I am a sucker for Farmers Markets. I love the idea of communities supporting local agriculture; be the farm large or small. So I was delighted, of course, when Pan told me she had found an established FM in Charleston, SC.

Founded by Mayor Joe Riley in 1989, the Charleston Farmers Market is produced by the City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs, in cooperation with the City of Charleston Parks Department. Over the years, the Charleston Farmers Market has received numerous awards: In 2005, the Charleston Farmers Market, newly revitalized and relocated back in the renovated Marion Square, received the Three Sisters Award from the Charleston Save the City Committee. In 2008, the Market was ranked by Travel and Leisure magazine as one of the top 10 best Farmers Markets in the nation. In the Charleston City Paper reader’s poll, “Best Of,” the Charleston Farmers Market was named 2009 Best Outdoor Event. Now permanently located in Marion Square, in the heart of historic downtown Charleston, S.C., the Farmers Market is open each Saturday, from April 3 to Dec., 19, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The Farmers Market is dedicated to the support and advocacy of Lowcountry farmers and growers and offers a variety of local produce, plants, herbs and cut flowers as well as breakfast and lunch vendors, live entertainment and an assortment of juried arts and crafts from local artisans.

Perhaps what was coolest though is that the market has attained “Green Status” which is quite rare. Essentially the title means that they have invested time and resources into making their vendors more eco-conscious to the extent of using recycable, reusable, and renewable products as well as helping maintain recycling locations and waste areas. I didn’t take many pictures but I did snap these two which show the small recycling cans located throughout the square as well as a vendor selling THE most amazing grass-fed beef. If we had a cooler I would have bought him out!

What about your community? Do y’all have an exceptional FM? If not, would you be interested in helping petition the city/town to begin one?

I am not going to be able to post much in the next few days as Pan and I have taken to the open road. I have some work things to tend to and so we are making a road trip/camping trip out of it. In the next month we’ll be stopping in Charleston, SC > Fayetteville, NC > Raleigh, NC > Pink Hill, NC > Wilmington, NC > Myrtle Beach, SC > Chattanooga, TN > Columbus, GA.

I’ll be doing some posting as I see things that interest me or if we can squeeze a video out. So don’t leave me just yet. It won’t be long. Until then…I’m on the road again!

I remember almost nothing about Jim Bakker. I have a sort of skewed vision of he and his wife standing at the pulpit, tearfully asking for support for their ministry; PTL (acronym for Praise The Lord.) Things get blurry though as to whatever happened to him or his love affair with Jessica Hahn (whom I only remember from a Playboy documentary type show on VH1 a few years back.) As for Tammy Faye? Well, other than her 15 delayed minutes of pop-icon fame as the overly made-up, prescription med. addicted, drag queen superhero, reality show queen….nothing. Nada. Forgotten too.

To give you the abbreviated “whatever happened to….”:

• Jim Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. In 1989, after a five-week trial which began on August 28 in Charlotte, the jury found him guilty on all 24 counts, and Judge Robert Potter sentenced him to 45 years in federal prison and a $500,000 fine. He was released in 1994.
• Tammy Faye Bakker divorced Jim during his prison years and married Roe Messner (the builder of their Fort Mill, SC hub) and died in 2007 of cancer.
• Jessica Hahn is a D+ actress and model who appeared in Playboy after the PTL scandal and later appeared on Married…With Children (twice.)

So allow me to cut to the chase. Why am I blogging about Jim Bakker?

This past weekend Pan and I visited with some family at a halfway point that happened to be Fort Mill, South Carolina. Our hotel? Heritage Grand Hotel. What’s wrong? Does it not ring a bell? What if I called it Heritage USA? Now we’re talking. That’s right. Pan and I stayed at the grand hotel once the centerpiece of the PTL-funded, religi-tainment complex, Heritage USA.

Heritage USA opened in 1978, and by 1986 was one of the top vacation destinations in the nation, behind only Walt Disney World and Disneyland, attracting nearly 6 million visitors annually and employing around 2,500 people.

The facilities included the 501-room Heritage Grand Hotel, Main Street USA, an indoor shopping complex, the Heritage Village Church, a 400-unit campground, The Jerusalem Amphitheater, conference facilities, a skating rink, prayer and counseling services, full cable TV network production studios, Bible and evangelism school, visitor retreat housing, staff and volunteer housing, timeshares and the Heritage Island water park and recreational facilities. What is left though is quite different.

Now owned by MorningStar Ministries, the complex has little more than the hotel (which is quite dated), an overgrown and poorly kept campground, an ampitheater that lacks a stage or any other recognizable theatrical unit, and a few scattered timeshares and cabins. The waterpark is long gone. The skating rink is no more. The rec facilities are either hidden or long disguised by overgrowth. The place is eery to say the least.

Heck, I have to admit….I have no idea where I am going with this post. It is just interesting to see what was once the third largest entertainment facility in America (just behind Disneyworld and Disneyland) and grossed some $286 million annually now reduced to little more than a dated hotel that is home to a progressive ministry that attracts people largely unborn at the height of Bakker or PTL.

Check out some of the pictures here. NOTE: They were taken with my cell phone so they are less than stunning.

Visit these sites to see more of the “Colombian” medical field.

Medical equipment. Medical tools. Incav Colombia comercializa equipos médicos y de laboratorio en Colombia.

This past weekend we all got in the truck (Pan, the fam, Red and myself) to leave the flatness of Piedmont and visit the turning leaves and primed orchards of North Georgia.

We were excited as it was our first time at the Georgia Apple Festival and we all had a small list of things we wanted to see, take pictures of, eat, smell, etc. Not to mention we were going to camp which with its late night fires, boy scout stews and extended games of Scrabble was a treat in itself.

