Ask any of my fellow colleagues, past or present, and they will tell you that it just isn’t Christmas until Mike starts blasting “The Christmas Shoes,” several times a day, regardless of how many people cry, beg and plead for him to stop.

Last week I published my first column in a long time. Apparently, I was a little rusty because I made a faux pas. When discussing my infant daughter, Nora, I stated that she tended to look like Peter Boyle from the back. Although the line was greeted with much laughter, I was urged to write something a little nicer about her.

Last year I wrote a book that dealt a little with time travel (Time Killer - available now at Lulu.com) and one of the things that happens in the book is that the present version of the hero meets up with the past version of himself. This also happened recently on the great new television show (based on a BBC show of the same name) “Life on Mars.” The same type of thing happens in all sorts of programs involving time travel, from “Back to the Future,” to “Quantum Leap” and beyond. It’s pretty trippy stuff, because one often has to wonder what would happen if you, meaning the you of today, met up with the you of some time in your past. What kind of advice would you impart on yourself and how would your life be different afterwards?

Notes on the UNplanned nanny city:

Here they come again, those nameless, faceless bureaucrats out of the bowels of Peachtree City who are determined — even after past rebukes — that you will get a single trash pickup service forced onto you, and it will be the one the city picks.

It is Oct. 31, 2008, and here we are at the end of the road … the last page of the final chapter … the final "Finding Your Folks" genealogy column. I'm giving you the date because one of the biggest problems with our website when it changed back in 2005 was that there were no dates on the "blog" type stories. The old website, which can only be accessed through a special link, featured a date with each story, making it easer to reference them. However, you can estimate the dates by going back a week for each one. They were published each Friday on the Web.

If you have a weak stomach or get offended easily, please don’t read any further.

A premature baby lies alone on a table in a hospital utility room, dying. His heart is beating, his lungs are supplying the air he needs to breathe. Autonomic and central nervous systems are functioning. His arms and legs are moving in the air that is so different from the warm, liquid world of amniotic fluid that has until moments ago defined his world for the past 23 weeks.

Every year around this time I write about my favorite horror movies and each year the list is basically the same. I always recommend “Halloween,” the original, not Rob Zombie’s dreadful and unnecessary remake, and I think Peter Jackson’s “Dead Alive” is a lot of fun - if you don’t mind being completely assaulted by massive amounts of goo and gore - but I want to talk about what horror movies you should avoid.

I messed up last week when I said that was the next to last column. Actually, this one is. I also promised you an explanation. I have already received a couple of concerned but kind-hearted phone calls and several emails and I will be happy to explain why we are discontinuing the columns.

I was delighted to hear from an old high school classmate this week. Neal Cobb of Rabun Gap who attended Russell High with me back in the 1950s, is looking for his Crawford family who lived in the Line Creek area back in the 1800s.

I was a little disappointed in myself last week when I couldn't find any more information on Lewis Brandenburg to share with you, although there was quite a bit of Brandenburg family history.

Some of the bloggers/commenters on this site might find the following email exchange to be of interest, especially "sniffles5" and "Evil Elvis."

One of the families mentioned in conjunction with the recent Kempson reunion at Mt. Carmel Methodist Church in Meriwether County was the Brandenburg family. Two sons of Lewis and Ann Hatton Brandenburg married daughters of Peter and Mary Ursula Long Kempson, thereby making their children descendants of Harmon Kempson and members of the reunion family.

Since we're already here and this family was part of last week's Kempson reunion at Mt. Carmel UMC, I thought I'd just give a little light research on them since we haven't done them before. Next week, we'll discuss the Brandenburgs, another family recognized at the reunion and one which we haven't done before. The other two reunion families, Kempsons and Grays, were covered in previous column series.

Last week we ran part one of Anne Westbrook Green's excellent story of old Campbell county and its merger into Fulton in 1932. Some of Anne's information came from an old newspaper article, possibly from The Atlanta Journal or The Atlanta Constitution, date unknown, written by Winifred Lee Moore entitled "Memories of Old Campbellton," referring to the first county seat which was replaced by Fairburn in 1870. Anne continues with information from the article, with a warning that she can't vouch for the accuracy of statements made therein, saying …

School system produces some paid checks, but no actual accounting

A few bloggers seem to miss the point of my earlier column: I received NO invoices detailing attorneys’ fees in my open records request.

