Did you know that a serious attempt to impose a tax on non-profits, churches, and religious schools is underway in Coweta County?

Most every husband out there has one thing in common. No, not that. While the female in our society has evolved into a beautiful, sensitive, thinking human being, able to remember just about everything, her male counterpart has somehow de-evolved. Over the years we have become lumbering, uncouth Neanderthals that have developed the unique ability to forget just about anything at any given time. No matter how important the event - soccer games, birthdays, or anniversaries - you name it, there’s a Neanderthal out there that’s forgotten it.

Every parent’s nightmare is losing a child. I can only imagine the anguish in the two local families who lost teens to suicide recently.

We all know that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree and then, stating, “I cannot tell a lie,” admitted to his father, or some authority figure, that he had in fact, chopped it down.

“What is it with men?” Karen was asking on the phone.

I sighed heavily, the kind of expression that denotes aggravation. “Beats me,” I replied.

The Supreme Court opens every session with the prayerful cry, “God save the United States and this honorable court.” The cry, or prayer, is said by the court’s marshal or deputy marshal. The marshal is a paid position. The U. S. Senate pays a chaplain, in part, to open each session with a prayer. He is paid $140,300 a year. The U. S. House pays a chaplain, in part, to open each session with prayer. He is paid $160,600.

The man who came out on the porch of the rustic shed smiled tentatively. He was slight and tousled and somehow fragile-looking, and he wore bandages on several fingertips.

Spring training for the Atlanta Braves has begun.

By now, the bitter taste of the Game 4 loss to the Astros in the playoffs has been erased by a full season of college and pro football, and the sweet taste of unbridled optimism that comes from a clean slate is swirling around the tongues of the baseball fan.

I am a people watcher. My wife and I care very deeply about the directions our society takes. This watching is not done from a vacuum or from an unfair critical position but from a perspective of love and the caring for the souls of mankind. It is a perspective that believes deeply in the dignity of man, and the worth of the individual. This perspective is spiritual in nature and formed in the Christian faith in its message here on earth that through Christ, you are loved, forgiven for the past, and somebody special.

What do these people have in common: Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Phillip Randolph, Jackie Robinson, and Sen. Edward Brooke, III?

The Dad was rustled from his sleep by a phone call, one he never thought he’d receive. The call came from a hospital. The son they had dropped off at college alive and well not six months previously was now occupying a bed in the cold room of a hospital somewhere in Alabama. Suffering from a concussion and possibly a collapsed lung, the boy had asked his doctor in the emergency room to make the call right before he lost consciousness.

The Jones line in America, that behind Milly Tidwell Boyd (of Fayette County) through her mother, Mary Amelia Jones Tidwell (of Meriwether and Coweta counties), started in Virginia in the late 1600s, as descendants of Captain Richard Jones and his first wife, Amy Batte.

Valentine’s Day was yesterday, so I hope that everyone was nice to their sweetie. If you weren’t I’m sure you are hearing about it today.

The simple things in life, I think, are missing. Things that served us well but the moment that technology magically appeared, we discarded them without a second thought and rushed on.

A woman walked into Peachtree City’s wondrous new library last week and went, as the saying goes, ballistic.

If you are a patron of that temple of knowledge you know that nearly everyone involved with its planning, construction, furnishing, and reshelving is proud of the long-awaited results. Its high tech glass and metal design combines well with old-timey comforts like a fireplace (albeit gas-fired), easy chairs, and tables at just the right height.

One day past Valentine’s Day. How did you fare? Did you get as many Valentine cards as the next person? Don’t you remember — as least for my generation — on Valentine’s Day, we all exchanged cards in school? At the end of the day we would count how many cards we received. It was kind of a barometer of how many people loved us.

Sociologists are reporting they see a trend that a number of church goers are regularly attending multiple churches in the course of a week or month. According to the Jan. 16 edition of “Monday Morning Insight” (www.mmiblog.com), an article attributed to The New York Times stated that more Christians are picking and choosing among programs and ministries that satisfy their personal needs. These folks are fine with floating from church to church.

I thought residents all over South Fulton might want to learn about one of the features of our Web site that you may not be familiar with. It is one that is designed to guarantee that you have a voice, that your voice will be heard and one by which you can exchange ideas and discuss issues affecting you communities among yourselves.

There are two radically contrasting views of ministry. One is articulated by the Apostle Paul: "I want it made clear that I've never gotten anything out of this for myself ... You don't even have to pay my expenses!”

The Wife and I went to a party the other night with some friends. Now I know that may surprise you that after almost five years of writing a weekly newspaper article we still have a few friends who wouldn’t mind being seen out in public with us, but have no fear. The good friends were hers – I just went along for the ride.

I don’t know whether anyone’s ever stopped long enough to think about it, but we genealogists tend to be a bit sexist. We go flying off into the wild blue yonder tracking our male ancestors, but when it comes to the females, we try to find their maiden names and, that done, we just sort of leave them dangling there, hanging off an outside branch of the family tree ... petticoats fluttering in the breeze.

Peachtree City is reeling from two teen suicides in the past two weeks. The big question is: what are we going to do about it?

Members of the Georgia General Assembly have introduced the “Stand Your Ground” bill, a bill that would allow gun-owning citizens to shoot and kill if they feel threatened.

The other day I was in a phone conversation with a friend, who also happens to be a legendary sports figure. I will not use his name for reasons you will quickly see.

Talk about déjà vu all over again.

For the first time in many, many years we had dinner at Flat Creek Club in Peachtree City. We were there twice in the past month, actually.

Former Mayor and U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, while providing television commentary as the coffin of Mrs. Coretta Scott King was being carried into the State’s rotunda last Saturday, said, “As a Christian, this part would be the most uncomfortable for her.”

Unincorporated South Fulton County is edging closer and closer to the threshold of its future. The question is, what will that future be?

Last night I watched our country’s State of the Union Address on TV, where our president spoke for about an hour. It is no secret to anyone who knows me, as to where I stand on George Washington Bush Jr. It is also no secret where I stood on President Clinton and on Hillary running for president, should she get the nod.

The University of West Georgia in Carrollton has, after a ten-month study, changed the school mascot from the Braves to the Wolves. I like the idea of a wolf as a mascot. Wolves are large, powerful, dangerous, aggressive, carnivorous creatures that hunt in packs and seem to fear very little. That’s the kind of mascot you want for the sports teams—one that conveys power, danger, and strength. It’s the reason the mascot was changed that I take issue with.

As far back as I can remember – no pun intended – I’ve had trouble remembering things. Take, for instance, Colonel Baker’s tenth-grade chemistry class. He spent an entire school year teaching us about the periodic table, electrons, neutrons, and atoms. Don’t remember learning much chemistry back then, but thanks to my selective memories they are a few things from that year and his class that I’ll never be able to forget.