Category: Huntsville

Huntsville, Alabama – home of NASA, Rocket Scientist Werner Von Braun, The US Space & Rocket Center, Redstone Arsenal and King Cotton – provides many stories that are locally inspired but that are often of national interest as well. Topics include current Mayor Tommy Battle, The Historic Huntsville Depot, and picturesque Big Spring Park.

Sweet Home Alabama – Lynyrd Skynyrd

After I pulled up the photo of Jeff Cook of the Alabama band last week, I took a second look at the photo set I have of Lynard Skynard hoping to find a shot suitable for a future TOCC TV cover. Alas, the band is worthy but my photography is not. Well, reall it is, but putting a horizontal aspect ratio onto a verticle cover just isn’t going to fit.

Jeff Cook Of Alabama Signs Off

I don’t really think that Jeff Cook has been hanging out on the square in downtown Huntsville for 107 years. The photo above was taken in 2005 when the fiddler guitarist of legendary country/pop band Alabama stopped over in Huntsville to sign autographs at the historic Harrison Brother’s Hardware store in downtown Huntsville. The band was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2005.

Snowy Big Spring

Remember the olden days when we used to build web pages with lots of tricks like this? In honor of the white stuff on the ground this weekend, I decided to… stay indoors and drag out this shot, actually nine shots stitched together from the great snow of 2011. I took a bunch of photos in the snow back then that I really like, mostly because I don’t have to go out and get them now.

Confederate General Jeff Sessions Fires A Shot Across The Bow | Don’t Touch My Soldiers !!!

The problem that intelligent and well-informed people face in Alabama, is that there are still plenty of rural places tucked away up in the holler where Johnny still hasn’t traveled farther from home than he has to go to fetch a bucket of water from the well. Even though this observation is quite literally true, it is just as unfortunate that it is also metaphorically true, and so extends to what otherwise appears to be “normal” people living in places like Huntsville. The fact is, the South ain’t gonna “rise again” in the sense that seems to motivate the cretins – that South simply don’t exist, that South was an entirely different animal whose politics and plantations are extinct.

Darren Goforth dTIRRd By Miles & Miles & Miles | Pigs Don’t Learn

In the months since Ferguson, we have seen countless police shoot and kill unarmed (black) men, and virtually the entire country has stated that the consistent excessive use of force is not ok. And yet, the response from law enforcement has been the same old excuses. Oh sure, under enormous public pressure, they did some restructuring in Ferguson. But everywhere else from New York, to Cleveland, and even Huntsville, the law enforcement response has been totally wrong, and totally lacking in contrition.

William Eric Freeman

I do remember thinking that the “consequence” for revealing “classified” information seemed a little distant and out of context. There certainly wasn’t anything I could do, I didn’t know the person, didn’t know if the dossier was just a joke done in poor taste, or a metaphor for something I didn’t yet understand, or whether it could be taken seriously at all. And, since I was the only one in the classroom who saw the material, there was no temptation to discuss the contents with the teacher who showed she wanted none of it, or the other students, which probably would have deemed my assertions unbelievable anyway, thereby making me a fool in the eyes of my fourth grade peers.

Profile Of Indoctrination And Corruption: Madison County Sheriff Blake Dorning

A cops job is dangerous. True enough. But, take another looks a the facts. Since 1880, 22 law enforcement officials have been killed in Madison County. In the last ten years alone, I’ve counted about 15 unnecessary deaths that were the result of jailer depravity, or excessive force by cops. A that rate, the cops have killed around 200 people – almost all of which were innocent or guilty of nothing serious. A track record of 22 cops to 200 innocent citizens isn’t very good. In fact, it’s goddamn unacceptable.