Fourteenth Century Italian writer Dante Alighieri in his “Divine Comedy” describes Hell as a place for those who have perverted “their human intellect to fraud or malice against their fellowmen.”  He could have been describing Alex Jones and his Infowars followers. For the past decade, this …

DEAR TEACHERS:

Several summers ago, my family and I went kayaking in Panama City. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was bright, the breeze was warm, and the waters were calm. It was only a 15-minute paddle to a small island that boasted of a beautiful beach with exciting waves and an abundance of seashel…

It is hard to believe it has been 26 years this week since the Centennial Olympic Games were in Atlanta. They began July 19, 1996, and wound up August 4, 1996. To refer to them as Atlanta’s Games is not entirely accurate. Competitions were held throughout the state, from Athens to Gainesvill…

Television around  the globe featured an astonishing sight last March 23. The Ever Given, a gigantic cargo ship — 1312 feet long, hauling 20,124 multi-colored  containers  stacked  ten stories high — lay lodged and straddled across the Suez Canal. She stayed stuck for six long days. Her dist…

Well, this is interesting. Donald Trump and Joe Biden have something in common besides being a couple of old white guys. According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, a little less than half of the Republicans polled want Trump as their first choice in the 2024 primary should he make a r…

I surrender all, I surrender all. All to thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all.

I may be one of the few people on the planet that has not seen “Top Gun Maverick.”  As of this writing the film, starring Tom Cruise and a sequel to the 1986 hit, “Top Gun,” has grossed over $1 billion at the box office and shows no signs of landing anytime soon.

In my Tennessee mountain home

Zzzzzzzzzzz! Snort! Snort! Smack! Zzzzzzzzzzz!

You can tell from the way the telephone rings who is on the other end of line. It is Skeeter Skates. When Skeeter calls, the phone doesn’t just ring. It jumps off the hook. He has that kind of effect on phones and people, too.

We all know the story of how to boil a frog to death (Frog lovers: I’m not suggesting you do so, I’m just trying to make a point here.)  The premise is that if you suddenly plopped a frog into boiling water, it would jump out. But if the frog is put in lukewarm water which is then very slowl…

Okay, RITOOs (Republicans in Trump’s Orbit Only), what’s next? Planning on sitting out November’s general election in a funk so that Democrats can elect Stacey Abrams governor and give Georgia four or perhaps eight years of left-leaning policies? If so, you will deserve every bill passed, ev…

Enormous and lasting benefits resulted from Dr. Charles Herty’s chemical breakthrough, a first-of-its-kind formula that permitted the pulping and printing of newsprint from Georgia pines. Into the poverty-stricken South of the 1930s, it pumped billions for paper mills offering good jobs in t…

Well, Mr. or Ms. COVID-19 finally found me. For nearly three years, I have been a very good girl, following all the recommended rules and wearing a mask, but somehow and somewhere the virus said “There is Nickie. She has avoided us for some time. Let’s get her!’’

She was Georgia’s Grand Dame. Our state’s First Lady. A prolific artist. A philanthropist and my muse. She was Betty Foy Sanders, who died on May 29th at the age of 95 after a life well-lived.

What a day it was. Tuesday, May 24. A day that will live in infamy. While we were deciding the candidates that will face off in the November general election in Georgia, a crazed gunman walked into an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas and killed 19 children and 2 teachers before being kille…

It is the gift that will keep on giving. And it could not be more rewarding.

It’s not everyday you come face-to-face with both the flaws in our healthcare system and the uncelebrated heroes who do their best to counteract those deficiencies.

I am having an identity crisis. Last week, a reader opined, “I’ve read your editorials for years and know you are a supporter of Republican Party efforts. I had hoped, in vain, that you would disavow the current Republican Party.”  I’m guessing he must have missed my snarky columns on David …

I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is a joke. An unfunny joke. She has accomplished nothing in her one term in Congress except to be denied assignment to any Congressional committee where the real work is done. That means she has no influence in what passes or doesn’t pass in Congress and is rel…

Back in 1984 as Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale was preparing to lose bigtime to incumbent president Ronald Reagan, he said something he shouldn’t have said and then tried to clarify his remarks.

Great minds run in pairs. I read an interesting opinion piece in the Atlanta newspapers recently about parenting. The author, Beth Collums, has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and experience as a child and family therapist. She is also a parent.

Having grown up adopted in the 1960s to early 1980s, I was never really sure where I came from. Or WHO I came from.

Well, I am going to have to do it again. Upset some people, I mean. But I can’t help it. It has to be done. I must once again extols the virtues of the Great State of Georgia and why it is Number One while the other 49 fight for sloppy seconds.

Linden Longino is a retired Atlanta banker who should have Nobel Peace Prize recipient next to his name. In 1995, Longino started a program in connection with the Carter Center called International Paint Pals, an idea simple, ingenious and oh-so needed – inspire children to promote peace, fr…

Between the pandemic and Putin, it has been a stressful couple of weeks. Thankfully, my readers have come to the rescue. I don’t want to get into a debate with my columnist colleagues but there is no question that my readers are smarter than anybody I’ve ever seen on Jeopardy and sharper tha…

Outrage and condemnations aside, Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, featuring attacks on unarmed civilians, violates the very laws of war Russia helped adopt and enforce 77 years ago in the war-crimes trials at Nuremberg.

You may be interested to know that you reside in a dumper of a place called Georgia. That revelation comes courtesy of TOP Data, a market research company with offices all over the world including Atlanta, the capital city of what they consider to be the 35th worst state in the nation in whi…

Red and yellow, black and white, we’re all precious in His sight. Every child that ever attended church, and quite a few that didn’t, knows those words. I sang those words over and over as a child, but never put a lot of thought into the depth of meaning contained in them. As an adult with s…

My fellow Georgians: (Yea! Clap! Clap! Clap!) I come before you today to submit to you my annual State of the Column address. It is with great pride that I tell you that the state of the state of this column is in such a state that it cannot be overstated! (Thunderous roar!)