Oh my aching back hopefully will soon be a thing of the past. Hurrah. I’ve been putting up with pinched nerves in my spine far too long. After months, actually several years, of conservative measures — exercise and yoga, physical therapy and you name it — I finally took the doctor’s advice and had injections in my spine. “Temporary?” I questioned the physician. “Life,” he replied, “is temporary.”
This issue hasn’t consumed all our attention this week. What took center stage was the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. The proceedings were not only unusual but controversial and comical at times. What else can you expect from a showman like Donald Trump? Now he is the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.
The national media is having a heyday, but they have been since Trump announced his candidacy and it just gets more involved and there will be much more controversy before the general election in November.
Now Trump’s poor wife Melania is feeling the pain of being in the spotlight mainly because of her speech Monday night that incorporated parts or phrases of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech. Melania made a good presentation, and she looked sensational. How can she miss? She’s a former New York model. I thought her dress was too tight though. Oh well.
Shouts of plagiarism were heard worldwide following Mrs. Trump’s remarks because of the similar remarks in Mrs. Obama’s that the Trump campaign folks are calling “mistakes.” Anyone from school students to journalists know copying someone else’s work is a “no-no.”
As a former reporter for this newspaper reporting hard news for many years I was very careful to get all the facts correct. And I certainly never committed plagiarism. Former newspaper publisher and owner Billy Blair, now retired, lectured on the subject and get your facts right. There were times he and the late Rudy Hayes, managing editor, questioned one of my pieces before it went to press. I am very thankful to have experienced the guidance and good advice from these fine and respected journalists and my mentors. I learned in J-school
at UGA to check and double check sources, and especially quotes. I made it a daily practice and I still do.
Now, that the RNC is a thing of the past, let’s get ready for next week’s Democratic National Convention. I can’t wait. Bruce and I will be front row center in front the television screen.
Out and about: Let’s greet Anna Gail Hammack’s baby sister, Elizabeth Kathryn, into the Hammack-Hooks family circle as well as to the rest of the world. “Libby Kate,” as her parent’s Nathan and MaryAnn Hooks Hammack say she’ll be called, was born Monday afternoon. Libby Kate is the granddaughter of Sen. George Hooks, Americus, and Mike and Connie Hammack, Ellaville. Sissy Dudley Ledbetter, presently of Thomasville, visited her dad, Gatewood Dudley, M.D. last weekend. And I enjoyed seeing Jack and Delores Chappell at Mr. Brown’s Farm Market near Montezuma where I wanted to pick zinnias and sunflowers to bring home, but it was blazing hot so I passed up that good opportunity. However, Karen Austin didn’t. She took big buckets filled to the brim with these colorful blooms as well as a cooler iced down with Brown’s peach ice cream to her sister, Beth Nellis in Highlands, N.C., who
she visited last week, going especially for the annual Highlands Flower Show. Karen and her sister served the ice cream at a dinner party they hosted honoring well-known floral designer and author Ron Morgan of Oakland, California, and Sylvia Sylvester of Birmingham, also a floral designer. Morgan was featured speaker at a luncheon program at the Highlands Country Club sponsored by the club’s garden club. Jerry Crisp of Americus also was among the guests. A few weeks ago, Karen and Beth spent five days in Newport, Rhode Island, traveling with members of the Highlands Country Club Garden Club, to attend the Newport Flower Show. Karen said it was outstanding. They toured private homes and gardens, dined at the New York Yacht Club and at one of the Vanderbilt mansions. Elsewhere, Chet and Mary Ann Crowley hosted the long-established Wine-Tasters Club, along with other friends and neighbors at their lovely ante-bellum home last Sunday, where everyone enjoyed their gourmet talents. There, I enjoyed chatting with Henry and Nancy Peabody who are home from the mountains. Malcolm Argo tells me he is batching it while his wife, Phyllis Argo, is in Maine; and we enjoyed hearing Donna and David Minich discuss the baby chickens she is raising. Why? The eggs, of course. Meanwhile, Livvy Barry turned five years old this week vacationing with her mom Christy Barry and grandmother Laura Faircloth at Panama City. Other family members helping Livvy blow out the candles on her cake were Laura’s sister, Denise Burgess, her daughter and son-in-law, Heather and Micah Simpson, their son Daniel and Hollie Burgess.

Leila Sisson Case lives in Americus.