When I was five, he was 79, but that didn’t stop my grandfather. On the clear, crisp, fall, coastal North Carolina mornings, he would pick me up in his old blue pickup to go deer hunting. I was too young to know the exact circumstances. Maybe mom needed a babysitter those days, or maybe grandpa...
The current battle between the legislature and the governor about board appointments touches on who actually governs the citizens of North Carolina. Most administrative boards have rule-making authority that makes them like “little” legislatures. So in the current dispute, it’s obvious from a constitutional standpoint, the state legislature should control the lions share of administrative...
There was this “No Wetlands, No Seafood” bumper sticker on the back of a Subaru station wagon sitting in the Walmart parking lot. It had the typical dark blue background and plain white letters we all have become accustomed to. This one differed in that it was only one of 50 plastered all over the...
Mama bears. The image that comes to mind is a giant female grizzly going berserk upon realizing something or someone has come between her and her baby. My wife says “I bore that child in pain,” and all of that pain, and more, will come down on anything, or anyone, threatening that divine biological womb-bond....
It was like a reenactment of a great Napoleonic battle. Arranged on the hundred-foot stage at one end were 4-to-5 year olds, dressed as angels, facing their classmates dressed as manger animals on the other. On a line down the middle, facing the audience, were the three wise men paired up with the manger animals; and...
On a clear, fresh May morning in 1973, my friend Brack Tesh and I pushed his Tanzer 14 sailboat through the salt marsh cord grass into the “Cut,” the local name for Taylor’s Creek in Beaufort, North Carolina. The boat was fitted with snacks, drinks, and two surfboards tucked under the bow. Our destination was...
Enjoy the sunrise It’s 6:32 a.m. I am sitting on our concrete patio in the community of Bettie, Down East, in Carteret County, on a mottled aluminum bench facing directly east. The distinct odor of exposed mud flat and salt marsh permeates the air, indicating the tide has passed low and is now rising. I...
The regulatory barriers placed on the need to develop natural resources to provide vital economic infrastructure have reached a crisis.
“When science dissolves its marriage with reality, truth, their child, is orphaned.” “Don’t you wonder where they all are?” This simple question was posed by Enrico Fermi during a lunch with fellow physicists in 1950 and has become a serious problem for modern science. The question has resonated like a stone thrown into a pond, but...
Editor’s note: This is part three of a three-part series from CJ columnist Nelson Paul on his unique perspective ofwhat it was like in the early 1970s when, as a teenager, he joined a cooperative shrimping operation in North Carolina internal waters. Part one can be found here and part three here. Bending over the culling tray to...
Editor’s note: This is part one of a three-part series from CJ columnist Nelson on his unique perspective of what it was like in the early 1970s when, as a teenager, he joined a cooperative shrimping operation in North Carolina internal waters. Dick Oliver was an unusually short man. Not an inch over five feet....
Voyager 1 was a NASA spacecraft launched in 1977 to explore the universe. In 1990, after its mission was complete, it exited the solar system and turned its camera around to photograph the planets. The resulting shot shows the earth as a single blue dot in a picture of over a million pixels. The earth...