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PAGE 6A - THE COMMERCE (GA) NEWS, WEDNESDAY. APRIL 8, 2009
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for working adults
Jackson County High School
Chorus & First Baptist Church of
Commerce members mil perform
‘A Child of Our Time' with four of
Georgia's most talented musicians.
Tommy Trotter
Tenor
Holly McCarren
Alto
The JCCHS
Chorus is
sponsored
by:
New Library Director's Journey
Goes From Cuba To Commerce
Summer is on the way...Call Cambridge College today
Michael Tippett’s
A Child of Our Ome
"I would know my shadow and my light, so shall I at last be whole."
By Mark Beardsley
Miguel Vicente’s life jour
ney has taken him from
one extreme to another.
He grew up in Cuba
where the government halt
ed the flow of information;
now he’s director of the
Commerce Public Library
where access to informa
tion is virtually unlimited.
His love of libraries
may have started in
Guantanamo Bay where
he spent a year and eight
months after the U.S.
Coast Guard fished him
and a friend out of the
Gulf of Mexico 25 miles
from Florida after they’d
drifted five days on a
makeshift raft fleeing the
Castro regime in 1994.
As he was processed for
eventual immigration,
someone advised him that
the first two places to go
in America should be “a
church and the library.”
When he joined his father
in Miami, Vicente, then 34,
made the public library
one of his first stops. There
he began the process of
learning English but more
importantly used a com
puter to get information
about how to get a driver’s
license and find a job.
“The people were so
nice,” he marvels, “and
everything was free. Wow!
This was a great thing.”
Vicente, now 45, had
earned a bachelor of arts
degree in physical educa
tion in Cuba, specializing
in wrestling, at which he
competed in both high
school and college. He
spent a couple years in the
Cuban Army, most of it
“preparing for an American
attack” Cuban military offi
cials seemed to think was
inevitable.
Miguel Vicente started his tenure as director of
the Commerce Public Library last week. The native
of Cuba was director of the Pinewoods Library and
Learning Center, a division of the Athens Regional
Library.
Although his route to
becoming a library pro
fessional was circuitous,
Vicente’s appreciation
for the wonder of the
American library system
never dimmed.
He found learning
English to be difficult in
Miami, where everyone
spoke Spanish.
“I was so frustrated,”
he recalled. “I’d taken so
many hours (of classes),
then I’d go home and
watch TV in English, and I
learned nothing.”
A friend from his
hometown in Cuba con
vinced him to join him in
Connecticut, where he’d
have no choice but to
learn the new language. He
started substitute teaching,
got his master’s of educa
tion degree in 1999, then
went to Springfield, MA, as
a Spanish teacher.
His transition to the
south began when he met
the woman who would
become his wife at a
seminar in Atlanta. They
married in 2005. Crystal
and Miguel Vicente have
a son, Michael Justin
Vicente, 3.
Vicente’s career took him
to Head Start for a year,
and to stints as a Spanish
teacher at elementary and
middle schools. Then,
the Pinewoods branch of
the Athens-Clarke library
needed a bilingual director
to serve a Latino neighbor
hood branch and Vicente
took the job.
The Pinewoods Library
and Learning Center has
but 3,000 books, but it was
a finalist for the Library
Journal’s “Best Small
Library in America” Award
as a result of its service to
the Latino community.
Set up to serve some
2,000 residents of a mobile
home park, the facility
provides adult education,
including English as a sec
ond language courses, fam
ily literacy activities and
after-school tutoring.
Vicente is enthusiastic
about duplicating some
of those activities in
Commerce, where he views
the library as blessed with
strong programs and an
excellent facility. He sees
the possibility of teaching
Spanish to local senior citi
zens, of ESOL courses and
after-school tutoring.
He’ll be busy. Within a
week of taking the job,
Vicente finds himself
with yet another oppor
tunity — the addition of
5,000 square feet of space,
thanks to the General
Assembly’s approval last
week (see separate story)
of funding for the library
expansion.
Americans may take
free public libraries — and
the information they offer
access to — for granted,
but Vicente never will. He
spoke of returning to Cuba
for a visit with family, and
realizing how uninformed
Cubans, who have no
Internet access and only
state-controlled news
broadcasts, are about the
world.
“People without informa
tion are like a small child,”
he said. “They do not
understand.”
The director of the
Commerce Public Library
makes it clear that his mis
sion is make sure all area
residents come to see the
library as a huge communi
ty resource whether they’ve
lived in Commerce all their
lives or just relocated from
another state — or another
nation.
Stimulus $$ To Boost Watershed Work
By Mark Beardsley
Two watersheds in Jackson
County will be rehabilitat
ed with funding from the
American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act.
Officials say Georgia is
leveraging $3 million in
state funds to get $6 mil
lion in economic stimulus
money.
