This is Viewpoints for Friday, March 3, 2017

Bowden fan

I was glad to see that the mayor and commissioners have decided to consider options other than selling Bowden Golf Course. My wife and I had just finished walking nine holes there and were remarking that there was a good group of golfers and a number of high school team members warming up.

I was therefor surprised to learn from a staff member that selling the course was to be considered that evening. While I understand the need to control city/county expenses, selling off assets, particularly those with such a valuable history and potential such as Bowden is very short sighted. We have recently hired a few superintendents who tore down trees, grew three-inch rough, and whose personal skills left much to be desired. A better job of finding someone to manage the course and a group of citizens to provide input and make suggestions would go a long way to helping Bowden fulfill its potential.

It is ironic that at the same time selling Bowden was being talked about, a proposal to rehab Luther Williams sailed through the commission. I would like to remind people that at least twice in the recent past we have signed agreements, spent tax dollars to improve the field, had teams play here only to have them leave for more lucrative markets. While I love and value Luther Williams and its rich history, as I do Bowden, I hope we look very carefully at this new proposal.

Bowden, like Luther Williams, provides a place where blacks and whites come together to enjoy sports and cherish our city’s history. I hope Commisioner Al Tillman will take two aspirin and then get to work finding solutions to make our city and its assets even more valuable rather than trying to sell them off.

Ode to Bowden

I have see the best of times and the worst of times playing golf at Bowden Golf Course. Its so rich in history; story’s of the famous and no so famous players. A golf course that has seen many changes through the years. I have walked and rode many a mile on the course — through drought resembling a desert — to times so rich with different colors of green and yielding beautiful fall colors of the season.

Each hole has a story that will yield to good or bad days depending on one’s handicap. A pond that is beautiful on the back nine but very unforgiving when one tees off from the men’s or women’s tee box with a spillway that just reaches out to grab golf balls not hit just right. Trees that feed golf ball back to the pond or send them to the woods or hides them beneath the pines. The pond feeds the many wildlife that visit it daily — and the geese.

I’ve seen grown men and women reduced to a vocabulary not printable, but also sounds of joy when playing golf at Bowden. The wonderful staff at Bowden labors to maintain the greens and tee boxes whether it’s hot, cold, windy or wet. They work with pride. I always wave at them thanking them for a job well done.

Bowden is needed in Macon because it serves the community. Programs for the youth, high schools with golf teams and various tournaments and programs for new golfers. Where else can one afford to play golf? I cannot afford membership at other golf courses. As a community, we need to keep this wonderful golf course for the richness it has served and most important, its history from past, present and the future to come.

Investigation coming?

There are many who would like to investigate the connections between The Donald and the Russians, and this would no doubt be a massive effort. Perhaps Congress needs to begin with something more modest — like the Yemen raid. We all know that if the bin Laden raid had gone sideways like the Yemen raid (green lighted over dinner with the son-in-law and the Angel of Death) that the Republicans would have voted a Bill of Impeachment by nightfall of the following day.

They had 10 investigations of Benghazi at great expense to the American taxpayer in an attempt to smear Hillary, so could we not have a few investigations of Yemen to test the military judgment of the “I know more than the generals” Donald? (And he didn’t even hang around the Situation Room to see his brilliant plan in action.)

Trying to understand

Macon Muslim Imam Muhammad Abbasi was quoted in The Telegraph as saying the word “Islam” is Arabic for “peace.” I liked that, as well as the outreach of the Unitarian Church toward our local Muslim neighbors. We need more of that, and vice versa, i.e. interaction and outreach of Muslims to non-Muslims.

However, being curious and somewhat of a skeptic, I went to several online language translators (Arabic to English) and none gave that translation. The Google translator said it translates to “Islam.” Try it. Strange, Google thinks the English and Arabic words are identical. Others gave the translation as Mohammad-ism, or other variants describing that religion. My Webster’s II Universal dictionary also did not list the word “peace” but listed definitions all relating to the Muslim religion or its followers as a group.I would be happy to hear that Imam Abbasi is correct and I just didn’t try the right translator.

Of course it appears that nearly all of American Muslims are peaceful, despite the words I have personally read in an English translation of the Muslim Koran which calls on Muslims to kill infidels (non-believers) and promising rewards in their afterlife for martyrs doing exactly that. We also know that 16 men on 9/11 took those words to heart, heard on recovered cockpit voice recorders saying “Allah Akbar” as they murdered 3,000 innocent people. I have yet to hear a Muslim address that apparent contradiction in their holy book. Why does that provoke some, like ISIS and not others? Maybe Imam Abbasi could reply to this letter about that?

I’m now an agnostic, as far as religions go, but I was raised as a child to be Christian, attending bible study for four hours every Saturday morning for two years before being confirmed as a church member in my teens, and I don’t recall anything in the Christian Bible like that, which makes me wonder how the Christian crusaders justified their wars in the holy lands long ago. Conflicting religions have been the source of much human misery for centuries. Can someone help me understand?

This story was originally published March 2, 2017 at 9:00 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Friday, March 3, 2017."