Author to Author

 

What a pleasure to recently meet fellow author (and tennis enthusiast!) Angela Williams, who in 2014 published her excellent and enlightening memoir “Hush Now, Baby.” (Amazon sale site here)

We connected during the summer and decided to meet in person. At a Mt. Pleasant Starbucks, we had a long chat and exchanged and signed our books for each other. (link here to my latest)

Angela is a longtime educator and retired English professor and writing lab director at The Citadel. She grew up in Berkeley County where three generations of her family founded and owned Williams Farm Supply in Moncks Corner. 

From her birth to her wedding day, Angela had a very close, supportive and loving relationship with her family’s live-in nanny/housekeeper/cook Eva Aiken. 

When we met I told Angela her book reminded me of the popular 2011 film, “The Help” which depicts the lives of Black women working at White family homes in Mississippi in the 1950s-1960s. 

Angela told me that the movie triggered her to write “Hush Now, Baby” because the film was nothing like her own experience. 

I recently completed this fine book. Angela provides such interesting details about her life in the Lowcountry from the early 1940s to the mid-1960s. 

In my book, her book is a five star read! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 

Folly Beach “Lifer” Bird!

 I wasn’t expecting to add a “lifer” bird during Sunday’s Folly Beach outing. But that’s a neat part of the birding hobby- expect the unexpected! 

Meet the Sandwich Tern. What’s with the sandwich you ask? This shore bird was “discovered” and documented in Sandwich, England in 1787 by ornithologist John Latham. 

The species has a distinctive yellow tip on its bill. That’s the mustard on the sandwich (I read somewhere). 

This tern type is a lifer bird for me, an unexpected bonus to our first visit to Folly Beach since August 2021. 

The Folly Beach Fishing Pier re-do is featured in my two years ago post. It has been completed but we were not close enough to see it in this August's visit. 

I saw this mixed group of shorebirds as we walked toward the inlet so we could see the venerable Morris Island Lighthouse. 

I’m a longtime member of the “Save the Light” organization that has helped repair and preserve the tall brick light that dates to 1876. 

This is a Ring-billed Gull that may have been also feeling the hot, humid temperatures. 

Long-legged Willets are common sights on our area beaches. 

To follow are other Folly Beach scenes.

Nature Being Nature Sequence

 I was not expecting to see what I saw recently when I walked in my backyard to photograph a Great Blue Heron that I spotted through a window. Here is the sequence I captured (Hint: poor bullfrog).