Avid Bookshop is pleased to announce an author talk and book signing with Harlan Hambright on May 11, 2012, Thursday, at 6:30 pm.
The Idiat and the Odd-yssey, the Adventures of Odyfferus Through International Georgia is a whimsical yet poignant look at the over 70 cities, towns, communities, hamlets and “former communities” throughout the state named for foreign counterparts.
The author, Harlan Hambright, St. Simons resident and Georgia native, researched the naming histories, collected interesting historical anecdotes, and visited every location in search of photographic material which might reference each namesake.
Discoveries include a lake in Geneva, pyramids in Cairo, Greek temples in Athens, a library in Ephesus, a shroud in Turin, and a manger in Bethlehem, to name but a few.
A certain university press rejected the project for publication as being not “academic,” a charge to which the author exercises his constitutional privilege as provided by the 5th amendment. The book is a fair and balanced combination of academia, history, humor and photography, according its author. “Why can’t we interject humor
into academic endeavors? That’s the problem with education nowadays,” proffers Hambright. Bits and pieces of the book have appeared in several publications including Georgia Backroads and Golden Isles Life magazines.
Harlan Hambright has been active in the field of photography since 1969. He received a Bachelor of Architecture degree from the University of Tennessee in 1976 and pursued a career as an architectural photographer afterwards. He was based in Washington, DC the decade of the 1980s and moved to St. Simons in 1990. His work has appeared in numerous trade publications and magazines over the years and assignments have taken him to Moscow, Santiago, the Turks & Caicos, and most recently to Las Vegas where he photographed the Venetian hotel, and back to DC shooting the Old Executive Office Building for a book being produced about its history and recent renovation.
He is currently the senior partner with H2O Creative Group, a dynamic agency in Brunswick. His wife, Rhonda, is an accomplished musician and the finest soprano in the state, and his son, Hank, runs 3 Pigs Farm out toward Winterville. Stepson Ben, a new Marine, will be deploying to Afghanistan concurrent with the event at Avid
bookstore.
