A Rolling Stone Gathers No Snow

I had time to reflect on my brief February visit to MA while the Boston TSA agent searched my carry-on bag. She carefully removed my lip gloss, placed the offending item in a zip-lock baggie, and glared at me as she moved on to my toothpaste.

I realized then that the New England weather is, if you will pardon the pun, the icing on the disgruntled cake. It's true that the cold rain and snow looked dreary last weekend but my friends and family were so happy to see me that I didn't focus on the weather. I think that many New Englanders have to toil and wait too long for the "Carolina Blue" skies we Carolinians enjoy on a regular basis. Because of this, some northern folks take the weather indoors and into their spirits.

It had been one year since I’d made the long drive south to live in the Carolinas. I did not see The Boulder during my visit to home-town Fitchburg. I have no doubt that it still sits in the center of town – a humble monument to those early dwellers who found it on Rollstone Hill, blew it up with dynamite, and cemented its pieces back together so it could rest in the Upper Common as it does to this day.

It was really hard to leave all my friends and family last year and yet I was now strangely anxious to get back to South Carolina. Ironically, the early generations of my family settled in South Carolina and migrated to Massachusetts so I am completing a circle that started over two hundred years ago.

Unlike the boulder, I was not content to stay where I was born. I am a northern stone who rolled south and now gathers no snow, only sun and rain, under a Carolina Blue sky.

I am home.

The Crescent Building is Gone...

We turned the corner and saw that the Crescent Building was gone..