The Battle of Aiken Rides Again...

I just returned home from a great evening downtown. I went to the world premier of the homegrown movie 'The Battle of Aiken'? held at the historic Imperial Theater.

This movie was excellent. My assumption was that it would be an amateur attempt at movie-making. Instead, it was a great small budget film, worthy of more than the five dollar admission charge.

One of my favorite Augusta people produced and starred in the film. Brad Owens did a commendable job of playing Hugh Kilpatrick, a Union general. With little acting experience, Owens was a fine example of an arrogant, stubborn and obnoxious leader. Trip Courtney did a fine job of playing against type, as a sadistic officer with the Union army.

This production was a year in the making and it shows. The battle scenes were well thought-out, with realism the main focus. The sound effects were well done, and the locations were scouted with an emphasis on being true to the time period. Never did the production look or feel campy; the dialogue was well-written; with some of the dialogue being direct quotes from the actual participants.

One of the stand-out actors was the character of Frank. This young man was amazing! His dialogue/accent was on target, and he was completely believable as the trusted family servant. I hope that he continues with his acting career.

At the end of the film, the producers, director and cast took questions from the audience. Most of the actors came in costume, which was interesting and amusing all at the same time. The long rifles, pistols and other guns propped up on the seats of the theater took some getting used to! The Q&A period was a great way to end a film that was a group effort in every sense of the way. The directors, writers, producers and actors have something to be proud of with this endeavor.

This film is playing all day Saturday, August 27th. Showings start at 2pm, and continue every 2 hours till 10. Please go, support your local arts. Take your kids, as there is really no actual violence, very little in the way of profanity, and they might actually learn something. I did.

Now Who Am I Going to Watch?

Now Who Am I Going to Watch?

Peter Jennings was the only reason to watch network news. I am an avowed Fox News junkie. Yet most every night, at 6:30, I was watching ABC News. Not because I thought that ABC was getting all the stories right, but because Peter Jennings made me feel better about the news.

As news anchors go, most are plastic Ken dolls, reading the news; hoping that their hair doesn't move between commercial breaks. Watching Jennings was like sitting in your favorite college class, listening to the older professor while he shared his experiences. I never felt that he was talking down to the audience, but was sharing his knowledge and understanding in hopes of making us all better citizens of the world.

As this generation of news reporters dies out, we are left with voids that will remain empty for a long while. There will never be another Cronkite, or Brinkley and Hunt; and there will never be another Peter Jennings.

Time Flies...

With my birthday this week and my ten year high school reunion next week, I have been thinking about the past.

I was flipping through my high school yearbook when I came across the memorial pages for the two students that died my senior year. Every school has a couple of kids who, for whatever reason, don't make it to graduation. There are car accidents, the "hey look at me" accidents and well, there's always murder. My high school has been no stranger to the sudden deaths of students. My senior year we lost two. Kenny Jarvis was killed in an auto accident involving another student, and Melanie Richey was murdered the summer before our senior year began.

When a student dies in an accident, you recoil at the horror, cry at the funeral and someday, somehow you begin to remember good things. When a child is murdered, it becomes very difficult to get beyond the anger, resentment and grief to find the wonderful memories.

When the complete horror story of Melanie's murder was told, we all realized that we had been sharing lockers, football games and walks in the common area with murderers. These were not the guys that 'looked strange'. These were the cute wrestler from out of town, the guy that we had gone to school with since middle school, and the guy from our rival school. We never got the heebie-jeebies from these boys; and we all realized how scary that fact was.

This was not meant to be a rehashing of the horrors of Melanie's murder, or a tome on the dangers of young people driving; it was meant as a warning.

School has just started. For some, it is the beginning of four years in high school, for others it is the end of an era. Please, please be careful. Here are a few things I wish someone had told me when I was in school.

:Your parents will not kill you for being late, so don't drive like Dale to meet curfew.
:Taking drugs, even for the first time can kill you.
:Drinking can kill you in many ways, and they all hurt.
:If something looks wrong, feels wrong, smells wrong; it usually is wrong.
:Burying your friends before graduation sucks.

Mississippi's Problem should Stay Mississippi's Problem.

Augusta is a great town if you are sick. You can go to MCG if you are a trauma patient, if you keel over with a heart attack; tell the ambulance to take you to University. If you are having a baby, there are several hospitals in the area with wonderful women's centers. If you are a burn patient, go directly to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctor's Hospital.

