Lindsey Graham

According to many news outlets, Lindsey Graham, long-time senator from South Carolina, died suddenly.

Graham was one of my senators for a long time, when we lived in South Carolina.

I didn't agree with Graham on some things, but, on others, I did. He was a man of principle, willing to state his opinions, and wasn't looking to advance himself.

Rest in Peace.

County size in California vs. South Carolina

A little geography, gentle reader.

Much has been made of the recent fires in San Diego County and other California counties, and I certainly have no desire to complain about such coverage -- we have family members living there. However, perhaps some South Carolina readers, and other readers from the eastern US, may not realize that counties are not the same sorts of things in all parts of the US.

San Diego County has a large geographic area, namely 4,526 square miles/11,721 square kilometers. In contrast, the combined area of Pickens, Oconee, Greenville, Laurens, Abbeville, Greenwood, and Anderson counties of South Carolina is 4,436 square miles. San Diego County is not the largest county in the US, or in California. Counties in the western US tend to be larger. Although the population of San Diego County is nearly 3,000,000, which is the third largest population of any county in the US, much of the large area is relatively unpopulated. Many of the fires in that county are in such relatively unpopulated areas.

Some are warning that development of such areas is asking for trouble -- fires have apparently been part of the chaparral ecosystem for a long time, and the recently developed areas, left to themselves, would mostly be chaparral.

Just as the southeastern part of the US is subject to coastal hurricanes, and some parts of the US are at risk for earthquakes, some of the US is at risk for wildfires. There doesn't seem to be much that we can do about this. We live in a fallen world, and we humans are in tension with the communities where we live and move, and this tension will, if anything, become larger as we expect to own more and more possessions, and as there are more and more of us.

God help us all!

Thanks for reading.

Greenwood to North Augusta on US Hwy 25

My wife and I like to travel. We don't feel that we have to see something exciting, or something that attracts lots of other people. We do like to see things that interest us, but it doesn't necessarily take much--a hawk on a tree will do it.

On March 4th of this year, we spent the night in Augusta, GA. Part of our trip was on US 25, from Greenwood, SC, to North Augusta, SC. A few years ago, I taught some Saturday morning classes in North Augusta, and we had traveled this route several times before. There are no big tourist attractions. Our highway map using shows no cities, towns, or villages at all. Nonetheless, let me tell you some of what we saw.

Not too far out of Greenwood is a small farm. The house is brick veneer. That's not unusual. The outbuildings are also all brick veneer, too. That is unusual.

Upstate South Carolina, where we live, is a rapidly growing area. My wife grew up there, and traveling roads that she used to take, she often remarks that she remembers when there were no houses, or no shops, along this route. Now there are. Well, this area isn't growing visibly. There are still lots of pastures. There are still lots of wood lots, some being harvested. Fire ants infest most of the pastures, and their hills sprout up along the road like the waste earth from little strip mines. There are occasional ponds. Once in a while we have seen a great blue heron in one.

A few miles further on, there is a brick wall on either side of the road, perpendicular to the roadway, as if the road is entering an estate. Then, a mile or so further on, there is another pair. Apparently, someone started to develop this land, and wanted to advertise the development with these brick gates. For whatever reason, nothing seems to have come of this, as there are no buildings or driveways at all between the boundaries.

Our trip was made more interesting by "Walter Edgar's Journal," a weekly radio program from the State public radio network. This week, it was on growing rice like that grown in South Carolina many years ago.

Edgefield, SC, is about two-thirds of the way to Augusta. The town advertises itself as having been home to ten governors. Clearly, its sons have made their mark on the state, and even the nation. The last governor to come from Edgefield, we believe, was J. Strom Thurmond, who went on to become the Dixiecrat candidate for President, and was in the US Senate for longer than anyone else in the history of the country. He finally retired, to the Edgefield hospital, where they had a special room for him. He didn't live there long, dying a few months later. He wasn't the last politician from Edgefield to go to Washington. Butler Derrick, US Congressman for 10 years, during the last quarter of the previous century, was from Edgefield.

There is something called the National Wild Turkey Federation a little South of Edgefield. We do have wild turkeys in South Carolina, and there must be some near Edgefield.

Greer, South Carolina, and the surrounding area, near the Northern part of I-85, is known as the peach capital of the South. There is even a water tower with a giant peach, appropriately colored, and with a stem and one leaf, near Gaffney. However, there is also a peach industry between Edgefield and North Augusta.

