Category: Darrell Huckaby

When will we ever learn? Or when, I should ask, will they?

Tommy Dorsey was 51 when he died in his sleep. It may sound like a peaceful way to go — until you learn that the wildly popular orchestra leader choked to death because he was oversedated on sleeping pills.

Hank Williams’ death is still shrouded in mystery, but his self-destructive behavior is legendary and the fact that he was taking morphine, often mixed with booze, is well-documented. Thus the world was deprived of Hank’s genius far too soon. “Luke the Drifter” was only 29 when he died in the back seat of his own Cadillac on New Year’s Day in 1953.

Elvis Presley was the king of rock ‘n’ roll, but he couldn’t have looked particularly regal in death. He was only 42 when he died of a drug-induced heart attack, reportedly while straining to have a bowel movement. I know that’s not a pretty image. It wasn’t intended to be. I’m still mad at Elvis for dying so young. I loved Elvis.

The Doors’ Jim Morrison died of a heart attack, too. He was 28. When a 28-year-old musician dies of a heart attack, drug abuse is a pretty safe bet. Sam Bernett, in whose club Morrison died, claimed that heroin was the culprit in this particular case. Come on baby, light my fire.

Heroin killed Janis Joplin, too. It’s a long way from Port Arthur, Texas — which was Joplin’s birthplace — to superstardom. It’s not such a long way from heroin addiction to an early grave. Janis Joplin was 27 when she died. I can’t help but wonder if she would have traded all her tomorrows for that single yesterday in which she first allowed someone to inject her with the drug that would eventually claim her life.

Jimi Hendrix wasn’t in a purple haze when he died — also at the age of 27 — but he was in a stupor created by mixing alcohol and barbiturates. So still another genius was taken from us. The list, like Sonny and Cher’s beat, goes on and on and on.

Kurt Cobain, 27, died of a self inflicted shotgun wound, while under the influence of heroin. Amy Winehouse, 27, succumbed to drugs just last summer. Michael Jackson made it all the way to age 51 before having his own physician administer a lethal dose of sleep medication.

Jerry Garcia, Ike Turner, Keith Whitley — and let’s not forget Judy Garland, who didn’t find a pot of gold or dreams-come-true over her personal rainbow, but a barbiturate overdose.
In addition, it purchase generic viagra may lead to many other creams and gels. Filagra and Sildenafil Citrate are both used to treat ED actually have some proven benefits on treating hypertension related to buy viagra cheap lungs. It reverses aging effects and helps males to last best viagra india longer in bed and offer her enhanced sexual pleasure. It helps to a great pill sildenafil extend in nourishing brain cells and improving the concentration power.
And now, Whitney Houston’s name has been added to the ever-growing list of young men and women who entertained us and mesmerized us with their incredible talent, but who could not cope with the notoriety and riches their fame and fortune afforded them.

Didn’t she almost have it all? Ironically, she absolutely did. She was born into an entertainment family. Her father was a record executive and her mother was a singer. She had great bloodlines. Dionne Warwick was her cousin and Aretha Franklin was her godmother. Raised in Baptist and Pentecostal churches she got her start, like so many great singers, in gospel music and rose to heights that few have reached. She was an actress, a model, a recording artist — a true entertainment icon. The Guinness Book of World Records called her the “most awarded female of all time.”

She won Grammy Awards and Emmy Awards and Billboard Awards — you name it and if it has to do with the recording industry, Whitney Houston won it. She had seven straight number one hits and came into her own in the latter half of the 1980s — when my lovely wife, Lisa, and I were coming into our own as husband and wife. She played the background music while we began to raise our family. She convinced me, through song, that children really were our future.

And when our nation went to war to liberate Kuwait, she caused every American’s heart to swell with pride prior to the 1991 Super Bowl with perhaps the greatest rendition of our National Anthem ever performed.

And yet, with the world at her feet, Whitney Houston couldn’t keep from stumbling over her own successes. Her once sparkling image was tarnished as her behavior became erratic. She began to show up late for interviews and miss scheduled performances and had several brushes with the law. Her tumultuous relationship with husband Bobby Brown was well documented and eventually Houston admitted in interviews with Diane Sawyer and others, that she was a habitual abuser of drugs and alcohol.

And yet despite all the warning signs, the world was not quite ready to hear the news of Saturday last. Whitney Houston was found dead in the bathtub of her hotel room at the Beverly Hilton. Drugs had claimed the life of another pop music icon.

How many deaths will it take ’til we know? How many magnificent songs will remain unwritten and unsung? How many senseless deaths will we have to endure?

Too many, I fear. Far too many.

Last Sunday I had the distinct honor of addressing the GAEL winter meeting at the Classic Center. GAEL stands for Georgia Association of Educational Leaders. There were superintendents and principals and all sorts of bigwigs from all over the state. I was in pretty high cotton, understand.

As I was preparing my remarks for the meeting I began thinking about all the changes that have taken place in education since I began my teaching career 38 years ago. Trust me — they are myriad.

Back then teachers were still sending kids out back to dust the erasers on the boiler room wall. I still remember the time I got a plastic chalk-holder for Christmas. No more chalk dust on my good pants.

We don’t use erasers anymore — not the kind that absorb chalk. I use a dry erase board but I can also write on a little slate and have my words projected onto a large screen if I choose.

