Neither Your Eyes Nor Your Camera Can Actually See Color. They See White Light!
Don’t tune me out just yet. It’s actually true.
What few people realize about capturing color images is that each capture starts in black and white. There is no such thing as capturing color! Let me try that from a slightly different approach. All color perception (eyes) and color images (cameras, monitors, and print) is generated from shades of white light.
There is an important fact beneath this strange statement. One that will make a MAJOR difference in the way you view, capture, and edit digital images. When you understand the visual choreography stated here, your understanding of color photography might just get bigger. Read on.
Your Eyes See White Light. Absolute white light appears colorless though it is composed of equal amounts of red, green, and blue lightwaves. Your eyes absorb these lightwaves as visual energy and the lenses in your eyes focus this energy onto a dense cluster of light receptors located fovea area on the backside of the retina in your eyes.
You actually have two kinds of receptors in each eye; rods and cones. And the cones are divided into three types, each receiving information about three colors; red, green, and blue. The three types of light receptors send this information to your brain’s visual cortex, which sorts out the values of light and composes them into color values. Only then does this blast of light get interpreted as perceptible colors.
So what I’m saying is actually true. You don’t actually see color, you only see light.
Your camera captures levels of white light. What does all this physiology have to do with photography? The very same principle is at work inside your digital camera. Until the (CMOS or CCD) sensors located on your camera’s image sensor parse the light into specific values of red, green, and blue colors, the camera actually only sees various levels of white light. These levels are specified as luminance, or light-shaping contrast. When the red, green, and blue levels of luminance are combined into a geometric matrix of pixels and projected onto a display screen, then your eyes see evidence of what the camera has captured.
Your camera doesn’t actually see color, it too only sees light! Which harkens back to a prior blog rant… photography is a grand illusion, but one that we all buy into and love.
Bonus print techno-point. Color separations in the printing trade are generated by capturing four different black and white exposures filtered through three primary filters; red, green, and blue. Each of these black and white images eventually produces a single color of the four colors necessary to produce full color pictures. The red filter captures cyan information, the green filter produces magenta, and the blue filter delvers yellow. The fourth “color” is black, which is a toned-down combination of all the other three images. and is used simply to provide tonality to the other colors.
When you understand how light behaves and how it is captured and processed by both your eyes and your digital devices, you’ll shoot better pictures. When you learn how to push those tones and colors around in Photoshop and Lightroom, and edit your pictures with confidence and accuracy, you’ll see remarkable results from your efforts. It all has to start with understanding the fundamentals of light.
If you are involved with preparing images for the printed page, you really need to see you images through the eyes of the printing press. This ain’t no giant inkjet printer, it’s a thunder-beast that has a totally different appetite. Start preparing images that the press can actually digest and you’ll see an amazing difference. You can learn more about that at http://imageprep.net.
If you really want to understand what makes color work, you need to understand how light behaves. And here’s where I can help you. I’ve created a very entertaining and easy-to-understand video series that will teach you these fundamentals and get you on track to capture and produce amazing color. http://gottaknowvideos.com
The Professor Said That There Is No God. The Student Gave Him an Inimitable Answer!
An atheist professor of philosophy pauses before his class and then asks one of his new students to stand:
‘You’re a Christian, aren’t you, son?’
‘Yes sir,’ the student says.
‘So you believe in God?’
‘Absolutely. ’
‘Is God good?’
‘Sure! God’s good.’
‘Is God all-powerful? Can God do anything?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you good or evil?’
‘The Bible says I’m evil.’
The professor grins knowingly. ‘Aha! The Bible! He considers for a moment. ‘Here’s one for you. Let’s say there’s a sick person over here and you can cure him. You can do it. Would you help him? Would you try?’
‘Yes sir, I would.’
‘So you’re good…!’
‘I wouldn’t say that.’
‘But why not say that? You’d help a sick and maimed person if you could. Most of us would if we could. But God doesn’t.’
The student does not answer, so the professor continues. ‘He doesn’t, does he? My brother was a Christian who died of cancer, even though he prayed to Jesus to heal him. How is this Jesus good? Can you answer that one?’
