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By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Jan. 28, 2026) – The Hibriten High School pep band was the coolest group of musicians this 11-year-old kid had ever heard in person. It was three more years before I would hear Maynard Ferguson’s screaming MF horn in the old concert hall at App State. But that’s another story for another day.

Mom would take me and my little brother to our older brother’s JV basketball games — Mom was the hoops fan, not Dad — and then we’d stay for the two varsity contests that followed. That’s when the pep band played, starting at halftime of the girls’ game. Those guys and gals playing horns and banging drums were so cool. Whether it was that first year or the next, I remember admiring Joe, the trombone player, in particular. I wanted to play just like him.

Coming from a white evangelical background — a really strict fundamentalist Christian household — I didn’t get to listen to rock or even pop music openly at home. Now, I was in the elementary school band — I played trombone, like Joe — but the only good songs we played were easy arrangements of Tijuana Brass tunes. My only other link to popular music was a wired earbud and a cheap AM transistor radio that picked up only the local radio station. Top Gun, as WKGX in Lenoir was called back then, played country-and-western music, and went off the air every day at sunset.

But that’s when the pep band started heating up on those cold winter nights in that crowded and stuffy high school gym. During breaks in the games, the band stood at one end of the home stands and played neat songs like “Windy” by the Association and “Up, Up and Away” by the 5th Dimension, as well as two jazzy tunes by Chicago, the original rock group with horns. I also remember a Cliff Nobles Philly soul hit called “Horse Fever” (not to be confused with “The Horse,” which every other pep band played), as well as the first Hibriten fight song that was actually App’s “Hi-Hi-y-ike-us” (mountain talk for “Hi, how do you like us?”).

Continue reading ‘Waiting for the Break of Day, Searching for Something to Say’

In memorium

By RAHN ADAMS

That ride on the golden escalator / was already at its lowest level. / It should have been shut down / once and for all, God damn it.

The golden tower never was as tall / as it was said to be. / The sales pitch was just a big lie, / selling fools timeshares on the 13th floor.

Now they want golden parachutes / to break their falls. / The rest of us are left waiting for an elevator, / or we’re forced to take the stairs.

The golden doors suddenly slide open; / we can go up or down. / Two good and pretty elevators can carry us, / but both are covered in blood.

in memory of Thich Nhat Hanh

By RAHN ADAMS

Across the sacred expanse, down the brown hill, through the leafless trees, / past the pilot-less autos and bystanders, / I glimpse the monks of peace, / Walking, walking, walking…

Their saffron robes attract the sun like dreamcatchers do the moon, / leaving the highway and heading down, / then up and around the road’s curves, / Walking, walking, walking…

Like a slow roller-coaster, a burnt-umber line of linked cars, / the monks climb to the summit as if being towed or driven / by some higher power that is always / Walking, walking, walking…

Past all the lonely people standing with outstretched arms, / asking for alms with smartphones / from mindful men who breathe and walk / for themselves, for us all, and for a world of hope and healing.

By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (Jan. 21, 2026) – When was the last time you drove anywhere unfamiliar without using GPS? Really? It was that long ago? Jeepers.

Despite the frigid temperatures Friday morning, Timberley and I hopped into Pearl, our little white car, and drove somewhere we’d never been – 85 miles and 90 minutes away – and we didn’t get lost a single time. That’s a miracle when I’m behind the wheel, even with GPS.

Two-and-a-half hours later, we returned home by a different route, again on unfamiliar country roads through Cabarrus, Rowan and Iredell counties without making any wrong turns. And this time we weren’t in a hurry, so we were able to enjoy our ride through all that fallow but beautiful farmland.

It was a win-win situation. I trusted the disembodied voice giving us directions, and I didn’t even have to think. I hadn’t had to do any serious pre-trip planning by consulting road maps, and I didn’t have to bother Timberley to fumble with her phone and plot our turns through Piedmont farm country.

More importantly, we didn’t have to take the wider but more congested interstate highways that most other motorists chose to travel between, say, Troutman and Kannapolis that day. We took the roads that at least appeared to be less traveled. So, you see where I’m headed here, right?

Continue reading Lighting the Way on Paths of Peace

in memory of Kenneth Eric Adams

By RAHN ADAMS

Every fall and winter I go back / to 1976 and 1977 when I was 17, / a senior in high school, / big brother to a little boy / who suffered more than he deserved.

It had been the Bicentennial, / a year of celebrating our freedom; / but summer was over, / and on the 1st of October / the march toward January 17 began.

After I hung up the telephone, / all I could think to do / was run over to our little white church, / fall down at the altar / and pray for his cancer to be cured.

I wanted some sign from God / that he had heard my plea / for my brother to be healed, / and that he might survive the knives / and the fire and all that poison.

I flipped open my Bible / to the longest of the Psalms; / and my unaimed finger fell on the 17th verse: / “I shall not die, but live, / and declare the works of the Lord.” Yes!

But on the 17th of January / I learned that the promise I had read / referred not to my little brother / but to me, as it traded my heaven / for the hell of wait and see.

By RAHN ADAMS

SALEM, N.C. (Jan. 14, 2026) — Last week I got fed up with current events and fired off one of those “What a Crazy World We Live In” posts on social media. In it, I pointed out that on the one hand we’re raptly watching a reverent procession of orange-robed Buddhist monks and their well-behaved dog walk single file across the South promoting peace, while on the other hand we are terrified to witness legions of masked federal stormtroopers, like Hitler’s SS, descending upon Main Street, U.S.A., and murdering us in broad daylight. (Yes, it truly was murder — a conscious decision at worst, depraved indifference at best. However it occurred, the killing was anointed by our heads of state and blessed by the crowd that pushes for The Ten Commandments to be posted everywhere publicly, including “Thou Shalt Not Kill,” I presume.)

