Monday, October 5, 2009

An interesting sight

Sunday was one of those days that really reminded me that the seasons have changed from Summer to Fall.

There wasn't much scheduled for the day - I had the idea of doing some house work and such but then Josh wanted to head out to a Sorghum festival. It was a quick drive out to the county and over a rattling wooden bridge. There wasn't much there, but it was fun to get out of the house for a while and get away from some tests that I needed to post.


It was interesting to watch the old machines squeeze the juices out of the Sorghum cane and the huge cooking trough. I saw the very same set up when I had to give out information at a similar sorghum festival in Lawrence County (around Ironton) back when I worked for LCCAO. I assume that there are only so many ways to turn the cane juice into some form of potable sugars so once it was figured out the basic design / system was spread from county to county.

Afterward, we were driving up to the store and I saw a huge string of people along side the road. I'm not sure what was the occasion, but for some reason there was a huge campaign to announce that "Abortion Kills".

I wasn't aware of any national awareness campaign for that Sunday, but there were almost four blocks of people shouting to get people's attention as they drove by. I've never understood the concept of the 'string of people with signs' campaign. Does it draw any more attention to an issue? Are they hoping that someone will see the validity of their sign and say to themselves, "Ya know, they're right," and change their lives accordingly because four blocks of people held up signs?

All I can see as the aim to such a stunt is to get media attention. An image like this is perfect for a local newspaper. It gets the public's attention, granted, but does it do anything with it once they have it?