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The Summeruville News
The Official Legal Organ of Chattooga County Georgia
WINSTON E. ESPY
PUBLISHER
WILLIAM T. ESPY
ADVERTISING MANAGER
GA %
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HOCIAT
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Address All Mail to: THE SUMMERVILLE NEWS, P. O. Box 310, Summerville, Ga. 30747
Editorials
Confirm Bork
Some members of Congress and liberal
special interest groups that believe the
U. S. Constitution is printed on latex are
howling for the scalp of Judge Robert H.
Bork, President Reagan's nominee for the
Supreme Court.
Sen. Ted Kennedy, known as the “hero
of Chappaquiddick,” went wacko over the
nomination, calling it “‘one of the darkest
chapters for the rule of law in American
History.”
Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee and a former
presidential hopeful, is opposed to Judge
Bork. But in November, 1986, Biden said,
“Say the Administration sends up Bork
and after our investigation he looks a lot
like Scalia, I'd have to vote for him, and
if the (special interest) groups tear me
apart, that's the medicine I'll have to
take.”
Biden, who has called Judge Bork
“brilliant,” nevertheless did a back flip
and is fighting Bork’'s nomination. Maybe
Wasting Money
Big corporations are not the only ones
that waste money on postage.
The News recently received a four-page
news release from the Georgia Depart
ment of Natural Resources (DNR). It was
unfolded and was inside a 10x13 manila
envelope. The postage meter mark in
dicated it cost 39 cents to mail the release.
It’s pretty common knowledge that
you can usually mail up to six pages in a
No. 10 envelope for 22 cents.
The extra expenditure of 17 cents for
one release really doesn't amount to that
much. But consider 17 cents times more
than 240 Georgia newspapers and almost
FromQurEarlyFil
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37 YEARS AGO
The following are excerpts from the Sept. 28, 1950 edition of The Summer
ville News.
* * *
GRAND JURY URGES THAT COUNTY OFFICERS BE ON SALARY
— A recommendation that every county officer be placed on a salary was made
by the Grand Jury at its session last week. It was pointed out that some of
the elective officers are receiving ‘‘more than" SIO,OOO per year in commission
due to the fact that fees, fines and forfeitures go to them personally. ‘“We are
in favor of progress,” the Grand Jury said. “Yet we are also in favor of economy.
Our present system of giving to our county officers every penny which they
take in is enriching our county officers and impoverishing our county.”
* * *
TUESDAY'S CALL EXHAUSTS SUPPLY OF 20-YEAR OLDS — A draft
call of 46 men Tuesday just about exhausted the supply of 20-year olds in this
county, Miss Mae Earl Strange, clerk, said this week. Fifty were scheduled to
have been sent, but only 46 of those called to report were eligible.
* * *
SUMMERVILLE SCHOOL GETS ON FEET, NOW ONE OF FINEST —
In a world where thousands of children are deprived of even the necessities
of life and where education is a luxury, it must be with humble pride that Sum
mervillians regard their schools. Counting only the improvements since the close
of the past school year, one can see immediately that progress has been rapid.
* * *
CENTRAL OF GEORGIA FILES APPLICATION TO DISCONTINUE
TRAINS — The Central of Georgia Railway has filed application with the
Georgia Public Service Commission to discontinue passenger trains Nos. 1 and
2 between Griffin and Chattanooga, which run through Chattooga County. A
spokesman said the Railway is reluctant to disturb old ties with the citizens
of the territory but is being forced to do so.
DAVID T. ESPY, JR.
GENERAL MANAGER
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
Within County .............x58.93
Out-of-County Rates
Available On Request
Published Every Thursday By
ESPY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
Second Class Postage Paid
At Summerville, Ga. 30747
PUBLICATION NO. SECD 525560
he didn’t want to take his “‘medicine.”
Even The Washington Post, not noted
for its conservative stands, said Biden's
conduct ‘“‘doesn’t do a whole lot for the
senator’s claim to be fit for higher office.”
That was before Biden plaigerized the
remarks of several politicians and ‘‘ex
agerated” his academic record.
No one has disputed Bork's academic
or judicial qualifications, just his view that
the Constitution says what it means and
not what a batch of second-guessing
judges wants it to mean.
Interestingly enough, Bork was con
firmed to his present post on the U. S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Col
umbia in 1982 by a unanimous Senate
vote. Including Senator Kennedy. In
cluding Senator Biden.
