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My husband and I built our Dawson County home a little over 3« years ago, located slightly over one mile from the intersection of Ga. 53 and Duck Thurmond Road. We were driving home last week and noticed the signs on the side of the highway saying "Stop the Motorsports Park." I paid a visit to http://www.citizens4dawson.org/ and to my dismay, realized this project is located extremely close to our home.
We moved to Dawson County in hopes of finding more affordable land in a more rural area, away from the never ending development south of the county line. We fought hard to obtain our septic permit from the health department in order to build our home in this location. We actually had to go before the Board of Appeals in order to accomplish this.
Our home is surrounded by wooded land, where deer pass through the front yard on a daily basis. We never intended to live in a commercial-retail area, which is why we chose this location. We have enjoyed the complete privacy and peaceful aura surrounding our home, which has made a day of playing outside with our soon-to-be 3-year-old son very enjoyable.
In October 2007, we put our house on the market, in hope of moving closer to family, friends, and work. We have had a few interested buyers in that time span, but the value of our home has gradually plummeted as the economy continues its decline. After reviewing the information posted on http://www.citizens4dawson.org/, I am truly perturbed that I did not know about this project sooner.
Our home is 1/8-mile off the direct path of Ga. 53, and I can only imagine how the noise from this motorsports park will travel down the highway. In addition, I am disgusted to think of my home value plummeting even further than it already has.
I am under the impression that this project has already been approved, but still felt the need to voice our opposition for many obvious reasons.
Leslie A. Tinsley
Dawsonville
Che's actions sparked great feelings of love
My friend, Dr. Douglas Young, wrote a thoughtful piece on why "Che" Guevara, remains popular 40 years after his death. Che images appear in trendy cafés, shanty towns of Latin America and Mexican markets of North Georgia.
Che still intrigues young people. Just before finishing medical school, he left the path set out for him, by exploring Latin America and describing his adventures in The Motorcycle Diaries. His daughter Aleida wrote, "the more I read (the Diaries), the more in love I was with the boy my father had been."
The desperate poverty he saw on the journey convinced him that poor people needed a social revolution to regain their humanity. Che combined youth, revolution, romance, secularism, heroism and scorn for the wealthy and powerful.
The cheapest way to belittle Che or any hero is to claim his love life was either too free or too severe. Just like American soldiers, his family also bore the burden of his fight for freedom, but he was well loved by his partners, and by Aleida.
His colleagues respected his leadership. During Cuba's Revolution against the dictator Batista, Che's guerrilla unit got shot up and went hungry for days. When food arrived, the troops devoured it instantly, except for Che, who instead offered his portion to the wounded. When his men panicked, he stood, fired at the enemy, and rallied his soldiers to victory.
At Santa Clara, Che led 340 revolutionaries against 15 times as many Batista troops. Che's man said, "with our chief, that's no problem." Che's fighters won with homemade gasoline bombs against tanks and planes.After the Revolution, Che oversaw tribunals, to provide justice, but prevent indiscriminate lynching. An official said "Che was very careful." None of Batista's men were "shot for hitting a prisoner" only for "extreme torture and killings."
Victims and their families testified, displaying their wounds. There were thousands of cases with only a few dozen death sentences. Che overturned some of these, but carried out 55 executions of the worst convicts. The U.S. had ignored Batista's human rights abuses but defended the abusers, which mystified Cubans at the time.
Che tried, mistakenly, to sustain revolutionary ideals by forcing hippies and gays into a macho patriotic mold. Unlike American religious conservatives, Cuba abandoned this outlook, even dedicating a statue of the countercultural icon, John Lennon.
Che, the fun-loving kid, matured into an international hero, yet an American reporter said he was unaffected by power. Instead of resting on revolutionary laurels, Che chose to fight again for the poor in Bolivia, where the CIA murdered him. Che, wrote, "Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by strong feelings of love."
The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre called Che "not only an intellectual, but also the most complete human being of our age."
Dr. Sean Herlihy
Gainesville State College