GwinnettForum | Number 20.52 July 21, 2020 6
THE SERENE AND BEAUTIFUL Al Weeks Sculpture Garden at the Hudgens Center is getting a clean-up and long term maintenance via a donation by Russell Landscaping of Sugar Hill. It is a 28,000-square foot outdoor space that features a tranquility pool and waterfall, cobbled courtyard and tree-shaded benches. The sculpture garden is open to visitors, Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no charge for admission. See Upcoming for more details.
EEB PERSPECTIVE: Here are GwinnettForum Endorsements in the August 11 Runoff Election
ANOTHER VIEW: Remembering a Mother’s Advice: Don’t Let Up; Keep the Ball Moving
ANOTHER VIEW: Online Teaching Is Frustrating, Since Difficult To Motivate via Screen
SPOTLIGHT: The 1818 Club
FEEDBACK: Send us your thoughts
UPCOMING: Russell Landscape to Clean Up and Maintain Hudgens’ Sculpture Garden
NOTABLE: Georgia Gwinnett College Selects New Food Service Provider
RECOMMENDED: Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
GEORGIA TIDBIT: John Lewis Devoted His Life to Non-Violence and Civil Rights
MYSTERY PHOTO: Beautiful Mystery Photo Looks Like an Advertisement for Tourism
LAGNIAPPE: Leadership Gwinnett Has Unique Graduation for Class of 2020
GwinnettForum endorsements in the Aug. 11 runoff election
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JULY 21, 2020 | With early voting already under way since June 20, today we’ll reiterate our endorsements in the August 11 primary run off elections.
Eligible voters may vote in advance in person every day, including weekends, through August 7 at the Voter Registrations and Elections Beauty P. Baldwin Building located at 455 Grayson Highway, Suite 200 in Lawrenceville from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Satellite voting at four additional sites will begin August 1 and continue through Friday, August 7 from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. every day, including weekends. The additional satellite voting locations are:
- Bogan Park Community Recreation Center, 2723 N. Bogan Road, Buford;
- George Pierce Park Community Recreation Center, 55 Buford Highway, Suwanee;
- Lenora Park Gym, 4515 Lenora Church Road, Snellville; and
- Lucky Shoals Park Community Recreation Center, 4651 Britt Road, Norcross .
Earlier this year, we told GwinnettForum readers of our choices in the primary. Now in the run-off election, we list our choices for these offices.
- Click here to meet the runoff candidates and read their responses to questions.
Voters from both Democratic and Republican primaries will have a choice to make in the runoff. However, there is only one Republican runoff, in District 3 for the county commission. There are six Democratic races to be decided, and one non-partisan Superior Court judgeship seat.
Our choices in this runoff election are:
For Democratic County Commission Chairman: Nicole Hendrickson of Lilburn, who in the first vote polled 49.35 percent, and just missed winning the nomination by a whisker. Meanwhile, her runoff opponent, Lee Thompson, who got 13. 85 percent of the vote, has suspended his campaign, conceding the race to Ms. Hendrickson.
For Republican County Commissioner, District 3: Ben Archer of Bethlehem, who won 46.31 percent of the first votes. His opponent, Matt Dereimer, had 29.42 percent.
For Democratic County Commission, District 3: Jasper Watkins III of Grayson. Watkins scored 20.58 percent of the first vote, while Derrick Wilson got 33.21 percent.
For Democratic Sheriff of Gwinnett County: Curtis Clemons of Dacula, who had 33.07 percent of the primary vote, compared to Kaybo Taylor at 32.16 percent.
For Democratic Tax Commissioner of Gwinnett County: Our choice is Attorney Tiffany Porter of Lilburn, winner of 42.83 percent of the initial vote. Her opponent is Regina Carden, with 37.22 percent on June 9.
For Democratic Senator from District 9: We endorse the candidacy of Nikki Merritt of Grayson, who won 47.73 percent of the first vote. Her opponent is Gabe Okoye, winner of 27.39 in the primary voting.
