About Lake Oconee news. (Greensboro, GA) 199?-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 27, 2017)
Friday, October 27, 2017 Lake Oconee News Page A5 Letters to the Editor For the record Letters must be signed and include your full address and phone number for verification; only name and town are printed. Submissions may be edited for content and length. The deadline is 1 p.m. Monday. Send to news@lakeoconeenews.us Madison is a small and picturesque town Reading letters and adver tisements in the paper seem to suggest that some think Madison is a town doing little right, with its economy and quality oflifeatriskif changes are not soon made. I see something quite differ ent. When my family moved here 23 years ago, Madison was a wonderful town. Today it is even more so. We now have Town Park alongwiththehistoricpreser- vation and new development it fostered. Until the city stepped in, this was a blighted area. Because ofthe park, nearly 40 businesses have located there. Assessed property values increased from $2 million to over $21 million. We have more shopping, restaurants, quality housing and a superb venue for outdoor events. Our historic downtown is more vital. Anequallyimportanttrans- formation is occurring in the West Washington gateway, another previously blighted area of the historic district. Even with the Great Recession, wekeptmost of our local industry and expanded it. When businesses were lost, new ones were generally found. Our interstate inter change businesses have bur geoned. Newprofessional and retail establishments have been built from the interstate to downtown. Increasingly, we are a destination for wed dings and the film industry. Madison’s 4.5 percent unem ployment, down from 11.2 percebt in 2010, is below the state average. Since 2004, our tourist industry has grown over 60 percent in spite of the reces sion. In the last six years, tourist expenditures are up 30 percent. Our town has been recognized as the “No. 1 Small Town in America,” among the “World’s 16 Most Picturesque Villages,” and by Southern Living as one of the special towns in the South. During the recent com prehensive planning process, dozens of residents attended city meetings to share ideas, concerns, and priorities. In the last decade, 40 acres has been permanently protected for greenspace and parks, four times that which was protected during our first 200years. Floodingproblems are being addressed; needed housing initiatives, under taken. We have some of the region’s lowest taxes. Since 2007, city staff and volunteers secured $4 million in funding to achieve our goals andkeep property taxes down. Officials from cities around Georgia regularly visit Madison to learnhowwe have accomplished what we have. All this does not happen by chance. It occurs because of vision, hard work and commitment by dedicated leaders and city employees; because citizen volunteers work week in and week out to make Madison abetter place; because city government does listen to its citizens and does work with the private sector and other government agencies. Are city staff, the mayor, and council perfect? Of course not. We all disagree with some of their decisions. They make mistakes. They are human. Is there much which needs to be done to make Madison even better? Absolutely. Yet ,show me a town in Georgia of 4,000 which has accom plished more than we have. What I see when I look at Madison is not a town about to lose that makes it special, but a town other cities point to and say, “I wish we could be more like them.” David Land Madison Response to letter by Mr. Giesler Let us take afewmoments and comment on Mr. Giesler’s letter of afew weeks past. His statements regard ing Democrats supporting slavery and the Ku Klux Klan shows a spectacular ignorance of simple histori cal time line, basic facts and milieu. The generally accepted first Democratic president was Andrew Jackson. Today we often see Donald Trump sitting in front of a large portrait of the seventh pres ident. (Future test question: Why would our Republican president want the first Democratic president’s pic ture in the Oval Office?) There were Democrats in the North and the South; just like there were Baptists and Methodists in the Northern and Southern parts of the “United” States. By the 1850’s, Southern Democrats were strongly pro-slavery and also by far the largest political block. Northern Democrats were ambivalent regarding this question and were more concerned about business and industrial expansion. In the northeast there was a small but very vocal group of Evangelical Christians who were anti-slavery. In 1854, they founded something called the Republican Party and in 1856, ran Gen John C. Fremont for President. Democrat James Buchanan won the election and the stage was set for the I860, campaign. By this time Methodists, Baptists and Democrats had split. The word ‘Southern’ now had to precede these nouns. The I860 election broke downlike this: Firstplace,A. Lincoln-Republican; Second