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4A Clje 1) eralb Tuesday, April 13,2021 Opinions Ruffin's Renderings: Decisions, decisions Researchers estimate that a person makes about 35,000 decisions each day. No, I don’t know how they arrived at that num ber. I do know that I just made a quick decision not to spend any time trying to find out. Yes, I think that number is too high. I mean, it must be, right? But I don’t have enough information to make a decision on the figure’s accuracy. It just feels high to me. But we never make decisions based on our feelings rather than on facts, do we? Of course, we make many decisions without giving them any thought. For example, I just decided to rub my chin thoughtfully. Ironically, I did so without thinking about it. On one hand, such decisions usually don’t matter, so it usually doesn’t matter that we don’t think about them. On the other hand, you never know how differ ently things might have gone had you turned left instead of right as you drove out of the grocery store parking lot last Fri day or had you left work at 5:32 rather than at 5:34 on that rainy Tuesday fourteen years ago. Still, it seems to me that we too often make big decisions without thinking about them. Sometimes it can’t be helped. Situations can develop quickly or unexpectedly that require us to make a split- second decision. We can all think of obvious ex amples. If some one suddenly stops their car right in front of you, you’re going to stomp on your brake pedal without thinking about it. Or maybe that’s not as much of a split-second decision as it seems. Maybe it’s more ac curate to say that your split-second decision is the end result of a lifetime of driving experi ence (not to mention a lifetime of practicing self- preservation). Now that I think about it, I wonder if a lot of the decisions that we seem to make without thinking are actually the culmina tion of a lifetime of think ing, considering, experi encing, and reacting. Maybe we should keep that in mind when have a “the right response to that is so obvious, I don’t even have to think about it” moment. Maybe we should remember that it is the sum total of our ex periences that make that “right” response seem so obviously “right” to us. Maybe we should consid er that our experiences can sometimes affect our thinking and responding in less than healthy ways. Certainly we should remember that not every one has had experiences that lead them to have the same response that we have. Maybe we should con sider the possibility that we might be wrong—or at least not totally right. We can’t go back and change our lives. We can’t change our ex periences. But we can reflect on why we react to events and occur rences as we do. And we can commit to paying more attention to our lives from this moment forward. We can work on having our character be formed by principles and commitments that will cause us to have split- second reactions that are worthy expressions of a life committed to—dare I suggest the possibility— love. Mike Ruffin is a Barnesville native who lives in Yatesville and works in Macon. His new book, Praying with Matthew, is available at helwys.com and at Amazon. Best things to see may be close to home, folks Election law not all good or all bad KAV S. PEDR0TTI kayspedrotti@gmail.com Every now and then, Bob and I take a notion to go someplace or see some thing we have yet to expe rience. Macon, Georgia, is not a place with which we are not familiar, nor is it a place most people think of go ing “on vacation;” but we just got back from three really fine days in our neighboring Big City to the South. Macon is a strangely eclectic city. There are huge churches down town which appear to be trying to out-steeple each other. Two historic cemeteries include the kind of statuary and brick boundary fencing that one does not see much anymore; most cemeteries now feature few if any fascinating sculptures or grave markers that are “hard to mow around.” At Rose Hill, the fascination is endless - but we mostly wanted to visit the gravesites of The Allman Brothers, Duane and Gregg. Also buried in the high-fenced plot is Berry Oakley, one member of that famous band and Butch Trucks. Having been Allman fans as long as we can remember, we also had never visited The Big House, where the family and some band members lived. It’s now a museum of extensive artifacts from a custom-padded amp to cancelled pay- checks, publicity photos to fantastic palette-knife type paintings of the band and some individ ual members. We spent too much money on stuff for our children, who also are fans. Back to Macon itself: we found nothing that made us unhappy - not even the extensive road construction going on - except the city’s parking- meter system. After six or seven unsuccessful tries at paying the fee with a credit card on Poplar Street, a woman with the right number of quarters came to the rescue. If a city wants to charge for its space, for the very good reason of keeping people rotating through town, then it should invest enough in the technology to make it work accurately all the time and according to directions. Macon has an abun dance of beautiful houses and buildings, some right alongside crumbling and moldy old structures. One can see there is major effort go ing on in safe, attractive and useful beautification, but it’s enough to give a zoning expert night mares. The city’s charm is certainly found in its support of music and the arts, given the rather large number of famous musicians associated with Macon - Otis Red ding for one, and guess what - one of the medi cal buildings is named for Richard Penniman, better known as Little Richard. It goes against my heart that the “pow ers who were” killed the Georgia Music Hall of Fame, giving it to Ath ens, and left the sports museum. We stayed in a won derful hotel near the Coliseum complex. My husband’s amazing abil ity to navigate kept us going in the right direc tion most of the time, and just the Big House would have been worth the trip - but we also did the Museum of Arts and Sciences and its Planetar ium. Next time we’ll go to the Tubman Museum and Hay House, two