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PAGE 4A - THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS. WEDNESDAY. MARCH 12. 2008
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Editorial Views
A Generous Donation
From A Library Advocate
It is interesting that the most generous donation
toward the expansion of the Commerce Public
Library is the result of a man's gratitude for a public
library in India.
But Dr. Narasimhulu Neelagaru, known universally
and affectionately here as "Dr. Neel," humbly attri
butes much of his education — and thus his success
— to the countless books and other publications he
read at the public library in Bellary, India, as a poor
child growing up in a poor nation.
Commerce residents and library patrons are grate
ful for his gratitude. The Neelagaru family's $150,000
donation puts the library within $75,000 of raising
the $583,000 it needs to leverage state funds for the
long-awaited expansion. The $2 million project will
add 5,000 square feet of space to the library.
The examples he set merit observation. First, Dr.
Neel recognized that the key to escaping poverty was
to get an education, and he set about to acquire one,
using his public library as a starting point. Secondly,
he applied himself diligently toward achieving his
goal, and thirdly, his gratitude is such that he wants
to help the Commerce Public Library as it serves
the public — just like the library in India served and
motivated him.
"The Neelagaru Family Children's Library" will
serve area children for generations. Hopefully, those
children will also learn about the man for whom it
is named. His work ethic, humility and generosity
are an inspiration.
State Water Policy
Defies Understanding
As Georgia braces itself for the second round of
the ongoing drought this spring, one thing is clear.
Georgia's leadership is confused and contradictory.
The General Assembly, governor and Environmental
Protection Division continue to issue edicts and
orders, each trying to manage local water issues
from afar, and none of them — apparently — aware
of what the other is doing. Meanwhile, local water
boards, which at state insistence drafted drought
contingency plans that were all approved by the
EPD, find those plans useless because one or more of
those entities issues countermanding orders.
What's driving state water policy — aside from the
clown convention we call state government — is the
low water level in Lake Lanier and the prospect that
Atlanta will not have sufficient water come May.
Most other reservoirs have recovered, and some
parts of the state have yet to feel the impact of the
drought. What is needed in Atlanta is a far cry from
what is warranted in Hartwell.
Water providers have no clear concept of what the
state water policy will be, because the EPD policies
often don't jibe with what the governor says, and
the legislature is apt at any moment to take matters
into its hands. Lost somewhere is the idea that local
governments just might have a better understanding
of their water needs than the folks 65 or 265 miles
away in Atlanta.
There may be times when the state has to intervene
in local government, but it should always happen
on the smallest scale possible. If one drainage basin
has a problem, address that basin. The state — EPD,
governor or General Assembly — should never force
"solutions" on cities and counties that don't have
the problems for which the solutions were devised,
and should not confuse the water providers and the
public with multiple orders from different entities.
Dealing with Georgia's fragmented approach to
water management is far more challenging locally
than providing adequate water during the drought.
Editorials, unless otherwise noted, are written by Mark
Beardsley. He can be reached by e-mail at mark@main-
streetnews.com.
The Commerce News
ESTABLISHED IN 1875
USPS 125-320
1672 South Broad Street
Commerce, Georgia 30529
MIKE BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
SCOTT BUFFINGTON Co-Publisher
MARK BEARDSFEY Editor/General Manager
BRANDON REED Sports Editor
TERESA MARSHALL Office Manager
MERRILL BAGWELL Cartoonist
THE COMMERCE NEWS is the legal organ of the city
of Commerce and is published every Wednesday by
MainStreet Newspapers Inc. Periodical postage paid at
Commerce, Georgia 30529.
Subscription Rates Per Year: Jackson, Banks
and Madison counties, $19.75; State of Georgia,
$38.85; out-of-state, $44.50. Most rates dis
counted $2 for senior citizens.
POSTMASTER send address changes to THE COMMERCE
NEWS, P.O. Box 908, Jefferson, GA 30549.
