YES, I AM STILL HERE looking out my window on Main Street, and I am asking you to join me in defeating two items on the General Election ballot.
Vote AGAINST Issue No. 2. This amendment tries to trick you with the term ‘Term Limits’ because it actually extends the time a legislator can serve.
This makes the third time some group has tried (twice successfully) to get voters to ‘approve’ term limits, and only too late did the people learn that it was the legislators taking care of themselves. Limits got extended and pay got increased. So …
Vote AGAINST Issue No. 2.
And let me suggest that you also …
Vote AGAINST Issue No. 3.
This neat little piece would make it harder for the people to get an issue on the ballot, virtually insuring that the only way something makes the ballot is if the legislators bring it. It also takes away publication requirements for legislative ballot titles. That way we the people don’t have to learn for themselves about the ballot issues, we can just take the word of the lobbyists.
Critics say this is just another attempt to take power away from the people. I agree.
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TO SERVE AND PROTECT — Four words that many police departments have adopted as a motto. Those words also describe how the late Larry Yates perceived his responsibility during his 10 years as police chief in Nashville.
As a newsman I have ‘covered’ this town from the time of Town Marshal Otis Icenhower to Police Chief Amy Marion. We have been so fortunate over the years. Let me repeat that.
No law enforcement officer ever cared more about a town or its people than Chief Yates. He didn’t just want to do the job — he wanted to do it well. And he did.
At the funeral home visitation Thursday I noted sadly but also with pride that he was being buried in his uniform. And his fellow officers gave him a radio ‘Last Call’ at the graveside rites in Center Point.
Peace to his friends and family, and thanks to the Almighty for putting such people among us.
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THE GOOD EARTH. My imagination or what? I’ve come to love goldenrod when it has the feathery yellow blooms on tall stalks in October. This year it seems to me that goldenrod is springing up in new places, and the growths aren’t as tall as in previous seasons.
Goldenrod has worked its way into the landscaping around my patio. I had sorta hoped that would happen. Seeds blown on the wind.
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THE GURDON LIGHT. Daughter Julie and I met in Arkadelphia Saturday to exchange some items and to indulge ourselves at that barbeque place at the junction on the edge of town.
We took a long lunch, and then decided to go to Gurdon and walk down the railroad tracks. It would be a tribute walk in memory of the late Larry Yates who was curious about ‘The Light’ and who went with us one fine night years ago. He was already retired by that time.
This past Saturday, Julie and I parked our cars on the side of the road and set off down the old railroad bed. There are no more rails or ties on the gravely bed, and it is really really really overgrown. It made me nervous but I waded through the tall weeds.
We came to — and tiptoed across — the first trestle. But before we got all the way to the second trestle I called a halt to our walk. I couldn’t see the second trestle through the growth on the rail bed. We hadn’t even gotten to the old cemetery that always gave me the heebie-jeebies when I walked past it on my previous trips to see ‘The Light.’
When Chief Yates and Julie and I went, we also had Miss Carsyn Elizabeth Murphy, now 17. She was little (maybe 6-7) at the time and now just remembers a big man going with us.
The four of us sat out on the second trestle for about an hour listening to the nocturnal insects and animals, and staring into the dark down the tracks in hopes of seeing ‘The Light.’ Carsyn was maybe a bit nervous.
All we saw were tiny beautiful pale blue lights winking on the banks of the muddy creek which ran under the trestle. Hundreds of them blinking.
After that trip, Julie and I made a couple more jaunts to see ‘The Light,’ but always without success. She’s never really forgiven me for having actually seen ‘The Light’ without her.
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THINGS I LEARNED from opening (and believing) anonymous emails. “The Law of Commercial Marketing — As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.”
I would like to add: Or, the store will move the display so that you can’t find it.
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WORD GAMES. Another set of siblings: Spic and Span. They like things to be clean and shiney.
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HE SAID: “I am sometimes a fox and sometimes a lion. The whole secret of government lies in knowing when to be the one or the other.” Napoleon Bonaparte, emperor of France and general of the army
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SHE SAID: “I often lay on that bench looking up into the tree, past the trunk and up into the branches. It was particularly fine at night with the stars above the tree.” Georgia O’Keeffe, American artist
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SWEET DREAMS, Baby
