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The ADVANCE, June 16, 2021/Page 5A
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
—James Russell Lowell
editorials
Another Monteen
From the Porch
By Amber Nagle
Georgia Maga
zine asked me to
write a story about
people who rescue
and rehabilitate birds
of prey, and after
a Google search, I
found Hawk Talk, a
wildlife rehabilita
tion center 40 minutes from my house. My
husband and I drove over and met Monteen
McCord and the hawks, owls, and other rap
tors in her care.
After the usual introductions and pleas
antries, I told her of another Monteen.
“I had an aunt named Monteen,” I blurt
ed out. “She was born in 1925 and raised in
Toombs and Tattnall counties. It’s such an
unusual name, and I have never met another
one until today.”
Monteen McCord shared that her moth
er loved the name and believed it was of
French origin.
But Monteen is far, far from French. She’s
pure Southern. She uses the same expressions
and phrases I have heard for my entire life and
taught me a few I didn’t know.
One by one, I lobbed my interview ques
tions at her.
“Can you tell
me about one of
the times you re
turned a hawk or
owl back to na
ture?” I asked.
She was direct
with me.
“I wish I
could tell you that
all releases have
happy endings,
but that would be
a damn lie,” she
said. “Things go
wrong sometimes.
The birds don’t
always survive. It
hurts.”
She got a far
away look in her
eye and contin-
ue d- (< Monteen with Cotton.
“Thirty years
ago, I rehabili
tated a female
Red-tailed hawk. She’d been shot, and it took
a while for her to heal. I couldn’t return her
to her old territory, so I released her near my
home. We lived in a wooded area with a 50-
acre pasture in the front lined with woods.”
Amber holding Little Fiona.
Monteen released the great bird and
watched her take flight, her large wings flap
ping and giving her lift into the wild blue yon
der.
“But then I saw something out of the
corner of my eye,” she said. “Another hawk
launched from a nearby tree and made a
beeline for her. It was a moment of terror. I
braced for the worst.”
The two
hawks circled one
another.
“After a couple
of minutes, I real
ized it was a male
hawk,” she said,
tears welling in her
eyes. “They did the
circle dance a few
more times then
flew off together,
and I cried like a
fat dog.”
She’s saved
hundreds of birds
of prey. She told
me about nursing
owlets to maturity
and explained how
to train hawks to
hunt by using a
hacking board. A
few times she got
sidetracked and
told me about the
time she stole her mother’s cremation urn
and ashes from her sister’s house and how her
ex-husband, who was a “neat freak,” married a
woman who has obsessive compulsive disor-
Please see Amber page 8A
Sammy the Crow
The enemy.
Uncle Guy Phil
lips had a love-hate
relationship with
crows.
Born in 1899, he
was my father's oldest
brother and practi
cally had no child
hood. Typical of kids
raised on a subsistence farm, his life was
mostly work with very little time for play.
When his father died in 1936, Guy as
sumed the care of his mother, sister, a mill to
operate, and two farms, which he merged.
There must have been some time to play
because he taught me to make sling-shots
and pea shooters and told me about his pet
crow “Sammy”
Aunt Ruth, his sister, said the adults
couldn't understand Guy's fondness for
Sammy.
Crows and farmers are natural enemies.
Crows pull up com as soon as it sprouts,
harass chickens, and are a nuisance.
This isn't a new problem: Ancient Greek,
Roman and Egyptian farmers built scare
crows to protect their crops; they all included
human features.
Crows are actually well organized. While
they help themselves to your garden, a sentry
observes from a tree.
My grandfather, it is told, believed that
crows could count up to five men entering a
field, information they broadcast through
“caws.”
Crows communicate by calls; my father
and his brothers competed at calling up
crows by voice from the front porch.
There are calls for distress, danger, rally,
fighting. Crows are like their cousins, blue-
jays, in that a distress call brings other crows
to give aid or comfort.
Guy made scarecrows and tossed an old
black shoe onto a low limb to appear as a
sentry. A few scattered black shoes and boots
appeared from a distance as feeding crows.
He stood under a tree and called. Some
times he took a crow from the top of a tree
with a .22 rifle.
Guy said he found Sammy near the “wa
ter rock,” a cool pocket under a car-sized
granite bolder where the men kept drinking
water in jugs while plowing.
He took the baby crow home and “split
its tongue” with a razor. Crows are natural
mimics, so it wouldn't be unusual for a crow
to repeat whatever they heard.
Guy said Sammy could talk as well “as
that other black bird,” a myna bird.
Sammy followed Guy, hopping around
the house, ate from his hand and was usually
on Guy's shoulder when they took to the
front porch in the cool of evening.