Don't tell anyone, but I hand-watered my roses for 27 minutes
yesterday Do you think the governor will have me arrested?
The Stars And The Lonely Ocean
The night sky in winter has
always seemed spectacular to
me, and never more so than
here, where we don't (yet) have
enough ambient light to make
the stars fade. Orion stands
out in such stark relief that he
looks like a connect-the-dots
figure, and Mars, this year, is
particularly close and therefore
particularly red.
Whenever the weather fore
cast says "clear and cold," I
think about how beautiful the
sky will be, and I never pull up
in front of my house and get
out of the car without looking
upward immediately.
So that's what I was doing the
other night: looking upward.
Usually I exclaim "Oh, wow!"
or something, but this time it
was late, and I was aware of a
vast silence that I didn't want
to break — a silence so deep
that it seemed to be echoing
itself. So I just stood there. And
suddenly a line of poetry came
to me: "The stars go over the
lonely ocean."
Joan Didion described a
similar moment in her book
"The White Album," which I
read 30 years ago. A line from
Ezra Pound's "Cantos" arrived
in her head: "Petals on a wet,
black bough." And it seemed
so significant to her that she
A Few
Facts, A
Lot Of
Gossip 2
BY SUSAN HARPER
wrote about it at some length,
and about Pound, too.
I feel that same way. I was
introduced to the poetry of
Robinson Jeffers more than 40
years ago — in the year that he
died, in fact: 1962 — and I'm
not sure I've read him since.
Yet there he was, in some part
of my head, waiting to give me
the perfect words after all these
years. That seemed as remark
able to me as the stars over my
head.
Jeffers, born around the
same time as my grand
mother (the late 1800s), was
a minister's son from north
western Pennsylvania. His
brother Hamilton became a
well-known astronomer, but
Robinson, a child prodigy,
was a bit (or more than a bit)
of a rebel. He entered medi
cal school in California, fell in
love with the wife of a promi
nent Los Angeles attorney, and
ended up in a scandal that hit
the front page of the L.A. Times
in 1912. By 1913 he had mar
ried her and they had moved
to Carmel, on the California
coast, where they built a house
out of rock, had twin sons, and
lived a rugged life, much of it
outdoors.
Jeffers would never have been
my cup of tea. He became
preoccupied with mankind's
"inhumanism," as he called it,
and didn't see how we could
build a decent, peaceful world
as long as we were all so ego
centric. (I don't think it ever
occurred to him that he was
the most egocentric of all!)
He didn't accept the idea of
meter in poetry (stressed and
unstressed syllables), so he was
at war with poets too. And he
was dead set against America's
entering World War II, so he
ended up being at war with
just about everybody. I think
he must have been a real sour-
puss.
And yet... he loved the
"astonishing beauty" of the
natural world, and his stars did
go over that cold, lonely ocean
— and for me, always will.
Susan Harper is director of the
Commerce Public Library.
A Better Appreciation Of Teens
Just as I started to feel that
American teenagers had been
completely lost in the self-
absorbed, technologically-
driven and indifferent culture
of our day, the challenge of
a county-wide essay contest
changed my mind.
No more Britney Spears cus
tody battle, no more American
Idol predictions, no more text
messaging, facebooking or
even myspacing. The thought
ful essays I read this past week
end were generally composed
by concerned and selfless high
school students interested in
how they can help make their
community a better place.
Topics such as global warming,
animal control, public recre
ation, health care, child abuse
and neglect, historic preserva
tion, business recruitment,
education, drug abuse, litter
control and public participa
tion through volunteerism
dominated discussion.
Outside of the few contes
tants who obviously regurgi
tated the last thing they heard
on the morning news, a major
ity of the essays were thought-
provoking and motivating. As
Views
In
Rotation
BY HASCO CRAVER
one teenage author eloquently
created a picture of an anxious
young girl entering a home for
abuse victims, another used
illustrative details to examine
the process of "paying it for
ward" — a phrase popularized
by a movie of the same name
whereby good deeds are carried
out in an exponentially grow
ing fashion (someone helps a
person in need, then the per
son originally receiving help
assists another, and so on and
so on).
