Opinion

By Mike Ruffin

When I was a boy growing up in the little house on Memorial Drive in Barnesville in the 1960s, my parents and I got ready for church with Southern gospel music emanating from the nineteen-inch black and white television set.

We’d listen to two programs that an Atlanta station sent our way.

The first show was the Gospel Singing Caravan, which featured the LeFevre family. Boomershine Pontiac in Atlanta sponsored it. The second program was the Gospel Singing Jubilee, hosted by the Florida Boys. [Full Story »] 

High school graduation is a definite milestone. For many it is the second major milestone in life following up on the acquisition of that driver’s license and the freedom it bestows. There will be many more milestones -good and bad - to come.

Graduates, there are some things you can do to maximize good outcomes and minimize the bad. There are millions of opportunities out there that your parents and especially your grandparents could never have dreamed of. Take advantage of them! Here are a few ideas you might consider.
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By Mike Ruffin

I recently read a 1955 novel by Leigh Brackett entitled The Long Tomorrow. It’s set a couple of generations after a nuclear war has devastated Earth’s cities. The new Constitution of postwar America forbids the building of cities. People live only in small towns and rural areas.

A major crisis in the book revolves around the desire of a man to build one more warehouse than he’s allowed by law. The limit he wants to violate is in place to keep a city from developing. Things don’t go well for him.
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By Walter Geiger

The level of divisiveness on the national political scene is the highest I can recall in my lifetime. Few, if any, of those in Washington have the term ‘non-partisan’ in their vocabularies. It is all ‘my side is right and your side is wrong’ with seemingly no effort being made toward compromise on even the simplest of agenda items.
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By Mike Ruffin

You may have seen a “Coexist” bumper sticker on some vehicles. We have one on one of ours. The sticker uses the symbols of several religions to spell the word “Coexist.” It thereby makes the statement that people who practice different religions need to learn to live together. It makes the even deeper statement that we need to respect and appreciate each other as we practice our particular religion.

It’s a noble and worthy goal. Like most noble and worthy goals, it’s difficult to achieve. [Full Story »] 

With any sport, the most exciting time is the postseason playoffs when teams must win or go home. The playoffs begin this week for local and area high school teams with the emphasis on soccer and baseball.

Baseball is an American born, American bred sport that has become popular in other parts of the world. The local high school teams are perennial participants in the baseball playoffs and this year is no exception. [Full Story »] 

Have you ever participated in the Stations of the Cross? If you’re a Christian, you should. It is a spiritually enriching and challenging experience. If you’re not a Christian, you’ll still find it an interesting and possibly moving experience.

The Stations of the Cross is an exercise in following Jesus as he moves toward his crucifixion. The First United Methodist Church offers the opportunity to engage in this exercise from Tuesday, April 16 through Good Friday, April 19 from 3:00-7:00 p.m. and Saturday from 9:00 a.m.-noon in the sanctuary.
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Last week, I was privileged to sit through a presentation on Southern Rivers Energy’s Operation Round Up. Through this program, members of the cooperative can have their bills rounded up to the nearest dollar and the money goes into a fund for distribution to needy applicants in SRE’s service area.
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My Good Wife and I recently traveled to Champion Stadium at ESPN’s Wide World of Sports at Walt Disney World to watch the last two Atlanta Braves Spring Training games ever to be played at that venue.

It’s the end of an era that lasted twenty-two years. The Braves moved their Spring Training headquarters from West Palm Beach to Lake Buena Vista in 1997. [Full Story »] 

By Mike Ruffin

It’s early in 2019. So far, roughly 197 Democrats have announced that they will be candidates in the 2020 presidential election. Meanwhile, a couple of Republicans are reportedly weighing the possibility of running for their party’s nomination against the incumbent president who really isn’t a Republican—c’mon now, you have to admit he isn’t—but who won their nomination and the presidency in 2016. [Full Story »] 

Life is full of little, aggravating things. These can be human behaviors that flip your switch or pesky little things that crop up - many of them technology based.

For example, my iPhone is three or four years old. It constantly wants to be updated or backed up or something. I charge my phone all night as I assume most do. Some days, the battery will be nearly dead by midmorning despite the fact that I almost always close out apps when i am done with them.

This amounts to a minor aggravation - something that burrows just deep enough under the skin to perturb me.
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Dear Isabella,

Welcome to the world! We are so glad you are here and that you are part of our family!

You are a gift we don’t deserve, but we gratefully receive you as the sign of grace you are. Every time we look at you or think of you, we are reminded of how good God is.

We love you. We don’t love you because of who you are or because of what you are. We love you just because you are.

As you grow, you’ll discover who and what you are, and we look forward to encouraging and supporting you in your journey of self-discovery. It matters who and what you become, because only as you do so will you be able to realize your full potential. [Full Story »] 

By Walter Geiger
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Sports fishermen and fishing guides who concentrate on inshore or flats fishing don’t care much for celebrity chef/restaurateur Emeril Lagasse. He has done well enough at the celebrity chef business that he is just Emeril - no last name needed. That puts him right up there with Herschel and Elvis, at least in some circles.

With all due respect to the late Julia Child, the first of the genre, I’m not much into cooking shows but I am into eating. One of my favorite dishes is blackened redfish. Emeril introduced that delicacy to the masses and, in just a few short months, the masses fell in love with it. This simple creation put Emeril on the map and blackened redfish began to appear on every upscale - and many low scale - menus around the world.

Suddenly, the lowly redfish, whom many had viewed as a trash fish for generations, was - sorry, Charlie - King of the Sea. Demand for redfish went up.

Commercial fishermen with long lines and nets targeted them in order to cash in on the craze and, you guessed it, redfish populations which had thrived since creation rapidly declined. [Full Story »] 

“The older you get, the colder you get.” Those words of wisdom - the only words of wisdom from him I remember - were imparted to me by Grandaddy Lonnie.

We were living in Ailey, Ga. at the time. We had a burn barrel behind the house for burning trash. It was a cold day and I had trash duty. Once upon a time, trash duty for me led to a wildfire in the adjoining broom sedge field but that is story for another day.
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