The student remains silent. ‘No, you can’t, can you?’ the professor says. He takes a sip of water from a glass on his desk to give the student time to relax ‘Let’s start again, young fella. Is God good?’
‘Er…yes,’ the student says.
‘Is Satan good?’
The student doesn’t hesitate on this one. ‘No.’
‘Then where does Satan come from?’
The student falters. ‘From God’
‘That’s right. God made Satan, didn’t he? Tell me, son. Is there evil in this world?’
‘Yes, sir…’
‘Evil’s everywhere, isn’t it? And God did make everything, correct?’
‘Yes.’
‘So who created evil?’ The professor continued, ‘If God created everything, then God created evil, since evil exists, and according to the principle that our works define who we are, then God is evil.’
Again, the student has no answer. ‘Is there sickness? Immorality? Hatred? Ugliness? All these terrible things, do they exist in this world?’
The student squirms on his feet. ‘Yes.’
‘So who created them?’
The student does not answer again, so the professor repeats his question. ‘Who created them?’ There is still no answer. Suddenly the lecturer breaks away to pace in front of the classroom. The class is mesmerized. ‘Tell me,’ he continues onto another student. ‘Do you believe in Jesus Christ, son?’
The student’s voice betrays him and cracks. ‘Yes, professor, I do.’
The old man stops pacing. ‘Science says you have five senses you use to identify and observe the world around you. Have you ever seen Jesus?’
‘No sir. I’ve never seen Him.’
‘Then tell us if you’ve ever heard your Jesus?’
‘No, sir, I have not…’
‘Have you ever felt your Jesus, tasted your Jesus or smelt your Jesus? Have you ever had any sensory perception of Jesus Christ, or God for that matter?’
‘No, sir, I’m afraid I haven’t.’
‘Yet you still believe in him?’
‘Yes.’
‘According to the rules of empirical, testable, demonstrable protocol, science says your God doesn’t exist… What do you say to that, son?’
‘Nothing,’ the student replies… ‘I only have my faith.’
‘Yes, faith,’ the professor repeats. ‘And that is the problem science has with God. There is no evidence…only faith.’
The student stands quietly for a moment, before asking a question of His own. ‘Professor, is there such thing as heat? ’
‘Yes.’
‘And is there such a thing as cold?’
‘Yes, son, there’s cold too.’
‘No sir, there isn’t.’
The professor turns to face the student, obviously interested. The room suddenly becomes very quiet. The student begins to explain. ‘You can have lots of heat, even more heat, super-heat, mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don’t have anything called ‘cold’. We can hit d own to 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can’t go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest –458 degrees. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat. You see, sir, ‘cold’ is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat, sir, just the absence of it.’
Silence across the room. A pen drops somewhere in the classroom, sounding like a hammer.
‘What about darkness, professor. Is there such a thing as darkness?’
‘Yes,’ the professor replies without hesitation… ‘What is night if it isn’t darkness?’
‘You’re wrong again, sir. Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light, flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and it’s called darkness, isn’t it? That’s the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn’t. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn’t you?’
The professor begins to smile at the student in front of him. This will be a good semester. ‘So what point are you making, young man?’
‘Yes, professor. My point is, your philosophical premise is flawed to start with, and so your conclusion must also be flawed.’
The professor’s face cannot hide his surprise this time. ‘Flawed? Can you explain how?’
‘You are working on the premise of duality,’ the student explains… ‘You argue that there is life and then there’s death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. Sir, science can’t even explain a thought. It uses electricity and magnetism, but it has never seen, much less fully understood either one. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite of life, just the absence of it.’
‘Now tell me, professor… Do you teach your students that they evolved from a monkey?’
‘If you are referring to the natural evolutionary process, young man, yes, of course I do.’
‘Have you ever observed evolution with your own eyes, sir?’
The professor begins to shake his head, still smiling, as he realizes where the argument is going. A very good semester, indeed.
‘Since no one has ever observed the process of evolution at work and cannot even prove that this process is an on-going endeavor, are you not teaching your opinion, sir? Are you now not a scientist, but a preacher?’
