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Page 4 — Wednesday, January 14, 2009, The Millen News
Opinions, yours and ours
The Chatter Box
By Deborah Bennett
We are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our first grand
child sometime this month, a little girl to be born to our son
Jason and wife Kim.
We are doubly blessed. Our son Tyson and wife Lindsey
are also expecting a baby, a little boy in April. So, we will
have twice the pleasure!
I can't wait to become the newest member of the “Grandma
Club!” I’ve been told by those in the know that there is noth
ing like it.
I have missed the sound of a child’s laughter and play in
our home and look forward to all the things that go with it -
Easter egg hunts, Halloween costumes, trick-or-treating,
birthday parties, Santa Claus, toy boxes and Tooth Fairies.
Of course, I know there are other things that will be encoun
tered like earaches, colds, bottles, diapers, baths, etc. But
Grandmas, I’m told, get to do the “fun” things the second
time around, and I can’t wait!
Please come by The Millen News office and pick up your
Magic of Christmas photos if you have not already done so.
I know that most of you would like to have them back, and
we would like to return them to you.
Happy birthday this week to: Linda Fuller, Bessie Lee
Saxon, Susan Brown, Glynn Bassett Jr., Jessica Herrington,
Matt Wallace, Dee Dailey, Florine Aaron, Sharon Jenkins,
Dean Brinson, Iesha Williams, Terry Thompson, Jessica
Aaron and Joanne Sharpe.
Celebrating wedding anniversaries are: Mr. and Mrs. Ray
Roberts.
Military Active Duty List: E-4 Sr. Airman Roy Davis, U.S.
Air Force, RAF Molesworth, United Kingdom; Lance Cpl.
Patrick Barnette, U.S. Marines, Twenty Nine Palms, CA;
Sgt. Adam Demshar, 44th Signal Battalion, Baghdad, Iraq;
Cpl. Lee Ogden, U.S. Marines, Camp Pendleton, CA; E5
Petty Officer 2 nd Class Eric B. Kelsey, U.S. Navy, NSA
Naples, Italy; Airman First Class Charles F. Woods, Moody
Air Force Base, Valdosta, GA; Stuart Burrus, U.S. Air Force,
Barksdale AFB, Bossier, LA; SPC 4 Travis D. Motes, 1st
Calvary Division, T. Hood, Texas; Capt. Donald Slade
Burke, 735th Air Mobility Squadron Detachment 1 Com
mander, Richmond Royal Australian AFB, Richmond, Aus
tralia; Staff Sgt. Gilbert C. Sheppard III, 48th Brigade,
118th Field Artillery, Iraq; Petty Officer 3rd Class Jamie
A. Yager, U.S. Navy, Marine Corps Base Hawaii; Petty Chief
Officer Andy D. Crosby, U.S. Navy, Elroy Destroyer, Nor
folk, Va.; Stephanie Crosby, R.N., U.S. Navy, Lafayette De
stroyer; Jimmy Cooper, U.S. Army National Guard, 878th
Engineering Battalion-Augusta, Persian Gulf ; 1st Lt. J.R.
Taylor, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division,
Iraq; SPC. Daniel Stuart, 18th MEDCOM, 121 General
Hospital, Seoul, Korea; Jeffrey Sweat, U.S. Navy, USS
Kauffman, MM3 59/E-Division, A-Gang, Norfolk, Va.; Cpl.
Larry Lamont Clark, U.S. Marine Corp, 2nd Marine Ex
peditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C. Bagdad, Iraq; Khan
Young, U.S. Navy, U.S.S. Kitty Hawk, Persian Gulf; Rob
ert Milton Jr., E-3, U.S. Army, Ft. Stewart, Hinesville, Ga.,
Mission Kuwait; Arnold R. Mosley, 2nd Lt., U.S. Air Force,
RandolphAFB,Texas; andDebraA.Mosley,Tech. Sgt., U.S.
Air Force, Randolph AFB, Texas; and SPC Charles “C.J.”
Amerson, U.S. Army, Camp Adder, Iraq.
"Don't worry. After awhile you won't even know he’s there."
Jim Hite
A TELESCOPE VIEW OF THE WORLD
Did you see the news report about a leading Russian political
analyst predicting the breakup of the United States?
According to the report in both print and broadcast media, Igor
Panarin predicts that by 2010, the United States will break up
into six parts as the economic crisis triggers chaos and possibly
civil war.
This will be caused, he says, because wealthier states will with
hold money from the government and push to secede. The U.S.
will not be able to prevent it because of what he calls our country’s
vulnerable political setup, lack of unified national laws and divi
sions among the elite.
As a result, Panarin concludes, the division will be into six
parts: the West Coast which will fall under Chinese influence, a
cluster of states forming the Texas Republic under Mexican con
trol, Atlantic America, including Washington and New York,
which may join the European Union, several northern states to
be claimed by Canada, Hawaii to become part of Japan or China,
and Alaska going to Russia.
