[Editor’s note: Last week, we here at The Citizen said goodbye to one of our family members, Michael Boylan. He is taking over responsibility for producing the content of several local magazines stretching across north Georgia. This is Mike’s last column for The Citizen.]

To the new guy at my (very big) desk:

Over the past week and a half I have been trying to tell you everything I learned in my 14 years at The Citizen. Read More»

I’m Samantha Frazier. This is my first time writing my own personal viewpoint to a large audience. I hope I can do it right.

I’m in seventh grade at Fayette Middle School in Fayetteville. FMS is on the chopping block for the Fayette County school closings.

I’m not going to like it but I’m gonna support the school closings. What people have to understand is that there are things in life that you have to overcome.

I have attended the board meetings on Jan. 28 and Feb. 4 and my view lately is that, logically, it is necessary though it may hurt some communities. Read More»

There’s a story told about a Paris chief of police who was called to a department store to stop a burglary in progress. Upon his arrival, he reconnoitered the situation and ordered his men to surround the entrances of the building next door.

When questioned about his actions, he replied that he didn’t have enough men to cover the department store’s many entrances but he did have enough for the building next door.

Let’s see whether there are similarities between his strategy and today’s gun control strategy. Read More»

Just as Lenin’s body remains on public display in Russia, because one never knows when he might be useful to rally the masses, so, too, does the ghost (but thankfully not the body) of the late Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) remain a useful symbol for Democrats in Washington. Read More»

[Editor’s Note: This is the second installment of a three-part series. It is running over a five-week period rather than three consecutive weeks.]

Thirty notebooks in pristine condition lay about me on the bed in Los Angeles after my husband had surprised me with the diaries of his great-great-grandfather, Charlie Tinker, a White House telegrapher who had been friends with President Abraham Lincoln.

Gingerly, I picked up the wonderments of history and found them to be in exceptional condition as though they were only a few decades old not 150 years in age. Read More»

Answers to your questions about life, religion and the Bible

Pastors get some of the most interesting questions from people they meet and people in their congregations. Here are a few that I have gotten during my years of ministry and for this column.

Dear Father Paul:  I am a Christian, but am concerned that I might have committed “the unpardonable sin.”  What is the unpardonable sin, and what danger is there that I did,  indeed, commit it?
Thank you. — No name please.
Read More»

While visiting family in my Tennessee hometown a couple of decades ago, I decided to take my kids to lunch. I was standing in line in a fast food restaurant when I spotted someone in front of me who looked familiar.

“Margaret?” I said. The woman turned around, saw me, and said, “David!” It had been years since I had seen the person who was my very first high school love. We were an item for the entire freshman year.

After catching up a bit, she asked, “What are you doing now?” I replied that I was a pastor in Georgia. Read More»

For the second time this year, I must venture down into the darkness. While fighting off creatures in our gloomy, musty basement, I shall retrieve my soapbox, dust it off, and stand upon it once again.

Actually, to be honest, The Wife has to get the soapbox while fending off those spider crickets. I still can’t navigate steps too well due to surgery last December. Read More»

The title atop the column in this space two decades ago was, “The rollercoaster ride begins.”

It was my first column in the first issue of this newspaper — Feb. 10, 1993.

Most of the names on that first masthead are gone, including one signally important one — Dave Hamrick, the first managing editor of what was then called The Fayette Citizen.

He died in 2002 at age 51 as he was playing soccer in a local over-40 league, after getting the paper out earlier that Tuesday. After getting the paper out. Read More»

For weeks there has been a weight I have felt regarding our school systems and a fear of what I see taking place in our community.

With the pending decision regarding school closures and our $15-20 million deficit, I don’t think our county has ever faced such a drastic financial and social challenge as this one.

Groups of citizens are threatening and pleading for their schools, which they presume are on the “chopping block.”

Subdivisions are fighting to protect their district borders and keep out others. Read More»