The class is in uproar. The student remains silent until the commotion has subsided. ‘To continue the point you were making earlier to the other student, let me give you an example of what I mean.’ The student looks around the room. ‘Is there anyone in the class who has ever seen the professor’s brain?’ The class breaks out into laughter. ‘Is there anyone here who has ever heard the professor’s brain, felt the professor’s brain, touched or smelt the professor’s brain? No one appears to have done so. So, according to the established rules of empirical, stable, demonstrable protocol, science says that you have no brain, with all due respect, sir.’ ‘So if science says you have no brain, how can we trust your lectures, sir?’
Now the room is silent. The professor just stares at the student, his face unreadable. Finally, after what seems an eternity, the old man answers. ‘I guess you’ll have to take them on faith.’
‘Now, you accept that there is faith, and, in fact, faith exists with life,’ the student continues. ‘Now, sir, is there such a thing as evil?’ Now uncertain, the professor responds, ‘Of course, there is. We see it every day. It is in the daily example of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.’
To this the student replied, ‘Evil does not exist sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.’
I was in elementary school when I first broke out in small, circular red patches on my legs. I can’t remember if an infection preceded these patches, but it’s likely. What I can remember is the overwhelming embarrassment I felt. I didn’t hear the term “guttate psoriasis” until my teens, after I started seeing a Dermatologist and had a biopsy done. I’m part of the 10-20% of psoriasis sufferers that have teardrop shaped patches spread across my body, as opposed to the larger, more typical plaques of psoriasis Vulgaris (the most common form). These teardrop patches usually flake less than their plaque counterparts, and for many people they do eventually go away. I am obviously not ‘many people’ though, and there are a few things I’ve found over the years that sets living with guttate psoriasis apart from plaque psoriasis.
We’re more likely to be triggered by infection
Streptococcal (strep throat) infections, tonsillitis, and other upper respiratory infections are among the most common triggers for acute guttate psoriasis. Streptococcus pyogenes (the bacterial culprit behind strep throat) can survive asymptomatically in about 20% of people, and there are a handful of studies that have shown removing the tonsils can significantly improve (or clear) guttate psoriasis in some patients (I may or may not have asked my doctor for a “therapeutic tonsillectomy” when I first learned of this research. He did not oblige me). Other infections, like fungal and viral, can also trigger your first flare, or make the existing condition worse.
We’re more likely to be triggered by drugs
Research suggests that we’re more likely to have drug induced or drug aggravated psoriasis. Anti-malarials, beta blockers, lithium, and NSAIDs (including aspirin, ibuprofen, and naproxen) may all cause us more grievance than our plaque counterparts. I can personally attest to the antimalarials being an issue! Guttate psoriasis may even be triggered by taking biologics, and in one clinical case, after an injection of ecstasy.
Our misdiagnoses are different
While flaking plaques on the elbows and knees may be a telltale sign of plaque psoriasis, guttate psoriasis may mystify your doctor. I was misdiagnosed with ringworm for many years (and I know many who can relate!). Guttate psoriasis can also resemble seborrhea, nummular eczema, contact dermatitis, tinea versicolor, or even hives. In short, there are many dermatological conditions that look similar, and the best advice is to get a referral to a Dermatologist and get a biopsy for a conclusive diagnosis.
We give different excuses
You’ve probably heard of plaque psoriasis sufferers passing off their symptoms as eczema or dry skin, especially because that’s often more expedient than explaining what psoriasis is. But these excuses don’t work as well for angry red spots! Instead, in the spring and summer I’ll sometimes pass them off as bug bites (which is by far and away what most people assume they are, especially in Canada). Mine are too big to be mistaken for hives, but for those with tiny red spots, hives or contact dermatitis is a common excuse. Of course, as a patient advocate I try to educate whenever possible, but sometimes I just don’t have the energy!
Topicals are not an easy solution
While topicals are one of the preferred treatments for guttate, they are often impractical for us. Imagine the frustration of having to apply topical cream to your plaques, twice every day. Now imagine your plaques fractured into 200 individual spots spread all over your body. Did I put cream on that spot already? Trying to use Q-tips to apply it to your back using the mirror (I always go the wrong way), always a struggle. It’s also difficult to apply steroid creams to only the affected area, which is the recommendation. For that reason, surrounding skin can often be collateral damage of thinning. If you have widespread guttate psoriasis and topicals are becoming impractical, talk to your Dermatologist about systemic/biologic or light therapy options.
