The McCollumn -2/24: "Lent removal"

Growing up Southern Baptist, I can’t claim to have a great grasp or even mild understanding of the Lenten season and its multitude of sacrifices and restrictions.

I always thought one of the perks of Protestantism was not involving ourselves in such things, but social media appears to show me that people are celebrating Lent regardless of dogma or denomination.

Across Facebook and the Twitterverse, countless numbers of people are giving up everything from soft drinks to video games, chocolate to daytime soaps and even barring themselves from using the very social media outlets they’re using to announce their Lenten bans.

Please don’t take this as me bashing people who legitimately give up perks and favorites during this season for real religious reasons — the people who recognize the sacrifice as a reminder for reflection and a need for simplification of the modern life.

The Lenten observations are not about you giving up meaningless guilty pleasures.

“I’m going to give up painting my toenails,” proclaimed one Facebook friend.

You should be commended for your bravery, madame.

Your commitment to your cause is not unlike a modern day St. Joan, bravely clamoring your truth even as the fires dance beneath your feet.

By denying the world the gift you give us with your gloriously-painted appendages, how will we know beauty until you bring your light back on that long-awaited Easter morn.

(If that’s the most you can “sacrifice,” I sincerely doubt both your sincerity and your brain’s basic functions.)

What Lent doesn’t mean is you complaining about your “sacrifice” ad nauseum until Easter Sunday.

I’m writing this column on Ash Wednesday, and I’m almost to the breaking point on seeing people complain about what they’re having to give up.

There are heroes from the churches’ collective histories that sacrificed themselves for their beliefs, so strong was their faith that they would pay the ultimate cost.

You giving up reading the Huffington Post or stopping drinking your daily Coke Zero doesn’t make you Saint Lucy (patroness of martyrs).

If you do choose to follow the Lenten rules this year, make sure you’re doing it for the right reason.

Rather than take to your phone to proclaim your latest craving or complaint, remember that your sacrifice should have a greater cause than becoming another way to voice your anger.

Spend that time in thoughtful prayer for those around you.

Ask for the ability to be a light for those around you, rather than a source of negativity and bitterness.

Find a way to better the world around you.

And if you can’t do any of those things, for the good of all of us, just stop and eat a Crunch Bar or drink your Diet Coke.

Leave Lent to those who truly mean it, and stop being a silly twit.

The McCollumn - 2/17: "It's Cookie Time"

“It’s Cookie Time!”

That message haunts me as I drive around town these days, as I see it displayed in store windows and private yards alike, reminding me of my eternal arch-nemesis - the Girl Scouts of America.

For years, I’ve given in to their marketing schemes, the cheap ploy of having doe-eyed little girls come in and beg you to buy their cookies, telling you that they’ll get a merit badge/ be able to go to Cookie Camp/ get a new computer/ be Queen of all the Girl Scouts/ get to go on the International Space Station...

I’ll be honest with you, readers:

Once the cookies have materialized, I’m not usually listening to the words coming out of the kids’ mouths. I honestly don’t know what it is Girl Scouts get for selling massive amounts of cookies.

I always assumed they got points and got to pick various cheap, foreign-made prizes out of a catalog to spend said points, not unlike the old Marlboro system.

(And those cookies are just as addictive as a pack of Menthol Milds. Don’t be fooled. People just haven’t found a way to freebase Thin Mints yet.)

“Congrats, little Susie, you sold thousands of dollars worth of cookies for us, so you get to use your 2,000 points to buy either a spare tire to Barbie’s Malibu Convertible or two plastic mustache combs.”

Oh, those delicious, sinful cookies.

The proud Tagalongs. The delightful Do-Si-Dos.

The Thin Mints. Dear God, the Thin Mints.

Why did they have to have Thin Mints?

(I’ll admit to consuming at least three Thin Mints while writing to this point in the column.)

And if I don’t buy them now, I may not get any, because Girl Scout Cookies have a season.

When does Cookie Season end? Since when are cookies seasonal anyway?

Swallows return to Capistrano, but what about Trefoils?

What’s the average airspeed velocity of a coconut-laden Samoan?

This barrage of insane questions starts to play in my head, and I find myself handing over stacks of dollars to those green-clad little imps for boxes upon boxes of cookies, hoarding them for the inevitable cookie famine that shall soon befall the land.

Friendly freezers across the county will see random boxes of Thin Mints pop up within them, as I start geocaching cookies to be consumed at my convenience.

(Fact: Thin Mints are always better frozen. This is not open for discussion; it’s just true.)

I wish I had the strength to say “No” to these powdered sugar pushers.

We learned in the DARE program years ago to “Just Say No” to the evils of drugs.

