Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

PAGE 4A —THE MADISON COUNTY (GA) JOURNAL. THURSDAY. FEBRUARY 19, 2009 Opinions Frankly Speaking frankgillispie671@msn.com By Frank Gillispie Don’t eliminate Crawford W. Long from hospital name “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main,” is a famous quote from John Donne, one of the most influential poets of the Renaissance. In this meditation Donne was saying that when one person suffers a loss, we all lose. We are all interconnected with each other and with the history and culture of our soci ety. That is why I quoted Donne. Georgia has just suffered a damaging historical and cultural loss. And because of that loss, we are all losers. Emory University announced Friday, Feb. 13, that it has changed the name of Emory Crawford Fong Hospital to Emory University Hospital Midtown. The change does a great disservice to Georgia’s history and culture. Dr. Crawford W. Long, a native of Danielsville, was the first doctor to use sulphuric ether as an anesthetic and was the first doctor to use anesthesia during surgery. Dr. Long's discovery makes him one of the great medical pioneers. The fact that he is a native of Madison County, Georgia, educated at the University of Georgia and practiced medicine in Jefferson brings a great deal of honor to our area. He is so important to the history and culture of our state that his statue is one of the two from Georgia located in statutory hall at the nation’s capitol. A duplicate of that statue stands in the courthouse square in the center of Danielsville. Our state and region are already being rapidly deprived of our history and culture by the “politically correct” crowd. They seem to be determined to wipe out all memory of our history, and to deny our unique culture and heritage. Those losses are steadily depriving our state of its soul. Soon our children will have no idea of who their ancestors were or what contributions they made to this nation. And every time our history is forgotten, or our heritage is denied, they become less knowledgeable of who they are. Soon, we will be a region of zombies. We will be surrounded by people with no sense of belonging. Their lives will be shallow and meaningless. All they will know is to go to work, spend money on foolishness, and eventually die without leaving any part of themselves for future generations. We need to remember Dr. Crawford W. Long. We need to know of his great con tribution to medicine. Emory University Hospital needs to remember that without the pioneering efforts of men like Dr. Long, they would not have the ability to serve the medical needs of the area. Removing his name from their facility is an affront to the very service to which they are dedicated, the best in medical service. I hope that Emory University will receive enough protests to cause them to change their minds and keep the honored name of Georgia’s most famous doctor on their hos pital. If you agree, let them know. Frank Gillispie is founder of The Madison County Journal His e-mail address isfrank- gillispie671@msn.com. His website can be accessed at http://frankgillispie.tripod.com/ The Madison County Journal (Merged with The Danielsville Monitor and The Comer News, January 2006) P.O. Box 658 Hwy. 29 South Danielsville, Georgia 30633 Phone: 706-795-2567 Fax: 706-795-2765 Email: zach@mainstreetnews.com SUBSCRIPTION RATES: Madison & surrounding counties $19.75/year State of Georgia $38.85/year Out-of-state $44.50/year Military personnel with APO address $42.50/year Senior rate $2 off all above rates College student discount rate $2 off all above rates POSTMASTER: Send address changes to: THE MADISON COUNTY JOURNAL P.O. Box 658, Danielsville, GA 30633 A publication of MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. What goes on our plates We offer blind faith to those who handle our food, putting our health in the hands of strangers when we purchase anything to eat. Short of raising, harvesting and preparing everything we eat, what else can we do? This is generally a fine arrange ment. But most everybody can cite harrowing exceptions to the rule. I think of the evening I purchased a hamburger with a bite already taken out of it. I guess the fry cook was hungrier than me. Nevertheless, I’ve always felt a certain control in assessing food risk. If I don’t want a burger with a bite taken out of it, I have a pretty good idea of where those risks increase. Likewise, I used to assume that any food I picked off a shelf had been inspected by a specific person and that the product’s safety was guaranteed. But now I can see that there’s simply too much to inspect. While I can feel a comfort in getting reasonably decent stuff — because I’m not getting sick all the time — I recognize, too, that I can’t just pretend there’s nothing to notice in terms of food safety. I think I’m pretty middle-of-the- road on this kind of stuff. I’m not going to freak out and avoid things I’ve always eaten, but I’m going to pay attention when red flags are In the Meantime zach@ mainstreet news.com By Zach Mitcham waved about certain items. For instance, I love popcorn, but if I want that nice butter taste. I’m going to add real butter, not settling for the artificial stuff. It simply tastes better. Plus, workers