Charleston Christmas Activities by Shelley Hopkins

The Charleston area is a wonderful place to celebrate Christmas, and to host out of town family members.  We may not have ice cycles and snowmen, but we are not lacking in Christmas spirit.  One local tradition is the James Island County Park lights.  We piled our family into one car, and drove all around the park, enjoying a lighted Santa, snowflakes, elves tossing snowballs, pirate ships, flags, and literally hundreds of lighted trees.  The show starts at the lake with our famous Ravenel Bridge nicely reflected on the water.   Midway through the drive we parked to walk through the rest of the attractions.  Kids and parents roasted marshmallows over fire pits, children rode a merry go round, and we walked among the smells of the fires, kettle corn and funnel cakes.  The best part was the enchanted forest full of butterflies, frogs and lights sprinkled all through the trees.  Our entire family decided to make this a new tradition for the Christmas week.  We enjoyed the light show a couple of days after Christmas, avoiding the long lines and crowds.

One warm sunny day before the holiday we drove to the beach on Sullivan’s Island, wearing shorts and sandals.  As we crossed the bridge we left the sunny day behind, driving into a wall of ocean fog.  We parked and walked along the boardwalk, the fog moving among the sea grasses.  We could only hear the ocean, hidden by both fog and low tide.  The lighthouse barely penetrated the mist, and it was eerily beautiful.  The fog cleared as the sun slowly set, the colors made even more vivid as the fog burned off. 

We took our family members to see the Charleston Tea Plantation on Wadmalaw Island.  We all drink tea and yet we had never seen actual tea plants.  We took a tour of the plantation, viewing the farm, the green house, and simply enjoying the beauty of the area.  In the shop we sampled different hot and cold tea drinks.  The plantation has 127 acres of Camellia Sinensis tea plants, grafted from original plants rescued from a Summerville farm that had been neglected.  We also stopped at the Angel Oak Tree, an absolutely beautiful and amazing tree at least 500 years old.  It is huge, rambling, and shades an area over 17,000 square feet.  To stand under this tree is to be amazed at the beauty and depth of nature. 

Charleston has so much to see with history, museums, architecture and home tours, but how wonderful it is to be able to enjoy the outdoors any time of the year.

Seneca Guns in South Carolina by Shelley Hopkins

Seneca Guns by Shelley Hopkins

Did you know that we have ghost pirates shooting at the shore here in the coastal South Carolina area?  That is one of the suggestions to explain the phenomenon of Seneca Guns that are occasionally heard around the coastal regions of North and South Carolina.  I have only lived here for a year, so this is new to me. Yesterday I saw a post from our local newspaper mentioning that several people from Isle of Palms to James Island had heard these boom sounds, and that people’s homes shook and windows rattled.  The paper was waiting to hear from the US Geological Service if the area had experienced tremors, but the writer said, if no tremors were measured then this was just a case of Seneca Guns.   So far, no tremors have been reported.

 I immediately began researching and learned that Seneca Guns is one of several names this unexplained booming sound is called.  James Fennimore Cooper wrote a short story about these booms that were heard in NY at Lake Seneca and the name stuck for the United States.  The same sounds have different names in other parts of the world, including Barisol Guns in India, Uminari in Japan, and my favorite, Mistpouffers off the coast of the Netherlands.

No one knows what causes these sounds.  One suggestion was sonic booms, but the Seneca Guns have been documented from as early as 1850.  At times these sounds are associated with earthquakes, or mainly with the aftershocks, including several mentions of these booms being heard after the Earthquake of Charleston in the 1800’s.  Other times these booms are heard on clear days with no possibility of thunder.  Seismic activity has never been recorded with the booms.  Generally they are heard along coastal areas or lake areas, so the suggestion of plate tectonic shifts has been made, but again no evidence has been recorded to suggest this is possible.

I read an article from the US Geological Service that discounted nearly every suggestion that had been made, from meteors to earthquakes to parts of the Atlantic plate sliding off in the ocean, to sonic booms.  The geologist concluded by saying, “The Earth is a complex place and there is a lot about it that we don’t understand. Perhaps someday we will understand what causes Seneca guns, but right now we don’t understand what makes them. However, they do not seem to pose a threat to anyone.” http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learn/topics/booms.php

I looked at a site from North Carolina, the NCCoast.org, and found a quote from a longtime resident, “Marlene Dixon Varnam has experienced Seneca Gun episodes all of her life. ….Varnam owns and operates Carson Varnam Seafood Market, a business she and her late husband launched back in 1955. 

