Vienna, Seville and Rochelle, Georgia

 First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2487 ; A Landing A Day blog post number 927

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N32^o 2.243’, W83^o 33.335’) puts me in Cen-S Georgia:

 

Here’s my local map, showing the towns named for cities in Europe:

I’m not going to bother with a Street Atlas streams-only map, and move straight to Google Earth (GE).  As I was using the GE elevation tool to figure out what was downhill from my landing, here’s what I found:

Obviously, the yellow pushpins show various elevations, and the yellow line is more-or-less my drainage pathway.  Notice that runoff from my landing heads down to elevation 323, and then has no where to go.

Here’s a close-up of the low spot:

Now wait a second.  This is one of my “internal drainage” landings!  I’ve had a ton of NV, UT and CA internal drainage landings, and a fair amount in NM, OR and AZ; but none before in Georgia! 

Typically, this kind of drainage system is in arid regions, subject to fairly recent (geologically speaking) tectonic activity that ends up producing closed basins.  Georgia doesn’t fit.

I’ve had some internal drainage landings in the Nebraska Sand Hills, where the near-surface geology is predominantly made of thick sand beds.  Rainfall simply soaks in rather than running off.  So, I checked on the soils near my landing, and found the Wilcox County Soil Survey.  Here’s a map:

So, I landed in an area with Cowarts-Nankin soils.  What are Cowarts-Nankin soils, one might ask.  Well, here’s the answer:

A “loamy sand” means that there’s mostly sand, with a little finer-grained stuff like silt.  So, my guess is that the low spot is underlain by very sandy soils (and not much silt), and the water that makes its way there soaks in, and makes its way underground and then flows slowly (maybe a few 10s of feet per year) through the sands towards eventual discharge in surface water, likely in one of these streams:

Unlike western internal landings where the water never makes its way to the ocean, here it does, although it might take years to get there . . .

Staying with GE, here’s the closest that the Orange Dude could get to my landing spot:

And here’s what he sees:

As you can tell by this post’s title, I’ve decided to feature European cities, rather than their Georgia counterparts.  Believe me, if I found a decent hook here in Georgia, I’d go with it.  But the truth is that I found all of the small towns in the vicinity of my landing to be:

So, off to Europe I go.  I’ll start with Vienna.  My first order of business was to check on how the locals pronounce the name of their town.  Just as I expected, it’s pronounced:  VY-yenna.

After confirming that Vienna Georgia was named after Vienna Austria, I started to look for a simple little hook, knowing that Vienna Austria would entail more history & culture than I could digest (or want to write about).

From the website “10 fun facts about Vienna by Kaley Ann”:

• Vienna is the only capital city in the world to produce significant quantities of wine within its city limits. Home to over 1,700 acres of vineyards and 320 vintners, the Viennese love their wine.
• Vienna is often called The City of Music, or the World’s Capital of Music, as more famous composers have lived here than in any other city in the world. Between 1750 and 1825, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Joseph Haydn and Franz Schubert lived there.  A little later, Johann Straus and Johannes Brahms also called Vienna home.
• Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, lived and worked in Vienna for much of his career.
• The Wiener Riesenrad, constructed in 1897, is the oldest still operating ferris wheel in the world. Located in the Wurstelprater amusement park, this is one of Vienna’s most popular tourist attractions.
• Pez, the fun little tablet candies that we all know and love, were invented in Vienna in 1927. The name Pez is an abbreviation on the German word “pfefferminz”, meaning peppermint. Because the original PEZ candies only came in that one flavor! The dispenser was invented in 1949, designed to look like a lighter. Smoking was prohibited at that time, so the Pez slogan was “No Smoking – PEZing Allowed.”
• The snow globe was also invented in Vienna. In 1900, Erwin Perzy, a fine instruments mechanic, was trying to improve the brightness of lightbulbs for a surgical lamp. But instead, he accidentally invented a snow globe. Perzy and his brother to open The Original Vienna Snow Globe shop. Over 100 years later, they are still making traditional snow globes right in Vienna, all hand painted and manually assembled.

