The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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Rear Admiral Kent Davis USN Retired, is a hero to approximately 400,000 veterans and their families within AL. He served successfully as Commissioner of the AL Department of Veterans Affairs for almost six years from February 2019 until October when AL Governor fired him after Davis filed an ethics complaint regarding a dispute over handling of federal grants offered through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. This appears to be unjustified because the AL State Board of Veterans Affairs...
This year marks the 70th anniversary of "White Christmas", the movie musical based on Irving Berlin's classic popular Christmas melody of the same name. And in the spirit of the Christmas season, many movie theaters are offering showings of the 1954 film on the big screen on December 15th, 16th, and 17th. Being a post-World War II musical, the plot centers around two soldiers portrayed by Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye who became a song and dance duo after the war's end. After an old army buddy...
Estimates state that there are 546 million listeners to podcasts worldwide. With there being over six million podcasts in the world. And that in the US, 47% of the population twelve and up listen to a podcast at least once a month. In an effort to reach some of the listeners in this popular digital audio file market, the Moody Bible Institute has developed a faith filled audio drama aimed at kids ages 8 to 13 in their podcast, "The Honeycomb Chronicles". With the purpose of "The Honeycomb...
December 18, 2024 - CENTREVILLE, AL - Donning a stylish red velveteen suit jacket, Mayor Mike Oakley of Centreville rushed from his city council meeting on Tuesday, December 17th, 2024 to join The Studio in their annual Christmas piano recital at the Four Points Baptist Church. As Mayor Oakley explained to those in attendance, when he was a young lad, there was a phenomenal piano teacher in the area named Miss Ruby who lived on Antioch Road. She would even go to people's houses to teach piano....
Eating out at restaurants is fun and convenient, but on New Year’s Day, don’t forget to eat your black-eyed peas. As tradition holds, if you eat cornbread on New Year’s Day, the cornbread will bring golden opportunities in the new year. If you eat collard greens on New Year’s Day with your black eyed peas, money will abound. If you eat the black-eyed peas with stewed tomatoes, the tomatoes will grant one good health in the New Year. And the black-eyed peas themselves, signify good luck and goo...
January 3, 2025 - For those who have tired of wading through the endless rows of mindless subpar "B" type movies that flood the streaming opportunities on Netflix, "I Can Only Imagine" is now streaming on Great American Pure Flix. Directed by the Erwin brothers, who are originally from Birmingham, Alabama, "I Can Only Imagine" is a biopic about the relationship between the lead singer of the American contemporary Christian music band, MercyMe, and his abusive father. Although rated PG, "I Can...
Fans of Jane Austen's incredibly insightful novels will readily reread every one of her six famous novels for perpetuity. However, another author who finds favor with many fans of Jane Austen is Elizabeth Gaskell. With Gaskell also being the daughter of a minister like Jane Austen was the daughter of a clergyman. And one of Elizabeth Gaskell's most seminal works is "North and South". While the title of "North and South" may evoke images of Patrick Swayze in the 1980s miniseries set before,...
November 12, 2024 - The story of George Washington Carver, an inductee into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, is inextricably linked with Alabama. As being one of the most prominent African-American scientists of the early 20th Century, he was invited by Booker T. Washington to be the head of the Agriculture Department of Tuskegee University in 1896. And George Washington Carver taught at Tuskegee University in Alabama for forty-seven years. Known for his innovations in crop rotation and...
Based on actual historical events, "I Heard The Bells" is an excellent movie about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's inspiration to write the poem that would become the Classic Christmas Carol, "I Heard The Bells On Christmas Day". An independent production, the very well done feature film was released in movie theaters across the USA in December of 2022, making it the first ever theatrical release of a feature film production for the "Sight & Sound" ministries. A ministry that focuses on faith...
November 22, 2024 - Gore galore is the overriding aspect of "Gladiator II" which is now showing in movie theaters nationwide. A long-awaited sequel to Ridley Scott's "Gladiator" which was released twenty-four years ago, "Gladiator II" makes heavy use of themes typically featured in male-oriented movies such as revenge, filling the little-known late father's shoes, and honor through fighting. While those topics can sound interesting in and of themselves, in "Gladiator II" these themes are...
The impact of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's friendship with a Birmingham, Alabama native, Franklin Fisher, is brought to light in the biopic, "Bonhoeffer", now showing in movie theaters across the country. A German Lutheran theologian, Bonhoeffer, moved to America in 1930 where he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York. Coming from a highly educated German family, Bonhoeffer was not very impressed by the classes being taught at the seminary. But, his friendship with Franklin Fisher, an...
While "Moana 2" is smashing all kinds of box office records for the Thanksgiving Day weekend, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" is doing surprisingly well at the box office. With the Christmas themed movie remaining in the top five nearly a month after its original release in the movie theater. And for those who prefer to watch their movies from home, "The Best Christmas Pageant Ever" is set to be released via streaming and video on demand platforms next week on December 10th, 2024. Directed by...
The American people have spoken loud and clear. They delivered the Republican Party majorities in the United States Senate and the House of Representatives and sent President Donald J. Trump back to the White House. With this electoral triumph achieved, it is time to unite as a nation and get America back on track. The sweeping results at the ballot box confirm the American people want conservative, commonsense solutions to the challenges we all face. President Trump has proven time and again...
