Author: Vivian Bikulege

Wow.  When the Saints come rolling in, they can be like monster trucks barreling over everything in their path, recklessly crushing our emotions and burying them under their gigantic, mud-splattered tires – right along with the cremated remains of the people and animals we have loved.

My sister Stacie sold her home on March 4th.  Located in Hamburg, a quaint bedroom community just outside the city limits of Buffalo, New York, the feat of selling her home in this dreadful economy, and despite its location in the snowy, tundra region surrounding Lake Erie, classifies as a minor miracle.  It was on the market for close to two years.

I am so trying to bring a positive perspective to my first Whatever column of the New Year, and I cannot seem to pull myself out of a 2008 funk.

I do not know if I have ever watched my spending more than I have this Christmas season.

    The 10th anniversary edition of The Lowcountry gives me an opportunity to pause and reflect on how my life has changed since I moved to Beaufort, and wrote First Beaufort Days, the title of my first Whatever column published in August 2004.

There is an ever-increasing trend afoot, new to some, standard for others, and still non-existent for the majority of folks, and that is the everyday use of GPS – global positioning systems.

Bad news on the doorstep, I couldn’t take one more step.

Some of life’s best lessons can be learned on a fishing pier.  Folks of all ages trudge down weatherworn, wooden planks, fishing rods and bait buckets in hand.

Recently, I took a travel writing course offered by Peaceful Life Writing Workshops instructor and author, Katherine Tandy Brown.

Between Mother’s Day and upcoming weekends full of June brides, there will be a grand exodus of high school and college graduates in ceremonies all over the country. I am inundated with graduations this year translating into the potential of being financially destitute by the end of June.