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The world is too much with us… William Wordsworth The past month has been very stressful. The burdens of the world seem to oppress and overwhelm me. Now more than ever I rely on the nature s...

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Long ago, before I ceased eating at fast food restaurants, a Burger King Whopper with fries and a Coke was my favorite fast-food meal. Thinking about those delicious, large, flame-broiled burge...

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I never had a house that was my own. For almost my whole life I have rented apartments and have been quite content with that. Although I am a porch person by sentiment and nature, I only once l...

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When I lived in southern Mississippi, there was a lot of turmoil in my brief time as an instructor at the university there, and I had to tough it out for a year. It was the most toxic and miser...

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I’ve watched a lot of videos of the destruction all over the mountains of NC, but this is down-to-earth one of the best. This man and his neighbors have a strong spirit, but I simply don’t kno...

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(Author’s note: I am confidently composing this, knowing only too well that no one under 40 reads these essays, and so most of you will know what I am talking about and not consider me too anc...

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Unless you live up in the Appalachian Mountains and foothills of five states devastated by wind and flooding from Hurricane Helene, it is almost impossible to grasp how many lives were lost, ...

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Is this the Pinnacle of life. No seriously. I mean look, what is your highest ambition? Is it this? No, no it’s not. You know this. It might be the highest ambition of your chemical mind, your ...

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Sunday is my one social outing of the week. Religiously, I head out to visit my brother and his lady friend at the beach. I’ve been doing this for three years. He is a great cook and prepares...

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My life is based on a true story. Author not known Seven years into retirement, I find myself looking back on the past more and more often, thinking of my past friends, jobs and careers with in...

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Part 1 https://www.prosebox.net/entry/2089068/ “The Sum of Trifles,” Title of a book By Julia Ridley Smith Here in Part 2 I continue my inventory and annotation of the contents of a selected ...

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Home is the question you fnally answer. Home is the hollow you finally fill. Home is the hearth where you warm your soul when everything around you is coming to pieces. Home is the place that yo...

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Suburbia: land of middle class dreams and hopes for the “good life” fulfilled. Good schools. No crime. No gangs. Just a lot of invisible angst. Shady streets, two–car garages, neatly manicured l...

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Occasionally I come across stories in the news that are so deliciously offbeat and strange, in a humorous way, of course, that I have to share them. Here’s one. You know how when you’re driving ...

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But when the melancholy fit shall fall 
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
 That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
 And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
 Then glut thy sorrow on...

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One of the most magical experiences in the mountains is the possibility of coming across a small, unexpected waterfall as you drive winding dirt or gravel roads up to higher elevations. The air ...

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One day you’ll look to see I’ve gone For tomorrow may rain, so I’ll follow the sun The Beatles In the summer of 1974 a group of friends and I put out a newspaper at the University we were all at...

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Let my mind become silent and my thoughts come to rest. I want to see all that is before me. And in self forgetfulness, I become everything. Joseph Cornell. I acquired early in life a sense...

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One of the best memories I have from the decade of the 1970s after I had moved from New Orleans to South Carolina, was heading out to the rural countryside outside Columbia with two new friends t...

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Back in pre-Internet says, there were only three broadcast networks from which people got their nightly TV news, and the daily newspapers in most of the larger cities. I remember highly anticip...

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I picked up an old photo album I hadn’t looked through in quite some time tonight, and was transported back to a trip across the country and through the Midwest in the Spring of 1985. The album ...

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When Julia Ridley Smith’s parents died, they left behind a virtual museum of furniture, books, art, and artifacts. Between the contents of their home, the stock from their North Carolina antiques...

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I wondered today, walking slowly along the road, how it was that so many simple things give me such exquisite joy.  I saw a gray cat curled up on a window ledge in the morning sun, and stood look...

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There are times when I feel most connected to life in the awareness of fleeting experiences that come to me in little epiphanies during the day. It doesn’t matter where I am. They are predicated ...

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It doesn’t have a single chestnut tree on it, this street in a very special city in South Carolina that I once visited often and wrote about frequently. That place is Sumter, where my mother g...

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