The fair came to Coweta County last week.

It came for the kids.

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I see deer everywhere these days. Literally every day. Deer here, deer there, deer everywhere. That's not paranoia talking, either. I have pictures!

Ok. That's not a great picture. But that really is a deer, and it was only the first of four I saw last night!

Even if you go to bed at sundown, you probably know that after dark suburban neighborhoods are teaming with raccoons, possums, and armadillos roaming between the religiously maintained lawns and hedges. Owls can be heard marking their treetop territory, and it's not summer without bats overhead hunting gnats and mosquitoes. Those critters are everywhere, but they're small. Deer are big, larger than dogs. You think you'd notice if they were around. Don't be fooled.

I've been letting Dad's dogs out at about 2AM for the past two months. Almost every night, I see deer. This week alone, on Sunday, I spotted a pair of does napped by a fence. On Monday a family of four walked calmly across the road in front of my car. On Tuesday another grazed at the end of the driveway without regard for my presence. The dogs chased it away briefly; then it came back and finished its meal. That was a determined, hungry deer.

Where do these deer go every day? Do they have a lair? Do they retreat to their secret underground deer cave? Do they squat in abandoned crack houses? (Dad watches a lot of Ancient Aliens on History Channel. He'd probably insist they go back to their spaceships.)

I'm not trying to be an alarmist about this. It's too late to build a wall. Deer. Are. Everywhere. It's time to stop fighting them and learn to live in harmony. And build bigger gardens: deer eat a lot of greens.

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Forest Lawn Memorial Park is just around the corner from my Dad's new house. It's been there since 1956, which means it was there when I was in high school. I must have passed it hundreds of times, but I'd never been in. Not until this week when the beautiful weather made a side trip necessary.

I've never liked it. Oak Hill is the older cemetery closer to town. As previous posts on this blog prove, I like it fine. Forest Lawn, on the other hand, has always seemed to me more like a small, sterile golf course than a cemetery. Now that I've been in, I'll second my own first impression.

I've never been a believer that cemeteries should remain solemn and unused plots of ground. If you can't celebrate the lives of the dead, why remember them at all? Besides, a tiny metal plate with a stack of fake flowers is hardly how I'd want anyone to remember me.

The rules are posted by the entrance. The first one is no kids (living ones, I assume). The second is no recreational equipment (read: no fun). The third is no pets ("Leashed Or Unleashed": even fish are out). That sounds awfully exclusionary, but read to the bottom and you'll see that "Properly Attired Walkers And Joggers Are Welcome Except During Funeral Services." Thanks for that offer, but I think we'll keep on passing by.

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What? I skipped a post again? Dammit.

In my defense, I've been busy these past few days. As you know, I've been supervising Dad's medications and dog-sitting Rambo and Scarlett (and trying to make July not jealous). Also, there have been issues with our commercial rental property, including an AC failure and an (unrelated) fallen tree that damaged the roof and destroyed the gutter over the back door that has a bad tendency to flood. Add to those that I have an end-of-July deadline on a coding project. And I helped one friend build some shelves and another fix her cable system. And my own ISP was down for most of Friday and Saturday. And I've been trying to find time to write more. And and and and.

But that's all just excuses.

On the up side, I did just recently discover that my phone takes great panoramic photos, a feature which I have been using exclusively to take photos of clouds.

So that's good. And that's enough.

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Seen from parking lot
the sunset's a forest fire.
Hooray pollution!

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The best thing about my father's hospital stay is the view from his room.

I'll take what I can get.

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I attended the annual county fair today but spent most of my time staring at the sky.

I took it as a bad sign when I overheard a group of professional carnival workers say "that looks like tornado weather." I've got things to do this weekend; I don't have time for a side trip to Oz.

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It was a hot and humid June. Heat + Humidity = Thundershowers. The one good thing about the rain is the clouds. And the best thing about clouds is spectacular sunsets.

Top that, July!

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You've probably heard by now that the Great Nazi Newnan Rally of 2018 this past Saturday was more fizzle than sizzle. I get the impression that the news media is disappointed that no one burned down our historic 1904 courthouse.

Estimates are that somewhere between 24 and 50 Nazis showed up, opposed by "hundreds" of counter-protesters, and 700 police. Police outnumbered everyone else 2-1. I don't know what the Nazis were rallying for, but what they got was a police state. I'm sure they felt comfortable. Newnanites pride themselves on being gracious hosts.

The only people arrested were counter-protesters who had the gall to cover their faces with bandanas. That may seem a little extreme, but how else were the police to know that they weren't secretly insurgents out to incite a riot? Or maybe they were crisis actors. Damn those crisis actors!

For the record, I didn't attend the rally. My Mom wouldn't let me. Instead we spent the day at home watching movies. Anne Frank wouldn't have needed a diary if she'd had RedBox.

The next time the Nazis think about coming to town, I'll be glad to recommend a film they could watch instead. Maybe Thor: Ragnarok. It's a pretty good way to pass an afternoon.

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Neo-Nazis are coming to Newnan. And this used to be such a nice Southern town. By which I mean the kind that kept its racism private.

The city police department sent a letter to local businesses to let them know that the Nationalist Socialist Movement (NSM) has rented a city park for a rally on April 21. The city says it can't do anything to stop that, what with the First Amendment and all. Funny. The First Amendment didn't stop the county from spending millions of dollars a few years ago to try to prevent Starship, a sex toy retailer, from getting a business licence. Sex toys bad! Nazis okay.

The city seems much more worried about the Antifa groups that have already announced their intent to protest the rally. The local newspaper suggests that we should just politely ignore the racists in our midst. I mean, why would anyone protest against those clean-cut skinheads? They look like such nice boys. Nice, white boys.

The representative of the NSM told the paper that his group chose Newnan for no specific reason, but, boy, aren't we be worried that "they" are coming for our Confederate monuments? "Next thing you know, it will be the Vietnam Memorial or even our American flag." Um, no, no it won't. Frankly, if the monument to Confederate dead on our Court Square is the reason we have Nazis in town, I'm okay with seeing it go.

Some sides just don't have "very fine people."

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