Coleman Chronicle and Democrat-Voice (Coleman, Tex.), Vol. 132, No. 31, Ed. 1 Wednesday, August 8, 2012 Page: 4 of 18
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OPINION PAGE
Page 4
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Coleman Chronicle & DV
SMOKE IN THE AIR
Baxter Black Sponsored By
PHARMACY
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t
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V
i
84
h
Linda Hyde
and
i
i
By:
Ronnie McBrayer
The stages of a forest’s
growth go from seedling
to pole (or sapling), to
and extreme changes
that give man pause to
question his own influ-
ence. Build a city below
sea level, dam a river,
put a freeway over an
earthquake fault, or live
in the desert. Stay there
long enough, and Earth
will try and take it back.
The mountain outside
my living room window is
on fire as I write this. It’s
part of a National Forest.
We moved the cows out
of danger. Let’er burn.
> AWKWARD SEP 8U6
t MOMENTS
will
So
If man disappeared like
the dinosaurs, in a short
1000 years the Earth
would begin to putrefy,
erode, digest, and bury
our human footprints.
Oh, the Sierra Club’s
National headquarters in
San Francisco might last
to www.colemanindependent.com for hon-
est, realistic, and open dialogue on today’s issues in our
community. Check it out!
Brett Autry
Amber Hardin
Ruth Poldrack
Karen Allen
Christine Flynn
Crissy Goulet
Lois Harper
Olivia de los Santos
Trudi Rutherford
Zane Laws
Ouieta Morris
Carol Jones
David Smith
Jeers to all the people that turn thier dogs loose on the
weekend because they know that WE DON'T HAVE AN
ANIMAL CONTROL OFFICER THAT WORKS ON THE
WEEKEND .I WAS HAVING A YARD SALE TODAY SAT.
AND SOME MAN WALKED DOWN THE STREET AND
JUST LET HIS DOG GO .THE DOG STAYED AT MY
HOUSE AND JUST GOT IN THE WAY AND WHEN I
CALLED THE POLICE DEPT. THEY COULD NOT HELP
ME. I ASKED WHAT IF HE BIT SOMEONE WAS I GOING
TO BE RESPONSIBLE .AND THE ANSWER WAS IF HE
DOES BITE SOMEONE WE CAN COME GET HIM A LIT-
TLE TOO LATE DON'T YOU THINK. I KNOW THAT
EVERYONE NEEDS A DAY OFF BUT I THINK SOME-
THING SHOULD BE ABLE TO BE DONE
Rebecca Hoover
>>
/
lamps????
CHEERS:
There are many exam-
ples of natural cycles
ON THE EDGE OF COMMON SENSE
cycle in the west.
Granted we try and
blame the Forest
Service, the BLM, the
pine-bark
untended
tossed <
arson.
and serve the world.
It will be in serving others
that the church will save
itself from becoming noth-
ing more than a spiritual-
ized 501 c3 not-for-profit,
self-centered corporation,
organized for the benefit of
donor tax exemption and
protecting sacred cows.
Because in the economy of
Jesus, only those who
serve will be served, only
those who choose to be
last shall be made first, and
only those who humble
themselves as servants will
be exalted. Serving others
- and serve others we must
- will remind us of our iden-
tity and call us out from this
self-absorbed, selfish world
to be people of genuine
faith.
Chronicle & Democrat-Voice
Owner/Co-Publisher
Editor
Office Manager
Customer Service
Coleman Correspondent
Coleman Correspondent
Santa Anna Correspondent
Voss/Gouldbusk/Leaday
Rockwood/Trickham/Whon
Valera News
Novice News
Talpa News
Paper Delivery
600D MI6HT, SLEEP TOT
AND CWT LET THE...ER...
OH, JUST 60 TO SLEEP!
/
I
longer than a cow path in
a wildlife refuge, but
sooner or later it will
become dust. And the
floods and fires and
earthquakes and volca-
noes and ice ages will
carry on. This is no con-
solation to those who
have been victims of
nature’s power. We can
only sympathize, but
man is stubborn. No
doubt we will continue to
try and tame acts of
nature with our own
unnatural acts. So, with
a tip of the hat to the
many thousands of fire-
fighters risking their lives
to protect man-made
possessions, fire is sim-
ply Earth renewing itself,
as it has since Genesis.
I
1
young, to mature and to
old. Our western pine
forests can reach 140
years. But eventually
they will succumb to fire,
storm, disease, insects,
or timber, but they do
succumb. Lightening
strikes a match in a
mature forest and cleans
house. Then the cycle
starts over.
We have given much
attention to global cli-
mate change. Duh, in
the grand scale our
Earth has frozen over
and heated up on a reg-
ular basis. We worry
man is polluting the
atmosphere. It’s a bit
pretentious to think that
man, over the millennia
can have much effect.
By: Baxter Black
Smoke in the air. Every
summer we watch hun-
dreds of thousands of
acres of forest burn. As I
listen to folks anguish
and wring their hands, I
have to remind myself it
is all part of nature’s
in the
I we
the
century.
Adaptable, decentralized,
as fluid as the wind that
blew across their deserts,
the Apache would not yield.
