8/18: Farm friends, Legion leader; Southern men

TUBING: The Chattahoochee River is a mecca for tubers these days, as Roving Photographer Frank Sharp found when visiting Abbots Bridge near Duluth overlooking the river on the weekend. Frank says: “I could hardly imagine the number of people who keep cool by floating down the lazy Chattahoochee River on a hot summer day – a good way to pass the summer. After parking nearby, I took the very narrow “catwalk” over the bridge to the midpoint – I would not recommend this walk to anybody because of the heavy auto traffic rushing by.” The photo was shot with a Panasonic Lumix FZ-1000 with a fast shutter speed.

IN THIS EDITION

TODAY’S FOCUS: Farm Friends Have Been at Gwinnett County Fair 25 Years
EEB PERSPECTIVE: Suwanee Resident Is New Commander of Georgia American Legion
ANOTHER VIEW: How Southern Men Are Threatened: Manipulation by GOP
FEEDBACK: Roundabouts Work Only “When used properly”
UPCOMING: Snellville Arts Council Schedules Annual Gala
NOTABLE: New Class of Leadership Gwinnett Announced for Coming Year
RECOMMENDED LISTEN: Literature of C.S Lewis by Professor Timothy B. Shutt (on tape)
GEORGIA TIDBIT: Lillian Smith Earns Position in Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.
TODAY’S QUOTE: Sometimes the Citizen Is Stuck Between Two Tough Alternatives
MYSTERY PHOTO: Architectural Gem in South Carolina Was Last Mystery

Help celebrate 25th year of “Farm Friends” at Gwinnett County Fair

By Sharon Cassidy

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga., Aug. 18, 2015 | In 1991, two 4-H Program Assistants, Audrey Hardin and I, decided Gwinnett 4-H had served enough funnel cakes at the Gwinnett County Fair. We wanted to educate youth and adults about “farm” animals and where and what products come from the farm.

From 1990

We went to the county extension agent, Bill Baughman, and asked to start the “Gwinnett 4-H Petting Zoo.” We created pens for the animals, used old doors as props and borrowed and bargained for everything under one small tent located between the livestock barn and the main building at the fairgrounds. There were in the area two calves, two sheep, some goats and chickens that first year. It has grown over the years to educate pre-schools in the morning and more children and adults during the regular hours of the fair each year.

We have focused on the education aspect for the children (and adults), learning about farm animals. We saw the need to teach children about where meat and products come from beside the grocery shelf. Many youth in our the metro area think that milk comes only from a container. The area, now called, “4-H Farm Friends,” is where we teach, “How many glasses of milk does a cow produce?” and “What is the name of the male and female bovine?”

Petting donkey

The bunnies hop around, waiting for a gentle touch of love from the kids, who love to touch the soft fur and long ears. Kids and adults can watch baby calves drinking their big baby bottles in the late afternoon. We have a donkey, “Miss Ellie,” that was born in the Cassidy farm five years ago during the fair. She will be returning for her ears to be rubbed and entertain with “braying” at the crowds. Come help celebrate the 25th birthday this year. Sheep are a favorite because of the different uses for the wool and the goats are entertaining when jumping around the pen.

Each year we add new trivia questions to the barn door for patrons to see how “Farm worthy” they are. This always brings a good chuckle from adults and even our senior visitors. We have Daisy, our milking experience (better known as a counterfeit cow) for everyone to try their hand at milking. We guarantee her not to kick or turn over the bucket! When leaving our area, Mayfield Dairy furnishes everyone with chocolate or white milk as a special treat.

Seeing calves

Over the years, more than 500,000 youth have been educated at the Gwinnett County fair. From beginning in a small tent, to the farm barn that the fair directors built for our Gwinnett 4-H program, it has continued to grow. We hope to continue to educate and excite youth and adults about where farm products come from and milk is not just from a carton.

Audrey and I have passed the torch to Pam Bloch and her 4-H staff now to capture the magical moments. Dedicated 4-H Volunteers and Master Gardeners are our adult supervision with our farm animals. We use 4-H youth to assist with our animals during the regular hours of the fair.

So join us at our 25th year at Gwinnett County Fair September 17 to 27, 2015. I bet you will leave saying, “I did not know that” about our animals.

