Celebrating 100 years of R.T.

It was on this day in 1905 that Roscoe Tennyson Peebles, my granddad, came into the world in rural northern Emanuel County. That can mean only one thing: It's time to celebrate the Centennial of R.T.

Here are some things you can do to honor R.T.:
+ Be very quiet and not say much.
+ At 9 p.m., have an ice cream float. Pour some pre-made chocolate milk in a small glass and then put a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top.
+ Click your teeth together a lot, like your dentures don't fit right.
+ Work on anything mechanical and get your hands very dirty and grimy.

We'll add some things you should know about R.T. to this blog throughout the year.

Warrentonians quilting for Katrina victims

Emma Sinkfield at Quality of Life and other Warrenton ladies are picking up the needles to help those affected by the hurricane, WJBF-Channel 6 reports.

Read 'Surviving The Corner'

Take 5 or 10 minutes today and read a really nice piece that ran in this weekend's Chronicle, a profile of Washington-Wilkes football player Markeith Wylie, and how his life changed after he was seriously wounded by a gunshot.

Screaming Devils lose to Spalding Co.

By one point, 15-14, in Griffin. The loss makes Warren County 2-1 for the season. Next Friday: A conference matchup with Hancock Central, who are 2-2 after Friday's loss to Putnam County.

Katrina from the air

The National Weather Service has posted some horrifying aerial photos of the devastation along the Gulf Coast. Meanwhile, click here to donate money online to the Red Cross. If you want to volunteer, the closest Red Cross chapter is the one in Augusta, and its Web site is here. The site says they have set up a shelter at Warren Road Baptist Church on Washington Road in Augusta. They're also offering classes on how to help people in disasters (as I understand, people who want to volunteer are being told they shouldn't go to the Gulf unless they are Red Cross-certified disaster relief volunteers). The class schedule is online here.

Meanwhile, if you are trying to find someone lost in the Katrina-affected area, try these two sites: The National Next-of-Kin Registry or the Red Cross' Katrina people-finder page. Or see complete coverage of Hurricane Katrina from the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper.

Top 100 Southern songs?

Some songs with Middle Georgia ties and other roots from the Warrenton area made the The Journal-Constitution's ranking of the Top 100 Songs of the South of all time.

Statesboro Blues, the signature tune of Blind Willie McTell, the great bluesman from Thomson, ranked at No. 53. The band who did the most famous cover version of Statesboro Blues, the Allman Brothers, who recorded in Macon, did quite well, too; Ramblin' Man made it to No. 15 and Blue Sky at No. 66.

Also from Macon, Otis Redding is at No. 16 with (Sittin' on) The Dock of the Bay. Did you know that comedian and Ph.D. Bertice Berry says her mother told her she was Otis' illegitimate daughter? Really. I read it in Dr. Berry's autobiography.

Another interesting fact: Otis Redding and my grandmother were born in the same town, Dawson, Ga., in Terrell County.

One more: My mother and her teenybopper friends at the Woman's College of Georgia in the late 1960s were all huge fans of Otis Redding. One of Mom's college friends got a summer job at a Macon department store, and one day Otis came in to buy a tricycle for his little boy. The girl fainted. At leat that's what Mom said.

Turning toward Athens, the B-52s landed Love Shack at 22 (three words: Tin roof rusted). And Maps and Legends at No. 99 was the only item I saw on the list by R.E.M., though I may not have looked carefully enough.

You'll need Macromedia Flash software on your computer (it's free, you just have to download it) to see the whole list, for which I'm having a devil of a time trying to find the permanent link. Until then, go this link to the AJC blog discussion of the top 100, where tempers are clearly flaring.

For the record, the list was topped by Billie Holiday's rendition of Strange Fruit. Jimmie Rodgers, the singin' brakeman, who was idolized by my late guitar-picking Warrenton granddad, was at No. 35 with his seminal Blue Yodel No. 1, largely known to the public as T for Texas. And two of my late mother's favorites were Georgia on My Mind at No. 9 and Midnight Train to Georgia at No. 17. If I didn't have my fingers on the keyboard, I'd be doing the appropriate Pips arm motions right now.

Even worse than Jim Cantore ...

In regard to the recent observation here about Jim Cantore of the Weather Channel: The only thing worse than having Jim Cantore show up in your town is having Christiane Amanpour show up.

When Jim drives up, it's bad, but there's still time to leave. When Christiane shows up, it's just too late. Something military or Biblical has happened by then.

For the record, I'm a huge fan of Christiane. But she may be the fifth horseman of the apocalypse. You remember the story: First, the white horse comes in with the Antichrist. Then War comes in on the red horse. Then Famine on the black horse. Then Christiane and her crew get off a Black Hawk with an advance unit of the 82nd Airborne.

CNN and the Weather Channel should cooperate (they're both headquarted in Atlanta, by the way) and create a primetime news show with both Cantore and Amapour as co-anchors. It could be titled Storm Stories from [Beirut/Gaza/Iraq/name your world hotspot here].

More area football results

Thomson beat Liberty County, 3-0; Hancock Central lost to Greene County, 48-7; Washington County beat Putnam County, 34-13; Jefferson County beat Harlem, 41-12; and Glascock County lost to Long County, 51-14, putting the Panthers at 0-3 for the season. Further south, Swainsboro lost to Statesboro, 35-0.

Warren County is now 2-0 for the season. The Screaming Devils' next opponents this coming Friday will be Spalding. The AAA Jaguars are 0-3 for the season, the Journal-Constitution says. (And see more scores from around the state on the AJC site.)

Screaming Devils beat Jenkins Co.

Warren County now has a 2-0 record this season. More good news: WCHS was also rated No. 10 in the "Prep Power Poll" on Friday by Augusta-area sports writers.

Hancock Co schools were closed Thursday due to lack of gasoline, NYT says

It's in the main New Orleans wrapup story in the New York Times online right now. My Google News search isn't finding any other mention of this elsewhere on the Web -- can anyone confirm whether this is true? Meanwhile, Gov. Sonny Perdue has lifted the state gas tax. In other news about Hurricane Katrina, the NYT has posted the complete transcript (expletives not deleted) of that radio interview by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin that has been all over TV today.

Gas shortages hit surrounding counties

Police have to direct traffic in Sandersville after stations run out; lines back up and impede traffic in Washington, the AP reports. The average cost of gas in the Augusta area was $2.866 earlier today, according to AAA's Web site; a year ago, it was $1.684.

Warren County 5th-worst SAT scores in state

Bad news: Newly released data from the state Department of Education shows Warren County has the 5th-worst average total SAT score in the state, with a total score of 783.3. Warren had 18 test-takers, the state said, the 9th-lowest number of test-takers of any school district in the state. The average verbal score was 383.9, the fourth-worst in the state, and the average math score was 399.4, the seventh-worst in the state. Hancock County fared even worse than Warren, ranking the second-worst SAT score in the state, of 732.8. (The worst average score of all was from Talbot County. The highest score was from the Jefferson City school district, with an average of 1096.8.)

Friends of the Ogeechee merges with Canoochee group

They're now going to be called Ogeechee-Canoochee Riverkeeper, according this story in The Swainsboro Forest-Blade. Their offices will be in Statesboro. The Friends of the Ogeechee site and the Canoochee Riverkeeper sites are still up.