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Buford museum preserving memories of bygone days
By Lynn Bowman
Custodian, Museum of Buford
Special to GwinnettForum.com

BUFORD, Ga., March 23, 2007 -- There are exciting things happening for the Museum of Buford. You may have heard mention of this Museum. You may know little about us. Do not be confused with the now-closed Lanier Museum of Natural History. Before I tell you about the "new" of the Museum, I should probably tell you about the "old."

In 1984, a group of artists started coming to Buford. Included in that group were the co- founders of the Museum, Randy Wood and Sandy Sumner. They opened the first art gallery, "Distinctive Collections" at 9 East Main Street. In the years to follow, many businesses to Main Street, began to transition away or close their doors. Randy and Sandy had the foresight to start collecting and preserving Buford memorabilia. In 1986, they started displaying artifacts in one corner of their art gallery.

In 1987, David Mabry and Pat Garner contributed items and tools of their fathers to jumpstart the collection. John Johnson soon added to the collection with hand tools, work bench, dies, patterns, and stamps he used from 1932- 1965 working for Bona Allen to give a more complete look into the talent of making hand carved saddles.

Then, in 1988, Larry Bailey donated an extensive collection of memorabilia from the Bona Allen Shoemakers, Buford's own semi-pro baseball national champions. This included photographs and trophies, among them the National Baseball Congress World Series Trophy and the 1940 Denver Post Semi-Pro Championship Trophy.

In 2005, I agreed to continue the tradition of the Museum and became the custodian of the collection.

On March 30, the Museum will launch its new interactive web site with over 100 historic photos, a comprehensive history, related links to Buford, and a Museum store for items of interest. The new site will allow visitors to view slide shows revealing vintage photos that may have never been published before from our extensive collection. Many of these images are too fragile to be displayed on a daily basis, and the electronic files make a perfect way for us to share our heritage beyond our physical location.

This new site has been in the works for over six months and would not have been possible without the aide of Buford High School, Debbie Valdez, and three outstanding students, Anna Cleveland, Britton Thomas and Shelby Dasher.

The Museum is also expanding into the fine arts. "Buford Artists - Past and Present" came about from the growing artist colony that has been present in Buford since the mid 1980's.

We also have in our collection work of two self-taught early artists, William Bell and Cecil Ramsey. Bell painted fantasy landscapes, usually complete with a mountain range and waterfall, and sold his works along Buford Highway between Flowery Branch and Buford during the 1940's-60's. Ramsey was born in Atlanta and moved to Buford at an early age. He was seen all over town pulling behind him a skate that he referred to affectionately as his little brother. He painted almost any subject matter, but he was best known for painting the murals within the Shadburn Office Building, which operated as a restaurant during the late 1970's and early 1980's as The Tannery.

We invite you to visit us at the Museum of Buford, either at our downtown location on Saturdays between 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. or anytime on the web at www.museumofbuford.com. If you have a special group or event, you may contact me, at 770-616-6318 for a private showing. Admission has always been, and remains free. Come see the "new" and "old" in Buford.

Legislature drags on even while hearing concealed gun bill
By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher
GwinnettForum.com

MARCH 23, 2007 -- With it marching toward the end of March, you could be feeling some relief that the Georgia General Assembly might be completing its annual session soon.

But no! We hear that this year's session of the legislative may run until about the end of April.

While the session usually ends well before April, lately these gathering have been getting longer and longer. Now don't go blaming the new party in power, the Republicans, for doing this, though they are the party in charge, and will determine how long the session will actually sit.

For it was the Democrats years ago who started maneuvering around the Georgia law which limits the Legislature to 40 days in session, something which the state had the good sense to write into its rules. Wanting to stall for more time, the Democrats started taking "recesses." What this did was stay within the law for the actual days in session, when in reality having only committee meetings during these days off, while technically the entire Legislature was not in formal session. It still was a sneaky way to get around the Georgia law.

