The Citizen Online staff_blogs

The real meaning of Mother’s Day

Fri, 09 May 2008 16:22:07 -0400

Remember when Mother’s Day was a simple affair? The kids woke Mom up with breakfast in bed — Froot Loops floating on a sea of slightly pink milk — and handmade cards.

Finding Your Folks: Oh noooo! Another Jesse Cole?

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:55:00 -0400

Just as I thought it was safe to move on … I received first some information from Frances Hanson Arnold on her Jesse Cole and second a letter from Ken Arnold which gave further information on this same Jesse. Because of the area they lived in, I would bet dollars to doughnuts these Coles are related to our other Jesse (son of Robert Cole and Elizabeth Fambrough) and even maybe to Marcus Cole of Butts County from last week's column. That is what really drove me to include this Jesse of Frances and Ken's. This Jesse, like Marcus, had a daughter named "Aletha" or "Eletha" Cole. Now, that is not your usual, run-of-the-mill female name and I thought it was worth mentioning.

Recession, recession, where’s the recession?

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:53:51 -0400

“It’s a recession,” said former President Harry Truman, “when your neighbor loses his job; it’s a depression when you lose yours.”

A plague of incivility

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:52:48 -0400

“You’d think that boy was raised in a barn!” my mother would often exclaim when she saw someone exhibiting minor uncivil behaviors. These “incivilities” may not always rise to the level of obnoxiousness, but they are still irritating enough to gain notice and to cost bystanders some level of comfort.

Barack Obama’s bitter half

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:51:34 -0400

Are you ready for hope and change? Barack Obama better hope his bitter half has a change of attitude if she expects to assume the title of first lady in November.

How not to lower those pump prices

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:50:17 -0400

The Hillary Clinton-John McCain gambit on sky-high gasoline prices — suspend federal gasoline taxes for the summer — is a tactic sensible voters might constructively latch onto.

Quality of life

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:46:50 -0400

The fact the deck had been both swept off and stained a deep redwood didn’t startle The Wife. The fact that for two nights the back door stood closed but unlocked did.

The difference between Obama and his pastor

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:45:09 -0400

Sometimes unrelated events nevertheless tell a coherent story.

One newspaper story that caught my eye recently was about two high-powered schools in South Korea where Korean girls study 15 hours a day, preparing themselves for tests to get into elite colleges in the United States. Harvard, Yale and Princeton already have 34 students from those schools.

A nation gone green

Wed, 07 May 2008 11:34:42 -0400

“It doesn’t matter who gets the credit as long as the job gets done.”

Someone told me either Harry Truman or Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, but Bartlett’s Quotations does not confirm it.

Let’s examine previous environmental alarms

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:28:41 -0400

Now that another Earth Day has come and gone, let’s look at some environmentalist predictions that they would prefer we forget.

Obama, the inexperienced

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:28:04 -0400

While the Rev. Jeremiah Wright continues to play out in sound bites on cable TV and talk radio, it isn’t Wright who might be president. It is Barack Obama who wants that job.

Mama has her say

Tue, 06 May 2008 18:27:20 -0400

For a couple of years, I had been trying to get Mama to write my column one week. Well aware of how much readers loved her, I knew they would be tickled to get her side of our story.

Is your church ‘Ageist?’

Tue, 06 May 2008 16:21:08 -0400

In my years of ministry, I’ve come to learn a lot about not just older adults, but about society’s attitude towards aging and older people.

The best concert at "The Fred" ever

Mon, 05 May 2008 13:14:21 -0400

The Citizen has certainly done its share of picking on The Frederick Brown Jr. Amphitheater in the past and not without reason (semi-annual REO Speedwagon/Foreigner shows anyone?), but the kick-off to the 2008 Summer Concert Series was fantastic.

Finding Your Folks: A question about Emily Cole Singley

Thu, 01 May 2008 15:30:57 -0400

We're going to pick up where we left off last week with information from documents generously contributed by Tex Dix of Spalding County, a descendant of Emily Jane Cole and John Singley. The problem we had in the beginning was identifying the names of all the children of Jesse Cole (son of Robert Cole and Elizabeth Fambrough) and his first wife, Elizabeth Crawford. Elizabeth died before 1836, Jesse remarried, and all the "first" children were grown by the time the 1850 census was taken naming all his "new" children. We knew of only two sons for sure, Robert S. and William Thomas Cole, and that was only because someone had written stories about them in "Memoirs of Georgia" in 1895 and in "Coweta Chronicles" in 1928.