It seems since my childhood that I have spent much of my life searching for a backyard. I have had hayfields and marshes as backyard but until this last move none were close to the one where I played ball with friends when I was in elementary school. I could plow up part of it for a huge garden but I have been there and enjoyed that when I was a lot younger. Read more.
My mother pictured above with our good friend, Mr. Cruz, never knew a lot about fishing, but she was smart enough to trust the experts.
Apparently, today’s parents have grown so smart that children no longer need schooling by teachers. Perhaps that is an exaggeration and not completely correct. The most vocal parents are okay with teachers as long as they teach their students to think exactly like their parents. The teachers should also do this while not wearing masks and certainly without asking students to be vaccinated or wear masks.
Considering how much time most parents spend on their smartphones where I am pretty sure they are not reading books, there must be another miraculous way of absorbing knowledge. I am sure it is not Facebook or Fox News. Based on the precipitous fall in newspaper subscriptions, it is certainly not from reading the daily paper. Read More
When I started writing for the web almost seventeen years ago, I had no idea how much I would appreciate my own writing. It turns out that few of us have memories as good as we think they are. Time after time, I will start writing about a subject and remember to look and see what I have already said about the subject. When you combine years of writing with extensive photographs from the same time period, you come up with local history that is often invaluable.
Local history is valuable in running local governments and even HOAs. In fact the governments, especially HOAs, that ignore their own history and precedents often get into the most trouble especially when they try to rewrite history.
Just because something is written down on the web does not mean it is automatically true. However, if it is written by someone with a long history of truthful writing, then you should likely give whatever they are saying consideration. I pay special attention to getting the facts right. I take some measure of pleasure in being right especially when I have been challenged by some who would rewrite history.
If you want to make sure your own story is correct, make sure you take being an author seriously. It takes a lot to build a reputation, but very little to ruin it.
Read more at my article, The Disappearing Narrative of Our Lives.
It was long ago in 1971, when we gathered for American Thanksgiving on the shores of the Bay of Fundy in a farm house that had been standing for over two hundred years. Most of the people in the picture are no longer in my life but those that are still connected are treasures. Read more at this link.
It seems that I have finally lost even those places that I could retreat to in my imagination. The COVID19 crisis and the mass shooting in Nova Scotia have stripped away those places that have anchored my psyche for most of my adult life. Now there is no place to run. Read more here.
This is definitely not the spring that we hoped for here on the Southern Outer Banks. Just after my birthday in early March the world seemed to enter a new more dangerous era. In spite of our location where the sand meets the sea, we are not immune. There have already been five cases identified in Carteret County, four of them from international travel.
By now we have usually kicked off the countdown to the beach season by having the Emerald Isle Saint Patrick’s Day Festival followed by the Swansboro Oyster Roast. Both events were cancelled this year to help prevent the spread of COVID-19 (coronavirus). We can be thankful that our area leaders understood the gravity of the situation.
Our streets and stores have been steadily emptying out over the last week as people began to practice social distancing. People seem to be getting the message that staying home is the best thing that you can do.
Saturday, March 21, 2020, was the kind of day that makes you want to work in your yard with temperatures well into the seventies. We did that and enjoyed immensely. Our beds are now ready for beans and tomatoes which we will plant the first week of April. Even though we enjoyed our first salad from the garden on Sunday, colder air embraced our area and it almost seemed like mother nature had figured out that things were not right and changed the weather to match the mood of seriousness.
Sunday also brought the first time we attended church by using chromecast to stream a YouTube sermon to our den television. With public access parking to the beaches closed and all restaurants either doing takeout or closing down, life remains out of sync with the seasons as trees bloom and yards begin to green up.
Fortunately, our gardens are doing well. At least we will not lack for lettuce or other green stuff for the next six weeks. In spite of the gardens, life is just not the same. Certainly, this is the first time other than hurricane season that I am telling people to stay home and not come to visit our beautiful coast. While I miss the beach, I know that our absence from the sands will help this crisis end sooner rather than later. I continue to enjoy the memories of better times through photo albums like this one from a hike on the Point at Emerald Isle in May 2017. I will continue to post pictures to keep the memories of sand and surf fresh.
We should all remain hopeful that there will be a summer beach season, but a lot depends on how well we do at staying away from each other. The alternatives as this simulation show are not encouraging. It is imperative that we stay away from each other until this crisis slows.
My newsletter from Sunday, March 22, with some additional details is at this link.
We are all in the same boat with COVID-19, but we can hope that living on the edge of the continent might buy us a little more time to learn from others’ mistakes.
Carteret County also has some unique characteristics which might help us a little. Some of those things are what attracted us to the area when we moved here fourteen years ago. Read more here.
Our journey to a home by the water involved a lot of learning and more than a few surprises
Finding your spot on the water is not as simple as it might first appear but it is not really difficult. You just need to understand that are a lot of different kinds of water. Read more about where and how we found our piece of waterfront paradise.
We hear lots of talk about inequality in incomes, but there is an underlying problem that continues to get worse. It infects government, corporations, and even neighborhoods. It is not new but it is getting worse. Read more
On the Friday after Thanksgiving 2018, the View from the Mountain blog will have its fourteenth anniversary. It was not my first adventure on the web but it certainly has been my most persistent presence. There are close to fifteen hundred posts at View from the Mountain. Read more
Our technological infirmity 
