#Follower January 14

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

In 2021 any day of the month that has the number 4 in the date becomes a day to post about one of the FOLLOWERS of this blog.

I have a fellow blogger who is very loyal in reading just about everyone of my posts. His name is John Tanner as in John Tanner’s Barbecue Blog. He lives in Washington DC and I live in North Carolina but blogging got us connected. Barbecue and good beer sealed the deal.

John is one of those FOLLOWERS who I have not only met but have invited to my home for our Beer Snob Pig Picking. I have had the opportunity to serve as a guest blogger on his site as a junior correspondent. I have also traveled the back roads of Eastern North Carolina during the pandemic to hook up with him to eat barbecue at Southern Smoke BBQ. In fact John even did a post on that visit.

Yet despite our connection thru barbecue John’s professional career is not hog wash in fact I find it quite fascinating.

John Tanner is the retired Chief of the Voting Rights Division in the U. S. Justice Department. As Section Chief he led the Voting Section in filing the highest number of lawsuits in its history. He also received numerous Department of Justice awards, including the John Doar Award, the Civil Rights Division’s highest honor.

He didn’t get there easily. After college and the Army, he joined the Voting Section of the Justice Department as a paralegal and went to law school at night at American University. Upon graduation he was accepted as an attorney in the Department under the Honors Program, and for many years was the principal Department of Justice attorney for voting rights enforcement in Alabama.

Blogging gives me a lot of gifts including getting to know the people who follow this blog. In the case with John Tanner it gave me a pig picking, great friend not just a FOLLOWER.