Gwinnettian is new commander of Georgia American Legion

By Elliott Brack, editor and publisher

AUG. 18, 2015 | A former commander of the Duluth American Legion has a new position—commander of the entire state of Georgia American Legion. He is Thom Mash, 63, a resident of Suwanee. There are 240 American Legion posts in Georgia, with over 52,000 members.

He has been a member of the Chattahoochee American Legion Post 251 of Duluth since 1996, and commander in 2001-2003. The post is one of the largest in Georgia, with 1,200 members. There are also American Legion posts in Gwinnett—-Buford, Lawrenceville and Snellville.

Among Mash’s past duties, besides being the Duluth post commander, has been Finance Officer and Adjutant. For 14 years he was the district adjutant, and has served in several offices of the state department. He was elected state commander at the 97th Department (state) convention in Dalton in June. He has also served at the national level on the national legislation and marketing committees.

Mash plans to concentrate his time as state commander with an emphasis on membership, an area he has concentrated on with his home Post. “When I joined the Duluth Post, we had only 250 members,” he notes. He points out that there are over 700,000 eligible Legion members in Georgia.

Mash

Mash is a native of Pontiac, Mich., and attended Indiana University on a wresting scholarship. In 1972, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines, where he received training at the IBM Computer Science School, and became a computer operator for the Marines. He was stationed at the Albany, Ga. Marine Supply Center. He continued his wrestling while in the service, and was the Marine Corps Freestyle wrestling champion at 126 pounds in 1974. He was discharged from the service in 1976 with the rank of sergeant.

The new commander began work in 1976 as a data processing operator with General Motors Pontiac division, where he served for 15 years. In 1981, he was transferred to Atlanta, working with GMAC. He started his own business, Nature Craft Deck Company, then in 1992 began to work with Abatement Technologies of Suwanee as Operations Manager, where he is now. The firm works in the air filtration business worldwide out of the Suwanee office.

Mash and his wife have three daughters, a son, and 11 grandchildren. They are members of the Duluth First United Methodist Church.

This September, it’s expected that another Georgian will be recognized in the top post of the American Legion. That will be Dale Barnett of Douglasville, who is on tap to be elected the national commander of the Legion on September 3 in Baltimore. He has served the Legion for many years and is a past Georgia commander. Mash says of Barnett’s incoming position: “We made Dale look good going in as National Commander when we were one of only two states to make an increase in membership, at 101 percent. We need to make sure he remains looking good this year as he serves us all.” Georgia was one of only two departments (of 55) that had an increase in membership.

Meanwhile, the 2015 Georgia American Legion fall conference will be held in Duluth on October 23-24 at the Sonesta Hotel. Approximately 600 Legionnaires are expected to be in attendance.

Continued manipulation by GOP threatens all Southern men

By George Wilson

AUG. 18, 2015 | W.J. Cash’s The Mind of the South, first published in 1941, is a brilliant examination of how the Southern elite, even with slavery no longer possible, managed to extend the same economic and political philosophy and system to their own benefit for 100 years, using Jim Crow.

When I see the Confederate flags waved today, I always think about the social unfairness that existed in the South during the Civil War. Here are a few examples.

• The food riots by starving people, in Atlanta, Richmond, Columbus, Macon, Augusta and other cities because the planter class refused to grow food crops but persisted in growing cash crops cotton and tobacco;

• The Confederate Congress amending the draft law to exempt anyone who owned 20 or more slave;

• Above all, Southerners were about evenly split between those who favored secession and those who wanted to stay with the Union. David William’s book, A People’s History of the Civil War, is a good place to learn how the only state to hold a secession referendum was Texas. The vote was 2-1 to stay in the Union. Secession conventions in the other states were won by the planter class largely through vote fraud, violence and threats of violence against anti-secessionists.

It would be hard for rich slave owners to get the non-slave owners to fight, hence they would wrap it in pretty words like “Weapons of Mass Destruction.” I mean, “Slave Rights or States Rights.”

Today, I’m always interested in the political chicanery that Republicans and moneyed elites commonly implore to maintain control in the South. For example, same sex marriage, welfare, guns, and abortion are used to play the same old shell game on the gullible. The latest is the so called freedom of religion, a non-issue.