in popcorn fac tories have had some serious respi ratory problems, called “popcorn lung,” which is apparently linked to breathing in large amounts of the chemical diacetyl, which gives popcorn its artificial butter flavor. Maybe this could harm me, maybe not. But I prefer just to avoid the chemical. I simply look for a brand, like Orville Redenbacher, that says “no diacetyl added” somewhere on the box. Of course, these days, our food safety focus is on peanuts. And when I stick that knife in the jar of peanut butter to put on my daugh ter’s bread, I feel the stab of irrita tion, recognizing that even snack time isn’t immune from big-world anxieties. Hearing of baby mice crawling in peanuts, of executives giving the go- ahead to sell nuts that tested positive for salmonella, makes me think of “The Jungle,” that famous 103-year- old novel about the meatpacking industry that led to U.S. food safety reform. Of course, Sinclair sought to write the labor movement’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” exposing the horrible work ing conditions of Chicago meat- packers. But when I learned about this book in high school, I was no different than most people — lack ing empathy for the plight of far away, forgotten strangers, yet very interested in the tale of rancid meat. After learning of “The Jungle,” I was thankful that our nation had taken a step into a more civilized food world. Nasty, un-inspected meat would never find its way to my plate. Well, of course, that’s no guaran tee. The conditions discovered at the Blakely plant don’t exactly give us much confidence in our food inspec tion system. The media blitz regarding the scandal has surely hurt peanut pro ducers. But the attention has at least one positive — slack food process ing plants are surely taking note of how exposure of their unsani tary methods can hurt their bottom line. Perhaps other plants are quietly cleaning up their act amid the peanut furor. Still, bad press is no substitute for good enforcement. Of course, the government can never completely eliminate food hazards. But there needs to be a better effort at food safety oversight. And if we’re look ing at more federal jobs now, then food inspections seems like a pretty worthy cause. Clearly, the peanut plant didn’t fear any government repercussions for their slack stan dards. They went for quite some time without anyone bothering to check them out. I liken it to traffic safety. If law officers put little emphasis on road patrol, they can expect more speed ers, more accidents. Likewise, if government puts little emphasis on inspections, they can expect more violators, more sickness. We know that laws don’t amount to much unless we have an environ ment of enforcement. If we become too comfortable with an anything goes, free-market credo for food safety, then we can’t be too shocked when anything goes on our plates. Zach Mitcham is editor of The Madison County’ Journal. Pandemic or ‘pandemonium’ — another crisis to prepare for I remember walking among the graves in Colonial Park Cemetery in Savannah on a cool fall day a few years ago and being struck by all the tombstones that shared 1918 as the date of death. There was a good reason for that. Yellow Fever swept through the country that year, claiming more than 700 lives in Savannah alone - and more deaths worldwide than World War I. Nationwide the figure was around 675,000 fatalities — and some reports say the worldwide loss of life could’ve been as much as 30-50 million (21.5 million seems to be the official number). Any of those num bers boggle the mind — just imag ine 700 dead in one town alone. A number of the tombstones in the cemetery had been damaged, van dalized, or simply removed to make room for walking areas and many of them were lined up along the one remaining stone wall at the back of the cemetery. Many of those too car ried the 1918 date — young to old, prosperous to pauper — all repre sentations of society were there. At the time I shook my head, thinking how sad it would have been to have lived through those days, possibly desperately ill yourself, and to witness so many die all around you — your family, friends, neigh bors — and then be left to mourn their sad passing. It seemed, it still seems, far removed from how we live today. After all, modem medicine has made us relatively fearless in our daily lives — when we’re sick with winter colds or flu we go to the doc tor or hospital, get medicated and get well so we can go on about our Close to Home ly Margie Richards business. Even the recent peanut butter scare — as bad as it is — doesn’t compare to something like what happened in 1918. We do need to understand though, that our society can, and if experts are correct probably will, have such an experience in the near future. For example, if the so-called "bird flu” or another mutant strain of influ enza makes the jump to humans, then 1918 could pale in comparison to what experts think could happen today. I know, I know, “fear-monger- ing” is a tiresome thing, we hear it most oppressively these days with the worldwide “economic collapse,” we’re all facing, with the threat of terrorism, with global warming — heck we even get it on the History Channel with ominous-sounding programs like "It Could Happen Tomorrow.” And