Cold, Cold, Cold
December 10, 2025
By Tom Poland A thirteen-year relationship was dying. Here comes one of those songs that arrives at a hurtful time. The song seemed written for us. You grieve, heal,…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, georgetown-sc-gazette, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move
My Fried Chicken History
December 3, 2025
By Tom Poland As evening shadows fell, I made my way home through woods. Overpowering the peppery smell of autumn leaves, the chicken frying in Mom’s cast iron skillet…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, georgetown-sc-gazette, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
Early bird pricing for Greenville Convention Center’s Holiday Fair benefitting Rotary Club of Greenville ends soon
December 2, 2025
Ticket Prices Increase by $5 on December 4th Don’t miss your chance to save on tickets for Holiday Fair benefitting the Rotary Club of Greenville, Greenville’s largest winter festival, running…
Read MorePosted in: upstatebizsc Category: business-services, entertainment, entrepreneurship, festivals, hospitality, life, local-industry, on-the-move, retail, social-scene
How the night before Thanksgiving became one of the heaviest drinking nights of the year
November 25, 2025The night before Thanksgiving has become known for heavy drinking, crowded gathering spots and increased risky behavior among young adults returning home for the holiday. National traffic safety data consistently…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: education, government, health-care, life, on-the-move
Highway Song, Part II
November 25, 2025
By Tom Poland A Sunday Drive Highways 321 and 301 meet my criteria for back roads. Little traffic. Lots of abandonment. Old stuff getting older. Those 1950 snowbirds heading…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, georgetown-sc-gazette, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
Highway Song, Part I
November 20, 2025
By Tom Poland A Sunday Drive I hadn’t seen him in 10 years. Him would be the preacher who buried Dad and Mom. He was preaching down South Georgia…
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Where The Dead Live On
November 12, 2025
By Tom Poland On a sultry August Sunday I drove up on Shady Grove Methodist Church. Seeing it resurrected James Agee’s “Shady Grove, Alabama, July 1936,” his description of…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, georgetown-sc-gazette, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
Don’t Let the Tricycle Horns of Life Scare You
November 6, 2025
By Jeff Becraft I don’t know what kid the car manufacturer took the horn off his tricycle and stuck it in my car is, but I’m sure that kid…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, georgetown-sc-gazette, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move
Winter’s Rainy Windows
November 5, 2025
By Tom Poland I have long admired the work of a fighter pilot turned writer. He wrote under the pen name James Salter. James Arnold Horowitz volunteered for combat duty…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, georgetown-sc-gazette, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
Return To Pawleys
October 28, 2025
By Tom Poland Sunday lunch at the Sea View Inn. Forty-five years it had been since my daughters and I were together at Pawleys. While eating I thought about our…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, georgetown-sc-gazette, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
Notes From The Road
October 22, 2025
By Tom Poland June 29, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Interstate Act. Nigh 70 years later a grid of steel, cement, and asphalt makes it impossible to see…
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Tim Burton’s ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’ exhibition helps kick off holiday season at Upcountry History Museum
October 22, 2025
The doors of the Upcountry History Museum have now opened to the enchanting world of animation with “Beyond Halloween Land: Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas,” an exhibition dedicated to…
Read MorePosted in: upstatebizsc Category: chamber, education, entertainment, hospitality, life, marketing-and-communications, media, non-profit, on-the-move, technology, the-arts
The Dejected, Rejected Playwright
October 15, 2025
By Tom Poland May 2011. Jennifer’s email cut to the chase “We want you to write a play for Georgia’s Official Folk Life Play, Swamp Gravy.” “Me, write a…
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Southern Exposure—The Fly Swatter
October 9, 2025
By Tom Poland Grandmothers’ Weapon Of Choice The New Oxford American Dictionary defines “fly swatter” as “an implement used for swatting insects, typically a square of plastic mesh attached…
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Primal Fear
September 30, 2025
By Tom Poland Stumbling Onto A Corpse Besides the solitary confinement of writing, I cut myself off from the world in two places. Hard-to-reach wilderness areas and forgotten churches where…
