Category Archives: Opinions
UFOs, cicadas and the Wild West
Time to put a few things in context here.
Our topics for today are UFOs, zombie cicadas and Wild West gun laws.
If this column is unsettling to you, or offensive, please don’t take it too seriously. Laugh it off and go on.
So…
I guess you’ve heard about the declassified report on “unidentified aerial phenomena” — otherwise known as UFOs — that the Pentagon is supposed to be releasing soon — or may already have released by the time you read
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Pickles, the albino ferret
Aunt May was in a panic. There was obviously something wrong with Pickles. Pickles was plucking out her beautiful white fur until only her pink skin was exposed. Her little pink eyes matched her pink skin. She was pink from head to toe. Aunt 
May had always denied that Pickles was an albino, because, after all, she has two black spots on her ear. Aunt May could find no veterinarian nearby who could help Pickles. It was suggested that Pickles might have fleas, but that was not the case. Meanwhile, Pickles, listless and lethargic, continued to pluck her fur.
Aunt May adopted Pickles from her son, Jonathan, when he got a job in
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Not every problem has a simple solution
It’s come to my attention that over the past few years there are a number of perfectly good gardening gloves in the basket where I keep things loosely organized for yard work.
They are usually in a loose pile stuffed in with the trowel and clippers, ant poison and miracle grow.
This spring I decided to dump everything out onto the porch floor and go through the pile to see what could still be useful and what should go. That’s when I discovered that yes, there are a lot of gardening gloves in the basket. But most of them are for the left hand only. There are only two pairs of gloves that have both left and right hand capability.
So why are there six left hand gloves with no mates?.
The right hand gloves have to be thrown away when all the fingers have holes in them and the seams come apart.
Logically, I should throw away all the mateless gloves.
But something just won’t let me do it. It probably has something to do with the line of McBride ancestors who believed nothing should be thrown out, as
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Courier Letter’s The Editor 5-26-21
Informative, as usual
Dear Editor,
I read Councilman Alex Saitta’s letter to the editor on May 19. It was very informative, as usual. I agree with his priorities of the recycle centers. They have gone down the past few years. On numerous occasions, I have gone to the center and the trash bin was full and bags were
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Pretty lonely on the back porch
About 12 years ago, my wife Kathy started hearing a noise in our basement that sounded like a baby crying.
When I went down there to check, I found a small gray cat with a heart-shaped white spot over her heart who had somehow snuck into the basement and gotten trapped. It was the same cat I
had seen a few days earlier running across the driveway as I was pulling in, and I said, “Look out, you smokey little critter!” She was the color of smoke, you see.
So I rescued Smokey from the basement and gave her a bowl of milk, and we became friends.
She was a stray apparently, but she must have had a previous owner, because she was gentle and sweet — not like the feral cats who showed up on the doorstep a few months later.
Since I doubt that you remember the column I wrote about our cats a couple
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Some things you should never do
It was raining. Not the pouring down kind of rain that washes seeds out of the ground, but the soft rain of May.
It was early, and the coffee had just been made.
So I rolled out of my warm, comfortable bed and put on my old bedroom slippers to venture downstairs.
There’s nothing like that first cup of coffee.
Someone else who lives here had already gotten their first cup and was
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It’s the bee’s knees
I was in the garden planting pollinator flowers when a bee kept buzzing around my head. Its tiny body was energetically bustling through the air, searching for nectar from the perfect flower. I kept looking, trying to see if he had any knees.
“The bee’s knees” was a fanciful phrase that originated in the 18th century and referred to something that didn’t exist. I think they were right, because I couldn’t see any knees on that bee.
However, in the 1920s, a lot of silly expressions became popular, and “it’s the bee’s knees” came to mean something extraordinarily wonderful, like
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Courier Letters to the Editor
Overriding issue facing the county
Dear Editor,
The county council is in the process of drawing up the budget for next year. To me, the most overriding issue facing the county, as well as all elected leaders in our county, cities and towns, is sprawl. Not just urban sprawl from Greenville, but regional sprawl from those fleeing the northeast and Florida and moving to the Carolinas. If we do not get ahead of the things population growth is stressing, we will be eaten up. Additionally, I want to protect the quality of life of
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Relentless compassion of God
I notice when talking with certain people about Christian living, it’s common for them to lose eye contact as they start searching for a way to change the subject. Actually, this is perfectly understandable. Why? Because if someone, even if 
they are somewhat religious, has never given their heart to Jesus Christ or made the commitment to follow him, they feel uncomfortable thinking and talking about it.
Our natural mind and the Spirit of the Lord are like oil and water, as the old nature wants nothing to do with being held accountable or surrendering our will to anyone, especially to God. Conviction from the Holy Spirit is a sense
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For want of a shoe, a horse was lost
Do you remember the old saying we learned in elementary school? Miss Moore, our sixth-grade teacher, cited it often. Thinking back, I recall hearing this when anyone didn’t show up with their homework.
It goes like this:
“For want of a shoe, a horse was lost. For want of a horse, a rider was lost. For want of a rider, a soldier was lost. For want of a soldier, a battle was lost. For want of a battle, a war was lost.”
I was reminded of this while I searched for pine straw this week. Or pine
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