young people

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Greenville North Carolina


This is a bit of a departure from most of my online rants. If you do not live in North Carolina, the chances of your ever hear of Greenville diminish quickly with distance. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Greenville’s population stands at 88,728. Also, according to thecentersquare.com, Greenville’s poverty level stands at 24.3%, highest in the state. And yet, were you to drive the streets to the south and east of the city’s center, you would be impressed by how new everything is and how vibrant this city is. And so, what is going on?

I live in Ayden NC which sits about 10 miles to the south of Greenville and has a population of about 5200, a farming community to be sure. Other towns surrounding Greenville are Winterville, Farmville and Bethel. With the exception of Winterville, to drive to any of those other communities, you will be driving past corn fields, cotton fields and tobacco fields.

For Greenville itself, the largest employer is Vidant heath which owns the city’s only hospital and many clinics. Next is the Pitt County school system. In other words, there is no industry in this city. At one time, Greenville was a center of the textile industry in North Carolina. Not the largest by any means but easily the area’s largest employer. But in the 1950s and 60s, like most of America, those jobs dried up and the mills closed down as the textile industry shifted to Asia.

But once you leave Greenville you are going to drive at least 1/2 hour before you reach another city of any appreciable size. This part of North Carolina is most definitely rural.

Then why would my wife and I relocate from the Boston environs to this area? Well first, we wanted to get away from New England winters. I am getting up there in years and shoveling snow was becoming too difficult. And I also found that to have my driveway plowed would cost me about $200 per storm! I was not willing to pay that. Also, in the Boston area we were paying $2300 per month for an apartment rental whereas here we own a home with a monthly mortgage payment of $1200. That was a no-brainer! Last winter Greenville received about 4 inches of snow early one Saturday morning and the city quite literally shut down for the next 2 days! We had to laugh.

While we are still trying to find a really good Italian restaurant, we have added a fantastic North Carolina Barbeque restaurant, the Starlight Inn here in Ayden. We like this place not only because it came in 2nd place in an all–North Carolina competition but because we just really like it. We also found a Jamaican restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall place near the town of Snow Hill, about 1/2 hour from us.

Getting the beach from here is about 1-3/4-to-2-hour trip. But once you get there, it is glorious! Not the outer banks, but still a southern continuation of the outer banks which suits us just fine.

One thing you notice in the Greenville area is all the new houses being built. These homes are being bought almost as quickly as they are built. I have known of houses in the process of being built that were already sold! To me, this says that Greenville and its environs, is an area on the rise. The cost of living relative to the northeast is much lower with certain exceptions but those are things like gasoline and other commodities where pricing is on a national level rather than a regional or local one.

Whatever Greenville lacks in urban attraction is made up for by a trip to the Raleigh and Durham area which are about 90 minutes away. Greenville is a very attractive place for young people from an affordability view and the same is true for retirees. The city is also prime for the location of new large industry, something I expect will happen in the near future. Say what you like but Greenville is truly a good place to live.

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As Teenagers Look Towards Their Future


I teach in a fabulous school system, Lexington, MA., though I am just a substitute teacher. I take my job very seriously and try to add to each student’s experience. The two things I most frequently do is to remind them of the tremendous opportunity afforded them in Lexington Public Schools, one of the best in the state. But I also try to reinforce in them that they are both intelligent and up to the task in front of them. Most recently a young man who was struggling with a classroom project kept calling himself “stupid.” I did my best to assure him that he is not stupid, that some things do not come as quickly to one student as another. I told him that at his age I was just such a student.

But I write this article because of an 8th grader, a very bright young lady, whom I have been mentoring for the last several months. She took the time to show me some of her writings which I found to be both well-written and thought provoking. She is obviously a young lady who grasps concepts far beyond her 14 years on this planet. But one of her most important questions to me, in general terms, is “why are things the way they are?” As someone who possess a Masters in History, I encouraged her to look backwards at least 100 years and, in time, I will encourage her to look back further.

What concerned me most about her question, though, was its inherent fear of a questionable future. I spoke to her briefly about my generation’s efforts to change society for the better, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I did not go deeply into it, not because I doubted her ability to understand my generation, but because context is required and so I gave her an assignment to look at women who were improving their lot in the late 19th and early 20th century. I explained her that to understand where you are, you must know from where you came. I narrowed that to include only women so that gender identity, her own, would focus her thoughts on certain historical facts about women, suffragettes, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Jane Addams, Lucy Stone and other women who found their niche and worked hard to improve the lot of women of their day.

It concerns me that any student should fear for their future but, considering the times in which we live, it is quite understandable. Today’s youth is bombarded with negative news, the prospect of uncontrollable climate change, political upheaval, losing the “American Dream,” among many other things.

I see it as my generation’s imperative to encourage young people to become involved with changes that will brighten their future. We need to encourage young people in their 20s and 30s to become politically involved. We need them to become outspoken critics of the status quo and to be instruments of change. My generation helped bring about many changes but we forgot to pass the idea of continuing change to our children. And so it is time for our children’s children to take over, to be the ones who define their future, and to reject any idea which runs contrary to their own well-being.