Such a maneuver also allows the lobbyists to peddle their wares, trying to influence legislation. It primarily was more of a extended marathon, giving the lobbyists time to bend the legislative ear more before they actually returned in full session to determine pending bills. Such recesses, while intended for good causes, are still getting around the intention of the limit of the session to 40 days. They do nothing but produce more costly and extensive government, and are not something the legislators do to complete the session with dispatch.

If Republicans don't watch it, we won't be able to tell them much from the ways the Democrats ran the state for years.

Of all the proposals the Legislature is talking about this year, many of them are quite questionable, the one that worries us the most is House Bill 89, which would change Georgia law to allow the concealment of a firearm anywhere inside a car

To show you the extent of this bill, if passed, Georgia would become the only state in the area where motorists could hide guns anywhere inside a car.

Even if you are against gun control per se, do you really want to give Georgians the right to have concealed weapons in their automobiles?

Think of all the crazies driving automobiles, many from time to time who become violent with road rage! On top of that the Legislature is considering allowing a person to have a concealed weapon in the car, and it be legal? (It already allows a loaded gun in the glove compartment.) Who's to know when one of these nuts whips out a gun because of some perceived wrong done him by a driver who might be (1) talking on a cell phone and not paying attention; or (2) cutting in front of him (even to avoid something in the road); or (3) committing some other perceived transgression at no fault of his own?

What will our legislators to do with this when this Road Rager whips out a concealed pistol (or even shotgun) and fires away at the unsuspecting driver? Why endanger you, me, and all the rest of drivers in Georgia with this proposed legislation?

We will be in luck if the Legislature will adjourn before such legislation becomes law. Yet it is not a good feeling to be hoping for the "ifs" to get bad legislation defeated.

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Nice to read your latest newsletter regarding the news about adding bridges to Georgia Highway 316 at Collins Hill and Georgia Highways 20/124 intersections. Having lived in Dacula over nine years, the traffic on Route 316 has gone from bad to worse and the feeder roads around these two intersections are becoming clogged with people trying to avoid the intersections.

I would invite anybody from the Georgia Assembly to come visit Gwinnett County at 4:30-7 p.m. Monday to Friday. They'll get a taste for what we sit through on a daily basis. Recently I came home at 6 p.m. and sat at the intersection of Old Fountain and Old Peachtree for over 20 minutes because of the stop sign at that intersection.

We need somebody to come out to the neighborhood areas of Gwinnett and review the use of stop signs or stop lights, thanks to the dozens of new neighborhoods being built over the last 10 years.

Many of our roads are still little two lane country roads with country town intersections. These need to be upgraded before much longer. The risk is it may soon take 50 percent of our commute time just to get to major roads. The feeder road system in Gwinnett should have been upgraded before the growth of the area, but that's "hind sight 20/20" thinking.

I think the chance of a new local support for taxing authority will benefit Gwinnett if the money can be used properly. We've successfully implemented the SPLOST (Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) for schools and public services. Another one percent should go a long way to correcting intersections around the areas that are developing faster than the local infrastructure will allow.

For heaven's sake, we upgrade the utilities, why not the transportation to allow for these new neighborhoods? We need to fix something now even though it is too late. Cobb County had the right idea years ago with slowing growth by limiting the number of houses per acre. The more cluster homes we can fit into Gwinnett adds an exponential amount of traffic to our roads. When will enough be enough? The DOT is already adding over 25 miles of new lanes in a 4-5 mile stretch at I-85 and Route 316. That should tell us something about our future. We're going to have so many houses in Gwinnett that we can't widen the roads or build more roads to get around while the sun is up.

Gwinnett is way beyond the need for help with the roads. Maybe we'll get some help soon just to get us up to where we should have been 10 plus years ago.

Keep up the great work and information in your GwinnettForum. It is a pleasure reading your information.

As the world prepared to celebrate World Peace Day, Saddam Hussein walked to the gallows in Baghdad. The Americans had handed him over to the Iraqis.