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The Maker’s Mark
September 25, 2025
By Tom Poland The Author’s Signature Is A Commodity I can’t remember who I signed the first book for but I’ll hazard a guess it was a woman. Not…
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The Kerosene Lamp
September 17, 2025
By Tom Poland Readers Respond My September 10th post, “A Whale of a Lamp”, received reader comments that deserve sharing. Who in this era of ultra-dark-defying lighting would take…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move
Prisma Health launches Sickle Cell Lifespan Center to provide comprehensive, systemwide care across all ages
September 11, 2025
Continuity of expert care from childhood through adulthood improves quality of life and prevents gaps in therapy Prisma Health has launched the Sickle Cell Lifespan Center, a newly expanded, systemwide…
Read MorePosted in: midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: government, health-care, life, non-profit, on-the-move
The Hometown Weekly
September 3, 2025
By Tom Poland In my youth we had a daily newspaper, The Augusta Chronicle. What we didn’t get every day was local news. That’s what made The Lincoln Journal…
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Caffeine
August 29, 2025
By Tom Poland “Cocaine,” JJ Cale wrote it. Eric Clapton sung it. Clapton described the song as anti-cocaine and that seems to be the case, if you read between…
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Lonely Lone Star
August 21, 2025
By Tom Poland I’ve long felt that two South Carolina community names ascend to prettiest—Silverstreet and Lone Star. Those names, evocative and wistful, charm the ear. One conjures up…
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A Lesson in Leadership from a Genuine Friend
August 13, 2025
By Jeff Becraft When I was a freshman, 18 years old, at Virginia Tech, I met a guy by the name of Rick Harman. Going in as a freshman,…
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Grandma’s Petunias
August 13, 2025
By Tom Poland A Short and Sweet, Fragrant Memory Vintage petunias, those flowers my grandma loved, I saw them in youth. As I sort through my memory album they…
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Queen Of The Shoals
August 7, 2025
By Tom Poland Her May-June reign approaches. The rocky shoals spider lily, Hymenocallis coronaria, will soon flaunt her crown of white, green, and gold. Exquisite, ephemeral, and periled. Much…
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Twelve No’s and a Yes: One Man’s Journey to Building a Business
July 30, 2025
By Jeff Becraft I have mentioned before that years ago I was with an organization called Fairway Outreach. One of the kids that was part of Fairway Outreach was…
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Highway 13, Cemetery Road
July 30, 2025
By Tom Poland Pot holes pockmarked the old road. She promised a bumpy ride, but rivulets of tar stitched her together, and that was good enough for me. I…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc, laurenscountybuzz Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
My Love Affair With Miss Zebco
July 24, 2025
By Tom Poland I fished many a farm pond as a boy. When I left my red-varnished cane pole for Miss Zebco, I fell in love. I filled my…
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My Southland, Maybe Yours
July 16, 2025
By Tom Poland April, along a back road to Athens, G-A, I saw ghosts. Amid new homes a shed and barn cast blue shadows across brilliant-green grass. Then I…
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Nailing Down A Mystery
July 9, 2025
By Tom Poland Old doors rife with nails. Rows and rows of nails. Studs. Like handsome lads, all in a row. All in precise order. I’ve come across two…
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The Songs Of Summer
June 30, 2025
By Tom Poland Nature blessed my boyhood summers with music. Cicadas’ rising-falling singsong gave days rhythm. Katydids chimed in evenings with a nightshift song backed by cricket twitter. The…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc, laurenscountybuzz Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
Granddad’s Fiddle
June 25, 2025
By Tom Poland Long did Grandad’s fiddle hang on my mother’s living room wall. I could never walk by it without wondering … “What’s its story?” Best I recall,…
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Blink Book Review: “Uncommon Favor: North Philly, My Mother, and the Life Lessons I Learned from All Three” by Dawn Staley
June 18, 2025
By Reba Hull Campbell I’m not usually one to pick memoirs by sports icons. Musicians, journalists, writers or politicians, yes. But not often sports heroes. I admit, I just…
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They Just Upped And Left
June 18, 2025
By Tom Poland Late 1950s. May 1. Riding with Dad by a cement block house. White. A few clothes out back on the clothesline. Diapers mainly. A tricycle with…
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Miss South Carolina Scholarship Organization announces 2025 judges’ panels
