a:10:{i:0;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"10";s:4:"slug";s:23:"contact-the-island-news";s:4:"name";s:23:"Contact The Island News";s:4:"type";s:8:"fieldset";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:0:"";}i:1;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"14";s:4:"slug";s:4:"name";s:4:"name";s:4:"Name";s:4:"type";s:4:"text";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:14:"H. KIRK RAINER";}i:2;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"15";s:4:"slug";s:13:"business-name";s:4:"name";s:13:"Business Name";s:4:"type";s:4:"text";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:4:"SELF";}i:3;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"16";s:4:"slug";s:7:"address";s:4:"name";s:7:"Address";s:4:"type";s:7:"address";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:86:"3557 POST STREET &lt;br&gt;5, FLORIDA  JACKSONVILLE &lt;br&gt;United States of America";}i:4;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"17";s:4:"slug";s:5:"phone";s:4:"name";s:5:"Phone";s:4:"type";s:5:"phone";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:10:"9043003128";}i:5;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"18";s:4:"slug";s:5:"email";s:4:"name";s:5:"Email";s:4:"type";s:5:"email";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:21:"HKIRKRAINER@GMAIL.COM";}i:6;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"19";s:4:"slug";s:15:"how-can-we-help";s:4:"name";s:16:"How can we help?";s:4:"type";s:8:"textarea";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:4170:"Age to Age, the Best and Worst, but then this Weekend, Wonderful but Wondering 

It was nearly a year ago since last visiting Beaufort and the differences are striking, my weekend a wonderful time with one of my children and much time on Bay Street and beyond.   No, I am not resident but once was, about a half century ago, as a Marine dependent living on Laurel Bay; and while the memories are often a combination of fact and fiction aided by such visits, the present perplexes me regarding events surrounding COVID to the point of this response to the former Mayor’s article, “The best and the worst of times?”

This weekend’s weather was perfect and what’s more, to see the faces of folks walking about, talking, shopping, touring and dining—versus a year ago when even the structure of two children at the entrance to the library was masked and a figurative fog cast an and eeriness, a sense of the worst of times versus better times before, since.   Yes, there is plenty of bad and sad news to weigh, death and sickness, but I believe that what delays or deters folks from what is apparently a hard decision, this drug, is not concern or conscientious, but is a developing conscious that—contrary to your comments—we are not “captains of our own destiny” or any semblance, but that our presumed choices are be being plundered on an international scale.  All this…, while the politic and other positions of power largely follow along, forfeiting any notions of sovereignty or the sacred, relinquishing any presumed rights in view the greater good, safety and security, coercion and perhaps compulsion.     
 
This weekend was(is) one to remember given, among other things, I had the chance to converse with another, also of Laurel Bay; to share some of the facts and possibly some of the fiction of our lives then,  in the Beaufort County public school system, with mine as at least a decade before her own. And yet our own recollection of the best and worst of times was the realization that, beyond survival, our individual lives are forever changed, preferably for the better as we each consider Beaufort better versus what is was, embroiled in racial conflict.  And to add this rich conversation was a visit along the river front, reading the inscribed that mark the many other periods of the worst and perhaps the best of times in The Low Country.  
But what makes me wonder beyond the wonderful but wondering years of a half century ago, or even several centuries past when survival was less so, is that we are living in our age of unprecedented events; one unlike that of Woodrow Wilson, who gave little attention to the Spanish Flu in view of WWI, where the politic is pressing the public to comply or else face potentially more constraints—not the least of which is to be constricted well short of community such as experienced this last weekend, with the potential to invoke control via international dictates and pseudoscience let alone the deniability, deception and disregard that is part and parcel of power taken beyond its due, design.   

Your appeal makes sense if one is to simply accept that the drug is a final solution in the best sense, but clearly is not; that perhaps as planned—even before this creeped upon our marshy shores—is that our lives are changed, changing, and as viewed with plain common sense, for the worst rather than the better of times.  And while I too could turn to statistics,  a rationality or basis to believe, there remains the spiritual among folks that refuse to deny, to be deceived, to disregard that truly special and assuredly sacred, or to abide by power taken beyond its due, given the lies and the lassitude laden upon us as yet another and then another constraint will surely come, coercion and compulsion with its commensurate forces.  

Personally, and not particularly as a voice of the public, I cherish the wonderful of this weekend and such better times, but I wonder of what has become of courage once represented among the politic and other positions of power, now displaced or dampened by that figurative fog, the fears that inject us with the worst of times.";}i:7;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"11";s:4:"slug";s:12:"verification";s:4:"name";s:12:"Verification";s:4:"type";s:12:"verification";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:1:"0";s:5:"value";s:0:"";}i:8;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"12";s:4:"slug";s:27:"please-enter-any-two-digits";s:4:"name";s:27:"Please enter any two digits";s:4:"type";s:6:"secret";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:2:"11";s:5:"value";s:2:"11";}i:9;a:7:{s:2:"id";s:2:"13";s:4:"slug";s:6:"submit";s:4:"name";s:6:"Submit";s:4:"type";s:6:"submit";s:7:"options";s:0:"";s:9:"parent_id";s:2:"11";s:5:"value";s:0:"";}}