About Lake Oconee news. (Greensboro, GA) 199?-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 25, 2017)
Friday, August 25, 2017 Lake Oconee News Page A5 Letters to the Editor Noa *« could ever Letters must be signed and include your full address and phone number for verification; only name and town are printed. replace that tree Submissions may be edited for content and length. The deadline is 1 p.m. Monday. Send to news@lakeoconeenews.us Special thanks to the staff at Putnam General A family member’s recent illness, which required a Friday visit to the Lake Oconee Urgent Care Center, led to six days of hospital ization at Putnam General Hospital in Eatonton. The former patient at PGH has recovered, returned to her teaching job in Atlanta and is very appreciative of the excellent care she received while battling a severe case of pneumonia. Having spent a lot of time with our daughter during her stay at Putnam General, I wanted to take this opportunity to share with your readers how im pressed we were with the medical treatment that was provided. A special thanks to Dr. Eddie Richardson, who first saw the patient at Urgent Care and attended her during her hospitaliza tion. Dr. Richardson is a great asset to PGH and to other healthcare facilities in the lake area where he provides services. All individuals who had a role in our daughter’s treat ment and care performed their duties in a highly pro fessional manner. We were provided timely updates on her condition and the various treatments being administered. The profes sionalism shown by the medical and nursing staff provided comfort and reas surance that our daughter was receiving the best possible care. As I’m sure residents of Putnam County are aware, a community hospital plays a vital role in public health care. Putnam General, based on our experience, has reminded us of the im portance of rural health care. Our recent experi ence also reinforces our belief that local hospitals are among the necessary facilities that help build economic strength and di versity among communi ties. Thanks again to PGH and all those who helped during our daughter’s time of need. Mickey Peace Greensboro Weird Continued from A4 Texas, and that’s not easy for an itinerant drifter. In fact, you can almost hear Texas swallow when a newcomer crosses the Sabine River and wanders unprepared into it. Texas, the Republic of, the Lone Star state, is the only state granted entry into the U.S. by treaty rather than an nexation; the big country, so big, in fact, that one could shoehorn all of New England, New York, Penn sylvania, Ohio and Illinois into it; Texas, where every thing is outsized, protuber ant, insanely magnificent. Texas, home of the King Ranch, that is larger than the entire state of Rhode Island; Texas, where the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport complex is larger than Manhattan Island. And the deeper into Texas one gets, the more overwhelming it becomes, especially to an outsider un accustomed to such colossal distances and topographi cal monotony. Union General Phillip Sheridan once said that if he owned Texas and Hell, he would rent out Texas and live in hell. Sheridan, by the way, has a statue in Washington D.C. done by the same sculptor who created the one carved into the north face of Stone Mountain which is the largest bas-relief sculpture in the world. Suddenly, I sound like I’m driving a tour bus. Let’s get back to Texas. In Texas, you pass through towns like Kerrville and Comfort and Sonora and Fort Stockton and out into the brush country where El Muerto, the headless horseman, still rides beneath the bloated moon, his canteen still empty, his ghostly voice rising out of his devastated throat: “It’s mine; It’s all mine.” From the banks of the Rio Grande to the Nueces river, all of it: rocks, mesquite thorns and eternal darkness, belongs to El Muerto. And he can have it. He can have the rest of the country, too, as far as I’m concerned. Just let me keep a little bit of Memphis and B.B. King and Elvis and Scottie Moore and Bill Black and Memphis Slim and Johnny Ace and Steve Cropper and Donald “Duck” Dunn and Booker T. Jones and Aretha Franklin and A1 Green and Isaac Hayes and Morgan Freeman and Junior Wells. Not to mention Louis Williams who played bas ketball at South Gwinnett High School (one of my alma maters) and even Justin Timberlake. Selah. NOTICE The Greene County CVB is looking for qualified applicants to join its Board of Directors. Applicants must have an interest in Greene County and seeing its tourism industry grow. This is not a paid position. Deadline to submit application: September 8, 2017. For an application, email Hannah Wilcher Hannah@visitlakeoconee.com For more information please visit www.visitlakeoconee.com T V I b I I ^Lake Oconee ^INTRODUCING GEORGIA’S LAK i— COUNTRY m IEALTH & FITNEJ ■■MAGAZINE® Change hearts to solve problems STOP PEOPLE, STOP!!!! I cannot believe the lunacy and degradation to which this nation has descended. To hate and disrupt is bad enough, to cause loss of lives is inexcusable! We as a nation should hang our collective heads in shame. It doesn’t matter how one spins and tries to justify their actions, “My side didn’t do it; it’s their fault” will not bring back life!! When President Trump said both sides were to blame, ‘one’ side wailed and gasped that ‘they’ could not possibly have been any part of the violent and deadly mayhem. To a degree, both sides were to blame. Indeed, we are all to blame. How did we as a people sit by and Letter Continued from A4 Letters to the editor are not term papers, essays or articles. They are written in first-person, just like an old-fashioned letter to Santa Claus. The