Want a park at Standing Boy?
With a pink hotel, a boutique, and a swinging hot spot, it’s Monday Mail.
D-Day
It’s June 6, 2016, so it’s the 72nd anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy invasion, “The Longest Day.”
This year’s longest day is now just two weeks away: The summer solstice, the day with the most hours of daylight, will be June 20.
That’s when the tilted Earth leans its Northern Hemisphere most directly into the sun, which from our perspective will shine upon the Tropic of Cancer at 6:34 a.m., when summer begins.
Paved paradise
Today’s opening is from “Big Yellow Taxi” by Joni Mitchell, because of this:
Folks here who use or live near Columbus’ Standing Boy Creek Wildlife Management Area at 2120 Old River Road need to read this email from the Georgia Department of Natural Resources:
Public Input Sought on Proposed State Park in Muscogee County.
State officials are asking for public input on master plan development of Standing Boy Creek State Park in Muscogee County. A meeting is set for 6-8 p.m. on June 7 at the Columbus City Services Center at 3111 Citizens Way. Planning firm Lose & Associates will lead the meeting.
The property on Lake Oliver, which is part of the Chattahoochee River, is currently a Wildlife Management Area. The Department of Natural Resources is exploring options for turning the 1,580 acres into a state park, pending future funding. Officials are asking citizens what kinds of outdoor recreational opportunities they would like to see at the new park. Comments also may be emailed to gastateparkscustomer.service@dnr.state.ga.us.
OK, so ….
I and some other folks who visit Standing Boy have this primary concern I can sum up in a sentence: Pavement is the enemy of nature.
Standing Boy is unpaved land. Swaths of undeveloped public land are dwindling, and we in Columbus have paved plenty of it already.
The longest phrase
Also in the email is this message regarding the annual graduation speech column:
Hey Tim,
Your old friend here. In reference to your … article of May 16, my eyes were drawn to the third paragraph. I don't know if you were testing the new graduates in English or not but you managed to make one sentence into a whole paragraph of fifteen lines long AND using Only "ANDS" and it would make my old English teacher, Pearl Short Garrett, want to flunk you by taking off ten points for every "AND" used to make the sentence so long without using periods instead of "AND" and I beat you in words by 18, I think. Make that twenty.
Your old friend,
John S. Rogers, M.D.
Buena Vista.
Dear John:
OK, let’s replay that part of the speech:
“I mean, sure, it’s 2016, and you’ve reached this milestone in the midst of a lackluster economy and dysfunctional government, with a post-apocalyptic dystopia prophesied for whoever wins the presidency, and you’re facing a worldwide environmental catastrophe leading to a sixth extinction of most of the Earth’s species, and whatever’s happening back in the cradle of civilization that’s now the Middle East surely marks the End Times, but so what?”
The idea is to make the sentence run on and on, and keep adding one misfortune upon another, and pile on the doom and gloom, and even go so far as to imply the world is coming to an end, and all hope is lost, and kids today really have no future, and they might as well just give up now, and yada yada yada, good luck with all that.
If you think my sentence is long, you should hear some of our politicians run on.
Tim Chitwood: 706-571-8508, tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com, @timchitwoodle
State officials are asking for public input on master plan development of Standing Boy Creek State Park, 6-8 p.m. Tuesday at the Columbus City Services Center, 3111 Citizens Way.
This story was originally published June 5, 2016 at 1:49 PM with the headline "Want a park at Standing Boy?."