Porches to Sidewalks
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
This summer has depended to a greater extent than ever before on the smartphone I carry. The folder of transit maps, brochures and guidebooks I used to carry has been replaced by the phone, which delivered reviews, directions, maps and even tickets ...
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
After 1000 miles of track, my son and I obtained a good idea of what the state of rail travel is like in the eastern United States today.
Our trip home began at Rockland Airport in Maine. This tiny facility had three TSA employees present on a Sund ...
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
The tourist guide to Camden, Maine listed the walk up the trail to the top of the Camden Hills in Maine as the second most popular visitor's activity in the community. It will also probably be my last mountain.
I've walked to the tops of other mount ...
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
The Laurel was a 150 foot pustule of material excess squatting in Christine, Maine's harbor. It was the sort of mega-yacht teenage boys aspire to own. Some boys grow up to become manipulative stock market shorters and buy such things with the wealth ...
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
A small fight was won in the struggle towards a more diverse transportation system for the Lowcountry on Tuesday.
The City of Charleston's new bicycle ordinance emerged a day before its first reading at city council with a stringent new provision wh ...
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
It was a hot, quiet July morning in Mount Pleasant. Those planning to go had already headed out to the beach. The sky was indifferent about the possibility of an afternoon thunderstorm. The vacant lots were verdant. The weeds growing up around the "F ...
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Last Month's CARTA Fixed Route Advisory Committee Meeting wrestled with the hard questions ahead for our area's growing transit system. The good news is that despite the recession, ridership on CARTA continues to grow. CARTA has seen a spike in rider ...
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Hands Across the Sand" held demonstrations at two East Cooper Beaches last Saturday to raise awareness about the hazards of off shore drilling. There were six local events and hundreds around the country.The Isle of Palms event was organized by some ...
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
On Friday evening, about a year since it opened, my wife Julia and I took a walk along Mount Pleasant's Memorial Park Pier to see how it is approaching the important and elusive goal of becoming someplace.A lot of East Cooper isn't headed in that dir ...
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
As I write this column, we are waiting to see if the Legislature will override the governor's veto of state appropriations for local libraries. In his veto statement, the governor suggested that the loss of $6 million in state assistance could be mad ...
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
In the frustrating economic transition we're slogging through, politicians are prone to lunge for a vulnerable target to focus public anger away from themselves. It's becoming apparent this political season that illegal immigrants may be getting the ...
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Next week's primaries transition the political process in South Carolina towards a November general elections likely to be the last of its kind in America.Fifty years ago the election topped by the contest between Kennedy and Nixon proved television ...
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Warm spring filled the afternoon air from the oak trees to the wooden dock on Hobcaw Creek where the Spirit of South Carolina was receiving visitors.The ship had the tidy, controlled quality sailing vessels always have at the dock, when their masts a ...
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The United States Government came looking for me on May 16. That won't surprise all of my readers, many of whom have been expecting something like that to happen for a long time. However I and the president are currently members of the same politica ...
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
The time of wind on the Wando and young laughter on the water has come in with the last tide. The tide reaches around East Cooper like a friend with a twice daily embrace of saline affection. The water rises up in the marshes until it reflects the li ...
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
To my Son:Dear Jackson, 18 years ago, on the pages of this newspaper, in a column titled "Love Covered With Sweat" Your mother and I announced your birth to the world. You were born after a night of storms, on a day when the streets of Los Angeles er ...
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
The American dream was dissolving in the cold florescent light of the Charleston County Courthouse on Tuesday morning. The benches were full of people waiting for foreclosure hearings. After twenty-five years of legal practice, most spent in the unha ...
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Portland, Oregon is on the verge of becoming the first major American city liberated from the automobile.Six percent of the people commuting in Portland on an average day arrive by bicycle. Many more come in by public transit, provided by on street r ...
Tuesday, April 06, 2010
Olympia Washington has been awarded the designation of being the best transit system in the United States. My son Jackson and I are visiting the area to scout colleges and haven't needed a cab or car since we arrived at our hotel. What can this bus ...
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
The children are always dressed for spring. They wait impatiently behind the barrier tape looking at the bright plastic eggs which cover the field before them. It will only be a moment before they are allowed to gather them up.Each Easter, our neighb ...
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Google's Android OS is pushing connectivity towards a type of seamless, globalized texture which will change life east of the Cooper in ways more radical than the internet already has.Two months ago, I upgraded my cell phone to a Motorola Droid. Like ...
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Few teenagers at Wando High School want to be gay. It's also likely most students at our school would prefer to be the same color, have the same religion, be popular, slim and have the perfect sense of current style. To be a teenager in America is to ...
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
The shoeboxes are quite ordinary. Each year at the St. Patrick's Day celebration on I'On Square, we turn shoeboxes into leprechaun traps. If you catch a leprechaun, it is said he will grant your wish to regain his freedom.The legend is that leprechau ...
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
More than 12 percent of South Carolinians aren't working this week. The insolvency of the State's Unemployment fund has been presented to the public as a secret surprise produced by a faceless, unresponsive bureaucracy. Nobody we elected admits to an ...
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
It is easy to win elections by slamming cell doors, but something more complex and responsible is required in South Carolina.The recommendations in the recently released South Carolina Sentencing Reform Commission Report To The General Assembly (Feb. ...
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