It’s time to face facts Still Got Cotton in My Blood

From The Augusta Chronicle

We share the goals of area students protesting school shootings. Maybe just not their aims. Over the Augusta area and across the nation last Wednesday, students walked out in protest and in other ways memorialized the 17 shot down in Parkland, Florida, exactly a month before. Some even staged a “die-in” outside the local office of Congressman Rick Allen.

The aim of many seemed to be, as one news story said, “to push Congress to end gun violence.”

Yet, can Congress really do that for us? Is Congress even the right target?

It may be, if you think all it will take to make kids safe is to disarm law-abiding citizens with gun control. We don’t happen to think so. It’s time we had a cool, clear, rational debate on all this — and admit, if we’re intellectually honest, that the faddish “Gun-Free Zone” craze hasn’t worked. It never could have; it’s only a gun-free zone until a criminal walks in with one. All we’ve done is assure him that no one else is armed.

There are surely some things Congress can do — such as improve interagency communications to prohibit the criminal and criminally mentally ill from purchasing guns. It can also help local jurisdictions ramp up security.

On that last point, we’re in complete agreement with Columbia County schools Superintendent Dr. Sandra Carraway — who recommended to her board this past week that the district add armed security officers to each of its 18 elementary schools. The board had already tentatively approved adding officers to every middle school, to go with ones at every high school.

She also asked the board to consider arming a law-enforcementtrained, well-vetted and screened teacher at each school as well. Absolutely. The problem, at the end of the day, isn’t the prevalence of guns. They’ve been prevalent since before our nation’s founding, and they fairly outnumber the humans today.

The problem is having allowed our schools to remain soft targets with minimal or no security.

In a way, it’s understandable in retrospect. We only incrementally increased security at airports, commercial buildings and courthouses and more — the centers of power, authority and commerce — after they became the target of terrorists and the insanely aggrieved. Why would anyone go after the most innocent — our young?

Well, it’s clear that has become a thing. And there’s no going back. The rational response is to secure them, just as we have our courthouses and such.

We must also deal with the more complicated issues of mental illness, family breakdown, peer bullying and incessant and escalating violence in entertainment.

As to the latter: How is it we ban cartoon-figure Joe Camel because he might encourage kids to smoke, but Colin Firth massacring an entire church congregation in slow-motion gory detail in “Kingsman: The Secret Service” is hunky-dory?

We support Dr. Carraway’s security-first approach wholeheartedly. Such common-sense proposals don’t inspire dramatic walkouts and die-ins and emotion-laden placards — but they work. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been employed at airports and in government and industry.

We stand — or lie, if preferred — with our students in saying no to any more school massacres. But if they want ineffective laws just for show, that’s where we part ways.

A much better show would be a show of force. From the Savannah Morning News

Every child’s favorite Savannah St. Patrick’s Day Parade entry is the Keystone Kops, who hand out mock citations for “Lookin’ Guilty” and other playful offenses. Next year, the city of Savannah should deputize them and give them a real citation book with but one offense on the ticket: littering. The police chief’s lone instructions to the group should be to write until their hand cramps up.

The trash task force is necessary because we once again proved an inability — or unwillingness — to police ourselves and each other on parade day. The post-parade scene Saturday should embarrass each and every Savannahian.

Left-behind cans, paper and other refuse blanketed some spots like leaves do a tree-filled lawn. Sadly, about the only rubbishfree zones were the insides of the tall paper garbage-collection sacks put out by the city.

Mayor Eddie DeLoach compared the dingiest spot, Chippewa Square, to a “trash dump.” Besides being an insult to landfills nationwide, that’s a cringe-worthy assessment coming from city leadership. The before-cleanup photos also reflect the statement’s validity, whether or not you believe the city’s dubious claim that it took more than 18 hours to clean up the square.

Naturally, some blame the mess on out-of-towners. The flaw in that logic is most of the heavy tailgate activity is organized by locals, and those all-day-long parties generate copious amounts of trash. A visitor with a hand-held cooler can produce an empty can or three, but not a case’s worth.

Yes, a significant number of Savannahians take their tents down and their chairs up yet leave their detritus on the ground. The spectacle would be worse if not for those with enough pride and self-respect to clean up after the litterbugs. A handful of do-gooders did just that post-parade on Oglethorpe Square to ensure that space didn’t look like Chippewa.

Some will suggest cleanup is the city government’s obligation. One viewer of our biweekly “Editorial Check-in” segment on the SavannahNow.com Facebook page insisted the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Festival wristband sales windfall offsets the sanitation costs. Even if that were the case — it’s not — paying a fee doesn’t entitle you to act like a pig.

In this instance, the only privilege the wristband charge earns you is the right to drink in public. You drop your empty cup on the cobblestones, you should get ticketed.

