Let’s face it. We’re a blessed people. Not only do we have the oldest state-chartered university in the nation with two recent National Football Championships, 27 Rhodes Scholars (but who’s counting?), and the greatest state song in the history of the world – Georgia on my Mind, as sung by Ray Charles Robinson – but we are also home to the sweet Vidalia onion. Our cup runneth over.

Count me in as one who still enjoys holding a good, local newspaper and absorbing almost every word. From the front page to the obituaries to the sports to the legals.

Sometimes, I have decided, rudeness works. Sometimes, it’s even called for. I had to do a lot of thinking on this because I advocate kindness and courtesy.

My boss and mentor at Southern Bell, Jasper Dorsey, taught me a lot about the business world. He also taught me a lot about the world beyond business.

A lot is going on at my alma mater, the University of Georgia. Not all the news has been good.

In the modest country home where I grew up, prejudices were not allowed. Though there was a serious bias against what Daddy called “no accounts,” men who laid up drunk and didn’t feed their families.

Between the time I write, and you read this, conditions can change. Particularly in politics. But as of this writing, there seems to be little doubt that an Alabama mining company will get permission from Georgia’s Environmental Protection Division (an oxymoron) to begin extraction of minerals from the Okefenokee Swamp.

This is how prayer works: Tink and I were one hour into a seven-hour trip home from Memphis. I’d been on a book tour for two exhausting weeks and had a stomach bug, very rare for me.

Several years ago, I cohosted a radio show that was recorded in a studio on Nashville’s famed Music Row. Top on my wish list of guests was songwriter Rodney Crowell.

My fellow Americans, my fellow Georgians, and my loyal readers without whom I would have to go get a real job! (Laughter and applause!)I come before you today to submit to you my annual State of the Column address. It is with great pride that I state to you that the state of this column is in such a state that it cannot be overstated! (Thunderous roar!)