THE LAST TIME that Timberley and I went out with friends on New Year’s Eve was in 2019, and, just our luck, a hockey game broke out.
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.
MORGANTON, N.C. (Dec. 24, 2025) – No, I’m not going to criticize my wife Timberley here on Christmas Eve, not until after we open our presents, anyway.
Jan Karon’s 15th Mitford novel was published in October. We finally took the time to read it this week.
This is a brief review of Lenoir native Jan Karon’s latest Mitford novel, My Beloved, which I just finished reading aloud to Timberley as one of my gifts to her this holiday season. As I discovered in reading the heartwarming story, my gesture was like a common thread running through the book.
Actually, this is the second present my beloved wife and best friend has gotten early this year. The other one was The Chicken Encyclopedia for her to use with the children’s book she has started working on. Yeah, I know. I’m so romantic, huh?
But back to My Beloved. Over the past four decades, Ms. Karon, 88, has written 25 bestselling books, 15 of which are novels set in the fictional mountain village of Mitford. Her faithful readers—like Timberley—know that Mitford is really Blowing Rock, N.C., the Watauga County town where Ms. Karon lived for 10 years.
She moved to Virginia around the time that Timberley and I took teaching jobs at Watauga High School after our own 10-year sojourn, but on the N.C. coast. To my knowledge, our paths never crossed in Blowing Rock or Boone.
Or in Lenoir, where both Ms. Karon and I were products of the Caldwell County public school system—her, in and around the town of Hudson; me, at Happy Valley Elementary and Hibriten High. She credits her first-grade teacher, Nan Downs, with encouraging her love of reading and writing.
I must have been a late bloomer, because the educator who turned me on to reading and writing was Shannon Russing, my 11th-grade English teacher. I hope she knows how much I still appreciate the encouragement she gave me, a shy 16-year-old struggling to find my place among more privileged and confident peers.
As I think back on that 11th-grade English class, I’m not exaggerating to say that I have only positive memories of the lessons in Ms. Russing’s classroom. If anything bad happened, I don’t remember it.
That isn’t the case, however, with my other high school English classes, where the two teachers—one an abusive man, the other an overly strict woman—managed their classrooms through fear. They started out tough to get us kids under control, and they rarely let up.
One thing I did learn in those bad classes, though, was what not to do as an English teacher myself later on.
BOONE, N.C. (Nov. 17, 2025) – Local authors Rahn and Timberley Adams have released the third book in their series of young adult novels focusing on teen living and high school sports.
Published by Gaillardia Press, this third installment is entitled Tales of the Barf Table, Book Three: Diamonds and Stone. The 365-page book deals primarily with boys’ baseball, but also with girls’ softball and year-ending school events. It also explores a mystery of life-and-death proportions that has been building throughout the series.
“Actually, the devastation of Hurricane Helene inspired this book,” said Timberley Adams. “We started on it late last year as storm recovery here was underway. We also remembered our experiences in Hugo and other hurricanes from when we lived on the N.C. coast in the 1980s and ‘90s.”
The release of Diamonds and Stone follows the January 2024 publication of From the Gridiron to the Fire, about high school football, and the November 2024 publication of Trouble Shooters, about girls’ basketball and boys’ wrestling. All three novels feature a group of misfits who sit together in the school cafeteria at what others call the Barf Table.
From the new book’s back cover: “A devastating tornado on Good Friday strikes Arbor High and forces teenagers Artie Bauer and Ty Green—both Arbor Bruins baseball stars—to take shelter in the team’s indoor batting cage. When the two friends emerge after the storm, they see that their ballpark has been severely damaged . . . but they soon learn that a rival school in the next town has been destroyed. Baseball season comes to an exciting end, prom time arrives, and graduation approaches. Through it all, [the Barf Table gang learns] the value of teamwork by helping friends and neighbors cope with the aftermath of the storm and with the unearthing of skeletons from the past.”
Rahn Adams noted, “We’re really pleased with this story. It offers positive alternatives for dealing with tough situations that many young people face. That’s what we want readers to see in all these books—good role models.”
MY NEW PEN PAL sent me this thank-you card and a “gratuity” for doing her a simple favor a few weeks ago.
By RAHN ADAMS
BOONE, N.C. (July 4, 2025) — Isn’t it great when someone — maybe even a complete stranger — does something that exceeds your expectations? That’s how I felt yesterday when I picked up the mail at the post office.
In last month’s column, I wrote about receiving someone else’s mail in error and deciding to do more than just dropping the envelope back in the outgoing mail slot. I’ve done that before and then have received the same piece of errant mail again and again.
But this appeared to be a birthday card or an invitation, and so I put it in another, larger envelope, addressed it legibly without the abbreviation that had confused the post office mail scanner, and sent it back across the state to Elizabethtown in Bladen County, not far from where Timberley and I used to live.
MAYBE MY NEW PEN PAL will get her greeting card without too much more delay, no thanks to the havoc Donald Trump has wreaked on the U.S. Post Office.
By RAHN ADAMS
MORGANTON, N.C. (June 10, 2025) — As we watch 79-year-old Donald Trump prepare to celebrate his own birthday with a taxpayer-funded, multimillion-dollar military parade in D.C. and a manufactured declaration of martial law in L.A., let’s take stock of where we’ve been and where we’re going.
Remember the old campaign question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?
Well, how about this: Are you better off now than you were six months ago — you know, before Trump took office again?
By any objective and reasonable measure — egg prices, inflation rates, constitutional rights and freedoms — an honest American’s answer to both questions would be Oh, hell no.
WAITING FOR A TABLE to celebrate a good doctor’s visit, we traveled back in time this afternoon in the lobby of an old favorite restaurant in Charlotte.
