That’s not terribly surprising. So does South Carolina. For all its reputation and nickname, the biggest cash-producing agricultural product in Georgia is actually chickens. Peanuts, pecans, and wood (for paper) are also big. But you do still see a lot of peach orchards if you drive down the country roads…
Steven
I guess I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention my current “hometown” as well…though it’s not actually a town. I live in Mount Hermon, which is a Christian conference center and family camp, founded in 1906 in the mountains outside Santa Cruz, CA. The nearest town that IS a town is Felton…one of the several tiny mountain towns that dot Highway 9 between Santa Cruz and Los Gatos.
Mount Hermon is a great place to live, especially if you have kids. We’re one of about 200 families who live here year 'round, and it’s a really tight, friendly community. There’s always something doing here. During the winter it’s mainly pastors conferences, church retreats and youth retreats, but during the summer it’s family camps…great groups of people come in from all over the country to stay a week and enjoy the mountains, with concerts and lectures for the adults and lots of camp activities for the kids. Residents are welcome to participate, and we do so with great enthusiasm! You couldn’t ask for a prettier place to live either…right smack in the middle of the redwoods, with Santa Cruz only six miles away, and San Jose just about a half hour’s drive over the hill…the best of multiple worlds!
Redwolf
I was struck by Jerry’s confident pronouncement
that he lives in a village of 350 souls. This raises
a question: how many bodies? Are they evenly
matched up with souls, or are
there more of one than
the other?
More souls than bodies and
I would say Jerry’s town is haunted,
or maybe there are some folks
with multiple personalities. Possessed.
More bodies
than souls, and I would suppose
there are zombies. One hopes
for equality, given
the alternatives.
I was born in 1942 in Flatbush
Brooklyn. It was more like the
19th century than like today.
Many streets were unpaved,
lots of horse drawn vehicles,
iceboxes, no TV yet, no
freeways, of course. However
the skies were filled with
dirigibles and airplanes,
because of the war.
Many people
in our neighborhood spoke Yiddish.
My father was a fruit and vegetable
wholesaler. We ate what he couldn’t
sell. I barely survived the year
of the great prune glut. Best
Actually, I don’t live IN a town, just in its postal area.
Instead, I live in a house built in 1841 from bricks made on the property. It was originally named Vandeventer and is modeled on a building in some State Park in New Jersey. In it’s time, it’s been a (in order) farmhouse, church (an 1850s tax dodge, I think), a farmhouse, a school, a ruin used for storing grain and a house again.
When it was built, they were just starting out in a little place up the road called New Salem (there was a guy named Lincoln that lived there for a while). Most people think of those log cabins as normal for that period in this area, when in fact there were several two-story brick homes and inns within a day’s easy walking. Never underestimate the power of a tourist trap.
If you average the multiple personalities, zombies and ghosts in with the souls precisely matched with bodies, it comes to 350 souls, ±3.012%.
Here’s a picture of the house with three, now disembodied, souls.
That makes me think of things like some turtles or snakes, with two independently functioning heads. I wonder if they share the same soul or if they have two, and how they would be counted in matters like that.
Jim?
Oooooh. Interesting question!
Hmmm. Well, the church would say that human conjoined twins each have their own soul, and that’s pretty much what two-headed snakes, etc. are (conjoined twins, that is), so I would venture to say that the same standard would apply.
Redwolf
Hmmm. Well, the church would say that human conjoined twins each have their own soul, and that’s pretty much what two-headed snakes, etc. are (conjoined twins, that is), so I would venture to say that the same standard would apply.
I see a difference between conjoined twins, each with their own set (or nearly complete set) or organs and limbs. Such as twins joined at the head or hip, or chest or shoulder, etc. It’s very clear that they are two people. However, I’m talking about the turtles and snakes that only have one set of organs, and only one set of limbs, etc. It’s one body, but where there is supposed to be a head, there are two. One isn’t dead or non-functioning in a lot of cases they each can eat and perform as if they are two seperate animals.
It might happen that way more in reptiles (at least all the ones I’ve seen happen to be snakes or turtles), because I can’t remember hearing about humans with one body but two separate independent heads. It creeps me out and makes me want to look at the same time. I suspect it might happen but the baby (babies) is/are aborted.
edit - Now that I think about it, I’m almost certain there was a 2 headed cow on the news semi-not too long ago.
There is such a case, Cran. Two heads, and limbs for one body. The girls have distinct personalities.
There is such a case, Cran. Two heads, and limbs for one body. The girls have distinct personalities.
A personality is not equal to a soul, which is what the question is. I know (online and personally) people who have more than one personality, but I assume they have one soul.
Are you certain?
It’s the same thing…it just tends to manifest differently in different individuals. Even among humans, conjoined twins often share organs…how much of which organs they share is often what determines if they can or can’t be separated. A two-headed snake or turtle (assuming one head isn’t purely vestigal) is two distinct individuals.
This has got to be the ultimate in thread drift!
Redwolf
I wonder where you draw the line. I would say a human body that had two heads was two different people. But what about a person who only had 3 arms? Would s/he be two people, one person, or one person who was supposed to be two people, and how many souls would she have? A person who was born with an extra arm is generally considered ONE person, but a person born with an extra head is considered TWO. I ask: why?
On the another end of the spectrum, I seriously wonder what makes the person have a soul. If it’s the act of having certain body parts (as I gather it is), then which ones count and which ones don’t? What makes this person with 2 heads have two souls? If a person is born with no head, do they not have a soul? What about a person born with a normal functioning head, and a non-functioning under-developed head? Do they have one and a half souls?
Not that it ultimately matters what any of us thinks about anything (and I keep repeating that to myself). But I really like talking about things like this for some reason. It makes me want to hear what people think. I think because I’m not sure what I think.
I’m a WASP. By definition, I don’t have soul. 
I’m a WASP. By definition, I don’t have soul.
Wrong you have half of one. 
Seriously though, I heard Queen Noor of Jordan use the term WASP on Tim Russert the other night.
I apologized for offending people with using that term loosely and I’m still sorry if anybody still hurts from it.
edited because olive is an oogly color.
Great house picture!!!
The slant this thread has now taken brings to mind…
We once had a cow (what we call a black baldy- Angus/Hereford cross) that had twinned before. She later tried to have triplets- the vet said this was very rare in a beef breed. In fact he’d never seen it before.
Anyway she had one dead very small calf- about 45 lbs. but obviously was not done. My husband checked her and said what he was feeling was beyond his skill so we called the vet. When all was said and done, many hours later, we had another calf with a head , a very broad chest with four front legs and then it split into two back ends- like a Y with the head and chest being the bottom of the Y. It was very weird. I kidded the vet , since I worked for him, told him if he hadn’t cut it up to get it out we could have sold the lot to Ripley’s! Sadly this was one of our best cows and she did not recover sufficiently to be of any use anymore. Farm life is not fun sometimes. 
Now how many souls would this be? Since there was only one head?
I vote for one. (Yes, I do believe that animals have souls too.)
Looking again at the picture of the house, built in the 1840s, it occurs to me that there’s an interesting relationship to the tinwhistle, introduced in the 1840s.
Aside from the fact that they were created in the same decade, can anyone figure out what the connection is?
I thought the whistle was created tens of thousands of years ago.