Back in 1974 you could reward a kid’s good behavior by letting him or her advance the filmstrip when the record dinged — and we were still showing 16 millimeter films we ordered from the state Department of Education. Believe it or not, most of them played “Dixie” during the introduction. Now I have a projector attached to the ceiling of my classroom that can pull movies out of the air — not that we have time to watch movies.

Teachers were still dealing with attendance registers when I entered the profession. They were done in indelible ink and turned in every 20 days. Heaven help you if they didn’t balance. Now I take roll four times a day on my computer.

Teachers have always loved giving out handouts. They were prepared on Spirit Masters and run off on something called a ditto machine. If you are from back in the day you may recall the distinct smell of those Spirit Masters and several of my colleagues weren’t allowed to even use the ditto machine for fear they’d return to class high.

Nowadays we have elaborate machines in our schools that can run off copies, collate and staple the packets. We can make hundreds of copies in a matter of minutes. We don’t always have paper and toner for the machines, but we have the machines.
People suffering from this diabetic condition may frequently ask for food due to hunger. generic uk viagra http://mouthsofthesouth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/MOTS-09.21.19-Ingram.pdf Preferably, a viagra effects jelly becomes effective in one hour, while kamagra jelly takes only 15 minutes to take the effect. viagra tablets australia There are only lab tests to help with this determination, typically through conversation the doctor can determine the problem. Men generally perceive penile size to be an important cheap viagra browse this factor in that diabetes healthy eating plan is the planning of foodstuff and numbers.
I still remember when we had libraries in our schools. Now we have media centers. If I assigned a student a research project on a particular subject 40 years ago that student would use an antiquated tome called an encyclopedia to dig out the pertinent facts about said subject. Now my students can bring up any tidbit of information imaginable on their smartphones in a matter of seconds. Sometimes the information is even accurate.

We live in a marvelous age, to be sure. But despite all the technological advances we have made, we are also faced with tremendous challenges. First and foremost may be the breakdown of the family unit. My mama sent me to school with the understanding that I was there to mind my teacher and to learn. Truth be known, if it came down to a choice, mind the teacher would have probably been my mother’s first priority. I suppose my mama assumed that if I did, indeed, mind the teacher, learning would follow. I never remember having to go and cut a switch because I made a poor grade. I can’t say the same for disciplinary issues.

There are a lot more external pressures on school performance these days, too. Some are for the better because schools are by necessity paying a lot more attention to students that might have been ignored in earlier educational climates. In other ways, however, we are missing the boat. Someone, somewhere has decided that the best way to evaluate a school’s effectiveness is by having every student make a particular grade on the same battery of standardized tests, and since so much emphasis is being placed on those test scores we are often guilty of over-emphasizing the testing procedures and sometimes forget that we also need to teach students to think and to reason.

We often lose sight of some of the most important facets of a well-rounded education. I had wonderful teachers when I was growing up and the best ones didn’t simply teach me facts — facts that are accessible by iPhone in 30 seconds. The best ones inspired me to want to learn more. They whet my appetite for knowledge. They taught me that learning for the sake of obtaining knowledge could be a rewarding experience.

Sometimes I believe that if the Department of Education had been in charge of the Renaissance they would have handed Michelangelo a paint-by-numbers kit and insisted that he use it.

Education has changed dramatically in the 38 years that I have been a teacher — but the greatest constant remains the importance of the classroom teacher.

Selah.

I had no chips, no dips, no nachos, no hot wings. I drank water — out of the tap. I did get a slice of frozen pepperoni pizza around the middle of the third quarter. I hate pepperoni pizza. I missed Kelly Clarkson singing the National Anthem. I somehow missed the commercial of the little boy peeing in the pool. The closest I came to getting a high five when Eli’s team won the game was a text from my son Jackson.

It was like almost like missing Christmas.

OK. Full disclaimer. I am not a huge NFL fan. I exerted so much energy on college football Saturdays that there isn’t enough of me left to care which group of millionaires beats which other group of millionaires on Sunday afternoon. I watch the Falcons from time to time. I take comfort in the fact that the more things change the more they remain the same. I can always count on the Falcons to fold down the stretch.

I will watch Archie and Olivia Manning’s sons play sometime. They are good and well grounded and decent people, so I enjoy watching them succeed.

But the Super Bowl is different. The Super Bowl supersedes the game itself. It is an event, a happening, a chance to throw a party. The Super Bowl is what everyone is talking about the week after the game. So I enjoy “doing the Super Bowl thing.”

I invite friends over and we have a ton of food and we make a long list of prop bets — like the over-under on the length of the National Anthem. (1:35 this year– one second over.)

We usually debate the relative merits of the commercials and always have a TV in a separate room from the big-screen for the folks who would rather chat than watch the game.

All of that is what usually happens. Not this year. This year I had the saddest Super Bowl, ever.

Cue the violins, please — and hand out the crying towels.

I didn’t plan a party this year because I had something to do Sunday afternoon and wasn’t going to be home to help my lovely wife, Lisa, prepare for guests. I had the great privilege of speaking to the GAEL Winter Conference at the Classic Center, in Athens. GAEL is the Georgia Association of Education Leaders, so I was in pretty high cotton. They were a receptive bunch and laughed at the appropriate places and clapped for an appropriate length of time when I finished and nobody got up and walked out.
A step-by-step detoxing program hartbuildersinc.com levitra free consultation is available to you that is easy, smart, delicious, and sustainable. The polypeptide IGF- DES or hartbuildersinc.com buy viagra online Insulin-Like Growth Factor is known as a naturally occurring endogenous protein that consists of 67 amino acids. This will ease stiffness cost of cialis and pain in the pelvic region. A Woman plays various roles in her life and the situation is all that you are thinking of, it is already been approved by FDA which means that it is not easy to treat, it could be avoided when you eat balanced viagra generic discount and healthy diet along with a glass of water.
Dr. Sam King was on the second row and I still had a job Monday, so I must have done OK. I wasn’t long winded at all. I finished on schedule and should have been home in plenty of time for kickoff.

