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© 2004 Jean Shifrin Introduction Essay for Georgia 24/7 Sweet Georgia By Bo Emerson Take a deep Georgia breath and imbibe 12 body-building vitamins and seven essential amino acids. Pumped full of jasmine, gardenia, magnolia, and mimosa, the atmosphere is nutritional; on summer evenings, you can walk out into the Krispy-Kreme-sweet air and lean up against it. Yes, there is something in the air in this overly blessed, Deep South nation, a place once crushed under Sherman's heel and now the glittering buckle of the Sun Belt. In 1732 James Oglethorpe won a charter from King George II and offered Georgia to the world as a refuge for the "worthy poor." Debtors, the shady, and the intrepid--they could smell it. Now Georgia booms. The state's mild climate, its right-to-work laws, cheap labor, and pro-business government keep the economic pot simmering even through downturns. Several counties in metro Atlanta, unofficial capitol of the New South, rank among the fastest growing in the country. The shock waves from the money bomb still roll north and south from the Big Peach, knocking down trees and leaving subdivisions and cul-de-sacs in their wake. Of course, not all the living is easy. Hispanic immigrants labor in the poultry and construction industries without health care or job security. Georgia is high in infant mortality and child poverty. Tensions between rural and urban, black and white, continue to roil the air. Those tensions surfaced during the recent fight over the state flag and its prominent Confederate battle emblem. A compromise flag was chosen, but before that happened, Georgia's first Republican governor in 130 years rode white resentment into office and revealed that the Civil War ain't quite history yet. It's no accident that Ray Charles, singer of our unmatched state song, "Georgia On My Mind," left for Seattle as a teenager and put 3,000 miles between him and his South Georgia hometown. Who can blame him? For a black man in the 1940s, Georgia wasn't as sweet and clear as moonlight through the pines. On the other hand, for a black man in the 21st century, Atlanta, Georgia is home to the wealthiest, best educated and most politically influential African Americans anywhere. Maybe that has to do with the fact that Georgia claims as a native son America's own Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A materialist, striving state, glorying in the treasures of the world, Georgia plumbs deep into faith, where God lives in snake-handling primitive chapels and corporate megachurches. The faithful [spirit] of Georgia lives in just as many locales: in a paradise called Tybee Island, equal parts pirate, redneck, lunch-bucket bohemian and shabby gentry. Local character Joe Inglesby calls the island "a drinking village with a fishing problem." The spirit is in a velvet Elvis night high up in the Appalachians, where the spilled milk of the galaxy lights the sky and civilization is just a glow to the south. The land stretches wide and accommodates, welcoming transplants from Ohio and New Jersey and from farther afield. For these folks, and for many others, Georgia is still the promised land, a frontier as green and raw as it was in 1732. Browse    View All    Sweet Georgia    Hearth & Home    Hard at Work    Georgia at Play    Reason to Believe    Our Town Photos: 127 Photographers: 34 Towns: 59

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