This is the account of my courtship of the lovely Ann Laura McGuire, the woman who would become my wife. I began classes at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in September 1947. The following summer of 1948 I was home at Carolina Beach, North Carolina, and working a summer job at the J.C. […]
After finishing the sixth grade at Carolina Beach Elementary School, my next two school years (1941-43) were spent at Winter Park Junior High on the eastern outskirts of Wilmington. The school was about 15 miles distant from the beach, and a school bus picked us up every weekday morning. Because of the distance from home […]
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace. This beautiful sentence of Elizabeth Barrett Browning expresses the sort of feeling that is beyond our ability to describe. No dictionary can provide words adequate to describe such […]
Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised to pass the new Equality Act. Do you understand what is in it? I urge you to read the my post, “LGBT Issues.,” that I wrote in early November but am republishing today. Also read the following article by Emilie Kao, Director of the Richard and Helen Devos Center for […]
Among many other things, Benjamin Franklin is remembered for saying “in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” I do not pretend to be an expert on economics or financial matters. The mysteries of national and international financial manipulations are beyond my ken, and I tend to avoid thinking or […]
My brother Branch, his wife Ruth, and infant son Branch Jr came to Carolina Beach in late 1940 and lived with us for a time at our home on Harper Avenue before acquiring their own abode. Branch loved surf fishing, and he got to do a lot of it that year. While he fished, Ruth […]
Those of us in the general public often think of our representatives in Congress as being somewhat deranged. Never has that been more true than it is at present. Little more than a decade ago Charles Krauthammer, a medically certified psychiatrist and much honored television commentator, applied the phrase “Bush derangement syndrome” to what he […]
The President and the Democratic Party leaders in Congress have dug in their heels. Neither side wishes to give an inch in the fight over funding for a border wall. How is the impasse to be resolved? Is some sort of compromise possible? The Democrats obviously hope that pressures created by the extended partial government […]
The family often vacationed at Carolina Beach in the early 1930s, and in the mid 30s Dad had a beach house built there. The cottage was located a mile north of the town center and was separated from the ocean shore by sand dunes. A year or two later Dad had two smaller cottages built […]
My mother was a Rives. (Note: Here I am entering a brief excerpt about the Rives family extracted from a posting on Robert Ryves in Wikitree, an on-line genealogical website. Following this note, most of the following material in this post is derived from the book Reliques of the Rives by James Rives Childs. Robert […]
Jordans-Journey 