BACK DOOR BOY IN A FRONT DOOR WORLD

Historic Bibb Mill Burns To The Ground

Just before midnight last night, I heard what I thought were firecrackers and looked over to our windows and saw the orange glow with intermittent blue flashes. Apparently the flashes were power transformers blowing up. The fire started in the back of the mill nearest the river and after about an hour it seemed the entire structure was ablaze. Consider that this is a 4 story, 750,000 sq.ft. structure built in 1900, so each floor was about 15-20' in height. All of the floors were hardwood, so essentially everything that wasn't exterior brick was wooden beams - read 'kindling'.

I've never seen a fire on this scale before, and it was very surreal. It literally roared and hissed. By the time it ran the length of the building and made it to the front on 1st Ave., I went out to the street near the Riverwalk access point and it was raining embers on me. Some were still flaming, and landed on the houses across the street. THAT was really insane looking.

After lunch I'm going to walk down and get more pictures before the cranes come in to take down the brickwork and will post them later. More pics behind the cut, mine are annotated and the rest are from news services.

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Obama Replies To A Little Boy's Request With A 3 Page Letter

Teacher Joyce Ben-KiKi had Aron and his classmates each send letters to a famous person as part of a language arts lesson. Ben-KiKi wrapped the exercise around well-known children's book character "Flat Stanley," so along with the letters, the children each tucked a Flat Stanley figure they had made into each envelope.

"I told them not to expect a letter back," Ben-KiKi said. "I told them these people are very busy and most likely will not write back."

The list of recipients was impressive: Yankee third basemen Alex Rodriguez; Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz; Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. John McCain.

Obama was the only one to write back.

Because he is carved from a solid block of CONCENTRATED FUCKING AWESOME. With everything he's been doing on a daily basis for months on end now, he still managed to get this done - because it mattered. Don't shit on my happy by telling me his staffers did it, just let me have this one - aiight, betches?

HAt tip to folk & synecdochic!