A Modest Proposal for Bringing Everyone Together Over Confederate Monuments

My friend and former newspaper colleague Jake Hallman wrote a piece recently regarding the Confederate Monument in our hometown. In his article, he suggests that such a monument has no place sitting on the courthouse square due to the inability to place such a statue in context while sitting in such a place of prominence in the city.

While I'm certainly sympathetic to his argument, I would like to present my own modest proposal that will no doubt leave both sides of the debate pleased with the outcome.

The primary argument for keeping a moment to the Confederate solders who rebelled against the United States and fought to create their own, separate country, is that in keeping it, the monument teaches us our history.  Removing it would erase the history of this area, the argument goes. Clearly this is a powerful case as all the books written in the world have never touched on the war that nearly ununited the United States of America.

Our statues are truly the only way to preserve this history. Until such a time that books can be written and distributed widely to children and adults, perhaps in schools or some sort of public repository that would allow people to borrow a book on the topic of their choosing, free of charge, and return it after a designated period of time, the statues will remain our only source of learning about our history. So therefore, the statue should stay.

But as I mentioned, the war the Confederate solders fought in was not a scrimmage against themselves. They were fighting another army. In their minds, they were fighting another nation. Yet, oddly, that side of the story remains untold on our courthouse lawn. Our children are only learning half of the story and, as I mentioned, books are unavailable to present the other side.

We have seen that statues teach us our nation's history and as such, I would like to present my modest proposal to the citizens of Bulloch County and the Board of Commissioners. Standing next to the Confederate Solder on the courthouse lawn should be a statue of William Tecumseh Sherman, the General from the United States who marched his solders from Atlanta to Savannah, through Bulloch County, in a devastating military campaign. Sherman burned down the courthouse, a log building that doubled as a barn when court was not in session, before proceeding on to Savannah.

Erecting a statue to this United States General directly alongside that of the Confederate monument could not possibly draw objections from anyone. After all, what better place for such a statue than on our courthouse lawn, the epicenter of learning in our community, far ahead of Georgia Southern University. Those who want the Confederate monument to stay would be pleased and those who feel it's inappropriate to have it there would have their own monument they could take pride in.  And rather than being a nondescript union soldier, or even Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant, it would be of a Union general who was actually in Statesboro. Imagine the learning possibilities for young and old alike.

Those arguing that the Confederate monument teaches history will no doubt be thrilled that additional educational materials will be available right on our courthouse lawn. My fellow citizens, I urge you to show up to the next County Commission meeting and demand that the Confederate monument issue be addressed. Some among us may say to you, "WTF?" when presented with this humble idea. To them, I say, "No. W.T.S." He is the statue, the monument, that we need at this time to heal this divided country.

Steal my sunshine

That was cool.

Like, legit, a top-5 life experience.


I don't really have anything profound or insightful about today's eclipse. My son is eight and like a lot of kids, he's interested in outer space. He knew the moons of Mars and was able to tell the planetarium director their names when he as five (until then, I didn't know Mars had moons*)

So when I heard several months ago about today's eclipse, I pretty much knew I was going to go. I could have planned to stay in town where the moon was going to eclipse 96% of the sun, but.... but if I drove 100 miles, I could get in the path of totality and experience a total eclipse.

So we decided to go. Unfortunately, last week my wife learned she wasn't going to be able to go with us. Se's usually the planner of our events. All I knew was I wanted to see a total eclipse, but beyond that, I didn't know what places were holding events or anything. She'd mentioned South Carolina State University was hosting an event and I figured what better place to go see this than an institution of higher learning.

I picked up my son from school about 11:15 and we set out on the roughly two-hour trip. My son wasn't all that talkative at the beginning, but as we got closer and closer, he started talking more and more. The eclipse began at 1:08 local time and we pulled in the parking lot about 1:15. We got out and immediately put on our glasses and saw the first traces of the moon moving across the sun.

We walked over to the football stadium where all the festivities were happening. Along the way we saw people grilling out, others in lawn chairs and blankets. There were also lots of amateur astronomers with telescopes set up along the short walk. Once inside the stadium, we saw a balloon being lifted off to get above the clouds to collect data for scientists a lot smarter than I am.

After that, the SCSU marching band started playing and there was also a DJ there playing songs. It was a festive atmosphere with college kids, community members and people from all over the globe there. In addition to people from South Carolina and Georgia, there were people from Maryland, Washington, Jamaica and Germany all in little old Orangeburg, South Carolina for the eclipse.

So for about an hour my son and I sat there, looking up every now and again with our glasses to see the moon slowly move across the sun while we laughed at the college kids around us, enjoyed the music and waited. For the longest time, if you didn't know an eclipse was happening, you wouldn't have noticed anything different.

Finally, at around 2:20 you could tell something was starting to happen. It started to cool off a little and the sky started to get darker. There was someone (I assume an SCSU science professor) explaining things. The sky in the west started to get darker and through our glasses we could see the moon nearly completely in front of the sun.

As it inched its way across, we both left our glasses on, watching and anxiously waiting for what we were all there for. There was yelling and cheering and a palpable excitement as the moment neared.

Finally, at 2:43 p.m., the moon moved entirely across the sun and for two minutes. The cheering and screaming (of which I fully admit I was one) of excitement echoed throughout the stadium. We could take our protective glasses off and were able to see Venus and Jupiter as well as the corona around the sun. With 20 seconds remaining, we were told (ok, encouraged) to put our glasses back on so we didn't look in to the sun when the moon stopped totally blocking the sun.

And just like that, the sun's light started to come back. As soon as it did, the crowd cheered some more. Being there with so many other people made it a better experience. We stuck around for another 15 minutes or so, but my son was ready to go home and I couldn't blame him. We made it back in a little more than two hours.

I'd do a disservice if I didn't mention that SCSU did an outstanding job with the event. From the music to the information to providing eclipse glasses to those who needed them, it was a first-rate 


*The moons are Phobos and Demos.