The projects are:
• Sandy Creek Watershed
Structure 23, which will
include the enhancement of
20 miles of stream corridor
and flood plains. Officials
estimate nearly $44,000
annually in benefits from
reduced flooding.
• Sandy Creek Watershed
Structure 15, which includes
the addition of a 300-
foot auxiliary spillway to
enhance downstream pro
tection from what is termed
a “high hazard dam.” It is
also expected to provide
almost $44,000 annually
in benefits from reduced
flooding.
Documents from the
USDA claim the Jackson
County projects will also
result in annual benefits in
excess of $50,000 in unspec
ified non-flood-related dam
ages and cause the creation
of 72 jobs.
SUMMER
is closer than you think...
and so is your M.Ed or C.A.G.S./E.D.S.
t
Larry Frazier
Bass
Julie Lowry
Soprano
Thursday, April 16, 2009
JCCHS Auditorium
7 pm
$5.00 ticket
Council To Get
'Education' On Variances
By Mark Beardsley
Commerce city manager
Clarence Bryant apparent
ly thinks his city council
needs an education on the
subject of issuing varianc
es to city ordinances.
Bryant informed the
council at its Monday
night work session that it
will have a 20-minute work
session following next
Monday night’s council
meeting on the topic.
The city council meets at
6:30 p.m. in the Commerce
Room of the Commerce
Civic Center.
Bryant told the council
— only three members of
which were present — that
he thought they “don’t
know the process” or the
requirements for issuing
variances.
Referring to the new
city sign ordinance that
is almost completed, he
told the council “that thing
is not worth a dime” if the
council issues variances,
and he advised members
that if they plan to issue
more variances — as they
have done in the past — to
“let me know up front so I
won’t waste my time (work
ing on the ordinance).”
He compared an ordi
nance to a bucket of water
and each variance to a
hole in the bucket.
Bryant also warned that
once the sign ordinance
is approved, “people are
going to start picking up
the phone and calling y’all”
seeking variances.
Agenda Items
Here’s what’s on the
agenda for Monday night’s
meeting:
• calling of a special elec
tion for Tuesday, Sept. 15,
to fill the unexpired Ward
4 seat of Bob Sosebee.
•appointment of Mayor
Charles L. Hardy Jr. to the
Downtown Development
Authority to replace
Sosebee as the city gov
ernment’s representative,
and the appointment of
David Sanders to replace
Terry Minish on the DDA
• amending the city’s
“technology ordinance” to
increase the amount of the
fine from $12 to $20, a fee
that is added to every traf
fic citation issued by city
police. The money will be
used to replace computers
at the police department.
• accepting a bid to
remove asbestos from a
condemned house at 172
Scott Street.
•recognition of the win
ners of the sixth grade
essay contest, “If I were
Mayor...”
• action on a request
from the DDA to close
parts of Pine Avenue and
Georgia Avenue for five
Fridays After Five events
this spring.
•action on an applica
tion from SKAPS for a
loan of $300,000 to
$350,000 from the city’s
Employment Incentive
Program account.
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Jackson County Chorus students perform
at the 62nd Liberation Memonal Sen/ice at
Buchenwald Concentration Camp in
Germany.
thechildren’ssleepingquaftersat
Bunchenwald Concentration Camp
On March 19,1944, the London Region Civil Defence Choir
debuted Michael Tippett's pacifist oratorio, A Child of Our Time,
in a London theatre as an expression of ‘man’s inhumanity to
man’. Meanwhile, Adolf Eichmann sometimes referred to as
“the architect of the Holocaust”, entered Budapest behind the
German Army and occupied Hungary. Over a three-month
period, approximately 450,000 Jews were deported to
concentration camps where 75 % of them were murdered.
The immediate catalyst for the oratorio was an act of political violence:
in November 1938 a German diplomat in Paris, Ernst vom Rath, was
shot by a 17-year old Polish Jew called Herschel Grynspan, in revenge
for the Nazi persecution of his family. When Vom Rath died a few days
later, the Nazis retaliated with the Kristallnacht pogrom, a night of
violence during which hundreds of Jews were killed and Jewish shops
and businesses systematically looted. This "night of broken glass" led
to intense harassment of the Jews throughout Germany and Austria.
The boy Grynspan became for Tippett a symbolic scapegoat, 'a child
of our time' and 'the protagonist of a modern Passion story'.
The Jackson County High School Choral Department invites you to its
2009 Holocaust Memorial Concert to be held Thursday, April 16 at 7:00
p.m. The concert will memorialize the victims of the Holocaust and is
dedicated to its survivors. We hope that you will join us in remembering
voices from the past and those who still survive today.
Sincerely,
Todd Chandler
JCCHS Choral Director