Recently I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the divisions in our country. Divisions which quite honestly, we see becoming vitriolic, in some cases almost demonic, on both political spectrums of the nightly news. Both sides, I believe, benefiting from our national divisions. Both sides, creating echo chambers, where tens of millions […]
National news and increasingly bizarre national politics seem to bombard our lives, not only for the growing numbers who use social media but for the rest of us who read newspapers and watch or listen to news broadcasts. It’s easy to say, “That doesn’t affect me. I’m just going to turn it off.” That would […]
As I have written before, it was the financial bailouts of 2008, during my season of working in branch banking, that I was shaken out of my slumber. Over the course of the next three years, the walks I took with my bride ceased to simply be walks in the neighborhood and nature trails, but […]
Readers of this column will remember previous OpEds about the vanished town of Hamburg, S.C., its history especially around the Reconstruction era, and its ties to Edgefield. What was once Hamburg is now within the city limits of North Augusta, adjacent to the old Fifth Street bridge; it was part of Edgefield County until Aiken […]
This was written on Monday August 28, 2017. On this day 7 years ago, I woke up in Washington, DC after spending the previous day attending a conference with many other UNdivided Americans from all around our republic. As a group, we either took buses or walked down to the Lincoln Memorial, where we joined […]
In its Eighteenth Century wording, the U.S. Constitution in Article II Section 2 grants Presidents “Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Our founding fathers left that power to speak for itself and many Presidents have used it, usually for cases of miscarriage of justice […]
Hammond West, 77, husband of the late Frances Calliham West, died Wednesday August 23, 2017. Funeral Services will be held Saturday August 26, 2017 at 11 AM at Antioch Baptist Church with burial in church cemetery. Mr. West was born in Edgefield County and was the son of W. A. and Louise Hammond West. […]
Dear Editor, In my almost sixty-five years as a member of this community I cannot think of another couple who have moved here and made as much of a difference as George and Beth Thornton. We all should be grateful for their vision, energy, and contributions to this community. I have had three opportunities to […]
As a retired Navy Officer and now a mathematician and a University Professor, I have met many interesting people from all across the globe. Mathematicians don’t pay much attention to their colleagues’ race, religion, or politics. Can this person teach? Do they really know mathematics? Are they committed to keeping up with their field? If […]
Based on a desire for commonality among many churches, the Revised Common Lectionary is now in use throughout the English-speaking world. In the U.S., its sequence of Bible readings for each Sunday is followed not only in my own Episcopal Church but also in the Roman Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran and Missouri Synod, Presbyterian, United Methodist, […]