Columns

Brunswick County Schools Superintendent Edward Pruden has it right. When it comes to student safety, there is no room for error.
It’s unfortunate, however, that at least two bus drivers missed the value of this message—and may have forgotten their training—when two students were let off county buses at the wrong locations.
Luckily for everyone involved, the students were ultimately safe, although one was injured following what the school system has called horseplay on a bus.

Maybe Brunswick County Social Services board chairman Charles Warren and members of the North Carolina Social Services Commission are getting their cues from the same place.
And apparently it’s a place where no one feels input from the county’s governing elected body—Brunswick County Board of Commissioners—matters much.
Last Tuesday county commissioners voted in majority to send recommendations for Dean Walters and Sue Carroll to the commission for two vacant positions on the local DSS board.

Recently, I swore my allegiance, taking up the cause of a growing movement in this country to “buy American.”

For one thing, I’ve been shopping at local produce markets. As far as I know, the stores’ crop yield this year still consists mostly of fruits and vegetables harvested on American soil, right? Except maybe for bananas.

I also pledged I would not buy or wear any new clothes that weren’t bearing a “made in USA” label.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

That’s my new motto, especially now that Hurricane Irene is churning toward the East Coast.

When every weather pro on TV is urging caution, as they did Tuesday complete with ominous-looking graphics encompassing the Carolinas, I tend to listen.

“Close your garage doors,” warned one local forecaster.

Before or after we skedaddle west?