We determine severity differently
A common way to assess the severity of psoriasis is to use PASI (Psoriasis Area Severity Index). PASI assesses the redness of plaques, thickness, and degree of scaling, but also the percentage of body coverage. When dealing with large plaques in focused areas, this assessment is easy, but how does one calculate the “total surface area” of (possibly) hundreds of small circles? If there’s a mathematical algorithm to do so, I don’t know of it! Instead, Doctors look at how many body segments are affected (scalp, trunk, arms, and legs), how prevalent your spots are in those areas, and how angry they look?
What about you? Do you find your guttate psoriasis presents unique challenges?
I'm not saying you should let this cow lick your baby, but ... (Boris Roessler/DPA via AFP)
People who grow up on farms -- especially dairy farms -- have way fewer allergy and asthma problems than the rest of us. Now one research team thinks they've brought science closer to understanding why.
In a study published Thursday in Science, researchers report that they were able to pinpoint one possible mechanism for the allergy protection in mice they studied. Surprisingly, the protein that they fingered as the likely allergy-preventer doesn't actually affect the immune system -- it affects the structural cells that make up the lining of the lung.
The research is related to something called the hygiene hypothesis, where a lack of exposure to microbes as a tyke leads to more allergy and asthma. It's what leads microbiologists to say that the best thing you can do for your kid is roll them around on the floor of the subway. That may indeed be true (as long as you roll very, very carefully!) but there's increasing evidence that farms have the best germs for preventing respiratory problems and allergic reactions later in life. One study found that just 25 percent of children living on Swiss farms reacted to common allergens like dust mites, pollen, animals and mold, while 45 percent of children in the general population reacted.
Why seasonal allergies make you miserable
Play Video1:19
An estimated 50 million Americans suffer from seasonal allergies. Here's what happens when things like grass, pollen, trees and molds affect your body. (The Washington Post)
And among Amish children -- who obviously have some of the farmiest of farm lives, though other factors may also be at play -- reactions fall to a shocking 8 percent or less.
It's still not totally clear what's behind this amazing allergy protection, but many scientists believe that the bacteria native to farms, especially ones that house livestock, may trigger something in children who live nearby.
The researchers behind the latest study had previously found that the epithelial cells of the lungs are important in the development of allergy responses.
"How does your body react the first time you inhale an allergen? The first cells that recognize the allergen are not so much the cells of the immune system, but the structural cells that make up the inside of the lungs," Bart Lambrecht of Ghent University, who co-led the study with Hamida Hammad, told The Post.
So they wanted to see how this farm effect might be visible in the lungs themselves.
In their experiment, Lambrecht and Hammad induced dust mite allergies in mice, then showed that exposure to dust from a dairy farm made early in life made them immune.
Then, they studied the mechanism that was protecting the mice, making their mucous membranes less likely to react to the allergens. They found a protein called A20, which the mice were producing when exposed to the farm dust. When the researchers knocked out the A20 in their subjects' lungs, the farm dust stopped protecting them from allergic reactions.
Roll that baby in the dirt, lady. (iStock)
A test in mice can't definitively provide answers on human health. But the research team did go one step further -- they tested 2,000 children who lived on farms, and they found that those who suffered from allergies in spite of their upbringing had a mutation on the gene related to A20, causing the protein to malfunction.
"A20 was not a coincidence, it was really necessary," Lambrecht said. "This is linking, showing a cause and effect link, between exposure to farm dust and fewer allergies. I think our study is a big step forward."
While there are almost certainly other factors at play in allergy development and prevention, Lambrecht and his colleagues hope that the cells of the lung itself will get more attention in research. This could be a sign, he said, that allergy and asthma vaccines need to be administered by aerosol instead of injection in order to truly be effective. And it may mean that epidemiologists need to think twice before focusing on blood samples alone in their allergy studies.
