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Today's Opinions

  • Tragic accident brings perspective about our fragile lives

    How many times has it been you? Awaken early, pile into the car and head down the road on a family vacation, excited, weary from a long preparation time, plotting a shortest-possible course across perhaps foreign territory to arrive at your destination.
    Your anticipation is racing through your veins, adrenalin pushing it like a chemical locomotive, and you keep your eye on the ever-larger dot on the map as you dash toward its fullness, following that beacon to a place of joy and wonder and happiness.

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  • What we think: Magisterial slices not always tasty

    The problem with the redrawing of magisterial districts in Shelby County would seem to be one of simple geometry that anyone can appreciate:

    No matter how you slice it, you can’t create seven truly equal pieces of a pie.

    Yet, that’s the problem facing fiscal court as it goes through the suggestion/review process required every 10 years to ensure that each magistrate represents a nearly equal number of residents.

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  • We congratulate: School grad rates, long-range plans

    We were extremely pleased to see how significantly Shelby County’s graduation rates have surpassed those of other school districts in the state, based on the new formula adopted for federal No Child Left Behind program.

    We understand that statistics can be misconstrued and misleading, but clearly Shelby County High School was getting students through the receiving line on graduation day. We marveled, too, at the large percentage of African-American and female students who had earned diplomas. These were standard-setting percentages.

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  • Letters to the Editor, Aug. 10, 2011

    A new budget plan

    There is plenty of blame to go round for the protracted, embarrassing performance of our elected officials during the recent debt ceiling debate. The kamikaze tactics of the tea party crowd deserve special mention. However, to their credit, these folks did get me to take a new look at the federal bureaucracy and where significant savings might be realized.

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  • MY WORD: Moores, Pflughaupts deserve our admiration and thanks

    It was my pleasure and honor to work with Mr. and Mrs. J. Edward Moore as the chairman of the O. L. Moore Memorial Scholarship Committee for the last 19 years of its 25-year existence.  It was one of the most rewarding experiences in which I participated in my 43 years of educational work.

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  • MY WORD: New assistant principal followed his heart to Shelby County

    Law school’s loss is East Middle School’s gain. Because Myron Montgomery decided to become a teacher and not a corporate attorney, the Missiles now have a new assistant principal who said, “I knew this was something I wanted to do for a long time....This is an industry where everyone is invested in improvement of the product, and our product is a kid that we want to be successful.”

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  • My WORD: Saddlebred group clarifies position about rift with some members

    The Board of Directors of the American Saddlebred Horse Association would like to respond to the article (“Saddlebred group has a bumpy ride,” July 27), which pertains to current litigation pending between the ASHA and a small group who refer to themselves as “concerned members” of the ASHA. We are a volunteer group of passionate and dedicated horsemen and women elected by our members to provide leadership and governance.

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  • An example of life imitating art – or at least the ‘Andy Griffith Show’

    Those black-and-white lessons we learned from our devotion to the scriptures of the Andy Griffith Show typically seem lost in the transcendent Technicolor of today.

    The tenets taught to us by Andy, Barney and the gang too often seem maudlin and misplaced in the constant churn of our lives, when we seldom slow down to inhale the sweet fragrance of love and life and spin like another damp load cycling down in a washing machine.

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