A few weeks ago, I came out of a fog. It was a hateful, paranoid fog, and it made me feel like I wanted to burn down the place. By place, I mean America.
Why is it I can’t remember where my car keys are in the morning, but I can remember the license plate number of my car I had in high school? Why can’t I remember where I put my glasses just ten minutes ago but I can remember, like it was yesterday, that I had to get up early on Saturday mornings so that I would not miss the cartoons?
In response to the Jan. 4, 2012, Letter to the Editor in the Fort Mill Times “Despite Rumors, We’re Not on the Titanic,”
Ah, a New Year.
It’s cloudy and almost dark when your cockpit display shows the President has given final approval for the carefully planned strike on the rogue mobile missile launchers. They told you before you catapulted from the aircraft carrier in your F-35C that the weather would suck.
Peeking out from under the tree with a bright red ribbon around his neck, he was their favorite present on Christmas morning.
The holiday season marks the time to enjoy the company of family and friends, attend festive parties and gatherings and count our many blessings.
I never used to cry in public unless it was out of anger. Until my early 20s, I’d go from a whirling dervish of ire to a heap of hot tears in 30 seconds. It was humiliating and certainly didn’t help me make my point.
Now that the world has lost Andy Rooney, the CBS News “curmudgeon-at-large,” I may volunteer for that role. The 92-year-old veteran managed to tickle viewers of “60 Minutes” for more than 30 years. Even though I rarely agreed with him, his long tenure alone invites respect. And it’s a tribute to our free republic that you can make a career of getting in peoples’ faces.
The next presidential election is a year away, and candidates for the nation’s highest office are busy canvassing our state.
For weeks, I’ve watched as the media has compared the recent “Occupy Wall Street” protests to the Tea Party rallies that began in early 2009.
Nothing delights my 4-year-old like Halloween. Ghosts, costumes, and all things spooky are among his favorite topics. Merely mentioning Trick or Treat, spiders or skeletons brings a gleam to his eye, and he plans his costume months in advance.
Twenty-plus years ago, when I joined the River Hills Emergency Squad (now River Hills/Lake Wylie EMS), there were seven volunteer squads, providing the county with ambulance and rescue services at no charge. They worked cooperatively with the six ambulances fielded by Piedmont Medical Center. We worked together, trained together and shared the same medical control and protocols.
Finally, we have discovered a use for the irresponsible, unaccountable commission that oversees the Department of Transportation: comic relief.
2000: Frank Lee Smith is posthumously exonerated — he’d died 11 months earlier — 14 years after being convicted of raping and murdering an 8-year-old girl. The eyewitnesses were wrong.