North Korea

North Korean Advancements in Nuclear Weapons.

In case you're inclined to hear the other side of the story.

Monotone Message Man

I've been told I need to work on my voice, which was described as, "Flatline." So if I suddenly sound louder and a little more varied its because i'm doing my darnedest.

Main News stories today:

Tommy Lovell recieved permission to move a road, and three bears tried to break into a man's bird feeder. my lead for the story was, "One Clayton man's Bird feeder was just right" trying to reference Goldilocks. I donno how many folks will catch it, hopefully some.

The quote of the day for the Rabun Sunrise was from Rodney Dangerfield.

While I'm on a National News kick

I'm keeping hush about my up coming plans, since i wanna release a good special. But check out this international news link and associated comments.

Is this who we really want negotiating for us? The TotalitarianTheo-crats of Tehran, versus everyones' favorite permissive European retreat? Don't get me wrong, I LOVE the dutch. They are awesome people, they have created a peaceful permissive, liberal state, and I'm all for it. Walk softly sure... but who's carrying the big stick?

Perhaps they are following the advice of the french author who said,

...The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that
very moment.


Then again, Someone said, "The Pope, how many divisions does he have?" Look where that got him.

Special Report With David Shideler

I'v began work on preparing a Special Report to begin airing probably on Monday, and running hopefully till Wed. It will depend on how much useable tape I get from my interview with the Sheriff Today, and with the Mental Health Expert I'm interviewing today. (they are pretty much back to back, so things will be tight.) I really want to make this a good signature piece. With some luck and skill it might be the kind of thing people clamor for more of. We'll see.

I can't resist commenting on some national news and commentary. Check out the following:

Chinese Diplomacy I've read some of Kagan's full length works. He's generally pretty insightful. This column seemed fairly obvious. The sad thing is that someone needs to say it. I lived in China for 3 years, and I loved it, and the Chinese I met, but it would be a mistake to pretend that their economic development isn't largely spurred by a nationalistic desire. Of course all countries economic development is nationalistic, its the nature of the beast. The difference being that the Chinese government is a non-democratic, post-totalitarian regime which supresses the press, puts down labor unrest with force, arrests dissidents journalists, and religious figures on occasion preemptively. I think the assumption that economic development will automatically lead to democratization is a mistake.

I'll leave you today with a quote I found yesterday, which I absolutely adore, but couldn't use for the Rabun Sunrise, for probably obvious reasons.

"The road to truth is long, and lined the entire way with annoying bastards."
-Alexander Jablokov

"Quid Pro Quo Clarice"

Clayton PD has asked me to announce the road closures for the Celebrate Clayton. I look forward to do doing it. Anything I can do to help out the Law is good. Hopefully they'll be able to help me out a little on down the line too!

Not that i'm not just a good citizen, but one needs sources if one wants to be a journalist, and since i'm brand new here, its been tough so far. But I'm working on it.

Big Story out of Tiger

A potentially big story out of Tiger, we'll see what develops once I get confirmation. I'm holding out till some officials from the County can confirm somethings.

we'll see.

Charity Gala+Free Food=News Story

Was at Yonah Park for Twilight on the Tugaloo, a charity dinner and auction benefiting the Stephens County Foundation Inc, whose purpose is to establish and preserve the "Tugaloo Corridor" a stretch of land encompassing multiple states, federal lands and rivers as well as ancient native american villages and other historical sites. I spent maybe 2 1/2 hours there, before trying to get home at around 830, getting terribly lost, making it half way to Lavonia before realizing I was going in the wrong direction.

The food was delicious.

Updates which are actually updates!

I've managed to nail down all the principals involved in the two car accident up in Dillard yesterday. Georgia State Patrol released the names to me about 7:30am, after I spoke with a very nice woman down there in Toccoa, whose having a terrible allergy season, and dislikes working mornings about as much as I do. Anyway, tune in for our 8:00 o'clock cast on Sky 104, or our 8:30 am cast on Rabun County Radio 1370 WGHC to get those.

My last need is to figure out which of the drivers was taken to the hospital by helicopter, and which hospital in Greensville it was. EMS will have that, as soon as I screw up the courage to call them back after my tail-tucking retreat from the angry EMS worker I woke up about 3 and a half hours ago.

Being on the scene in a Emergency

After two car accidents within mintues of each other in Dillard sent me to Rabun County Hospital for about 2, maybe 2 and a half hours yesterday. I was originally supposed to cover a Hospital Authority meeting, but skipped out to interview as many people as I could about the air evacuation. So of course I'm hanging out by the Emergency Room door, looking for officials: Sheriff's Deputies, EMS personnel, anyone willing to talk who might know what's going on. A some what iffy proposition, since anyone who knows is busy filling out paper work if they are the supervisor or chief guy in charge, or if they are not the lead they won't say. It was complicated by the fact that Georgia State Patrol was working the first accident, and didn't have a representative at the Hospital. Then there are the victims family and friends, who are about as happy to see you (the media!) as they would be if you were the actual cause of the accident.
So I got what I could, and then returned to the office to track down the GSP who were working the accident. No luck on that still, and its 6 am here. I gave the first news cast of the day with a few more vaguaries than I would have preferred, but what I did say was stuff that seemed relatively certain. I'll call the GSP when they open at 7. I tried to call Rabun County EMS, only to throughily tick off some poor woman. Apparently EMS, unlike Rabun County 911 Dispatch, does not have someone who is up and on duty all the time. Instead they are more like a fire department, where you see the fireman sleeping at the station. I did not know that. So anyway, I'm sure my name is somewhat worse than mud down at EMS. Not a good thing.
Maybe word will spread that you should tell David Shideler everything you know as soon as possible, so he doesn't call and wake up you at 4:30 am.

