Editor’s NOTE: Now that we are home from the weekly shopping trip to Food Lion, here are three columns for Sunday reading. First, Nicole and I thank folks and praise God for His help with the Albemarle Observer. Next, there is a column from Jonathan Tobias about the importance of remembering the Holocaust. Tobias is a North Carolina Press Association award-winning columnist. Lastly, there is a column from Pat Throckmorton about how to define success. Throckmorton is a retired nurse and a published author.

Lunch with Lico — Our Mission Statement and a Word of Thanks, Praise to God

BY MILES AND NICOLE LAYTON

I had lunch with Gary Lico the other day at the Broad Street Diner – that’s the newish restaurant in Edenton that serves a good breakfast and nice turkey sandwiches.  

An accomplished man, certainly in sales, Lico asked me what the Albemarle Observer’s mission statement is. Lico made the television show Forensic Files a household name and around these parts, he’s known as the number one best Santa you call when the town is lighting up our big Christmas tree. Gary, thanks for lunch.  

If the Albemarle Observer has a mission statement – it is that my wife and I are here to serve the community and Northeast NC.  

Here is the official mission statement from the website – Albemarle Observer celebrates the very best in northeastern North Carolina and the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Through the online content we publish, we share information about communities and opinions on the various problems that coastal North Carolina and Virginia are facing right now.

Nicole and I want to thank the people who have donated to our cause. 

We’ve got to say – thanks be to God. Prayers are answered.  

Starting an unknown venture, it is scary, very scary, this path, but I have faith in God enough to take that first step.  Gary offered a quote about explorers and being able to see the shore when no one else can.    

Our endeavor to build a better newspaper began like this. 

People came up to us, whether it was at the town’s only grocery store or our favorite coffee shop, Edenton Coffee House – folks said the stories or columns they had written weren’t getting in the local newspaper or how this or that story wasn’t covered. Many folks talked about media bias, particularly toward people and issues in rural areas. 

This is our home, so rather than do nothing, we created the Albemarle Observer. Initially, the page was there to post reader submissions so that if they didn’t get published in the local newspaper(s) who don’t place any value on such submissions, then folks would have a place (beyond Facebook’s selective algorithm) to find their columns or stories about their groups. I think our first couple of posts came from one of John Mitchener’s columns about Aces’ sports history, Betty Johnstone’s National Alliance on Mental Health’s local meeting and the latest happenings from the Edenton Tea Party chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.  

Then a couple of important stories came our way that we couldn’t ignore and that the understaffed/overworked local media were slow to handle, so we started to write more stories mainly to fill in the gaps in coverage. We felt that if those stories didn’t appear in the local paper, then folks could find them somewhere else – not have to wait a week or longer for their news.  

Other independent journalists, too, are doing much the same thing nationally because the legacy mainstream media is broken beyond repair. And I’ve seen that firsthand in Ohio, where a local media outlet — the Athens County Independent — is absolutely crushing the local corporate-owned newspaper.

Stepping out on a ledge — having faith in God — things have taken off for the Albemarle Observer.  

Prayers are answered – thanks be to God!  

Thanks to folks’ support, we can continue to keep the lights on and serve our community. 

If you want to subscribe — FREE — check out our website at https://albemarleobserver.news/

If you want to subscribe – you can enter your email address at the website or send it to us at albemarle.observer@gmail.com and we will gladly add you to our growing subscriber list.

You can also donate by going to the Donations page by clicking here or send us a check at Albemarle Observer, C/O Miles Layton, 205 E. Church St., Edenton, NC 27932. We also

HEADLINE: The Past is Never Past

BY JONATHAN TOBIAS

“The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” That famous line is from the great Southern writer William Faulkner (from his 1950 novel, Requiem for a Nun).
It is in remembrance that we recognize the enduring presence of the past in the present, so that in the future, we can prevent those past evils from happening again.

I’m referring to last Monday, January 27th, the annual “Holocaust Remembrance Day.” On that day in 1945, the Auschwitz death camp was liberated by Red Army troops from the Soviet Union, during the final months of World War II and the fall of Nazi Germany. On November 1st, 2005, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 60/7, which established January 27th as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In Israel, the remembrance of the Holocaust is known as “Yom HaShoah” on the Hebrew calendar, 27 Nisan. This year, that day is Friday, April 25th. Exactly one week after our Good Friday.

