All writers in Op Ed are here to inform and acknowledge issues of importance to our communities, however these writings represent the views and opinions of the authors and not necessarily of The Advertiser.

By Robert Scott

A fellow columnist for The Edgefield Advertiser has stated she cannot stand to focus on the day’s news for over 15 minutes at a time; it is just too depressing. Many of us, myself included,can relate. There seems to be an overabundance of reporting about death, mayhem, or outright selfishness in the news today, and an apparent lack of joy, harmony, and brotherly love, what the King James Bible calls agape. Whether it is a story about various states mandating that teachers ignore parents’ concerns as well as their own, regarding CDC-recommended mask wearing before their children are allowed by law to be vaccinated; or four short of the required sixty U.S. Senators voting to approve a probe as to what really happened at the Capitol building on January 6^th; or South Carolina’s Governor Henry McMaster issuing an Executive Order prohibiting state-licensed foster care providers from giving aid and comfort to unaccompanied children arriving in our country from Latin America; there always seem to be headline-grabbing stories that are of genuine concern.

But it is possible to avoid this trend toward the negative in Edgefield County, on a beautiful day in June. Let us set aside those concerns just for a bit and, instead, celebrate this glorious month with the words of the Massachusetts poet James Russell Lowell.

A Day in June

By James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

And what is so rare as a day in June?

Then, if ever, come perfect days;

Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,

And over it softly her warm ear lays;

Whether we look, or whether we listen,

We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;

Every clod feels a stir of might,

An instinct within it that reaches and towers,

And, groping blindly above it for light,

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.