TVland counts, what happens in our neighborhood doesn’t. 

Even my brilliant physicist friend did this a little.  Vivian didn’t boast about unraveling the secrets of the universe, or say a word about her team being nominated for the Nobel Prize; but she did let fall that her CERN colleague, Dr. Richard Field, was the brother of the actress Sally Field. 

On NPR once there was a jokey sequence where the commentator explored the saying, “Well, it ain’t brain surgery,” by asking brain surgeons if they felt any smarter than the rest of us.  They said no, that what they said among themselves was: “Well, it ain’t rocket science.”  So the commentator asked a NASA scientist and he said no, rocket scientists didn’t feel all that special, they had kind of a complex about not being as bright as theoretical physicists.   

If that’s the scientific hierarchy, then there Viv is at the pointy tiptop of the food chain; and what impresses her is hanging out with the Flying Nun’s brother?  Go figure!

Anyway, my point here is that living in the middle of nowhere doesn’t mean we live in the middle of nowhere.  This is reality!  No place – not New York, not LA, not whatever the fake skyline behind the newscaster is supposed to represent – is realer or more important than here, where we live. 

This is it.  This is real.  This is where it happens.  This is where it counts.  This is – because we don’t mind ending sentences with prepositions in Dade County; in fact it’s practically mandatory – where it’s at.

You could say that about anywhere you live, I expect; but I also maintain in Dade it’s a bit more true.  Ever since I’ve been here myself I’ve noticed it has an odd black-holey way of sucking in people you wouldn’t expect.  I have a theory if I sit here long enough, anyone I want to see will eventually turn up.  If you need further proof, did I mention that the Higgs boson physicist, Vivian O’Dell, got sucked onto my porch in the Rising Fawn metro area?

All this has been in aid of explaining why anyone should read an online newspaper written from, and about, Dade County, Georgia.  I’ll tell you the answer, and I think it also in its humble way says something about the fabric of reality, though I’ll tell you for free I don’t know a Higgs from a handsaw when the wind is southerly:

This is the throbbing heart of the living universe.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Trenton Cleans Up From Killer Tornadics

Scenes like this are becoming rarer as Trenton gets down to business on its nuisance ordinance.  This "tornadically damaged" Glenwood house, photographed in May 2013, is no longer around to drive its neighbors crazy.  Mayor Emanuel says two houses have been razed so far and possibly another four will have their date with the 'dozer before it's all over. 

Trenton City Commission Making Good Headway on Enforcing Eyesore OrdinanceBy Robin Ford Wallace

             The Trenton City Commission will hold a special election this Tuesday to fill its long-empty streets commissioner seat, but none of the three candidates for that post were present at the city commission meeting on March 10 to have their likenesses immortalized in the pages of The Dade County Planet.

Early voting ends today, Friday, at 4 p.m.; then the polls at City Hall will be open on Election Day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.  Seeking the street commissioner seat – albeit from a distance –are Tommy Lowery, David Moore and Donald Taylor.

Mayor Anthony Emanuel began the regular meeting with his usual intimate tour through the city finances.  Though he was pleased with how well this year’s expenses have been kept in check, February revenues were below projections, said the mayor. 

Emanuel then called upon City Clerk Lucretia Houts to explain the figures:  The first quarter called for bills to be paid up front, said Ms. Houts, but the city has the rest of the year to recover, plus a hefty Georgia Power franchise check winging its way Trentonward even as she spoke to refeather any bare spots in the municipal nest.

“The message to our citizens is we’re not running in the red,” said the mayor.  “We’re in the black.”

Also on the agenda this month was opening bids for cleanup of 20 Glenwood Drive subsequent to realization of Trenton’s eyesore ordinance.  The city had received two bids for the work.  The commissioners voted to accept the low bid of $1200 and award the work to Mike Lawson, pending formal review to ensure the bid met requirements.

Emanuel explained after the meeting that work at the Glenwood site was mostly a matter of hauling away wreckage.  The home on the lot had been pretty much leveled by what Emanuel is pleased to term the “tornadic activity” of April 2011.  “But the debris is there, and the debris has created an unhealthy and unsafe condition,” said the mayor.

Drivers through the Glenwood and Edgewood areas of Trenton may have noticed how much sprucer the neighborhoods are looking these days.  The mayor says yes, for the most part, property owners are doing a good job of complying with the cleanup ordinance.

