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Greeting and blessings! Unfortunately, Jesse Louis Jackson (1941-2026) dies at age 84. The well-known fierce champion advocate for justice and voting rights passed away at his home on February 17th in Chicago. He was surrounded by his family. Jessie Jackson was a prominent Civil Rights leader, politician, and a ordained Baptist minister. He was known for his activism, presidential campaign and founding of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. He stood as a towering figure for more than 5 decades, fighting the fight, shoulder to shoulder alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. Jackson went to Selma, Alabama and joined up with King. In fact, Jackson was there in Memphis, Tennessee, standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel when King was shot dead by an assassin bullet.

Comic books got me hooked on reading. I cannot remember exactly how it started but I was a voracious reader even as a child. Laugh if you will but comic books played a huge role in me developing an interest in reading for pleasure, which translated into reading for educational purposes, and that ultimately led to a career that I enjoyed. I became a voracious reader across a wide variety of genres, and it is still an enjoyable pastime, though not as often as I would like. The importance of reading cannot be overstated as those who cannot read well will have considerable problems functioning in today’s world. Yet testing conducted in 2025 revealed reading proficiency among high school students continues to fall, with 32 percent of high school seniors dropping below the “basic” level as recently reported by CNN.

The war on drugs continues and while I’m not sure the war can ever by won, law enforcement is putting a dent in the problem through Georgia. Recently, several large drug busts have been made in the state and here are a few of the reports from those cases. On Thursday, Feb. 12, law enforcement agencies executed 18 search warrants in connection to an investigation into a local trafficking organization operating in Muscogee, Harris and Russell counties. According to a Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) press release during the execution of the 18 search warrants, approximately 2.2 pounds of suspected Cocaine, approximately 46 grams of suspected Fentanyl, approximately 2.5 pounds of suspected Marijuana, approximately 105 grams of suspected THC, approximately 101 suspected Hydrocodone Pills, and other assorted pills and drugs were seized. The total value of the drugs seized was $126,321.00. The Muscogee County Sheriff’s Office also seized $101,035.12 in U.S. currency and 14 vehicles.

Last Monday, on President’s Day, I had cinnamon spice oatmeal for breakfast. Normally, of course, that isn’t news. That isn’t even worthy of a mention in passing.  But this time, it was different. You see, the last time I had cinnamon spice oatmeal for breakfast was the morning of July 31, 2025.  During that meal, I had a heart attack. (True, I treated it as if it were acid reflux, and it was four days before I did anything about it, but that’s another story – one I’ve already told in this space.) I’m happy to report that history did not repeat itself, and I didn’t have another attack while enjoying my cinnamon spice repast. But it was definitely an episode of “poking the bear.”

Science fiction has brought to life an interesting variety of planets, some real and some not. Some of you that have been around for a long time might remember that in 1934 readers of the newspaper comic strip Flash Gordon were introduced to the planet Mongo. Mongo was the creation of Alex Raymond and Don W. Moore. Raymond was the comics artist behind Flash Gordon and Moore was a ghostwriter and magazine editor. As envisioned, Mongo was about half the size of Earth, had an atmosphere comparable to Earth’s, with gravity slightly less than Earth’s, and four moons. It was a rogue planet that drifted into our Solar System.

• Mar. 3. Today in 1980, the submarine USS Nautilus is decommissioned. Launched in 1954, Nautilus enjoyed a storied career as the world’s first nuclear-powered boat, first nuclear-powered submarine, and the first submarine to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole, serving for 26 years. Named for Captain Nemo’s fictious submarine in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea today the Nautilus is a museum ship at the Submarine Force Library and Museum in Groton, Connecticut. She has been designated as a National Historic Landmark and visited by an average of about 250,000 people per year.