"The study opens an new area of investigation in our long quest to understand the hygiene hypothesis, which is the complex interaction of farm exposures and their impact on the function of structural cells of the airway," said Mark Holbreich, a physician who studies the hygiene hypothesis but was not involved in the new research.
But while A20 is a fascinating new piece of the puzzle, it's unlikely to put an end to allergies as we know them.
"We know from many studies that there appear to be multiple factors that contribute to protection," Holbreich said. "This article adds to our expanding knowledge yet we are still far from developing a means for the primary prevention of allergies and asthma."
It has long been assumed that the success of Gone With The Wind, both as a book and a movie, was due to the genius of its author, Margaret Mitchell. There is no doubt that Margaret Mitchell was a talented writer, but a little known fact is that the plot of the book came straight from the lives of real people . . . most of them, very famous on their own account. She would have never come in contact with these people had not a strange, unpredictable chain of events begun over 2,000 years ago at the northern tip of Bartow County, GA in the valley below the Pine Log Mountains.
Two thousand years ago, an advanced indigenous people arrived here from the south. On a flat topped hill, they established a ceremonial enclosure and royal compound. In the valley below they built a town with several mounds. In 1817, Cherokee Chief Charles Hicks, the father of the Cherokee Renaissance, established his farm in that ceremonial enclosure. Over a century ago, nationally famous author, Corra Harris, bought that farm to be near the ghost of her husband. For the next 18 years, Harris gathered together progressive leaders of the New South for weekend retreats at that farm . . . first to promote the right of women to vote and then to promote the right of women to work in professions. A cub reporter with the Atlanta Journal, Margaret Mitchell, tagged along with her bosses to most of those retreats.
This 1951 blockbuster movie was based on the experiences of Lundy and Corra Harris, while he was a Methodist “Circuit Rider” minister in Georgia’s Nacoochee Valley. The original book was named, “A Circuit Riders Wife.” The roads are paved now, but most of the buildings in the movie still stand. Ironically, Lundy Harris committed suicide after “A Circuit Rider’s Wife” was serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1910.
Cast of characters in Episodes Three, Four and Five
Corra Mae Harris
Corra May White Harris: She was born in 1869 on a not-too-prosperous small plantation in Elbert County, Georgia in the hamlet of Ruckersville . . . which was primarily a mixed-blood Creek Indian community. As an escape from a miserable marriage to a mentally ill alcoholic and opiate addict, she began sending a series of controversial, but well-crafted “blogs” to a New York newspaper. One of her first blogs supported the lynching of African-American men, who raped Southern white women. This in fact, was her emotional revenge after discovering that her husband, while a professor a Emory College, had a long time affair with a rural black woman. She went on to become the first woman writer in the South to achieve national prominence.
In 1910, Corra became nationally famous when her semi-biographical novel about her experiences as a Methodist minister’s wife in the Georgia Mountains was serialized by the Saturday Evening Post. In 1911, Corra published a novel about a heroine of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, “The Co-Citizens,” which was loosely based on Rebecca Felton’s life.
Corra was the inspiration for Belle Watling, the owner of an Atlanta brothel and friend of Rhett Butler. She had a platonic relationship with Henry Ford. The weekend retreats at her Pine Log, GA home allowed people such as Martha Berry and Henry Ford to “be themselves” away from the public’s eye.
The Rev. Lundy Harris
Rev. Lundy Harris: He was born in McDonough, GA in 1858, from a long line of Methodist ministers. He graduated from Emory College (now university) in 1879. Fluent in Classical Greek and Hebrew, Harris was always known as a brilliant scholar, but a “hell and brimstone” preacher. In addition, to “serving time” as a Methodist Circuit Rider preacher in the North Georgia Piedmont and Mountains, he also was a a professor at Emory and Young Harris College, plus an official of the Southern Methodist Episcopal Church.
Harris had problems with bouts of depression, plus addiction to alcohol and laudanum, a opiate derivative. As years went by the bipolar behavior worsened into severe mental illness. He died in 1910 from a deadly overdose of alcohol and opiates at the foot of the flat topped hill in Pine Log, Georgia, where Native peoples, many centuries before, had constructed a sacred enclosure.