During family meals, Sammy was put
into a bird cage. Ruth said the family would
not have a crow hopping around on the din
ing room table.
The cage went outside during meals
because Sammy raised a fuss when away
from Guy.
I asked what happened to Sammy.
Guy said that he left.
I asked if he'd pinioned his wings.
“No,” Sammy was a bird, bom to be free.
The family noticed that Guy wasn't
much on shooting crows after that.
joenphillips@yahoo.com
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
©202.1 D6T. eM WNS VKnuaes SfNOCSne er^V wVte®N^54<»qwA.C<>'m
Trying to Understand Georgia
Republicans Is Not Easy
I must
confess that as
smart as I am,
there are a few
things in this
world I do not
understand,
such as the
unsolved
problem in
fundamental
physics as to
whether gravity and the quantum can
be made to coexist within the same
theory. Egyptian hieroglyphics are a
bit challenging for me, as are the rules
for the Tajikistan sport of buzkashi,
which is similar to polo but involves
hitting a goat carcass instead of a ball.
And then there is the Georgia
Republican Party. I am not sure all the
physicists, Egyptologists and buzkashi
players in the world can figure out this
bunch. I know I can’t.
After watching them boo Gov.
Brian Kemp as he addressed the GOP
state convention at Jekyll Island, I
came away with the feeling that they
are having their usual problem of
identifying the enemy. Hint: It is the
other side. The Democrats have to be
laughing their heads off at what they
are seeing from the Republicans.
It seems some Republicans are
having difficulty accepting the fact that
the presidential race is over and is not
coming back. Obviously from the
jeers, they hold the governor
responsible. Well, guess what? He
showed up for Kangaroo-Court-by-
the-Sea and faced the Trump grumps
head on. If you will recall, Gov. Nathan
Deal decided he would ignore the boo
birds after vetoing a “religious liberty”
bill in 2016.
I assume they don’t care that Kemp
has signed a voting rights bill they all
wanted, successfully guided the state
through the COVID-19 pandemic
while ensuring that Georgia maintained
a substantial reserve ($2.8 billion),
instituted income tax cuts, raised
teacher pay and opposes “critical race
theory” being taught in our public
schools. Sounds pretty Republican to
many of the things Donald Trump did
but were turned off by his hyperbole,
his insults and his arrogance. Yet, those
very factors appealed to a lot of
frustrated people tired of seeing
irrelevant millionaire ballplayers
disrespecting our country, goons
turning over cars and looting small
businesses while demanding the
defunding of police, and media
coverage overtly slanted to the left.
The problem is that while they may
feel better that someone stood up for
what they believe, this will not grow
the party.
I find it interesting that despite
Donald Trump’s endorsement, both of
Georgia’s GOP incumbents lost their
United States senate seats to
Democrats, thereby giving Democrats
control of both houses of Congress.
Were those election results fraudulent?
Just asking.
Iwasimpressedbytheobservations
of Alan Futch, the 21-year-old
chairman of the Ben Hill County
Republican Party, who said in an
opinion piece in the Atlanta
Newspapers that the GOP can’t win
going forward by continuing to look
backwards.
Futch says the party is “eating itself
from the inside out” over the election
controversy and worries that, “If we
don’t stand together, we will fall apart.”
The youngest party chair in the state
suggests it is time for Republicans to
get over the presidential election and
move on. I suspect he speaks for a
number of his generation. They are the
future of the party and had best be
listened to.
Instead of continuing to turn on
each other as it seems to be their
inclination, the Georgia Republican
Party needs to get its act together and
quickly. If you boo-birds don’t like
Brian Kemp, I hope you will enjoy the
administration of Gov. Stacey Abrams.
You will have gotten what you deserve.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at dick@
dickyarbrough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, At
lanta, Georgia 31139 or on Facebook atwww.
facebook.com/dickyarb
By Dick Yarbrough
me.
As if the nitwits could not get
nitwittier, Vernon Jones, who has
announced that he is running against
Gov. Kemp in next year’s Republican
primary, got an enthusiastic reception
from the crowd. Vernon Jones? You’ve
got to be kidding. This guy has more
baggage than an airport carousel.
Check his record. He is the
quintessential RINO.
I know a lot of Republican
strategists and good ones they are. I
have not talked to them about what is
going on with the GOP these days, but
I have a good idea. They have to be
scared to death that the Donald Trump
zealots are going to lead the party right
off the cliff like a bunch of lemmings
and hand the governor’s office to
Stacey Abrams. Remember, Abrams
lost to Kemp in 2018 by less than
55,000 votes out of more than 4 million
cast. And that was when Republicans
were a lot more unified than they are
today.
If my mail is any indication, a lot of
long-time conservative voters liked
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