Then, the American gov-
ernment gave the Apache
tribal leaders cows. And
everything changed. Once
in possession of this rare
resource, and with the buf-
falo population hunted to
extinction, wealth in the
form of walking, bawling
bovines became the virus
that ate away Apache soci-
ety from the inside out.
The tribal leaders used the
cow as a form of reward
and punishment to control
rather than lead their socie-
ty. Flexibility was replaced
by centralized accountabili-
ty and rigidity. The eager-
ness to travel, and thus
remain outside the
American Empire’s control,
was abandoned for the
as a code word for self-
preservation that is break-
ing us. Consider this:
Americans give more to
churches and religious
organizations than any
other charitable vehicle.
Eighty-five cents out of
every dollar given to
churches is spent internally
and only 2% - two cents
out of every dollar put in the
offering - ever makes it out
of our country.
If American churches real-
located the dollars they
spend on building construc-
tion and maintenance to
food and education pro-
grams (about $19 billion a
year), global starvation and
malnutrition would be elimi-
nated in less than a
decade. American church-
es could provide clean
drinking water and sanita-
tion to every person on the
planet with only 15% of
§
!
Ori Brafman and Rod
Beckstrom are Silicon
Valley entrepreneurs, nei-
ther pastors nor theolo-
gians. As someone who
writes on issues of faith,
these men are about as far
from the pulpit or seminary
as one could get. Yet, I
have found their insights to
be invaluable.
In their book, The Starfish
and the Spider, these two
take a detailed look at the
native Apache tribe of what
is now the Southwestern
United States. The Spanish
were unsuccessful in sub-
duing this wild band. The
Mexicans likewise failed. At
first, the Americans fared
no better. For hundreds of
years the Apache main-
tained their independence
against all would-be colo-
nizers, threatening
American power right up to
the turn of the twentieth
I
white man’s farm. To be an
Apache no longer meant
being a part of the land,
being owned by creation.
Now the Apache had
wealth - ownership of
things - cows - and
according to Brafman and
Beckstrom, it broke their
society.
Wealth is not inherently
evil, but it is dangerous;
especially for the tribe
known as the church.
Wealth blinds us to the dis-
tress of others as we work
to amass our own posses-
sions and protect our eccle-
siastical fortunes, trading in
a generous, service-direct-
ed way of life for bigger
profits, softer lifestyles,
sacred cows and strategies
we proudly call “faithful-
ness.”
Whenever I hear the
phrase, “We are called to
be good stewards,” I take it
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PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS
2010 MEMBER: Texas Press Association, West Texas
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Smokey the Bear
admonished us as kids,
“Only you can prevent
forest fires.” But is that
really true? On a cen-
tennial scale, certainly
on a millennial scale it
seems fire is inevitable.
You can only put if off for
so long.
: beetle,
I campfires,
cigarettes or
• •••••••••••••••••••(
their annual corporate
income.
May our eyes be ripped
from their sockets to see
that 1 billion people are liv-
ing in wretched poverty;
700 million live in slums
and substandard housing;
500 million are on the verge
of starvation; and 2.5 billion
people are thirsty for clean
water - all while we have
the resources to do some-
thing about it.
Our wealth must be pushed
away from us and out into
the world where it can
serve God and not our prof-
it-loss statements or our
monthly financial reports
read in the church business
meeting. For neither the
Christian nor the church are
ends unto themselves -
spiritually or materially -
but we are called, as the
people of God and imitators
of Jesus Christ, to bless
JEERS...... In the last week of June, I was downtown to
attend a meeting which adjourned after dark. I noticed
several light bulbs were out in the street lamps. Then last
Tuesday, I drove into town on Tuesday night, looked down
Commercial Avenue and counted 12 burned out bulbs in
our iconic streetlights! Need I say more? Do we not have
enough money in our city funds to purchase light bulbs?
Before I jumped to conclusions, I called our City
Maintenance Department about this issue and left a clear
message about my concern with a specific request for a
return call. I have not heard back, and on Monday night (5
weeks after my initial recognition of the lighting (or lack of)
issue, all 12 burned out bulbs are still dark. Does anyone
else think it’s ironic that citizens pay mega-bucks for elec-
tricity, but the City can't provide light bulbs for our down-
town "first impression" street?
CHEERS: to whoever came to their senses about
‘showcasing’ Coleman in a TV program that, upon investi-
gation, appears to be an expensive info-merciaL You can
get more in-depth info at this website:
http://blog.biznik.com/2010/07/23/financial-infomercials-
.cleverly-disguised-as-news-repost/........
and WHAT exactly are we going to "showcase": our street
Enter Man: Homo
saipen. It’s only been in
the last 200 years of our
continent’s existence
that forest fires have
become an inconven-
ience to humans. We
became civilized and
presumed we could
encroach on the forest’s
natural cycle. We have
found that unless they
are completely
destroyed there
always be a threat,
that’s what we do, we
pave it.
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Hardin, Amber. Coleman Chronicle and Democrat-Voice (Coleman, Tex.), Vol. 132, No. 31, Ed. 1 Wednesday, August 8, 2012, newspaper, August 8, 2012; Coleman, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1175159/m1/4/?rotate=270: accessed July 18, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Coleman Public Library.