By: Ali Elizbeth Turner
After making coffee, Mayor Ronnie showed me the submissions for the America 250 art contest that were laid out in the city hall boardroom, with a description of what was being portrayed. The Athens Arts League is sponsoring the contest as part of our Red, White and Boom celebration, and the entries were fascinating. They ranged from Vincent Van Gogh to FDR to Sacajawea, and in some cases, the reasons why that character had been selected. There’s more to come on that as we get closer to the Big Birthday Party…
Food City has announced that its grand opening is going to be July 21, and the mayor had done a walk-through on Tuesday. The project is definitely coming along, and it is also encouraging that there will be job opportunities for Athenians, especially young ones. You can’t beat a brand-new building with good leadership at the helm, generous pay and benefits, and a chance to get gas and groceries in one stop on the West side of Athens.
We talked about the upcoming 4th of July, and heroes that bravely personified the power of communication, especially when doing so meant certain death. In both of our stories, the impact of that said commitment had had on the lives of the recipients was one of life and death. Mayor Ronnie once had the opportunity to meet Jeremiah Denton, the famous Mobile-born and U.S. Navy Admiral Vietnam POW. Denton communicated through blinking Morse code with his eyes about the fact that he and his fellow prisoners were being tortured, and were certainly not receiving the humane treatment touted by the Viet Cong. “T-O-R-T-U-R-E” was the word he managed to blink out while talking to his interrogator, all the while pretending to have eyes that were reacting to the studio lights. He went on to serve as a U.S. senator for the Great State of Alabama, and served from 1981-1987.
For my part, I told Mayor Ronnie about a woman by the name of Elise Bauer. I had just learned her story the morning we met, and found it remarkable. Elise, by way of her clever communications as a prisoner in Ravensbruck during WWII, embodied the courage and commitment to communicate as well. Elise was 61 when she was imprisoned, and had been a church organist. She developed a way of transmitting intel to other prisoners through hymns. She used lyrics, rhythms, and tempos which were varied to disseminate specific and vital information throughout the camp. She was dismissed by her captors as a silly old woman trying to comfort herself, and was never caught. After the war, the story of how many hundreds of fellow prisoners were saved by her commitment to communicate became known, and when she died, people from six countries attended her funeral.
By contrast, we both felt the need to pray about artificial intelligence. It is moving so fast that even the experts are overwhelmed, and we both marveled at the potential for great good and great evil. Mayor Ronnie was aware of a court case being dismissed because an attorney used AI to create a brief, and I told him about some of my own encounters that were inarguably unsettling. Trying to find out how to be “wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove” when it comes to AI is no small task, and it’s not going away any time soon, nor the need for wisdom as to how to handle it.
“We can never get to the place where we no longer communicate face-to-face,” said the mayor. I couldn’t agree more. There was only one thing left to do, and that was to pray, so we did. And then it was time for Ronnie to roll.
By: Ali Elizabeth Turner
