COLUMN: 'Stupid bug' Thom closes the book on 2011

            Getting ready to start a new scrapbook holding 2012 columns, along with letters to the editor, e-mails and such about them, I looked back over the book with my 2011 columns.

            A few invited follow ups. For instance, one of the January 2011 columns dealt with the groundbreaking for an addition to the Lamar public library. It was a nice ceremony, and it was dedicated to an old McClenaghan High School classmate, Dr. Sidney Griffin.

            Things went along well, and recently they had another ceremony, the new wing was opened and now is in business.

            Several columns during the year dealt with the Florence downtown and the developing South Dargan Street arts corridor. The Francis Marion University Performing Arts Center had its big opening in 2011, and across the street construction starts soon on the planned Florence Museum.

            When riding along South Dargan, one must be struck by the great buildings inspired by donations from the Drs. Bruce and Lee Foundation. It seems to me that South Dargan, from the planned museum south past the Performing Arts Center, Florence Little Theatre and county library should be rebuilt with a dramatic appearance. Maybe we could call it the Bruce-Lee Arts Corridor or something like that. 

            Downtown suddenly showing promise was focus of several columns. Startup shops continue to operate. A dress shop has moved into the old J.C.  Penney store space on West Evans, a new shop is scheduled to open on the 100 block of South Dargan, and they say work will start this year on a downtown hotel in an old West Evans building. That should bring life to the downtown.

            And people traveling eastward on the 100 block of West Evans are struck by a potential office building that has been renovated and needs a tenant, and at the corner with Dargan the police precinct station is housed in a renovated building. Ah, if we could just have some apartments on upper floors.

            I was reminded of what I already knew by a response to one 2011column after I guessed out loud that a reference to “belle-fille” might be to a “beautiful daughter.” An e-mail from somebody with a French-sounding name said it was just “daughter-in-law.” Whether or not she is beautiful is immaterial. Actually, I already knew it’s hazardous to guess in print about languages I don’t know, which would be all but English.

            One column dealt with how much better network television was in the 1950s than today and the irony that I felt then that TV would be great when people finally learned how to use it. I didn’t realize then that we were in the golden age of network TV compared to now when the big webs have descended to the unreality of reality television.

            One thing I noted was that new operas actually were done live on commercial TV networks occasionally back then, but if you go to PBS, they still are. (Also, we now have live Metropolitan Opera telecasts, in high definition, at the Swamp Fox Cinemas.)

            One column early in the year noted that on a cruise, our party of Florentines “adopted” a young couple from Chicago who were aboard our ship. Heidi and Al Coppersmith were so much younger than our group that we called them “the children.”

            The Coppersmiths spent much of their time with us, and it was nice having them around. In fact, we have stayed in touch and my wife and a couple of our group’s women saw Heidi in Charlotte last summer.

            Before 2011 ended, there was an additional Coppersmith, a son, born late in the year. Looking at the calendar we wondered if the cruise were somehow connected.

            Right-wingers write outraged letters and e-mails to or about this moderate, fiscally conservative observer. My doubts that their role in creating the 2^nd Amendment meant early American leaders wanted to have people walking around with machine guns caused outrage. A couple of pages of the 2011 scrapbook include those communications.

             “Liberals think with emotion,” one right winger wrote emotionally while conservatives are “logic-minded.” Their “logic-mindedness” led one writer to say I had caught the “stupid bug,” an observation that would develop only through calm, rational thought.

 Thom Anderson is the former editor of the Morning News. Contact him THIDBIT@aol.com.