GwinnettForum | Number 21.53 | July 26, 2022
RED ART WORK: Here’s a distinctive photograph one reader found alongside the highway. You could call it an iconic American statement on art. It also doubles as today’s Mystery Photo. Now, can you tell us where it is located? Details below on where to send your answer.
TODAY’S FOCUS: Applying recent insurrection to popular gospel song
EEB PERSPECTIVE: January 6 hearings show Liz Cheney being highly responsible
ANOTHER VIEW: Some thoughts when you feel old age creeping up
SPOTLIGHT: The Gwinnett Stripers
FEEDBACK: Remember when you used them to wrap fish, too?
UPCOMING: PCOM to graduate 75 new master’s degree holders this morning
NOTABLE: GGC students have option of attending summer resource camps
RECOMMENDED: Alienist by Caleb Carr
GEORGIA TIDBIT: Stevens and Wilkinson was major architectural firm since 1947
MYSTERY PHOTO: Bright red objects are for you to guess about today
CALENDAR: GGC president to address Snellville Commerce Club on August 2
Applying recent insurrection to popular gospel song
(Editor’s note: While we seldom print verses, for fear of being overwhelmed by submissions, we thought Today’s Focus was particularly excellent, and timely, and hence, its publication today. –eeb.
Herndon
By Ashley Herndon
OCEANSIDE, Calif. | Here is the original version of the song, “I Come to the Garden Alone, by Charles Austin Miles (1868-1946), a prolific author of gospel songs. Alongside it, is another version I penned is what the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, 3 percenters, and others gave us on January 6:
I Come to The Garden Alone
While the Dew Is Still On The Roses,
And The Voice I Hear Falling On My Ear
The Son Of God Discloses.
And He Walks with Me, And He Talks with Me,
And He Tells Me I Am His Own;
And the Joy We Share as We Tarry There,
None Other Has Ever Known.
…
He Speaks, and The Sound of His Voice
Is So Sweet the Birds Hush Their Singing,
And The Melody That He Gave To Me
Within My Heart Is Ringing.
And He Walks with Me, And He Talks with Me,
And He Tells Me I Am His Own;
And the Joy We Share As We Tarry There,
None Other Has Ever Known.
…
I’d Stay in The Garden With Him,
Though The Night Around Me Be Falling,
But He Bids Me Go; Through The Voice Of Woe
His Voice To Me Is Calling.
…
And He Walks with Me, And He Talks With Me,
And He Tells Me I Am His Own;
And The Joy We Share As We Tarry There,
None Other Has Ever Known.
I come to the riot well-armed; while the mobs are gathering behind me, And the demi-god voices I hear falling on my ear, are scalding and sadly horrifying.
Yet they scream at us all, while lying to us, and telling us ‘I love you’. It builds fear and hate as we tarry there, like no other this country has ever known. He lies to me and tries to trick us…Right into the jail.
He Speaks with a forked tongue, and the sound of his voice grates against the crucible of liberty. His family and cohorts exclaim, they prefer Barabbas to Love.
And he lies and claims he will walk with us, as he talks from both sides of his mouth. We March to the tune of hate and criminality. We share fear in the Ellipse, like none other we have ever known.
I would stay on the White House Lawn with him, though the laws are constantly broken. He bids me to go to the Temple of Liberty to create woe and death. His voice calls us to violence and mocks us in silence.
But he does not walk with us as promised, but hides cowering in the house of the people he razed. He bullies as the mob terrorizes, threatens, attacks and creaties horrors like none ever known.
…
EEB PERSPECTIVEJan. 6 hearings show Liz Cheney being highly responsible
Cheney during a recent Jan. 6 committee hearing | Photo via CSPAN.
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JULY 26, 2022 | The nation isn’t talking much about who’ll be running in the 2024 presidential election.
Instead, we’re concentrating on what happened on January 6.
Donald Trump keeps alive the hope he might run again for president, thinking that a sitting president might be harder to pin any charges on.
If former President Trump doesn’t run, who might? The one name you hear most often is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Yet some think he might carry as much baggage as Mr. Trump did with his strong rightist views. Overall in general, there aren’t any obvious contenders right now, as after all, that campaign is more than two-plus years away.
Yet on the GOP side, there seems to be emerging one particular person who, though not mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, is showing incredible signs of leadership.
