OPINION -- Say what?
By Gene Price
Published in News on August 16, 2004 2:01 PM
On a recent Sunday, my wife, Gloria, had been called upon to deliver the sermon at St. Francis Episcopal Church. She serves there regularly as an ordained deacon. Hence, she is more familiar to some parishioners in her vestments.
After the recent Sunday sermon, she hung up her robes, came home and changed into a dress for a going-away party for Fr. Frank Russ, who is leaving St. Francis to become rector at a church in New York City.
We were walking across the church parking lot to the reception when we met John Vincell, a faithful parishioner.
He did a double-take at Gloria without her vestments.
Then, grinning mischievously, John explained: "I didn't recognize Gloria with her clothes on!"
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Add this one to the dictionary of political correctness. A New York police officer was fired for refusing a "direct order" to arrest a homeless man found sleeping in a public parking garage.
In a newspaper account of the incident, the homeless man was referred to as being among the city's "dispossessed."
Now that might warm the hearts of the politically correct, but it sure suggests that society -- not the man himself -- was responsible for his being a street person.
My impression has been that most of those folks were on the streets on their own volition and in spite of efforts by public and private groups and concerned individuals, including family members, to help them.
They hardly meet the implication of "dispossessed."
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My fellow Wildlife Commissioner John Lentz of Ellerbe is great at sharing with me little jewels he has gleaned from various sources.
Recently he passed on this "Secret to Long Life:"
A man many years ago told his son that if he wanted to live a long life, the secret was to sprinkle a little gunpowder on his cornflakes every morning. The son did so religiously, and lived to be 93.
When he died, he left 14 children, 28 grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren -- and a 15-foot hole in the wall of the crematorium!
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