POINT/COUNTERPOINT

First, this news flash from this morning’s Searcy Daily Citizen:

Ruth Fuller selected for Hall of Honor

Jean Ann Bell

“A Renaissance woman is the way I would describe Ruth Garlington Fuller,” said Mary Lou Dunn, director of Searcy Sunshine School. Dunn has been Fuller’s student and her neighbor when she was growing up in Searcy. Dunn will present Fuller as she is posthumously inducted into the Searcy Public Schools Education Foundation third-annual Hall of Honor.Dunn qualified Fuller’s Renaissance characteristics by saying that because she performed such a variety of tasks as a 44-year veteran teacher, she certainly fit into such a category.

Her first year of teaching was in Benton, Ark., in the 1928-29 school year. She then went back to Searcy, where she had attended high school and college at Galloway Women’s College (now Harding University), and taught in the primary and grammar schools. The majority of her teaching career at Searcy, however, was at Searcy High School where she taught biology, chemistry, physics and French.

Fuller was married to John Fuller. While they had no children of their own, they did have several nieces and nephews with whom they maintained a very close relationship. Three of them, Bobby Scott Fuller, Billy Fuller, and Ruth Ann Fuller, will accept the foundation’s auspicious award in memory of their Aunt Ruth.

The posthumous presentation of Fuller will be made at a banquet at the Searcy High School Sullards Annex Cafeteria on Jan. 26, 2006, at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are on sale at the Searcy Public Schools Superintendent’s Office at 801 N. Elm.

The full story may be found at http://www.thedailycitizen.com/articles/2006/01/08/news/local_news/news03.txt

I don’t think there’s a single one of the readers of this site who does not have warm memories of Ruth Fuller. Let’s hear them for next weekend’s follies, what say?

Warren Darden

(Regarding 1/7’s piece on Channel 4 bowing to pressure and dumping “The Book of Daniel” Friday night).

Tom, I think you may have stepped outside the parameters of Searcyyesteryear. Your entry today was a personal matter.

Regarding your comments: First, I think you should go back and think about the statement of the station. Second, maybe YOUR views are in the minority??

I support Channel 4 for their judgment.

Thanks,
Warren (a member of that "very noisy minority")

Tom Pry

Warren, thank you for your expression of opinion, and in such a reasonable tone. This is the kind of thing where a “reasonable tone” is NOT usually the case.

My own comments to the substance of yours: my statements WERE personal, but the issue itself affects all of us. It ended up on Searcy Yesteryear because it happened here in Arkansas, one of three states that seem to be most prone to this kind of errant nonsense (the other two being Utah and Alabama).

It all boils down, you see, to YOU telling ME what I can and cannot watch. This is only one short step away from ME telling YOU what church you can-or-cannot attend, what books you cannot read … get the idea?

This kind of thing is why you can’t buy a drink in White County … unless you’re a member of the Country Club, the Elks, or the VFW. Other people have chosen to tell you and me what we can and can’t do and, by doing so, they are infringing on MY rights. My rights should end at the point where the exercising of my rights starts affecting your rights. This is the reason, for instance, that murder is illegal: that’s taking personal freedom too far. Telling me that I can’t watch a TV program because YOU don’t like it is taking your personal freedom into my patch of real estate.

The citizenship, you see, already has the power to affect all of us with a MAJORITY view. Had channel 4 carried “The Book of Daniel” Friday night and NOBODY WATCHED, I guarantee you that show wouldn’t have had a second network appearance anywhere. This has happened in the industry, just like others have been resurrected because so many people have screamed bloody murder.

As an example, “America’s Most Wanted” was slated to be cut to a half-hour, preparatory to being dropped entirely. Well, both the viewership of Fox in general and, especially, the law enforcement community raised so much hell about that move that AMW sits right there in that prime Saturday night real estate on Fox every week.

It’s Choice, Warren. I want to choose my shows by my lights. I do NOT want you, as nice a guy as you are, telling me what I can or cannot watch. (One of the hottest new films on the market is “Brokeback Mountain.” I have no urge to see a movie, no matter how good it is, about two gay caballeros .. uh .. gay cowboys, but I certainly do not agree with the Utah theatre that, at the last moment, cancelled the schedule of that film in their state).

Maybe my opinion has no place on here, Warren: quite likely it is/was out of place but, until mid-July, things like that will crop up here occasionally.

You don’t have to read them if you don’t want to, but they'll be on here if you DO want to read them.

Have a nice week, gang!