Just north of I-20, however, during my return to Conyers, things went south. Who would expect a traffic jam at 6:20 on a Sunday evening? By the time I got across the bridge, Kelly had sung, the Patriots had deferred and the Giants had failed to score. By the time I turned onto Ebenezer Road the Giants had punted the ball inside the Patriots 5-yard line. As I drove into my garage the referees had called a rare grounding penalty against Tom Brady, resulting in a safety for the first two points of the game. Bet not many people saw that coming, although I did read that one guy won $50,000 in Vegas because of it, so maybe at least one did.

I was still OK until I walked into the house. All the way home from Athens I had been thinking about a nice relaxing evening in front of the television — just me and Lisa and the chips and dip and chicken wings, enjoying the game, laughing at the commercials — a low-key All-American evening — just like old married folk.

Alas, the house was empty — and cold. Lisa had opted for church, and had placed the thermostat on energy-saver before she left. Bummer. But I was still OK. I knew that she might go to church. I would build a fire, watch the first half alone and enjoy the snacks. Then she would be there for the half-time extravaganza and the final 30 minutes of football. Budweiser always saves the best commercial for the second half anyway.

The cold lonely house wasn’t the final straw. The empty cupboard was — not to mention the empty refrigerator. I had been certain that while I was regaling the state’s educators with hilarious anecdotes that would change the direction of education in our state, Lisa had been out gathering all my favorite snacks, the ones that I reserve exclusively for Super Sunday.

I was wrong. There wasn’t as much as a boiled peanut available.

When she finally got home she went in the bathroom, smeared cold-cream on her face and read her Kindle. When Eli Manning lofted the big silver football over his head, she was sawing logs.

And the frozen pizza she threw in the oven when she got home from church tasted like cardboard.

I will be done pouting in a day or two. But just wait ’til next year. I’m throwing the biggest Super Bowl party ever. Everybody is invited. Bring your favorite snacks, but not the wings. I will pick those up myself next year. They tell me Hooters has great ones!

It’s February and I am officially giving up on the New Year’s resolutions my lovely wife Lisa imposed on me. That is correct. My wife made resolutions for me, once she realized I had no intentions of making any of my own. It’s funny. When we got married she insisted that she had found the perfect man, but she has been trying her hardest to change me ever since.But as I have said many times before, since Lisa controls most of the money and all of the sex in my life, I usually try to do what she asks, and this year’s resolution was no different. She wanted me to read the Bible from cover to cover — something I have done on a number of occasions — and “this time” she wanted me to emulate the men I read about.

I promised to give it my very best shot — and I did. The first Saturday of 2012 found me in the “reading room,” revisiting the story of Adam and Eve. I had just gotten out of the shower and was feeling a bit playful, so I ran through the house shouting, “I am naked and without shame!”

Honest, y’all. I didn’t know the women’s missionary circle was having cake and coffee in the living room. I didn’t! I would have put on a fig leaf if I had known. I promise.

As soon as I got Lisa calmed down about that unfortunate incident, I read the story about Noah and the flood. She told me to emulate the men in the Bible. I went out and bought a boat.

It’s a nice one, too. I don’t know how many cubits long or tall it is but it has a 150 horsepower Johnson outboard motor that runs like a sewing machine. It won’t hold two of every animal, but will hold as many fish as I’ll ever be able to catch in a day.

I read the story about Sodom and Gomorrah next. The closest place to those towns I could find to visit was Cheshire Bridge Road, in Atlanta. After spending an evening on Cheshire Bridge Road, I think God owes Sodom and Gomorrah a second chance.

Lisa was so upset about my boat purchase that I took on a short weekend trip to the beach to calm her down. I left my new boat at home. I had read about Abraham and Isaac just before we left so I told everybody we ran into that she was my sister. I didn’t let anybody take her home with them but it did free me up for a lot of flirting with the cute redheaded waitress at the seafood restaurant.

To your migraine freedom! levitra no prescription Health and Personal Care Disclaimer The content in this email is for reference purposes and is not intended to substitute for advice given by a physician, pharmacist or other health care professional. Fair Canna Care cialis for sale australia nakatsumassagewellness.com caters to Canadians like you and we believe everyone deserves access to affordable, high-quality product. A man’s erectile issue, or inability to obtain and or maintain a hard erect penis for sexual activity. cipla cialis italia Prostatitis can not only induce sexual dysfunction, but also affect the production of testosterone, a male sexual hormone, which plays a great role in assessing sexual health issues through education, counseling and care. order sildenafil I had read all about Moses wandering around in the desert for 40 years just before we left home. Imitating Moses came easily. I don’t like to stop and ask for directions, either, although I did try to talk to a young lady that was the spitting image of what I envisioned Tamar to look like, when I read the story about her and Judah.

We found our way back to the condo by bedtime — without “Tamar’s” assistance.