For Democratic Senator from District 41: Our choice is Kim Jackson of Stone Mountain, who scored 47.13 percent of the initial primary vote. Her opponent is Mohammed Jahangir Hossain, who won 20.34 percent in the initial voting.
In the non-partisan Superior Court judge’s race, we reiterate our choice for re-election of Kathryn Schraeder of Duluth, winner of 37.22 percent in the June 9 voting. Her opponent, Deborah Fluker, scored 20.22 percent.
* * * * *
Prior to making a decision of how you will vote on August 11, let us suggest you read what the candidates themselves have to say about their race.
GwinnettForum is providing space for the runoff candidates to answer six questions (in no more than 100 words) about their candidacy. Go to this section to learn how each of these candidates feel on issues of the day, and hear about their backgrounds. Note that GwinnettForum provides this space at no cost to the candidates, except they must meet with GwinnettForum for at least 30 minutes to qualify to be sent these questions. These questions and answers will appear here until the runoff.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
A mother’s advice: Don’t let up; Keep the ball moving
By Ashley D. Herndon
OCEANSIDE, Calif. | Aristotle said, “Once you have Oligarchic Rule, there are only two choices available: Revolution or Tyranny.
Herndon
That is it. Or as the Looney Tunes closer said, “That’s All Folks.”
Those in power and their followers MUST accept that after 400+ years of mistreatment and mis-education concerning racism, misogyny, economic injustice, sexism and the other “isms” are still with us. Now add the raw horror of a pandemic which is killing us by the thousands. Something will give. There is no more room or patience for mistreatment and mis-education. Truth telling is where it’s at!
Ducking, dodging, dissembling, deceiving, et al, just does not get it. Keep it up and the pressure will only get worse. Fanning the flames of fear is equal to pulling a trigger.
But there is Good News: Revolution does not require violence. Remember Gandhi, remember Bonhoeffer, remember MLK, Jr. They lifted no arms. They used no violent language. Any violence that occurred was foisted upon them. Previously, you could have asked the late John Lewis and Rev. Dr. James Lawson. The first three were assassinated. The last two started fighting the ‘50s.
I am not naive enough to say if there is a ‘Non-violent revolution” that it would solve all problems. However, I will say if it will provide relief, or, because of who is currently in power, there will be a very ugly corporate-controlled tyranny. Wells Fargo, Citigroup, Exxon, Goldman, et al, will not lose, and believe it or not, some of them are actually willing to change, mainly because of public pressure. No time for either a Plantation or Gangster economy.
It is beginning to look like it is time to get our act together and move forward. The current bog is getting smelly.
“Don’t let up…keep the ball moving,” as my Mother used to say. Then, Vince Lombardi, another proven winner, advised, “It is a game of inches.”
Inches become yards. Both of those folks knew how to win.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Online teaching is frustrating; Difficult to motivate on screen
By Alex Tillman
VALDOSTA, Ga. | When I started teaching in the early 90s, I was given a box of chalk, a set of textbooks, and a hardy slap on the back. I was glad to have a job.
Tillman
I never imagined how technology would take over the classroom. Much has remained the same in education, especially the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. For learning to occur a teacher with content knowledge has to engage a willing learner. The COVID-19 school shutdown with the change to online learning has strained that relationship.
Online instruction is frustrating. I need to be with my students, not talking to distant students. My subject is American Government for high school freshmen. Very few 15 year-olds find the Constitution interesting. Plus, it’s very difficult to motivate students through a computer screen.
Here’s where the willing learner gets lost: the teacher is not in the same room with students, where the teacher can offer encouragement. Teachers are similar to athletic coaches: we are our players’ greatest fans.
I’ve told countless students that it’s okay not to like the subject of American Government, “But if you will do what I ask, I will get you through the course, and you’ll come out a better student and a better citizen, too.”
Another difficulty with online learning is that the students are at home. For them, home is a comfortable and safe place, as it should be. As a teacher I find it difficult to totally focus when at home. I prefer to leave my work at school but don’t mix home and school up. My friends in other professions who have to work from home are finding home distracting as well.
