Barrow journal. (Winder, Ga.) 2008-2016, March 02, 2016, Image 4

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Barrow journal., March 02, 2016, Image 4

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Newspaper Page TextPAGE 4A BARROW JOURNAL WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 2016 Opinions “Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. ” ~ Henry Ward Beecher - Lady Bulldoggs make entire community proud News comes in all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, not all news is good. This week is no different as a local man has been arrested for the murder of his wife. It should be noted he has not been convicted. That will be decided by the court system. Each week this paper publishes a list of numerous arrests ranging from serious to those many file under “someone was arrested for that?” A true community news paper has to report the news as it is. We don’t make the news, we simply report it. However, there is also good news, some very good news, from our community this week as the varsity girls basketball team at Winder- Barrow High School has continued its surprising state tournament run and we are certainly thrilled to report that. The Lady Bulldoggs are set to play for the Class AAAAA state championship this Friday in Macon and the group of players on this team has captured the support of an entire community. The WBHS Lady Bulldoggs, led by coach Brandon Thomas, con tinued their impres sive season by defeat ing Brunswick High School last Saturday in a semifinal game played at Columbus State University. The Lady Doggs actually won three state tournament games in Columbus. The team first defeated Carver-Columbus in a second round game and then played twice at Columbus State University, recording wins against Mays High School and Brunswick. Now it’s on to Macon as WBHS will face Southwest DeKalb in the champion ship. It’s the last step in what has been a remarkable journey, a remarkable sea son and a story of a remarkable group of players. One of the biggest fans of the Lady Bulldoggs is WBHS principal A1 Darby. Before moving into administration, Darby was a high school basketball coach him self and once upon a time was a star player for the WBHS Bulldoggs. Darby has been seen at recent state tournament games with face paint and colorful wig sporting the Double G colors as he looked and acted like the team’s No. 1 fan. In reality, it’s not an act. He really is the top fan of the program, as well as any program that stu dents from WBHS are involved in. Through the years, many high school principals have said hav ing a successful athletic team helps in ways many would not ever consider. A success ful team actually helps make the school days run smoother. When the student body has something to focus on and rally around, then the learning expe rience becomes more positive. “You see the teachers and oth ers rally around the team.” Darby said. “Athletics are such a part of a school’s culture. To have a team be so success ful like our Lady Doggs have been this year, means a great deal to everyone at Winder- Barrow High School.” Since the victories in the state tournament began for the Lady Bulldoggs, the WBHS principal said he has noticed an “upbeat” nature in the hallways. “There is a positive vibe throughout the school,” Darby said. “We always believed in Double G, but something like this makes it go up several more notches.” The WBHS principal said the school’s athletic programs always receive strong support, but this magical basketball sea son has gone several steps further. “It has come not only from the school and the parents of the players, but the entire community,” Darby said. “There has been so much support at all levels.” Make no mistake, everyone who sup ports WBHS and the Lady Bulldoggs want a victory this Friday in Macon. Whichever way the game turns out, however, the 2015-2016 basketball sea son will be talked about for a long time. Darby, with his basketball coaching back ground, said this season could turn out to be the tip of the iceberg. “We are so young this season that 1 think most people didn’t really expect us to get this far,” Darby said. “If you make the state tournament, you always try to win, but we only have one senior.” As the players prepare for their big on- the-court battle, Darby said he expects the excitement within WBHS to reach a new peak. “It’s great to see,” the principal said. “We all want what’s best for our student- athletes. They put in so many hours of work to be successful. It’s something great to be a part of.” As for Darby, this Friday will be special for him as well. As a former basketball player at WBHS himself, the current principal will be in Macon resuming his role as the team’s No. 1 fan. You won’t be able to miss him as he enjoys the moment almost as much as the team itself does. Books have been written and movies have been scripted about local sports teams and the impact they have on their communities. It’s the ultimate ral lying point for communities like Winder, where people often go their own ways, leading their own lives. However, what the Lady Bulldoggs have accomplished this season shows what’s great about living in communities such as this one. Less than 24 hours after WBHS defeated Mays High School in the Elite Eight, signs had been produced and placed around town declaring the Lady Bulldoggs had made it to the Final Four. It was something you had to be impressed by, how quickly that had taken place. All of WBHS and the entire community will be cheering for the Lady Bulldoggs as