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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 not to be considered the opinion of this newspaper, its manage ment or owners. Letters to the editor voice the opinions of the newspaper’s readers. The Millen News reserves the right to edit any and all portions of a letter. Unsigned letters will not be published. Letters must include the signature, address and phone number of the writer to allow our staff to authenticate its origin. Letters should be lim ited to 400 words. The deadline for letters is Friday at 5 p.m. You can email let ters to themillennews@yahoo.com. Chartered 1903 The Millen News is published weekly by Chalker Publishing Company, 601 E. 6th St., Waynesboro, Ga. The Millen News 856 East Cotton Ave. • Millen, Ga. 30442 Phone: (478) 982-5460 • FAX: (478) 982-1785 Periodical postage paid at Millen, Georgia. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: The Millen News P.O. Box 909 Millen, GA 30442 USPS No. 349-660 Walter Harrison Frank M. Edenfield Editor 1946-1985 Editor/Emeritus 1985-1998 Roy F. Chalker Jr. Bonnie K. Taylor. Deborah Bennett Lavonna Drawdy Melodye Williams Publisher General Manager Editor Advertising Composition Office Assistant Subscription Rates (Includes tax): In Jenkins County $23.00 Elsewhere in Georgia $26.00 Outside of Georgia $29.50 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 Deadlines FRIDAY AT NOON: Wedding Announcements Engagement Announcements Anniversary Announcements Birth Announcements School News Columns Memoriams and Thank You’s FRIDAYS PM: Chatter Box Items, Letters to the Editor, General News Items. MONDAY-10 AM: Datebook Items, Church News & Obituaries MONDAY-11 AM: Classified & Legal Ads MONDAY-NOON: Retail Display Ads