AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2007 > June
June 2007
Let’s keep Old Glory glorious
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In a week or so we’ll be celebrating the Fourth of July and you won’t be able to turn around without seeing red, white and blue. They are this nation’s colors and I think it’s nice a couple of times a year that we get a little teary-eyed and patriotic.
And with that same thought, could someone please make sure the flag flying outside the Sandy Springs post office in the City Walk shopping center gets replaced? I noticed the flag has seen much better days. It’s badly faded and threadbare and ragged.
I don’t know if it’s up to the City Walk folks or the post office employees - but someone needs to step up and make this right. And they need to do it today.
I know a flag is just a piece of cloth. I know that not everyone has the same reverence for it that I do, but that doesn’t mean we just let it rot at the top of a metal pole.
I can promise you just about anyone who served in the military would be bothered by it. Not to mention anyone who has a son, daughter, and spouse or loved one of any relation in uniform with their boots on the ground in the Middle East.
Maybe it is just a piece of cloth, but it stands for something. It stands for the price paid more than 200 years ago for this country to exist in the first place. For all our problems, and we have more than our fair share, this is still the country seen as the land of opportunity. This is the country people outside our borders look to step up when a crisis hits.
We’re free. We grow up in a country that has as level a playing field to compete on as any place on this earth. We live in a place that reaches its hand out to help other without thinking about the cost.
Doesn’t the symbol of this country deserve a little more respect? Don’t we owe it that much?
Dogs move up in the family pecking order
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
With our son spending the summer working in Indiana and our daughter off on a class trip to Italy our three dogs are moving up a notch in the family pecking order.
This does not mean they qualify for full-fledged “child” status. Our kids are our kids, our dogs are our dogs, and never the twain shall meet. That said, with both kids heading to college in August, it’s a good bet that Jake, Molly and Sydney will be enjoying a lifestyle upgrade as autumn approaches.
Part of this has to do with purely practical matters. Kids demand and deserve much of their parents’ attention. After the kids are taken care of, then it’s dog time. No kids at home means, theoretically, we have more time to devote to the dogs. That’s their story anyway. The dogs, not our kids.
Pets do have some advantages over kids. None of our three pups have ever asked for their own mobile phone. And that means we’ve never had the heated discussion over how outrageous their charges for text-messaging were in a given month.
No matter how smart any of our three dogs may be, we’re never going to fret over being able to send them to a really good college. The closest we ever got to this was when Jake was sent to dog boot camp several years ago for some attitude adjustment. Suffice to say it worked better for him than rehab did for Lindsay Lohan.
Dogs never “need” new clothes, mp3-enabled running shoes, a new laptop or ask for a car. They don’t surf the Net for naughty pictures or put up scandalous personal myspace.com pages. I don’t have to worry that their CD collection is going to have inappropriate lyrics.
None of our dogs will ever be seen out at a late-night club with Paris Hilton.
Not that they’re without their quirks. They’re pretty adamant about feeding time, getting lots of cool water during the hot months and the three huge dog beds my wife bought for them.
And it may be a good that we have extra time to devote to the three amigos, as they’re pretty upset over all these allegations surrounding Mike Vick and his alleged ties to dog fighting. All three believe that dogs were put here for a lot of reasons, but tearing into each other under the guise of entertainment is not one of them.
And while they let the justice system run its course where Vick is concerned, they’ll be rooting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this fall. That is, if I get their satellite dish installed in time for football season.
When your house is not as valuable as the dirt it sits on
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
We’re all abuzz in our little corner of Sandy Springs with the news that two homes currently under construction are going to sport $1 million price tags when they hit the market. That’s a one and six zeros, just in case you thought it was a misprint.
Now I grant the qualifier that what one asks for a house and what one actually gets for same house can be two different things. But just the idea that any domicile within our subdivision would cost that much has me a little shell-shocked.
This may be as close as I ever get to actually living in a million-dollar home. For me it’s enough to know our little grass-challenged lot might at some point bring a seven-figure price tag. I can only guess this is how Jed Clampett felt when he struck oil.
But all this has me thinking that the face of my city is going to change much faster than I thought even a year ago. We’ve discussed this before - most of the houses in Sandy Springs are not nearly as desirable as the dirt they rest on. Sandy Springs is seen as a great location. Parents want to move in for access to the public schools. All of which is good for those owning property.
But for those who don’t like change, you better get ready to be really unhappy.
I wouldn’t have said this two years ago, but now it’s not too much a of a stretch to think that some older neighborhoods will disappear as the modest houses get picked off, one by one, for newer-bigger-fancier homes.
Not a bad deal from a monetary standpoint, but what about those people who don’t want to sell? Two of our neighbors love their 3BD/2BR ranch houses. They have invested chunks of cash into improvements and enhancements. And they’re wanting their roots to sink deep. They aren’t looking forward to the day someone comes knocking with a big cash offer.
Money talks, but only if someone is listening.
Harry Potter and the real education issues
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
If you’ve been clicking over to ajc.com’s Gwinnett County news you’ll see that Harry Potter is safe and sound on the shelves of the county school libraries. This in spite of several attempts by Gwinnett mom Laura Mallory to get them pulled because they supposedly promote “witchcraft and the occult.”
I will defend Ms. Mallory’s right to her opinion and full use of the system to try and achieve her goals. That said, I wish she’d shut up.
I personally don’t know Harry Potter. I tried reading the first book but gave up after six chapters because it didn’t ignite. I’ve seen a couple of the movies and likewise didn’t get into it.
My wife and kids have read all six, however, and I haven’t noticed any gurgling cauldrons, black cats or tributes to Satan around the house and those are the kinds of thing’s I’d notice.
Nonsense issues like this rear their heads from time to time and it bugs me because it takes time and mental oxygen away from real problems, whether in Gwinnett, Sandy Springs or anywhere else in Georgia served by the public school system.
We have kids moving through our school systems without acquiring the basic skills for life. Doesn’t that need more attention than some fictional kid from a place called Hogwarts?
We have kids going to class in trailers. Isn’t that more of a concern than the absurd notion that Harry Potter will lead to a generation of witches and warlocks.
We don’t having enough teachers to fill all the open slots. Shouldn’t we be more concerned about that than a work of fiction?
Should we also take “Gone with the Wind” out of libraries because some characters supported owning slaves? Do we take out Eldrige Cleaver’s “Soul on Ice” because it advocated the overthrow of the federal government? Ever count the number of n-bombs in the works of Mark Twain? And don’t get me started on the sexual perversity and homicidal violence in Shakespeare.
And while we’re at it, those Dr. Seuss books need a one-way ticket to Dumpsterville, too. First of all, Dr. Seuss was a pseudonym — what was that guy trying to hide, anyway? And the grammar in those books was atrocious — it promoted improper subject-verb agreement.
This kind of protest is like a carnival sideshow — diverting, maybe interesting but ultimately a waste of time.
