Upstate Energy Summit Set for July 26

The 2nd Annual Upstate Energy Summit will take place on July 26 at the Civic Center of Anderson, 3027 Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard. The summit brings together recognized leadership across key energy disciplines of industry, policy and finance. The Opening Session will begin at 8:30 a.m. Two sessions are scheduled during the day; the 8:30 am to 2 pm session is for Commercial and Industrial participants. The residential portion of the day will be held from 3 to 7 pm.

“Blue Ridge Electric Coop is proud to partner with this quality group of organizations to help raise awareness of the issues and policy changes that are facing business,” said Tim Mays, Key Accounts Manager. “At Blue Ridge, we endeavor to adapt to the challenges of our changing world while exercising leadership in the community. The Upstate Energy Summit is one way we can reach out to our members and provide energy efficient and cost saving tips that will help them keep more money in their pockets.”

Duke Energy Community Relations Manager Scott Miller stated, “Duke Energy has a long history of community support and the Upstate Energy Summit is a compliment to our mission. This year’s Summit combines informative presentations by industry leaders and energy experts, educational breakout sessions for hands-on learning, case study presentations demonstrating real projects and real results, and networking opportunities for collaborating with colleagues and solution providers – literally something for everyone. We encourage everyone to join us for this very worthwhile event.”

Anderson County, in partnership with Pickens County, Oconee County, Tri-County Technical College, Blue Ridge Electric Co-op, South Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership, Piedmont Natural Gas, Fort Hill Natural Gas, Oconee Alliance, Alliance Pickens, WorkLink, Anderson Chamber of Commerce and Duke Energy scheduled the 2nd Annual Upstate Energy Summit & Expo to provide education and hands-on demonstrations promoting energy efficiency and cost savings.


Dist. 5 Construction To Be Finished by School Start

A pair of Anderson County School District Five construction projects are expected to be completed before classes begin Aug. 21. 

The new North Pointe Elementary School is in the finishing stages will open on S.C. 81 North as planned. The Anderson Five Charter School, the other new school opening for the first time this year, is not part of a construction project and will occupy space in the Career Campus.

Construction at T.L. Hanna High School includes improvements to security at the entrance of the school and improvements to the parking lot are also under way and on schedule.

Henry Avenue Water Repair Planned for Tomorrow

The City’s water department will shut down water service to Henry Avenue at 9 a.m., July 11, 2012, to repair a fire hydrant. This work will effect the entire length of Henry Avenue. The city apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. This work is expected to take approximately one hour to complete. For more information, please contact the Electric City Utilities water department at (864) 231-5230.

AnMed Named Among Most Wired Hospitals

AnMed Health has been recognized as one of the nation’s Most Wired hospitals and health systems, according to the 2012 Most Wired Survey. The survey results were released today in the July issue of Hospitals & Health Networks magazine.

According to the survey, the nation’s Most Wired hospitals are leveraging the adoption and use of health information technology to improve performance in a number of areas. As a field, hospitals are focused on expanding and adopting information technology that protects patient data, and optimizes patient flow and communications.

Among the key findings this year:  

•  93 percent of Most Wired hospitals employ intrusion detection systems to protect patient privacy and security of patient data, in comparison to 77 percent of the total responders.  
•  74 percent of Most Wired hospitals and 57 percent of all surveyed hospitals use automated patient flow systems.
•  90 percent of Most Wired hospitals and 73 percent of all surveyed use performance improvement scorecards to help reduce inefficiencies.
•  100 percent of Most Wired hospitals check drug interactions and drug allergies when medications are ordered as a major step in reducing medication errors

“As shown by these survey results, hospitals continue to demonstrate how IT not only can be used to improve patient care and safety but it is also a means to improve efficiency,” says Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association. “Hospitals receiving Most Wired recognition are truly representative of our nation's hospitals and systems – rural and urban, small and large, teaching and non-teaching, and critical access hospitals geographically dispersed.” 