place, F. Douglas-Northern Democrat; Third place, J. Breckenridge-Southern Democrat; Fourth place, J. Bell - Constitutional Union Party. So there it is. For the next 100 years you couldn’t find a Southern Republican if your life depended on it. Solid South meant Pro: segregation, Jim Crow and White only office holders. The exciting elections were the Democratic Primaries. There Dems could duke it out. The General election was just for the national candidates. After the Civil War, the Republican Party morphed into a party that strongly supportedbigbusinesswhile the Democratic Party looked more toward the working man. This is an over simpli fication, but it can serve as an over-arching definition. The solid Democratic South was the South of Nathan Bedford Forrest and the KKK. The solid Democratic South began to crumble after WWII. It was angry that Democrat Harry Truman integrated the U.S. military. Strom Thurmondand others broke and formed the States Rights Party, also known as Dixiecrats. Thurmond ran for president and carried four Southern States. Through the 50’s and 60’s the National Republican Party and Northern Democrats moved ahead with basic civil rights. This caused Southern Dems to double down on “segregation forever” and Confederate battle flags began to appear on state banners. 1968 was a pivotal year for the modern Republican Party. Nixon won the elec tion, but Alabama governor George Wallace won 56 elec toral votes on the American Independentticket. National Republicans saw a chance and came up with their “Southern Strategy.” Now then, why would a famous California gov ernor kick off his 1980, presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi? Speakingto ajubilant crowd at the Neshoba County fair, Ronald Reagan let it be known that he didn’t care for the Federal govern ment. When he said he was for states rights, scores of Confederate flags waved. Boisterous Republicans in the South? That scene was 100 percent impossible 25 years earlier. The answer to the above questions: Neshoba County was the site of the murder of three voter rights activists 16 years earlier. Conscientiously or sub-conscientiously, the word was out. Vote Republican and certain groups will be “saved.” So there you have it. It’s the “Mad Hatters Tea Party.” One pill makes you larger and, one pill makes you small. Up is down and down is up. The modern Republican Party has absolutely nothing to do with the I860 party of Lincoln. And Strom Thurmond was never a modern Democrat. He was amodern Republican and a 1920, Southern Democrat. Keep Calm and Study on. Billy Scholly When I was a child, from the time I was old enough to sit on the floor and play with my toes until far past the time I put on my first coatofmascara, Ihave loved records. I thought it was magical thatlcouldputablackround disc on my little phonograph player and soon music or wordswouldbeplaying.This absolutely fascinated me. If you ever run into Tink, ask him to show you one of his favorite photos. He always has it close at hand. My husband enjoys plundering through boxes of old things to find pieces of me as a little girl. Somewhere, he found a black and white photo of aplump 3-year-old clutching an old 45 record in my pudgy fingers. My head is flung back joyously and I am laughing. In every photo from my childhood, I am either laughing merrily or grinning happily with twinkling eyes. And, too, in most photos of a childish me, you can count on seeing a piece of my petticoat trimmed in lace. “Why are you always showingoffyour petticoat in photos?” he asked, laughing as he gazed at the ensemble of white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, a jumper, lace- trimmed socks and black patent shoes. I shrugged. “I liked my petticoats. They made me feel pretty.” Without fail, every photo - andTinkhas afewofthese he can share, too - I have bobbed red-brownhair with bangs that are too short and crooked. They are at least a half inch longer on one side that the other. “And your bangs are Dixie Divas always crooked.” Helaughed again. “Because Mama cut them and if she couldn’t find her regular scissors, she’d just use her pinking shears.” It’s a good thing that my hap piness didn’t depend on me being pretty because those bangs were plenty ugly. So, this child with crooked bangs, a happy personality and petticoats longer than her dresses, loved records. As soon as I could read, I was equally fascinated with the record jackets. Whenever I got a new one, I would sit down and read every word written on theback. In those days ofvinyl records, it often included what was known as “liner notes” which was a couple of paragraphs about the album and sometimes included a story about the artist or the songs. Faithfully, I read who produced the album, which musicians played on the ses sion and, importantly, who wrote the songs. Sadly, this is something that has been lost to downloaded music and even CDs. 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