Opinion

On a sunny Friday afternoon, the damnations of work behind you and the blessings of a weekend settling large on your horizon, you find yourself winding down a road that is as familiar as the scars in your own skin, one whose hills, dales and dusty side trails you can see perfectly with your eyes shut and nothing but motion to plot its passage.
Each fencepost is a milestone of your journey, a dot on your mind’s map so large and bold that you can name generations of people – their nicknames, their offspring, their ancestors – who lived behind them.

The swift and positive reaction by Shelby County Jailer Bobby Waits and the county’s magistrates to an opportunity for new business will provide an important infusion of cash into a county budget that is becoming difficult to balance.
Waits was quick to respond earlier this spring to a brief openinig to secure a $600,000 contract with Anderson County to house its inmates.

Citizens in Mount Eden, on both sides of the Shelby and Spencer county lines, are putting up the good fight against what ultimately may be the most overpowering opponent other than death that any of us will face: the United States government.
They fear – and with good cause – that they will lose their venerable post office to the aggressive cost-cutting plan that the United States Postal Service is employing to combat the diminishing income of its once great monopoly.

For the first time in nearly four decades, Shelby County Public Schools graduated two classes of  seniors on Saturday.
Though these teenagers traversed the threshold from child/student to adult in a simple march across a podium and in the gentle grasp of an administrator’s hand, the final understanding of how far they have come, how much they learned and can accomplish, won’t be on life’s diploma until, oh, a few decades from now.

An old colleague, basketball executive, author and many times Boston Marathoner Pat Williams, used to open speeches by saying:
“I’m going to speak first to those of you who are smokers, in as much as you have less time to live than the rest of us.”

And today I am addressing you smokers.

But this isn’t a pray-for-you evangelism about the evils of inhaling the incineration of an unctuous weed whose fumes are so toxic that they do nothing but spread death through your body.

Something tells us this won’t be the last time we congratulate Caterina Karas for winning a state championship.

Karas, a junior at Collins, in November captured the first state championship silver for the Titans’ new trophy case by running away with the cross-country championship, and on Thursday she added two more baubles by winning her events at the state track & field meet.

Her victories in the 1,600- and 3,200-meter runs – that’s the metric mile and 2-mile runs – in one meet is a fabulous feat of feet.

Were you like me around dinnertime on Saturday evening? Did you look at the clock and wonder?
Surely I wasn’t left behind, was I?
After all, radio evangelist Harold Camping had been saying that the Rapture would begin at 6 p.m. Saturday, that a series of Heavenly orchestrated earthquakes would crash across the country and that we all would be headed Home.
Well, some of us.
Certainly, if that had happened, I was hoping to be included.

We really like this new plan for 7th Street. We like the idea that our leaders are taking steps to improve an important corridor for the value of Shelbyville and for the quality of life for Shelby Countians.
We like the idea of the new roundabout to enter the Clear Creek Park, and we like the new, uncrumbled sidewalks on both sides of the street.
We like the idea of painting the railroad overpass and of redeveloping some of the vacant and decaying property around it.

He called out, “Brother Collins!” This was my first interruption during a worship service in 18 years of ministry. I was surprised, to say the least.

It was Easter, 1978. We were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ at the First Christian Church. The music was fantastic, the scripture and sermon were inspiring, and the hymn of invitation brought nine people to the front of the sanctuary.