At AnMed Health, information technology is an integral part of providing care. Patient medical records have been electronic since 2000, and AnMed Health was the first in the state to implement PACS, a picture archiving and communication system that gives doctors and clinicians instant and remote access to radiology images. Today, physicians routinely use a computer-based portal to review monitor data, nursing documentation and diagnostic test results.  

AnMed Health is in the process of bringing electronic health records to every owned doctor’s office. And in the hospital, handwritten orders are already a thing of the past. Physicians use a computerized physician order entry system (CPOE), which sends doctors’ orders directly to caregivers and departments without handwriting and legibility issues.  On nursing units, nurses scan barcodes to ensure patients receive the right medicine in the right dose at the right time, and Horizon Enterprise Visibility allows caregivers to know what’s happening with every patient by glancing at a flat screen TV. 

CBS: State to Study "Inland Port" in Greer

The South Carolina State Ports Authority board agreed Monday to begin engineering studies on an inland port in Greer to provide more efficient movement of cargo to the coast by rail.

"It's been our belief that the successful growth of intermodal container movements in our state and in our region really requires us to look beyond our traditional port facilities," authority President and CEO Jim Newsome told the board during a teleconference.

The new facility, described by Newsome as "a port without water" and to be developed with Norfolk Southern, will be operated by the authority. It will provide a place for transferring shipping containers between trains and trucks for shipment to or from the coast.

The plan has big advantages for South Carolina motorists. Newsome estimated that the port could eventually eliminate 50,000 truck trips a year on busy Interstate 26 between Charleston and the Greenville-Spartanburg area.

The board agreed to hire an engineering firm to develop plans for the facility in the busy Interstate 85 corridor that will be built mainly on land the authority already owns. The authority bought 100 acres for such a facility 30 years ago.

The board agreed to award a $1.1 million contract to Patrick Engineering to work out plans for the terminal. Those engineering studies will develop the total cost. The authority has $23 million set aside to develop the project.

The terminal will mean some new jobs in the Greer area, although Newsome said the specific number is not now known. He said he hopes the inland port can be operational within a year and a half.

"It puts a very robust and capable port facility 220 miles in the interior and extends our footprint into the interior," he said later. "The advantages being that we can handle containers in a very capable fashion closer to where they are needed and move them in a more efficient way, incorporating more rail movement and taking some pressure off I-26."

He said the port envisions an overnight train service between Charleston and upstate South Carolina, where a container could come into the port late in the day and be available near customers upstate for the open of business the next morning. He added it also could lead to more distribution centers in that area upstate.

"I look at this as a mini-North Charleston Terminal or a mini-Wando Terminal without the ships in the interior," he told the board.

Bloomberg: Hospital Bills Unpaid as S.C. Shuns Medicaid Plan

Shirley Johnson gets her medical care at Palmetto Health Baptist hospital’s emergency room in Columbia, South Carolina. She goes when her back gives out or when a benign tumor near her ribcage swells and throbs. She goes for headaches, heartburn, and spider bites, leaving the hospital a sheaf of unpaid bills.

“I owe so much money,” said Johnson. “The last time I went just for my toe. It cost $1,000.”

Johnson, as a 49-year-old with no dependents, isn’t eligible for Medicaid, the joint state-federal health program for the poor, which covers about 20 percent of the state’s residents. And in two years, when President Barack Obama’s health-care overhaul allows the expansion of Medicaid to cover 17 million more Americans, she may still be left behind.

Governor Nikki Haley, a Tea Party-backed Republican, was among the first state leaders to oppose expanding Medicaid after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can’t make states do so. Caught between poverty and pressure to curb government’s power, South Carolina illustrates the forces at play in the nation’s capitals amid the broadest changes to the health care system since 1965.

In South Carolina, the law would add about 500,000 people to Medicaid, said Tony Keck, whom Haley appointed to head the Health and Human Services Department.