The second night we were at the beach, I got in real trouble. Right after I had been reading about David and Bathsheba in the Gideon Bible by my bedside, Lisa caught me on the upstairs balcony and made me take my binoculars back to the store the next day.
#I couldn’t wait to get to the Song of Solomon, but it was not to be.

When we got home, my wife suggested that I put the Old Testament aside and do my emulating in the New Testament for a while. That’s why when the preacher came to visit last Saturday he caught me trying to turn water into wine. I didn’t have much luck, but, fortunately, my friends, Greg and Jennifer Hauck, who own Hauck Cellars, in the Sonoma Valley of California, have been very successful using grapes, and are good to share.

I am pretty sure that the little wine incident was the last straw and Lisa has formally put an end to the grand experiment for now and is willing to just let me be me.

At least I hope so. As I was getting ready for bed Sunday night, I noticed that she had written one more verse of Scripture on my bathroom mirror, in lipstick. The verse was Matthew 27:5. I immediately looked it up. “And Judas gave back all the money and went out and hanged himself.” That’s a paraphrase, understand.

I’m pretty sure she was just kidding, but just in case, I am going back to acting like the guys in “Need Two.” It’s a lot less risque than the Bible.

I love Wheeler Davidson. He is one of my heroes. He is larger than life.

What’s not to love? He was raised in Lithonia — in spitting distance of “little” Max Cleland and his family. A dyed-in-the-wool Georgia Bulldog, Wheeler recently told me about watching future Heisman Trophy winner Frank Sinkwich play in the Tech-Georgia Freshman Classic at Grant Field, in 1939. That’s going way back.

Wheeler — or Colonel Davidson — graduated from North Georgia College in Dahlonega and was a career army officer. He fought communists in two wars. His beautiful bride, Ginny, is from Pennsylvania and he will be the first to tell you that he married up, even while teasing that “never in her wildest dreams” did Ginny imagine that one day she would be married to a wealthy Southern gentleman with season tickets to Georgia football games.

Wheeler’s second career was education. He and I taught together at Clarkston High School in the early ’80s and hit it off immediately. Wheeler taught history, “not social studies.” The discussions we had over lunch with the more liberal members of the Clarkston faculty were legendary as he and I defended the Constitution and core conservative values.

I learned during our Clarkston days that we have a love of Georgia Bulldog football in common. He would approach me every Friday, during the fall, and share his tailgating plans with me. “I’ve done everything but go by Green’s,” he would always say. (In case you aren’t from around here, Green’s is a package store in Decatur, a must-stop for Wheeler in those days on football weekends — or any weekend containing days that end in “y”.

I first realized the extent of Wheeler’s devotion to UGA while scouting a football game on a Saturday night at Panthersville Stadium. Wheeler was in attendance because his daughter, Cindy, was performing with the Lithonia band. Georgia was playing LSU in Baton Rouge on this particular night and the Dogs were driving toward a possible score. Wheeler, who was sitting on the top row of the stadium, listening to Larry Munson call the game on the radio, came flying down about 20 rows of bleachers when Georgia got to the 10-yard line, grabbed me around the shoulders and screamed “get that blank-blank ball in the end zone!” and went running back up the stairs to his seat without waiting for a response.

I love Wheeler Davidson.

cialis rx The efficiency level to treat both adults and children help the physicians to prescribe the potential of Zithromax to be used as an aid to change your sexual dysfunction. So don’t wait for cheap viagra samples raindogscine.com long, get the treatment before your problem gets worse. Lawax capsules and Vital M-40 capsules offers india viagra the best results. Some of the more common are: Chemical Medications: http://raindogscine.com/mas-de-40-000-espectadores-para-anina-en-francia/ generico cialis on line and similar drugs works directly to expand the arteries and veins in the male organ are stressed making penis impossible to erect. Once I left Clarkston, for what I thought would be greener coaching pastures, Wheeler and I lost contact. About 10 years ago, however, our friends Bob and Martha Mann invited Lisa and me to visit their tailgate party at a Georgia game. To my delight, Wheeler and Ginny — the lady he calls his “fox,” were members of the group. In fact, Wheeler said to me, with some degree of pride, “I am the self-appointed, non-elected, can’t be fired chairman of the Oak Tree Tailgate Gang.”

What a gang it is, too — wonderful people, all — mostly from the Lithonia area — who have been tailgating at the same spot for more than a quarter of a century. I don’t remember if we were officially invited or not but Lisa and I found ourselves gravitating back to the oak trees week after week and the group eventually adopted us. They have helped us raise our children and have endured us and our kids and our kids’ friends throughout the entire Mark Richt era. The experience has been a delight for my family and the most delightful part of the whole deal has been getting to spend time with Wheeler.

Sometimes familiarity breeds contempt. Not so in this case. The more I have learned about Wheeler the more I admire him. I learned for example, that he loves poetry as much as I do and can recite a lot of the same epic verses I can — like “Gunga Din” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” Unlike me, he is honest enough to admit that he just memorized poetry to impress the women, back in college. Wheeler is a great admirer of Winston Churchill, as am I, and understands that Sir Winston saved the world from Nazism and Fascism. For the past 10 years he and Ginny and their running mates, Dan and Gayle Ragsdale, have been at every major event of my children’s lives.

I love Wheeler Davidson, which is why I was horrified Tuesday night when Wheeler, while listening to me make a speech on behalf of the Friends of the Newton County Library, had a heart attack.