Talk about the yin and the yang of living in the material world now. It’s like night and day; like fire and ice; like having a white dog on one shoulder, a black dog on the other; or like claiming to be followers of Christ, but worshiping the devil instead, as many white Christian fundamentalists do. These days I can’t seem to get W.B. Yeats’s apocalyptic poem “The Second Coming” out of my head, with its talk about things falling apart and centers not holding and anarchy being loosed upon the world. (That’s where the “Rough Beast” in my headline comes from. It isn’t a reference to the monks’ yellow dog.)

Yeah, this is gonna be one of those blog columns — not a lot of laughs, because Rahn’s big-boy panties are in a wad again. (Well? Referring to oneself in the third person seems to be par for the course now, even though it was a funny bit from a 30-year-old Seinfeld episode.)

Oh, right. Rahn needs to buy himself some big-boy panties. Sorry, he gets those put-downs mixed up sometimes. It’s from having TDS or from letting that lying sack of farts with the orange spray-tan and weird comb-over live rent-free in his head. All the bald-faced lies, hatefulness, bullying and braggadocio run together after a while. (And that’s how SAD things have gotten — I mean, that the big bad wolf of 5th Avenue’s dyed-in-the-wool Sheep Are Du-u-u-ummmb.)

Continue reading Monks Walk for Peace as ‘Rough Beast’ Slouches Towards War

By RAHN ADAMS

for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

At the edge of the ocean / On the cusp of sea and sky and spit / Lived the old lighthouse keeper; / Ever faithful Charlie Swan kept the Cape Fear beacon lit.

Three square little houses / In a row with unobstructed ocean views, / Like pieces on a game board, / Sheltered Captain Charlie and his beach-borne lifesaving crews.

This fearsome washboard of shoals / Has always sent swabbies to their knees / On the decks of sailing ships / Seeking safe harbor from dark or stormy seas.

That blessed beacon in its day / Was more than hope and saving grace; / It was a confident beam, / A blinding pinpoint of trust in that barren, windswept place.

But the captain and his light are gone; / God only knows where his crewmen now abide. / Left are their vacant dwellings / With sand and sunflowers on every side.

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Jan. 7, 2026) – So, how did you spend Old Christmas yesterday? Did you have a big feast or give someone special a gift? Did you take down your Christmas decorations and stow them away until next Halloween? You should have done that at least.

No? Well, then, did you stay up past midnight on Tuesday to see if your pets would kneel and pray? That’s an Appalachian tradition—staying up late on Old Christmas Eve to hear animals talk. I mean, Balaam’s ass actually speaks in the Bible (Numbers 22:28-30). The mule doesn’t exactly pray, but he does ask why his master is mistreating him. Animals can talk, and they do pray.

We need no proof at our house, because Scout, our little Type-A Manx cat, has a word of prayer with me every blessed morning. She tells me—not Timberley, mind you—in no uncertain terms when it’s time to get up and feed her. Her laid-back brother Jem, an orange tabby, knows to keep his mouth shut—until I open the can of cat food. Then it’s smack, smack, munch, munch.

When Scout says, “Muh-wow,” we know she’s asking for water, and we let her jump up on the bathroom counter for a drink. When she’s perturbed with me for wanting to stay in bed a minute longer, she says, “Raw-run, Raw-run,” and I’m not quite sure if that’s my name or what I need to do to keep her from jumping up on me. But she does—with all four feet—if I don’t rise and shine.

Continue reading How Do You Celebrate Old Christmas — With a Bang or a Whimper?

By RAHN ADAMS

Crossing Mad Inlet to get there / was what made the trek / An adventure on an otherwise ordinary day.

If your sojourn on Bird Island / wasn’t timed with the tide, / Your return might be delayed for hours

While you waited on the beach / for the meandering moon / And the arcing sun to align for your benefit.

So then you’d wander on down / to the driftwood bench in the dunes, / To see what other dawdlers had said

About getting themselves stranded / for wanting to be in touch / With limitless sky, salted winds, and holy sea.

But storms through the years / have closed Mad Inlet / And have posted a shiftless sign in the sands of time.

It’s almost too easy now — / a dog walk to the box and back, / Stopping by dunes on a showy evening / for what is lovely, dark, and deep.

By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (Dec. 31, 2025) – Like that time the crazy guy groped his mic stand on the campaign trail, this past year has sucked so badly that I’m looking for a watchnight service to attend tonight. I need some hope for a change. Call it what you will.

You’re probably asking yourself, what in the H-E-double hockey sticks is a watchnight service? Well, it’s kinda like Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest, but without the late Dick Clark’s ageless charisma (because he’s still dead), without real rock ‘n’ roll, just fake rock called contemporary Christian music or praise hymns, and without the boyish charm of Ryan Seacrest.

But it does take place on New Year’s Eve, though in a church or cathedral with lots of singing and praying. It sometimes follows a light communal meal called a lovefeast, usually only coffee or tea and cookies—more of a love-snack, if you ask me.

What will attendees be watching for tonight? According to Wikipedia, the watchnight service “provides the opportunity for Christians to review the year that has passed and make confession, and then prepare for the year ahead by praying and resolving.” Make confession? Hmm. That could take a while.

And what was that last thing, after praying? Resolving? No, no, I don’t bother with New Year’s resolutions anymore. At my age, I figure it’s too late to change my ways. This old dog ain’t learning any new tricks.

Continue reading Watching for Common Sense’s Second Coming