Where's the Gym?

If you’re a regular reader of Rheta Johnson’s weekly column, you know she lives just outside Iuka, Mississippi—not quite the Big Apple, but bigger than Rascaltown. In her most recent column, she discussed her new gym membership and not with any great favor. She commented that it was painted purple and gold inside; here’s a snippet:

The club is scab ugly. Let me begin there. Health, in my opinion, should include an emotional component, and who can be mentally disposed to become fit if the place you’re exercising is garish, a love child of Chuck E. Cheese and the ER?

If you have the sensibilities of a colorblind goat, you’ll gag at bright purple and gold as a backdrop for sweating people. I suspected that a health club would not look like the inside of Sainte-Chapelle, but this is beyond the pale.

There’s an off chance that the gym in question isn’t in the Shoals, but we’re betting it’s in Florence. Does the description give anyone a clue?

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Anyone out there like the proposed legislative bill to allow representations of the Ten Commandments in our government buildings? If you said yes, we’re sure you’ll like the similar new monuments to the words of Mohammad and in praise of Satan, because that’s what you’ll get. Of course, you could be lucky and just get a lawsuit that takes money away from schools, streets, etc.

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We've been sent reports of a woman's body having been found late last night in an area of Sheffield commonly called Baptist Bottom. We've not been able to verify that rumor.



Shoalanda

Local News: A Lost Cause Says Rheta Johnson

Do you love to read Rheta Grimsley Johnson? We do. No, we don't always agree with her ultra liberal politics, but we deeply appreciate her down home writing. After all, she hangs her hat in Iuka, so she has to be someone worth reading. Her column this week concerned the loss of printed news four days a week in Mobile, Birmingham, and Huntsville. Like Ms. Johnson, we lament the actions of the Newhouse group that owns these former bastions of print.

What we didn't agree with was her take on lost local news. She compared news gathering via Twitter to sending a cocker spaniel to purchase groceries. We say: Thank God for blogs and local Internet magazines. Let's look at some local stories the TimesDaily either failed to cover or dropped the ball on.

* Most recently, our local rag failed to mention the UNA candidate in the Miss Alabama contest. How does something like that happen? Wait...we know. The one-size-fits-all article was written in Decatur where they apparently think the Shoals is some mythical parallel universe.

* Local Colbert County Commission candidate Troy Woodis was recently profiled in The Connection concerning his wage garnishments. After the online magazine leaked the story, the TD did something of a follow-up and referred to the original source as "social media" while leading readers to believe the garnishment was totally for unpaid business purchases. Didn't they think it was important that Woodis also owed thousands in back child support?

* Former Lexington resident Keith McGuire lost his teaching license last year after the Alabama Board of Education declared him guilty of rape, among other things, and morally unfit to teach. You would have thought since his rape trial had been held in Lauderdale County that the TD would have covered this. Nope.

* The death of acclaimed local writer Margaret Phillips? No, nothing on that from the TD.

* The death of former TD editor Fred Dillon? We believe you're smart enough to have guessed no TD coverage on that one either.

The above are just some examples of the TD's failure to report. There are many more of the TotallyDecatur's production of some highly sanitized versions of important news stories. In other words, if you think cheerleading is only present in athletic venues, think again.

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We've added Brave Mable to our sidebar today. Mable is the artistic offspring of Amy Collins. If you missed Amy's blog on Walmart, be sure to check it out: Link

We've also added a Flickr link to some very telling photographs of the Sweetwater ruins taken 14 months ago.



Shoalanda