Full Story Here

CU Professor to Lead International Crop Workshop

CLEMSON — Clemson University research associate professor Chittaranjan Kole has been selected to chair a special international workshop on Genomics and Breeding of Climate Resilient Crops for Future Food Security for the International Crop Science Congress Aug. 6-10 in Brazil.

Every four years the International Crop Science Congress gathers the world’s most prominent scientists in the fields of agronomy, genomics and plant breeding. The goals for the Congress are to advance crop productivity with a focus on environmental sustainability and meet the world’s food and industrial needs.

Kole is the director of research at Clemson’s Institute of Nutraceutical Research, where the overall goal is to pursue research opportunities in food safety and security with the U.S. government and other international entities. His current research includes development of crop varieties for use as functional foods and dietary supplements to combat deadly chronic ailments, including AIDS, cancer, diabetes, hypertension, obesity and stroke.

Kole’s area of specialty is plant biotechnology, including genomics and molecular breeding. He established the International Climate Resilient Crop Genomics Consortium, which includes 30 scientists from 11 countries. Kole received India’s Crop Research Award in 2004 and Hind Rattan (Jewel of India) award in 2010. He has published more than 130 research articles, edited 55 textbooks and reviewed books on frontier areas of biotechnology, and patented two medicinal varieties of bitter melon: CBM10 and CBM12.

NYT: Cells Carriers by Spy Requests

WASHINGTON — In the first public accounting of its kind, cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.

The cellphone carriers’ reports, which come in response to a Congressional inquiry, document an explosion in cellphone surveillance in the last five years, with the companies turning over records thousands of times a day in response to police emergencies, court orders, law enforcement subpoenas and other requests.

The reports also reveal a sometimes uneasy partnership with law enforcement agencies, with the carriers frequently rejecting demands that they considered legally questionable or unjustified. At least one carrier even referred some inappropriate requests to the F.B.I.

The information represents the first time data have been collected nationally on the frequency of cell surveillance by law enforcement. The volume of the requests reported by the carriers — which most likely involve several million subscribers — surprised even some officials who have closely followed the growth of cell surveillance.

“I never expected it to be this massive,” said Representative Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who requested the reports from nine carriers, including AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon, in response to an article in April in The New York Times on law enforcement’s expanded use of cell tracking. Mr. Markey, who is the co-chairman of the Bipartisan Congressional Privacy Caucus, made the carriers’ responses available to The Times.

While the cell companies did not break down the types of law enforcement agencies collecting the data, they made clear that the widened cell surveillance cut across all levels of government — from run-of-the-mill street crimes handled by local police departments to financial crimes and intelligence investigations at the state and federal levels.

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CP: Christians Upset Over Baptist "Blind Side" Vote

New York Times best-selling author Eric Metaxas is among the Christians upset over the decision by LifeWay Christian Stores to remove "The Blind Side" from its shelves because it contained profanity and racial slurs. He says objections over the language miss the point of the film and such reactions make it hard for Christians to be taken seriously in cultural discussions.

Metaxas, a rising evangelical voice who is best known for his biographies on William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, expressed his disapproval of LifeWay's move to pull "The Blind Side" in acommentary for BreakPoint radio this week.

"I'm kind of upset. A great movie was pulled from the shelves of a Christian bookstore chain," he said on the July 5 program. "Look, I'm as concerned about cultural messages as anyone. I'm a father. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do this – and the wrong way definitely includes the permanent state of umbrage that many Christians seem to exhibit. They seem to have confused being salt and light with being curmudgeons."

LifeWay Christian Stores, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention, made the call to remove copies of the inspirational movie from its shelves last month after a Florida pastor within the denomination complained over the language used in the film. The film tells the true story of NFL player Michael Ohr, an impoverished young black man, who is saved from inner city gang activity and homelessness when a white Christian family adopts him.