Student apathy is often a problem. It is no one’s fault. We must have teachers who can cut through apathy, and by better teaching, engage the students.
Teaching is an art. When you engage students, you get to look in their eyes, and they feel this contact with you. I have to be with them to read their eyes. You don’t get that with distance-learning. In the classroom, you can see in their eyes anything from total confusion to that “A-ha” moment that makes teaching a rewarding profession. In person we can drag those critical thinking questions out of a student to move learning to a higher level.
None of this is possible in the online environment. Most K-12 students don’t like to raise their hand and openly admit when they don’t understand something. But this is more likely to happen in the classroom. You can often see confusion, and call on Johnny, asking “What don’t you understand.” That’s impossible online. Most students would not ask questions, even in a private one- on-one Google Meets of Zoom sessions.
The artist needs to be in the room with the canvas.
The sad part is that this coming school year may drastically reduce what students learn if they have to take classes online. And that will be lost to them forever, affecting their entire lives.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
The 1818 Club
The public spiritedness of our sponsors allows us to bring GwinnettForum.com to you at no cost to readers. Today’s underwriter is The 1818 Club, named for the year that Gwinnett County received its charter. The 1818 Club is a member-owned, private dining experience providing the best in food, service and meeting accommodations for its members. Whatever your business or social dining needs, the 1818 Club has the proper facilities, recently renovated, to gracefully host your gatherings.
- 100-seat formal dining room open for breakfast and lunch.
- Capital Room open for breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as cocktails.
- Three private rooms which can be used for dining or meeting space. AV is offered in each room.
- 220 seat Virgil Williams Grand Ballroom, divides into three sections, all with AV.
- Gwinnett Room for upscale dining, with Frankie’s menu available.
Our top-notch service team enhances your experience by providing a sophisticated social atmosphere, engaging events and a full serving of dining and entertainment opportunities. If you want an urbane and central site to entertain people, consider joining the 1818 Club. For more details, visit https://www.the1818club.org/Home.
- For a list of other sponsors of this forum, click here.
Send us your thoughts
We encourage you to send us your letters and thoughts on issues raised in GwinnettForum. Please limit comments to 300 words. We reserve the right to edit for clarity and length. Send feedback and letters to: elliott@brack.net
Russell Landscape to maintain Hudgens’ sculpture garden
Russell Landscape of Sugar Hill will conduct a major clean-up of the Al Weeks Sculpture Garden at the Hudgens Center and will continue to maintain it. The company’s award-winning landscaping teams will clean and maintain the area, prune the trees, distribute fresh pine straw throughout the area and contribute to the general upkeep. The in-kind donation will help the center continue its mission to bring art to the community.
Laura Ballance, executive director of the Hudgens Center, says: “The Al Weeks Sculpture Garden has always been a beautiful, tranquil place for our visitors to experience. Russell Landscape has been a wonderful friend of the Hudgens Center and their gift will help ensure the gardens will remain a lovely, peaceful place for our guests.”
The Al Weeks Sculpture Garden is a 28,000-square foot outdoor space that features a tranquility pool and waterfall, cobbled courtyard and tree-shaded benches. It is home to dozens of wildlife species and flowers.
An area of the garden features a permanent memorial to the grandson of Russell Landscape founder and chairman, Bill Russell. He was the son Russell’s daughter Angie, died from a rare childhood disease.
The sculpture garden is open to visitors, Tuesdays through Saturdays, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There is no charge for admission.
Teddy Russell, CEO of Russell Landscape, says: “Russell Landscape is proud to support the Hudgens Center for Art and Learning and their mission to share art and spread creativity. We believe in providing outdoor spaces where people can feel rejuvenated and be inspired. We are honored to have this opportunity to give back to our community.”
Russell Landscape is the largest privately held Georgia-based commercial landscaping firm. Founded in 1987 and headquartered in Sugar Hill, Ga., Russell Landscape has grown to seven branches throughout Georgia, Florida, Tennessee and South Carolina and employs 350-plus men and women.