Alabama native, Ezra Richardson, debuts as an actor in "Average Joe", a PG-13 rated movie now showing in movie theaters across the country. Richardson, a Birmingham native, realistically portrays the young rebellious, pugnacious, skipping school to play pool, troubled main protagonist of the motion picture, Joe Anthony Kennedy. Based on a true story, "Average Joe", relates the story of Coach Joe Kennedy, who after being given up for adoption as a child, seems destined to go through life as a reb...
Tomorrow, Thursday, October 24th, 2024, the Head Coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team, Kalen DeBoer, turns fifty years of age. Coach DeBoer follows in the footsteps of Coach Nick Saban as Head Coach of The University of Alabama's football team. And, given that Nick Saban was 72 years of age when he retired from his position as Head Coach, it is possible that the landmark age of 50 for Coach DeBoer only heralds many more years of ahead of him as an esteemed college football coach....
October 29, 2024 - TUSCALOOSA - Luke Durant, who is now thirty-six years of age, attended the Alabama School of Math and Science when he was a young student. And while he has been employed as an engineer by a software company known as NVIDIA, he has not forgotten his mathematical background. With Durant using his home-built, cloud-computing-based, $2 million dollar GPU-boosted supercomputer, on October 11th, 2024, he discovered the largest known prime number, ever. Known as M136279841, Durant's...
As Russell B. Laine, the Chief of Police of Algonquin, Illinois and the President of the International Association of the Chiefs of Police has stated, "Without community support, law enforcement agencies cannot succeed." And as part of the effort to connect with the local community and build support, one of the services that various police departments in Alabama offer is the very informative and insightful Citizens Academy. A four to eight weeks long course, depending upon the resources of the...
Originally published on January 01st, 1960, "Patriot's Daughter: The Story of Anastasia Lafayette" by Gladys Malvern, was reprinted in 2011 as part of the wave of Gladys Malvern historical fiction novels that were being made available to readers once more after being out of print for decades. Gladys Malvern wrote nearly forty-eighty books throughout the course of her writing career and the intent was to bring back all of her nearly four dozen books onto the modern bookshelf. With many of her...
There are 1100 Volunteer Fire Departments in the State of Alabama. And with the number of volunteer firefighters nationwide reaching a low in 2020, many local Volunteer Fire Departments are actively seeking volunteers. While the number of volunteer firefighters has slumped, the call volume nationwide has more than tripled in the last thirty-five years. The County Sheriff's Office is responsible for providing the dispatch services for the Volunteer Fire Departments. With many communities having...
Separation of Church and State and ending religious "superstition" form the basis of State Senator Kane's campaign for U.S. Congress in "God's Not Dead In God We Trust", the fifth installment in the "God Is Not Dead" movie series. Superbly portrayed by Ray Wise, an American actor originally from Ohio, State Senator Kane receives good news for his campaign when six weeks before the election, his sole opponent passes away. This news is not well received by Senator Smith, portrayed by a former...
A delightfully entertaining and laugh out loud funny show, "Sean of the South LIVE", played to a full house at the historic Bama Theatre in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on Saturday, September 21st,2024. Similar in style to Lewis Grizzard, Jeff Foxworthy, and Rick Bragg; Sean of the South is the stage name of the columnist, novelist, and country musician, Sean Paul Dietrich - a Southern writer who was born in Missouri during the third quarter of Coach Paul Bear Bryant's farewell Liberty Bowl. Describing...
September 21, 2024 - COALING - Nine teams participated in The Fourth Annual Defend the Orphans Kickball Tournament hosted and organized by Coaling Baptist Church on Saturday. Originally k own as "Kicking Baseball", kickball was for many decades considered a children's elementary school game, however, it began growing in popularity in the 1990s among young professionals and adults. So much so that in 1998 the World Adult Kickball Association was founded. With several cities creating kickball...
The eight-day election prayer guide written by the granddaughter of the highly regarded Billy Graham, Cissie Graham Lynch, is now available for free from the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Known for her "Fearless" series in which Cissie Graham Lynch tackles important modern day social issues from an evangelical Biblical perspective head on, the prayer guide implores readers to research the candidates, to pray fervently, and exercise their privilege to vote. Opening with a verse from 1 Ti...
September 27, 2024 – Tuscaloosa - For our final class of the Citizens Academy, the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff gave us the grand tour of what they call "Tuscaloosa's finest gated community" - the County Jail. All of us participants in the Citizens Academy looked forward to the occasion with both trepidation and anticipation. And as we stood outside of the entrance to the jail waiting for class to begin, more than one of us made a list of who we'd call to bail us out, should we be detained for a...
I have not been writing as consistently as I used to. Entirely by choice. Meaning, there are not any problems between myself and any of the newspapers or outlets I write for. It is entirely me. First, I have been writing for over 30 years now and I guess I am stepping back to see what I think of it all. I take it that is normal. The world of media has changed. There was a shift that came along with Covid. I do not feel I have the same freedom of speech I once had. I feel this way because I have...