“As a child I was curious about what they were. My first thought, of course, was that there might be a storm. But, then, there would be no clouds in the sky.  Our house might shake, but I was never frightened,” she recalls.

“Through the years, we heard a lot different things that might be causing the booms – earthquakes, part of the continental shelf slipping away and jets breaking the sound barrier,” she says.

“There are no definitive answers, and the booms have become part of our lives.  We just go about our business when it happens. Some mysteries you just can’t solve,” Varnam concludes.” http://www.nccoast.org/

I love the fact that despite all the scientific knowledge of our time we still have mysteries.  It is exciting to try and imagine what might cause these sounds.  I do not believe the answer is ghosts or any other mystic phenomenon but it is fun to imagine the possibility.  A little mystery in life is good. 

At the same time I did find an explanation that seems reasonable, that involves atmospheric inversions due to cold air and warm air that could create a microphone effect.  This would explain why the sounds are heard near the coast and why they are so loud, yet does not explain the cause.  Life is interesting.  My goal for now is just to hear and feel one of these Seneca Booms while not seeing a ghostly pirate ship on the horizon.  If you have any experience with this, please share it, I am very interested.

thoughts on plans for the new year

Goals and Plans

For the last 20 years I have been a stay at home mom.  I learned a lot from that experience, and believe it or not, what I learned there has carried over to my new career in Real Estate, to my dream career in writing, and to my life in Christianity.  A stay at home mom is not on a life pause, but is working for her family as a self-employed home manager.  The pay is not great, but the perks and rewards are without measure.

One of the roles I played was household management.  I worked to save money, be frugal and provide good nutritious meals for my family.  I enjoyed making homemade baby food, cooking, baking bread and sewing.  Well, maybe not sewing.  The biggest struggle as a stay at home mom is the freedom I had to plan or not plan my days.  I found I needed a schedule and goals.  Home management does not just happen.  To have frugal, tasty and healthy meals takes planning.

What were our goals?  First and most important was to raise, nurture and be there for my children.  We had values to instill.  We chose to always attend church, to put God first.  Walking at the park we could talk about God and the beauty of nature, in the playground interactions we could talk and model Christ like behavior.  I wanted my kids to enjoy life and live simply.  I wanted them to play outside, build forts with blankets, read books and delve into their creativity.

I learned how to cook.  I tried different vegetables and fruits and always we experimented with different recipes.  We grew a garden and saw where our food came from.  We also ate fast food and frozen pizzas, but hopefully we had a balance.

Now the children are grown, and I am working.  I have found the lessons learned are needed in my “real world” life.  I am a Real Estate agent, a wanna-be writer, and a Christian.  In each area of my life I need goals, a plan and a schedule.  No one is going to lay that out for me, there is no clocking in and out for any of those sections of my life.  This is scary.

This week I am writing out my Real Estate goals, and trying to create a loose schedule that I can use to plan my days in order to achieve these goals.  I must do some form of prospecting, or advertizing in order to let others know about the services I offer as an agent.  I must read and train myself on contracts, financing and the market.  I must get out and look at neighborhoods and homes.

I want to write.  I need to schedule time for that, to sit and write.  I need to read a wide variety of texts; I need to improve my vocabulary and grammar.  I need to get out and observe life, and to see and experience.

I want to grow as a Christian, and to share my faith.  I must have a faith in order to share it.  I must pray, study, work on my relationship with God and my church.  But to share this faith and to challenge myself and grow, I must get out and participate in life, meet others and use my faith.

One action item, so to speak, is the same for all my goals.  Get out, become involved in life, and develop relationships.  People will only trust me as an agent if they know me.  I will only have writing material if I have a life, and Christianity not shared is dead.  How can we love and teach others if we don’t care, don’t know them and remain aloof?

For me, I need a balance of scheduling, planning, goal setting and getting involved in living.  I like to just see where life will take me, and some of that is natural and who I am.  A true plan that will work will take my natural personality and strengths into consideration, so for me a mixture of well laid out plans and “lets just hop on that road and see where it goes” is what will work best. 

What are some of your plans for 2014?