good thing is, you don’t have to be polite, you can just get straight to the point. You don’t need to list statistics, numbers, details (boring) or be lengthy - just spit out what you have to say! Third, sign your name. If you’re worried about incorrect grammar, mis spelled words, leaving out allow such a disruptive and confused mindset to become the norm? If the mainstream media would report events like this re sponsibly and unbiased, our citizens would not be so confused. Whereas the original gatherers have their right to peaceable assembly, I am sorely grieved that the Confederate (get this part correct, folks) ‘Battle Flag’ was used by this group. Any association or allusion to the noble and honorable Confederacy should only be exhibited in a dignified manner, which it deserves. Then the general public would not have such a neg atively skewed impression of the flag and our nations’ Confederate heritage! This commas, please don’t let that stop you. We do not change the meaning or wording of letters, but we will correct grammatical/ spelling mistakes, if you request. And we don’t go around talking about such mistakes - we’re way too busy to even think about it. Besides, I wouldn’t want you judging me on my accounting skills, or the lack thereof; so I’m not going to make any judgement on anyone about their writing skills, or the lack thereof. At the end of the letter, put your name, your town, your daytime phone number and your email address. We flag should NEVER be used in such a manner or associ ation. In the aftermath, our country was once again wounded by the hate, de struction and malicious violence in North Carolina toward our countries’ Con federate heritage. Was this event an unlawful assembly? It appeared to be. Was this also destruction of public property? Definitely!! Was this a hate crime? Clearly. Was it inciting a riot? It could easily have been. Why weren’t there more arrests made and fines levied? These people are on camera; they should be easy enough to find. Who orga nized this? Removing monuments will not publish your phone number or email address, but we will call you to verify you sent the letter. Besides local issues and hot topics, letters to the editor also are a great way to inform the community of your goings-on. Between 35-50 press releases arrive in my inbox every day, and there is never enough space for them all in the newspa per. So why not write a letter and tell everyone yourself? Email your letters to editor@msgr.com, hand-deliver it to the office, or snail-mail it to The Eatonton Messenger, 100 N. Jefferson Ave., Eatonton, GA 31024. and an ISIS-like destruc tion and rewriting of history will not heal our nation. An Atlanta news story had an interview with a black man. He quite correctly stated (I’m paraphrasing here) that removing things won’t solve anything, you must change peoples’ hearts. Thank you,sir! To whoever is behind all this hate and destruction, removing and destroying national monuments will only infuriate people more, and cause greater division in our nation. However, it’s pretty evident you already know that. May God bless and have mercy upon us. We need it. Sincerely, Steve Wallace I will be glad you did, and you will, too! Sincerely, Lynn Hobbs Associate editor When I was a child, around the age of 5, my mama’s brother went to fight in Vietnam. He was a career military man who served on helicopters that dropped into the jungles and picked up the badly wounded and dead. It scarred his heart forever. His heart was also scarred by what was happening back home. He had left behind two children, whose mother had left them behind when she went back to her homeland of Germany and never returned. My aunt Ozelle took in the beautiful young girl. The absolutely adorable son, Mike, the same age as me, came to live with us. While my uncle’s life was miserable during that tour of duty, Mike and I were having quite a fine time back home in Georgia. We put up an Army regula tion, drab green tent that Mike’s daddy had bought for us at the commissary and camped out nights, eating Army food from green cans. We climbed trees, picked blackberries and explored every nook and cranny of the creek. And we fished. There was a stream running through the pasture that burbled its way to emptying into the creek. Because we had seen tadpoles, Mike and I figured that we could catch fish there, too. We were only 5, remember. We made fishing poles out of sticks, attached string, and fashioned hooks from safety pins. It’s safe to say that Mama helped us figure out this engineer ing. For hours, my best Ronda Rich Dixie Divas buddy and I sat on the em bankment of that brook and waited for the big fish we were certain we’d catch. Under a tree that shaded us from the summer’s sun, we whiled away our time. Later, I bought that land and built a house, posi tioning it where I could see that stream and that tree, so dear to my childhood, from the front porch. Often, I’d pull into the drive and look over at that stream and tree and think of Mike. It may sound silly, but for 12 years I prayed over the three trees that gave character to that stream. “Please, Lord,” I’d pray often, “don’t let me outlive those trees.” In the past several years, ice storms and drought have taken dozens of trees from the property where Tink and I live. My heart begged the Lord to leave those three trees. I couldn’t bear the thought of life without them. Silly, perhaps. But the heart loves what it loves. One morning, I walked out on the back porch and heard a chainsaw. Tink had hired someone to do some cleaning up in the SEE TREE » A8 mu Local Lonzenu Reserve your space now! Call Vicki Parker Office: 706-454-1290 Email: Vicki@msgr.com
