Opinion

By Mike Ruffin

In an Oct. 21 story on NPR’s Weekend Edition program, I learned about a course that Professor Eric Smaw teaches at Rollins College called “Zombies, Serial Killers, and Madmen.” It’s the most popular course at the college. It’s a morning class now, but Smaw used to teach it at midnight. Spooky.

Toward the end of host Lulu Garcia-Navarro’s interview with Smaw, the following exchange took place.
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I used to spend a pretty good bit of time in the Macon County Mennonite community participating in dove shoots. There were 42 dairy farms packed into a relatively small area and all those farms were producing corn silage. That meant lots of grain and lots of doves.

The Mennonite culture has changed some now though I am sure there are still some strict adherents. Back then, their trucks were black and had no chrome and no radios. There were no televisions or radios - other than a weather radio - in the houses either. There were rumors that two Mennonites were excommunicated for sneaking off to a motel on the interstate in Perry to watch the Super Bowl. I never got to the truth of that but it made a good story.
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By Mike Ruffin

According to the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), we have until about 2030 to make drastic changes to prevent environmental catastrophe. If we can hold global warming to under a 0.9 degree Fahrenheit increase, then, as a story at PBS.org says,
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Brett Kavanaugh is now Justice Brett Kavanaugh. He was sworn in as the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court Saturday. The partisan vote to confirm him in the United States Senate came after seven FBI investigations, making Kavanaugh easily the most scrutinized justice ever sworn and possibly the most most scrutinized American citizen ever to draw breath.

Thank God the process is over! Our system of selecting those who serve on the high court survived somewhat intact but American civility did not.
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By Mike Ruffin

Jesus tried to help his disciples understand who he was and what it meant for them to be his followers. He’s still trying, and we who are Christians need to do better at listening to him.

One day, Jesus asked his disciples what they were hearing people speculate about him. They offered various answers. Then Jesus asked his disciples who they thought he was. A disciple named Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.” (“Messiah” is a Hebrew word meaning “anointed one.” “Christ” is the Greek translation of “Messiah,” so when we say “Jesus Christ,” we are saying “Jesus the Messiah.”)
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We just finished up with a very well-attended 45th annual Buggy Days. Unfortunately, there was a huge snafu with the parade that overshadowed what was an otherwise great weekend.

Of course, there were other glitches. There always are with events so large. It was extremely hot and emergency personnel were busy dealing with dehydration and other heat-related medical issues. The Friday night concert conflicted with LCHS homecoming. It would seem just a little pre-planning can avoid that in the future.

Still there was a nice crowd at homecoming and, from all accounts, the downtown concert featuring The Swingin’ Medallions drew the largest crowd for any event ever held at that venue.
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By Mike Ruffin

As I write these words about a week before you’re reading them, the Atlanta Braves are seven and a half games ahead of the Philadelphia Phillies in the battle for the National League Eastern Division pennant. The Braves’ magic number (the combination of Braves’ wins and Phillies’ losses that would give the Braves the championship) is 10.
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I visited Chicago once. It was winter. It wasn’t even warm in my hotel room. I was glad to get out of there. Two things come to my mind when I think of Chicago: murder and Lewis Grizzard’s quip that he was “held hostage” there when he went temporarily insane and took a job with the Chicago Tribune.
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By Mike Ruffin

Sometimes before a worship service in which I’m going to preach, I’ll tell the folks staffing the soundboard, “Try to make me sound better than I am.” We share a laugh. But I’m always suspicious that they’re thinking, “We would if we could!”

I don’t really mean it, though. I want my real voice to be heard. I furthermore want my real voice to reflect my real life.
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Our youngest, Livia Lanier, is now a freshman at UGA. She called one day last week to let us know she had gotten her football tickets for all the home games in Athens this fall. She was excited and with good reason.

Kirby Smart has exorcised all that remained from the Mark Richt era of underachievement. We need look no farther than last season when Smart took his team to the national title game in a year most of the pundits thought he would go 8-3 or something like that. [Full Story »] 

By Mike Ruffin

Whenever an election was approaching, my father, the late great Champ Ruffin, would tell me, “If you don’t exercise your right to vote, they’ll take it away someday.” He started telling me that long before I became eligible to vote in 1976.

I figured he was exaggerating to make his point, which was that I should vote. It turns out he wasn’t.
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Suddenly Stacey Abrams is the darling of the main stream media as she mounts her quest to become Georgia’s governor and the first black female governor in U.S. history. She has been endorsed by Barack Obama and Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton along with lesser lights like Kamala Harris.

The Democrat party and its usual minions will pour millions into the Abrams campaign in an effort to push her over the top in the race against Republican Brian Kemp. [Full Story »] 

I used to watch professional wrestling.

There, I said it, and I feel better.

Most of my viewing occurred way back before pro wrestling became the huge entertainment business it is now and before its scripted nature was publicly acknowledged. We’re talking the late 1960s, when I was ten or eleven years old.
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By Walter Geiger

Though August is only just about to begin, we are busy writing about and covering the start of school. Yes, I’m old but I never started a school year until after Labor Day.

In fact, opening day dove shoots on Labor Day weekend were something akin to the end of summer for us. As we cleaned birds, we knew we would be hitting the books soon.
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