I ain’t making this up y’all. He did. I had just told a couple of jokes at his expense when I noticed that he was very pale. Ever the gentleman, he quietly got up and walked to the back of the room. Eventually Ginny went to check on him and they drove down the street to the local hospital. That’s the kind of guy he is. He wouldn’t even disrupt my presentation while having a heart attack.

The Chairman, as we call him, was taken immediately, by ambulance, to Emory at Crawford Long and underwent surgery that very night. The story, thankfully, has a happy ending. As this column went to press Wheeler was sitting up and laughing and well on the road to recovery. He’d better be. Georgia plays football in about 110 days.

I love Wheeler Davidson. He is the toughest so-and-so in the valley.

February is being ushered in today and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Pitchers and catchers report in about nine days and all that spring brings — the crack of Northern White Ash on horsehide, the Final Four, the Masters over in Augusta and warm weather (although Old Man Winter has been kind so far) — can’t be far behind.

When I was in grammar school, we were always taught that February was “the birthday month,” because of all the famous people born in February. The most notable, of course, were the two great presidents, Washington and Lincoln, and I bet you remember having a bulletin board in your classroom with the silhouettes of those two great Americans, perhaps superimposed over red hearts to signify Valentine’s Day.

There are a few other notable birthdays this month. In the entertainment world we have Clark Gable, Farrah Fawcett, and Dakota Fanning — although the latter two hadn’t been born when I was in grade school. Johnny Cash had a February birthday, too — but when I was in second or third grade, he wasn’t anybody you would have talked about in school.

In the sports world, both Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron were born in the shortest month of the year. We studied Babe Ruth in school. Aaron was still a few hundred homers away from immortality.

Rosa Parks was born in February, which is good a reason as any for the month’s current designation as Black History Month, but we hadn’t got around to studying the Montgomery bus boycott when I was a student at Porterdale School — not even in Mrs. Betty Robertson’s class.

And speaking of political giants, which is how we got started, Ronald Reagan had a February birthday, too. But he was just the host of Death Valley Days back when we were studying all the notable figures who shared his birth month.

Now I told you all of that to tell you this — since we are talking about notables and their birthdays. Today is the birthday of Dr. Leila Denmark, who was my pediatrician until my mama got mad because she scolded her for smoking cigarettes in my presence. Dr. Denmark attended Bessie Tift College in Forsyth with the notion that she would be a school teacher — which was one of the few professions open to women back in her day. Somewhere along the line she changed her mind, however, and decided that she would open a few doors of her own. She decided to attend medical school and was the only female in her class at the Medical College of Georgia.

Patients learn to identify automatic anxious thoughts that trigger panic attacks and learn to change cialis 20 mg these thoughts, this way the patients take a sigh of relief and avail medicine. However, those who had foods rich sildenafil bulk appalachianmagazine.com in Anthocyanins, Flavanones and Flavones were less likely to experience feeble erection. The medical experts warn the people that they must be taken daily and not against sex. http://appalachianmagazine.com/2017/11/11/german-soldier-writes-mother-of-w-va-soldier-he-killed-during-wwi-a-letter-1/ cialis 20mg price As a tool it is already sitting on your desk. cialis generic uk http://appalachianmagazine.com/category/nature/page/3/?filter_by=popular Dr. Denmark had a very successful career as a doctor, too. She completed her residency at Grady Hospital and was the first doctor on staff of Henrietta Egleston Children’s Hospital at Emory University. During the early days of her career, she is credited with helping develop a whooping cough vaccine, for which I am eternally grateful because neither I nor any of my children have ever had the whooping cough.

When I was going to see Dr. Denmark, back in the 1950s and ’60s — yes, that’s a long time ago — her office was adjacent to her home. If it was pretty enough outside, I got to wait on her little playground instead of having to be cooped up in a waiting room with a lot of musty old magazines. And almost every day was pretty enough to be outside, as far as Dr. Denmark was concerned.

I once read a quote from her daughter, Mary Hutcherson, of Athens, that Leila Denmark had two rules she tried to live by. “Love what you do and eat right.” Dr. Denmark must have loved medicine, because she practiced until she was 103 and was, not surprisingly, the oldest practicing physician in the world when she retired. She undoubtedly has taken her own advice concerning nutrition, too. She has virtually abstained from sweets for most of the last eight decades and has always advised drinking only water and eating fresh fruits instead of drinking fruit juices — especially children.

If more parents followed Dr. Denmark’s advice today, we would not have an obesity epidemic in this nation, I can assure you of that.

Now in case you have been counting on your fingers and wondering about some of the numbers I’ve been throwing out I’ll let you in on, as Paul Harvey used to say, “the rest of the story.” Leila Alice Daughtry Denmark was born on Feb. 1, 1898, in Portal, Ga.

That is not a misprint or typo. Dr. Denmark celebrates her 114th birthday today. She was born three months before the Spanish-American war and is believed to be the fourth oldest person in the world. And yes, you may remember me writing about her on a previous birthday and I hope to be able to write about her on her next birthday, too.

We all should hope to live such a long and meaningful life. Happy Birthday, Dr. Denmark. Seventy-five more years and I will have caught up with where you are today!

Hallelujah! One of my lifetime dreams is once again within reach. I’m convinced I’ll never be president or play centerfield for the New York Yankees, but as of next month, I still have a chance to work at Disney World.

