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Here's to a newsy 2009! |
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Mountain
Musings
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| By Ann Dickerson
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Big Canoe resident Chuck Gordon is giving himself one of the best Christmas presents in the world, a truly priceless gift that is guaranteed to be coveted by nearly all the loved ones on your shopping list.
What is the one item many of us yearn to possess, yet can’t buy anywhere?
Time. Time to read, garden, learn a new language, play golf, hike, and well, you get the picture.
By stepping down after four years from his volunteer position of executive editor of Smoke Signals, Chuck will now have a little more time to hang out with the grandchildren, tend to his banking business and cross off items on Linda Lee’s honey-do list.
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Don’t mess with Christmas |
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Sometimes it seems to me that Christmas is in danger. Christmas is a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Christ, but we seem to hear less and less about
One Moment
Please...
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| By Chalmers Holmes
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Christ at Christmas. What we hear about is sales and profits for department stores. Make a purchase at one of them and you are not likely to hear, “Merry Christmas” from the clerk.
Christmas can easily become a Christ-less holiday.
Hall Luccock of Yale University once considered this and took a different look at the Wise Men of the Christmas story.
Suppose, he said, that the Wise Men came not from the Eeast but from the West.
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We need operating audit of POA |
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For What
It's Worth
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By Jim Owens
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Several years ago a blue ribbon panel of Big Canoe property owners was requested by the POA to study its financial status including trends. One crucial prediction of the group was that by sometime between the years 2007-2010 the anticipated operating expenses of the POA would exceed anticipated operating revenues absent a major change in its course by the POA in the interim.
Since then the revenue for the usual arrival each year of new property owners has all but ceased. On the other hand expenditures have continued to climb. For example, from about 2001 to 2008 the POA has spent over 16 million dollars for capital improvements. Without questioning the necessity of such expenditures, the POA now estimates that our long-term debt will exceed 9 million dollars at the end of this year. Servicing that amount of debt will require over $700,000 a year.
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We have come a long way since then |
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| Et cetera |
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| By Bennett Whipple
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I watched them from an open window in the clerk’s office in the county
court house in my middle Georgia hometown. It was Election Day and my
father was chairman of the county’s Democratic Party and running the
primary election. I liked to hang around.
I remember it well and I think about it from time to time. It came to
mind recently on that day in early November when a black man was
elected President of the United States of America.
Times were beginning to change and they had asked for permission to
cast their ballots in the court house instead of the neighborhood
voting place for blacks, and he had agreed to their request.
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Desperate times call for thanksgiving |
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Mountain
Musings
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| By Ann Dickerson
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There is much gloom and doom these days about the economy. The housing bubble has burst, the stock market has been rising - but mostly falling - like a rollercoaster and retailers are deathly afraid that skittish consumers will give handmade knitted scarves and cross-stitched pillows for their holiday gifts this year, instead of brand-name sweaters and the newest MP3 players.
As stock portfolios have fallen, those nearing retirement age have decided to keep working, though that's not an option for thousands of Americans who have been laid off as the economy has slowed. Many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck and when the paycheck goes, so goes the house, the car, even - gasp - the Tivo.
Our pastor last week noted that "we are living in desperate times."
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Community News 