The pastor had proposed a resolution for the SBC's annual meeting June 18-20 that called on LifeWay to pull the PG-13 movie and any other products that contain "explicit profanity, God's name in vain, and a racial slur." Wanting to avoid controversy at the annual meeting, officials at LifeWay announced that the movie would no longer be sold.

Metaxas pointed out that the objectionable language helped to realistically depict the "unpleasant world" from which Ohr was rescued from. He disagreed with the Florida pastor's reasoning that the presence of this movie in Christian bookstores would make children more likely to "embrace" this kind of behavior.

"I think it's insane. I saw the movie myself. I even let my 12-year-old daughter see it. That's because it is a great film and I recommend it highly," he said.

Added Metaxas, "Concerns about the language in the film also miss the larger point: what made the Tuohys – the family depicted in the film – such great Christian exemplars wasn't their non-use of profanity; it was their willingness to reach out and embrace someone in need."

"If we Christians can't get this, then maybe we really should refrain from commenting on culture in the first place."

Metaxas thought that LifeWay's decision to pull the movie only reinforced the negative stereotype of Christians: there's no "pleasing" them and they're always "mad" about something.

"We complain about the calumnies and caricatures of Christians on the big screen; and then, when an Academy-Award winning film shows us at our very best, we complain that scenes depicting harsh, inner-city reality are too true to life!" observed Metaxas.

"We are, in effect, making our participation contingent on all our possible objections being met beforehand. Since there are many people who would be happy if we stayed within our cultural and religious ghettos, it's difficult to imagine how we Christians can hope to be taken seriously in cultural discussions and debates with this kind of an approach."

Full Story Here  Column on Blind Side Baptists Here

Mama Penn's Featured in Huffington Post Blog

Poet James Dickey, whose poetry student I once was, called my "Up-Country" South (among many other things) "the country of nine-fingered-men."*

In Pickens, the county seat of Upstate South Carolina's eponymous Pickens County, you can still see some of those men, the symmetry of their hands rearranged by close encounters with farm or mill machinery; their full beards, Confederate-flag attire and bright blue eyes harking back to the moonshiners and stubbornly isolationist Calvinists who were their (and my) forebears.

But, for the most part, the South Carolina I've known since my birth in 1951, is fast-morphing, with the recovery of the country's economy at large, into a country of other men entirely: Spanish-speaking men; men employed by big foreign business (BMW and Daimler, near Spartanburg, just for example); men voting a straight Democratic ticket; men who won't hesitate to pick up the phone and call the cops when a diner at Clemson's Mellow Mushroom pizzeria leaves his dog locked up in a car in the 99-degree heat of July.

In the South, the South I thought I knew, the times they are a'changin' . . . and it's about time. The mills and moonshine are gone. What's replacing them -- big-box Walmart stores, Pizza Huts and enclaves of rich, northern retirees -- are fast-changing the landscape I (and all the Bolemans, Smiths and Shirleys before me called home).

Mark Knight, a former school principal and current Guest Services Rep at Clemson's Holiday Inn Express, told me, "As an Army-brat-who-was-dropped-off-and-took-root-here, I've lived in Pickens for the last 20 years. It's great to witness the changing of the guard in the City Council and the fresh ideas coming in with it. I moved here and loved the idea of a town kind of like Mayberry: little crime and tons of friendly people who take time to say hello every day. It's been a great place to raise a family and now, an influx of new businesses over the last six months, has given me hope for Pickens's future. With a Walmart Supercenter moving in, our city will only continue to grow."

Zack Mauldin, Editor of the Pickens County Courier, expanded on his fellow townsman's analysis: "I don't have the numbers, but I can say that, as a 2006 Clemson U graduate, with many friends trying to enter the workforce around the time the recession hit, that jobs in Pickens County were very few and far between.