This scene carried with it eerie echoes of another moment in time when another ruler also maneuvered to avoid responsibility for the death of a prisoner. Just as surely as Pilate is remembered for the death of Jesus, so will the United States be remembered for the death of Hussein.

Saddam wore a dark suit, hat, overcoat and leather shoes. He dressed as the head of state that once was supported in his ruthlessness by the very ones who "handed him over" to his death. Hussein had been America's de facto ally in a bloody eight-year war against Khomeini's Iran. The United States provided billion dollar loans, weapons and satellite intelligence. Forever he will be the hero of those who would defy the United States and its own self-righteous religious or chauvinistic tendencies. Just as he went to the gallows, Quran in hand, praising God, expecting glory, so did we go to war, Bible in hand, proclaiming the justice of God.

Defiant to the end, Hussein refused the mask traditionally put over the faces of condemned prisoners. Now he is celebrated across the world as a martyr to U.S. domination.

Fearing reprisal, all his hangmen covered faces to hide their identities. They were not expecting to have flowers strewn at their feet for hanging him.

Hussein was executed on the Muslim feast of Eid ul-Adha which celebrates the deliverance of Ishmael from the sacrifice of Abraham. On this Islamic feast it is customary to release prisoners -- not to execute them.

We invaded Iraq and justified the war on false grounds and now carry on our own backs the burden of injustice: There were no weapons of mass destruction. Iraqis had nothing to do with al Qaeda and had not been breeding terrorists. They did not support the attack on the Twin Towers.

All of those things have been forgotten. We tell ourselves that at least we eliminated a dictator. But with what gains, as the numbers of our dead and wounded climb and theirs skyrocket?

I enjoyed your article on the Gainesville schools. We seriously considered moving there, rather than to the Atlanta area, for that reason. We have been happy with the Gwinnett County Schools, and I'd like to highlight the one where I currently teach reading support to kindergarteners and first graders.

Nesbit Elementary, on Cherokee Drive near the Gwinnett-DeKalb line, has changed from a failing school to one that has achieved "Adequate Yearly Progress" for five years straight. The school has done this despite a 93 percent poverty rate, over 50 percent ESOL students. It has such a transient population that no more than half the students attending Nesbit this year were here last year. The results we have obtained have led principals and administrators from as far away as Pennsylvania to visit us, wondering how we do it.

The answer lies in three things: a. Learning Focused Strategies, a program by which all the teachers are trained in the same, research-backed instructional methods without being handed a word-for-word script and told to follow it; b. structured time for collaboration among teachers; and c. what we call the push-in method. In other words, rather than pulling children out of class for ESOL or other services, the specialists go into classes, working with small groups in cooperation with the classroom teacher. This causes far less disruption and far more continuity of instruction.

I would love to see the "Gainesville model" available in more places. In the meantime, or in addition, I highly recommend the methods used at Nesbit and several other Gwinnett County schools. What's good for struggling students is often good for others as well: structure, high expectations, and plenty of support.

The Georgia Society of Professional Engineers will host the Georgia MATHCOUNTS Competition starting at 8 a.m. Saturday, March 24, at Zoo Atlanta. This is a math enrichment, coaching and competition program for middle school students. In existence for over 23 years, MATHCOUNTS is one of the most successful education partnerships involving middle school students, educators, corporate sponsors and volunteers.

Participants from Gwinnett and their schools will include Daniel Park of Richard Hull; Austin Dong of Trickum; Neil Patel of McConnell; and Luke Richerson of Sweetwater.

Over 200 middle school mathletes from across the state of Georgia have qualified for the state level competition and will attend Saturday, seeking to win a slot on the MATHCOUNTS team that will represent the state of Georgia at the national competition.

Researchers at the American Cancer Society are beginning to enroll 500,000 adults across the United States for its Cancer Prevention Study-3 (CPS-3).

This will build on evidence from three previous studies from the American Cancer Society, the first of which began in the 1950s: Hammond-Horn, CPS-I, and CPS-II, which together have played a major role in the understanding of cancer prevention and contributed significantly to the scientific literature and to the development of public health guidelines and recommendations.

