YES, I AM still here, watching through my Main Street window on everything and everyone.
Some comments about Monday night’s Chamber of Commerce awards banquet.
I’m thankful for the men and women who serve on the chamber board. These are people who do more than just talk about making life better here. My job allows me to thank these people and to be thrilled that our community has such citizens.
Thank you, outgoing president Tammy Gibson and incoming president Loren Hinton.
Thank you, outgoing chamber board directors Tammy, Janet Carpenter, Leslie Reeder and Will Martin (Will is also a chamber board past-president).
Thank you and good luck to new board members Nicole Aylette, Michelle Boone, Annette Brown and Hunter Green.
Thanks for making our community look better — Smokehouse Pizza, Occasions, Rehab Specialists, Angel Nails, Flex Gym, Lisa Chandler Insurance, What Fur, Hoppin Nutrition Bar/Roobungee, Nashville Nutrition Den, Husqvarna and Pilgrim’s — recipients of new and remodeled building awards.
Thanks for the memories — the memorial awards for Jerry Jacobs, Andy Anderson, Vernon Wildbur, Joey Jamison, Charles Sharp, Tom Strasner and Helen Millwood. Just think for a moment about the many ways these wonderful citizens shaped our community. We miss them.
Thanks for long community service to Max Tackett, who was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award. Max affected our lives by his service on the school board, as county judge and as administrator of the regional solid waste district.
Bloom Where You are Planted Award — Andi Reeves Green. Do you ever stop smiling?
Orange & Black Award to Andrea Pinegar and the Scrapper Supermarket.
Woman of the Year Cheryl Power — who quietly wears many hats in the community — business owner, retired teacher and counselor, active church member. And, Cheryl, we understand why you and your staff are so tired.
Man of the Year Alan Green. To paraphrase one of the presenter’s sources, “If ever I needed someone to speak to God on my behalf, it would be Alan Green.” Yep.
Events like this don’t just happen out of thin air. My thanks to chamber executive director Mike Reese (by the way, he’s a past president and winner of Man of the Year Award) and to the chamber volunteers who worked hard to put together this event in our town’s swell new special events center. Thanks for the great meal, Pattacakes, and thanks for serving, Howard County 4-H Club.
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I WASN’T GOING to say anything more about litter on the sides of roads in Howard, Sevier, Hempstead and Pike counties, but people keep coming up to me to say they saw my recent column which bemoaned all of the trash on the sides of our roads.
One guy said that our area is hoping to get more and more economic results from tourism, and that the utterly trashy roadsides won’t help lure visitors. We’ll pay an economic price, he sez, because tourists are not going to go to trashy places.
My own observation is that there are a lot of empty animal feedbags on the sides of the roads. Somebody is forgetting to secure the feed sacks in the back of pickup trucks after they’ve fed the cows, goats or rabbits.
My idea was that maybe courts could hand out more sentences of community service and reduce the amount of fines, many of which go a looooooong time before being paid off anyway.
Ideally, people wouldn’t litter in the first place. But that’s a pipe dream and it’s not gonna happen. Litter happens, whether by intention, ignorance or innocence.
And let me be the first to confess that I’m sure litter has blown out of many of my own pickup truck beds sometime in the last 35 years.
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ANIMAL CRACKERS. I really hope it was a false alarm — the time I wrote about not hearing birds anymore in my predawn walk through the neighborhood. Monday and Tuesday morning I heard not one, but two, bird species singing as daylight popped over the horizon.
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GOOD MANNERS. A recent news article notes that the national legislature in the Philippines has passed a law making schools teach ‘good manners and right behavior’ daily — yes, daily — in grades K-12.
Maybe we need for our solons to pass a law making mom and dad teach good manners and right behavior in the home BEFORE Junior and Sissy go off to classes.
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THE GOOD EARTH. The folks at Historic Old Washington State Park need to consider moving the annual Jonquil Festival to an earlier date. Reason: Global warming. It’s the middle of February and there are already jonquils blooming at old home sites all over southwest Arkansas. They’ll be mostly gone by late in March when the Jonquil Festival arrives.
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WORD GAMES. Another set of twins: Pen and Ink. Does anyone besides me write letters anymore?
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HE SAID: “We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., preacher and activist
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SHE SAID: “It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age.” Margaret Mead, anthropologist and author
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