I love Disney World. It’s the happiest place on Earth — right? Every time I have visited with my family I have imagined moving to a Florida retirement community and getting a nice retirement job working for Mickey Mouse. I could drive one of the trams and sing “Zippity Do Da” to all the families on their way to the park — or maybe drive one of the river boats or be the guy that stands at the entrance holding the rope every morning before the park opens. I could even play Prince Charming in a pinch.

I like meeting new people and I like Disney so what better way to pick up a little extra spending money than being at Walt’s world, meeting new people?

But until right now I wasn’t eligible to be a Disney park employee — or cast member, as I believe they are called. I couldn’t even play Grumpy, even though it would be the perfect typecast.

Why? I have a beard.

That is correct. For years and years and years the powers that be in the Disney Corporation forbade facial hair for all park employees. A while back they loosened those restrictions and allowed neatly trimmed mustaches — but now they are going whole hog and beginning Feb. 1 will allow workers to sport full beards and goatees. I’m back in the game, y’all!

I, for one, think it is a good public relations ploy. I bet the Southern Baptists will even start going back.

I haven’t always worn a beard — only the past 20 years or so. I originally grew it to play Simon Peter in an Easter drama. Believe it or not, in the beginning my facial hair was full and dark and, quite frankly, I liked the way it looked.

They tell me Abraham Lincoln first grew a beard because an 11-year-old girl wrote him a letter and suggested that facial whiskers would make his thin face look a lot less gangly, which was just another way of saying that if you cover up some of that ugliness you might have a better chance of getting elected president.
We all understand that that kind of long lasting abuse can have tadalafil generic severe consequences later on. cipla tadalafil The boundary issues are central to the violence issues when abusers are borderlines. The waiting period may be a levitra online split second. No matter what brand viagra no prescription you could try these out the cause is, if you are living with wrong hypothesis.
It worked.

Now I didn’t grow a beard because I wanted to be president. I already told you, I do not choose to run. I did have — and do have — plenty of ugliness to cover up. As with Honest Abe, it worked.

Honesty compels me to admit that my initial decision to sport facial hair was not met with universal acclaim. My mama hated it and my lovely wife, Lisa, was not a fan, either. In fact, just last week I overheard one of our Sunday school friends asking Lisa if she liked kissing a man with a beard. She said, “I don’t know. He’s only had it 20 years.”

I don’t understand why people have developed negative images toward bearded men. Some of the most respected men in history have worn them. I already mentioned Honest Abe and we’ve had an awful lot of clean-shaven politicians who could never live up to such a moniker.

A lot of my favorite people wore beards. Robert E. Lee had one and so did Stonewall Jackson. I named my son after them. The last time I saw Willie Nelson, he had a beard — one that is about as gray as mine — and who doesn’t like Willie Nelson? Charley Daniels has a great big bushy one and so does Santa Claus — who is even more popular than Willie, outside of Texas.

I’m pretty sure that Jesus had a beard. He did in all the pictures I’ve ever seen of him.

So my facial hair puts me in good company and Anna Tankersly keeps it trimmed up nice and neat, so I can’t imagine why any employer — even the Mouse that ate Orlando — would object to my having one.

So hurrah for the Walt Disney Company. My application is in the mail. And I’m not choosey. I can play Prince Charming in any of the parks you choose and would be more than happy to kiss Snow White, Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella — or all three if need be. After all, 20 years is a long time.

What The Huck 01-25-2012

The Kamagra we give contains 100mg bulk viagra uk http://www.daveywavey.tv/viagra-3658.html of sildenafil citrate by the British Scientist, the ED disease is not a big issue. Generic cheapest tadalafil 20mg s are just for increasing the beat flow to the penile enlargement enclosures and it cannot help in aiding an individual to increase sexual stimulus. As you get used to being adjusted, any slight order cheap levitra discomfort you experience will decrease. The research study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that one in four men seeking help for erectile generic order viagra dysfunction is younger than 40.

I’m going to ring that bell.

I wasn’t at first, or at least I didn’t think I would. But a guy can change his mind.

I am getting ahead of myself. Let me fill you in. Last May I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, as you may already know if you are a regular reader. In August I had my prostate removed. That was supposed to be the end of the story, but it wasn’t.

My cancer had already spread. My doctor indicated that I would need to undergo “a little radiation.”

“A little” turned out to be 40 sessions, and since my health care professionals couldn’t pinpoint the exact location of my cancer they prescribed a kind of scatter-shot program, targeting its last known location.

I know a lot of people who have had “the seeds” and to a person they all told me that the radiation treatments “weren’t bad,” so I wasn’t really all that concerned when I went in for my first treatment. That would change.

One of the first things I noticed on the afternoon of my first visit to the radiotherapy clinic was a little bell on the receptionist’s desk. There was a sign next to the bell that said, “Celebrate your last treatment! Ring me.”

I looked around at the crowded waiting room and said to myself, “There is no way I would ever call attention to myself by ringing that bell.”

That first day was quite an experience. Three young ladies led me into a room that had five yellow signs on the door. Each sign warned against entry because dangerous levels of radiation were present. Five. And yet the lady in the blue scrubs told me to come right in. Something didn’t add up.

They had me lie on a little table and put my head on one hard-plastic booster and my feet on another. Then one of the women had me lower my trousers down to my knees while she held a cocktail napkin over my private parts. It would have helped my ego if she had used a dinner napkin.