Two Scoops or one?

So the Clayton Tribune had two stories I didn't have this week. The first was a story about a guy who Rabun County Sheriff's Deputies were looking for out near Tiger, but didn't find. I knew about the story, guy named Pollard, had some warrants on him, and when the deputies shows he bolted, although I understand they called the swat team in. But Chief Investigator Carey made it sound like total snoresville, which it probably was. He said the highlight of the thing was that the store down there opened early so that the officers got some food. The other story I had, sorta. I ran the story about a girl who accused a camp counselor of sexual molestation, and withheld the names for Investigator Carey. Course he promised to let me know when the situation changed. he did, but he downplayed that too.

So I guess I've learned this week that when it comes to what makes news, you need to decide for yourself. Of course one of the Rabun County Jailers not only downplayed but said he'd never heard of that meth in the jail story, and I still dug that up. I suppose my instinct just needs to be honed is all.

Call Sky 104 at 706-782-1041 if you've got a hot news tip in Rabun, Habersham, Stephens Counties in Georgia, Oconee County in South Carolina, or Macon County in North Carolina.

"Sorry Johnny, Classworks version 2.0 says you get to repeat 3rd grade"

While probably completely unfounded, I think I have a serious problem with a computer program which remediates kids based on their performance on tests and assignments entered into it.

This is in reference to Rabun County Board of Education's looking into ClassWorks, a program which will have every student in Rabun County entered into it, along with their test scores, to determine the best way to teach students. This is includes deciding if they are an auditory or visual learner, and presenting material accordingly, as well as giving them review work on stuff they aren't doing as well on.

For starters the program will not be able to determine WHY a student did poorly on an assignment or test. The teacher will know that Timmy is having trouble at home, or didn't sleep well, or whatever. (Or at least they are supposed to) where as to the program, failure is failure.

I suppose my objection comes from a well of resentment against standards based education. Is it important to know certain basic facts, and have basic abilities with social science, math and language arts? Yes it is. But more important is children LEARNING to LEARN. If they aren't good auditory learners, well tough luck. Fact is they are gonna be facing the real world where, believe it or not, information is conveyed by ear, whether you are good at it or not.

Any teacher's dream..

was how Jan Adams, young Ishida Mahajan's teacher described her, actually just one of many absolutely glowing things the educator said. From the tone of her voice it was clear that she meant every single one of them. The story aired without her comments unfortunately, because she was unwilling to speak on tape. That's a problem with alot of people, largely, I think because they don't trust how their voice will sound over the air or they are worried about how they will sound if they don't have an a prepared statement. Of course the truth is that the best sounding stuff just comes when people speak openly and at length, because then I can just take the best sounding parts. After all, I'm not out to make people look stupid. Its tough to get alot of the news makers, specially the politicians to understand that. In my mind, the goal should be to make both sides of the argument as intelligible as possible, and let the audience decide what it wants to think. But especially in this case, the death of a little girl, Adams concern was she'd come off tacky and insincere I think. She didn't come off that way at all. It's sad I was unable to bring you the wonderful comments she had to say about her.

Never Be news-less again (Sounds like a Bond Movie)

My brother Ray (For those of you who think you remember Ray, you don't, I've never mentioned him by name before. But he's the fella who was supposed to hook me up with photos from Iraq, while he was working there as a Private Security Contractor. I got the pictures, but my technical expertise let us all down.) gave me his scanner. Its a 1000 channel dual trunking police scanner. I've entered in Rabun and Habersham Counties, and plan to add Stephens and Macon County soon. I even have an earphone in it, so I can listen quietly. Its fun that way because I feel like a member of the Secret Service.

Course it also squawked last night and woke me up. So I was probably the first to know that Officer 205 was going off duty around 2 am. Lucky me.

While on the subject of my technical expertise (or lack of it) I will soon be webmaster, or co-webmaster of www.rabunradio.com The company sent me to a class and the whole deal. Took about 6 hours, they paid for lunch, it was nice. But anyway, I hope you'll be seeing my handiwork there soon. They are also supposed to send me to two more classes, so I can do advanced work like posting audio clips, interviews, and digital pictures. I can feel the piercing laughter of the elite bloggers and techno-junkies.

Your News is in the Sky!

DK Republic



www.rabunradio.com is where I work, and where my news and other articles should be appearing.

It was terrible to hear about the young girl from South Rabun Elementary school who died in that crash in Habersham County. You'd think people would know better than to get behind the wheel when they are drunk. The lady who hit her is getting charged with first degree vehicular homicide, DUI, and some other stuff, so it looks like they are going to throw the book at her. Rear-ended the parent's Maxima, and the little girl, Ishita (or Ishida, I've seen it published both ways, I donno yet which is the correct spelling) Mahajan was in the backseat. The GBI is doing the autopsy to see if the poor girl died in the crash or the insuing fire. We can only hope of course that she didn't have to go through that kind of horror. I'll be calling them when normal people wake up to find out, assuming its getting done today.

In other news Attorney for Rabun County Allyn Stockton Jr said on Friday that the County having to provide tail coverage insurance on the sale of the hospital was "kind of ridiculous." With a $750,000 dollar premimum I'm inclined to agree with him. Anyway, it made a good soundbyte.

DK Republic has a change of focus

DK Republic

Hi Folks. In case anyone's wondering, (You aren't, I have no readership) I am now in Rabun County Georgia, where I am employed as News Director for Sky 104/1370 WGHC

In the future you'll hopefully see a lot of local type stuff here. Maybe, assuming I get into the swing of things enough here, and can maintain my regular duties without getting myself fired.