Now, I’ll give the same treatment to Seville.  I couldn’t find anything on its local pronunciation.  SEE-ville, anyone? 

Anyway, Seville Spain is incredibly beautiful and has a great reputation as a tourist mecca.  A point of interest about Seville is that it has a “secret code” that is more-or-less NO8DO.   Here are Google Images of the code:

As you can see, it’s all over the city.  Here’s some info from NotJustATourist.com:

Inscribed across every alleyway and plaza is a top secret message reading: ‘NO8DO’. The “8” is said to symbolize a skein (small coil) of yarn. The Spanish word for skein is ‘madeja’. Replace the 8 with madeja and you have ‘no madeja do’.

Repeat the code out loud and it sounds like ‘No meh day hah doe’. This phrase can be roughly translated to “It has not abandoned me”.

The code was encrypted long ago by the 13^th century King Alfonso X. When the King’s own son attempted to usurp his power, Seville remained loyal and did not abandon him. As a thanks, Alfonso X gifted the citizens a heartfelt personal message.

There you have it.

Of course, you’ve heard of Vienna and Seville, but how about Rochelle?  Well, it turns out that Rochelle GA was named after La Rochelle France.

La Rochelle is on the west coast of France, on the Atlantic Ocean.  The city is protected from open ocean batterings by two islands, the Ile de Re and the Ile D’Orleron.  Here’s a Google map:

 

Like Vienna and Seville, it is replete with history and culture, and I’m pretty much going to ignore both.  But (unlike Vienna & Seville) it’s on the sea . . .

The Orange Dude couldn’t have been happier when I sent him from rural Georgia (no offense, rural Georgia) to check out La Rochelle.  I sent him down to the “Vieux Port” (Old Harbor), to take a look around.  Right off, he saw this:

And then, not moving in the X-Y coordinate plane, but spinning on his Z axis, he saw this:

The two ancient forts guard the entrance to la Vieux Port.  Here’s a GE shot, showing the inner harbor, and two forts:

Here’s a shot posted on GE by Jean-Baptiste Engelking (French or German?) of the entrance to the harbor:

It seems to me that if you were sailing an enemy combatant ship, and you wanted to enter the harbor, you were in deep trouble . . .

Here’s another shot by Mark Jone.  (Yo, Mark, are you sure there’s not an “s” on the end of your last name?):

Anyway, while perusing GE, I saw this incredibly-huge marina:

And a closer view:

And a closer view yet:

I had the OD head over to take a look, and here’s what he saw:

Wow. 

I checked out other photos posted in GE in the general vicinity of La Rochelle, and here’s what I found.  First this amazing shot by Dennis Derrien:

And this, by Isabelle Bertrand:

Here’s a shot by Nicholas Fourcade of a bridge that goes out to the Ile de Re:

And a lovely shot, just off the Ile D’Orleron, by Nadine Nedelec:

Enough Europe. I’ve got to get back to the good ol’ US of A.  I’ll close with a shot posted on GE by Jessica Parks, taken a few miles north of my landing:

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

© 2020 A Landing A Day

 

Starkville and Sturgis, Mississippi

 First timer?  In this formerly once-a-day blog (and now pretty much a once-a-week blog), I use an app that provides a random latitude and longitude that puts me somewhere in the continental United States (the lower 48).  I call this “landing.”

I keep track of the watersheds I land in, as well as the town or towns I land near.  I do some internet research to hopefully find something of interest about my landing location. 

To find out more about A Landing A Day (like who “Dan” is) please see “About Landing” above.  To check out some relatively recent changes in how I do things, check out “About Landing (Revisited).”