That person is Liz Cheney, the (sole) representative from Wyoming to the U.S. House. She has been a congresswoman since 2017 and is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney.
Today she is in the spotlight as the vice chair of the House Select Committee to investigate the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. She stands out as one of only two Republicans to serve on that committee, and has great visibility, intelligence, determination and restraint in questioning witnesses before that group.
One gets the feeling that Ms. Cheney has a deep appreciation of the American government, and is deeply troubled by Mr. Trump’s failures on January 6. Yet this is the same Ms. Cheney who backed many of the Trump Administration ideas before Congress. That makes her deep-felt views on what the president did ever so revealing and remarkable.
In effect, Liz Cheney is showing nothing less than leadership. One feels she is well-grounded in her efforts, is making the right call, could set our country straight, and exhibits the qualities we want in leaders.
Ms. Cheney was born in Madison, Wis. when her father was a student at the University of Wisconsin. She graduated with a bachelor of arts degree from Colorado College, her mother’s alma mater, where she wrote her senior thesis, “The Evolution of Presidential War Powers.” She received her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 1996. Later she worked in private practice and then for the State Department for five years and the United States Agency for International Development. After 1993, she took a job at Armitage Associates LLP, the consulting firm founded by Richard Armitage, then a former Defense Department official and later the Deputy Secretary of State. She and her husband, Phil Perry, have five children and live in Wilson, Wyoming.
One can see that she has had responsible positions in government, making her easily qualified to be sitting in Congress, where she was first elected in 2016 to the U.S. House.
Wyoming flag
Yet this political year she is facing a tough challenge in the Republican primary, which will be on August 9. Her opponent, Harriet Hageman, is the only candidate in Wyoming endorsed by a vindictive Donald Trump. Polls show Ms. Cheney running significantly behind her opponent.
Remember, Wyoming is our least populated state, with only 581,348 (2020) people. Only 110,575 votes were cast in the 2020 Republican primary. Ms. Cheney could easily lose this race, all because she is leading a valiant effort to show the American people how Donald Trump was the man most responsible for a never-before-seen insurrection against our Capitol and our nation.
Possible? Ms. Cheney might lose the Wyoming primary, but gain the trust of the nation? Could she be the next presidential candidate of a newly-enlightened Republican Party?
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
Some thoughts when you feel old age creeping up
By Alan Schneiberg
SUGAR HILL, Ga. | Old age has creeped up on me. So I wanted to share some thoughts about growing old that gives me a laugh. So here are some musings about growing old.
Schneiberg
“To get back to my youth I would do anything in the world, except exercise, get up early, or be respectable.” — Oscar Wilde.
“The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.” — Will Rogers.
“We must recognize that, as we grow older, we become like old cars – more and more repairs and replacements are necessary.” — C.S. Lewis.
“Inside every older person is a younger person wondering what happened.” — Jennifer Yane.
“Old age is like a plane flying through a storm. Once you are aboard there is nothing you can do about it.” — Golda Meir.
“I’m so old that my blood type is discontinued.” –– Bill Dane.
“The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” — Mark Twain.
“Wisdom doesn’t necessarily come with age. Sometimes, age just shows up all by itself.” — Tom Wilson.
“Always be nice to your children because they are the ones who will choose your retirement home.” — Phyllis Diller.
“I don’t plan to grow old gracefully. I plan to have face-lifts until my ears meet.” –– Rita Rudner.
“It’s paradoxical that the idea of living a long life appeals to everyone, but the idea of getting old doesn’t appeal to anyone.” — Andy Rooney.
“I was thinking about how people seem to read the Bible a lot more as they get older, and then it dawned on me—they’re cramming for their final exam.” — George Carlin.
“I’m 59 and people call me middle-aged. How many 118-year-old men do you know?”— Barry Cryer.
“Old age isn’t so bad when you consider the alternative.” — Maurice Chevalier.
“Getting older. I used to be able to run a four-minute mile, bench press 380 pounds, and tell the truth.” — Conan O’Brien.
“I have reached an age when, if someone tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to.” — Albert Einstein.
“You know you are getting old when everything hurts, and what doesn’t hurt doesn’t work.” — Hy Gardner.