“They’ve responded very well,” he said.  “We started out with I believe 32 different locations and it’s down to less than 12 now.”

In a county so allergic to zoning or indeed any land-use restrictions that local politicians avoid saying the Z-word aloud, the Trenton city government passed the eyesore ordinance in early 2012 in the face of multiple buildings left in rubble by those killer tornadics.  It gives the city the power, after a long and careful legal process, to demolish properties if their owners will not clean them up, though Emanuel said that’s only as a last resort when all else has failed.

Only two buildings have been razed so far, said Emanuel.  “There are four, I believe, that we’re giving the homeowner time to address it,” he said.  “But there’s four more that we’ll probably have to knock down.”

  Eloise Gass addressed the city commission on behalf of Trenton Tree City, reporting that her group had planted a tree in honor of Edward Wilkie, former Bank of Dade president. 

The Trenton Arts Council had no representative at the meeting, but Marshana Sharp, manager of the Dade County Library, reminded all that TAC and the library were partnering to present a lecture on art books on Friday, March 14, at 7 p.m. and a workshop on making them on Saturday the 15^th at 1 p.m.  (See Writer’s Column entry below for more information.)

Ms. Sharp also said quilting and knitting classes were ongoing at the library, and invited listeners to sign up for beginning computer classes.   Readers may call the library at (706) 657-7857.

The Trenton City Commission meets at City Hall at 6 p.m. on the second Monday of every month.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Rick Breeden is thought well of at the Rising Fawn Hardware Store, said an audience member.  And how many people can say that?

Dade Commission Taps Breeden to Replace Goff in District 3

by Robin Ford Wallace

            At a brief meeting on Thursday called for the purpose, the Dade County Commission voted to appoint Rising Fawn’s Rick Breeden to fill the District 3 seat left vacant by Robert Goff, who resigned the commission last week in favor of a run for the Georgia House of Representatives. 

            “It’s a group decision,” said County Executive Chairman Ted Rumley.  “It’s not a one-person deal.”

            Rumley and the other sitting commissioners noted that the law allowed them only 15 calendars days from Goff’s resignation to fill the empty slot.  Thus they had been obliged to act as quickly as possible while at the same time satisfying Sunshine Law requirements for transparency.   

            “One thing I know,” said District 2 Commissioner Scottie Pittman.  “If you’re doing something that people aren’t happy with, the room’s going to be totally full.”  

            The room was not totally full.

            But the commissioners did solicit such public opinion as was on tap in the person of Wildwood’s Rex Harrison, who was among the scanty audience.  Harrison gave Breeden his blessing, pronouncing him “a good Christian man,” and opined:  “Well, they must have went down to Rising Fawn Hardware and gotten him from there.”

Breeden was generally esteemed at the hardware store, added Harrison, and added:  “If you want to know anything from that end of the county, that’d be the best place to go.”

Breeden, retired from a career as estimator for a fabrication company in Chattanooga, is currently a poultry farmer in Rising Fawn.  He has never sought elected office before.  “It sought me out,” he said.

Breeden said Rumley asked him on Sunday to accept the post.  “Let me mill it over through the night,” he replied.  In the morning he asked Rumley:  “Tell me a worst-case scenario that goes along with this job.”  Presumably Rumley did not describe a case bad enough to daunt his draftee because Breeden in the end accepted.

Breeden will serve out this year, after which the District 3 seat will be filled via a special election which will be appended to the general midterm election this November.  Breeden specified that he has no idea yet whether he’ll seek election to keep the job himself. 

“I’m not a politician but I can be a public servant,” he said.

robinfordwallace@tvn.net

Trenton Tree City is spring-cleaning city flowerbeds and could use a little help!  Volunteers cheerfully accepted, strong backs not required but seriously appreciated, nobody’s getting any younger here!  Call Tree City President Eloise Gass at (423) 883-6388 to volunteer.  Pictured here are Ms. Gass (foreground), her faithful amanuensis, Mary Petruska (background) and jail trusty Adam West, who was on carwashing detail at the Dade Sheriff’s Department across the street and brought the thirsty pansies a pail of water.