Finally, when the Georgia legislature meets in January, you can depend on these continual diversions from the real problems. Raising the minimum wage, extending Medicaid to everyone, making it easier to vote, solving transportation problems and addressing educational inequality, are examples of issues that could assist ALL Southern men.

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Feels roundabouts work at intersections … “if used properly”

Editor, the Forum:

I agree with you that roundabouts are more efficient. However, let me add “If used  properly.”

I grew up in a town that had a roundabout and it was just that, efficient. The problem I discovered here in Gwinnett is that many drivers don’t know how to use roundabouts.

They stop when the shouldn’t and yield to cars on the other side of the roundabout that are of no consequence to that car entering the circle. It frustrates me more than it helps me. Go stand at the roundabout in Duluth near the old Joan Glancy Hospital, you’ll see what I mean.

— James Savadelis, Duluth

Dear Jim: We agree that it will take some education. But it’s better for governments to re-adjust intersections to roundabouts, along with adopting an educational campaign on how to use them, than to continue to put up with T-Bone collisions that can lame us. –eeb

Snellville art gala to feature whodunit mystery, game show

Snellville’s Arts Commission (SAC) is hosting its annual gala fundraiser and silent auction on August 29.The event, set for 6 p.m. at the Summit Chase Country Club, 3197 Classic Drive, will feature Occupation: Murder! – a whodunit mystery and fictional game show starring audience members and actors.

The dinner and show is $35 per person with proceeds going toward the Snellville Arts Commission.

SAC board member Kathi Mardis says: “The Snellville Arts Commission’s mission is to help foster development of, participation in, and enjoyment of all the arts for both Snellville citizens and visitors to Snellville, as well as serve in an advisory capacity in developing an aesthetic vision for the city. Snellville recognizes that the arts are fundamental to humanity. They ennoble and inspire us and help to express our values. In addition to adding to culture and education, the arts industry spends money locally, generate government revenue and are the cornerstone of tourism.”

Social hour is from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. and the show begins at 7:30 p.m. For more information on SAC visit snellvillearts.com.

Elisha Winn Fair coming this year on Oct. 3-4 weekend

The Elisha Winn Fair will be on Saturday and Sunday, October 3-4, from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. both days. There will be free onsite parking. The fair is hosted by the Gwinnett Historical Society.

Elisha Winn House

The Fair features arts and crafts, and takes place at the Winn House, 908 Dacula Road, Dacula. This year’s event gains historical significance because plans for forming the new Gwinnett County were conducted at this location prior to 1818, the year Gwinnett County was officially created.

Along with tours of the original two-story house built circa 1812, complete with period furnishings, there are multiple outbuildings open to visitors, including an 1875 one-room school house depicting a typical early-on school day; an operating blacksmith shop; an 1820s jail house; a 1917 barn; plus antique farm equipment, and a historical railroad memorabilia display.

There will be re-enactors with a cannon and other military artifacts plus vendors, food and live bluegrass/country music on stage both days. Featured musicians will be the famed Skillet Lickers.

• For vendor applications, please visit www.gwinnetths.org/winnfair.html or for more info call Betty Warbington at 770-963-6301.

OTC in Norcross plans fund-raiser honoring the late Robin Williams

Help the  OTC Comedy Troupe honor Robin Williams in a benefit for Parkinson Foundation at Lionheart Theatre in Norcross on Saturday, August 22 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $10 per person.  This show is a fundraiser and the proceeds will be donated to the National Parkinson Foundation in honor of the late Robin Williams.

Kelley Cody-Grimm, the OTC artistic director, says: “This is our second annual Pie it Forward Comedy Show.  My mother has Parkinson’s and one of our other cast members, Michael Parker, also has a family member who is also affected by this disease, so it’s personal. We want to help raise money to find a cure so others don’t have to see their family members go through this.”

She adds: “Robin Williams was the comedy world’s Pavarotti – he had perfect pitch and timing.  The idea that he’s no longer with us still stings. One way to honor his memory is to take one of his signature scenes from Mrs. Doubtfire where he puts a pie in his own face and says ‘HELLO!!’.   We recreate that scene with whipped cream pies and invite our audience to join us.  How many times do you get to have a group pie in the face?  And it’s for a good cause.”