“I’ve never known a person who lives to be 110 who is remarkable for anything else.” — Josh Billings.
“The idea is to die young as late as possible.” — Ashley Montagu.
“People ask me what I’d most appreciate getting for my 87th birthday. I tell them, a paternity suit.” — George Burns.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
The Gwinnett Stripers
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Remember when you used them to wrap fish, too?
Editor, the Forum:
There are those of us who really pine for actual holding of a newspaper to read with our morning coffee or afternoon tea over the quick (if incomplete) online news. Today’s media just don’t offer the old hometown feel that you used to get from an actual newspaper.
I loved reading what some local society lady or group of ladies were doing on some particular day of the week. Gone are the pictures of local folks who thought it was “cool” having their pictures in the paper and it wasn’t a FBI “Wanted” notification.
Newspapers were free packing material. Newspapers had the local ladies’ recipes to try out and if you liked it, you could clip it out of the paper and save it in a notebook. Newspapers had wonderful obituaries of people you never met, but wish you had just from reading what others had to say about the deceased.
Newspapers had local advertising of businesses where you could find someone to help you with your problem, be it automotive, septic tank, mortuary needs. Newspapers made celebrities of local people. The comics drew in the youngest of newspaper readers.
If you are wondering, no I never worked for a newspaper, but my great-great uncle was the managing editor for the Miami Herald and, my grandfather and his brother both worked as editors in the Herald’s Advertising Departments, one national and the other local. All of that is gone because we now have YouTube, Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook and others online, no longer the single photo in a dignified manner in the newspaper.
– Sara Rawlins, Lawrenceville
It’s hard to have an opinion on an apartment fire or murder
Editor, the Forum:
I believe the fall of newspapers is related to the temptation that journalists have to insert “analysis” into the stories they write. We get mostly opinion on Fox and CNN, which I rarely watch. During Desert Storm, CNN did excellent reporting. Now not so much. I prefer David Muir on ABC, who shows some bias, but not so much. I prefer printed news even in the liberal AJC.
I rarely watch other than local news now. It’s hard to have an opinion to share on an apartment fire or another murder. Print journalists are not immune to editorializing either.
– Scott Batterton, DDS, Lilburn
Dear Scott: In the old newspaper days, before cable was so prevalent, if the reporter inserted opinion, he caught the devil. Opinion was reserved for the editorial page. Today’s cable reporting should not be called that, as you point out, for they don’t see a line between news (facts) and opinion (one’s understanding.) –eeb
Forum fails to reach many who may need it the most
Editor, the Forum:
It occurred to me that the GwinnettForum might not exist were it not for the Internet and computers. Changing times create pluses and minuses. Complaining about what we have lost may provide your readers with an outlet for their frustrations, but I like your attempts to “always look on the bright side of life.”
– Tim Keith, Sugar Hill
Dear Tim: Yep, for sure, this Forum would not exist without the internet. But the problem is that we can’t reach a “mass” audience, which newspapers so easily did. We are a small, small niche…and most of our readers are at least open-minded, if not liberal. We fail to reach many on the “the other side,” who may need the Forum the most. —eeb
- 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, and include your hometown. The views of letters are the opinion of the contributor. We reserve the right to edit for clarity and length. Send feedback and letters to: elliott@brack.net.
PCOM to graduate 75 new master’s degree holders
On Tuesday, July 26 at 11 a.m. 75 master’s degree students will graduate from PCOM Georgia, a health sciences university in Suwanee, at the Gas South District in Duluth. The graduates include 45 biomedical sciences students and 30 physician assistant students.
The graduates will hear from keynote speaker La Dawn Hackett, who is a 2008 alumna of the inaugural class of PCOM Georgia’s biomedical sciences program, who then earned an MD degree from the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta. She then completed an Internship in internal medicine and four years of a diagnostic radiology residency at the Medical College of Georgia, before completing a one-year fellowship in abdominal radiology at Emory University.
Today, Dr. Hackett mentors students, from high school to medical school. In addition, she instructs first and second year medical students at PCOM Georgia about radiology. In February 2020, she was presented with an Alumni Award by Student National Medical Association leaders for her service to the PCOM Georgia community.
This enterprising physician established a small business in 2018 and is expanding her services to include content creation, healthcare consulting and video production for healthcare companies.