Artist's Book Lecture and Workshop

WRITER's COLUMN

Artist’s Book Lecture and Workshop This Friday and Saturday
By Robin Ford Wallace

I was about to start this piece by telling you that the first time I met Bob Dombrowski he gave me an artist’s book.  Then I realized I was understating the memory:  Actually, I met the artist’s book before I met Bob!  He sent me one through The Dade County Sentinel, as a kind of calling card, back when my only connection to the newspaper was the “Bob’s Little Acre” columns I contributed sporadically.

I remember wrinkling my brow over it, puzzled.  I had never seen an artist’s book before, even though (through a series of circumstances too complicated to explain) I myself am married to an artist, as opposed to something sensible like an orthodontist, or tax attorney. 

But I digress. The artist’s book was small, about the size of the little tracts proselytizers used to hand you on the sidewalk, but instead of cartoony pictures of what was waiting for you in Hell if you didn’t shape up, it contained Bob’s line drawings and short poems. 

I was interested in the concept but turned up my nose at the idea of “modern poetry.”  I hated everything later than T.S. Eliot!  My philosophy was:  They can make me work for a living, they can make me pay taxes, and sooner or later I will have to die; but there is no power on earth that can make me sit here and endure modern poetry. 

Well, that was just one of many of my core tenets that have been proven wrong.  I stuck that first little booklet on a shelf somewhere and might have forgotten it, but shortly after that I became acquainted with Bob and his life’s partner, Mary, and their zany friends and their sculpture and their paintings and the wild, wonderful dripping-with-color pastiche of their relocated-loft-artist lives. I’ve always thought of it as walking into a Hemingway novel, back during the Paris days when there were cafés and dancing.  Once you walk in no way you’ll ever want to leave – even if it means learning to enjoy a little blank verse here and there at Beatnik Poetry readings!

The Trenton Arts Council, which Bob and Mary founded, is perhaps best known in the Dade community for those Beatnik evenings, as well as for the Downtown Banner project that for several years made Trenton a more interesting town to drive through; but you can’t think of Bob without thinking of those little books.  He continues to make them and not every time you see him, but not infrequently, either, he will hand you one a new one.

Here is a picture of Bob and Mary in 2010, doing their American Gothic impression for a
n article about their performance art festival, "Happenings."

So Bob and artist’s books are inextricably entwined in my mind; but as it turns out the artist’s book tradition is a lot older than Bob (although Bob is no chicken!).  They were around long before 19^th -century poet William Blake found fame with the elegant little volumes he hand-painted, printed and bound with the sole help of his wife.    They date back at least to the Middle Ages.

Artist’s books are not catalogs of an artist’s work.  They are fully realized pieces of art in themselves.  They may contain just images or just words or both.  They can be printed in small editions but the usual case is that they are handmade.  They can be made in batches or each one can be unique.

Avant-garde artists have always used the artist’s book medium to get their work out to the world without the help – and sometimes despite the indifference – of publishing houses and galleries.  The whole point of the artist’s book is that it takes the publishing houses and galleries out of the equation.  It doesn’t matter what the publishing house is looking for right now or what kind of art the gallery is currently showing.  They can shove it up their nose.  The artist is calling the shots here!  

You might compare it to writing a blog …

ANYWAY, Bob Dombrowski has not only been producing artist’s books himself for decades, he has also collected those of others, and this Friday, March 14, he will lead a discussion about them at 7 p.m. at the Dade County Library.  Then, at 1 p.m. on Saturday, there will be a hands-on workshop in which guests will learn to make artist’s books themselves.  Library manager Marshana Sharp will be conducting a session for young children, helping the smallest artists to make books of their own.  After the event, a collection of artist’s books will remain at the library for public display.

The library is partnering with the Trenton Arts Council for this project through a grant the two organizations obtained through the Georgia Council for the Arts, which partners with the National Endowment for the Arts.

Bob was interviewed about the artist’s book event by both the Chattanooga Times Free Press and the local public radio station.  Readers may find the newspaper article online (March 2 edition) but the radio interview is yet to come – it will be aired tomorrow, Friday, at 10 a.m., on WUTC, 88.1 FM.

Both the lecture and the workshop are free and both adults and children are welcome.  Guests may register for the workshop by calling the library at (706) 657-7857, but they are also welcome to drop in. 

The Trenton Art Council and the Dade County Library invite all to attend – to listen, to discuss and perhaps also to create something small and perfect of their own.

Robinfordwallace@tvn.net