Living Off the Land

September is "shrimp baiting" season -- when regular people, as opposed to just the commercial fisherman, try to fill their freezers with enough shrimp to last through the winter. The bait is a ground up fish meal mixed with clay -- pretty disgusting, but the shrimp like it and I choose not to think about it too much.






Duncan has had pretty good luck with his cast net in our tidal creek -- though you can never have enough shrimp in the freezer. One night this week, he brought the net in and found a nice flounder. Life is pretty good when you can have crab stuffed flounder with shrimp on the side and not even have to go to the grocery store.

Weekend in Savannah

As a late birthday experience for Duncan, we did a quick trip to Savannah over the weekend. We've lived here all this time and have never made it down there.

To my mind, it's a lot like Charleston -- historic neighborhoods, live oaks, Spanish Moss, pralines, shrimp and oysters. We did a couple of tours and felt Charleston tour guides needed to give theirs some lessons in customer service and general pizzazz. Have we already become lowcountry snobs? My favorite thing was just walking and wandering through old neighborhoods on Sunday morning.

Very pretty tree-canopied streets.


Gardens tucked away down alleys behind gates.


And of course, the famous "squares" -- this one; "To the heroic memory of Sergeant William Jasper who though mortally wounded, rescued the colors of his regiment in the assault on the British line about this city, Oct. 1779. Time has not dimmed the glory of the Irish American soldier whose last tribute to civil liberty was his noble life."

Wow, bet he wouldn't have called George Washington a liar during a speech to a joint session of Congress.

We drove a little further to the beach at Tybee Island and liked that a lot. We thought if we were to go back, we would want to go stay at the beach for a few days and make a day trip into Savannah instead of the other way around.

Tybee has an old fashioned feel to it, which I suppose means that there are houses on the beach instead of hotels and condos -- and some of the houses are older and smaller than what, sadly, has become the norm in such a fragile environment.

We were surprised by the incongruity of parking meters at an Arby's. Had not encountered that outside of a major metropolitan area, which I think Tybee Island prides inself in not being.

On the way home, we stopped at the Old Sheldon Prince William Parish Church about half way between Savannah and Charleston just off of 17. Though only a ruin, it was still very impressive.


Built between 1745 - 1755, burned by the British in 1779 and again by "the Federal Army" in 1865. Lots of civil war era graves surrounding the church and several with birth dates in the 1600s. It was a beautiful, quiet place, deep in the trees.

All in all, a fun, interesting little get away. We should do it more often.

Labor Day 2009

I can't tell you how glad I am to be ensconced in the American workforce this Labor Day.

My job with SCIway.net -- take a look if you haven't already -- is like working for the encyclopedia. Everyday I dip into random topics related to South Carolina history and/or culture. Everything from waterfalls in the Upstate, to historical churches in the Midlands, to keeping up with football results for Clemson and what they call "Carolina".

I write -- notices to advertisers, notes to anyone who contributes ideas, descriptions for the photo gallery, short newsletter articles AND I figure out how to translate nearly everything I do into computer code.

I get to ponder things like when to use an endash instead of an emdash, the proper use of semicolons, how to say something substantive in 140 characters or less, and how to load text with the words that help us in Google rankings without being too obvious or repetitious.

You have to wonder how the really crack English teachers are teaching writing these days.

For those of us who came of age in the 70s, there was The Prophet by Kahil Gibran. He had something to say about nearly everything, and about work he said:
". . . And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching. . .

Often have I heard you say, "He who works in marble, and finds the shape of his own soul in the stone, is nobler than he who ploughs the soil. . ."
But I say, the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.

Work is love made visible. "

I know I am fortunate to have found work at all, but to have found work that is interesting and satisfying and offers me opportunities to learn everyday is what I will celebrate on this holiday.