Category Archives: Opinions
Losing friends and making new ones
If we live long enough, we’ll eventually get to the age where we start losing people around us. Friends, neighbors and relatives 
succumb to serious illness, and our lives will never be the same. We end up going to more and more funerals. Our social networks get smaller and smaller, and that leaves us … where?
Alone … unless we see the writing on the wall and plan ahead
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Looking out for No. 1
All across the country there are veterans who might be ill and not know it. The reason: They don’t have the results of their 
medical tests.
If you have medical tests done at a veterans’ facility, before you leave, ask when the results will be ready. You’ll likely be told, “Someone will call you.” Get a name and write it down. Later if you start getting anxious because you haven’t gotten a call, give it one more
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Days of crabs and ice cream
We were visiting my Aunt Liv (Olivia) in Washington, N.C., on the Pamlico River. It was summer, and we’d all been swimming.
Sammy and Shep had been out on the river in the boat to check the crab pots and had hauled in a bumper crop. They were all good sized Atlantic blue crabs and they were destined for the picnic table after some folks got busy setting everything up.
You need more than one large pot of boiling water for that
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Calling for action after another mass shooting
Can we resolve to do something?
Can we take action so that when the next mass shooting occurs, 
we aren’t sitting here wondering if there was something we could have done?
This is not a call for gun control or background checks or arming teachers or more school security. It is just a call for action.
Action might look like one of those things mentioned above. Or,
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Letters to the Editor
Let’s better
manage our budgets
Dear Editor,
I read the article in the Feb. 7 edition about the city of Pickens proposing increasing city business license fees by 10 percent.
I recently looked at the city of Pickens’ financial audits of the past few years. One of the main challenges the city government has is its costs are rising, but natural revenue growth is non-existent or very low. Pickens isn’t Greenville or even Easley with a growing property or business base. In the face of persistent
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Going for the gold
Although I couldn’t stay up to watch some of the Olympic events, I did get to see a number of events that were inspiring.
The women’s hockey team fought their way to a gold medal in one of the most exciting finishes seen.
It was so tense a situation it was hard to watch. But they conquered.
The U.S. curling team’s victory just made you feel good.
They were regular people who aren’t regular any more because
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Local schools deserve more options to protect our kids
The one thing in common among the school shootings that have horrified America and stolen so many precious lives was not the 
type of weapon, or the type of school or even the type of community. The one thing in common is that no one in the school was shooting back.
The fact is that school shooters prey on gun-free zones where they know that they will be unchallenged. Notice that mass shootings do not occur at gun ranges or hunt clubs or
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Courier Letters to the Editor 2-28-18
Maybe time to run for council seat
Dear Editor,
I read the informative article about the county councilmen and officials who took a trip to Karlsruhe, Germany (that’s Europe, folks) on the taxpayer’s dime.
President John F. Kennedy said ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.
I think our councilmen are asking what their new status as county councilmen can do for them, taking this trip along with their wives and visiting relatives once there. The article said they toured a castle and a jukebox museum. Let’s not forget the
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Passing the good fight
Despite their rhetoric of denial, Congress does have the power to pass legislation that would protect our children from being killed at school by an assault weapon.
I know they say this isn’t the appropriate time.
We’ve heard that for years and years.
We didn’t believe it then, and we don’t believe it now. I would be more inclined to listen to them if they quit taking millions from the NRA. Somehow that affects their credibility.
When deranged people go into a school, a movie theater, a hotel, a church or any other place with the intent of slaughtering as many innocents as possible, what is the weapon of choice?
The AR-15 appears to be very popular with mass murderers. There was
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Helping younger kids after a school shooting
The recent school shootings in Florida affect the children in other states, because parents and older siblings in other states are processing the devastation of the deaths of adolescents. Feelings are raw and overwhelming. Children react to their parents’ reactions. And, of
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