November 2008

It's a good day to look at the "Good, the Bad and the Ugly" of our journalism competition.

The good goes to the weekly Observer for a touching story on a local man who lit up Christmas spirits for many years. The bad goes to NSBshadow.com for its bad to the bone story on Clay Henderson and his telephone conversations with City Commissioner Randy Richenberg and the ugly to the Daytona Beach News-Journal for its two days-late, 75 cents too-much story on an elderly woman rescued by deputies.

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- Two years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Hirem Desai became an American citizen. The bloodshed in his native India over the last several days has reinforced his belief that terrorism can happen at any time and any place.

Desai, who works as a cashier at the Marathon gas station on North Dixie Freeway, has been heartbroken over the carnage that claimed nearly 200 lives in Mumbai -- a half dozen Americans.

The world is not big enough for terrorism to hit home, Desai said. "It's bad and getting worse," said the 27-year-old native of Braruch, 200 miles south of Mumbai, India's largest city. Now a resident of South Daytona, he added, "I feel bad for everybody."

NEW SMYRNA BEACH -- An 84-year-old woman was found Thanksgiving Day living in deplorable conditions in a home near New Smyrna Beach along with about 50 cats, 15 turkeys, 20 ducks and a dog, Volusia Sheriff's spokesman Brandon Haught said, adding deputies learned she had apparently been living in the home against her will, having been set up there by her daughter.

All schoolchildren are taught that the pilgrims had a hard time surviving at Plymouth, but managed to pull through and survive. What they are rarely taught is that the pilgrims made their initial life in the new world unnecessarily difficult. They invented agricultural socialism and tried to live by it.

The pilgrims were supposed to till community farm lands and put the fruits of their labor in a common store house. Everyone was then supposed to be fed from the common storehouse. Nobody had a plot of farm-able land to call his own and no one had any food stuffs that they could call their own other than what was doled out to them.

This is the season of Thanksgiving. Not just the day, but the season. As Americans, we rarely see people walking around giving thanks for everything we possess and enjoy in this wonderful land: Freedom of speech, freedom to own land, freedom to drive a car, freedom to have a job and earn money and freedom not to work.

All these freedoms come as a right granted to us by the Constitution of the United States of America .

I challenge anyone who is unhappy with the way we live in America to visit a third world country and experience first-hand poverty, rule by authoritarian leaders, the lack of food to feed one’s family. I could go on and on with the list.

Rather than beat this point to death, let’s talk about what it takes to please God for the many blessings we are granted here in the good ole’ U.S.A.

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