Opinion

By Mike Ruffin

Have you taken acetaminophen lately? It’s not surprising if you have, since 23% of Americans do so regularly. You may take it without realizing it, since it’s an ingredient in more than 600 medicines.

I ask because I’m concerned about the seeming lack of empathy I perceive in many of us. Empathy is the ability to understand and share in someone else’s pain because you can imagine what their experience is like. Evidently, acetaminophen may be partly to blame for our failure to empathize.
[Full Story »] 

By Walter Geiger

It’s August, the footballs are flying and, as they do every season, gridiron hopes spring eternal.

Both the Lamar County Trojans and the Pike County Pirates have opened camp and have scrimmages on the near horizon as the regular season draws nigh. Sadly, the two teams will not play each other and the Battle of Potato Creek will be shelved at least for this fall. [Full Story »] 

By Mike Ruffin

During my boyhood, this time of year was all about going to the Barnesville swimming pool, which was located about where the Gordon Highlanders now play baseball. I’d join many others in purchasing an annual pass and using the laminating machine outside of Carter’s Drug Store to render it waterproof. [Full Story »] 

By Walter Geiger

There is a spot I pass on one of my walking routes where kudzu has taken permanent hold. It has been there for years but has not spread far because it is hemmed in by a maintained hayfield on one side and the county right of way on the other.
[Full Story »] 

I have written before of my disgust with the self esteem politics that I encountered on a brief foray into recreation football coaching many years ago.

My coaching partner and I worked hard to teach the boys football.
[Full Story »] 

By Mike Ruffin

Around two o’clock in the morning on Sunday, June 12, a man opened fire with a Sig Sauer MCX rifle on patrons of Pulse, a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.

Forty-nine people were killed.

Another 53 were wounded, many seriously. Police killed the shooter. [Full Story »] 

It’s a bad time to work for the Orlando chamber of commerce.

The fantasy world created there by Disney World, Epcot, Universal et. al. was harshly welcomed back to reality by a sickening series of events over the past week. [Full Story »] 

By Mike Ruffin

I’m serving as interim pastor of The Rock Baptist Church. A couple of Sundays ago, we had lunch together after the worship service. Everybody brought food.

There were about 30 people there. We could have fed 150. We had at least 12 baskets of food left over. It was all very Biblical. It was also lots of fun. Midway Baptist Church, the church to which my parents first took me when I was 10 days old (as my mother never tired of reminding me), and in which I was baptized into the church and ordained to the ministry, has been having Homecoming on the second Sunday in June ever since John the Baptist baptized Jesus. [Full Story »] 

By Walter Geiger

Some of my earliest memories are of watching my Daddy and Granddaddy shave.

I would stand in the bathroom and watch in awe as they lathered up and cast off the previous night’s crop of whiskers with a big old safety razor. Sometimes, they would let me coat my face with shaving cream then remove it from my whiskerless skin with the razor without a blade in it. I felt so grown. [Full Story »] 

By Mike Ruffin

I had poured my heart out every Sunday morning for six years.

I had tried to tell them how much God loves them. I had preached about the blessings and the challenges that come with following Jesus. I had tried to help them see just how amazing it is that Almighty God gives any thought to us at all, much less that God loves us so much that Jesus died for us. I had told them over and over again that we have an amazing opportunity to be crucified with Christ, to be raised with him, and to walk in newness of life. [Full Story »] 

By Sen. Johnny Isakson


“We would not be where we are today had it not been for veterans who died on the battlefield so we could have free speech, democracy in government, and so our people could peacefully decide whom their leaders were and leave it up to us to lead the country.

“I want to put a personal face on Memorial Day for just a moment.

“First, I wish to talk about a guy named Tommy Nguyen. Tommy Nguyen is my legislative staffer on military affairs information. He volunteered for the U.S. Army Guard. He went to Fort Benning, GA, and graduated No. 1 in his class. You know what that means at Fort Benning. Right now he is deployed in Afghanistan and has been deployed for the past 5 months. [Full Story »] 

Nearly lost in all the campaign rhetoric and discussion on which bathrooms should be used by whom and who gets to be the bathroom monitor was news that the U.S. Senate has okayed a bill which would allow families who lost loved ones in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia.
[Full Story »] 

By Mike Ruffin

So there’s been a report making the rounds that says you shouldn’t hug your dog. My dogs and I find this news very disturbing. Dr. Stanley Coren, a retired professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia, examined photos of people hugging their dogs and concluded that, in most cases, the hugged dogs exhibited signs of stress. [Full Story »]