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14 MAR 03: WARY OF THE GREEN
"Excuse me, sir," a teenager said loudly to me outside a supermarket on South Lumpkin Road Friday afternoon. But my back was turned, and the teen was competing with the loud rock music inside a Coca-Cola truck behind him. There seems to be no soda for the classical music buff like me.
I needed the young man to repeat his request. "Would you like to make a donation to the Green Hornets?" asked the teen holding a plastic bucket. I figured either this was a new environmental club - or some people are desperate for comic books.
"What's that?" I asked the Green Hornets representative.
"A basketball team," the teen answered. Sure enough, he was wearing a bright green basketball jersey with the word "Hornets" on it. For all I knew, this could be a Spencer High School farm team.
"Who are the Green Hornets? I've never heard of them before," I asked further.
"AAU," the young man replied. That organization puts on amateur basketball leagues from coast to coast - but why should I give money to it? I hear stories of agents slipping top players money all the time.
What would YOU have done, facing an offer like this about a mysterious team? "Since I've never heard of your team, I'm going to pass," I said. I'd trust the players more if they had a table selling chocolate chip cookies.
After a Saturday of reflection, however, I had to repent of my decision. Christians like me are supposed to err on the side of mercy, when it comes to requests like these. In this moment, I was acting like critics of "The Passion of the Christ" - yes, like my pastor.
The request from the Green Hornets came just before I entered the supermarket. After I left and rolled my half-filled cart of groceries to the car, a man walked by my trunk. "Are you alright?" he asked. "Are you alright?"
"Physically, yes," I told the man. He kept walking away - as each of us probably wondered what the other was up to mentally.
BLOG UPDATE: The "Friends of David Glisson" held a fund-raising "Home Run Derby" Saturday at the Rose Hill softball field. Some people in this neighborhood probably asked why Glisson wasn't armed with a softball bat last December 10th -- because then Kenneth Walker might have lived.
TV coverage of the Home Run Derby did NOT show a big crowd of people on hand. And a petition to reinstate David Glisson to the Muscogee County Sheriff's Department didn't appear to have many names on it. Someone should arrange a
meeting between Glisson supporters and the Rainbow/PUSH coalition - and the side with fewer names has to shut up.
Organizers of the Home Run Derby assured reporters David Glisson is NOT a monster. I never expected I'd hear a former sheriff's deputy compared to Charlize Theron....
Now other notes from a splendid springlike weekend:
+ Muscogee County schools held their first-ever "Character Education Day." My personal favorite character is Bugs Bunny -- but apparently he never came up in the discussion.
(The "character education" in-service day actually dealt with ways to prevent bullying in schools. Of course, they couldn't bring up the religious factor in prevention -- such as telling pastors to stop using a "bully pulpit.")
+ College students from several campuses finished the Habitat for Humanity "Collegiate Challenge." In five days, they built nine new houses! It almost makes you wonder why the Trade Center expansion has taken more than a year.
+ The Port Columbus museum is marking its anniversary with a celebration called "RiverBlast." For some reason, Sonic drive-ins did not mark the occasion with a "River-Blast" slush or shake.
(WRBL's Katie Weitzner did a live report on RiverBlast from a Civil War-era boat, in the middle of the Chattahoochee River! Thankfully no other station knew about this -- because the battle could have left her hair a mess.)
+ Spring cleaning around the apartment reminded me that Target is marking five years in Columbus this month. Come to think of it, why IS this store on Bradley Park Drive? Shouldn't a Target be closer to Fort Benning?
+ Jason Kostal gave a concert at Fountain City Coffee downtown. He's a singer and guitarist, who's also an instructor at Fort Benning's sniper school -- so WRBL dubbed him the "singing sniper!" Somewhere, a budding hip-hop star wrote down
those words....
+ Instant Message to area Blimpie's sandwich shops: Why do you all seem to shut down after dark - even on a Saturday night at 7:30? Some of us DO want a sub outside banker's hours.
COMING THIS WEEK: Why some soldiers are bailing out of Benning, after serving in Iraq....
© 2003-04 Richard Burkard, All Rights Reserved.