I know just what to say to some junkie who offers me heroin or some Coke-bottle meth, but Nancy Reagan didn’t teach young me anything about what to do about a box of Lemonades.

So, I’ll keep feeding my habit, literally, continuing the cycle of addiction I’ve dealt with for years, hoping that a spot will open up at the prestigious Cookie Monster Clinic for the Cookie Addicted.

It’s Cookie Time, friends. Be afraid.

The McCollumn - 2/10: "Paying your civic rent"

“It still feels kind of strange to be up here talking to all of you,” Tipi Colley Miller said, when addressing the Lions Club as its guest speaker Monday.

“It’s weird to see Cliff here, too. I feel like we’re both still supposed to be about this tall,” the Keep Opelika Beautiful director continued, indicating a small child’s height with her hand. “I just don’t feel we’re that old.”

I knew full well what she meant.

I often feel the same way.

I look around at my fellow Lions, and the other civic organizations that help build up and support our town, and I can’t help but feel young.

Save the presence of a 20 Under 40-er like Tipi, the faces I look at tend to be a great deal older than me,  at least 20 years and sometimes more.

I see the parents and grandparents of people I graduated with, but few fellow ‘04 graduates.

I don’t mean to criticize or cavil.

I’m blessed to have a job that not only gives me the time off to join a civic club like the Lions, but encourages me to do so.

I recognize not many people my age have such jobs.

You work hard and don’t have the sort of breaks or leeway to be able to attend weekly luncheon meetings.

Dues can be problematic, as those of us who are working starter salaries know how hard it is to make those checks stretch all month.

There’s a million reasons not to join, not to do it, I know.

I fought getting involved for a while myself.

I left the “do-gooder stuff” to fellow ‘04ers like Micah Brown Melnick (founder of the Big House Foundation, Opelika’s organization for helping local foster kids and their families), Meg Gafford Beard (Jean Dean Reading is Fundamental organization, who gives books to underprivileged kids across our area), J.M. Anderson (another dedicated RIFer) and Michelle Breedlove (who has volunteered with the yearly DARE camps for years and has even mentored at-risk children in our community), to name a few.

I gave of my time and my money sparingly, always trying to find an excuse or an out as to why I couldn’t help.

Unfortunately, my generation and those who are coming after us have a dangerous self-interest streak, one that seldom allows us to participate in events or help out in our community without thinking to ourselves “What’s in this for me?”

We’d all participate in things like Keep Opelika Beautiful’s annual Cleanup Day or go label books at the RIF Warehouse when we were going through school, sure, but only because most of us needed the mandated community service hours that honors organizations and clubs required of their members.

We donated canned goods and coins to various causes, all the while trying to win contests and prizes for our classes, as the motivation of helping others didn’t seem to be enough to fan the flames.

It was forced volunteerism, and we treated it as such, occasionally coming to resent having to help others.

Yes, some of us were that bad, myself included. Some of us still are.

What we didn’t see then was that our forced actions of volunteerism did actually help the community.

Roads and thoroughfares got cleaned, adding to the sense of civic pride we felt as citizens.

Children received books we labeled, getting to take home not only a new book but a sense of pride of ownership and a new zeal for reading. Those books may be some of the only ones those kids ever got.

What we need to do is get past the idea of “What’s in this for me?” and take it to a new level, one I’ve heard used repeatedly by Observer owner and all-around class act Henry Stern: paying our civic rent.

The generations who came before us gave us a wonderful town filled with almost any amenity we might need.

They built parks and baseball fields for us to play on.

They gave us schools filled with computers and resources that most schools in Alabama wish they had.

They did so much for us, and all we had to do to take part in this town was to be born here and live here.

They gave of themselves to give us better than what they had, and now it’s time we all start to do the same.

If you can, join one of our city’s many civic clubs - there’s contact information on the back page of our paper  for all of them.

If you can’t find the time to be able to do that, look for other ways you can help pay your civic rent to the city of Opelika.

Help an elderly neighbor by offering to mow their lawn or help with chores they might be unable to do.

Pick up trash wherever you may find it, or, better yet, recycle it and return it to use.

Find an elementary school class to go and read a book to, just on a whim. You have no idea how much children appreciate an adult coming to read to them, to get on their level and be a reading role model for them. (My dad, Homer McCollum, did this for years.)

That simple action could plant the seeds of literacy that could grow into a bumper crop of lifelong readers. It did for me.

Pick a cause you feel strongly about and give whatever time and money you can to support it. Organizations like Big House Foundation and Jean Dean RIF always need folks who are willing to pitch in and lend a hand.

Find some way to make this community a better place to be.

If you see a problem, try to find a way to fix it or ask for help when you can’t.

If we’d all take just a minimal amount of effort, give just one day to bettering our town, think what we’d be capable of, what good we could accomplish by working together for a common goal.

