Newspaper Page Text
Pickens County
Editorial
Quote of the Week:
An optimist is a fellow who believes a
housefly is looking for a way to get out.
George Jean Nathan
Page
• Opinions • Community Views • Good Old Common Sense
January 7, 2016
n
rom the Staff
Things we’d like to see
in 2016
•Tourism efforts put on the backbumer by
county and city officials and business groups.
Enough with the water park and tourist desti
nation dreams. Let’s concentrate on what we
already are - a great bedroom community for
the metro area - and look for ways to capitalize
on this.
•For Kirby Smart to fire up the DAWGS and
have us poised for a serious run at the national
championship bowls next year. Enough good-
but-not-good-enough out of Athens; we want
to be a contender.
•A cool restaurant, ideally a brew-pub, in the
restored NAPA building on the
corner of Main Street and High
way 53. The building makes a
great anchor for downtown. Now
we need a tenant that is truly a
draw for the whole street.
•The Boys & Girls Club building
completely funded and built by
their goal of this spring. The
fundraising team has raised over
$2 million for the project and is
less than $200,000 away from a
fully-paid-off facility that will give our kids
and teens a safe place to spend time. If you
haven’t yet, please donate.
•A revival of the arts. We were sad to see
Sharptop Arts Association close their doors,
just as we were sad to see many other galleries
and arts events (i.e. the Jasper ArtFest) that
have come and gone. We would like to see
new groups or new faces step up - like the suc
cessful Ed B’s Studio 54 in downtown - and
make arts-related events happen here because
they make a community richer and more vi
brant.
•More support for veterans. We’d like to see
more programs that help our vets transition
back into civilian life so they can find work
From brew
pubs to Blue
Bell and a
good DAWGS
season, here
are our 2016
wishes
and live out a happy life at home with their
families. We’d also like to see more funding
for programs that help veterans struggling with
drug addiction, PTSD, homelessness, job in
security or disabilities from combat. We ap
plaud all the programs out there already, like
the well-received Veterans Court in this judi
cial circuit and programs offered through
Highland Rivers, but we think more can be
done in our country for those who served.
•At least one good snow before spring.
•New sports heroes and idols to cheer. Every
body loves a hero and southern boy Cam New
ton has been great to cheer for this
past year as he nearly led his Car
olina Panthers to a perfect season
(thanks Falcons) but we need
more sports role models for us and
our kids. It’s fun to get behind
sports figures, especially when
they espouse the values we’d all
like to emulate.
•While not original, we would like
a more courteous tone in politics.
We realize that partisan ruthless
ness and low intellectual tone are chronic fea
tures of politics because they work - up to a
point. But so does decency.
•More adoptions at the local shelter - and less
animals there in the first place. Spay and
neuter people. Spay and neuter.
•Jon Stewart’s yearlong retirement ‘joke,’ end
and him announce a new show. Comedy
makes everything better.
•And maybe, just maybe, Blue Bell will come
back with expansion plans after a safe return
to shelves following the listeria scare that took
the smooth, creamy, sugary stuff from us.
AGREE OR DISAGREE? Tell us your thoughts on this week’s staff editorial with a letter to the editor
that will be published next week. Letters may be e-mailed to news@pickensprogress.com. All letters
must have a valid e-mail address, full name and telephone number for verification. We still take them
by regular mail at Pickens Progress, P.O. Box 67, Jasper, GA 30143
The Essential Bad Attitude
By Alan Gibson
Redundant Speech - Using Two Words Where One Will Do
I hereby vow to seek out and
quash redundancies wherever I
find them. Here are some com
mon instances of overstatement
that you and I may encounter.
famous celebrity - A
celebrity may be assumed to be
famous. Otherwise one isn’t
much of a celebrity.
crazy nut - If you’ve estab
lished that one is a nut, he is pre
sumed to be crazy.
maximum capacity - There’s
no such thing as partial capacity,
which is probably an oxymoron
although I’ve never like that
word. Anyway if a ballpark is
filled to capacity, it is understood
to be maximum capacity.