Evidently, Mississippi is also telling its burn patients which road to take to the burn center at Doctor's. In an article from the Tuesday, August 2nd edition of the Augusta Chronicle, it states that currently Doctor's Hospital now takes patients from South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee and Alabama. According to the article, that list might include Mississippi in the near future.

Mississippi's only burn center stopped taking patients May 31, 2005. All new burn patients will now have to find a place to go. Doctor's Hospital has volunteered to make room for these displaced patients.

The question becomes, why is Mississippi having such a problem with burn patients? It is a drug problem. Due to the methamphetamine labs that have taken over the state, over a third of burn patients in the Mississippi burn center were caused by fires related to methamphetamine labs and methamphetamine usage. The financial strain from treating meth-lab burn patients has shut down this burn center.

This weeks Newsweek cover story was on the catastrophic problems caused by methamphetamine usage. This drug is cheap, easy to make and obtain and is highly addictive. It is a drug that began in the heartland, and has quickly spread to the south.

My concern is not over the 'sharing' of our world-class burn unit. But who is paying for the cost of treating Mississippi's burn patients? The average cost of treatment for substantial burns is well over $200,000. Are these burn patients from out of state taking up resources, beds and funds that could otherwise be used by Georgia residents?

Before we allow Mississippi's problem to become Georgia's burden; we as citizens need assurances that our thin Medicaid/Indigent budget not be stretched further by these patients.

A Marriage by Any Other Name....would stink.

My apologies to Shakespeare.

I have just finished watching a documentary on same-sex marriage. Same Sex America chronicles seven Massachusetts couples during that state's fight over same-sex marriage. For the last half hour of the show I sat on my couch, just me and my box of Kleenex; crying as the marriages took place.

I am not one of those right-wing conservatives that are crying over the loss of the sanctity of marriage. I am one of those conservatives who think that the sanctity of marriage was lost when the divorce rate rose above 50%. The crying came, as one by one, all the participants in these marriages wept over the signing of the marriage license. Most weddings have a couple of older ladies, crying under the nettings of their blue hats; but in this instance, all the participants were crying over the simplicity of a legal document.

While I was listening to each couple explain their feelings about marriage, I was disturbed. Each of the couples profiled have been together longer than 10 years. That is longer than a quarter of all straight marriages in the United States. My question then becomes, what is wrong with people in love wanting to get married? As a married woman, I do not feel that two men or two women marrying will be a detriment to my marriage, or diminish the validity of the union.

But this fight has been fought before. I am too young to remember most of it, but I am sure that there are some of you out there that remember it all too well. In 1963, Governor George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door, blocking blacks from entering an all-white school. Just 38 years ago, it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry in 16 states. In both those instances, it took the Supreme Court of the United States to break down those barriers.

We all look back on those years, shaking our heads, wondering at our ignorance. Yet most of the country is willing to again vote to inhibit the civil rights of a group. We can all remember "Separate but Equal"? and how separate was in no way equal. A "Civil Union"? is just another form of this quasi-equality, and should be treated with the animosity that it deserves. As citizens of a Democracy that is willing to go to war for human rights, we must first look inward, and be willing to fight for the civil rights of our citizens.

The Silence is Broken

Where to begin? Some blogs have a central theme, an underlying reason for existing. Not this blog. This will be about...nothing, everything, whatever I am reading, whoever I have spoken to, things that annoy me, and the little bits of stupid trivia that I am always picking up.

You are probably waiting for an introduction. For starters, I am 27, married with one daughter. I have spent most of my life here in Augusta. I am somewhat involved in local politics, so from time to time, or all the time, you will hear my ranting on political/governmental issues.

That all said here are my first random thoughts.

Since it is Friday, I guess I should start planning for the weekend's events. One of my friends is getting married, so I am going to an engagement party on Saturday. Hmm... I should have thought of that when I got married. That would have been two occasions that people would have felt obligated to buy me a present. This is just another opportunity for free stuff that I have missed.

I also missed having my birthday during the school year; therefore I never had the cool cupcakes and fun stuff at school, and didn't have those class-wide parties where everyone brought a present. I should have stayed in school longer, because this year, I would be going back to school on my birthday. That would have been cool in elementary school and would have gotten progressively less enjoyable as I grew older.

Whatever happened to summer vacation? It seems that every year it gets shorter and shorter. Why don't they just get it over with and start year-round school. Then the dictators that run the schools can influence the children all year long. (Insert evil villain laugh)

Lakeside95