Top 5 Reasons Why Last Weekend Could Top the Holidays

I don’t usually order my weekends rare, but last weekend was quite special. Late December, you are on notice: the bar has been raised.

5. With one kid at her grandparents’ house and the other at a Girl Scouts function, I was able to sleep past 9am on Saturday. Glorious!

4. The wife & I dined out and outside. In mid-December. We also grilled out during the weekend. Did I mention back-to-back pizza events to close it?

3. The Lee Ladies and I got to celebrate my out-of-town godchild’s Sweet 16 birthday, which happened to fall on…

2. The day her sister performed for the last time in the Nutcracker of Middle Georgia. A 10-year veteran of the annual production, my oldest niece performed beautifully in Macon, Ga.’s Grand Opera House, a 131-year-old theatre once graced by the likes of Charlie Chaplin, Houdini, Will Rogers, Bob Hope and George Burns. When asked if she liked the Nutcracker, my 2-year-old said, “No, it had rats in it.” 🙂

1. My high school football team won the state championship for the first time since 1978! “They were able to reach so high because they were standing on the shoulders of giants, red-headed giants who played circa 1988-1992,” my brother and fellow Westminster Wildcat football alum quipped. Go ‘Cats!

History and Hers

Four score (in years) and several days ago, an Atlanta writer said, “In a moment of weakness I have written a book.”

That book was “Gone With the Wind” and the author, of course, Margaret Mitchell. Well ahead of her time, Mitchell became famous for writing about well before her time.

The colorful quote about her 1,048-page Civil War epic came on the anniversary of another famous piece of writing, this one all of 270 words. A great writer who doubled as president, Abraham Lincoln issued the succinct yet epochal Gettysburg Address on the same November date.

Abe’s “Gettysburg Portrait,” which would become the model for the Lincoln Memorial statue, was taken on November 8th, 1863, 37 years to the day before Mitchell’s birth.

Relics in The Lee House