June 17, 2025
The Miss South Carolina Scholarship Organization has announced the panelists tasked with selecting the next Miss South Carolina and Miss South Carolina’s Teen. The 2025 competition, taking place in Columbia…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: life, non-profit, on-the-move, philanthropy
My Perfumed Nights
June 12, 2025
By Tom Poland Squall lines, thunder and lighting, and tornadoes signify the changing of the guard. Winter’s heavy air gives way to lighter air, and soon air conditioning will…
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Fences Say A Lot About Folks
June 5, 2025
By Tom Poland A fence has become more than a way to mark property—delineate—as a five-dollar word goes. “I put that fence up to delineate precisely where my line…
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Newest exhibition at Upcountry History Museum assembles display of Avengers originals
June 4, 2025
Traverse the Marvel Universe through a unique experience that explores the fourth installment of the Avengers saga in “Avengers: Endgame – The Exhibition,” a first-of-its-kind showcase opening at the Upcountry…
Read MorePosted in: upstatebizsc Category: chamber, day-care, education, entertainment, life, marketing-and-communications, media, military, non-profit, on-the-move, the-arts, veterans
Man Will Always Wage War
May 29, 2025
By Tom Poland Cynicism Sometimes Is Backed By Reality I remember the Vietnam anti-war protests at the University of Georgia. Some group firebombed the Army ROTC building and I…
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Sometimes I Hallucinate
May 22, 2025
By Tom Poland Fate lays its hand on me. While driving the Fall Lines Freeway to Dry Branch, Georgia, the time to medicate arrived, 9 a.m. I had a…
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Juke Joints & Dive Bars
May 14, 2025
By Tom Poland Mom never darkened the door of a juke joint, but that didn’t stop her from rendering a harsh judgment. “The only people who go to juke…
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The Birds of Death
May 7, 2025
By Tom Poland Forever Fly, You Black Riders Roads tell stories. I’ve come across the “Mule Kick That Killed Eight People” in Edgefield County. I’ve seen stores fall to…
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Capt. Mose Rogers & The S.S. Savannah
May 1, 2025
By Tom Poland I visit cemeteries never knowing what I’ll find. February 10, a cemetery gave me a story that has the elements of a great movie—risk, bravery, tragedy, the…
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Nature’s Fierce Defiance
April 23, 2025
By Tom Poland For seven years I only read Russian writers, Boris Pasternak, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, and my favorite, Alexander Ilyich Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn wrote of life under Stalin.…
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South Carolinians to shine “Two Lights for Tomorrow” on April 18
April 18, 2025
South Carolina will participate in “Two Lights for Tomorrow” on the night of Friday, April 18, a nationwide commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Paul Revere’s legendary midnight ride and…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc, laurenscountybuzz Category: life, on-the-move
A Southern Rock Connection
April 16, 2025
By Tom Poland Back roads took me past pecan groves and cotton fields and eventually to Charlane Woodlands, Chuck and Rose Lane Leavell’s home/tree farm. That evening Chuck and…
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We Never Met
April 10, 2025
By Tom Poland I wish we had. I traded letters with a writer who lived alone in the remote reaches of Alaska, the Land of the Midnight Sun. Poet…
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Experience a master class on collaboration at Endeavor’s Collaborators & Cocktails networking event
April 7, 2025
Endeavor Workspace’s spring C&C on April 30th is all about marketing Greenville. Attendees will get a master class on collaboration and smart selling – from a brand and a key…
Read MorePosted in: upstatebizsc Category: chamber, conversations, economic-development, hospitality, life, local-industry, marketing-and-communications, media, on-the-move, social-scene, the-arts
Gnarly voicemails
April 2, 2025
By Jeff Becraft I’m on my second illness in six weeks. What kind of shenanigans is this? I guess all the running around over the last month and eating…
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A Day in the Life of a Garbage Man
April 2, 2025
By Tom Poland Let this harrowing tale serve as a warning. Be careful of what you wrap in aluminum foil. A British judge stopped a man’s 12-year legal battle…
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Upstate Deputy Calls for Better Care After Line-of-Duty Injury
April 1, 2025By Corporal Lucas Watts On November 16, 2023, our family began the long, grueling journey of recovery that comes with a traumatic brain injury. While on duty for the Oconee…
Read MorePosted in: upstatebizsc Category: government, health-care, life, on-the-move