Several times over the years I have mentioned that part of Fayette and Coweta's adjacent neighbor county to the north, Fulton County, was once known as Campbell County. In doing the genealogy columns, I always refer to this area as Campbell, since the name wasn't changed until 1932. Our study of families usually involves those who were in Georgia in the late 1700s and those who settled our immediate area and were here from the beginning, or in the early 1800s.

A charity that helps feed down and out Fayette Countians is itself down and out — of food and charitable family items — and needs your help.

I'm going to stay with the McWhorters this week since I recently got involved in a volley of messages on the McWhorter email list. This Allen M. McWhorter was a relative of Laura McWhorter Thompson Stowers of last week's article since he was the much younger half-brother of Laura's grandfather, Moses McWhorter and, therefore, the uncle of Laura's father, Leroy McWhorter. However, since Allen was the child of a second marriage, he (b. 1795) and his nephew, Leroy (b. 1797,) were close to the same age.

Russia. Georgia. A lot has been made on both sides about the reasons why Russia made its move past the South Ossetia breakaway region and continued its march to Gori in the central part of the country and to Poti on the Black Sea coast. The reasons appear to be several, though at least one of those has received virtually no media coverage.

I was so excited last week after receiving a reply to a message I had left on Rootsweb back in 2001 about my McWhorter family.

Some of you may know that I have this huge, sprawling family tree (nearly 20,000 people) on Rootsweb's WorldConnect Project and, by default, on Ancestry's World Tree. Many people in it are relatives and some are not. We call these semi-related and non-related families "collateral" and "allied" families because they are either related through marriage or connected through other means.

I'm going to pick up on a family from last week - James and Mary Herndon Norris, a member of the Norris family of Walton, Gwinnett, Fayette, Campbell, Douglas and Cobb counties. When I mentioned them a couple of weeks ago I had no idea that someone would pick up on this particular couple. I was thrilled. I had very little myself. But Pat Vermeer wrote and gave us a little more information for which I am very grateful. Let me give you a little of what I have, then I'll tell you some of what Pat said.

“You’re where? Why on earth would you be in San Francisco? It’s 10 o’clock here. That makes it the crack of dawn there.”

“All government, of right, originates with the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole. Public officers are the trustees and servants of the people and are at all times amenable to them.” — (Constitution of Georgia of 1983, Article I, Section II, Paragraph I.)

Sheriff — Wayne Hannah

District attorney — Scott Ballard

County Commission — Peter Pfeifer, Greg Dunn and Bob Fuhrman

By ELLIE WHITE-STEVENS

This Republican primary I’m working with 10 of our candidates on their advertising. Some of them chose to answer The Citizen’s questions for the online forum, some did not. While I’ve had my say in a lot of their advertising strategy, I’d like to approach them, and the other candidates, with some media advice from a professional.

This week's story was written by Sandra Moody of Sharpsburg. Because of space limitations, I had to edit some of her details. If you will write to Sandra, she can send you the full, unedited version. Sandra writes:

Oil over $140 a barrel, with OPEC announcing that it could go to $200 within a couple of years (did they mean months?).

I do apologize for the interruption in the genealogy columns but it was unavoidable. Most of you are aware that last March I was diagnosed with breast cancer and, after talking with several experts, decided on surgery to get rid of it once and for all. The surgery was done on June 3 and I am happy to report that all is well. Recuperation will take a while but all the cancer is gone (along with a goodly portion of me). My granddaughter, Jadie, came down from Covington to stay with me as she did after the open heart surgery a couple of years ago, and I couldn't have come back so fast without her. She is an amazing young lady.

When summer time hits and the high school ball fields are empty, the sports pages need to be filled. We receive news of little league baseball teams, soccer teams, roller hockey teams, swimmers, golfers, drivers of all ages and track athletes. In addition to all of these stories, my colleague Kevin Wandra and I have started a summer tradition of challenging each other to sporting activities around the county and seeing how we stack up. Last year, we went miniature golfing at DixieLand Fun Park. I won the first course and Kevin won the second, also eking out a one-stroke overall win.