Lionheart Theatre is located at 10 College St., Norcross.  To purchase tickets in advance or make a donation to the National Parkinson Foundation – go to  www.otccomedytroupe.com.

Leadership Gwinnett announces participants in 2015-16 Class

The Leadership Gwinnett Class of 2016 officially convened for their first session on August 11 at The 1818 Club in Duluth.  Forty leaders will spend the next nine months learning, connecting and preparing to take their place as community trustees.

Since 1985, Leadership Gwinnett has ensured that community leaders are knowledgeable about issues, well networked and passionate about the success of the county and region. Armed with new knowledge, connections and perspectives, all Leadership Gwinnett graduates are prepared to take their place as an effective community leader. The flagship program that kicked off this week includes two overnight retreats, seven learning days covering topics such as leadership in a world class community, infrastructure, economics, education, health & human services, justice and regional relations, as well as monthly study groups, exclusive tours and hands-on experiences.

The Leadership Gwinnett Class of 2016 includes:

• Marian Adeimy, Andersen, Tate & Carr, P.C.;
• Whit Alexander, Lose & Associates, Inc.;
• Mike Allee, Edward Jones, Lawrenceville;
• Taylor Anderson, Blue Landworks LLC;
• Butch Ayers, Gwinnett County Police Department;
• Kirsten Baker, Gwinnett County Public Schools – North Gwinnett High School;
• Monica Batiste, Gwinnett County Public Schools;
• Freddie Betanzos, Georgia Power Company;
• Brent Bohanan, Gwinnett County Habitat for Humanity, Inc.;
• Cathie Brazell, Gwinnett Medical Center;
• Jim Brooks, Evermore Community Improvement District;
• Tommy Carraway, Brand Bank;
• Trent Cloer, Moore Stephens Tiller, LLC;
• Radu Coliba, Lawrenceville First Baptist Church;
• Jennifer Cramer, Brand Mortgage;
• Fred Dawkins, Frederick C. Dawkins, Esq, P.C.;
• Bryan Ginn, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine – Georgia Campus;
• Theresa Hinds, Cisco Systems;
• Danny Jardine, Gwinnett County Public Schools;
• Scott Jarvis, Alston & Bird, LLP;
• Douglas Johnson, Georgia Gwinnett College;
• Rory Johnson, Lawrenceville Boys and Girls Club;
• Charles Kim, Georgia Gwinnett Chiropractic Clinic;
• Donald Lee, Gwinnett County Government;
• Nancy McGill, Cartridge World Lawrenceville;
• Linnea Miller, Gwinnett Church and Suwanee City Councilmember;
• Kim Nelson, J.M. Tull – Gwinnett Family YMCA;
• Mark Reiswig, Gwinnett County Health Department;
• Kay Sibetta, Gwinnett County Government;
• Derek Singleton, View Point Health;
• Sharon Smith, Gwinnett County Public Schools – Brookwood Elementary School;
• Russell Smith, RTS Associates;
• Amanda Sutt, Rock Paper Scissors;
• Annie Valenty, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta;
• DePriest Waddy, United Way of Greater Atlanta;
• Chandra Walker, Gwinnett County Public Schools;
• Jermaine Whirl, Gwinnett Technical College;
• Leticia Willis, Willis Mechanical, Inc.;
• Shevonn Willis, The Smith Willis Firm, Ltd.; and
• Alex Wright, Central Garden and Pet and Peachtree Corners City Councilmember.

Literature of C.S Lewis

Lectures by Professor Timothy B. Shutt (on tape)

Professor Timothy B. Shutt brings to life the works of C.S Lewis in this 14 lecture series of books on tape. He discusses Lewis’ life and events that carved his inner philosophy, the evocation of “joy.” Known for his Chronicles of Narnia series, Lewis also wrote a riveting science fiction trilogy in which he seeks to present an unfallen world, a world of peace and a world of complexities. Shutt also tells of Lewis’ apologetic works such as Mere Christianity, which was written for the entire Christian family. Other scholarly works include the Screwtape Letters, the Discarded Image, the Allegory of Love and the Four Loves. Woven throughout is Lewis’s singular theological theme, which is the complexity of the world, which includes dark and light and all shades in between. After listening to these lectures, I am moved to read Lewis’ other works which include food for thought and contemplation.

