kudzu telegraph

It's Back

John Lane — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 11:27:58 -0400

The Union County lake that all reasonable people thought had been put to rest in 2008 is somehow, like Dracula, back from the dead.

Let me refresh your memory if you've somehow forgotten this important environmental issue: In 2004 Union County and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers entered into an agreement through the Planning Assistance to States program to create a feasibility study for the potential creation of "Patriots Lake," a 5,000 acre reservoir on private and public land along the Tyger River.

A Proclamation for Proclamations

John Lane — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 10:24:35 -0400

There's been so much talk in Spartanburg about Mayor Junie White issuing a proclamation making June 19th, 2010 "Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Pride Day" that I too wanted to weigh in.

Carbon Neutral Road Trip

John Lane — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 08:09:06 -0400

My friend Jack Byrne was in the upcountry last week to teach a sustainability workshop at Furman University. Jack's the director of Sustainability Integration at Middlebury College in Vermont, one of the leaders in academic responsibility in the area of climate change.

Seeing AVATAR

John Lane — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:05:36 -0500

"Did you like AVATAR?" my friends ask when I tell them I finally saw it, the blockbuster James Cameron 3-D film. How could I not? I'm "green" to the core, an environmentalist, and my favorite Bible story as a child was always Eden.

Rates of Change on a World Stage

John Lane — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:46:43 -0500

I'll have to admit that my ideas about change have been moved around a great deal, prompted by flying half-way around the world. What I saw in China created a dramatic contrast to my own backyard.

The Big Global Dance

John Lane — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 07:25:28 -0500

Four weeks ago in my first column about my trip to China I wrote how I hoped to encounter China's "cultural core," its Confucian "root," and experience it.

During my two weeks in China I did encounter what I might call China's ancient core a few times-in a ceremonial smudging outside a Buddhist temple and the timeless view across West Lake in Hangzhou, in the colorful ancestors' tombs on the hillsides on the way to Yiwu, and upon arriving in that city listening to an old singer chant an ancient song in an ancestors' temple.

Wilderness in the Balance as China Climbs

John Lane — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 02:27:50 -0500

A friend wrote today in an email and said "Save the Earth" at the end of her note. I'll admit I've thought about the problems of "saving the earth" a great deal since we touched down in Shanghai. The pressures on the planet here are seriously extreme already, and it's obvious they will mount in the next few decades. The scholars who have lectured us have said that the Chinese know they will not be able to establish a middle class like the West because there will simply not be enough resources.

First Dispatch from Tomorrow

John Lane — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 05:20:30 -0500

This sets my personal record for distance learning. I'm half-way around the world in China's largest city, Shanghai. It's Day Three of the Wofford Milliken Faculty Development seminar.

I think it's yesterday where you are, or maybe it's yesterday here, and today there. Time is just the first of my concepts under renovation. This morning the only thing I know for sure is I'm not in Kansas (or Cowpens) anymore.

Leaping Dragon, Perching Eagle

John Lane — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 17:44:40 -0500

I'm headed to China for two weeks on a Wofford College faculty study trip. At first I wasn't very excited about going. I'm not a city boy, and our whole 14-day excursion would mostly take place in vast Shanghai, a coastal city of over 20 million people, China's New York, a pulsing vortex of trade, commerce and consumerism.

Burning the Christmas Greens

John Lane — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 08:40:32 -0500

Most years on Dec. 21, on winter solstice, we've burned the previous year's Christmas greens.

Some years we get our act together and have a solstice party where I read William Carlos Williams' poem "Burning the Christmas Greens." We drink hot cider and mulled wine. We watch the first sun of the new season go down with our friends, and note the descent into the early winter woods like good neo-druids.