Georgia Gwinnett College selects new food service provider
Georgia Gwinnett College has entered into a partnership with Aladdin, a food service provider specializing in higher education dining, beginning July 1.Aladdin will transition the college’s dining program with a full Ecolab Sanitation Audit and establish its “SafeCafe” initiatives to ensure the facilities are primed for students, faculty and staff upon opening for the fall semester.
Aladdin’s Season Harvest, a plant-based food program, also will offer menu options using fruits, vegetables and whole grains to accommodate vegetarian lifestyles.
The Grizzly Dining residential program will include innovative menus with complete allergen and caloric information along with monthly special events to keep the dining program fresh and exciting. Chefs will prepare fresh, customized dishes in front of students at food preparation stations. Each station will engage customers through innovative culinary techniques, which will be a focal point in the dining program.
The Grizzly Dining retail program at the Building A Food Court will continue to feature Chick-fil-A, Panda Express and the General Store.
The Kaufman Library will remain home to the GCC Starbucks and Building B will continue to house Einstein’s Bagels.
GACS student selected for 2020 All-National Mixed Choir
Yu, in center
Greater Atlanta Christian School rising senior, Haotian (Bob) Yu, has been selected for the 2020 All-National Mixed Choir. Bob entered GAC as an International student his freshman year and quickly gravitated to the offerings in the Fine Arts Department and onsite private music lessons. He is the son of Haiying Wu and is a part of GAC’s International Homestay program, where students begin their high school education and graduate from GAC.
Bob is currently in his hometown of Shanghai, China, and was thrilled to hear the news. The All-National Mixed Choir is chosen from high school applicants spanning all 50 states and is comprised of over 250 musicians. The culminating program is expected to take place at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center in Orlando, Fla., November 5-8, 2020.
Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons
This book’s first sentence pulls you in: ‘When I was little, I would think of ways to kill my daddy.’ Whew! Later we learn: ‘But I did not kill my daddy. He drank his own self to death.’ This little (126 page) book, from 1987, keeps getting more interesting as you read about the antics of this 11 year old orphan who hankers for a better life. After her mother’s death, we find that her grandmother is a mean, self-centered old biddy, who punishes Ellen severely, then dies. Set in rural, harsh North Carolina about 75 years ago, it’s a heart-warming book that sets Ellen on the road to a better life, as she finally picks out for herself a new family. As tough as the book is, Ellen sees the world with humor and maturity beyond her years, and comes out as tough, but civilized. It’s a keeper.—eeb
An invitation: what books, restaurants, movies or web sites have you enjoyed recently? Send us your recent selection, along with a short paragraph (150 words) as to why you liked this, plus what you plan to visit or read next. Send to: elliott@brack.net
John Lewis devoted his life to non-violence and civil rights
A devout advocate of the philosophy of nonviolence and the belief that all men and women are created equal, John Lewis has been a preeminent leader of the modern American civil rights movement. He has represented the Fifth Congressional District of Georgia in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1987.
Lewis
Born to a sharecropper family in Pike County, Ala., on February 21, 1940, John R. Lewis was educated at the American Baptist Theological Seminary and Fisk University, both in Nashville, Tenn. While a college student in the early 1960s, he was swept into the sit-in movement. By sitting at lunch counters, public libraries, and other places designated for whites only in Nashville and dozens of other cities throughout the South, young people like Lewis protested what were known as Jim Crow laws, which segregated African Americans and whites. Trained in methods of nonviolent resistance, the young protesters refused to submit to what they regarded as immoral and un-American laws. They were arrested and, in many instances, beaten savagely by white southerners who resisted integration.
Lewis put his life on the line at several of the best-known battlegrounds in the modern African American struggle for equal rights. He was arrested numerous times for acting on his beliefs. Lewis was one of a small group of men and women who protested the segregation of interstate bus terminals in 1961 by traveling in integrated groups through the South. These Freedom Rides attracted national attention. When Lewis and others were attacked by white segregationists at a bus station in Montgomery, Ala, they made national headlines and publicized the plight of black Americans under a racially segregated social order.