honest truth - “Tell me the
honest truth,” a prosecutor might
ask, to which a clever witness
might respond “One may assume
the truth to be honest.”
warm welcome - You might
contest this one, averring that a
welcome could be frosty. But
then it wouldn’t be a welcome. A
welcome is presumed to be warm
- otherwise it’s some kind of am
bush.
free gift - A gift is ipso facto
free. That is unless you’re ca
joled by advertisers to ‘pay only
shipping and handling’ in which
case it isn’t a gift.
dead corpse - Assuming one
is not a zombie, a corpse may be
assumed dead.
lazy loafer - It is probably
impossible to be anything but
lazy if one is a loafer. There are
very few ambitious loafers.
starts out - Can’t a story just
start? Does it have to start ‘out’?
exciting adventures - An ad
venture is, by its nature, exciting.
Otherwise stay home.
phony facade - The job of a
facade is to disguise reality, thus
it is intentionally phony and does
not need to be so characterized.
On the other hand redundan
cies are devilishly hard to avoid.
If they emphasize the point
you’re making, charge ahead
(note the redundancy: it’s hard
to charge backward). Life is,
after all, an exciting adventure
(another redundancy). This has
to stop. Spotting redundancies
is turning me into a crazy nut.
[Gibson is a regular colum
nist for the Pickens Progress.]
’iragrgBS
(USPS 431-820)
Published by Pickens County Progress, Inc.
94 North Main St. P.O. Box 67 Jasper, GA 30143
(706) 253-2457 FAX (706) 253-9738
www.pickensprogress.com
JOHN A. POOL DAN POOL
Publisher Editor
WILLIAM E. POOL
Managing Editor
Published each Thursday at Jasper, Pickens County Georgia. Entered
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10)<a
Other Voices
How will you use the 2016
bonus day in Leap Year?
By Reverend Max Caylor
Former pastor of the Jasper
United Methodist Church, retired.
cardinalmax@bellsouth.net
The calendar, seasons and the
orbit of the earth is out of synch
and about every four years has to
be adjusted because it takes
365.242199 days to move around
the sim. February twenty-ninth is
added to keep the seasons in line
and is called Leap Year.
How will you use the extra
day? When one Googles New
Year Resolution Ideas the second
article states “50 New Year’s
Resolution Ideas and How to
Achieve Each of Them.”
The top three listed by author
Dimitrijevic was to “get in shape
and look for steady results with a
program that is easy to stick to.”
The next is start eating health
ier food, and less overall by not
eating emotionally. The other top
suggestion was to “stop procras
tinating by do something fun in
stead of hard work.”
As one went down the list the
closest resolution to “spiritual”
was number eleven which said
“learn to be happier with your
life, number thirty-three suggest
ing reinvent yourself and almost
at the bottom number forty-eight
stating face your fears and inse
curities.”
These are all great suggestions
with positive rewards but what
about the spiridial?
One might consider adding
questions to the above for a 2016
resolution? God, how can I be
happier by opening my life to
you? Lord, how may I reinvent
myself by reading your Word?
Holy Spirit, how can I face my
fears and insecurities by follow
ing you in my head and heart?
In 1972 I had been struggling
with a call to ministry since
1968. I was not HOLY enough!
I can’t quote scripture! I don’t
pray enough! I don’t own a black
tie with a black suit much less
have a white one with belt and
shoes to match!
A scripUire changed all of that
for me.
The Apostle Paul was strug
gling with his situation like all
humankind in some way. He
called it “a thorn in my flesh” and
no one knows whether it was
physical, emotional or spiritual.
It was so annoying, painful and
bothersome he asked the Lord
THREE times to remove it.
God’s answer to Paul changed
his life, mine and possibly yours.
“My grace is sufficient for you,
for my power is made perfect in
weakness” 2 Corinthians 12:9.
For Paul it did not matter about
the thorns and for me I did not
worry about being HOLY enough
because our strength to deal with
situations came by and through
the Grace of God with us.
We have an extra day with a
bonus 24 fours containing 1,440
minutes to consider our thorns
and God’s amazing Grace to
overcome them.
Happy Leap Year!
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