From You
Eve Carson.1
originally published March 26, 2008
I just want to thank the editor for his thoughtful column on Eve Carson [Pub Notes, Mar. 12]. It helps the rest of us to read well-considered words in trying to give expression to our collective grief. Her being snatched away from her family so violently, and at such an important threshold of her life, was unspeakably tragic. Thank you again.
Eve Carson.2
originally published March 26, 2008
Pete McCommons is awesome. I have been reading his Pub Notes for years and usually agree with his basic premise. But this week he wrote something that hit my heart like a ton of bricks... He so eloquently expressed what it is like to lose someone so wonderful as Eve Carson. Cobbham was hit heavy. All of us lost a family member when Eve was murdered.
I have lived in Cobbham for over 23 years, as a renter and a homeowner. My ex-husband and I raised both of our boys while living on the same street in Athens. Bob and Theresa are my mentors. I have loved them both for years and always felt a kindred spirit with them. I have watched them raise their two beautiful children, love every family in our crazy neighborhood, love our community and the people of Athens. All of the articles I have read about Eve talk about her ability to love everyone the same. It is so true. She learned some of that from her amazing parents.
I want to add one more thing to Pete’s well-expressed description of the Cobbham neighborhood. The success of this wonderful community is the ongoing love and acceptance that each family has for each other. We are all so different in many ways but I think the one thing that binds us all together is our quest for knowledge and truth. With that comes tolerance and love. I think Cobbham is one of the most wonderful places in this world to raise a family and I feel totally blessed to be part of this amazing neighborhood family called Cobbham. I thank Bob and Theresa from the bottom of my heart for sharing their precious Eve Carson. Her life was too short.
In Indiana
originally published March 26, 2008
I was shopping with friends in the local Wal-Mart store here in southern Indiana when I came upon a pretty bottle of water. My interest in where exactly people were getting this “safer” source of water lead me to inspect the label.
My jaw dropped as I read:
Bottled 3-03-08
Bottled by DS Waters of America Inc.
6750 Discovery Blvd.
Mableton, Georgia 30126
Source Springs, Blue Ridge, GA
Perhaps I am misunderstanding the situation in Georgia, but I recall hearing there was a drought on. Is this correct? The University of Georgia seems to believe so. So much that they have an entire site at www.caes.uga.edu/topics/disasters/drought dedicated to the drought.
Indiana, thankfully, is not in a drought. In fact, it’s pretty much guaranteed we are going to get rain tonight and tomorrow, again. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to mock your situation. God forbid anyone should ever not have enough water.
Still, I gotta ask. Why are you sending us water? Don’t take this the wrong way, and pardon my Northern city tongue, but are your peoples ret… er, mentally handicapped?
I live a rock’s throw from the Wabash River, which has been flooded since at least January. The Ohio and the Mississippi, as far as I know, are still flowing strong out here.
Yours in deep concern,
NBAF Fears
originally published March 26, 2008
Athens has been fortunate to contain relatively little of our growing national military machinery. The loss of the Navy Supply Corps School won’t cripple the community, but that loss should be a warning for those who think the proposed bio-weapons lab sounds attractive.
Government facilities can be fickle friends. If the bio-lab lost funding after a period of operation, could it be converted to another use as easily as a school campus?
If this building houses the highest risk level of bio-agents, could it ever be sanitized for another use if future leaders wake up from the insanity of WMD production and global war?
The lab represents, on another level, a regional outpost of what many call The Warfare State. The Orwellian idea of endless war has firmly taken root in the fear-turned and enriched mental soil of millions of American minds.
The current, imaginary War on Terror, with its faceless, nameless, placeless enemy has created a permanent state of emergency toward which the masters of war must merely nod to elicit a knee-jerk acquiescence.
The ultra-high security/ secrecy aspect of the facility gives less cause for comfort. I’m told 50 armed guards will be in place. Will they be, as in Iraq, lawless, machine-gun toting “contractors,” with itchy trigger fingers, warily eyeing everything that moves?
Manufacturing may be in decline, but fabrication of fear, secrecy, and deadly weapons is one business a healthy city would do well to avoid.
NBAF Response
originally published March 26, 2008
To Flagpole Editor: We have tried to be patient as Grady Thrasher, leader of FAQ, has repeatedly boasted, including in an open letter to DHS [Comment, Mar. 19] that he forced the University to revise downward its economic impact of the NBAF facility. But, enough is enough! For Thrasher to claim that he was responsible is ludicrous and inconsistent with documented facts. It’s time to end this revisionist history and debunk his implication that we have deliberately misled the public.
We possess and would be happy to share an email dated Aug. 14, 2007 in which we asked the Carl Vinson Institute of Government to redo the economic impact analysis in light of new information. As we describe on the UGA-NBAF website, we decided to revise the economic impact analysis because we wanted to act responsibly and because we had more information from DHS than we had when we were first asked to perform the analysis. The email requesting a new analysis is dated a full month before we met with Thrasher and Kathy Prescott over coffee, at 10 a.m., Sept. 18, in the Georgia Center cafeteria, in order to inform them about NBAF.
The revised economic impact data were made public, shortly after they were received from CVIOG, during a presentation at the Sept. 5 Athens Rotary Club meeting. The figures were reported by Don Nelson in the Athens Banner-Herald on Sept. 5, 2007.
At our Sept. 18 meeting with Mr. Thrasher, we told him we would provide him a copy of the final report as soon as it was available, and a printed copy of the report was delivered to him on Sept. 21, the day after it was first available from CVIOG. The NBAF website was updated with the revised figures, as it notes, on delivery of the report in September. Why this delay between Aug. 14 and Sept. 21? Because it was not, as Mr. Thrasher claims, “hastily prepared.”
So, if he is misrepresenting himself on this issue, what else is he misrepresenting? Well, for one thing, he implies that UGA has been negligent in communicating about the NBAF. A search of Athens Banner-Herald news stories shows that UGA sent out information about the status of the project from its inception, and this news was reported beginning in February 2006. In addition, as noted on the NBAF website, and easily verifiable, we have met with community groups since 2006, and we stepped up that schedule as soon as the Georgia NBAF site progressed to the short list announced by DHS on July 11, 2007. We have taken the initiative to reach out to the majority of these community groups, rather than wait until they contacted us. What is not noted on the website are our numerous meetings with individuals to inform them about NBAF.
Finally, Thrasher also insists that our NBAF website, a primary source for information about NBAF and the status of the project, was launched in February 2007. This is not so; it was launched in mid-October 2006.
It is impossible to debunk the conspiracy theories and colorful metaphors that Mr. Thrasher employs (“NBAF could turn out to be a far more dangerous lemon than your typically oversold and overrated used car”). But let’s recognize them for what they are: emotion-fanning innuendo, not truth.
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