Margaret Mitchell’s description of an insane, alcoholic Gerald O’Hara after the Civil War is based on Corra Harris’s description of Lundy Harris during his bouts with depression and alcoholism.
Dr. William Felton
Dr./Rev./ Congressman William Harrell Felton: He was born near Lexington, GA in 1823. Felton was a Populist renaissance man, who went to the mountains of NW Georgia in 1847 to build up a 1000 acre plantation. Prior to the Civil War, he became a licensed surgeon AND an ordained Methodist minister. During the Civil War, he treated Confederate wounded laying on the ground beside the Western and Atlantic Railroad, just north of Cartersville.
During Reconstruction, he was elected to Congress as an Independent. He became nationally known both as a public speaker and proponent of economic opportunity for the “little man.” He was the first United States congressman to publicly speak for women’s right to vote. He was a brilliant, handsome man, who was inept at practical matters, such as running a plantation or business records. Felton was dependent on Rebecca Felton (Scarlett) to make business decisions for him.
Dr. Felton was the inspiration of both the characters Ashley Wilkes and Dr. Meade, who attended to the sea of wounded at the Atlanta rail depot. The astonishing thing is how closely, British actor, Lesley Howard, resembled William Felton. Was this intentional?
US Senator Rebecca Felton
Rebecca Latimer Felton: She was born in 1835 on a modest plantation southeast of Atlanta. After graduating from college in 1852, she became William Felton’s second wife in 1854. This was in an era when most Southern women had no education beyond the age of 15. As her husband’s political career blossomed, she provoked several scandals for being at his side during political campaigns, and also speaking to the public. As a young bride, she took control of her husband’s business affairs and saved their plantation from bankruptcy. Later she went on to be nationally known for her work to provide universal public education, eliminate saloons, give women the right to vote, and open up career opportunities for women.
At the same time that she was promoting civil rights for some, Rebecca used rented convict laborers to run her saw mill and iron mine, just as Scarlett O’Hara did in the novel. Also . . . just like Scarlett . . . as a young Southern Belle, Rebecca had a 16″ waist. Rebecca was the REAL Scarlett O’Hara.
The Love of Henry Ford’s life
Martha McChesney Berry: She was born in 1866 on an extremely prosperous plantation on the Oostanaula River near Rome, GA. Her father became very wealthy from owning several steamboats in Rome. She used the wealth inherited from her father to start a free school for poor mountain children. It evolved into Berry College. Berry College has the largest college campus in the world (38,000 acres) and is now rated the top small college in the Southeast. Industrialist Henry Ford paid the tab for much of Berry College’s mid-20th century development . . . but there is much more to the story than that. It is probably the reason that despite being a beautiful, intelligent Southern Belle, Martha never married.
As the “social liberal” among Corra Harris’s regular guests, this true Southern Belle, who loved people of all colors and economic backgrounds, is obviously the inspiration for Melanie Wilkes.
The bedroom, where Martha Berry and Henry Ford met, during the first third of the 20th century is upstairs.
Henry Ford
Henry James Ford: He was born in 1863 near Detroit, Michigan. Ford was a lifetime friend, benefactor, confidante and paramour of Martha Berry. Yes, that’s the same Henry Ford, who built autos. Corra Harris maintained a bedroom for them, upstairs in her rural farm house, when Henry was visiting Georgia. It is still called the Berry-Ford Bedroom. Apparently, Berry and Ford maintained this secret intimate relationship their entire lives. Publicly, they were merely friends. On several occasions, Berry was invited by Mrs. Ford to their Michigan estate. Or perhaps . . . Mrs. Ford just didn’t care.
There was another irony in Henry Ford’s secret life. Publicly, he was bitterly opposed to tobacco smoking and forbade it among his workers. However, ALL of the women, who came to Corra Harris’s farm . . . including his paramour . . . smoked.
While publicly a conservative Republican and opposed to the right of women to vote, Ford’s wealth donated secretly to Rebecca and Martha, personally funded the Women’s Suffrage Movement in the South. This is a little known fact.
