Here And There

originally published August 23, 2006

A WINNER, ANYWAY

Bill Overend is that rare political candidate who so distinguishes himself by losing that future success seems guaranteed. As everybody in town now knows, Bill ran for Solicitor General, the high-sounding low-level job of prosecuting misdemeanors in local court. In the Democratic Primary, Bill finished a distant second, 800 votes behind but in a runoff with eventual winner C.R. Chisholm. In the runoff, Overend closed the gap to just 33 votes, a margin that held up in the perfunctory recount last week.

Now Bill will have to go back to practicing law for a living, but here’s hoping he takes another crack at elective office before long. He not only ran a good campaign with good ideas for how he would handle the office, he didn’t quit when it looked like he didn’t have a chance in the runoff.

Congratulations to our newly elected Solicitor General, C.R. Chisholm, and here’s to Bill Overend and his future success.

UGA TODAY

The University of Georgia freshman class this year is as big as the whole university was when I was a freshman. The average SAT score of the incoming freshmen is the same as mine was, and it was considered high at the time. The number of African-American students is gradually inching up from the two who broke the color barrier when I was a student and sent my classmates swarming into the streets waving Confederate flags in protest. The faculty is much more diverse, too, than the mostly Georgia graduates teaching when I started, and they’re sharper dressers, as well. The campus bus system has replaced hitch-hiking as the primary transportation mode, which is just as well, because the girls got all the rides.

GEORGIA REVIEW

I call your attention to the current (spring) issue of The Georgia Review because of the essay by Jed Rasula, “Jazzbandism.” This is a fascinating slice of cultural history, detailing the entry of jazz into the world and into the language. The essay alone is well worth the price of admission, but the Review is chock full of its usual high-quality fiction, poetry, art, reviews and an interview. The issue is lovingly dedicated to recently retired longtime Managing Editor Annette Hatton. And I did not know until I read his note to readers that Editor T.R. Hummer is leaving, too. Big changes at the Review, our highly-esteemed literary journal.

ELECTRIFICATION

I finally got by the “Power To The People” exhibit in the Russell Library (go down the sidewalk on the right side of the main UGA library), thinking there would be a few interesting pictures and maybe an old light bulb or two. It’s about the electrification of the farm in the ‘20s, but it’s really about what farm life was like back then, with old stoves and refrigerators and loads of interesting explanatory material and photographs. I didn’t allot enough time and will have to go back. I recommend it to anybody curious about how our people lived without electricity and what it meant to them to get turned on.

THE NEW DEAN

Thanks to Claude Williams and Mark Smith, I met the new Dean of the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication. Dr. E. Culpepper Clark (his doctorate is in history from the University of North Carolina) was formerly head of the J-school at the University of Alabama. He is a native of Grady County, GA, and he seems on first meeting to be both very bright and quite affable, with a good sense of humor, too. He apparently goes by the nickname “Cully,” which is a lot less imposing than E. Culpepper.

Speaking of a sense of humor, the venerable professor emeritus Dr. Worth McDougald welcomed Dr. Clark to Athens and the University by referring back to one of his predecessors, the famous Dean John Drewry. According to Dr. McDougald, Dean Drewry was notorious for being extremely tight in financial matters. The University and indeed the whole state were scandalized when, as a result of marital discord, Dean Drewry’s wife shot him with a pistol. Shortly thereafter, the Dean was having dinner with the young Dr. McDougald, and, knowing that his faculty member would want to know the details, Dean Drewry extracted his wallet from the inside pocket of his suit coat and showed McDougald where the bullet had entered the wallet and lodged in the wad of bills within. Impressed by the thick wallet compared to his own, McDougald couldn’t help responding, “Dean Drewry, if you had been an assistant professor, that bullet would have gone right through your heart.”

Pete McCommons, Editor & Publisher editor@flagpole.com

Pete McCommons, Editor & Publisher

editor@flagpole.com