Bohemian South

A river with a history of ferry boats and Civil War battles may one day provide a new route for hikers who finish the Appalachian Trail to continue south until they reach the Gulf of Mexico, a national conservation group says. Leaders envision the Chattahoochee River as a way to allow Appalachian Trail hikers to reach the Gulf either on trails along its banks or in a canoe or kayak on the river. The trail already stretches from Maine to north Georgia. The Chattahoochee’s headwaters, in the north Georgia mountains, are near the trail’s southernmost section.

A great idea.

Loyal fans have been begging Mary Kay [Andrews} to write more Callahan stories but the prolific author hasn’t resurrected the character because she has been busy churning out clever novels. But now, just in time for the holidays, Callahan is making a comeback in a short story called “Fatal Fruitcake.” … Perhaps the most delicious part of Mary’s Kay’s plan is that she will donate a dollar from the sale of every $9.95 print copy of “Fatal Fruitcake” to American Red Cross disaster relief. She also will earmark a percentage of electronic sales to the Red Cross. The print version of “Fatal Fruitcake” is a limited-edition (500 copies) signed and numbered short story that Mary Kay has self-published.

Mary Kay Andrews’s best-selling books are often described as “chick lit” but she wrote a very good series of mysteries featuring a main character called Callahan before her popular new books. The earlier books appeared under her real name, Kathy Hogan Trocheck. She is donating money for victims of Hurricane Sandy because she has a lot of past experience with hurricanes as a former Floridian and a former Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter who covered some huge storms. She also has good friends who were affected by Sandy. Funny thing about all this to me is that my wife, who once traveled on a book tour with Kathy/Mary Kay through California, and I had lunch with her today at Brogen’s on St. Simons Island and she didn’t even mention this good project.

Four days have passed since President Barack Obama took enough of the electoral college to secure a second term and Florida has still not quite counted 100 percent of its ballots. But with the last absentee votes from overseas trickling in and precincts firming up, Florida’s Secretary of State today finally announced Obama would walk away with its 29 electoral votes. President Obama took the state by a paper-thin margin over challenger Mitt Romney at 50 percent to 49.1, or roughly 74,000 votes — barely over the half a percent margin that would have mandated a recount.

Finally! But a great result, anyway. Thank you to the good voters of Florida.

Zane Tankel, the CEO of Applebee’s New York Franchise, Apple-Metro, is so dedicated to not spending money on his employees that he’s refusing to hire anyone new. Why? Because he might have to provide them health care. Under the Affordable Care Act, a business of 50 people or more must provide a health care option for its employees by 2014. The 40 Applebee’s restaurants in New York employ hundreds of people, and Tankel believes providing them with health insurance plans will be too costly. In an appearance on Fox Business News, the CEO said he won’t be able to hire new people because of the law, and even floated the idea of layoffs.

In case you’re tempted to eat at an Applebee’s soon, you might want to consider a different restaurant that cares more about its employees and is a better corporate citizen. Olive Garden and Red Lobster were already on my personal boycott list. Now, Applebee’s is on the list, too. The good news? I’ll probably be eating healthier by avoiding these places.

In his own words, “he’s done”. Philip Roth, for half a century a towering figure of US literature and the author of 31 books including Goodbye Columbus, Portnoy’s Complaint and The Plot Against America, will write no more. The news came quietly, not at some prestigious festival or awards ceremony, but almost as an afterthought, let slip last month during an interview to the French magazine Les inRocks about his most recent – and, it transpires, his last – novel Nemesis, whose French edition has just been published. “Nemesis will be my final book,” he said, making clear there would not even be a memoir. “Look at E M Forster: he stopped writing fiction when he was around 40. I used to do book after book. Now I’ve written nothing for three years.” Instead he had been working on his archives, preparing to hand them over to his biographer, Blake Bailey. “I don’t want to write my own memoir. I want my biographer to have the material before I die.” Mr Roth is perhaps his country’s most decorated living author, a peerless chronicler of the American Jewish experience that provides the theme of many of his novels, many of them highly autobiographical. Goodbye Columbus, a novella published in 1959, won him the National Book Award for Fiction, at the age of 26. Portnoy’s Complaint, an explicit and hilarious account of the masturbatory fantasies of a lustful and mother-obsessed young Jewish bachelor that was published in 1969, made him both controversial and famous.

The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it would take a fresh look at the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the signature legacies of the civil rights movement.

Sorry to say this, but as a Southerner from a family who has lived in this region for generations, I do not believe the time has come for lifting Voting Rights Act requirements. And, if those requirements are to be lifted any time soon, Alabama — where this challenge began — is not the place to start.

Secretary of State Ken Detzner, facing a tough grilling from CNN’s Ashley Banfield, concedes that “we could have done better … we will do better” in handling the election in Florida as a growing chorus of voices is openly ridiculing the state for its latest electoral embarrassment.

Detzner attributed the extarordinarily long lines at early voting sites to the length of the ballot and the fact that a record number of people participated in the election. But under Banfield’s questioning, he said it’s time for the Legislature to expand the types of early voting sites, beyond elections offices, city halls and libraries.

Florida residents have expressed their vitriol with the state’s troublesome elections process in waves in recent days, by firing off thousands of angry emails to Gov. Rick Scott. From all over the state, Floridians have bombarded the governor’s email address with their voting horror stories, and their embarrassment that Florida was still counting votes long after Pres. Barack Obama was declared the winner of Tuesday’s election.

The messages—and the national ridicule—have not been reflected in Scott’s public statements. He maintains that Florida “did the right thing.” Scott did say he would talk to his Sec. of State, Ken Detzner about possible fixes.

Nigeria is “at war” with Islamist sect Boko Haram and should not negotiate with its leaders who are “mass murderers”, Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said on Friday.

President Goodluck Jonathan said earlier this year his government was open to dialogue with the sect, whose insurgency has killed an estimated 2,800 people since 2009. The sect is styled on the Afghan Taliban and while it usually targets security and government officials, it has also struck churches, mosques and universities, becoming the biggest security threat in Africa’s top oil producer.

“Don’t talk to mass murderers. You are not obliged to talk to those who made the killing of innocent people their philosophy,” Soyinka told reporters at a conference in Lagos. “This is a security issue. It becomes a question of who goes down: is it the community? Is it society? Is it the nation? Or is it a bunch of killers who are totally beyond control?”

Soyinka, 78, who sports a distinctive white Afro hairstyle, is a playwright and one of Africa’s leading intellectuals. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.

Although I should know more about this situation, I can’t say that I do. I did meet Wole Soyinka while he was teaching at Emory University, though, and I have enormous respect for his opinions.