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In This Issue
- Editorial Staff, Cartoonist Apologize for Comic
- Spec Buggers Queer Coverage
- Contraceptive Addiction: The Next Big Thing
- Letters to the Feditrix
- BOSS Leader on Racism
- Fed Editor on Racism
- Howard Dean Broke my Heart
- More on Columbia Security Department
- Lasers Make Atlanta Almost Cool
- Barnard Student Government Shows Resolution
- Jesus: Zombie Demigod Beloved By All
- Fundamentally Funny Bible Games
- Fed Fun Guide to Columbia Campus
Lasers Make Atlanta Almost Cool
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Lasers Totally Rock Coked-Up City
Shira Backer
Ahhh, the laser show. Growing up in Atlanta, a city "world-class" enough to host the Olympics but not quite world class enough to have any worthwhile tourist attractions outside of the shrine to syrup and carbonation known as the World of Coke, I believed that the Laser Show was the apex of entertainment. You see, I wasn't quite correct in my assertion that the World of Coke is the only thing to see in my hometown; in fact, there are two. Let me explain.
Stone Mountain is one of the most prodigious wonders of Georgia's natural landscape, and is in fact the largest exposed granite formation in the world. Yet Stone Mountain did not always have a 200-foot long carving of President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson hewn into its side. In 1912, the carving existed only in the imagination of Mrs. C. Helen Plane, charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It would take money, perseverance, and the visionary talent of Gutzon Borglum, son of a Danish Mormon bigamist to make Mrs. Plane's dream into a glorious reality.
Borglum, better known as the sculptor responsible for hacking away at the majestic Black Hills of South Dakota until the faces of four deceased white men came to gaze patronizingly for all eternity over what was once Native American holy land, was hired to transform Georgia's own Stone Mountain into a monument to the enduring glory of the fallen Confederacy. He envisioned seven central figures accompanied by "an army of thousands." Lee would be the first of this battalion of rocky Confederates to meet the mountain-his head was finished as of his birthday on January 19th, 1924, but the project then fell victim to a lack of funding, and so the disembodied head of General Robert E. Lee was to adorn the side of the mountain bereft of both a torso and comrades-in-arms for some thirty-nine years.
When 1963 arrived, the nation was arguably a different place than it had been when work first began on the Mountain. As 200,000 people converged on the Mall to hear Martin Luther King deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech, the people of Georgia were busy seeing to it that state funds were used to secure the latest in thermo-jet torch technology. After eight years of arduous thermoblasting, visitors to Stone Mountain Park could at last gaze up at an imposing carving of Davis, Jackson, and Lee sitting regally astride gallant horses, seemingly ready to meet any number of yellow-bellied Yankees in battle and skewer them like chitlins on the tips of their bayonets. The carving is visible from miles away, because it is as large as a football field.
Despite being deemed worthy by many Dixie patriots of being added to the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, and Easter Island as the Eighth Wonder of the World, the carving itself was not enough to draw people in. Hence, the advent of the laser show, that awe-inspiring mélange of light and sound that might aptly be described as the only remotely religious experience of my childhood. Each year on the Fourth of July, my family and I made the pilgrimage among so many pick-up trucks and shirtless men with their family names tattooed across their backs to sit at the foot of Stone Mountain.
If there was a contradiction inherent in watching fireworks explode somewhere beneath Jefferson Davis's left knee as "God Bless America" blared across the grassy lawn blanketed in picnicking rednecks, I certainly never saw it. Every summer show included healthy doses of Kansas, the Allman Brothers, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and culminated with the explosion of a mind-blowing barrage of fireworks as Elvis belted his incomparable version of Dixie over the loudspeakers. Who needed marijuana when the air was so thick with southern pride? And so, at the feet of three illustrious Confederate fathers, each one as tall as an eight-story building, I experienced the sort of ecstatic thrill that most people have to ingest uncommonly strong household chemicals in order to achieve.