Landing number 2486 ; A Landing A Day blog post number 926

Dan:  Today’s lat/long (N33^o 27.793’, W88^o 57.775’) puts me in Cen-NE Mississippi:

My local map shows my proximity to Starkville, the proud home of Mississippi State University:

Taking a very local look at my streams-only map:

I landed in the watershed of Jackson Branch (of Self Creek); on to Self Creek; on to Trim Cane Creek.  Zooming back:

Trim Cane Creek discharges to Line Creek; on to Tibbee Creek; to Catalpa Creek; and finally to the Tombigbee River (I’m ignoring the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway, part of a man-made connector between the Tennessee River & the Tombigbee, and thus to the Gulf of Mexico).

But wait a second!  Counting the Jack Branch as a creek, I landed in the watershed of six (count ‘em) six creeks!  Jackson, Self, Trim Cane, Line, Tibbee and Catalpa!  I did a fairly extensive search of my landing spreadsheet, and I’m convinced that this is the one and only time (out of 2486 landings) that I’ve been able to identify six creeks as part of my landing watershed system!

Moving over to Google Earth, here’s a close-up shot of my landing:

 

I wonder what the clearings are?   I’ve seen areas like this where hunters clear out some woods so they can get better shots at passing deer . . .

Anyway, I pretty much landed in the woods, so once again, we don’t get a good look at my landing spot:

 

This’ll have to do:

 

The Orange Dude traveled down the road a piece to find a bridge over Trim Cane Creek:

The woods are so dense, you can hardly see any water.  So, here’s the bridge:

I’ll start with Starkville.  It actually has a rather dark history in the world of whites vs. blacks; but I won’t go into that.  Nothing to be gained.  But today, it’s actually a very integrated, very cool college town.  Mississippi State University is huge, with an enrollment of almost 22,000.  It has a research and development budget of %240 million; largest in Mississippi.  Take that, Ole Miss . .  .

In their more-than 120-year history, the Bulldogs have won 21 individual national championships and 30 regular season conference championships. The school is noted for a pervasive baseball fan culture, with Dudy Noble Field holding 17 of the top 25 all-time NCAA attendance records and the school’s Left Field Lounge being described as an epicenter of college baseball.

We’ll take a quick GE SV trip to Dudy Noble Field:

Quite the stadium – nicer than many minor league parks.  So, what’s the Left Field Lounge?  It was Wiki-clickable:

The Left Field Lounge is the area beyond the outfield fence in Dudy Noble Field. It is truly unique in college baseball, and has enabled the grounds to be named the “#1 place to watch college baseball.”

The Left Field Lounge started in the 1960s with fans driving cars and trucks into the area to watch a game. In the late 1960s, fans started bringing grills, tables, and ice chests full of drinks for a full tailgate party experience.

As the area became more popular, a line would form to get in before the game.  The area would fill up, and some would be turned away. In the early 1970s one truck driven to the Left Field Lounge would not start and was unable to leave after the game was over, so the owners just left the truck there.

For the next game, the truck was still there, creating what was essentially a reserved spot. Other fans picked up on this idea and brought in trucks and grills with the intention of leaving them there.  Eventually, the university established rules for the spots in Left Field Lounge.

Spaces were rented for the season, and after all of the spaces were filled, those not receiving a space were placed on a waiting list.

The famed author John Grisham is an alumnus of Mississippi State and avid fan of MSU college baseball. For the book Inside Dudy Noble: A Celebration of Mississippi State Baseball, he wrote an introduction about his time at MSU and in the Left Field Lounge.

Here are some excerpts:

I guess every ballpark, in earlier times, was something else. Great things come from humble origins and all that, but it’s difficult to believe Dudy Noble was once a cow pasture. I discovered it early in March of 1975 while a sophomore at State. This was before Polk [a legendary baseball coach], and the crowds were small. On those cool spring nights, I would take a thermos of coffee and sit by myself in the bleachers by first base. I was 20, older than some of the kids I was watching, and had just recently hung up my spikes because I couldn’t hit a junior college curve ball. I was sad because I wasn’t playing, yet I loved to watch the game. It was a pleasant place to be in the spring, but the park wasn’t magical, yet.

