www.markholder.org

Yes, hindsight is truly 20/20. Georgia is drowning in new cases of Covid-19, no doubt due to Governor Brian Kemp's insistence to re-open the state to please his hero at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Kemp, the same man who ran for Governor while holding office as Secretary of State, an office in charge of overseeing the electoral process , has bumbled his way through the pandemic almost as embarrassingly as Trump, complete with dumb quotes, obvious ignorance of the situation he faces, and surrounded by flunkies who assure him he's doing everything well. At least his body count is lower than Trump's. Georgia is devolving into Florida North, but this will somehow be blamed on migrating birds bringing the madness north as they fly north for the winter. Times like these make this writer ask "What if...?" but such an exercise is exhausting and ultimately frustrating. Election day is only 16 weeks away. What unfolds in anyone's guess.

What a year 2020 has become. As the federal government (particularly the head of the executive branch) dithered, a microscopic killer grew in strength and swept across the globe. A novel virus; one which humans have not been exposed to and thus have no immunity from. No effective treatment, no vaccine at this time. The possibilities are horrendous. At first it was a China problem, then an Asia problem, before it became a global problem. In my home state of Georgia, it has become a human behavior problem. The state has been partially shut down for a matter less than one month, yet is set to reopen in days. Never mind that our governor claimed he was unaware that the virus could spread via asymptomatic persons, earning himself a place on the Dumbest Governors list. The state is reopening with a mind-boggling list of businesses: hair salons, barber shops, tattoo parlors, massage parlors, bars. These are the last  businesses that should open, yet Kemp, doing his best impression of a son

This photo is an example of what I call a happy accident. While wandering in a cemetery in Rome, Georgia, I found this stunning, weather worn sculpture. I took my camera (then a Nikon P-50) from my pocket, composed the shot and pressed the shutter button. It was an overcast day and the exposure was a bit longer than expected; also, the P-50 had noticable shutter lag. The result is this photo, in all its blurred, slightly offcenter composition. This happy accident is a much better photo than what I had in mind when tripping the shutter.

On a mountain road in northeast Georgia, not far from the town of  Dahlonega , stands the chimney of a house long fallen. One wonders what became of the home and those who dwelt in it. This was gold country, home to the first gold rush, twenty years before John Sutter discovered gold in a creek in California. What fortune led to the building of this chimney, and what misfortune led to it being all that remains of a settler's dream?

I'm spending a little time on  Ancestry these days, and between online resources and talking with relatives, I'm learning quite a bit about my forebears. My paternal great grandparents have proven to be a fascinating study. Let's take a look at the story of John Wesley Holder and Mary Crider Holder John Wesley is a bit of a mystery. He was a sharecropper on the Crider farm in Rocky Face, Georgia. No photos exist of the man, and very little is known of him. What is known is that in 1909, John Wesley, age 37, married Mary Crider, age 25 and a daughter of landowner Elijah Crider, on December 26. This didn't go well with her father, who disowned his newlywed daughter. As they say, nevertheless, she persisted, embracing the life of a laborer's wife and giving birth to four children. Life was hard; they lived in a shack on the farm, subsisting only on her husband's labor. Before his death, my grandfather recalled waking many a cold winter morning to find snow o