THE ET CETERA CHRONICLES - VOL. 71

THE SMILING IRISHMAN   -  Some people may remember Jeremy Craig,  the First Secretary to Irish Embassy.  Craig, the smiling Irishman,  came to early in his diplomatic career to  Dublin to promote Irish heritage during the 1970 Saint Patrick’s Festival.    Craig, a 28-year-old native of Dublin, Ireland, was promoted to Counselor in 1974.   In 1979, Craig was appointed as the Deputy Head of the Irish Mission to the United Nations in New York.    

Jeremy Craig was a respected Irish diplomat who served in several important posts at home and abroad during the course of a 25- year career in the Department of Foreign Affairs. In 1981, Craig was elected to a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for the two-year term.   Craig represented Ireland during the Falklands War, as well as the troubles in the Middle East.  

In 1983, Jeremy was promoted again and posted to Beirut as Irish Ambassador to Lebanon where he was also non-resident ambassador to Syria and to Iraq. This was a post of significance for Ireland’s relations with the Middle East and because Irish peacekeepers had been serving with the UN in Lebanon since 1978. It was also a difficult and dangerous assignment as Lebanon was convulsed by a complex civil war which in one form or another lasted from 1975 until 1989.

Three years later, in 1986, he took up another important posting in the embassy in London as deputy to the ambassador. Sadly, for health reasons, he did not have the opportunity to make the contribution he might have made there to Anglo-Irish relations. After a short time in London he returned to a post in the department in Dublin and he took early retirement on health grounds in 1991. Craig died in March, 2016.  The Irish Times, March 26, 2016. 

THE INVASION OF THE BIRDS - As the evening temperatures began to drop in the late summer of 1930, many of Dublin’s citizenry would gather around the courthouse at dusk.  They came to see the purple martins,  thousands, if not tens of thousands of them.  Every evening the birds circled the courthouse tower, long a refuge of alighting birds.   After the martins moved on, they were replaced by chimney sweeps, much to the delight of Dublin’s bird watchers.  Dublin Courier Herald, September 14, 1930. 

WE WENT BLUE - For the better part of seventy years, the residents of Dublin, Georgia were prohibited from buying almost anything on Sunday.  Only emergency purchased were allowed.  The first such blue law was passed by the city council in -.  Obviously, intoxicating beverages were banned on the Sabbath.  The council men set their sights on shaves and shoe shines.  That might be questionable, but when the holier than thou alderman decided to ban soft drinks and candy, the children of city turned blue.  A fire and brimstone speech by evangelist Sam Jones a few days before got the true believers on the hunt from the poor kids who ran out of candy on Saturday night.  Savannah Morning News, October 15, 1901.  

HOMELESS VETERAN - Clinton W. Terpening has seen war under horrible living conditions.  The Civil War veteran from Illinois moved to Soperton in 1920.  He was somewhat of a hermit who lived in a house built of scraps and was described as “some sort of heathen building.”  Terpening died in late September 1930.  His body was brought to Dublin for cremation before it was shipped back home to his sister in Illinois.   Dublin Courier Herald, September 25, 1930.

LOOK WHAT I CAUGHT! - Bob Hightower loved to go to fishing holes on Turkey Creek.  Just as he saw three ducks approaching his position, he let his bait fly off the end of his rod and reel.  Hightower’s line caught one of the ducks by the foot. The duck plunged into the water safely.  The happy fisherman reeled his catch in, removed it from his tackle,  and took it home with him alive.  Dublin Courier Herld, October 5, 1930.