"As Pickens County struggled to replace jobs lost when a wealth of textile plants closed their doors," Mauldin continued, "most workers from the area, including university graduates, were forced to look elsewhere to find jobs. Fortunately, the tide has turned in a big way in Pickens County. In just the last year or so, several high-tech manufacturing firms have decided to move to the county, while a number of existing county businesses have expanded operations.

"In all," said Mauldin, "these moves have added hundreds of jobs, boosting the county from the depths of a recession into a rapid boom that has no end in sight.

"One of the main reasons behind the influx of technical jobs is the School District of Pickens County's emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. The education begins at the elementary level--a team of Clemson Elementary students beat 120 teams earlier this year to win the JetToy Challenge, an international car design competition in Detroit. County students have won recognition at the local, state and national levels in STEM competitions and, in May, County businesses donated more than $10,000 to the school district to continue and advance the STEM program. The school district is in the midst of opening new facilities for each of the four County high schools, as well as a new Pickens County Career and Technology Center, which opened last year. These facilities, along with Clemson University and nearby Tri-County Technical College, are churning out graduates who are 'in high demand' because of their skills and knowledge," Ray Farley, director of Alliance Pickens, told the Pickens County Courier recently.

This displaced Southern author came home for a week or so this July to see old friends, visit my parents' grave site in Townville, South Carolina, and gorge on field peas and snaps, (real) fried chicken, carrot-and-raisin salad, and pound cake.

An eighth-generation South Carolinian (with Virginians, Georgians and Native Americans thrown in, for good measure) on my mother's side, I just get a hankerin' to head South once every year and, the air fares being what they are, this year there was nothing for it but to drive.

For about 14 hours. Straight through, with food and gas stops. The "back way": through Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and North Carolina. The last three hours of the drive, we were running just ahead of the massive storm that did for our nation's capital, and much of the mid-Atlantic, right side of the country, for about a week. I guess West Virginia got the shortest end of that stick, and so many others.

We just beat it, arriving in Clemson, where I used to teach Journalism, at about 3:30 a.m. I knew I had driven about as far as was humanly possible when I hallucinated Christopher Walken hitch-hiking by the side of the interstate, somewhere near the giant peach water-tower of Gaffney (a landmark no one believes exists till I show them a photograph). Take my word for it: Christopher Walken and that great surreal peach must share some plane of existence physicists have yet to describe. I'm just sayin': I know what I saw.

So. Here we are, my Rochester-NY-born, jazz-musician husband and I, in Upstate South Carolina, conducting a very informal culinary tour.

Which brings us, of necessity, to an eatery in Anderson, the county seat of, wait for it, Anderson County (we Southerners are stingy with our descriptors), called Mama Penn's (www.mamapenns.com).
Opened in 1970 in a strip mall storefront a stone's throw from Anderson's best-known hardware store, Mama Penn's, the restaurant, which specializes in all those peculiar-to-the-South "sides" which accompany fried chicken, chicken livers, pork chops, country steak, and something known hereabouts as a "flounder plate," has morphed into a behemoth of a place as cool, orderly and efficient as a Swiss clock . . . chock full of locals snarfing down everything from biscuits and gravy to peach cobbler.
Just walking into the place is, for me, a religious experience. My husband looks at me peculiarly, but it's been a year now since I had decent, homemade cornbread, grits milled locally, butter beans and field peas, or . . . "sweet-tea."

If you grew up on sweet-tea, you know of what I speak. If you didn't, there's no use trying to parse it for you.

In any event, at Mama Penn's--and at Dyar's Diner, in Pendleton, or Wade's, in Spartanburg (http://www.eatatwades.com/), my other two favorite Upstate eateries--just the sides on today's menu comprise: Macaroni & Cheese, Mashed Potatoes & Gravy, Green Beans, Potato Salad, Cole Slaw, Rice & Gravy, Yellow Buttered Corn, Turnip Greens, Ambrosia (http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/ambrosia-10000001023717/), Butter Peas, Broccoli & Rice Casserole, Fried Squash, and Diced Cantaloupe. I've died and gone to heaven.