In 1963 Lewis was elected chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), an Atlanta-based civil rights organization that emerged from the college students’ sit-in movement and was devoted to direct action; he remained in the post until 1966. Along with Martin Luther King Jr. and several others, he was a speaker at the August 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He helped coordinate SNCC’s 1964 “Freedom Summer” project in Mississippi.
In 1965 Alabama state troopers beat Lewis and some 600 civil rights activists as he led them on a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge from Selma, Alabama, to Montgomery, the state’s capital. News cameras captured the beatings and broadcast them to a national audience.
The outrage that followed what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” helped create a consensus that resulted in the passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act later that year.
Lewis won elected office for the first time in 1981, when he secured an at-large seat on the Atlanta City Council. He resigned that seat in 1986 to run for the U.S. House of Representatives. Lewis faced Julian Bond, another SNCC veteran and a close friend, in the Democratic primary. Lewis defeated Bond in what became a surprisingly bitter primary runoff and then won the general election. He has remained popular with voters in the years since, winning re-election each subsequent term, and has served in several leadership positions in the House Democratic caucus.
Lewis splits his time between Washington, D.C., and Atlanta with his wife, Lillian Miles, and son, John Miles. He has received numerous honorary degrees and awards, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People‘s Spingarn Medal, the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, the Martin Luther King Jr. Nonviolent Peace Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1998 he published a memoir, Walking with the Wind, which won the Lillian Smith Book Award (named for Georgia writer Lillian Smith and administered by the Southern Regional Council) and an award from the Georgia Writers Association. In 2013 he published March (Book One), the first of a trilogy of graphic novels chronicling the history of the civil rights movement. The second book, March (Book Two), appeared in 2015, and March (Book Three) debuted in 2016.
He died in Atlanta on July 17, 2020.
- To view the Georgia Encyclopedia article online, go to http://georgiaencyclopedia.org
Beautiful Mystery Photo looks like an ad for tourism
This edition’s Mystery Photo may be familiar to many readers. Clues abound in this beautiful setting. Figure out where this photograph was taken, and send your answers to elliott@brack.net and include your hometown.
A better picture. Click to see larger.
Original mystery photo.
The previous Mystery Photo didn’t have many clues. Yet George Graf of Palmyra, Va. worked it out and found that the picture was a “Pig Monument” in Washington County, near Tennille, Ga. The photo came from Jerry Colley of Alpharetta, who had blurred the writing. We’re showing the intact monument today, along with what Graf supplied as a “tourist sign” pointing to the monument.
Graf writes: “In front of a dry shallow well, this granite memorial has the picture of a pig on it. According to the story, a farmer named Bartow Barron lost track of his prize winning Duroc hog for two solid weeks back in 1933, during some of the worst days of the Great Depression. He finally found the pig staring up at him from the bottom of the dry well, which was 40 feet deep at the time. Mr. Barron came up with the idea to slowly fill the well with dirt, so the hog could climb up little by little and jump out. For 12 days, he tried to fill the well by himself. When he was about ready to give up, his neighbors pitched in to help and they rescued that animal together. The monument celebrates ‘the spirit of friendship and community so characteristic of those times.’ The monument is about halfway between the Oconee Antioch Church and Herb’s Fish Place on Georgia Highway 272.”
Leadership Gwinnett has unique graduation for 2020 class
Leadership Gwinnett found a distinctive way to honor graduates of its Class of 2020 because of the current COVID-19 pandemic. That day, first came a three hour Zoom meeting. In the afternoon, instead of having the graduates walk across a stage, the class had a one hour “moving graduation,” as members of the class drove through the Infinite Energy Center parking lot to the signs and applause of previous members of Leadership Gwinnett. Each new graduate was given a bag of remembrances including graduation plaque and while they completed the drive through the parking area, as Babak Mostaghimi shows below.
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