Trouble in God's Country
If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you know that I try to pay attention to public policy from the rural Georgia perspective that I live. Pike County (Where's that? That's the way we like it.) is just far enough out of Atlanta that no one has ever heard of it. The sharp-eyed on Twitter know right where it is: ATL179027. As you can see, 27 miles from the world's busiest airport (Hmmm, hadn't thought about that lately) isn't that far out of the big city. So, it's not the distance, it's the time.
What truly separates this county is the lack of roads. It's only 27 miles to "the big airport" but it's an hour's drive. Pike is as far away from the interstates as you can get anywhere around Atlanta. It truly is a place where "you can't get there from here".
Back in the day, when I was Chairman of the Democratic Party of Pike County, I had to think about how the County would develop. Nobody down here wants it to be developed but the developers have their ways. Anyway, I pulled out a map (I love maps) of Georgia and started drawing straight lines between any city pairs you could think of in and/or near Georgia. Atlanta to Macon, Columbus to Augusta, Savannah to Chattanooga, Greenville, SC to Birmingham, AL. Not one of them ran through Pike County. Except for one: Atlanta to Albany, GA. (Gulp.)
Take a good look at those numbers. I took them from John Hopkin's Center for Systems Science and Engineering's excellent page, tracking COVID19 (at 6PM on April 6, 2020). It's pretty amazing that Albany, GA has more deaths than Atlanta. (Metro Atlanta consists of several counties but the City of Atlanta is almost completely in Fulton County.) If it gets you interested in the problems facing rural Georgia -- actually rural America -- then I'm doing my job.
And all this is a wind up just to introduce you to a new blog I'm reading: Trouble in God's County. Charlie Hayslett runs it and , unlike me, is a whiz with numbers. I'll let you read up on his background for yourself and I'll stop writing so you can go read his. I'm really enjoying it. I hope you will too.
Don Brown
April 6, 2020
What truly separates this county is the lack of roads. It's only 27 miles to "the big airport" but it's an hour's drive. Pike is as far away from the interstates as you can get anywhere around Atlanta. It truly is a place where "you can't get there from here".
Back in the day, when I was Chairman of the Democratic Party of Pike County, I had to think about how the County would develop. Nobody down here wants it to be developed but the developers have their ways. Anyway, I pulled out a map (I love maps) of Georgia and started drawing straight lines between any city pairs you could think of in and/or near Georgia. Atlanta to Macon, Columbus to Augusta, Savannah to Chattanooga, Greenville, SC to Birmingham, AL. Not one of them ran through Pike County. Except for one: Atlanta to Albany, GA. (Gulp.)
Take a good look at those numbers. I took them from John Hopkin's Center for Systems Science and Engineering's excellent page, tracking COVID19 (at 6PM on April 6, 2020). It's pretty amazing that Albany, GA has more deaths than Atlanta. (Metro Atlanta consists of several counties but the City of Atlanta is almost completely in Fulton County.) If it gets you interested in the problems facing rural Georgia -- actually rural America -- then I'm doing my job.
And all this is a wind up just to introduce you to a new blog I'm reading: Trouble in God's County. Charlie Hayslett runs it and , unlike me, is a whiz with numbers. I'll let you read up on his background for yourself and I'll stop writing so you can go read his. I'm really enjoying it. I hope you will too.
Don Brown
April 6, 2020
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