Why is it important to remember that over six million Jews were murdered by Hitler and his henchmen? This unthinkable number represents two thirds of Europe’s Jewish population, and one third of the entire Jewish population in the world. It is an unthinkable number. People cannot grasp it and thus it becomes an abstraction. As Joseph Stalin once said, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic.” Undoubtedly, that is how he anesthetized himself while killing off almost 4 million Ukrainians, and now Putin is following in the same footsteps.

Large numbers are seemingly unreal and unbelievable. Tragically, there are so many today who don’t believe the “six million” statistic. At all.
And that six million doesn’t even include all the other people who were murdered by the Axis regime: a wide diversity of physically disabled and the mentally ill, other “sub-human” (a favorite Nazi term) ethnicities like Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Serbians, Freemasons, communists and socialists, even Jehovah’s Witnesses were all up for slaughter. Doubtlessly, if Blacks and Hispanics would have been around, they would not have been left out.

Why is it important to continue responding to and refuting claims that the Holocaust never happened? Why is it so necessary to remember that too, too many collaborators shut their eyes, held their nose, but enabled this genocide anyways?

Simply this: if we don’t remember, it will happen again. It was easy and expedient to collaborate with the Nazi regime, as it was so powerful and popular. Although we’d rather not think it, it is surprisingly fast and easy for an authoritarian movement to infiltrate and corrupt a democracy or a republic. We forget that following Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor on January 30, 1933, Germany transitioned from a republic democracy to an authoritarian state in only a matter of months.

Why so fast? The way of collaboration was just too easy, too appealing, too profitable. “Broad and easy is the way of destruction,” Someone Famous once said. Germans, even nice Christian Germans, began thinking and speaking in ways that a year before they never would have thought possible. And of course, such thinking and speaking transmogrified into horrible, Holocaustic action.

The Weimar German republic fell. Third Reich Germany had only just begun.
And indeed, the way of destruction is broad and easy right now. The Economist magazine reported in December 2023 that one in five American young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 believe that the Holocaust is a myth. Approximately half of Americans Millennials and Gen Z have seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online.

I ran into one of these several months back. An earnest young man from Idaho runs a podcast in which he ONLY GIVES THE REAL HISTORY (all-caps are his as you’d expect, pointing out that other more conventional histories are Marxist: it seems that one must use all caps in the keyboard warrior business of owning the libs). According to his breathless report, concentration camps like Auschwitz were only “philanthropic centers,” set up by Hitler to give food and shelter to homeless, wandering Jews. And the gas ovens were utilized simply to dispose of those who died. He suggested, too, that any bad thing that happened in this arrangement was probably the fault of the Jews.

I pointed out a number of flaws in his argument, the chief of which was an enthusiastic lack of reason and a jejune dependence upon dubious social media networks.

Of course, he paid me no mind, bless his heart. “You’re just woke!” he sputtered.

Well, okay, if remembering the Holocaust makes me “woke,” I’m glad I’m not sleeping. I guess he had his own truth, his own reality. He had done, to his satisfaction, his own research.

“Woke” is one of the emptiest, most toxic words in American speech today. It’s not innocent. When used as an accusation, it’s deployed, perhaps unwittingly, in the process of belittling, depersonalizing, and finally de-humanizing the “other.” And so the scapegoated person (or class of people) can now become a convenient target, a mere Freudian fetish for anger. “Woke” is part of the hate speech dictionary, along with other verbal bombs like “toxic empathy,” “deplorables,” “snowflakes,” “vermin,” “unhuman” (à la Posobiec). Nowadays, non-verbal bombs like the Nazi salute have come into vogue – which, for those of us whose loved ones have gotten killed or wounded in World War II, can never ever be minimized and excused as a joke.

Hate speech always goes before hate action. In fact, it aids and abets the actual bringing hate horror about. This is what my hero and great martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer warned repeatedly before he was hanged by Hitler on April 9th, 1945. The Holocaust was the inevitable climax, the apotheosis, of hate speech. Scapegoat a people long enough, and genocide will happen. Over and over again. Count on it.

