Inspiration

Thurnell shook out his dreams like a quilt for the little boy to play on.

I love that line, about a father who harbors mountains of admiration and love for his young son.

It's from Praying for Sheetrock by Melissa Fay Greene. Have you read it?

It's good. It's good because it jumps back into that part of Georgia history where small, rural towns began to either grow up or die. When their all-white, all-male governments began to crack a little bit. When interstates were laid down. When old men still knit fishing nets by hand. When the African-American citizens of McIntosh county began to realize how bad they were getting duped. And when they decided to do something about it.

But mostly the book is good because it's just a crazy story. Because of racism, because of poverty, because of people's spirits and their persistence to do both good and bad. Because of a criminal who masqueraded as a sheriff and got away with it.  Because of people following through with their dreams. If you haven't read it, I recommend it.

They parked in starry fields in the small hours of the morning and captured fragments, falling from the night sky, of the Voice of America, on black-market radios.  Just this exotic and incredible and forbidden did the voices of the civil rights movement sound to the fishermen, gardeners, and maids of McIntosh County.