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By RAHN ADAMS

SALEM, N.C. (March 11, 2026) – Yesterday I wrote more than a dozen paragraphs — around 750 words — about our lying president and the hypocritical evangelist who helped put him in office 10 years ago.

I trashed them both good — and I was only halfway done. But even writing that much wore me out.

So this morning I decided to trash that column and start all over — and to keep it simple this time.

One of our problems now is having to deal with the president and his men constantly “flooding the zone with shit,” as one stated years ago when this madness began. It’s overwhelming.

So today I want to address in simple terms just one thing that’s bothering folks — the idea that the war in Iran is the start of Armageddon, the last big battle prophesied in the Bible.

Even the aforementioned evangelist got in on the act last week by posting on social media his support of the attack that, among other things, killed 150 innocent schoolgirls in the Iranian city of Minab, nearly 700 miles south of Iran’s capital of Tehran.

Continue reading The Last Temptation of Donald Trump

By RAHN ADAMS

Were there two trees / in the storied Garden of Eden, / or was there just one?

The Tree of Life / and the Tree of the Knowledge / of Good and Evil:

One, a live oak; / the other, a sacred fig / for both food and shelter?

That’s my guess, / if the two trees were different; / so now riddle me this:

What kind of life / knows not wrong from right / and just exists in ignorant bliss?

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (March 4, 2026) – This morning as I wake and check the news on my phone, I’m thinking about two people on the world stage — well, three, but that third guy kinda goes without saying these crazy days.

The third man — and, yes, all three are men — is Donald Trump, of course, who has now pushed the penultimate panic button of his putrid presidency in order to divert attention from his criminality and incompetence.

There’s only one more button for him to push, and I have no doubt that he will if given the chance. Do I have to tell you what that last button does? OK. It’s the one that blows everything up, figuratively as well as literally.

How would that be for a distraction? Nope, we won’t be voting for Democrats or sensible Republicans after that happens. But it’s what 77 million Americans apparently want, right?

Continue reading It’s the Second Coming (Not of Who You Think)

By RAHN ADAMS

Part I

(written before the war began early Saturday MLST*)

Donald Trump shits his britches, / and Franklin Graham merely giggles, / “Oh, just hold your noses, folks, / and pretend it’s chocolate pudding.”

The Donald puts his signature, / which looks like obscene squiggles, / on all the merch he sells, / like red MAGA hats, Chinese Bibles and white hooding.

On stage and behind the podium, / Don shimmies, shakes and wiggles; / if he didn’t play air-accordian so well, / you can bet the old Trumpster would sing.

The state of the onion is glassified, / the apple-polishing press corps signals; / his fragile ego’s a veil of tears, / and his id’s a mycologic no-good thing.

Donald Trump craps his pants, / and Stephen Miller giggles, / “Keep lying to those dumb [folks], sir; / they don’t know horseshit from hasty pudding.”

Continue reading SUNDAY VERSES: The State of ‘The Onion,’ Parts I & II (3/1/2026)

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 25, 2026) – I was mindlessly streaming one YouTube music video after another this past weekend, and I ran across an old song that I hadn’t heard in years but that has regularly come to mind in various contexts.

It was Eagles founding member Don Henley’s solo hit, “The Heart of the Matter,” from his 1989 studio album, The End of the Innocence. The album came out the year before Henley founded the Walden Woods Project, a nonprofit organization that has been near and dear to my heart since July 2012 when Timberley and I went there — to Walden Woods and Walden Pond near Concord, Mass. — for the first time. I had been accepted for the week-long Approaching Walden seminar for high school teachers. It was the best professional development of my career.

Having been an Eagles fan since at least the summer of 1977, which was not long after the band’s multi-platinum-selling albums Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975) and then Hotel California initially hit the pop charts and airwaves, I was hoping that during the week-long seminar at the Thoreau Institute, Henley himself might show up to greet us, especially since his band wasn’t on tour right then. He didn’t come around, wherever he was; instead, he sends me a fund-raising letter every year in December. Even though I know what it is when I see it in our post office box, I get a momentary thrill seeing Henley’s name on the return address.

Continue reading ‘I’ve Been Trying to Get Down to the Heart of the Matter’

By RAHN ADAMS

The legal battle was over / who owned the lot — / the benevolent developer / or the crusading islanders.