The closer you get to Augusta, the more sand is found in the soil.

US 25 turns right at a little hamlet named Trenton. Right after the turn, there is a section of the road lined with pecan trees on both sides. Pecan trees are quite common in the South, but this is the only place I know of where they are planted along the road on both sides. (I was unable to find a good picture of leafless pecan trees. Like most trees, they have a characteristic shape. I should have taken one myself.)

After that, there is a large flower wholesaler on the right.

Just outside of North Augusta, perhaps two miles from the intersection with I-20, there is an amazing community. One travels along, seeing occasional small homes or businesses. Then, all at once, you are in a housing development. On each side of the road, there are nice brick houses (someone else was struck by these). Interspersed among them are roughly equal numbers of mobile homes, a strange juxtaposition. Once we drove among these homes, and asked a woman, who was out walking, about this practice. She told us that the people simply lived in mobile homes until they could afford to build. There's a Catholic church in the development. Although there are Catholics in South Carolina, they are a minority, but there are Catholic symbols in front of almost every house in this area. Another interesting thing about these houses is that the windows are darkened. You can't see anything but blinds, or sheets. All the windows seem to be covered from the inside. This area is known as Murphy Village.

The most interesting thing about these houses, however, is that most or all of the people living in this group of houses are Irish Travellers. (Word doesn't like the spelling with 2 l's, but that seems to be the way this particular term is spelled.) (See links in the previous paragraph for a little more information on these people. There are some of them still in Ireland, apparently, and they probably live in other places in North America.)

* * * *

On April 12th, 2005, an editorial in the Greenville News (SC) complained about wasteful government spending, listing nearly $500,000 spent on the National Wild Turkey Foundation as one such example.

Thanks for reading.

Colors: Indigo

Why a post on indigo? I am attempting a post on each of the colors of the rainbow, and that's where I am today. See my previous post, which cites a source which claims that Isaac Newton, himself, reported the colors separated by his prism to be red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. So, if it was good enough for Newton, it's good enough for me.

Indigo, the color, says the Wikipedia, is named for the dye-producing plant, indigo. I am a South Carolinian. Indigo (the plant) was, at one time, a very important crop in my state. Its growth required lots of manual labor, and, unfortunately, encouraged the planters to use slaves. A young woman, not yet twenty years old, is said to have been the person who started indigo growing in South Carolina.

I am sure that you are not surprised to know that the word, indigo, does not appear in the King James Bible. It doesn't appear in a lot of other places, either. I checked all of the color words that I am using with WordCount, which says that someone has figured out the ranking of all commonly used English words (and some uncommon ones). Of those I have used as the subject of a post, and those I plan to use (violet, brown, purple, gold, silver, gray, black and white, God willing) indigo has the lowest rank. It is the 24,266th most common word. Here's part of the list, from the 24,263rd to 24,267th most common: Tactile, Whitelaw, Jonadab, Indigo, Reticent. Jonadab!? Whitelaw!? I know--Jonadab is a Bible name, but am surprised to find it on the list at all, and I confess that I don't even know (yet) what whitelaw means. My point is that indigo isn't a very common word. If WordCount counted use in blogs, this post would probably move the rank of indigo up a little bit.

A web page from the American Psychological Association comments in depth on a report in the December, 2004, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. The researchers studied two groups of children, in two separate cultures, and concluded that the naming of colors was due to the language learned by the children, rather than reflecting the way humans see color. The researchers say that English has 11 basic color terms, which are black, white, gray, red, green, blue, yellow, pink, orange, purple and brown. Note the indigo and violet are not included. Six colors that are not part of the rainbow are basic color terms, namely black, white, gray, pink, purple and brown.

Indigo occurs in a recent science news article. (I wasn't looking for it. C. S. Lewis, in The Silver Chair, wrote that there are no accidents.) A February 15th article in Nature News describes lobsters as indigo in color. That's until they are cooked, when they become red. There's a chemical/physical explanation for the change of color, if you really want to know about this.

Like indigo, my name isn't near the top of some lists. There's no reason that it should be. So what? What would the rainbow be without indigo? Seriously flawed. Perhaps you and I have some importance in God's master plan, even if we are far down on some list.

* * * * *
Addendum, Feb 26, 2005.

Some writers do not use ROYGBIV for the colors of the rainbow, but ROYGBV, widening blue and violet and dropping the use of indigo.