they take on Southwest DeKalb later this week. No doubt many will make the trip to Macon and bask in what has been an ever-growing spotlight. “It’s great to be in the spotlight for something like this,” Darby said. “It’s such a positive thing for our school, our players and coaches and our commu nity. It’s something you really like to see and it’s something none of us will soon forget.” Just one more step to go. See you in Macon. Chris Bridges, a resident of Winder, is editor of the Barrow Journal. You can reach him at cbridges@barrowjournal. com. chris bridges “You see the teachers and others rally around the team. Athletics are such a part of a school’s culture. To have a team to be so successful like our Lady Doggs have been this year, means a great deal to every one at Winder-Barrow High School.” — Principal Al Darby Georgia legislators contradict themselves Talk to any member of the General Assembly and most of them will tell you one of their biggest goals is to bring business to the state and cre ate more jobs. That’s a worthy objective. I understand why legislators would adopt budgets and pass bills that are tailored to attract business development to Georgia. What I don’t understand is why our lawmakers would then turn around and pass legislation that insults the very people they hope to bring here. This happened last week as the House of Representatives passed a bill - HB 781 - that was introduced by one of the newest members of the Legislature: Rep. Brad Raffensperger (R-Johns Creek). If you hang around the Legislature long enough, you’ll see a lot of dumb bills introduced by lawmakers. HB 781 could very well be the dumbest bill I’ve ever had the experience of writing about. Raffensperger’s bill would prohibit city and county governments from appoint ing anyone to a board, committee, or advisory council if that person is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident of Georgia. In other words, he doesn’t want undocumented immigrants serving on any government-appointed body. Rep. B. J. Pak (R-Lilburn), the first Korean-American elected to the Georgia House, knows a few things about Georgia’s immigrant communities. He said he’s never heard of an undocu mented immigrant being appointed to a government agency. “I am not aware of any,” Pak said. “This bill attempts to solve a problem that does not exist.” HB 781, of course, is an attempt to curry favor with voters who don’t like immi grants and want to deport the ones who live here. What the bill actually does is spit on the international business people that Georgia officials are hoping will move their operations to our state. Georgia gave Kia Motors more than $400 million in tax breaks and financial incentives to open an auto assembly plant in West Point. Under HB 781, a Kia execu tive who relocated here to work at that auto plant would be prohibited from serving on any advisory council or economic development com mission where their interna tional expertise might be useful. The same thing applies to Baxter International, a healthcare prod ucts company that received a financial package worth an estimated $200 mil lion when it agreed to locate a facility in Newton County. Baxter has business operations all over the world. If the company wanted to relocate one of its employees from South America to Newton County, that person would also be barred by law by participating in any business advisory group appointed by one of the local gov ernments. “We live in an international city, we live in a state that does business globally,” said Rep. Pat Gardner (D-Atlanta) during the debate over HB 781. “This seems to me a very short-sighted thing to do.” “We spend lots of money recruiting people from other countries to make investments in this state,” said Rep. Mary Margaret Oliver (D-Decatur). “The mes sage in this bill is, we want your money but we don’t want any advice from you. We want your jobs, your money, but we don’t want your expertise.” The Legislature is also considering passage of a “religious freedom” bill that would allow people to discriminate against gays as long as they claimed they were discriminating because of a “sincerely held religious belief.” One of the largest companies in the world is Apple, which has a market capi talization of more than $500 billion. The CEO of Apple is Tim Cook, who said this when he acknowledged he was gay: “I’ve had the good fortune to work at a company that loves creativity and inno vation and knows it can only flourish when you embrace people’s differences ... So let me be clear: I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.” Do you think Tim Cook would con sider, even for one microsecond, open ing a business in a state that just made it legal for other people to discriminate against him? I don’t think so either. Georgia should be trying to persuade business leaders to move here. It’s dif ficult to do that, however, when you’re smacking those same business leaders in the face. Tom Crawford is editor of The Georgia Report, an internet news service at gare- port.com that reports on state govern ment and politics. He can be reached at tcrawford@gareport. com. The Barrow Journal Winder, Barrow County, Ga. www.BarrowJournal.com Mike Buffington Co-Publisher Scott Buffington Co-Publisher Chris Bridges Editor Jessica Brown Photographer Sharon Hogan Reporter Susan Treadwell Reporter Alex Pace Reporter Katie Cofer Reoorter POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Barrow Journal, 77 East May Street, Winder, Georgia 30680 Published 52 times per year by Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. Periodicals postage paid at Winder, Georgia 30680 (USPS 025-132) Email: news@barrowjournal.com Phone: 770-867-NEWS (6397) Fax: 706-621-4115 SUBSCRIPTIONS: $25.00/yr. The mistakes writers make shelli bond pabis As an editor of a homeschool magazine, I get a lot of queries (i.e. “pitches” in the form of letters or e-mails) from writers wanting to write for us. I rarely respond to any of them because they rarely warrant a response. While I wish I could return each message with an instructional guide on how to make a proper pitch, it would be a waste of my time. Still, my heart goes out to these wannabe writ ers because many years ago, I didn’t know how to make a pitch either. I have read books, articles, attended writers conferences and classes on how to write and make pitches to magazines. While I feel pretty confident I know how to write a decent query letter, I don’t often write them. That’s because most of the time even good pitches get rejected. That’s because of two reasons: 1) There are thou sands of other writers wanting to write for the same magazine, and 2) You just never know what the editor of a magazine may be wanting at the time you send your letter. They may list their needs on their website (which you should follow to a tee), but even then, you never know if your idea will suit them just right. As a homeschooling mom, I don’t have the proper time to do everything I must do to write a good query letter for a magazine, let alone research and write it, and unless I’m pitching to a national magazine, the pay won’t usually be worth the effort. 1 love writing, and I’d do it for free (and usually do). But when time is limited, and my priorities are elsewhere, I have to weigh what’s worth my time. So I don’t query much. But I wince at these queries I’m getting in my inbox. It makes it clear to me that most writers don’t go to any effort to learn not only how to write properly but how to contact an editor with an article idea. If you want to be a freelance writer, you should first spend a few months reading books, articles, and perhaps attending a writer’s conference or class on how to do it properly. Nothing is easy. If you want it to be, you need to do something else. I’m not going to give instructions here on how to write a query letter because there are plenty of resources online that will tell you how to do that. There is an art to it, and you have to practice to get it right. What I will tell you is the biggest mistake I’m seeing coming into my inbox and that’s that the writer knows nothing about our publication. For example, I’m listed as the editor to send queries regarding health and bal ance, among other things. So I get a lot of queries for articles about living a healthy lifestyle. The part that the writer doesn’t address is that we’re a homeschool ing magazine. Hello? How does your article tie into homeschooling? If you are not a homeschooling parent, student, or at least someone who comes into a lot of contact with homeschoolers, you probably do not have the right experience to write for us. Yet even homeschoolers make the mistake of not getting to know our publica tion. Recently a writer sent us a query more suited for a Christian publication. If she had read our magazine, she might have realized it’s secular. I also have had people send me submissions for blog posts, which shows they really didn’t look closely at our website. We do have a blog, and if we were making a call for bloggers, we’d have that on our website. But we’re not hiring bloggers. We are a magazine, and we accept queries for magazine articles. Another huge mistake is bugging me on social media. Do not copy (cc:) me on every blog post you write and then post to Twitter. I don’t have time to read your posts, and you’re bordering on spammer. Or stalker. You will be blocked, and you will never write for my magazine. One of my and my editor-in-chief’s pet peeves are the writers who write a cheerful note letting us know they are writers and available to work for us. Even if well- written clips accompany this e-mail, it’s not a query, and unless you’re famous and willing to work for what we can pay, it’ll go unanswered. As I keep saying, most writers fail to read our publi cation. If you haven’t read at least one issue cover to cover, you will not understand our tone or the subject matter we’re seeking. And queries should not only explain your idea for an article in (brief) detail, you should be able to tell us where it fits into the magazine. And we want a short, succinct paragraph about you and your experience too. Many queries I get are one or two lines long. While brevity is good, this is too brief. There are times when a writer sends a pretty good pitch, and my partner and I talk about it and consider it. But for whatever reason, we decide we can’t use it. I always respond to these writers and tell them their idea wasn’t quite right, but they should try again. Yet, I never hear from them again. Why are you giving up, I wonder? Writing is hard work. It takes time to come up with a good idea, do the research, and even more time to find the right publication for it. And, yes, if you can’t find it in the library, you have to buy a copy of the magazine when you barely have two pennies to rub together. I know it’s frustrating. I know it pays crap. But if you’re going to do it, learn to do it right. Winder resident Shelli Bond Pabis is a contributing columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at writetospabis@gmail.com or visit her blog at www. mamaofletters. com.