Before we left a friend sent me this passage from Samuel Beckett’s book Watt

. With its black comedy sense it wasn’t the most likely of inspirations. In fact, the book is about the grotesque and improbable adventures of a fantastically logical Irish servant and his master. Hardly the lighthearted muse I would have asked for. But as I read I realized that its truth was what I was after.

The crocuses and the larch turning green every year a week before the others and the pastures red with uneaten sheep’s placentas and the long summer days and the newmown hay and the wood pigeon in the morning and the cuckoo in the afternoon and the corncrake in the evening and the wasps in the jam and the smell of grose and the look of the gorse and the apples falling and the children walking in the dead leaves and the larch turning brown a week before the others and the chestnuts falling and the howling winds and the sea breaking over the pier and the first fires and the hooves on the road and the consumptive postman whistling “The Roses are Blooming in Picardy” and the standard oil-lamp and of course the snow and to be sure the sleet and bless your heart the slush and every fourth year the February debacle and the endless April showers and the crocuses and then the whole bloody business starting all over again.

And so as the weekend closed and we started back home I realized that I wanted to trade “the whole bloody business” of the Piedmont for potentially “the whole bloody business” of the mountains…dead leaves and all!

I cannot even remember the last time I blogged. Even as I sit to write this post I realize I don’t care much for blogging anymore. I am pretty sure my readership has dwindled and in my attempt to really “retire” from the ‘net world I have just cut my time on the computer way back. So what have I been doing then? Well, the short answer is living. As many of you have noticed I am not even on Facebook much anymore. My days pretty much consists of waking up, eating breakfast, having coffee, working, coming home, having a glass of wine with Pan, eating dinner with the family, watching a little TV, reading some, and then going to bed. Some of that time is filled with family games of Scrabble, one-on-ones of Checkers, and my newfound love for composting/gardening.

We did play host last weekend to the Cage Free Family which was such a blessing.

In case you know nothing about them, they are a family of four that have given up the material world to live a more adventurous (which some say is irresponsible) life on the road in their RV. They were coming from Atlanta headed to Florida and I invited them to stop in so they did. It was great. I enjoyed getting to know the entire family and especially playing with Quinn and Neeka, the children. It is an experience my family will not soon forget.

I have also been working a few extra hours as Barnesville has seen a homicide rate grow out of nowhere and the newspaper is all over it. I love this line of work and each day is a new challenge for me. It is rewarding though when I get to punch out at 5:30pm and not take it home with me. Life is going really well.

And now I sit here wondering what to blog about. I just don’t have it in me. I have nothing much to say. Oh well. It is 4:10pm anyway so I can start wrapping up our “early day.”

First of all, I have lost my chapstick. For most people this is no big deal. But for me? It is HUGE. I have been addicted to Oxybenzone for nearly five years now. Tomorrow morning I will get a new tube from the first place I find it. Tonight may be a long, long night.

At any rate, I write tonight from Johnson City, Tennessee. Why J.C. you ask? No reason. It is just shy of Asheville and is considerably more affordable. Pan and I were able to Priceline it and turns out it is a pretty nice room. We even have free local calls and HBO!

This morning began as a Maxwell Morning as we guzzled down some brew from the Snow White Grill in Winchester, VA. Great food and you can read my review on Yelp, if you like.

Sunspots is a wonderful little glass blowing studio full of all sorts of vases, ornaments, gazing balls, necklaces, etc. Whilst there we got to watch the artisan blow out a glass Christmas ornament. It was very cool and Pan and I both decided to try glass blowing before we die.

After enjoying a lunch of Fajitas at the Baja Bean Co. we got back in the truck and took to the Interstate. Our third stop was somewhere just around Roanoke, VA at a little gas station that had dirty floors in the convenient store part but immaculate restrooms. Very odd but somehow very encouraging. The best part of the stop was the view of the mountains around the service station.

I woke up and took my last trip on the J train headed downtown to Jamaica Plains. I got off at the LIRR and hit the AirTrain bound for JFK and the Budget Rent-A-Car desk. It was there my Trailblazer awaited me and my stuff. If you will remember I have been working hard the past few months to minimize and downsize which has resulted in only an SUV worth of personal affects (or is it effects?). It took me a solid hour to get back to Brooklyn as Google Maps is a JOKE! There Pan and I loaded up and hit the road around 12:45pm. Two hours later we were just hitting the Holland Tunnel after trying to follow Google Maps through Brooklyn, up Canal Street in Manhattan, and over into New Jersey. Needless to say we were WAY BEHIND on our E.T.A.

Sometime around 4pm we Pricelined a hotel room in Winchester, VA via our traveling network (the MacBook Pro and a Verizon EVDO USB dongle). It was a few minutes after this that we stopped in Clinton, New Jersey to grab a cup of coffee and anatomically dispose of our previous cups of coffee. What a cute little town; Clinton. You can see .

Tomorrow we are going to hit the road around 9am or so headed to our next stop, Johnson City, TN. It is only about 5.5 hours away and I am sure there are several adventures along that road! Until later……………..

It has been rumored that I am leaving NYC. To clear things up I am, in fact, moving away. Due to a number of circumstances including the state of the economy, quality of life, proximity to Pan, etc., I will be leaving my beloved Brooklyn on Wednesday. Yes, I am going to miss it. I have made a number of dear friends here and I have enjoyed all the city has to offer. But it was an adventure and I knew it was never for the long haul. And if God would have me come back one day, I will.

In the meantime I will be living in Barnesville, GA and working on some projects there (details forthcoming) as well as enjoying family and a slower pace of life.

So, thank you all for supporting me in my adventures and for being part of this particular one. It has been so rewarding.