Dear Editor:  This letter is hard to write. Leaving Jackson County Habitat for Humanity is hard to do. The conversation around housing is hard to have. Hard things have to happen, sometimes.

Our eighth-grade science teacher Mr. Underwood asked for a volunteer – someone to spend three hours in isolation, blindfolded, in a dark and quiet room, and then write a report on the experience, what you thought and felt.

The Commerce Planning Commission ran head-on into the classic planning dilemma at its Monday, Oct. 28, meeting.

The City of Jefferson has a lot of big issues floating around right now and the outcome of those could be determined at next week's city election.

I am enamored with an idea suggested at a lunch Friday about housing – put some of the tax incentive money from SK Battery America to use on housing.

I am becoming concerned that too many Americans (on all sides of the political spectrum) misunderstand what freedom really means.

During the 1800s, a lot of people from Jackson County moved west. Many settled in Texas, but others were scattered all over the place. 

My wife keeps a supply of olive oil on our kitchen counter. Not just any olive oil. But extra-virgin olive oil, whatever that means.

What is the current equivalent of book burning? Taking their cue from ISIS, today’s brilliant secular extremists are tearing down Confederate statues honoring historical figures with whom they disagree in an attempt to blot out history.

High school has changed in the past 50 years. Aside from the technology changes (computers were not in my high school), the emphasis has changed a couple of times.

Dear Editor: This is a response to Sonny Cheatham’s Sept 26, letter pertaining to police officer’s pay.

I was baseball crazy in the spring of 1966. The Braves of Milwaukee would soon begin their first season in Atlanta. Already, I knew their players, Felipe Alou, Hank Aaron, Rico Carty and Eddie Matthews. I had the season’s schedule cut out of the Atlanta newspaper with the first-ever Sunday d…

Dear Editor: Well, once again I had to labor through two pages of rants against Trump and his supporters.

I was intrigued by a recent piece by Chris Stirewalt of Fox News on the background behind Grimm’s Fairy Tales. And I was reminded of how important a common set of virtues is to a functional society. In our country today, with its issues of violence, both verbal and physical and the seemingly…

As this newspaper is going to press on Oct. 2, an important court hearing is taking place in Jackson County.

Did you know that it has been estimated that legal expenses incurred by the medical community add up to 33% to our healthcare bills and thus our insurance premiums?

Dear Editor:

I woke up this morning thinking of my grandmother’s made-from-scratch biscuits.

Folks in the area are spending some time thinking about what we want to be when we grow up.

The death last week of Tommy Stephenson was the end of an era and the loss of one of Jackson County’s most enigmatic public officials of the last five decades.

I was given various psychological and personality profile tests back in 1981, a requirement for all in-coming seminary students. The tests provided some good fodder for in-house humor among those of us who had left homes and jobs to study for ministry.

A recurring theme running through America’s political debate for more than a decade (with a lot more smoke than light) is the issue of healthcare. Single payer, private healthcare, government versus private care, Obamacare, socialized medicine, free markets ...both sides claim to have exclus…

Dear Editor: I was one of around 30 people who recently attended the second annual Citizens Law Enforcement Academy done by the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.

The recent revelations about the Atlanta Public Schools superintendent and her contract not being renewed amply illustrates a big weakness of the state’s open meetings and open records laws.

Dear Editor:  I am thankful for a newspaper which prints political opinions from different perspectives. Jim Kinney’s editorial opinion in the September 4 Jackson Herald gives an interesting insight into how Trump supporters think — I appreciate his sharing.

Dear Editor: A member of the Georgia House recently asked a constituent this question: “What’s wrong with the system of redistricting Georgia’s electoral districts?”

Dear Editor: The Rome Statue which created the International Criminal Court provides the most recent and expansive list of specified criminal acts that may constitute crimes against humanity.

Last month, I received an invitation to a reunion of our 1971 Gainesville Junior College basketball team. Sorry to say, but I had lost track with all but one of them since my wedding day in 1974.

My current heroes are the protesters in Hong Kong. While the rest of the world is upside down from misplaced populism and a massive amount of propaganda, the protesters in Hong Kong are about the only people with clarity in our world today.

I was 11 years old, and she was 13. She was friendly, quick to smile, showing her perfect white teeth. She learned my name, and I learned hers. For several weeks that summer she came in almost daily to my uncle’s store down in Middle Georgia. We always spoke to one another – by name.

Dear Editor: The August 28 issue of The Jackson Herald had a discussion on the proposed 5G cell towers installations and the legislature's mandate that preempts local governments have any say in the matter.

This is the time of millage rates. Local government entities are setting them for the fiscal year 2020.

If our society is to heal the divides we currently face, two things must happen. First we must begin to learn to listen and secondly, we must be willing to acknowledge not all of our opinions/positions are without error.

For two years, James Fulton Foster remained in prison, convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Charlie Drake, gunned down in his home. James Horace Wood and my father, Floyd G. Hoard, were his attorneys filing the appeals and pushing for a new trial, all in an effort to keep him alive.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib, Rep. Ilhan Omar and President Donald Trump all have something in common: All three have trotted out anti-Semitic rhetoric in recent weeks to further their own political agendas.