Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 57F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..
Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. Slight chance of a rain shower. Low 57F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.
The Davis House Child Advocacy Center hosted its annual Button Ball fundraiser at the Saint Elle event space Saturday night, raising more than $200,000 for abused children in treatment.
Harpeth True Value celebrated its relaunching with a unique ribbon cutting Saturday afternoon in Franklin.
HERMITAGE – Claire Stegall went into Saturday’s cross country meet trying to run under 18 minutes in her return to the Midstate Cross Country Association’s Voyles Classic.
BRENTWOOD – It’s hard to miss Daniel Cochran whether he’s on the basketball court or football field.
The Davis House Child Advocacy Center hosted its annual Button Ball fundraiser at the Saint Elle event space Saturday night, raising more than $200,000 for abused children in treatment.
Harpeth True Value celebrated its relaunching with a unique ribbon cutting Saturday afternoon in Franklin.
The Davis House Child Advocacy Center hosted its annual Button Ball fundraiser at the Saint Elle event space Saturday night, raising more than $200,000 for abused children in treatment.
Harpeth True Value celebrated its relaunching with a unique ribbon cutting Saturday afternoon in Franklin.
Thought for the week — When you take a disciplined approach to your life and your responsibilities, God will reward your good judgment. Self-discipline pays — it always has and it always will.
William Carter is a retired longtime Franklin city employee and published author. He may be contacted at wcarterfranklin@aol.com.
William Carter is a retired longtime Franklin city employee and published author. He may be contacted at wcarterfranklin@aol.com.
If you are reading this column, you may be violating someone else’s sense of moral superiority!
It’s back-to-school time again so, of course, the snow-flakiest of the snowflakes have dusted off their pitchforks and re-lit their torches and, like a cloud of south Georgia summer gnats, swarmed together to aggravate the hell out the rest of us and make life even more miserable for one of the already most under-appreciated, over-worked, and stressed-out segments of our society — public school teachers.
Naturally, I am referring to all of the book-banners out there and their demands to remove any reading material from school libraries that may be thought-provoking, foster compassion and understanding, encourage creativity and curiosity, or even hint that penises and vaginas exist.
Their fear, it seems, is that if a child reads certain books, they may start caring about the struggles of someone with gender-identity issues, the horrors of slavery, or that maybe the light has dimmed just a bit in that “shining city on the hill” America is supposed to be.
Maybe that’s all true, at least let’s hope it is. Maybe, too, the book-banners out there just might be scared to death their child may come home and start asking questions they’re not comfortable answering.
It’s just weird to me, coming from a family where piles of books made it difficult to move around the house at times and reading was more important than eating or sleeping, that anyone, child or adult, should be denied the right to decide for themselves what their interests may be, or not be given credit for being intelligent enough to determine for themselves whether or not what they’re reading is worthy of the time and effort or, in fact, is straight-up bulls**t.
Influence, I guess, is all a matter of what someone is willing to believe. I mean, I grew up reading Dr. Seuss, Asimov, Tolkien, Herbert, Poe, and the King James Version of the Bible, not to mention all of the comic books. But not once, ever, as a child did I think dragons were lurking in the pine forests outside of town, or that sand worms were tunneling beneath the peanut and cotton fields. I never feared robots taking over the world, either, or never tried to fly or walk on water, or never had a hankering for green eggs and ham. I did once try to eat a toad that I cooked over a small campfire I built behind the house, but that was only because I was stupid, and not because of anything I’d read.
As for myself, I can honestly say I can’t recall reading anything from my elementary, middle or high school libraries that painted a picture of how cool it would be to grow into an ignorant, hateful bigot as an adult. On the contrary, I learned from those books that the world is much bigger than I ever imagined it to be, and that of all of the people out there, no two are exactly alike and that most of us just want to live our lives without being harassed by those who think we’re not meeting their standards as human beings.
But, then again, maybe the book-banners are right. Maybe every single thing we read does determine our path to the future. If so, then, in the interest of full disclosure, I hereby demand that every self-important book-banner who feels compelled to quack away in front of a school board or at a public meeting provide us with lists of what they read in their younger years that fueled their outrage and burdened them with the hateful and twisted sense of moral superiority they bear as adults. It’s only fair the rest of us should have the information we need in order to keep our own young ones safe from being subjected to such horrible, mind-altering reading material. Please, can’t we all just think of the children?
For the most part, it seems that what’s giving the book-banners all the reasons they need to claim persecution and make public asses of themselves is anything written by someone from the LGBTQ community, anyone who does not believe the Bible is the literal truth, or anyone who is of the opinion our history of slavery was a tragedy that, as a nation, we should be reminded of every day. So, it makes me wonder, if this insanity continues, will any future life-saving cancer research conducted by a gay doctor be considered as valid as that done by a straight doctor? Will the heroism of a soldier or a policeman or a fireman be called into question because they don’t wear a Christian cross around their neck, or that they acknowledge they were descended from slaves?
The saddest part of all of this, in my opinion, is that so many of us seem to be more than willing to be held hostage by the rabid self-righteous; by those who believe that only what they believe is actually worthy of belief.
The easiest path to oppression, someone wrote, is to deny we are on a path to oppression.
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do you research what you write about before you publish, or do you just "hit the high notes" of the talking points? am I to understand that you (and your side) are in favor of elementary and middle school children having access to books that contain graphic pictoral representations of sexual acts? you see, this is one of the books that was presented to the school board by those evil "book banners." shall I assume that you would like to open the floodgates and allow all of our kids access to ALL flavors of sexually explicit material...or are you a "book banner"? you boil it down to parents wanting to ban books authored by LGB folks...but that is deeply dishonest. the authors are not the problem...it's the content. dig deeper sir...don't just attack people because they don't share your world view. I thought guys like you were all about "inclusion"...yet in an ever-growing trend...the left seems to be the place where people are reviled, impugned, cancelled and threatened for having the audacity to disagree with the woke agenda. it's very sad that we can't even have an honest conversation about what is truly harmful to children...because folks just fire off wild generalizations without providing any context or real information for people to think about and consider. then again...this was an opinion piece. you are entitled to the opinion that kids should be protected from parents who don't want them looking at pictures of sex acts in the school library.
Well, we'd better make sure no one has access to The Holy Bible. You can't even get through Genesis without gross depictions of underage drinking and incest.
30 Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31 One day the older daughter said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is no man around here to give us children—as is the custom all over the earth. 32 Let’s get our father to drink wine and then sleep with him and preserve our family line through our father.”
33 That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
34 The next day the older daughter said to the younger, “Last night I slept with my father. Let’s get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and sleep with him so we can preserve our family line through our father.” 35 So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in and slept with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.
36 So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father.
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