Atlanta, as I have come to realize since relocating to New York City, is in fact a much less cosmopolitan place than I realized. Yet Stone Mountain, and in particular the Lasershow Spectacular, impressed upon me at a young age the value of multi-sensory immersion in terrible southern rock music, and instilled in me a deep nostalgia for the days when Scarlett and Rhett sipped sweet tea on the porch of Tara. It only takes a little bit of mental projection to add the one essential element needed to complete the scene...in the words of the Stone Mountain Park informational website, "the stars come out, and a modern laser animation projection system transforms brilliant, colorful lights into dramatic stories, historic tales, and all sorts of comical characters," which can be glimpsed among the soaring white columns and through the Georgia pines.
Stone Mountain is one of the most prodigious wonders of Georgia's natural landscape, and is in fact the largest exposed granite formation in the world. Yet Stone Mountain did not always have a 200-foot long carving of President Jefferson Davis and Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson hewn into its side. In 1912, the carving existed only in the imagination of Mrs. C. Helen Plane, charter member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. It would take money, perseverance, and the visionary talent of Gutzon Borglum, son of a Danish Mormon bigamist to make Mrs. Plane's dream into a glorious reality.
Borglum, better known as the sculptor responsible for hacking away at the majestic Black Hills of South Dakota until the faces of four deceased white men came to gaze patronizingly for all eternity over what was once Native American holy land, was hired to transform Georgia's own Stone Mountain into a monument to the enduring glory of the fallen Confederacy. He envisioned seven central figures accompanied by "an army of thousands." Lee would be the first of this battalion of rocky Confederates to meet the mountain-his head was finished as of his birthday on January 19th, 1924, but the project then fell victim to a lack of funding, and so the disembodied head of General Robert E. Lee was to adorn the side of the mountain bereft of both a torso and comrades-in-arms for some thirty-nine years.
When 1963 arrived, the nation was arguably a different place than it had been when work first began on the Mountain. As 200,000 people converged on the Mall to hear Martin Luther King deliver his "I Have a Dream" speech, the people of Georgia were busy seeing to it that state funds were used to secure the latest in thermo-jet torch technology. After eight years of arduous thermoblasting, visitors to Stone Mountain Park could at last gaze up at an imposing carving of Davis, Jackson, and Lee sitting regally astride gallant horses, seemingly ready to meet any number of yellow-bellied Yankees in battle and skewer them like chitlins on the tips of their bayonets. The carving is visible from miles away, because it is as large as a football field.
Despite being deemed worthy by many Dixie patriots of being added to the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, and Easter Island as the Eighth Wonder of the World, the carving itself was not enough to draw people in. Hence, the advent of the laser show, that awe-inspiring mélange of light and sound that might aptly be described as the only remotely religious experience of my childhood. Each year on the Fourth of July, my family and I made the pilgrimage among so many pick-up trucks and shirtless men with their family names tattooed across their backs to sit at the foot of Stone Mountain.
If there was a contradiction inherent in watching fireworks explode somewhere beneath Jefferson Davis's left knee as "God Bless America" blared across the grassy lawn blanketed in picnicking rednecks, I certainly never saw it. Every summer show included healthy doses of Kansas, the Allman Brothers, and Lynyrd Skynyrd, and culminated with the explosion of a mind-blowing barrage of fireworks as Elvis belted his incomparable version of Dixie over the loudspeakers. Who needed marijuana when the air was so thick with southern pride? And so, at the feet of three illustrious Confederate fathers, each one as tall as an eight-story building, I experienced the sort of ecstatic thrill that most people have to ingest uncommonly strong household chemicals in order to achieve.
Atlanta, as I have come to realize since relocating to New York City, is in fact a much less cosmopolitan place than I realized. Yet Stone Mountain, and in particular the Lasershow Spectacular, impressed upon me at a young age the value of multi-sensory immersion in terrible southern rock music, and instilled in me a deep nostalgia for the days when Scarlett and Rhett sipped sweet tea on the porch of Tara. It only takes a little bit of mental projection to add the one essential element needed to complete the scene...in the words of the Stone Mountain Park informational website, "the stars come out, and a modern laser animation projection system transforms brilliant, colorful lights into dramatic stories, historic tales, and all sorts of comical characters," which can be glimpsed among the soaring white columns and through the Georgia pines.