What we should do as a nation is come together and work out solutions to the many challenges we are facing. Health care is merely one of them; others include a reform of Wall Street, education and immigration reform, and (my favorite) a commitment to becoming energy independent.
What we are getting instead is bipartisan bickering, a media frenzy that feeds on negative energy that in turn divides the nation. As a result, the majority of our leaders and the general public lose their way, their sanity and their dignity by focusing on single issues without putting them into perspective. We get into heated debates on who is right or who is wrong, and by doing so, we forget the real issues that desperately need to be addressed and which deserve well thought-out solutions that are not full of political and economic compromises. Read More
When Charles Fraser conceived Sea Pines a little over 50 years ago, the term “green” simply stood for the color green. Charles was way ahead of his time without knowing it. There are three major decisions he made that have stood the test of time and today symbolically represent being green:
• Creating the 605-acre Sea Pines Forest Preserve;
• Recognizing that natural beauty is a major asset;
• And creating a building code that ensures that man-made structures blend into the existing natural surroundings.
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Everything!
I remember when I was 15-years-old, I came across a sentence written by German philosopher and poet Friedrich Schiller that read, “Happiness is to love and to be loved.” This sentence stood out among an ocean of words and immediately stuck with me. For a few months I examined it’s meaning and tried to find a better definition of happiness, but I couldn’t. Hence I made it my “credo.”
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It is reassuring to know that the town’s resolution for the new year is to examine what lies ahead for us and what measures we can take today to meet the changing demands of the next 25 years.
To that end, the town has updated the comprehensive 10-year plan and the mayor has appointed a task force to formulate a vision and road map to address the question of how we can improve the quality of life for all citizens, how we can make the visitors’ experience more rewarding and how we can secure the economic viability of our community.
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Before we look forward, we must look back.
Before formulating a new vision we must capture the essence of what defines us.
What is the intangible essence of our island?
Maybe it helps to understand that its material existence relies on the force of nature itself. The land where we build our homes and businesses was under sea level for millions of years. In contrast, 15,000 years ago the sea level was 400 feet lower than it is today, and our land was miles from the ocean.
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Let me be clear: Keeping the only PGA Tour event in South Carolina here on Hilton Head Island is a very important matter. There are three main benefits to our community that come from hosting the event.
The first and possibly the most important is the exposure our brand gets all year, and especially during the event itself that helps us maintain a high profile as a desirable golf destination. The second is that the week of the event is always a big boost for tourist-related businesses. The third benefit is that the Heritage Foundation is able to award scholarships and provide considerable amounts of money every year to local nonprofit organizations.
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“Hilton Head is a brand and every brand’s value is either rising or falling.”
The founding fathers of Hilton Head Island, including Charles Fraser, have left us with not only a heritage, but also a mission to fulfll. Hilton Head was conceived as a high-quality resort destination where nature and civilization would co-exist in harmony.
What sets us apart as a planned community is our limited space due to our natural geographic boundaries, and the fact that we are one of the largest barrier islands on the East Coast. Limited space means there are only a pre-planned number of dwellings that can ever be built in our town. Being a barrier island means our natural surroundings provide a special allure.
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“Now is the best time to invest in our future.”
It’s all good and fine to declare that the recession is over (if you missed my June column, you can find it at www.hiltonheadmonthly.com) or to tell the president of the United States that he should make energy independence the No. 1 priority ( July issue). But for most of us, these more generalized topics have very little immediate impact on our daily lives; after all, we own property in the Lowcountry and we do business right here. Therefore, this month’s focus is on our home turf.
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Dear Mr. President,
As we prepare to commemorate the Declaration of Independence on July 4th, it is an opportune moment to reflect on what the spiritual essence of this nation is: To be independent!
If being independent was so important in forming the United States of America, and has guided us well for more than two centuries, why have we given up on making this a top priority?
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Predicting economic downturns and upswings is more an art form than an exact science. In my view, there are two important factors when making economic predictions: the facts (traceable economic data) and emotions (how we feel often dictates our future economic behavior).
Readers of my column seem to like it when I take a positive view of the world. So today I’m going on the offense by declaring that the recession is over! (I expect the National Bureau of Economic Research to officially say that the recession will be over this summer…and since it usually lags about 18 months behind, we’ll have some time to find out if I was right).
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