To view the ceremony online, tune in on PCOM Georgia’s Facebook or YouTube channels on July 26, starting at 11a.m. For more information on PCOM Georgia, visit www.pcom.edu.
GGC students can opt to attend summer resource camps
The summer gap between the spring and fall semesters can cause some students to fall behind on academics. A Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) summer program seeks to help returning, new and transfer students connect with faculty, academic counselors and resources to support their college careers.
GGC’s Summer Preparatory Academic Resource Camps (SPARC) create academic bridges between the spring and fall semesters for students to experience supportive sessions. These sessions range from small group environments with GGC faculty providing brief class examples, to larger sessions where students are given information about resources available to them. This can include tutoring, peer mentoring and other support services, such as the Registrar’s Office, Counseling and Psychological Services.
Dr. Justin Jernigan, dean of the college’s Student Engagement and Success division, says that the idea of SPARC is something rooted in necessity. “Two years ago, we wanted an element that complemented and built on student experiences at Grizzly Orientation,” says Jernigan. “That’s how SPARC was born.”
With the goal of inspiring students at the forefront, Jernigan said that SPARC implants the idea of questioning in the minds of the participants. “It’s all about encouraging discussions between students, professors, advisers and schools. We’re looking to promote futures.”
U.S. Highways 441 and 82 to get EV charging stations
Georgia Department of Transportation (Georgia DOT) has received federal designation for two highways as Alternative Fuel Corridors from the Federal Highway Administration. The first route is U.S. Highway 441 from Cornelia in northeast Georgia to Dublin in east central Georgia. The second route is U.S. Highway 82 from Brunswick in coastal Georgia to Albany in southeast Georgia. These two routes will add 25 percent, or approximately 330 miles, to Georgia’s electric vehicle (EV) charging network.
Russell R. McMurry, commissioner of Georgia DOT says: “Convenient access to electric vehicle charging stations is critical to innovating and expanding Georgia’s transportation network. These federal designations are important because they signify Georgia’s commitment to alternative fuel options in every part of the state, including rural areas, and provide motorists options to reduce transportation costs and address environmental concerns.”
These two routes were selected based on a variety of criteria including location near major economic clusters, access to tourism sites, high share of new electric vehicles sales in nearby counties, proximity near a Georgia Emergency Management evacuation route and service to southeast Georgia.
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law established a National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program to provide funding to states to strategically deploy electric vehicle charging infrastructure and to establish an interconnected network to facilitate data collection, access and reliability. These new designations expand the opportunities for the use of NEVI funds, as Georgia continues to build out its Alternative Fuel Corridors.
The state of Georgia has approximately 30,000 electric vehicles on the road and more than 1,300 publicly available electric vehicle charging stations with an estimated 3,400 individual outlets. That number represents more electric charging stations or outlets per capita in the Southeast and Sunbelt, except for California.
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
The Alienist by Caleb Carr
From Karen J. Harris, Stone Mountain: It is 1896 in New York City and a maniacal killer is cutting up boys who are prostitutes in seamy areas of town. The boys are horribly mutilated, and fear is raging especially among the immigrant populations. Dr. Lazlo Kreizler, a well-known alienist, believes that by building a profile of the type of person who would commit these crimes that identification is possible. At odds with this plan are New York City police and others in leadership who are at cross purposes with bringing the deeds out in the open for resolution. Thus Dr. Kreizler and his team have to work both to build the profile of the killer and dodge the antics of the police and leadership miscreants. Time is of the essence as the killings accelerate and become more vicious. How this resolution occurs in this page turning masterpiece of suspense is well worth the reader’s time.
- 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
Stevens and Wilkinson was major architectural firm
The architectural firm of Stevens and Wilkinson, formed in 1947, is the successor firm of Burge and Stevens (established in 1919). After Flip Burge’s death in 1946, James Wilkinson (who had been with Burge and Stevens for 10 years) was made a full partner; he was already leading the practice in its role as one of the most progressive architectural firms of the region.
During the early years of Stevens and Wilkinson’s history, the modern aesthetic in architecture, based on functionalism and inspired by International style models created by such European masters as Walter Gropius and Le Corbusier, was being established.