Judge Bork should be confirmed and
we urge Georgia Sens. Sam Nunn and
Wyche Fowler to demand that the confir
mation process not be dragged out for par
tisan political purposes.
300 radio and television stations. Then
consider the cost if such releases are mail
ed even 26 times per year.
The cost for that extra 17 cents would
be $2,386.80 per year — from just one
state agency. Multiply that by many,
many more agencies, departments and
divisions and you're talking about quite a
bit of money every year. Your tax money.
And that doesn’t even consider the ad
ditional cost of a manila envelope over that
of a No. 10 envelope.
Is it any wonder that the cost of
government keeps rising?
TOMMY TOLES
EDITOR
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A ‘hu
Where’s The Time?
WHY DON'T we have more time?
We have vehicles that zip along at
speeds of 55mph or more (usually more)
and fine asphalt or concrete roads. It takes
less than a half-hour to drive to Rome
when it used to take more than a day with
horse and buggy over abominable ‘‘pig
trails.”
We can drive to Atlanta in less than
two hours, board a jet and zoom to Los
Angeles in about four hours.
& &
OUR HOMES are chock full of so
called time-saving and labor-saving
devices. Microwave ovens heat up a meal
in minutes when it used to take hours to
cook. Automatic dishwashers clean a fami
ly’s worth of pots, pans, glasses and plates
in just a few minutes. Vacuum cleaners
have enough suction to run the space shut
tle and gobble up every speck of dirt in the
house with relative ease.
Housewives and more than a few men
are able to toss their dirty clothes in a
washer, pitch in a few powders, flip a
switch and forget it. Then we pop them in
the automatic dryer and forget them again
until the buzzer sounds. Compare that to
scrubbing on a washboard or even using
the “‘new”” wringer-type tub washers of not
too many decades ago. And using a clothes
line.
* *
OUR CLOTHES are permanent press
and machine washable. It's rare for anyone
to have to pick up an iron anymore,
especially if they prefer clothing made
with the fruit of the “polyester tree.”
On The Funny Side
By Gary Solomon
Memories Of Fall
FALL HAS officially fallen, according
to the calendar. Wednesday of last week
marked the first day of the season, and the
weather cooperated for once.
Temperatures dipped into the low 50s
overnight. Brrrrr!
I can’t count the number of people who
have told me, “Don’t get your hopes up for
cold weather. It's gonna get hot again.”
What a bunch of lily-livered pessimists we
have in this state.
* * *
I LOVE FALL. It's the best season of
the year. After the summer sun has bak
ed everything — including you and me —
to a crisp, fall blows in like a breath of
fresh air.
I haven’t always welcomed the advent
of this special time, however. In fact, as
a child the shift from summer to fall
depressed me, mainly because I associated
it with having to return to school. And
that, for me, meant a huge loss of freedom.
The first month of school every year
was absolutely the worst. It signaled a
return to early bedtime and to homework,
the two most horrible curses God ever
placed on kid-dom. My shoulders drooped
and my spirits sagged because I knew I
would no longer hear, ‘‘Be back by dark,”
from mom as I headed out after dinner to
hunt grasshoppers with my 88-gun in the
Viewpoint
By Tommy Toles, Editor
With the advent of electrical power and
lighting came the ability to stay out of bed
longer and get up earlier, giving us even
more time. ‘
* * *
BUT WASN'T it only an hour or so ago
that you heard someone say they didn’t
have enough time to do something or the
other? Maybe it was you.
It’s that odd? We have managed to in
vent all sorts of time-saving devices and
yet we seem to have less time than our
parents, grandparents and
great-grandparents.
I wonder if it's because we are attemp
ting to crowd more things into the time we
have. After all, 24 hours is no different
now than it was in 1878 or 1927.
* * *
OUR PARENTS and grandparents
didn’t try to zip to Rome in a couple of
hours. They knew it was impossible then.
They didn't try to attend innumerable
meetings all over the county every month.
They couldn’t. They didn't try to get to
dozens of places every week.
The fact is that we do have more time
to spend on things other than making a liv
ing. Sometimes we waste it by expending
it on a lot of activity that may not be all
that important. Perhaps we don't set
priorities but allow extraneous demands
on our time to consume important parts
of our lives.
* * *
MAYBE WE ought to look more close
ly at how we spend our time.
vacant lot next door.
. i *
NO, WITH school again in session, she
would instead ask, “Just where do you
think you're going, young man?” as I tried
to slip quietly out the back door.