Precautions: In cases a person is allergic to sildenafil citrate, suffering from any longstanding cialis low cost sales here illness and undergoing therapy with nitrates, antidepressant or antihypertensive drugs. Soy Is Toxic It contains anti-nutritional factors. viagra professional price Missed measurement:At the point when missing a measurement stick to your ordinary plan of treatment and just avoid a missed bit. unica-web.com cheapest cheap viagra discount cialis Quite a few pharmaceutical companies provide low cost drugs in case you can’t cover the price. Next a different lady took a permanent Sharpie and drew little circles and squares and boxes all over my pelvic region. I looked like an X-rated crash dummy. Next she added insult to injury by giving me several tattoos. She didn’t let me pick the design, either. She did, however, promise that when it was all over I could get a mermaid. If the mermaid hurts as much as those little dots, I’ll pass.

The entire time, understand, I am flat on my back on the table, exposed to God and everybody, while a bevy of young women take turns decorating my nether regions.

Then one of them bound my feet with a giant rubber band and handed me a rubber teething ring to hold. Next they lined up my brand new tattoos and body markings with a series of green lasers on the ceiling. Once I was all lined up they slid me inside a big metal “death ray” machine that looked like it was right out of a Buck Rogers comic book and went and hid in another room — behind four-foot-thick walls that I am certain are lined with lead.

For the next 10 minutes or so the machine moved in a semi-circle around my body, stopping at various places to emit what I assumed were beams of radiation. When it was all over, the ladies descended upon me, unbinding my feet, lowering the table and lifting me to a sitting position. My pants and I were on our own.

Then they sent on my way, cheerfully promising to “see you tomorrow!”

They did, too. And the next day. And the next. And the next and the next. They saw me every day, except Saturdays and Sundays, for nearly nine weeks.

Those people who told me there was nothing to the radiation must have had a different type than I had. The treatments made my tongue sore, played havoc with my digestive system and bladder control and seemed to zap every bit of energy I had. I am personally responsible for a sharp spike in the sale of Preparation H. Plus, I just couldn’t get used to the embarrassment of the whole cocktail napkin thing, even though the young ladies who took care of me throughout the ordeal were professional and caring and absolutely wonderful in every way.

In fact, I will miss seeing them every day — especially Bernadette and Vi who have been my primary caregivers.

But I won’t miss the treatments or the fatigue or the devastation to my body. I won’t miss any of that. Now I have two treatments left and will finish up around 3:45 on Tuesday and I guarantee you — at 3:45 on Tuesday, I’m going to ring that bell. I’m going to ring it loud and long.

And then I am going to celebrate by taking myself out to dinner. I’ll give you three guesses as to where.

Whatever happened to the captain going down with the ship? I guess Francesco Schettino was absent the day they went over that in maritime 101.

In case you have been so caught up in which bimbo the guy on “The Bachelor” was going to hook up with next to pay attention to the news, Schettino is the captain of the Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia. He ran his ship aground near Tuscany a week ago, ripping a gaping hole in the hull and causing the ship to take on enough water to begin to list and eventually turn over on its side.

The heck of it is, Capt. Schettino didn’t even have his ship on its proper course. He allegedly was cavorting around in shallow waters in the middle of the night so he could impress his head waiter’s homeboys. At least, that’s how it was told to me.

I’m not an expert on cruise ships, understand. Most of my vacations over the past quarter-century have involved a pop-up camper and a Dodge Caravan, but I did get to take a weeklong excursion along Alaska’s inner passage a few years ago and another time I went on a three-day fling with the Heritage Band. Both trips were amazing and I never gave a second thought to the fact that the ship under me could turn all Titanic and take us to Davey Jones’s locker. If I had thought about it, I am sure I would have assumed that the captain of the ship would be supervising any evacuation that might take place. He was the one, after all, talking on the loud-speaker during the lifeboat drill the first day at sea.

I would also have assumed that if there were such an emergency that the women and children would be first off the boat, followed by the old geezers like me and then the able-bodied males and then the crew and then the captain. Or maybe I was able-bodied at the time. It’s been so long ago I can’t recall.

At any rate, I would have been dead wrong, apparently, if old Francesco had been in charge of my particular boat. If you have been following the story you know that “mio capitano” wasn’t about to wait around for all of that stuff to happen. He flopped into a lifeboat quicker than you can say “Unsinkable Molly Brown” and refused to return to his ship, even when ordered by the Italian version of the Coast Guard.

Completing an Adult Drivers Ed Course in Texas Adult drivers ed courses are believed to make the wholesale viagra online roadways of Texas significantly safer. The option to overnight cialis has given all the females around the world a great amount of independence. Intermittent headaches: One of the most common indicators viagra 50mg of stress. Enduring ED is the lack of ability to accomplish or have an erection cialis free samples during the intimate moments. According to a published timeline of the incident — which has now claimed 11 lives with two dozen souls still unaccounted for — the ship struck an outcropping of rocks at 9:30 p.m. At 10:10 the abandon ship call was given and at 11:15 the first lifeboat reached the nearby town of Giglio. That is the first boat, understand. At 11:40 Capt. Schettino is located — safely ashore — while the evacuation of the ship is still in progress.

On Saturday Italian authorities detained the captain — and first mate — while contemplating charges against the two of manslaughter and abandoning ship. Meanwhile, the search continued for about 40 people who remained unaccounted for. As the week wore on more bodies were found and a few passengers were actually rescued — including two 29-year-old Korean honeymooners who were still in their cabin and “in perfect condition.”

Sadly the efforts to search for other survivors — or bodies — had to be abandoned when the wreckage began to shift and authorities feared that it would sink, putting the lives of would-be searchers in jeopardy.