Stevens and Wilkinson’s E. Rivers Elementary School (Atlanta, 1949) was noteworthy for its innovative “finger plan,” in which linear classrooms and corridors extended like fingers from a support spine containing offices and a library. Published widely, the plan brought numerous other commissions to the firm, including, most notably in the immediate following years, Blair Village School (Atlanta, 1955), Roswell High School (Roswell, 1954), and James Riley School (Fulton County, 1956). The Georgia Center for Continuing Education(1956) at the University of Georgia in Athens, with courtyards brought inside by walls of glass, is a masterpiece of modern planning.
In commercial architecture the Rich’s Store for Men (1951, razed) was Stevens and Wilkinson’s most noteworthy project and one of Atlanta’s significant modern designs. The Allstate Insurance Building (Atlanta, 1957-58), a “classic” period piece of a decade being rediscovered, was recently transformed into ancillary service at the foot of the monumental Church of the Apostles, completed in 2001. The Buckhead Sears Store, also in Atlanta, was one of the best in a series of retail outlets for Sears Roebuck and Company from the 1960s on. A short-lived masterpiece of the firm’s suburban commercial design, it was razed to make way for Buckhead Plaza.
The firm built the North DeKalb Mall, in DeKalb County, in 1963 and a series of Richway stores in the 1970s, but its most noteworthy project of the period was Executive Park, inaugurating the now-epidemic phenomenon of landscaped suburban office campuses. Atlanta landmark buildings by the firm include the Atlanta Memorial Arts Center (1967-68, with Toombs, Amisano, and Wells), the downtown Central Library of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System (1980, designed by Marcel Breuer with New York’s Hamilton Smith Associated Architects), and, beginning in 1967, the development of Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport (later Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport).
Stevens and Wilkinson remained the “architect of choice” for Georgia Baptist Hospital in Atlanta since Burge and Stevens designed the original hospital building in 1923. Now refaced, the firm’s 1952 early modern hospital block, the so-called 300 Boulevard Building, was among its best.
Throughout Georgia and the Southeast, Stevens and Wilkinson erected a wide variety of modern schools, hospitals, department stores, corporate headquarters, and business parks. The firm also designed award-winning libraries and rapid transit stations, including the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) station in Decatur (1979). These and similar projects keep the firm among the most active in the region.
- To view the Georgia Encyclopedia article online, go to https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org
Bright red objects are for you to guess about today
Today’s mystery is a bright structure alongside a highway. Figure out first what it is, then where it is and send your idea to elliott@brack.net, and include your hometown.
Last week, Susan McBrayer of Sugar Hill not only recognized the Mystery Photo as the Chapel In the Hills in Rapid City, South Dakota, she sent along a photograph of the structure on which the Chapel was modeled: “This is not a rainy area. The chapel is affiliated with the Lutheran Church and is an exact replica of a chapel in Norway, the Borgund Stavkirke, which looks like some kind of fairy tale or witch’s house.” The photograph came from Helen Rocquemore of Lawrenceville.
Others spotting it included George Graf, Palmyra, Va.; and Bob Foreman of Grayson, who said:
“I am not going to pass up a church building. That is the Chapel in the Hills, Rapid City, South Dakota. It is an exact replica of the Borgund Stavkirke, built around A.D. 1150, located near Laedral, Norway.”
Stave church near Borgund, Norway
Allan Peel of San Antonio, Tex. gave some additional detail about the South Dakota chapel: “In the 1960’s, the originator and preacher of the Lutheran Vespers radio hour, Dr. Harry R. Gregerson (1899 – 1992), was looking to expand the scope of his popular radio ministry. Since many of the original settlers of the Dakotas and surrounding states were Norwegian Lutherans, Gregerson decided to build the church in the style of a ‘stave-church’, typically built in Norway from the 11th to the 13th century, where the walls were constructed of upright planks or staves. Groundbreaking for the Chapel in the Hills began in 1968, and was completed in July 1969. It continued to serve the Lutheran Vespers until 1975 when the radio program was moved to Minneapolis, home of the American Lutheran Church at the time. The Chapel in the Hills was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 7, 2012.”
Snellville Commerce Club’s noon luncheon speaker on August 2 will be Dr. Jann L. Joseph, president of Georgia Gwinnett College. The meeting will be in the Community Room of Snellville City Hall. Reservations are required, and can be made at this link.
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