The writing style exhibited
by these teenagers was aston
ishing and wildly entertaining.
Their understanding of com
plex issues coupled with their
ability to convey those ideas in
written word was delightful.
After rereading some of my
favorites over and over again, I
forgot that I was reading essays
written by the portion of our
population that is normally
seen as moody, insecure, argu
mentative, angst-ridden, impul
sive, impressionable, reckless
and rebellious.
The idea that teenagers are
impossible to talk to, live with
and relate to has become so
commonplace that most adults
start to believe and act as if it
is so. The myth of the difficult
teenage years is perpetuated
over and over until everyone
believes that all teenagers are
difficult all the time. The teen
ager is truly a unique creature.
I am not a parent, so my
pondering of contemporary
parenthood usually occurs
while reading a journal article
or watching a television pro
gram about the bleak outlook
so many experts have for our
community's future. While
there are numerous reasons to
be nervous, and even fright
ened by the world around us,
Please Turn To Page 5A
It's Gospel
According
To Mark
BY MARK BEARDSLEY
Amazed By
The Restoration
In St, Louis
We celebrate in Commerce when
one of our historic buildings is reno
vated, and we've had several oppor
tunities to celebrate in the last year.
More will come.
Imagine my amazement then, to
find 27 historic buildings undergoing
renovation all at once — 17 of them
in a two-block commercial district.
I was in St. Louis, visiting my
cousin Bruce and his wife, Jane, who
is one of three employees of the
tiny Old North St. Louis Restoration
Group nonprofit. She arranged a tour
of "The Mall," a 17-building swath of
commercial buildings stretching two
blocks on both sides of the road.
Sometime next year there will be a
grand opening, new businesses will
be in the now-vacant storefronts and
people will occupy the 80 apartments
being rebuilt above the storefronts.
Dozens of workers were scattered
among the buildings that Friday
afternoon, framing apartments,
hanging wire, installing plumbing.
There are private investors, people
who've seen previous ONSLRG proj
ects that worked and think they can
make money on this one. There are
some tax credits, 20 percent federal
and 25 state, that help leverage the
resources, but the largest asset is the
optimism of the group, its backers
and investors in the future of the
neighborhood.
What I neglected to mention was
that the project is in an inner-city
neighborhood. Burned out or other
wise abandoned houses are adjacent
to restored houses. Vacant lots and
junk abound. The property crime
rate is atrocious. White flight took
place decades ago.
Bruce and Jane live in an ONSLRG
project, a new house built in the
style of the historic old houses in
the same neighborhood. Across the
street, a friend has lovingly and art
fully restored an original house. Next
door is a long-abandoned house ripe
for restoration. Neighbors are actu
ally neighbors; people stop on the
street to talk, and everyone knows
everyone else — just like in a small
town.
Some of the buildings being
restored lack a wall or a roof or both.
Some are burned, completely gutted.
Others were all but abandoned when
business died out, and one or two
are still occupied and being reno
vated privately outside the auspices
of ONSLRG.
All over St. Louis, old buildings are
being restored to their original con
dition for new uses, both commer
cial and residential. Some of them
are huge. I couldn't tell you if resto
ration outpaces decline — St. Louis
has a world of problems — but clearly
there is a strong belief that restoring
the old is preferable to building new.
If Wal-Mart, Bi-Lo and Ingles shared
that belief, the square footage of
blight in this little town would drop
precipitously.
It began with a church that decid
ed to start a second church in the
neighborhood as something of a
mission. Members looked around,
saw work to do and figured out how
to improve a historic but run-down
neighborhood. Two decades later it
continues, still an act of faith. The
church folded back into the original,
but the mission it created is rebuild
ing a neighborhood, one building
here, 17 there. Truly amazing.
Mark Beardsley is editor of The
Commerce News. He can be reached at
mark@mainstreetnews. com.