The following year State hired Ron Polk, and Dudy Noble snapped back to life. He won, as he always has and always will, and suddenly the stands were full, the crowds were loud, the trucks and trailers appeared in left field, the Lounge was open for business, and the clouds of barbecue smoke became a symbol of baseball success at Mississippi State. We outgrew the old park, and he convinced us to build a new one.

The older I become, the more I find myself drawn back to Dudy Noble. There are many reasons. It’s great baseball played by very talented kids. The game is pure and uncorrupted by money. The place is filled with memories, both of my college days and of the great games and moments since then. It’s a wonderful place to unwind. The food is plentiful. The people are happy. The mood is festive. Time is meaningless. The game is played without a clock. There are no telephones in Left Field. Deadlines are more distant. Appointments seem insignificant. Regardless of wins and losses, I always feel better when I leave Dudy Noble than when I arrive. There are few places of which this can be said.

Just a quick word about Grisham.  I just finished his novel “The Guardians” about a small organization (“Guardian Ministries”) dedicated to finding innocent people falsely convicted of major crimes (generally murder) who are serving life sentences or awaiting the death penalty.  And then (obviously), they work hard to prove their innocence and get them out of jail.  Not a great book, but definitely readable, and I enjoyed it.

Grisham’s book is based on an actual organization – The Centurion Ministries – based in Princeton NJ (less than 10 miles from my home).  There are numerous parallels – obviously, Mr. Grisham got permission from Centurion.  And, my wife and I actually know a woman who works at Centurion . . .

Moving west to the tiny “town” of Sturgis (pop 200).  Besides the fact that they have an annual motorcycle rally (modeled after the much larger, original one in Sturgis ND), I saw on Wiki that it was the home of Kid Thomas.  Kid was Wiki-clickable:

Louis Thomas Watts, commonly known as Kid Thomas was an American musician in the rock, rock & roll and blues genres.

Kid Thomas was born in 1934 in Sturgis, MS.  As a child he moved to Chicago, Illinois, and learned the harmonica. He initially played blues, but then switched to rock ‘n roll. By the early 1950s, he played regularly with Muddy Waters, Elmore James and Bo Diddley, and as a solo performer.

He traveled to Los Angeles with the idea of emulating the success of Little Richard. There, he met record producer George Motola, and in 1959 recorded the single “Rockin’ This Joint To-Nite,” which was released on Motola’s Transcontinental Records label.

The record has been described as “one of the wildest rock’n’roll discs of all time with Kid Thomas blowing his harmonica and shouting out the lyrics in a frantic frenzy.”  However, it was not a commercial success. He continued to perform in Los Angeles clubs.

In 1965, he recorded two singles for the Muriel Records label, “The Hurt Is On” and “Wail Baby Wail”, another full-blooded rocker featuring guitar by Marshall Hooks, but neither were hits.

Finding little commercial success in the latter half of the 1960s, Kid Thomas worked mowing lawns in Los Angeles. On September 3, 1969 (at age 35), while driving his truck he struck a young boy and killed him. Arrested on a charge of manslaughter, the charge was later dismissed for lack of evidence. However, the boy’s father waited outside the courthouse and shot him. Kid Thomas died at UCLA Medical Center, Beverly Hills on April 5, 1970.

Ouch. 

Here’s his 1959 single “Rockin’ this Joint Tonight.”  Remember, this song never took off:

 

If I were producing this song, I would have slowed him down just a little . . .

And here’s a “B” side from one of his singles, “You Heard What I said,” which I think is better:

 

I couldn’t find much in the way of pretty photos near my landing, but I did find this, by Sandra Jaramillo, taken a few miles north of my landing:

 

That’ll do it . . .

KS

Greg

 

© 2020 A Landing A Day