yeah, anything could happen. But if we take a lesson from the pages of history, we should under stand that in today’s mobile, highly- populated society, where most of us brush shoulders with a variety of our fellow human beings day in and day out, it’s quite plausible that a "bug” could get quickly and quietly into the general population before we had the time, or the means, to react. To me that’s even more frightening than the economic collapse, meteors that may come crashing through the atmosphere, or even the elevated threat of a terrorist bomb. The dictionary defines "pan demic” as an epidemic that spreads through human populations over a large region. There have only been some 200 confirmed human deaths from the much-touted avian flu so far (none in the U.S.), and most of those have been in small, isolated clusters of individuals. But as this vims changes and mutates, so could the numbers. And it’s not just a flu bug that could cause widespread disease, tubercu losis is just one other example of a deadly disease that’s on the rise again, with some new and antibiotic resistant strains emerging. If/when one of these diseases breaks out, how will we deal with it? Would panic reign? Would we ignore it until people were dropping like flies? Or would we heed govern ment health warnings, quarantine ourselves, and wait it out? I’m sure there will be some of all of that going on. Browsing around on the Internet, I found a government website that told a little of how Georgia dealt with the pandemic of 1918: “The Atlanta City Council declared all public gathering places closed for two months as a precau tionary measure. Schools, libraries, churches, and theaters also closed. Streetcar conductors were directed to keep all windows open — except in rain. In an attempt to stop the epidemic before it reached Athens, the University of Georgia suspended classes. In Augusta, where influenza was rampant, the city suffered from a shortage of nurses. The situation became so acute that nursing students were put in charge of some shifts at the local hospital. An emergency hospital was also constructed on a local fairground, and school teachers were enlisted to act as nurses, cooks and hospital clerks.” And in the town of Quitman, people were ordered to “cough into their handkerchiefs” and post "influenza” on their doors if anyone inside was afflicted. Can you imagine if that happened in this day and age? It seems, like the History Channel says, "it could hap pen tomorrow.” The only difference is that now, if we take advantage of it, we have some time to get ready. To this end the Madison County Flu Pandemic Planning Committee and the Northeast Health District who have been formulating plans for some time now to handle a pandem ic on the local level, will sponsor a pandemic flu training seminar for county pastors and other interested church members on Tuesday, Feb. 24, at 7 p.m. in the meeting room of the Madison County Library. After all, in our small community, churches will play a vital role, on many different levels, in helping get through any such crisis. The federal, or even state government may have few resources to distribute in such a widespread crisis, so it’ll be up to us as a community to get ourselves through it. Margie Richards is a reporter and office manager for The Madison County Journal. House approves property assessment freeze For many years, I have intro duced and supported legisla tion that would put an end to the back-door tax increases on local property owners that occur through the revaluation process. On Thursday, Feb. 12,1 joined a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives who approved HB 233, which would establish a two-year moratori um on property reassessment increases. A majority of House members also voted for HR 1, a pro posed constitutional amendment that would have capped prop erty assessment revaluations at 3 percent or the rate of inflation every year in the future. But as a proposed constitutional change, two-thirds approval was needed Difficult times call for disciplined fiscal leadership With shorter weeks at the Capitol now, every day is bus ier as we work diligently to address the many issues facing Georgians. Late last week we learned state revenue for January was down 14 percent, equating to a quarter of a billion dollars, put ting additional pressure on the state budget, which is already hamstrung by our current eco nomic situation. Earlier this week, we found out that unem ployment rose at a shocking rate in January. These difficult times continue to underscore the need for disciplined fiscal leadership at the state level and also at the local level. Property taxes continue to be a hot topic under the Gold House News By Alan Powell in the House, and Thursday’s vote fell short of that. HB 233 addresses a major problem in our state: a prop erty tax system that is broken and adversely affects all prop erty owners: residential, com mercial, agricultural and others. This moratorium, which now — See “Powell” on 5A House News By Tom McCall Dome. This week, we debated House Resolution 1 and com panion legislation House Bill 233 that seek to implement a statewide cap on annual prop erty tax assessment increases to three percent per year. House Bill 233, adopted by a — See “McCall” on