Honestly, if my fat, lazy self is able to do it, no one else has any valid excuse.

Get off your butts and get to work for your town.

The rent’s overdue, and it needs to be paid now.

Opelika Observer Staff Editorial - 2/3: "Dangerous debt limit? No, not here"

Last week, we used an old, tried and true journalistic device: raising a question in a headline that we proceeded to answer, or at least attempted to answer, in the story.

We thought we had succeeded, answering the question, “Is Opelika in a dangerous debt situation?” with a loud “No.”

We believed that readers would recognize that a debt repayment ration of 14.3 percent was damn good, particularly in these economic times. 

But, no, everybody didn’t get it, so let’s try to make it clear:

Opelika’s debt is decidedly not at a dangerous level.

We also admit to making a small mistake, too.

We meant to say the 2004 school warrants were being repaid from Opelika’s 16 mils property tax, instead of Opelika’s $16 million property tax.

Darn that spell check.

Questions about Opelika’s debt load are particularly relevant, given the publicity attached to Jefferson County’s and the city of Prattville’s financial problems.

Indeed a citizen has the right to ask almost any question that relates to how his tax dollars are being spent.

The answers to those questions are generally readily available from our city officials, elected and otherwise.

As a matter of interest, none of the risk factors that contributed to the Jefferson County crisis are present in Opelika’s past, present or planned practices.

But, we repeat, the question about similarities is overwhelming reasonable and proper. As proud citizens of Opelika, we are glad the answer is that there are no similarities.

Ratings by Moody’s (Aa2/stable outlook) and Standard and Poor (AA/stable) issued in connection with recent debt issuance by Opelika  contained common themes such as:

– solid financial position

– healthy general fund reserves

– stable tax base

– history of prudent financial management and reserve policies

– history of conservative budgeting procedures that provide for consistency in long-term financial management

Only five cities in Alabama have a higher Moody’s rating than Opelika. One of these cities, Huntsville (AAA/Aaa) actually has a less favorable percentage of Constitutional Debt Limit margin than Opelika.

Following last year’s issuance of warrants, Opelika has a Constitutional Debt Limit margin of $24.6 million or about 40 percent of its 20 percent limit of assessed evaluation.

Huntsville’s margin is approximately 37 percent.

Both rating services caution that several factors could make Opelika’s very favorable debt ratings go down.

These factors include increased debt burden, decreases in General Fund reserves and overall financial position and sizable tax base deterioration.

None of these are foreseen.

Additionally our city officials have been able to maintain a “municipal rainy-day account” of 20 percent of annual revenues in the General Fund.

Does everyone now get it?

Opelika’s debt situation is on solid ground!

The only similarity between us and Jefferson County and Prattville is that we are all in Alabama.

The McCollumn - 2/3: "Mocking wines, brawling beers"

This might be another one of those columns that could get me potentially bounced from the Southern Baptist faith, but I continue nevertheless.

Growing up, I participated in the Bible Drill program, a competition-based activity for children in which Bible verses were memorized, along with the order of the books of the Bible, for the purposes of a game show-like presentation of said knowledge at various churches around the area.

Memorizing random facts has always been a delight to me, even at an early age, so this was right up my alley.

While my memory fades with each passing year, a few gobbets have always remained with me.

Proverbs 20:1 was on our list in the fifth grade, burned into my brain the minute I saw it on that little piece of paper.

“Wine is a mocker and beer is a brawler. Whoever is led astray by them is not wise.”

Fifth grade Cliff took these words to literally mean anyone who chose to drink any alcohol at all must be some sort of mental case and a bum devoid of any redeemable human traits. 10-year-olds can be very absolutist.

25-year-old Cliff, with his beard, English major and fondness for dessert wines and infused vodkas – well  – he’s not quite so sure as young Cliff was.

Now, one wants to look to the second sentence and begin to parse it out.

I don’t pretend to be any kind of Biblical scholar, but I don’t see any outright condemnation of alcohol in that text.

It simply seems to say those “led astray” are not wise. In other words, moderation and forbearance are key.

A glass of wine should be reasonably acceptable; a few bottles is right out.

Having the occasional drink is not the unforgivable sin some would have you believe it is; drinking to get drunk every time, however, is abhorrent and a sign you should probably seek help and treatment.

But, this is my interpretation. It’s a guess based on a short textual analysis, and I wouldn’t put much faith in me. I try not to, at least.

Some of you may hold to that prohibitionist approach. That’s your right.

If you choose to teetotal, I applaud your choice, but it’s your choice. You not drinking doesn’t mean you get to sit in condemnation of everyone who does, however.

Judgement can only truly come from someone we’re all familiar with, and I think it’s best we leave that sort of thing to Him, don’t you?