— Karen Harris, Stone Mountain, Ga.

An invitation: what books, restaurants, movies or web sites have you enjoyed recently? Send us your recent selection, along with a short paragraph (100 words) as to why you liked this, plus what you plan to visit or read next. –eeb

Lillian Smith earns position in Georgia Writers Hall of Fame

(Continued from previous edition)

The liberal author Lillian Eugenia Smith was born into a large, prosperous family in Jasper, Fla., on December 12, 1897. When the family business collapsed in 1915, her family moved to their cottage in Clayton, in Rabun County, and started Laurel Falls Girls Camp. Smith studied at Piedmont College in Demorest (1915-16) and then left to help run the family camp.

Smith

Pursuing her interest in music, she also did two stints at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Md. (1917, 1919). In 1922 she went to China to offer musical instruction at a Methodist missionary school. When her parents’ health began to fail in 1925, she came home and eventually took over the running of the camp, which in time she converted into a place for serious discussion of social issues. Her longtime partner, Paula Snelling, a school counselor, assisted her.

In 1936 the two founded Pseudopodia, a small magazine meant to further their ideals and to give southern writers, including blacks, a forum. After several renamings, including South Today, Smith closed the successful magazine in 1945 to devote herself to writing.

Unfortunately, none of her books achieved the emotional power of her controversial novel Strange Fruit or the intellectual and psychological depths of Killers of the Dream. She battled cancer from the early 1950s until her death in 1966, but to the end she remained devoted to her dream of a South liberated from the “ghosts” of southern traditions. Her last published work was Our Faces, Our Words (1964), which applauded nonviolence in the civil rights movement.

It is arguable that Smith’s sojourn in China, where she witnessed prejudice, oppression, and constant violations of her youthful Christian principles, compelled her to become an outspoken social critic. But she was not a churchgoer and did not refer to herself as religious. She read the giants of intellectual modernism (namely, Freud) with great passion and cited modernist writers (Henri Bergson, Carl Jung, and Paul Tillich among others) in her attack on prejudice and narrow-mindedness. Her own sexual orientation and personal life gave her a clearly existential understanding (she read most of the main existentialists of her day) of what it meant to be part of a despised minority considered deviant and dangerous by many.

By and large, Smith’s neighbors were polite to her, but she knew what many southerners thought of her and could decipher the ugliness of the expression, uttered by Eugene Talmadge, that Strange Fruit was a “literary corncob.” Fred Hobson has written that Lillian Smith “was not afraid to confront the darkness within Southern, and American, society—racially, sexually, and politically. She was, in the finest sense of that term, a moralist, an absolutist, one of the last of the all-or-nothing voices.”

Though her fame may have diminished since her death, she was an important early voice in the movement for civil rights in the American South, one of the first white southern writers to confront the evils of racism and injustice in a forthright, uncompromising manner. Smith was inducted into Georgia Women of Achievement in 1999 and into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2000.

• To access the Georgia Encyclopedia online, go to http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org

Space welcome station is in Orangeburg County, S.C.

For this edition, the Mystery Photo is taking a day off. Look for another mystery in the coming edition.

The far-out mystery photo from last week came from the Center for a Better South. It was snapped by Don Gordon of Mount Pleasant. Several people recognized it. First in was Philomena Robertson of Flowery Branch, telling us that it is in the heart of the Southern Crescent in Bowman, S.C., in rural Orangeburg County.” She was followed in identifying it by Ross Lenhart of Pawley’s Island, S.C.

Bob Foreman of Grayson writes: “Having been in the architectural profession for 43 years, I am always on the lookout for locally-produced significant architectural works. The UFO Welcome Center in Bowman, S.C. is just such a work,  sort of a Big Chicken of that rural area outside of Charleston.  I do not understand why it has not won numerous architectural awards.” He adds: “I also do not understand why local building officials have not yet condemned it and ordered it to be demolished as a threat to public health and safety.”

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