Category Archives: Lifestyles
Celebrate America!
County July 4 events planned
By Jason Evans
Staff Reporter
jevans@thepccourier.com
COUNTY — Pickens County is celebrating Independence Day with a number of events this week and Monday.
Central/Clemson
Although it ran for more than a quarter of a century before the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020, the annual Clemsonfest is not returning this year, as officials announced earlier this year that the event was “officially done.”After years at the Y Beach in Clemson each July 3, the event had moved to the Spittoono site on Eighteen Mile Road in Central, a move that
How to make Father’s Day more enjoyable for Dad
Dad gets to be king of his castle at least one day during the year. Come mid-June, children near and far scramble for ideas to treat their fathers to a special day and award him with gifts for being a role model, provider and confidante. Father’s Day activities should be centered around Dad’s interests. With that in mind,
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Father’s Day – A History
On July 19, 1910, the governor of the U.S. state of Washington proclaimed the nation’s first “Father’s Day.” However, it was not until 1972, 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official, that the day became a nationwide holiday in the United States.
MOTHER’S DAY: INSPIRATION FOR FATHER’S DAY
The “Mother’s Day” we celebrate today has its origins in the peace-and-reconciliation campaigns of the post-Civil War era. During the 1860s, at the urging of activist Ann Reeves Jarvis, one divided West Virginia town celebrated “Mother’s Work Days” that brought together the mothers of Confederate and Union
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Clemson-led research team launch rockets into aurora borealis to study dynamics of energy exchange
CLEMSON — As the Northern Lights danced over Poker Flat Research Range near Fairbanks, Alaska, early one morning in April, a team of researchers led by 
Clemson University assistant professor of physics Stephen Kaeppler launched a sounding rocket into the colorful aerial display.
Three minutes later, the scientists launched a second rocket.
The researchers launched the rockets to study how energy behaves during an
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NSF grant boosts effort to better understand what controls space weather
CLEMSON — When you open a weather app on your phone or catch the latest forecast on the local television news, the information you receive affects several decisions you make that day — which clothes you will wear and what activities you will do.
Space has weather, too, and while its effects on daily life may not be as obvious, it can be just as impactful.
Space weather is activity on the Sun’s surface that ultimately affects the Earth and its atmosphere. Like tornadoes and severe thunderstorms, space weather can also be devastating. Extreme space weather impacts electric power grids, spacecraft, and satellites used for communication, global positioning systems and intelligence gathering.
Clemson University Department of Physics and Astronomy Associate Professor Xian Lu
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Reconciling racism & religion
By Dr. Thomas Cloer, Jr.
Special to The Courier
For Black History Month, we have focused on the award-winning book “Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo,” by African American author Zora Neale Hurston.
“Barracoon” is a Spanish word for “barracks.” A barracoon was the hellhole where captured Africans were kept until their voyage to a life of enslavement. This book is already considered a masterpiece of our American literature by many in the literary world. It won Book of the Year awards in 2018 from 14 different entities, such as Time, NPR, Barnes and Noble, Christian Science Monitor, New York Public Library and Amazon.
Although Hurston finished the manuscript in 1931, it was published in paperback by First Amistad Paperback Edition of HarperCollins 
Publishers in 2019. I wrote earlier about why it took so long for this masterpiece to be in print. The author finished her manuscript in 1931. Hurston interviewed and wrote direct dictation from the African Kossola of his growth to adulthood in Africa and his capture and voyage to Mobile Bay, Ala. Kossola gave memories ranging from his horrifying enslavement to his release from slavery into Jim Crow America.
Chapters I-XII in Barracoon are the words of Kossola, as Hurston wrote them in the 1920s. The dialect of Kossola was written so expertly by Hurston that it flows smoothly and eloquently in the book. Kossola learned a dialect of spoken English as an adult slave in Alabama. Hurston made many visits to Kossola’s little home in Alabama when Kossola was in his 80s. He would be the last former slave who had grown to adulthood in Africa and could give an eyewitness account. His memories
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Parallels between Native American and African slavery
By Dr. Thomas Cloer, Jr.
Special to The Courier
Last week, to celebrate Black History Month, we introduced the award-winning book “Barracoon: The Story of the Last Black Cargo,” by Zora Neale Hurston.
Barracoon is a Spanish word for the “barracks” where the human cargo from Africa was kept until their voyages. The book was a result of Hurston travelling to Alabama in the 1920s and recording the memories of Kossola (African name) or Cudjo Lewis (American name). He was the last living eyewitness former slave
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Kidnapped from Africa: Last captured slave tells all
By Dr. Thomas Cloer, Jr.
Special to The Courier
I’ve often thought about how much I would have loved to read the last sad report by Cherokees whose homes and crops were burned in our Eastatoe Valley of Pickens County. As far as I know, such a report doesn’t exist from the Cherokee perspective.
I have read many slave narratives, but until now, had never read a firsthand account from a slave who was born, reared and stolen from Africa. I had never read a slave narrative written as this slave dictated. This former slave, Kossola, stolen from Africa, could neither read nor write. His remarkable memory has been corroborated historically by the academic world using other
sources. His easy-to-comprehend language is remarkably captured by the author.
For celebrating Black History Month, I want to feature this must-read for anyone
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Paying Tribute
Wreaths laid at graves of more than 1,000 local veterans
By Ann Warmuth
For The Courier
news@thepccourier.com
COUNTY — Downpours could not stop the Central, Clemson and Easley volunteers numbering over 450 who came out for the third year in a row on Dec. 18 to remember the lives of the communities’ 1,027 veterans at rest in the 10 cemeteries supported by the local Wreaths Across America (WAA) programs.
This year’s WAA theme was “Live Up to Their Legacy,” with 2.4 million veterans wreaths laid on their resting places in more than 3,110
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