The American Cancer Society estimates that nearly 1.4 million people living in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer in 2006 and that nearly 565,000 will die from the disease. Scientific evidence suggests that about one-third of cancer deaths are related to nutrition, physical inactivity, and overweight or obesity.

The Gwinnett County Relay For Life will be May 11-12 at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds. The Gwinnett County Relay will be one of many sites around the country where individuals can enroll in the new study. The Gwinnett Relay seeks to enroll 1,200 individuals. Researchers are looking for a diverse group of men and women between the ages of 30 and 65 who have never had cancer and are willing to complete a mailed survey every two years during the course of the study, which is expected to continue for several decades.

Jackson Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) has achieved a milestone in its nearly 70 years of operation, adding the 200,000th meter for its member/owners this month.

Randall Pugh, cooperative president/CEO, says: "Jackson EMC serves an area of the state that has been experiencing phenomenal growth, starting with Gwinnett County in the 1990s. It took our cooperative 55 years to reach 100,000 meters from our beginning in 1939, but has taken only 13 years for that membership double in size.

Over the past five years, the cooperative has seen a 22 percent growth in meters served in Hall County, 26 percent in Gwinnett County, 32 percent in Jackson County and 45 percent in Barrow County.

Jackson EMC, headquartered in Jefferson, is the largest retail electric cooperative in Georgia, and among the four largest in the United States.

The physical and mental training for a grueling national triathlon contradicts the soft-spoken, affable personality of Mark Davis of Loganville, but he intends to compete and win competition in Monterey County, Calif., soon.

Davis is a Head Start program specialist with Ninth District Opportunity, which operates Head Start and community action programs in 20 north Georgia counties.

Davis is an experienced athlete who is donating his energies for this to benefit the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Having raised his own scholarship entry fee, Davis says "I will be competing in memory of our loved ones who have lost their battle with cancer." In May, Davis will be swimming 1.2 miles, biking 5.6 miles and running 13 miles to raise funds and awareness for the society

A nine-year veteran of the Head Start program, Davis and his wife have three children and live in Gwinnett County. Additional information about the event is available at Leukemia and Lymphoma Society's website www.teamtraining.org/ga or by calling 678 279-2006

During the first half of the 19th century artists fanned out across the northeastern United States to find aesthetic inspiration in nature. Thomas Addison Richards was one of the few who traveled extensively in the South. Through his paintings, illustrated magazine articles, and guidebooks, Richards introduced the natural beauty and distinct characteristics of this region to a national audience.

Richards was born in London, England in 1820. His family immigrated to America in 1831, moving first to Hudson, N.Y. and then to Charleston, S.C. Around 1837 they settled in the small town of Penfield, Ga., the original site of Mercer University, where Richards's father served as a charter trustee. In 1838 the young Richards left for Augusta, where for the next two years he offered lessons in painting and drawing and contributed travelogues about his rambles around Georgia to the Augusta Mirror, a local literary magazine.

In 1841, sketchbook in hand, he began to travel around the South in search of picturesque scenes. The following year Richards and his brother, William Cary Richards, published Georgia Illustrated, which featured 11 steel engravings after Richards's closely observed topographical drawings. In 1844 Richards settled permanently in New York City, where he gave art lessons from his studio and began taking classes at the National Academy of Design. Many of the paintings he regularly contributed to academy exhibitions were romantic landscapes of the South.

Richards enlivened his travelogues with personal anecdotes, legendary stories, tips on lodging, and engravings after his on-site drawings. Tallulah and Jocasse, a collection of Richards's short stories about the South named for two waterfalls in north Georgia, was published in 1852, and in 1854 a series of engravings after Richards's southern sketches appeared in Romance of American Landscape.

In 1857 Richards married Mary E. Anthony, an author of children's stories. Thereafter, Richards concentrated on teaching and painting. At the National Academy and Brooklyn Art Association he exhibited still lifes and landscapes, often of tranquil southern scenes. Richards died in 1900, in Annapolis, Md.

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