By RAHN ADAMS
MORGANTON, N.C. (May 28, 2025) — Since May 2017, my sweetheart and I have spent considerable time at Levine Cancer Institute in Charlotte—our stays thankfully less extended and less frequent as the years have passed. We were there today for what has become an annual visit for tests and consultations. We are truly thankful.
At the start of this journey, Timberley had to endure multiple scans and painfully relentless blood testing and radical surgery that would have made even the patient Job cuss. This morning, however, she had three quick and relatively painless tests done. Later she met again briefly with the surgeon who had saved her life eight years ago. Though inconvenient, today’s trip back to the huge medical center was a tolerable and not entirely unpleasant reunion of sorts.
My job all along has been to provide support services for our shared endeavor—driving us from Boone or Morganton to Charlotte, often in the predawn hours; sitting patiently in waiting rooms while appointments are met, usually masked to keep from catching others’ viruses (which has happened, anyway); and driving us back home through summer heat, winter cold, and any type of traffic, without cursing the transportation gods (the auto pilot?) too often or too loudly.
Admittedly, I’ve had the easier job. I hope I haven’t fallen short of expectations—or at least not too much.
When I was a school teacher, I had the misfortune of being harassed by a student who spent several days and nights placing dozens of prank telephone calls to our home.
This was before we had Caller ID, so I had to dial a certain code after each call so that it could later be traced. As a result, the prankster was eventually arrested and prosecuted.
And we signed up for Caller ID and Call Blocking on our home telephone — a landline phone back then, of course. That was that — but not the whole story.
Soon after the kid was arrested, the pressure on me from his parents, their attorney, my principal and even our school resource officer to be forgiving of the poor, misunderstood teenager began.
At the time, I corresponded with novelist and poet Reynolds Price, who was also a professor at Duke University. Mr. Price told me about being harassed himself by a student, and he encouraged me to stay strong and not give in to the pressure tactics of those who didn’t want me to hold the boy accountable for his crimes against me and my wife.
In one email, Mr. Price also noted that “my friend Eudora Welty” had been victimized by telephone harassment and that she had made sure her harasser was prosecuted. Maybe you know, maybe you don’t that Eudora Welty, author of great short stories like “Why I Live at the P.O.,” was a kind, sweet lady. But even she was harassed by a jerk over the phone.
Which leads me to why I went to the P.O. today and what happened while I was there…
THIS WAS THE STANDING HEAD of my weekly column in my first full-time newspaper job. It was in the early 1980s at The Valdese News, owned by The News Herald of Morganton and Park Communications.
By RAHN ADAMS
Cutting to the chase, I’m not a fan — of social media, that is. Never have been.
I know that “social media” can be broadly defined and include platforms other than the three or four that most smartphone owners and tablet users prefer. I’m referring primarily to Twitter/X, Facebook, and Instagram, the ones I’m most familiar with.
I’ve never used Snapchat or TikTok, and I don’t intend to. I’ve used YouTube for years, but I go there for the how-to and music videos, not for the inane comments from viewers. I recently logged onto Bluesky, but I know little about it, as in whether I like using it or not.
In mid-November, Timberley shows off a proof copy of “Trouble Shooters” before she and Rahn begin final editing of the young adult novel.
BOONE, N.C. (Nov. 26, 2024) – Local authors Rahn and Timberley Adams have released the second book in their series of young adult novels focusing on teen living and high school sports.
Published by Gaillardia Press, this second installment is entitled Tales of the Barf Table, Book Two: Trouble Shooters, about girls’ basketball and boys’ wrestling. The uplifting and often humorous story also explores teenage issues such as learning whom to trust and whom to love.
“We’re really pleased with this story,” said Timberley Adams. “It offers positive alternatives for dealing with tough situations that many young people face. That’s what we want readers to see in all these books—good role models.”
The release of Trouble Shooters follows the January 2024 publication of the first book in the series, From the Gridiron to the Fire, mainly about high school football. Both novels feature a group of misfits who sit together in their school cafeteria at what other kids call the Barf Table.
From the book’s back cover: “Ninth grader Leah Russo has finally found her place at preppy Arbor High—not as a cheerleader or basketball player, but as a sportswriter and photographer for the school newspaper. Still dealing with the death of her big brother, everybody’s hero, Leah accepts help from her diverse circle of friends….”
Trouble Shooters begins at Thanksgiving and ends on Valentine’s Day, and follows the wins and losses of Leah and the Barf Table gang in the school lunchroom, on the basketball court and on the wrestling mat.
“We’re already working on Book Three,” said Rahn Adams. “It’ll close out the three-part series but also the school year at Arbor High, covering boys’ baseball and girls’ softball, as well as other spring sports and events.”
The Tales of the Barf Table series and two other children’s titles written solely by Timberley Adams are all published by the couple’s imprint, Gaillardia Press. Timberley’s two children’s books are Turtle Beach (2019) and Henry Heron Finds His Home (2022).
The Adamses also are working on a 20th-anniversary edition of their first novel, Night Lights; or, Golf, the Blues, and the Brown Mountain Light, first published in December 2004 by Parkway Publishers, Inc.
Both Rahn and Timberley Adams retired as teachers in Watauga County, after also teaching in Brunswick County. They also coached athletics in both counties. Rahn won tennis coach-of-the-year honors in both the Northwestern and Waccamaw Conferences.
In addition, the couple have extensive experience in radio and newspaper journalism, having won awards from the North Carolina Press Association, Radio-Television News Directors Association of the Carolinas, and the North Carolina Association of Educators (for outstanding education coverage).
Tales of the Barf Table, Book Two: Trouble Shooters is available from online booksellers and by request from local bookstores. For more information, contact the authors at P.O. Box 1382, Boone, NC 28607.
