op-ed

(published in The State, Columbia, SC 12/3/2006)

Is there any such thing as a Southern writer? Is there even a South to write about?

There are those who think the South is a place no longer apart, a region absorbed finally, like the fluid in a blister, back into the body politic we call America.

(Appeared in Blue Ridge Press Syndicate, 5/20/2002)

As elsewhere in the South, the growth beast recently has pointed its flinty claw at Spartanburg County, S.C. A year from now, on the city's west side, a new Super Wal-Mart will splay its massive parking-lot feet over ground occupied for 30 years by Dorman High School.

(Appeared in the Raleigh News & Observer 2/11/2002)

The Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,400-acre private residential community in the rural mountains of Jackson County, N.C, is now taking orders for homes. On paper, the Preserve sounds like an environmentalist's dream, but I won't be looking for my own little piece of the Smokies there.

For 10 years I've owned a cabin in Jackson County-a ramshackle affair, lying deep in an isolated hollow a few creases down from the Blue Ridge Parkway. It sits on four acres surrounded by large timbered parcels owned by a holding company in Florida.

(Appeared in Blue Ridge Press Syndicate, 11/13/2001)

The debate about water quality in the Southeast has taken on new urgency this fall. While state environmental protection agencies, such as South Carolina's and Georgia's, push for new water pollution controls, developers and public utilities fight higher standards. As the EPA steps in to manage water quality monitoring in West Virginia, the region's Chambers of Commerce warn against the economic impact of new regulations.

(Appeared in Blue Ridge Press Syndicate, 10/8/2001)

Before Sept. 11, I would have defined myself as an environmentalist and writer first, with "American" obscured somewhere down the list between "college professor" and "Methodist."

(Appeared in Blue Ridge Syndicate, 7/2/2001)

I've been walking Spartanburg, South Carolina's Cottonwood Trail a few times a week for the past 10 years. There's nothing epic about my three-and-a-half mile ramble out and back along Lawson's Fork Creek. It's not Yellowstone or the Appalachian Trail. It's an ordinary Southern suburban trail twisting through a flood plain and under a wide power line right-of-way. It's also my local sanctuary: a great place to walk, my nearby nature, safely protected by a conservation easement. It's not the kind of place-or so I thought-where an environmental activist would put up much of a fight.

(Appeared in Blue Ridge Syndicate, 1/8/2001)

With a $1 billion project on the line, South Carolina developer Burroughs & Chapin in late December filed the last of an extraordinary volley of documents aimed at persuading the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to revise the floodplain map of the Congaree River.

(Published in The State, Columbia, SC 4/1/98)

Welcome to the 90s: Smart bombs. Rapid deployment. Cruise missiles. 72 hour wars. Just when it looked like the decade's military/political hype had finally drifted deep enough to make the world feel safe and small, two incidents recently brought me back to reality.

(Published in The State, Columbia, SC 1/1/98)

I make a pilgrimage to Charleston at least twice a year. I go down to park my car and slip on my walking shoes, to eat a praline from the market, to stand in front of historic buildings and reflect on my relationship to my own complex past.

(Published in The State, Columbia, SC 12/8/97)

Today I turned onto the street alongside First Presbyterian church in Spartanburg and found myself, I kid you not, in a line of eight Suburbans, what a friend calls "suburban assault vehicles."