Column
By Mike Buffington
This I believe…
I believe in the power of the written word. Even in this day of unlimited access to video and audio communication, the written word retains its amazing ability to engage the human mind.
I believe moderation is an underrated virtue.
I believe in life’s great swath of gray. Much of the human experience involves a mix of good and bad, darkness and light. Both goodness and evil happen, but generally co-exist as the Janus-face of mankind.
I believe obsessive exercise is an addiction of which I shall never be found guilty.
I believe in the power of childhood as a force of human redemption. Children are the antidotes to routine. They are an ever-changing life force into which all our hopes and fears are gathered.
I believe in leadership and that we have too few real leaders in the world today.
I believe Americans are too self-absorbed and that we have an inadequate grasp of the complex societies that exist in the rest of the world.
I believe that one should be suspicious of big institutions, big government and big business in particular.
I believe the greatest moment ever witnessed by modern man happened in 1969 when men first walked on the moon.
I believe that striving to be the best at whatever we do is our calling and that the lack of such desire is the root of social, political, and economic mediocrity.
I believe too many parents let their children run wild in public places, especially restaurants.
I believe fear-mongering by our own government will do more to harm this nation than terrorism.
I believe that capitalism will exist even in the most undemocratic of societies. Self-interest and outright greed will always trump all other economic models.
I believe “Dr. Zhivago” is the most hauntingly beautiful movie ever made.
I believe our nation’s democratic system is seldom as neat as it’s portrayed in school textbooks. It is often messy and unkempt, sometimes done with vanity and stupidity. But a messy democracy is better than the brutalities that arise from all autocratic forms of government.
I believe war should always be an action of last resort.
I believe in the power of openness to keep reins on our government; knowledge is a powerful tool against public corruption and incompetence.
I believe love and friendship are two sides of the same coin.
I believe in the power of science and the unlimited potential of the human mind. We will never fully understand the cosmos, or the oceans, or the inner workings of even our own species, but our capacity to understand and explore is unlimited.
I believe we are not at war with “terrorism;” rather, we are at war with intolerance and superstition, two foes that cannot be vanquished with guns.
I believe that public schools are not as bad as critics claim, nor as good as defenders say. The truth is somewhere in the middle.
I believe we have too many “-isms” in the world and too many people are exploiting them for their own self-aggrandizement.
I believe human progress, both for good and bad, is inevitable. If it can be done, man will do it.
I believe there are questions to which we shall never have all the answers.
Note: The above is loosely based on the national “This I Believe” effort of National Public Radio (thisibelieve.org). Readers are invited to submit their own “This I Believe…” essays to this newspaper at editor@mainstreetnews.com and we will publish them at a later date. Please include your name, age and address.
Mike Buffington is editor of The Jackson Herald. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.
Time to start water rationing
With area water reservoirs running dry, it’s time for local governments to enact a worst-case plan. Sometime between Thanksgiving and Christmas, if there’s no major rainfall (Tuesday’s shower wasn’t enough), the Bear Creek Reservoir will be out of useable water. That will impact every government in this region, including Jackson County and several local municipalities.
Given the lengthy drought of 2007, local governments should go ahead and enact some kind of water rationing system now.
How that is done, however, will be a problem. It’s impracticable to shut water lines on and off. Some believe the best way to ration is to allot each home a certain number of gallons per month, then charge heavy fees for usage above that level.
Business use is another problem. How should water be allocated to businesses, especially those that use a lot of water?
These are all questions local officials should work though and address now before the crisis deepens.
This isn’t the first time our area has faced a drought. In 1986, the results of a two-year drought hit the county’s agricultural community hard. Thousands of chickens died and had to be buried in pits and hay was brought in from Illinois to feed cattle.
But that crisis had one silver lining — it motivated county officials to jumpstart the Jackson County Water Authority later that year.
In the ensuing two decades, a lot has changed in Jackson County. Rather than depending so much on well water, rural areas of the county are now developing with county water drawn from Bear Creek. In addition, a surge in city residential growth has pushed many municipal systems to their limits. The margin for error is much less now than it was in 1986.
For the future, local governments must plan for additional droughts. Historical evidence indicates that Georgia has periodic droughts, some lasing for many years. Tree ring records show a nine-year drought in 1467-1475 and a severe drought in 1809-1811. Officials estimate that before 1875, there may have been up to 20 instances of droughts similar to, or worse, than the one we’re having now.
In other words, several times each century, Georgia has had severe droughts. The modern use of water resources should be planned with those extremes in mind.
Of course, such planning won’t help in the current crisis. But perhaps there will be a silver lining in that area governments will do a better job of planning for future drought events.
Meanwhile, all we can do is conserve water and hope that heavy rain will soon give us some relief.