The most immediate way we can remember the Holocaust is swearing off hate speech and not to just “let it go.” And showing respect to all groups of people, even if we do not agree with their lifestyle choices. And recognizing, in our speech and actions, that every human being bears the image of God. If we do this, we can avoid getting brainwashed into collaboration with a despotic, genocidal regime.

My brother Ben and my ninth-cousin Bonnie – who are adept genealogists – tell me that I haven’t even a tiny fraction of Jewish roots in my background. And yet, when I look up my last name in the database of Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, I find over seven hundred murdered victims who are surnamed “Tobias.”

And so I count them as family. Blood, after all, is not thicker than water. There is no pure blood or bad blood. There is only one blood, one shared humanity.

In the Book of Common Prayer, there is a prayer for a mission that concludes the daily morning service: “O God, you have made of one blood all the peoples of the earth, and sent your blessed Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near …”

“In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither male nor female,” St Paul says in Galatians. Too many Germans got brainwashed by hate speech into forgetting this truth in the Thirties. We, in this decade, cannot ever forget this verse. We simply must remember this and all the lessons of Auschwitz. We cannot afford to go to moral sleep.

If we want to keep the nightmare horrors of the past away from our future, we need to wake up. And stay watchful and awake!

HEADLINE: So You Are Successful But Are You Significant?

BY PAT THROCKMORTON

First, no two people are the same; thus, everyone’s definition of success differs.  How do you define success in one’s life?  Can it be described in one word or a dissertation?  When people think about a successful life, they often think about money, social status, and power.  Generally, women define success in terms of life balance and relationships, whereas men focus more on material success.

Proverbs 16:3 NIV tells us, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and your plans will succeed.”  Psalm 37:4-6 NIV says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.”

To delight in the Lord is to know Him intimately.  Knowledge of God’s great love for us will indeed give us delight.  To commit ourselves to the Lord is to entrust Him with everything – our lives, jobs, families, and possessions.  We must be willing to wait patiently for His plan to work in our lives.
“Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all.”  Proverbs 22:2 NIV.  It is profitable to remember this.  Note that it doesn’t say Maker of both – it says Maker of them all.  The assertion here is that God is the giver of all things to all people.

A simplified definition of success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.  Throughout our lifetime, our goals and objectives refashion.  You look forward to your first day of school as a young child.  When my granddaughter Carla turned ten, she said, “Oh, Mamou!   I am now in the double-digits!”  She wasn’t nearly as excited when she became a teenager.  Then life moves on, and you are sixteen with a driver’s license in hand.  Then twenty-one, thirty, forty, fifty; retirement for some, and on and on.

As you look back over your decades, you recognize the evolution of your years.  In the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, he gave strong encouragement.  And these words are befitting to us today.  “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man.  And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.  But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.”  1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV.

Wrong desires and temptations happen to everyone – don’t feel singled out. None of us are without trials.  Others have resisted temptations giving proof that so can we.  Search for like-minded Christians who can offer help in any time of need.  Purposely turn from what is wrong.  You will be successful!
How does one live a life of significance?  All you have to do is share your resources.  But what are they?  They are referred to as your three T’s – time, talent, and treasure.  You do not have to be a millionaire to share any of these.

Although it may sound contradictory, giving away your time will add meaning to your life.  Creating memorable moments with your children, grandchildren, or other family members is a most precious gift.  Providing a meal for someone incapacitated, having a conversation with a shut-in, or running errands for someone unable to do so are deeds that cannot be measured in dollars but are priceless to those on the receiving end.  

Everyone has a talent specific to themselves.  “For who makes you different from anyone else?  What do you have that you did not receive.”  1 Corinthians 4:7a.  The implication is that our abilities and skills come from God.  What is your talent?  Patience, persuasion, organization, speaking, writing, singing, or something else?  Whatever it may be, share your talent with others.

What may be an insignificant amount to you can be a fortune to someone in need.  Most of us know or have known persons who have fallen on hard times – perhaps you have experienced such.  Did you reach out to offer financial assistance?  

Being significant infers that you matter and that your empowered choices can improve your life and those with whom you have contact.   So, practice being generous with your three T’s.  You will begin to recognize more joy in your life.

God measures success differently than the world does.  Jesus said, “For he who is least among you all – he is the greatest.”  It has absolutely nothing to do with wealth, influence, or skill.  True success is when we have overcome the world, are saved, and know we will have an eternity in heaven.