Any time my mom called me ‘“‘young
man,”’ something was wrong. Either I was
doing something I shouldn’t be doing, or
I hadn’t done something I was supposed
to do. By the time I was 12 I had pretty
much learned to hang my head in shame
and whine, ‘‘l'm sorry. I guess I forgot,”
even when I had no idea what the problem
was.
* * *
NOT THIS NIGHT, though. I needed
to get out of the house and away from
homework, so I gave it my best shot.
“I'm going out to save the lives of this
entire family,” I replied bravely. “If that
swarming hoard of grasshoppers makes its
way to our garden and ravages the food
we depend on for our sustenance, it could
very well be the end of civilization as we
know it. What'll we do then?”’ It was a
mouthful, alright, but I'll be darned if it
didn’t sound downright impressive. Guess
who wasn’t convinced, though?
“We'll have to shop at Safeway, I sup
pose,” mom answered matter-of-factly.
see ON THE FUNNY SIDE, page 5-A
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Guest Column
By Dr. Franklin Shumake
More On Testing
THESE ARE tough times for teachers. They have
taken an emotional beating the last three years in Georgia
(I use the term ‘“‘teacher” to include all educators). One
of the clear implications of the current reform efforts has
been if we rid the schools of incompetent teachers, all the
problems will be solved, and test scores will go up.
This narrow point of view overlooks the poverty of a
high percentage of the people we teach, the permissiveness
of the society we have lived in the past three decades, and
the lack of parental participation in the educational pro
cess of children.
* * *
FRANKLY, teachers have accepted this scapegoat role
rather gracefully and philosophically. We are aware of the
necessity of a scapegoat when things go wrong and reform
sets in. In past years, failures have been blamed on modern
math, new English, sight reading or racial integration.
The testing of teachers has placed teachers in a no-win
situation. We do not object to testing. It is our way of life.
We have been tested to get into college, tested to get into
teacher education programs, tested for certification, and
we return to college on a regular basis to be tested in new
courses.
* * *
IT WAS THE implication that tests were to be used
to seek out and put out of the profession the incompetent
ones among us which strained our patience. All veteran
teachers — Phi Beta Kappas, former honor roll members,
the bright, and the successful — were recalled and retested.
It may have seemed more reasonable if at the same ear
ly hours on Saturday morning at the same obscure loca
tions, there had also been long lines of veteran lawyers
returning to retake the bar exam, or a line of experienced
doctors returning to retake the medical exam, or a line of
legislators gathered to take a civics exam.
* * *
BUT WE EVEN swallowed the veteran testing pill
rather gracefully, except for a teacher union group which
continues to exploit the issue each year about membership
time.
All of this is a kind of catharsis intended to rid the mind
of bad memories and lost causes. The bottom line is that
the public schools are owned, operated, and financed by
the public, and teachers are employees of the public, and
the public wanted the testing done.
Now we must move on. We must pick up our pride, cut
our losses, drop our defensiveness, and generally take time
to do some serious soul searching.
* * *
IN ALL HONESTY, we as teachers must be willing
to make some changes. Let me suggest a few for
consideration:
(1) In our own ways and in our own channels, we must
remove the incompetents in our profession. Through
regular evaluation, annual contracts, and due process pro
cedures, the local principals, superintendents, and school
boards can replace the incompetent teachers, help the
marginal teachers, and provide encouragement to the suc
cessful teachers.
(2) We must straighten out the kinks in our teacher
education programs. Academically weak students ought
,not to be enrolled in teacher education programs. Students
who cannot communicate effectively ought not to be
recommended for student teaching in our schools.
Students who are not ready to accept the responsibilities
of teaching, or who lack content knowledge, or who have
not been effective student teachers ought not to be recom
mended for certificatio,:l at the end of a college program.
* *
(3) WE MUST LOOSEN up on our certification red
tape. We have become obsessed with counting courses and
expanding certification titles. Honoring certification from
other states, the use of talented liberal arts majors, and
more general certificates are essential if we are to get on
with the business of teaching students.
(4) We must drop our defensiveness even when we have
to defend ourselves. We do not have to react to every
criticism we hear. These critics did not give us our digni
ty and professionalism, and they cannot take them away
from us. It is our own attitudes, actions, values, dress,
manners, pride, and competence which give us our digni
ty and professionalism.
* * *
(5) IT IS IMPORTANT that we put teacher organiza
tions into perspective. Militant teacher organizations,
determined to perpetuate their own status, have often been
the cause of the loss of respect for teachers in local com
see GUEST COLUMN, page 5-A