Between my freelance work and environmental education programs, I’ve amassed quite a storeroom of random trivia about Georgia. Naturally I thought this would be great fodder for a “Did Ya Know” article — so here we go, I hope you enjoy these random bits of not-very-useful trivia about life in Georgia!

So, did ya know?

• Athens is home to the Tree That Owns Itself. In approximately 1832, the former property owner granted his favorite oak tree the “entire possession of itself and of all land within eight feet of it on all sides”. The tree is estimated to have started life between the 16th…

A natural disaster is certainly unfortunate enough, especially for those directly affected. There are people, though, that are intent on making matters worse. Many are already using Hurricane Harvey as their own piggy bank and they will take extraordinary measures to profit from the survivor’s loss — and from your good intentions. Beware.

Below you’ll find the information you need to help you make sure your best efforts and good deeds aren’t manipulated or taken advantage of. And most importantly, that your help actually gets to where it’s needed most.

For starters

There are Facebook and Twitter posts currently circulating that state…

• This essay was originally published at Elephant Journal.

We don’t have an electric can-opener, or a microwave, or television channels, or a home phone.

We heat our house (or one room really) with a wood stove during the winter. During the summer, we open the doors and windows and plug in an oscillating fan. Our little garden grows much of our food, and our chickens provide little protein bombs of nourishment every day.

We reuse everything we can, we shop locally and buy second-hand. We barter and trade with our friend-tribe for raw milk, pastured meat, mechanic work, used refrigerators, and the like.

One of my girlfriends, an adorable, petite, badass hog farmer, summed us kind…

From sea to shining sea, the 4th of July conjures images of fireworks, cookouts and cold beer. People everywhere are rolling out their barbeque grills and donning their stars and stripes to take part in America’s birthday celebration.

Some hard-core history buffs (or anyone who’s ever attended high school) can even quote parts of our Declaration of Independence. Especially this part:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But did you know…

“Party affiliation has become an all-encompassing identity that outweighs the details of specific policies”. — Amanda Taub, New York Times — “Why Americans Vote ‘Against Their Interest’: Partisanship”

It’s curious to me how people are convinced to vote against their own best interests for the sake of being affiliated with the right “team”. It has baffled me that many people, who are good solid humans, can side with a party that blatantly diminishes causes they profess to care about.

I believe this phenomenon is the purposeful design of our “football nation”. We are led to believe we must have loyalty…

It isn’t a secret that Trump isn’t nearly as well spoken as, well, every single other President we’ve ever had. So I thought it’d be fun to do a little “compare and contrast” — especially since Presidential words are forever recorded and attached to the history of our United States. People of tomorrow — those yet to be born — will one day look back on this era and draw conclusions about who we were.

This stuff needs to be contemplated, y’all. So, without further ado, here are statements that Trump has made, followed by statements that other Presidents have…

Donald Trump is a liar.

He is using his lies to coerce you into second guessing yourself and questioning what you have seen and heard with your own eyes and ears. He is purposefully trying to muddy the waters of reason and convince you to believe that the truth is a lie, and that the lies are the facts.

There is a word for what he is doing — it’s called ‘gaslighting’.

In a recent article in Psychology Today, Stephanie Sarkis, PhD and Licensed Mental Health Counselor states:

“Gaslighting is a tactic in which a person or entity, in order to gain more power, makes a victim question their reality. It works much better than you may think”.

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