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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
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
Regional leaders unveil unifying riverfront brand for Midlands
July 27, 2025On Thursday, July 24, regional leaders from the Midlands Business Leadership Group (MBLG) and the River Alliance gathered at the Saluda Riverwalk to unveil a new brand identity designed to…
Read MorePosted in: midlandsbiz Category: economic-development, life, marketing-and-communications, on-the-move
Focus, Interrupted
July 24, 2025
By Tammy Davis What a Former Mobster Taught Me About Going After What You Want Chaos tends to follow me around. I like to blame my unmedicated ADHD brain, but…
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What’s Vital Is Often Missed
July 24, 2025
So I needed to get a new driver’s license. This is one of the REAL ID driver’s license… because without it, I couldn’t fly. Now we don’t fly very often.…
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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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Blink Book Review: “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” by Sarah Wynn-Williams
July 17, 2025
By Reba Hull Campbell For anyone who hates social media – and Facebook in particular – you’ll get a real satisfaction from reading this book and all the awfulness surrounding…
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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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Sequins at 3 AM and My First Night Alone in Vegas
July 16, 2025
By Tammy Davis Departure For years—maybe even decades—my college roommate invited me to join her family’s annual Vegas getaway, but I always had an excuse: too broke, too single,…
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Something to be glad about
July 16, 2025
By Jeff Becraft I have no micro-motor skills. Or if I have any, it’s very little. It takes me forever to get the key into a keyhole and to…
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Hanging together
July 10, 2025
By Jeff Becraft We just celebrated the 4th of July, Independence Day, in our country. Way back when the Declaration of Independence was signed, Benjamin Franklin said, “We must…
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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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Summer Blink Book Review: “A Bit Much” by Lyndsay Rush
July 3, 2025
By Reba Hull Campbell Each summer during my personal reading challenge, I try to include at least one book of poetry. This isn’t my usual reading genre, but I like…
Read MorePosted in: midlandsbiz Category: life, on-the-move
Bathroom renovation update
July 3, 2025
By Jeff Becraft There are two bathrooms in our house. There’s one in the hallway, and there’s one in our bedroom. As the kids were growing up, they used…
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Mekong Memoirs: Come hear the story of a Vietnam veteran from South Carolina
July 1, 2025
Glen Inabinet was a bit farther along in life, a bit more mature, than the average draftee who went to Vietnam. He was an old married man of 25, and…
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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…
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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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A seat at the table
June 25, 2025
By Jeff Becraft Last week I was at a week-long retreat with a children’s home. As part of this retreat, we all have meals together. We wait until everyone is seated…
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Identifying what’s most important
June 19, 2025
By Jeff Becraft I finally got another car. The car I was driving, which has been a fantastic car, was fifteen years old and had over 316,000 miles on…
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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…
Read MorePosted in: lowcountrybizsc, midlandsbiz, upstatebizsc Category: life, on-the-move, the-arts
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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Four guys and 10 minutes
June 12, 2025
By Jeff Becraft Since I recently talked about Wallaby, and also Mr. Mert, I am going to tell another story that happened at Mr. Mert’s wedding. There were four…
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Blink Book Review: “Grace Will Lead Us Home” (reprise in memory of the 10th anniversary of the shootings)
June 11, 2025
By Reba Hull Campbell If it’s summer, that means it’s time to gear up for summer reading. (Writer’s note: I wrote this review in 2019 shortly after the book…
Read MorePosted in: midlandsbiz Category: life, on-the-move
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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Summer Blink Book Reviews are back for 2025
June 5, 2025
By Reba Hull Campbell If it’s summer, that means it’s time to gear up for summer reading. Remember those summer reading clubs from childhood? In my family, we would…
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Saying thank you
June 5, 2025
By Jeff Becraft As I’ve said before, my Dad was a great man and my Mom was a great woman. They were two incredible parents. And so, as time…
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Wallaby, the Soldier We Never Expected
May 29, 2025
By Jeff Becraft Years ago, I was at a friend’s wedding in Virginia Beach and one of the friends who was also at the wedding was telling me about…
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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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Free lecture on the Battle of Bunker Hill, 250 years later
May 29, 2025
There were more Revolutionary War battles fought in South Carolina than anywhere else, but we have to admit that there were SOME significant fights elsewhere. And the 250th anniversary of…
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‘Tis the season for graduations … and this year’s update of “20 life lessons”
May 22, 2025
By Reba Hull Campbell ‘Tis the season for graduations, new jobs and life transitions. It’s also the season for my annual updated “20 lessons” list. A number of years…
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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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Our mistakes do not define us
May 20, 2025
I may have talked about this before, and to be honest, I really can’t remember. Some of the early Friday emails got lost when we changed servers years ago… but…
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Pizza and fried chicken
May 15, 2025
A couple of Friday nights ago I needed to work late, which meant I had to eat late. Brenda was not feeling well. as she was fighting off a cold,…
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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 Battle of Camden, as explained by a ‘redcoat’
May 13, 2025
Books have been written about war since writing was invented. In the 1890s, Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage initiated a new way to tell such stories. Rather than…
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A cure for FOMO (or also entitled 48 hours in the company of hooting, cackling and snorting friends*)
May 7, 2025
By Reba Hull Campbell At my age, there’s not much that can gin up a full-blown case of FOMO anymore. But when I recently realized I was the only one…
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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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Brighten up someone’s life
May 5, 2025
By Jeff Becraft (Someone once told me they end their week and start their weekend with the Friday email. Well… maybe on this one, you can end your weekend…
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West Columbia Police Department hosts Lexington County Law Enforcement Memorial Service
May 1, 2025The West Columbia Police Department will host the Lexington County Law Enforcement Memorial Service on May 6, 2025, at 9:30 a.m. at the Marc Westbrook Judicial Center at 205 E.…
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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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Do it right the first time
May 1, 2025
One time when I was up in Maryland, I bought a big bag of frozen blueberries. Now this was a big bag. I felt along the top when I was first opening…
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Free admission to the museum for military and families, thanks to Blue Star
April 28, 2025
The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum seizes upon every opportunity to honor those who have served in uniform. That certainly includes those serving now – and their…
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Veteran ‘Tunnel Rat’ will tell his story at Lexington County Library branch – May 2
April 24, 2025
On May 2, the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum’s Noon Debrief series of free lectures will debut in a new location. And it will be a particularly…
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He took my place
April 24, 2025
By Jeff Becraft (Another story involving Black Mountain for Children… names have been changed for privacy sake.) Last year, I was speaking at a weekend camp with Black Mountain…
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Learn about the struggles of a Montagnard soldier who settled in South Carolina
April 24, 2025
We all remember – if we’re old enough – the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, particularly the image of that helicopter trying to evacuate people from a rooftop.…
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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…
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