Henry Ford’s personality was much of the inspiration for the character of Rhett Butler. The only difference was, of course, Rhett was a Southerner.
Margaret Mitchell
Margaret Munnerlyn Mitchell: She was born in 1900 in Atlanta, GA to an upper class family, who could afford to send her to a private academy and Smith College. During the 1920s, she was a young reporter for the Atlanta Journal. She was usually invited along when the intelligentsia of Atlanta spent the weekends at Corra Harris’s Farm. She would sit in the background, enthralled, as Rebecca Felton, Martha Berry and Corra Harris told stories of the Old South and the Reconstruction Era.
Margaret intentionally made the O’Hara family Irish Catholics, to honor her grandparents, who emigrated from Ireland during the Great Potato Famine. It is a little known fact that the only ports open to Irish immigrants during much of the Potato Famine were Savannah and Charleston. Savannah now annually sponsors the world’s third largest St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Prologue – The real Tara
Rear view of the Felton Plantation around 1885
Today, the site of the Felton Plantation is a nondescript sea of rental storage buildings and speculative office buildings. The home was burned by arsonists in 1998, who were angry that the home was to be a museum dedicated to women’s rights. A century ago, however, it was the home of one of the most successful leaders of the political efforts to obtain the right of women to vote and be employed in professional position.
Civic leaders in Cartersville planned to restore the Felton Plantation as a museum dedicated to the Women’s Civil Rights Movement. After all, it was William Felton, who FIRST promoted the right of women to vote.
Fortunately, just before the structures were destroyed, architectural as-built drawings were prepared in anticipation of the plantation becoming a major monument of the women’s rights movement. In 2012, these two dimensional drawings were developed into a virtual reality computer model that will enable future generations to better understand the world that Rebecca lived in.
Act One – The Civil War in Georgia
As a teenager, Rebecca was the epitome of a Southern Belle. Beautiful, high spirited, intelligent . . . her 16 inch waist line was the inspiration for Scarlett O’Hara’s 16 inch waist. Rebecca rejected all suitors when she was 18, and went off to college. The fact that she waited till age 23 to marry, would have been almost scandalous in the Ante Bellum Era.
The life of Rebecca Felton closely paralleled that of Scarlett’s O’Hara, except that William and Rebecca Felton’s marriage was a strong one. They were in as much love when he died as when they married. William and Rebecca initially opposed Secession, as did most of the people in northwest Georgia. The Felton’s were horrified when their children came home from school, wearing “Secesh” ribbons. The people in their county even raised a militia to guard the United States Mint in Dahlonega, GA from Confederate soldiers, but they quickly changed uniform colors, when President Lincoln ordered the invasion of the South.
William didn’t join the army because of his political beliefs, but he did all he could, as a doctor, to help the thousands of wounded soldiers who were deposited beside the railroad tracks near their home, after big battles to the north. That is how William Felton became the inspiration for Doctor Meade in the horrific scenes wounded Confederate soldiers during the Battle of Atlanta.
When the fighting moved into Northwest Georgia in the summer of 1864, the Felton’s fled with their entire household to Macon, GA. Rebecca heard that both her mother and sister were critically ill with the measles . . .contracted from the invading Northern troops during Sherman’s March to the Sea. She first tried to reach her family by train, but a bridge had been blown up by Union Cavalry.
Rebecca drove a mule wagon over a hundred miles through the devastation of Sherman’s March to the Sea in an attempt to reach her family. In the Old South , plantation class women would have never considered driving a wagon or traveling alone. While in the mule wagon, she was attacked by Yankee cavalry, but a troop of Southern cavalry came to her rescue and drove off the invaders. This event exactly matches the plot of “Gone with the Wind.”
By the time Rebecca reached her family, her mother and sister were dead. Again, that is exactly like the plot of “Gone With the Wind.” She then returned to Macon. All of her family and slaves fled to “a refuge” in deep Southeast Georgia. They almost starved to death. Rebecca’s firstborn son, along with many of their farm hands, died of measles. She almost died of measles, too (just like in the movie, GWTW, but eventually recovered.
