Good Samaritan Health & Wellness Center is open Monday through Wednesday and on Friday from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. On Thursdays, they’re open from 8:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. Further information is available on their web site www.goodsamhwc.org or by calling 706253-4673. care, and each provider can speak with other providers about patient care and treatment. Good Samaritan has applied for patient-centered medical home status and will be the only center within 20 miles to enjoy that distinction. All of which equals high quality care. That care comes at a price, however, and since the early days, the local community has been generous with its support. That hasn’t changed. Now that additional sources of funding are available because of their CHC designation, the board and staff actively seek additional resources to underwrite current services and make additional services available in the years to come. Good Samaritan is a 501(c)(3) charitable non-profit organization, and all donations are tax-deductible to the extent provided by law. So what comes next? Maddux is quick with an answer. Planning for the current building project actually began in 2007, although the timeline had to slow down when the economy slowed about the same time. Now that the new facility for the Jasper location is assured, the board’s next area of interest is neighboring Gordon County. Maddux explains that out of Georgia’s 159 counties, only 109 have Community Health Centers. Gordon County is one of those counties without a center, although Good Samaritan’s Jasper location sees many Gordon County patients. The board’s next big dream is to locate a satellite clinic in Gordon County. Availability of funding will determine when this happens. “A second location would add convenience and allow us to serve more people,” Maddux says. In the meantime, while only one of the original founders is still living, the glue their volunteer efforts provided exists today as the Good Samaritan Health & Wellness Center.
I had baths in sinks like that until I was a pretty good size kid. My husband grew up in such a house, with such a kitchen sink. His daddy built the house by hand. They had five children in that house. Raised four to adulthood, losing one baby boy at age 6 months. All of them had baths in that sink. As did all their children. And literally tons of dishes, glasses, pots and pans, fresh vegetables from the garden, and who knows what else. My husband’s mother would often talk about remodeling the kitchen. How the built in cabinets would look, the kind of floor she’d pick out, what color she’d paint the walls. But she never got around to doing it, saying she was too old anyway and it’d just be a waste of money. I like to think she enjoyed the dream more than she would have the new kitchen. Time went by. My husband’s daddy died. Then his mama became older and had to stay some with her oldest child, a daughter, who
lived within a mile from her. For a while, she came home during the day, where she still made her biscuits for breakfast. But eventually, she became too weak to live alone and had to move in with her daughter. They closed up the house. And it sat. My husband’s mother passed away, and they divided up a few things that each child wanted. Then the grandchildren came in and picked up a few things. I asked for her dish towels and hand towels from the kitchen. They locked the door behind them, and the house sat. And sat. The family got together and decided to put it all up for sale, as each of them had inherited parts of the land. As more time went by, the house began to look very sad and in disrepair. I made a timid request that my husband passed along to his two living siblings. I asked that if and when the house either fell in or was bulldozed down I could have the
Eighty percent of success is showing up. -Woody Allen
kitchen sink. You see, I loved my mother-in-law very much. She was the best. We talked on the phone a lot, and went down just about every weekend. It was very important to her that she cook what we liked. When she learned my very favorite was fried potatoes cooked really crisp, she cooked them at every meal I sat down to at their house. She’d never let me help clean up, no matter how much I insisted, because she wanted to talk and said the dishes could wait till we left. Said it would give her something to do. So, I never got to wash dishes at her sink until after she passed away. I still miss her. Both my husband’s sisters said yes, I could have the sink, but wondered what in the world would I do with it? I have a lower porch that we’d never done anything to. I dreamed of making it a glorified potting shed, with shelves for empty pots, flowers growing, a good place to sit and a sink that could be used for watering and potting.
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511 East Main Street, Downtown Blue Ridge
I am at peace with the process through which the latest book was put together. We released it into the world, and now it stands as is. I am happy with its form. Lora: Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? Scott: I write new poems every single day, often more than just one. I’ve published over 1,200 of them in the past three years, with even more that remain yet unpublished. So there is a constant drive to find new ways of expressing similar ideas. Thankfully, we live in very interesting and exciting times. So the well never completely runs dry. Lora: Who is your favorite author and what is it that really strikes you about their work? Scott: Hunter S. Thompson is one of several I could go with. His wild ranting style of attacking the decadent institutions of this world always gets me fired up and ready to shoot off at the mouth myself. Lora: Do you have to travel much concerning your book(s)? Scott: I will be traveling up to Philadelphia
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soon for a show. I have open invitations to events in Colorado, Texas, and at a workshop I’ve been invited to host in India. There is also the possibility of flying to London for a gig later this year. My plan for 2018 is to hit the road and really kick the promotion of my books into high gear. Lora: Who designed the cover of your book(s)? Scott: “Songs of a Dissident” was designed by Glenn Monroe Irby with art by Christos Karapanos. “Chaos Songs” was designed by Tom Janikowski with cover art by Davide De Col. “Happy Hour Hallelujah” was designed by Ken Allan Dronsfield and Raja Williams. “Poison in Paradise” was designed by me with cover painting by Red Focks. Lora: What was the hardest part of writing your book? Scott: I find the process to be enjoyable and exciting overall in every stage of production. It’s what I love to do most in life. But if I had to pick something, I’d say the most challenging aspect
might be in finding the right order in which to place the poems. It is a delicate balance, and the rhythm of each piece flowing into the next is something that plays a key role in the continuity of a collection. Lora: Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it? Scott: Yes, indeed. I learned that dreams do come true. With hard work, persistence, patience, and the right mindset just about anything is possible. Scott has come across to be as having an inspirational outlook on life with his faith and dedication to the arts. It was a pleasure to do this interview with him, and I have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know more about him and his work and look forward to more of the same. When you purchase his works, or come to listen to him read, you too can experience the talent and energy he brings forth. You can find the links to his poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, reviews, live performances, and books at 17Numa.wordpress.com.
Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling? - M. C. Escher
When I began school, we lived in a rental house on Toccoa Street, and I was 6 and old enough to start in the Primer, which was somewhat equivalent to our Kindergarten today. Miss Dora Weese was my teacher and taught long enough to be the teacher of both my children. Miss Ruth Black was my first grade teacher, and also taught both my children. It is unfortunate that I do not remember very much about my class work in either grade. I do remember a few schoolmates. I can still see those Dick and Jane colorful readers that were used for many years. An interesting way of teaching the first year was that the teacher wrote out new words for us to learn, cut them out for each child and placed them in a penny match box for us to take home and learn. How exciting to suddenly see these newly learned words appear in our little readers! This was an innovative way that she taught, and she used this method even when she taught my children. No child could ever forget pushing open that little box and finding strange, new words to learn. There are two outstanding reasons why I do not remember much of either grade at McCaysville. When I was in the Primer, I had scarlet fever which was a dreaded disease in that day, and I missed many weeks of school. This is also why I had to go to the first grade instead of moving on up to the second as most children did. Then when I was in the first grade, we moved out on the Blue Ridge Highway, and I had to attend Epworth School. I only attended until Christmas in the first at McCaysville. As I have stated, I do not remember much about the class work, but the school building was imprinted indelibly in my little mind. I can remember almost every door and window in that schoolhouse. The school was about 20 years old by the time I attended, yet it all looked new to me. I can remember that we did not have a very large playground area as you might imagine for it was on a corner lot close to each street. It is hard to believe this now, but no child ever ventured even as close as the outside sidewalk. Rules were rules! All the space to play was where the present parking lot is located. To enter this “huge” building, I can remember walking up quite a few wide concrete steps with cast iron hand rails. I looked down as I stepped to see the black rocks that had been imbedded in the concrete steps. There was a very small entrance ”porch” before you opened the dark, heavy double doors with glass at the upper half. This same type entrance was also on the front facing Highway 5. The halls were extremely wide, I thought, and floors were wood and were oiled to keep down the dust. They sometimes would squeak when you walked. Actually, the hall was just a wide common area that led to other rooms. There was a water fountain in the hall and restrooms. The lower grades and office were on this first floor. At the back of the hall, you went up wide wooden steps to the second floor which housed the upper grades. You need to know that this one square building contained both grammar and high school grades. Yes, I went to “grammar” school there as it was then called. One thing I remember that would not happen today, was that they allowed children to go from door to door to the classrooms if they had lost or found something, which interrupted the class. In the first grade
Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. - Claude Monet
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I found this to be fascinating, so I plotted to go see if anyone had found “whatever” I had lost. You could see in the rooms as the upper part of the doors were glass. I can remember looking into each classroom and soon found out that no one had found my “lost” object”! This was simply an adventure to see how the other half lived. It was truly a waste of everyone’s time, but today I would not take anything for getting to see the entire school, for after the first grade, I no longer attended there. Now, the unique thing about my classes in this school was that they had so many children in the lower grades that they only let us go a half day each day. There was no room for a second class of the same grade. We were assigned which half. I guess I was fortunate enough to go in the afternoon. I can remember mother waking me up way up in the morning and telling me to get up and get ready for school. By the way, this is how I got the dreaded scarlet fever. A boy who sat at my desk in the morning had just come back to school after having scarlet fever, and so the story goes. To get to school, I put my little feet on the sidewalk and walked down the street to the corner, turned left and walked over the newly built, beautiful white concrete bridge over the Toccoa River, which was the same age as myself. Naturally, as one does today, I looked into the river as I crossed. When I got to the intersection, I looked both ways and then crossed over to the school yard. I don’t remember if there was a traffic light then, but I sort of doubt it. Anyway, my first grades in this school must have made
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an impression upon me for I can still see it all today, and yes, the layout is still the same. Probably by the time I got to the first grade, I realized that Johnny Cook’s grocery store that we shopped at was across the street before the intersection. I know my daddy had taken me there and had probably bought me a treat. So from somewhere, quite often I got a nickel, or maybe it was a penny back then, and nervously ran across that, wide concrete street. My folks did not know I was doing this, and I certainly did not tell them that I got candy there often. This is just one of those childhood “tricks” as we begin to explore the world. Later, if my children did this, they would have been hit by a car, and today someone would have been “smushed.” Times are a-changin’! After going to school there a year and a half, going half days, with all my scarlet fever, whooping cough, and other childhood diseases, I probably did not learn much. But what I did learn and remember about that old building is a real treasure to me. The memory, as we say, is worth a thousand words, and I probably did not learn as much as a thousand words! Yes, I did continue my education, and I will write some amusing stories in issues to come. For now, I am thinking of getting out that little match box to see if I can think of some more new words to tell you about this old school, but I will just say how grateful I am that I have the opportunity to tell you this much for future generations to learn of the earlier years of education in our area.
Art is either plagiarism or revolution. - Paul Gauguin