I beg Tommy and Jimmy Davis for a recipe, any recipe: I settle for a Mama Penn's T-shirt, emblazoned with the query: "Have you had your veggies today." I have.

Even a New-Jersey-exiled Upstate South Carolina writer home for only a week cannot eat 24 hours a day. I tried, though.

We drove up to Pickens in the 100-degree heat of midday, looking for some non-existent cool in the foothills of the Great Blue Ridge, but found only more great blue blazes.

Full Story Here

AP: Haley to Outline Budget Vetoes Today

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley faces a deadline for striking items from the Legislature's $6.7 billion budget plan and $100 million reserve spending that was passed last week.

Any vetoes must come Thursday before midnight, but the governor is not publicly discussing what she vetoed until Friday afternoon.

State law gave Haley five days, excluding Sunday, to issue vetoes. Otherwise, a bill becomes law without her signature.

A stalemate over small business tax cuts had blocked a compromise for weeks as a government shutdown loomed. The Legislature approved a compromise on the $6.7 billion spending plan for state taxes last Thursday, as well as a separate measure designating $100 million from a rainy-day fund.

Neither reached Haley's desk until Friday, delaying the clock by a day. A continuing resolution kept government running at current levels while she considered her vetoes.

The spending plans will take effect with Haley's decisions, five days after the fiscal year started. An improving economy gave legislators an additional $1.3 billion in projected one-time and recurring revenue to allocate in 2012-13.

Legislators will return to Columbia to consider overriding Haley's vetoes. When they return depends on what she strikes.

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What We Celebrate: the Declaration Still Rings Loud

The Declaration of Independence: A Transcription

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IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Andy Griffith Invited Us to a Better Place

By Greg Wilson

Andy Griffith died today. You probably have heard about it by now. Hard to look at any news site without seeing the details. He was 86. He was a huge television star whose show, “The Andy Griffith Show,” was number one in the ratings its entire run from 1960-1968. He was also a very good dramatic actor whose role as Lonesome Rhodes in “A Face in the Crowd” should have garnered him an oscar. He also proved he could play pure evil as the rich patriarch John Wallace in “Murder in Coweta County.” No doubts on his talent.

The stories I’ve seen, such as this one in the L.A. Times, list dates and details, but to a lot of my generation, Andy Taylor was a lot more than just the star of a weekly TV show. Andy was family. Something he did reminded us of our own father, and that resonated. His interactions with Opie were about as close to real father-son relations as television ever attempted. The show was warm, even the most challenged characters were treated with dignity and respect and kindness. Like family.

My wife and I have been married almost 25 years, and some of our earliest dates were watching the show on a mammoth Betamax tape deck. Eventually we had all the episodes on beta, vhs and later dvd, prompting one friend to warn another: “If they start talking about Andy Griffith, don’t make eye contact and back away slowly.” Might have been some truth in that. We love the show, have used it to teach Bible studies, host fan club meetings (We are the Mayberry Gazette Chapter, since it was founded by members who all worked at the newspaper), and just to unwind, just like Malcolm Tucker who was the “Man in a Hurry” and needed just the tonic only a Sunday in Mayberry could bring.

We laughed at Andy’s astonishment that Mr. McBeevee did have a shiny hat and walk in the trees. Our heart grinned open when Opie the Birdman nursed the offspring of a bird he had killed with his slingshot. Christmas is still not complete without a view of old Ben Weaver’s heart melting on the night of December 24 in the Mayberry courthouse. Just listing the names: Floyd the barber, Gomer, Aunt Bea, Opie and, of course, Bernard P. Fife brings a feeling that somewhere, at least for a little while we were a part of Mayberry too and that things will be alright.

Andy was a major force in writing the show and insisted that it not be full of jokes, but full of funny and warm situations between family and friends. Thanks, Andy. You left the world a better place. Your family, and those of us you invited in, will miss you.