They’d already fought / over crossing the wide moat / that protected their castles / in the shifting sands,

And the king had won, / realizing his plan / to replace the drawbridge / with a high-rise, concrete span.

But Lot 1A was different, / being new dry land / that had built itself up / with each crash of ocean surf.

At the end of the day, / King Ed said, “Let it be so / that the people win. / Our crown will be this gazebo.”

By RAHN ADAMS

BOONE, N.C. (Feb. 18, 2026) – All week I’ve been intending to write this essay about the recently concluded Walk for Peace — the part of it where, not the rubber, but the bare feet of Buddhist monks and their Peace Dog met the road on their trek across the Bible Belt. That part of the mission officially ended last Wednesday.

According to the monks’ leader, the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara of Fort Worth, Texas, an individual’s walk for peace by practicing mindfulness should never end. That person should seek this type of peace for the rest of his or her life. And if they keep trying to find that peace within themselves — that “inner child,” he called it — they will not have failed.

That was my own epiphany — the monks’ definition of peace — after seeing them in person with Timberley on Jan. 16 outside Mount Olivet United Methodist Church near Kannapolis, N.C. The historic church, with its own old cemetery, is located across the street from Carolina Memorial Park, which covers the entire hillside there.

According to the Find-a-Grave website, more than 28,000 individuals rest in peace on that sacred hill where we met the monks.

It was the 83rd day of their mission that had begun on Oct. 26, 2025. Distance-wise, they were almost midway through the 2,300-mile, 108-day walk from Bhikkhu Pannakara’s home temple in Fort Worth to the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. They officially ended the sacred walk with a peace rally at the Lincoln Memorial last Wednesday on Day 109. On Days 110-112, they visited Annapolis, Md., and returned to Fort Worth by bus.

Continue reading ‘Have You No Sense Of Decency, Sir, At Long Last?’

By RAHN ADAMS

The setting sun shone / in the window / of the great room / with the cathedral ceiling.

Every day at dusk / we walked together / past this bright house / on Fairmont Street

As we headed back / from the beach strand / or the tennis courts / on the island.

From the water tower / to the waterway, / the unmarked pavement / ran south to north,

Letting twilight die / a golden death / in the highest peak / of this vacant second home.

By RAHN ADAMS

MORGANTON, N.C. (Feb. 11, 2026) — So many things are happening right now, it’s as if this second week in February is the nexus of alternate universes. Take three seemingly unrelated events this week that are alike only in terms of spectacle:

The week started on Sunday with Super Bowl LX — an unremarkable football game whose two halves book-ended a most remarkable halftime show. Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny’s extravaganza was 13 minutes of cultural education.

On Tuesday, the Buddhist monks that Timberley and I have been walking with in spirit for the past two months reached Washington, D.C., on their 2,300-mile, 108-day Walk for Peace. They are there today and tomorrow before catching a bus in Annapolis, Md., for Fort Worth, Texas, where the peace walk began. I’ll write more about it next week.

And today is the start of Speedweek 2026 at Daytona International Speedway in Florida — a really, really big deal for folks who like stock car racing. They’ve had three months of nothin’ since the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Ariz., last fall. The single-ring circus gears up again starting today.

Back in the 1990s when Dale Earnhardt was The Intimidator and won the last few of his record seven NASCAR Winston Cup championships, Timberley and I would regularly meet up with her dad, Nat Gilliam, at the races in either Darlington, S.C., or Rockingham, N.C. Nat worked with Earnhardt’s race team, representing one of its sponsors, Western Steer/Mom ‘n’ Pops, Inc., of Claremont, N.C. He even got us into the Daytona 500 once.

Continue reading Bad Bunny, Buddhist Monks, and Daytona Speedweek ’26: Signs of Changing Times

By RAHN ADAMS

As of this morning, / the bees were still buzzing / in one of our hives / like a well-built Belvedere.

On my knees, I pressed / my ear to the box / and heard the happy thrum / of a thousand little lives,

Clustered against the cold, / generating heat / to protect that one life / at the center of their being.

Why the other hive died / we probably won’t know. / Too much stress / and too spread out, we guess.

We should have robbed it — / taken all of the gold / to make them work / harder for their precious honey.