Tag: Janisse Ray

Many of the dozen or so islands that make up the Georgia coast are notoriously inaccessible. Most, in fact, are reachable only by ferry or charter boat. Of course, that very remoteness has preserved 100 miles of relatively natural landscape, unmatched along the Eastern Seaboard. Now, researchers and students at Emory University’s departments of environmental sciences and history and its Center for Digital Scholarship (best known for its decades-long effort to document voyages of enslaved people) are creating an online portal, open to the public, that allows anyone to visit the islands virtually. The rapidly expanding Georgia Coast Atlas features flyover footage, video interviews, informative articles, historical documents, annotated maps, and other resources.

Georgia’s once-mighty and fast-diminishing forests are one of the country’s least appreciated wonders. Author Janisse Ray has long been their fierce advocate—and as a new threat emerges, her message is more urgent than ever.

On this morning the sky was a transparent blue-and-white bowl, resting upside down on the far horizons. Situated within this bowl was my heartland, my beloved Georgia. The sky was as blue as china, as blue as a bluebird, cerulean blue, the blue of the Caribbean, blue as the bluest eye; it arched like a cathedral over me, vaulted over everything I love, and I was in love with everything it covered, whether I wanted to love or not.

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