I had hoped to get out this Memorial Day Sunday for a nice long bike ride, but my plans have changed.
Sonny’s BarBQ is back.
Sonny’s BarBQ is the name I give smoke from the wildfires which began in South Georgia a month ago, then spread into Florida, where it’s called the Bugaboo fire. But it started here so it gets the name of the Governor of Georgia, a Republican named Sonny Perdue.
Atlanta is over 200 miles from the fire, but for the second time light winds have settled it over our heads. Don’t breathe too deeply. Hope for a cold so you won’t smell it. Lower the window shades as you would against a winter storm. It won’t do you a lick of good.
Sonny’s BarBQ is going to get you, no matter what. It seeps in under the door, it comes into your lungs no matter how softly you breathe. It gets into your clothes, the drapes, the crevices. It strangles your baby in its crib. It shortens your life.
And it continues. This fire is still going on. New smoke is being
created by it. Each day Sonny’s BarBQ moves — up the Blue Ridge,
perhaps, or across to Mississippi. We may say, on those days when the
wind is right, that the smoke isn’t affecting us. But that just means
it’s blowing over the Atlantic or the Gulf — no one thinks of places
without people as being real.
Sonny’s BarBQ doesn’t have to be this way. There is no doubt in my
mind, and should be no doubt in yours, that were our National Guard not
bogged down overseas there would have been equipment and manpower
a-plenty to knock this thing out weeks ago. Instead it goes on and on.
Sonny’s BarBQ is a harbinger, of the real crisis facing our country,
of the ongoing destruction of the planet which threatens the extinction
of the human race. We can ignore the fires in Brazil, or Indonesia —
they are far away. We can’t ignore this.
This is going to be a life-changing event for people across the
Southeast. Folks are going to talk about this for years to come.
They’re going to tell the story to their children and grandchildren.
They should.
This should be the turning point. This is the sign you cannot ignore.
