Letter to the Editor: Bait-and-switch on Putnam BOC?

Dear Editor,At its Feb. 7 meeting (10 a.m.), the Putnam County Board of Commissioners (BOC) will vote on approving an agreement between the Putnam Development Authority (PDA) and a developer, Harmony Road, LLC, which could cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

Rich: My cousin

It was a simple gesture.Probably meaningless to anyone but me.We were at the funeral home, celebrating the well-lived, godly life of our Aunt Kathleen. Tink and I were seated on the sofa near her beautiful casket when my cousin, Wanda, plopped down in my lap and threw her arm around me.

Yarbrough: Some facts of life for a new great-grandson

Dear Samuel Knox Wansley:Who are you, and who am I? The answer is that you are the family's youngest member, still awaiting your first birthday, and I am your great-grandfather who doesn’t have that many birthdays left ahead. So, we should have this conversation while I can still write it down.

Crane: What’s the deal with Greenland?

I recall the factoid from high school geography that Iceland was purposefully deceptively named and is quite green. Greenland is essentially a massive slab of ice, though not quite as icy as it used to be. But more on less ice later.

Letter to the Editor: Will of the people?

Editor’s note: Letters to the Editor from our readership are always encouraged; however, Smith Communications, Inc.

Rich: The wedding gift

It was a wedding gift. We never knew from whom it came, even after all these years.I just opened the front door, and a quart jar of clear liquid sat there. My first thought was that it was water.Then I saw the note. “Congratulations on your marriage. Have a toast, from a friend.

Tocher: A Canadian’s concern over U.S. expansionism

When I was two years old, my parents brought me and my six-month-old sister from Scotland to Canada. Late in 1997, I moved to Atlanta with my then-new, U.S.-born wife, and 20 years later, I finally officially became a U.S. citizen.

Ridings: Local newspapers provide reliable perspective

Meta’s recent decision to replace third-party fact-checking with a crowdsourced system called “Community Notes” further highlights the importance of local newspapers in providing reliable, vetted information to their communities.

Yarbrough: Swapping one problem for another at Okefenokee?

While some things may change, others seem not to. I am talking about the efforts to drag-mine our Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge for titanium dioxide so mankind never runs short of toothpaste whitener.

Rich: Fried baloney sandwiches

It happened in Kentucky a while back.Perhaps 13 years. The name of the small town in which we stopped escapes me completely, but that does not matter in the story.I was on a three-day, three-town speaking tour with Kentucky’s first female governor, Martha Layne Collins.