By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher | Last week we had the best peach of the 2016 season. Man alive! Do I enjoy a juicy sweet Georgia peach.
Now’s the prime time for its eating. Some people enjoy peaches in different cooked desserts or ice cream, and these are good. But there’s nothing better than just enjoying them as they come, simply eaten fresh and raw. Makes my mouth water thinking about them, and I’ve already had them for breakfast for the last few days!
Some comments don’t need words. About the British exit from the European community, the current New Yorker cover said it best. What a wonderful conception by Cartoonist Barry Blitt.
Gwinnettians have good reason to celebrate July 4, as do people in Hall and Walton Counties. After all, our three counties are named for Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall and George Walton, who were on hand in Philadelphia to sign the Declaration of Independence. Now as to the exact date that they signed it, that’s another matter. But they were there, and we remember them especially on this holiday. Think about the inconvenience of traveling from Georgia to Philadelphia in that day!
The Chicago Tribune reported the other day that if you celebrate the Fourth by enjoying sweet corn, you are probably eating corn from Georgia or Florida. It’s too cool in Illinois and other Northern states, for corn to ripen by the Fourth of July. I remember my year in Iowa, and I was worried about the corn crop. Up there, they’re happy if the corn is “knee high by the Fourth of July.” By then, most Georgia corn is coming to maturity.
But after the Fourth, watch out in the Midwest! Man, that corn grows fast. And in Iowa with 14 feet of black dirt, corn just shoots up. The dirt there is so rich that Iowans don’t bother with planting corn in rows. Really! They broadcast it, and then the pickers find it in their jaws and do the harvest.
The Tribune also reported: “(Georgia and Florida) rank first and third, respectively, with California in between, for sweet corn production, according to Mark Schleusener,of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In 2014, Illinois — the heart of the Corn Belt and home to numerous corn festivals — placed ninth.”
Illinois plants 11.8 million acres of field corn compared to just 6,400 acres of sweet corn, nipping at the heels of Iowa. Now toward the later summer, Midwesterners can start enjoying sweet corn from their own state.
Independence Day is an annual public holiday in Georgia observed on 26 May. It commemorates the May 26, 1918 adoption of the Act of Independence.
All the above is right, of course, but we are talking about the Democratic Republic of Georgia in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It is the national day of the country of Georgia. Its Independence Day is associated with military parades, fireworks, concerts, fairs, and political speeches and ceremonies, in addition to various other public and private events celebrating the history and culture of Georgia. That last part sounds like American Georgia.
By the way, Atlanta and the Republic of Georgia’s capitol of Tbilisi are “sister cities.” Altogether, Atlanta has 21 sister cities.
Now go enjoy your American Fourth of July holiday.
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