Of course, we read this in disbelief, with a smile and maybe an
outright laugh. How can a person be so ignorant of U.S. history?
How can a person assume that the dynamics of the Soviet Union's
breakup (the independence of countries suppressed by Russia)
have a parallel here in the United States?
To us, it is obvious that he has a complete misunderstanding of
our country. He sees the world through the lens of his own nar
row experience within a very small part of that world.
But I think there is a lesson here for us. How often do we view
the world around us through the lens of our own small part of
that world? How often do we refuse to see the world beyond our
own? How often do we remain ignorant of other cultures and
other nations’ histories? How often do we see the world, and
judge that world and those in it as good or bad, right or wrong,
even saved or lost, by our very narrow and limited knowledge
and experience?
In a sense, far too many are like Igor Panarin, viewing others
through a lens that is like the lens in a telescope. Viewed from
the wrong end, the objects become very small.
I come back to a comment made by an Anglican priest during
a service we attended some years ago in Tyneside, England. He
and his family had just returned from India. He described the
beauty of the country and the culture and his family’s apprecia
tion of both. He then noted that to understand and appreciate
others, one cannot take one's own hometown along with him.
If we do not get outside our own little world, if we do not learn
about others, if we do not come to appreciate cultures other than
our own, we are little different from Igor Panarin.
Letters policy
Letters to the editor of The Millen News are welcomed and
encouraged. These are pages of opinions, yours and ours.
The unsigned editorials generally appearing on the left side of
the editorial page represent the opinion of the newspaper and not
that of any one person on our staff. Personal columns represent
the opinions of the writers whose names appear on them and are
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ment or owners. Letters to the editor voice the opinions of the
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The Millen News reserves the right to edit any and all portions
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ited to 400 words.
The deadline for letters is Friday at 5 p.m. You can email let
ters to themillennews@yahoo.com.
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Bill Shipp
CHUCK AND THE JUDGE
I remember when ...
... Chuck Morgan sat in his shabby fourth-floor office in an
aging building on Forsyth Street. Known among reporters as the
Bomb-Throwers’ Building, the low-rent edifice housed most of
the civil rights organizations in Atlanta.
Along about 4 o’clock each day, “Chuck Baby,” as he was
called, would haul out the bourbon and begin telling invited visi
tors tall tales from his Birmingham days. He had worked a full
day butting heads with segregationist advocates, so he figured a
drink or two and a couple of lively stories would not slow him
down.
... For the umpteenth time, I lugged a bundle of legal papers
relating to the latest civil rights court decision to the posh office
of Judge Griffin Bell to ask him to explain, in simple, off-the-
record English, what the decisions meant and what impact they
were likely to have. He was happy to oblige, though such confer
ences between judge and reporter were deemed improper in some
circles.
Bell may have considered it a duty to keep the record straight
and accurate.
At age 90, Griffin B. Bell died last week in an Atlanta hospital,
and Charles Morgan Jr., 78, passed away a few days later at his
home in Destin, Fla.
No two lawyers in the modern South had as much positive
impact on the region.
Bell, as a federal appellate judge and premier partner in the
King & Spalding law firm, set the course and tenor for a success
ful civil rights straggle that helped free Georgia from its segrega
tionist past.
Morgan was a fire-breathing civil rights lawyer who had been
ran out of Birmingham in 1963. In a rip-roaring speech to a civic
club, young Morgan blamed the city’s business and professional
establishment for tolerating the strife and violence that plagued
Birmingham during the civil-rights years. Morgan moved to At
lanta and, as an ACLU lawyer, carried on the fight for equal op
portunity for all races.
He successfully appealed to the Supreme Court to toss out elec
toral systems (like Georgia’s old county unit system) that wa
tered down the political power of urban Southerners, especially
blacks.
Morgan represented newly elected state Rep. Julian Bond when
the Georgia House refused to seat him. Bond angered lawmakers
by reading a statement at a press conference (from civil rights
leader John Lewis, now a congressman) that advocated burning
draft cards to protest the Vietnam War. Bond was finally seated.
Morgan openly fought his own bosses in the ACLU for dis
criminating against all Southerners, white and black. The ACLU
fired him, and Morgan went out on his own to make a small
mint representing such entities as the Tobacco Institute and Sears.
Chuck was one of the finest storytellers and most eloquent law
yers I ever met. He died of complications from advanced
Alzheimer’s disease.
There may be some irony here. Bell, who died of pancreatic
cancer, and Morgan succumbed just weeks after the nation elected
Barack Obama president. I doubt if either believed a black Ameri
can could be elected president in their lifetimes. Obama’s vic
tory unofficially signaled the end to one of America’s most tur
bulent eras: the 50-year organized straggle for equal opportunity
for all Americans.
Bell was often the backroom guy who had more direct influ
- See Shipp, page 7
The Millen News
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