William and Rebecca together drove the mule wagon 250 miles northward to Cartersville, to see if anything was left standing on their farm. All of Bartow County was a visage of hell. Sherman had ordered most buildings burned a full four months after there were any Confederate regiments in the area. These pure acts of terrorism, and Sherman openly admitted it.
As Rebecca and her family crested the hill on the road leading to the house, Rebecca stood up to see that their farm was wrecked, but the house was standing. She the uttered those famous words, “I swear by God that I will NEVER be poor again!” Of course, Scarlett said the same words in the novel and movie.
Rebecca Felton created a national scandal by speaking for her husband at rallies next to the newly completed Bartow County Courthouse.
Act Two – The South after the Civil War
During the extreme poverty of Reconstruction, William and Rebecca started a school, since the Yankees had burned all of the public and private school buildings around Cartersville . . . except one that had a Masonic emblem on it. William ran for Congress in outrage when the “Old South Democrats” immediately took control of Georgia after Reconstruction ended. He called these Plantation Democrats . . . the Bourbons.
Rebecca began buying up all of the land around their farm: eventually another 2500 acres. She used rented convict labor to run a saw mill and iron mine Does that sound like “Gone With the Wind?” Rebecca became very wealthy from her business activities, while William became nationally known as a progressive congressman and public speaker. There is a section in “Gone With the Wind” when Scarlett is assaulted in a Shanty town. Both Corra Harris and Rebecca were terrified of being assaulted by black men, although there is no record of either of them being harmed in any way by any black person. It is believed that Corra may have fabricated the story of being assaulted by a black man, which Margaret Mitchell dutifully recorded in her novel.
William Felton’s political career and health waned in the 1890s. He died in 1909 from Parkinson’s Disease. By then, however, the couple had become extremely wealthy from her businesses. She was an astute businesswoman like Scarlett O’Hara . . . but also, like Scarlett, her wealth was created on the backs of rented convict laborers, who were treated far worse than any African-American slave before the Civil War.
Rebecca devoted much of her time to two political causes, the Temperance Movement and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. She considered the two causes interrelated because widespread alcoholism in the Southeast after the Civil War had kept the region in a dungeon of poverty and despair, while archaic laws kept women in political chains that prevented them from applying their talents to solving America’s problems. Ironically, although much of Felton’s early wealth came from leasing convict laborers, she led the effort to have the practice outlawed in Georgia in 1908. For 20 years Felton also wrote a popular syndicated “advice” column for newspapers, called “The Country Home,”
Shortly, after the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, giving women the write to vote, At the age of 87, Felton was appointed to fill in the term of a Georgia senator, who had died, until a special election could be held. Although the Senate was in session only the last 24 hours of her term, she was sworn in as the first female to serve in the U.S. Senate and was invited to make a significant speech to Congress. Rebecca Latimer Felton died in 1930 at the age of 95. “Gone with the Wind” was published six years later.
“Fiddle-dee-dee . . . tomorrow is another day! “
Richard Thornton is a professional architect, city planner, author and museum exhibit designer-builder. He is today considered one of the nation’s leading experts on the Southeastern Indians. However, that was not always the case. While at Georgia Tech Richard was the first winner of the Barrett Fellowship, which enabled him to study Mesoamerican architecture and culture in Mexico under the auspices of the Institutio Nacional de Antropoligia e Historia. Dr. Roman Piňa-Chan, the famous archaeologist and director of the Museo Nacional de Antropologia, was his fellowship coordinator. For decades afterward, he lectured at universities and professional societies around the Southeast on Mesoamerican architecture, while knowing very little about his own Creek heritage. Then he was hired to carry out projects for the Muscogee-Creek Nation in Oklahoma. The rest is history.Richard is the Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the KVWETV (Coweta) Creek Tribe and a member of the Perdido Bay Creek Tribe. In 2009 he was the architect for Oklahoma’s Trail of Tears Memorial at Council Oak Park in Tulsa. He is the president of the Apalache Foundation, which is sponsoring research into the advanced indigenous societies of the Lower Southeast.
The three types of light receptors send this information to your brain’s visual cortex, which sorts out the values of light and composes them into color values. Only then does this blast of light get interpreted as perceptible colors.
