About Dawson County news. (Dawsonville, Georgia) 2015-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 17, 2021)
PAGE 7 A Send a letter to the editor to P.O. Box 1600, Dawsonville, GA 30534; fax (706) 265-3276; or email to editor@dawsonnews.com. DawsonOpinion WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2021 This is a page of opinion — ours, yours and others. Signed columns and cartoons are the opinions of the writers and artists, and they may not reflect our views. Baseball, football and life in between Maybe I am being a bit too Southern sensi tive here, but I got the distinct feeling the national media disrespected the Atlanta Braves from the beginning of the playoffs through the World Series and beyond. Had they had their way, I think they would have preferred Los Angeles or San Francisco. Then some MSNBC weenie decried us as racist because of the Tomahawk Chop and a sleazebag agent claims the win was “tainted” because of general manager Alex Anthopoulos getting three outstanding hitters from clubs willing to trade them. Both Anthopoulos and manager Brian Snitker were snubbed for postseason awards they clearly deserved. As a result, all the team has as a consolation prize is the forever honor of being undisputed 2021 World Series champi ons! Eat your heart out, whiners, and kiss our grits. The few responses I got supporting Donald Trump’s harrumph about the late Gen. Colin Powell was not because Powell was an up- from-the-bootstraps South Bronx success story who served his country with distinction in Vietnam and later as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and then secretary of state in the George W. Bush Administration. No, it was because he was considered (shudder!) a RINO. That is someone who is said to be a Republican In Name Only, or, more succinctly, someone who does not support Donald Trump down to his or her tippytoes. I hear that term a lot but never DINO — a Democrat In Name Only. Trump is on record as saying he wishes Democrat Stacey Abrams had been elected governor of Georgia instead of Brian Kemp. He also financially supported current vice pres ident Kamala Harris when she was running for attorney general of California as a Democrat. Does that make him a RINO or a DINO? I don’t have the answer but I do have a feeling someone is going to straighten me out on that. My dear wife used to tell our grandsons, you are free to do whatever you choose. Just under stand there will be consequences to pay if your choices are bad ones. Somebody should have told that to UGA linebacker Adam Anderson, who has been arrested and accused of sexually assaulting a 21-year-old woman in the wee hours of Oct. 29. His lawyer says he is innocent. I say he should never have had the woman in the apart ment between 5 and 6 a.m. as has been alleged and doing what he is alleged to have done. What was he thinking? Obviously, he wasn’t. Speaking of lawyers and football (Can I segue, or what!),I saw a recent article decrying the lack of Black attorneys in this country, say ing that people of color make up 13.4% of the nation’s population but only 5% of the legal profession. If we are going to use that as a standard, then we need to apply the same rule to the National Football League, which is 69% Black in a country that is 72% White. Maybe we can get the ACLU to quit stewing over who can go to what bathrooms and devote their efforts to getting more White running backs in the league. Talk about an underrepre sented class. Seven law enforcement officers in Georgia have been killed in the line of duty so far in 2021, including two this month. But I don’t seem to recall a bunch of wet-behind-the-ear anarchists hurling Molotov cocktails, turning over cars and looting small businesses in pro test. Frankly, they don’t deserve to be on the same planet with these brave heroes and their grieving families. Finally, my friend Toby Probst, an ardent baseball fan and an Auburn War Eagle of the first rank, informs me that of the last three World Series the Braves have won —1957 in Milwaukee and 1995 and 2021 in Atlanta — the quarterback at Auburn has been named Nix: Lloyd Nix in 1957. Patrick Nix in 1995. His son, Bo Nix this year. I did some fact checking and discovered Bo Nix has just one more year of eligibility left and the only other two Nix surnames I could find on the Internet were Wendy Nix, an ESPN reporter and Sofia Nix, a porn star (I’ll take their word for it), neither of whom seem to be quarterback material. Hmmm. This could be serious. Let’s hope Alex Anthopoulos and Brian Snitker come up with a brilliant alternative. Like re-signing Freddie Freeman. You can reach Dick Yarbrough atdick@dickyar- brough.com; at P.O. Box 725373, Atlanta, GA 31139; online atdickyarbrough.com or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/dickyarb. Searching for the next best thing I spent the first part of my life trying like mad to get out of the town I grew up in. To me, it was bor ing, stifling, and felt like a dead end town void of opportunity and possibilities. Any time someone asked me what I wanted to do or be, my answer was, “Anywhere but here.” Every decision I made, every step I took, was to help move me away, off to some distant, unknown to me land where I would be free of the shackles of a small town, where everyone was in your business, and things never seemed to change. I didn’t know how to describe where I wanted to live. In a lot of ways, it was a feeling more than a place. A sense of belonging, commu nity, and a haven of sorts. All I knew was, it would be better than where I had been for the first 25 years of my life. I’ve done that with a few jobs, too, always looking for something better. It’s largely why I job hopped most of my earlier life, bouncing from job to job, only staying a year or two before I hopped to the next one, in hopes of something more appealing. If you could see my resume you’d see my work history ranges from working as a criminal investigator to selling makeup, directing weddings, working in radio, and even a couple of salons. Always in search of something that made me happy, fulfilled, and felt like home. It also contributed to a greater sense of dissatisfaction. Nothing seemed to fill that void I was trying to close. A few years ago, I commented on social media that wished I could move “home” - to the town I grew up in, a place I had romanticized in recent years, to be the only place I had known joy. Within an hour, one of my friends messaged me. “Girl, what are you even think ing? You know all we all talked about when we were kids was getting out of there.” True. And once I did, I was glad to be free and in a new location. It was short lived though. After the novelty of being in a new place wore off, I felt restless and ill at ease, like I was supposed to be some where else. I thought, at the time, it meant moving back home. I tried. I did. Instead, I moved to the mountains. Part of me felt like I had known what it was like to live in my old home town and I was hungry for new adventures. I had always wanted to live in the mountains and this seemed serendipitous. Again, I found myself quickly experiencing that wanderlust of the soul, feeling like I needed to be somewhere else. But where? “You didn’t like it up there at first,” Mama reminded me the other day. No, I didn’t. I was frustrated with traffic from the tourists along with some of the small town constraints I had been critical of in my former hometown. It was a sense of unhappiness and not knowing how to make it right, or even what it was that I was searching for. Don’t we all tend to do that to some degree though? To always feel like there’s something better, more appealing - just somewhere on the periphery of where we are? We feel that sense of discomfort, where we’re not where we need or want to be, and grapple with trying to make a change that will give us the peace we need. It doesn’t always happen. I’ve wrestled with those feelings quite often over the years and found myself not sure what needs to change or what steps I need to take. Difference is, something shifted recently, maybe an epiphany of sorts. I’ve realized, I’m always looking for the next best thing, when maybe where I am already is pretty good. Instead of keeping one foot out the door, maybe I should put both feet in and try to make the most of where I’m at - kind of watering the garden beneath my feet so to speak. There’s nothing wrong with want ing something better. It’s part of what motivates us to create change in our lives. But we can always be so focused on getting that thrill and rush of something new, that we never take the time to appreciate what we’ve already got, that’s pretty dam good. I came to realize that I had spent a lot of my life chasing after some elusive thing that was impossible to capture, or if I did get it, it was hard to hold. The overall feeling was that of contentment, fulfillment, peace, and perhaps a little bit of joy in this crazy life. Maybe it’s not a place we’re look ing for after all; maybe it’s some thing inside of us that we’re trying to find. Sudie Crouch is an award winning humor columnist and author of the recently e-published novel, "The Dahlman Files: A Tony Dahlman Paranormal Mystery." SUDIE CROUCH Columnist
