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By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (April 30, 2026) — On Sunday morning when church bells were ringing in the Salem community, Timberley and I found ourselves smack dab in the middle of an intense kind of excitement for the first time. No, not a snake-handling revival service. A swarm of honey bees.

They were our own relatively gentle Carniolan bees, not vicious Africanized mutants, though that meant we also had a financial interest in how and, more precisely, where this buzzing whirlwind of Apis mellifera wound up. We were standing in our own beeyard near the little house on the hill, and we saw the swarm alight high in a tree at the edge of our property. But we didn’t know how long they’d stay there or where they’d go when they inevitably left.

That was the setup for the lesson in beekeeping — and in life — that we would learn over the next 30 hours, from the time we saw thousands of our bees boil out of their hive and fly in ever-widening and higher loops around us to their temporary resting place in that tree until we watched them suddenly break their cluster the following afternoon and noisily fly due west far, far away.

Continue reading What My Honey and I Learned By Losing Our ‘First’ Swarm

“Good fences make good neighbors,” / wrote that famous old codger / whose farm produced little more than poesy.

What did that grandiloquent gomer know — / with his square head — / and the little horse he rode in on, too?

We need to build some bridges, / is what he should have said, / to get us together or away from one another.

Mending fences isn’t very sexy, / not like building a big ballroom / or a supersized arch that signifies nothing.

But a good bridge is everything — / posts planted firmly in the earth, / holding high a strip of possibility / way, way up in the everlasting sky.

By RAHN ADAMS

“Onward, Christian soldiers, / marching as to war…” / What kind of song is that? / A battle hymn? God, of what republic?

Then there’s “Jesus loves me, / this I know…” / Did the Great Physician trade in / his healing hands for an M1 carbine?

It’s so confusing these days — / good people worshiping / Baal and his golden bone spurs, / breaking commandments,

Especially the first one / about having no other gods, / because he’s a jealous god, right? / Just fuck around and find out.

Dropping bombs on Sunday / is how we do business now, boss. / It’s still about shock and awe, / and it’s about, uh, just cause.

By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (April 15, 2026) — Today is my best friend and favorite artist Timberley’s birthday. It’s also Tax Day, of course, but that isn’t how I remember it’s her big day.

April 15th has always been circled on my calendar. It was also my late younger brother’s birthday, and it was the day I was fired in 1987 from my one and only full-time radio job here in my one of many hometowns. I had been darn good at that kind of work — speaking into the can, as they say on O Brother, Where Are Thou? — but I got canned anyway, no matter how many awards I’d won and whose birthday it was that day. In the late ’80s, I was a man of constant sorrow. Now I’m just a soggy-bottom boy.

Timberley, the queen of my heart for the past 45 years, also got fired without good cause from a Hickory radio station around the same time, not on her birthday, though. That wasn’t how we met — not in the unemployment line — as we were already married. Still, the twin experiences convinced us early on that media jobs, in general, and the small-town radio business, in particular, aren’t necessarily fair. It’s even worse now, competing with the internet and social media.

So, yes, Timberley has always had to compete for attention on her big day. But our taxes have been filed (I’ll write about that debacle some other time, hopefully not after I’ve learned we’re being audited), and I have no intention of ever again working for the goober who still owns the local radio station — or for anyone else in the local media. That’s a definite benefit of retiring from the rat race.

Now, I’ll try to keep this column short, because we do intend to celebrate the day at least by going out somewhere nice to eat, and we do have some errands to run, as well as some honey bees to tend in our growing apiary outside the little house on the hill. That leads me to my next queen to discuss here.

Continue reading Idylls of the Queens: Three Girls After My Own Heart

By RAHN ADAMS

So many questions. / Only one answer. / He was a player. / She was a dancer.

He gave her money — / the start of the deal. / She took his surname / and made it for real.

She gave him a son / so he wouldn’t roam. / He smacked her around / and took off from home.

He went to Vegas, / to gamble and whore. / When she took him back, / he beat her some more.

But she wouldn’t leave, / and we know her fate. / How far is too far? / By then it’s too late.

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (April 9, 2026) — In the midst of this week’s madness — beginning, of course, with Donald Trump’s Easter Sunday tweet — I decided to wait until late Wednesday to write this column. I mean, if the world was going to end on Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, why bother writing anything?

Since we’re still here — for the time being, anyway — I’ll go ahead and say my piece about how Timberley and I spent the hours that must have reminded folks older than us of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. I was three then, Timberley was two, and neither of us remembers it. Our knowledge of the world’s brush with nuclear war is secondhand, unlike what’s happening now.

Continue reading ‘The Whole (Wide) World Is Watching’

for Bee Whisenant

By RAHN ADAMS

Death and resurrection are funny words / to use when referring to honey bees — / how the hive declines in late autumn, / then comes back to life in early spring.

Workers live only six weeks in summer; / drones, two months if they don’t mate; / the solitary queen, two to five years, / because she’s the most important bee.

Or is she? Sure, she lays all the eggs, / but she had to tango with several guys / on her mating flight high up in the skies / in order to be the egg machine she is.

And the thousands of poor worker girls? / They do everything to keep the hive / clean and fed and safe and humming; / they literally work themselves to death.

So, the beehive stays alive all year; / it dies and resurrects itself over and over / in the expendable lives of its workers, / who — no doubt — are what the buzz is all about.

By RAHN ADAMS

RUTHERWOOD, N.C. (April 1, 2026) — I’m embarrassed to admit that I nodded off Monday evening during the second hour of Henry David Thoreau, the Ken Burns- and Don Henley-produced documentary about my favorite philosopher.

Then, last night during the conclusion of the long-awaited PBS presentation, I was so tired from helping wife Timberley plant four new bare-root roses yesterday afternoon that I needed to rest my eyes again midway through the hour-long show — or at least that’s what I claimed.

But Timberley is no fool — not even on April Fool’s Day — so she woke me up both evenings as soon as she saw that my eyelids were closed for more than a second. She knew how much I had been looking forward to the documentary and that I wanted to be awake for its over-the-air premiere.

Continue reading The Nights Thoreau Spent in Our Living Room

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun. (Sonnet 130)

By RAHN ADAMS

When you look at a picture, / what do you feel first? / The colors? The lines? / A brain tickle? A thought burst?

What about the artist, / what they had in mind / when they whet their brush / with the tastiest art they could find?

Or is your take on a painting / all that really matters, / not the painter’s intent / nor the way their paint spatters?

Is art simply like beauty — / in the eye of the beholder? / Is it a silent meditation / or a transaction much bolder?

Me? I can’t answer that / because I’m married to my art. / I’ve learned to be quiet / and just trust that sweet heart.

By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (March 25, 2026) — Last week I posed several questions that I promised to answer today: Should my “Southern heritage” — or anyone’s, for that matter — be preserved as something honorable? Should Confederate monuments, like the one on the Old Courthouse Square here in Morganton, stay or be moved? And were Rebel soldiers heroes or villains, or were they both at the same time?

As it turns out, my final answers weren’t all that hard to formulate. I got a little help from my friends — from my wife and writing partner, Timberley; from a former teaching colleague who also happens to be Timberley’s distant cousin; and from another old friend who offered a practical take on that last question.

Last week I had discovered that my maternal great-great-grandfather, John W. Duckworth, served from May 1861 to the end of the Civil War as a Confederate private in Company E of the N.C. 16th Infantry Regiment. Known as the Burke Tigers, the company fought in all the major battles from 2nd Manassas (Bull Run) to the surrender at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865. His name appears on the Morganton monument.

Continue reading O Grandfathers, Where Art Thou? (Part 2 of 2)