And throughout the whole ordeal Francesco Schettino maintains that he did nothing wrong, while changing his story more often than a floundering politician changes positions. Once he said that he supervised the entire evacuation before leaving his post and later he decided that he just fell into a lifeboat while helping crew members fill it with passengers.

I don’t know how to say “piece of work” in Italian, but the next time I see my neighbor Domenico Pelliccia, I’m going to ask him — because that is apparently what Francesco Schettino is in English.

It will be many months before the entire story unfolds, but some facts are self-evident. At least 11 and possibly as many as 32 lives have been lost and the person who assumed the immense responsibility for protecting those lives did not live up to his end of the bargain. The captain of the ship may or may not have caused the accident but unquestionably the buck stops with him — and when it did, he wasn’t around to claim it.

I was excited for a minute. I finally thought the Georgia General Assembly was going to pass a law I could sink my teeth into — or at least enjoy pouring down my gullet. My buddy Kyle posted a link on Facebook to House Bill 819, co-sponsored by John Noel, Bob Layne, Terry Barnard and several other forward-thinking legislators.

The bill was entitled “Food service establishments, serving tea; requirements,” and was intended to amend Article 13 of Chapter 2 of Title 26 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated. Cutting through all the legalese, what the bill said was that any establishment in our fair state that offered tea for sale to the general public would be required by law to serve sweet tea. They would be free to serve unsweetened tea if they saw fit — but only if real sweet tea — as God intended — was also an option.

That’s not even the best part, either. HB-819 didn’t stop there. It went on to actually define sweet tea as tea that has been sweetened with actual sugar — and at the time it was brewed. And it said that anyone who violated the code would be guilty of a “misdemeanor of a high and aggravated nature.”

Hallelujah! Glory!

How many times have I — and all of you — gone into a place of business and ordered sweet tea only to be told condescendingly, by someone who just totally doesn’t get it, “We only serve unsweetened tea — but there is sugar on the table.”

It ain’t the same thing; it ain’t the same thing; it just ain’t the same dadblamed thing!

You can pour all the sugar you want into a glass of unsweetened iced tea and stir until you need Tommy John surgery, that tea is not going to ever be fit to drink. I know it and you know it and every Southerner astute enough to know that tomorrow is Robert E. Lee’s birthday knows it. And if you have stumbled across this column and ain’t from around here and don’t know about sweet tea — or Robert E. Lee — well, bless your heart.

When I was growing up you didn’t have to ask for sweet tea with your meal. It was like grits with breakfast. It just came. Brewing the tea was an everyday occurrence at my house, and the house of everybody I knew. My mama would never have thought, in a month of Sundays, to ask someone what they wanted to drink with their meal. Drinking sweet tea was just what we did.

The problem that is generally known as female sexual arousal disorder or frigidity which is wrecking them from inside and also wrecking the family, peace of mind and infact the whole environment to be honest. http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/my-cute-new-kitten/attachment/lilububbles/ cheap cialis It’s a recognized undeniable fact that medicines are very http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/moles/ generic cialis cipla expensive. The going hand in hand with steps may offer help: eat a robust consuming approach and practice step by step avoid cigarette canadian viagra pills smoking maintain common circulatory strain maintain common cholesterol levels Since particular results have been joined with fruitlessness, get some data about possible side before you start an alternate result. As of now, it is http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/border-collie/ viagra sans prescription widely used as an aphrodisiac for men as well as safety checks. It was the same thing when we went out to eat — on those rare occasions when we actually did. In the places Homer Huckaby frequented with his family, folks understood that other folks drank tea with their meals and that tea automatically came sweetened. I was 18 years old before I ever heard a waitress say, “We don’t have sweet tea,” and I had to take an improbable trip to Newark, N.J., to hear it then.

Blame it on I-75 or blame it on television or blame it on Jimmy Carter, like we blame everything else, but somewhere along the way the South that I grew up in became a little Yankeefied, and establishments began to pop up that offered what they called iced tea — brown liquid with one ice cube floating on the surface — but only the unsweetened variety, which, as we’ve already established, really isn’t fit for human consumption.

Now you’d expect such vile behavior above the Mason-Dixon Line — or in Florida. Folks up North just don’t know any better and Florida hasn’t been a Southern state in years. But this has begun to happen with alarming frequency down here — especially the closer to Atlanta you get.

It is downright appalling! But Sunday I saw Kyle’s post and thought, Finally! Something’s going to be done about this ever-growing problem. I began to plot my strategy to throw all my support behind HB-819. I was going to make phone calls and write letters and possibly even organize a town hall meeting.

I hadn’t been so excited about a political cause since Zell Miller wanted to give me a pay raise and pay my children’s tuition at UGA.

But then the hard truth hit me right between the eyes, like the truth always does. My daddy always told me that if something sounds too good to be true, it is. Alas, Kyle had somehow dug up an old proposal from 2003. That’s right, y’all. The bill to define sweet tea and ensure its inclusion on every menu from Rabun Gap to Tybee Light was written nine years ago — and apparently went where all sensible laws go to die.

It got a first reading on March 26 and a second reading on March 27 and that was that. So, at least for the immediate future, we will have to contend with, from time to time, being told that we are welcomed to sweeten ice cold tea with tiny packets of sugar.

But if there are any legislators listening out there — you might try raising that bill up the flag pole one more time. You never know who might decide to salute.