Greg Hooper, 41, was born on September 10, making him a Virgo. Virgos, he says, tend to be extremely clean-conscious. It’s certainly true of him. “I’m known as a perfectionist,” he says. As his family can attest, one of his favorite phrases, in anything he’s doing, is “to perfection.”

It was indeed summertime in South Carolina. Temps were in the 90s, relative humidity was up as always this time of the year, but the woods remained dry, courtesy of a drought that’s plagued parts of the Southeast for almost two years.

The final days are being counted down to the end of 2008, a leap year that started on a Tuesday. It was an interesting year, good in some ways, bad in others, but MMVIII is about to wrap up another chapter in the history books—what a year it was.

D.W. Hood, 2 years old, takes a moment to peruse SLT. He’s the son of Ricky Hood, a logger from Moultrie, Ga.

With Georgia leading the way in active, announced and prospective wood-to-energy plants, prompting Gov. Sonny Perdue to declare the state as the region’s “Bioenergy Corridor,” management and sponsors of Timber Expo Southeast have fittingly designated part of the live demo area as the “Bioenergy Equipment Corridor.”