on our list that we just ran out of time to do. Coincidentally, we have discovered that our offspring are irrevo cably connected to the Allman Brothers Band. That band formed on the day our daughter was born in March of 1969; Duane died in October 1971 within a week of the birth of our first son. Vic says he remembers be ing attracted to the “Eat a Peach” and “Fillmore East” album photos and drawings when he was only two years old. Visit Macon for some thing you’ve never seen or done - I’ll bet they have it there. And the food is outstanding! Kay S. Pedrotti has spent some 50 years writing for newspapers. She is active in the Lamar County community and currently serves as the president of Lamar Arts. She lives in Milner with her husband Bob Pedrotti. EDITORIAL BOARD THE TIMES, GAINESVILLE Georgia is again at the center of a political maelstrom, and while you would think by now we were accustomed to being in such a position, knowing that the vitriol being directed our way is both unnecessary and unjustified makes it harder to accept the black eye much of the nation seems determined to give us. Unnecessary because the election reforms that have put the state in the national crosshairs of bad publicity were the re sult of Donald Trump and his supporters repeat edly making false claims about fraud that no one was ever able to prove existed. Unjustified because much of what is being claimed about those reforms is as inaccurate as were the allegations about the election made by Trump and his legal team, one of whom has gone so far as to admit that the claims she made should not have been believed by “reasonable people.” The angry drumbeat of criticism is not likely to be silenced any time soon. Already there are multiple lawsuits, which will have to wend their way through the courts even as the state begins to gear up for another election cycle that will see the governor, state officials, a U.S. Senate seat and every member of the General Assembly on the ballot next year. What a mess. Ironically, the most significant change in the election law is one receiving little attention by those determined to have the reforms stricken from the books by the courts. While the talking points grabbing attention have been drop boxes, absentee ballot identifica tion, deadlines and water bottles, the fact that the legislation removes much of the Secretary of State’s authority to manage and control elections and shifts that power to a position responsible to the legislature has stayed under the radar. The new law removes the Secretary of State as the chairman of the state’s board of elections and replaces him with an appointee of the General Assembly. It goes on to then empower the board to step in and override decisions made at the local level related to how elections are conducted, which is a major and dra matic shifting of power related to the operation of the voting process in Georgia. With the change, three of the five members of the board, including the chairman, will be appointed by the legis lature, whose members run for re-election more often than most other office holders in the state thanks to their two-year terms. References to foxes and hen houses might be appropriate. If you only listened to the one-sided theatrics of its opponents, you would believe the election reform measure to be so terribly skewed in intent as to be an evil likely to crack the foundations of liberty that form the un derpinnings of our state government. It isn’t that. But neither is it an elec toral revision that was delivered on the wings of angels and is pure as the driven snow, as some of its supporters would have you believe. Elements of the bill that have garnered atten tion at the national level have been misstated, misrepresented and misinterpreted by many who have jumped on the bandwagon to criticize the law. •Voter ID - The new law requires those SEE ELECTION LAW 5A Letter printing guidelines The Herald Gazette welcomes letters to the editor. For a letter to be considered for publication, please include the writer’s actual name, address and tele phone number. Limit letters to 250 words or less. All letters are subject to editing. Send letters to RO. Box 220, Barnesville, 30204, email it to news@barnesville.com or drop it by 509 Greenwood Street, Barnesville. April 11-17 10 years ago A powerful storm sys tem packing devastating straight line winds ham mered the county April 5, downing trees and inflicting heavy damage on power lines. South ern Rivers Energy had 6,588 homes without power, about 35% of its members. Three weeks later, a much more severe storm would hit the community. 25 years ago There was much rejoicing as most of the local guardsmen deployed in the Persian Gulf War were returning to American soil. The troops were assigned to National Guard units in Forsyth, Griffin and Thomaston. 50 years ago Benjamin Franklin Martin, 40, an employee of the Barnesville light and water department, was killed April 13 when he came in contact with a high voltage line at the water works. Martin was a native of Lamar County, lived on Free man Road and was a veteran of the Korean War. Services were held at Calvary Baptist Church with burial in Lamar Memory Gar dens. 100 years ago Mr. H. A. Daniel of Griffin recently became the agent of the express office in Barnesville, Mr. W. H. Strickland having gone to the agency at East Point. Mr. Dan iel has been with the agency at Griffin and is an experienced and accommodating official. He and his family, con sisting of a wife and two children, are at present rooming in the Carriker place on Zebulon Street next to the Baptist Church. Zi)t Heraltr #a^tte barnesville.com 770.358.NEWS P.0. Box 220 Publishers Staff SUBSCRIBE DEADLINES 509 Greenwood Street Walter Geiger Nolan George $30 per year in Lamar and sur- The deadline for public notices Barnesville, Ga. 30204 Laura Geiger Rachel McDaniel rounding counties; $40 outside is noon Thursdays; news and 770-358-NEWS Tasha Webster the local area. advertising before noon Fridays. barnesville.com General Manager Includes 24/7 access to Early submission is appreciated. E-mail: news@barnesville.com Missy Ware barnesville.com