dry counties: still necessary?

Question

some counties in parts of the south are dry, that is, the sale of alcohol is prohibited. in other places, it's strictly regulated.

of course any decision is ultimately up to local authorities, but what's your opinion? is it worth it to continue to prohibit alcohol sales in some places? should economic factors override traditions or local customs? should wal-mart get involved? why or why not?
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/15265943.htm

Answer 1

I LIVE IN A DRY COUNTY. YOU HAVE TO TRAVEL 45 MINUTES TO GET TO SOMEWHERE THAT SALES ALCOHOL. I RESPECT THOSE WHO DON'T DRINK,JUST AS I RESPECT PEOPLE THAT DON'T SMOKE. BUT FROM AN ECONOMIC VIEW,I THINK IT IS RIDICULOUS. THIS COUNTY THAT I AM FROM WOULD BENEFIT GREATLY FROM THE SALE OF ALCOHOL. THERE WOULD BE MORE JOBS AND GREATER REVENUE BY KEEPING THE MONEY WITHIN THE COUNTY. SOME PLACES THOUGH,ARE STEEPED SO FAR IN TRADITION THAT IT WILL NEVER CHANGE. AND YES,WAL-MART WOULD BE AN EXCELLANT CHOICE IF SOMEONE WANTED TO INTERVENE. THEY CARRY A LOT OF POLITICAL WEIGHT.
GREAT QUESTION BY THE WAY!

Answer 2

I grew up in Arkansas where most of the counties are still dry. I think it has more to do with religion than anything else. What I found was that there is just as much alcohol flowing in the dry counties as anywhere else. Another observation was that there were more drunk driving accidents and deaths because people had to drive a good distance to get their hooch and of course, they just had to have a few on the ride home. There were alot establishments that served alcohol illegally too. I think the dry counties would be wise to allow alcohol sales because the drinkers are going to drink no matter what. I live in Michigan and our Walmarts sell beer and wine but no hard liquor. I don't know what effect Walmart would have if they sold alcohol in their southern stores. Like I said, the drinkers are going to drink no matter what they have to do or how far they have to drive to get that drink.

Answer 3

you mean there's places that don't have them? where the hell have i been? oh wait..thats right..the bible belt....therefore i am a travelling drinker....i can drive with my toes while doing a beer funnel and changing radio stations...arkansas teaches that subject in college now i think...anyway...yea religion there will always prevail as a political standpoint to win points with the conservatives...so..until we start putting people like celebrities in offices down south..its to be expected...good question

Answer 4

the better to make bathtub gin

Answer 5

Really ? Did not know that ! How weird !
Are they trying to evacuate people or something ? Make place for airports, fields......mormons ??
People will always find a way to brew their own home made alcohol.....Anything can be used.
Moonshine will be on the black market........
Am a bit speechless with that bit of news !
The land of Free Speech eh ??


"The Drunken Boat, " Illuminations, & A Season in Hell

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) – updated 8/22/99 with links to original French texts


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On August 28, 1999 we had a Fiction & Film Group event focused on Rimbaud and Verlaine's poetry as well as the film about their tempestuous relationship, Total Eclipse. Below is the material we used.

About Rimbaud: Rimbaud is one of the world's most influential writers. He was a seminal influence on artists as diverse as Oscar Wilde, Jean Cocteau, H.P. Lovecraft, the Surrealists, Federico García Lorca, Hart Crane, Jean Genet, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Morrison & the Doors, Bob Dylan, Patti Smith, and today's alternative music scene. He wrote all of his masterpieces before the age of 20.

What to Read: "The Drunken Boat" is the visionary piece which first brought Rimbaud to Verlaine's attention. Illuminations contains about three dozen brief prose poems. A Season in Hell is an hallucinatory memoir. I admit that initially I had a lot of trouble reading Rimbaud: so if you don't connect with one of these works, try some of the others. You might also want to peruse these five Verlaine poems. And remember that all points of view are welcome, including critical ones. Feel free to read these or any other translations. If you read French, here are the original texts of Les Illuminations and Une Saison en enfer; also, both Rimbaud and Verlaine's complete works are at Athena: Textes d'auteurs d'expression française.

More Information: In Claude J. Summers' Gay & Lesbian Literary Heritage, see the articles and bibliographies for "Rimbaud," "Verlaine," and "French Literature: Nineteenth Century." There are many resources – including additional poems, articles, and photographs – at Peter Pullicino's excellent Rimbaud site.



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"The Drunken Boat" [Le Bateau ivre] (1871)

As I was floating down impassive Rivers,
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets,
nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews,
carrying Flemish wheat or English cotton.
When, along with my haulers, those uproars stopped,
the Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips, last winter,
more absorbed than the minds of children, I ran!
And the unmoored Peninsulas never
endured more triumphant clamourings.

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
which men call the eternal rollers of victims,
for ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
the green water penetrated my pinewood hull
and washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains
and the splashes of vomit, carrying away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
devouring the green azures where, entranced
in pallid flotsam, a dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;

where, suddenly dyeing the blueness,
deliriums and slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
stronger than alcohol, vaster than music,
ferment the bitter rednesses of love!

I have come to know the skies splitting with lightning,
and the waterspouts, and the breakers and currents;
I know the evening, and dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
and sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors
lighting up long violet coagulations
like the performers in antique dramas;
waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows,
the kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
the circulation of undreamed-of saps,
and the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!

I have followed, for whole months on end,
the swells battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
could muzzle by force the snorting Oceans!

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas,
where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers in human skins!
Rainbows stretched like bridles
under the sea's horizon to glaucous herds!

I have seen the enormous swamps seething,
traps where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm,
and distances cataracting down into abysses!

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
where the giant snakes, devoured by vermin,
fall from the twisted trees with black odours!

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fish. --
Foam of flowers rocked my driftings,
and at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
the sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
lifted my shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me,
and I hung there like a kneeling woman...

Resembling an island, tossing on my sides the brawls
and droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds.
And I was scudding along when across my frayed ropes
drowned men sank backwards into sleep!...

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether;
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanseatic ships would have fished up;

free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky which bears
a sweetmeat good poets find delicious:
lichens of sunlight mixed with azure snot;

who ran, speckled with tiny electric moons,
a crazy plank with black sea-horses for escort,
when Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;

I who trembled to feel at fifty leagues off
the groans of Behemoths rutting, and the dense Maelstroms;
eternal spinner of blue immobilities,
I long for Europe with it's age-old parapets!

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
whose delirious skies are open to sea wanderers: --
Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
O million golden birds, Life Force of the future?

But, truly, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
sharp love has swollen me up with intoxicating torpor.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the black
cold pool where into the scented twilight
a child squatting full of sadness launches
a boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons;
nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants;
nor pull past the horrible eyes of prison hulks.




Arthur Rimbaud.

PS: Always seemed to me that most influencial people were heavy drinkers ????????? Dunno.....Hemingway, Winston Churchill.......etc.....