Let’s go a step further: To curb the litter and other unsightly party-related sins, should the city consider banning alcohol consumption along the route on parade day as Tybee has done on the beach for Orange Crush weekends?

No? Then this community, at least the parade regulars, should pledge today to clean up after themselves next year and exert peer pressure on others to do likewise. Those who stake a daylong claim to square footage in a square or along a sidewalk should resolve to not go home until their area and the space nearby is debris free.

The city has enough to deal with on parade day without having to issue littering citations. And they shouldn’t have to.

Just this morning I was posting on the infernal machine that it was time to face facts. My writing has taken a turn for the worst. In other words, I’m not getting a lot accomplished. I guess I could make a hundred excuses, but I won’t. I’m just going to blame it on age, and life changes and let it go. After I get “Lucy and the Ghost Train” out, I’m going to sit down and try to decide which way to jump. I know already that goals and deadlines are impossible for me to meet. So they will all be relegated to file 13.

I enjoy all the stories and little mementos I receive concerning local history. Most are local, which are the ones I love the most. A few months ago, I received a 1947 and 1948 Brighton “Warp and Weft Annual.” I have spent many happy hours looking through it since Christmas. There is no doubt about it. I love to look back on the cotton mill life of my childhood. Growing up in Lindale wasn’t any different than growing up in Shannon. “The Warp and Weft” was full of all the happenings going on in the Brighton village, it was a wonderful news source.

I also received a small book from the 1920s called “Cotton Mill Mathematics,” which might as well be in French. I learned just enough in Algebra 1 as a freshman to realize I didn’t want to take Algebra 2. And so far I’ve made it in life without it, or any other math except the basic stuff. I’ll give this little book to the Lindale museum, when they get one.

Another small booklet I have is labeled the “Cave Spring News.” It’s a wonderful anthology of news columns from Mrs. Steve Pettis. Wait, let me back up here.

In June of 1981, Mrs. Ladye P. Taylor and her sister, Nina K. Pettis, assembled as many of their mother’s news columns as they could, and bound them into a small booklet. It seems that at sometime after World War II, Mrs. Pettis was asked by Fields Whatley, editor of the Polk County Times, to “do” a Cave Spring News column. Cave Spring was not very large or “newsy” (and it still isn’t), but Mrs. Pettis’ slant on the news that was fit to print resulted in a gradual escalation of the comments into a biweekly column.

She had a way with words, to say the least. As I browse through her columns, I find some that fit me to a “T.” One in particular, that may fit some of you, too, was titled “Inertia.” And went like this.

“I don’t know what it signifies, but my energy is erratic and intermittent. If I knew how to remedy the situation I would endeavor to forget the remedy ’cause I get along fairly well if the energetic days aren’t too close together.”

“When I’m lazy, I want everyone else to be lazy, and when the old pep is present I want everybody to help me with the job at hand. The inhabitants of this house have learned to detect the symptoms and conduct themselves accordingly. The two-legged ones light out on real or imaginary errands. The dog crawls in her bed for a day-long nap, and the cat disappears for parts unknown.”

My difference is my cats head for the veranda to escape me bumping into them by sweeping or mopping. Gertie runs and gets under the bed, while the rest of the gang just gets in the way.

Mrs. Pettis continues with a column on Thanksgiving. She pretty much lambasts it because it has turned into a contest of irons, either shooting iron or gridiron (as it seems the men go hunting, and then watch football).

She says she does miss Thanksgiving at home, but it seems to have lost its significance. She wishes that some church in the community would hold a Thanksgiving service. She seems to think that folks are too busy enjoying their blessings to take time to give thanks for them.

She says last year Thanksgiving was a complete flop; there was no one home but her and Ladye, so there was no point in cooking a big dinner. She did have fried chicken and strawberry shortcake, which was a terrible mistake. She says her stomach wasn’t conditioned for that sort of fare. Also she says the food didn’t taste right and the house didn’t smell right. There was no sage, no onion, no mince pie and no reason to use the Air Wick.

By nightfall she was craving a turkey drumstick. With Thanksgiving now approaching, she says if she finds herself alone again with just her daughter, she’s going to rub sage on her hands and make an onion sandwich.

I can only imagine how much fun she was to be around, and easy to see why the Polk County Times wanted her to write for their paper. She was able to write a news column on a small town that really had very little news to write about.

One of the things that made me open the booklet, besides being listed as Cave Spring News, was her name. The first Ragland to come to this country was named Evan. He was sold into indentured servitude for seven years to a farmer that lived along the Virginia and Maryland border. That farmer had one child, a daughter named Suzanne. Evan did his seven years, and married Suzanne Pettis. I guess that’s one way to get a farm. So the name Pettis attracted me, and I’m glad it did.

I hope Mrs. Steve Pettis wrote more, and that I can find it. MIKE RAGLAND