Mojo gets caught up

The Editors,

Mojo and I have been out of town for Christmas visiting family and friends. We took our stockings. Santa found us.

Mojo couldn't wait to get back to put his paws on the Georgetown Times. While we were gone, he read the news and the letters to the editor on line, but it is not the same as feeling the crinkling paper.

Mojo asked me if I would consider responding to two letters. At first blush, they didn't seem related. However, Mojo insisted that they are tied together.

The first letter from Mr. Hills commented on the proposed amendment to the County's tree ordinance. He was against it. His basic point was that individual property rights trumps everything. Unless what he does directly impacts my property, he should be able to whatever he wants to do, including cutting down trees, to his property. Further, since Mr. Hills has earned his living in the timber industry, he knows trees. Since the proposed amendment is aimed at size and not type he is opposed on the grounds that some trees are simply not the equal of other trees no matter their size.

Mojo and I take issue with the notion that a person has the right to do whatever he or she wants to do on his property. We think that there are community norms that need to be protected. If a pair of bald eagles chose to set up shop in one of the trees on my property, I ought not to be able to kill them if I find them inconvenient. The live oak is synonymous with our area. One reason we purchased our property and pay our taxes is not only because of live oaks in our yard, but because of live oaks all over our neighborhood. In our opinion, and believe me, Mojo knows trees, all live oaks in the County should be protected as a community norm. If there is a special reason for taking down a live oak, then a permitting process can be entered into.

The second letter came from Mr. Munson who reflected on the death of Christopher Hitchens, a writer who was an aggressive proponent of atheism. According to Mr. Munson, Hitchens argued that religion "misrepresents the origins of man and the cosmos." Mojo and I got to wondering, what religion was he talking about? My impression is that Mr. Munson and Mr. Hitchens pit religious fundamentalism and Biblical literalism against scientific findings. In my religious tradition, the Bible is taken seriously but often not literally. The Bible is a book of meaning, not a science book. It is a leap of faith, but I believe that God is the source of all knowledge, including the perception of atoms being the building blocks of creation and the evolving of species. Science and faith are not mutually exclusive.

That said, how are the two letters and the responses connected? Mojo is simply looking at me. He is cocking his head to one side as if to say, "Think". Ha!!!!!! I've got it! At the heart of both letters is the notion that humanity is at the center of everything. Mojo is now giving me that all-knowing, you finally got it, growl. All of us, certainly including me, have the tendency to play God and be all-knowing (that is what the Adam story is about). The first letter tended to deify individual human property rights. The second letter tended to deify human intellect. The first deification can squash community. The second can give us powers we were never intended to have.

Mojo has once again proved that he is smarter than I am.

Sincerely,

The Rev. Dr. Jim Watkins

and Mojo

Pawleys Island

Christmas wreaths

To the individuals that removed the Christmas Wreaths from the entrance to the Litchfield Country Club we wish you joyful and peaceful Holiday season and may you enjoy them as much as the members of our community have.

Litchfield Country Club Neighborhood Watch.

Joe Gabriel

Pawleys Island

Voter ID law

Kudos to the [U.S.] Attorney General’s office which declared the proposed Voter ID law for South Carolina was in violation of the laws of the United States.

The state League of Women Voters (LWV), a non-partisan organization, took a position that opposed implementation of the proposed legislation and advocated strongly in the media and with legislators for support of its position.

The Attorney General’s office cited the Voter Rights of 1965 that assured the right of minorities to have the vote. Those provisions as well as other legislation have sufficed for these many years to give people the right of the ballot.

Among the LWV arguments was the fact that sufficient procedures were already in place in our state to ensure that only qualified voters were allowed to vote. A mandatory voter photo ID was deemed unnecessary to add to the procedures in place.

We hope that the publicity thus generated will influence a bigger voter turnout in the upcoming election season.

Ralph P Edwards

Chair, LWV Georgetown

Voter Service Committee

Georgetown

Collective nouns

The remainder of the year 2011 and the upcoming Presidential election will go down in history as the most important period in our great nation. Yes, our federal government is a mess and we have the government we deserve. We, the people, vote in the scoundrels that lie and steal from us while in office and keep right on doing it.

We may ask ourselves the following question. Should a politician vote according to their constituents’ will? It seems that most people vote for any politician that can  get them more of someone else’s money. This is contrary to the needs of our nation as a whole and must change. A good politician (is there such a person?) will occasionally have to vote against the wishes of the folks back home because the wants of a few are contrary to the needs of our nation as a whole.

Enough of the philosophical rantings. The English language has some curious names for collective nouns for animals in mythology or children’s stories. For example, we are all familiar with a Herd of Cows, a Flock of Chickens, a School of Fish, and a Gaggle of Geese.

Less widely known names are a Pride of Lions, a Murder of Crows, an Exaltation of Doves and maybe because they look so wise, a Parliament of Owls.

Fellow overtaxed citizens, we should consider another group of animals — the Baboon. They are the loudest, most obnoxious, most aggressive and least intelligent of all primates in the animal kingdom. What is a collective noun for a group of Baboons? Believe it or not — a Congress! That accurately describes what is coming out of Washington.

Art Blenk

Pawleys Island