Many readers know or suspect that Hannah McLeod, who has been publishing columns semi-regularly in The Smoky Mountain News since mid-2018 after graduating from Appalachian State University, is related to me. She’s my daughter.

Hannah is smart, well-read and stays informed on happenings in our country and abroad. She can discuss literature or poetry, current events, music, movies, pop culture, geography, history, and is fluent in Spanish. She took her college classes seriously and managed to earn two undergraduate degrees. 

Burlesque dancing may be in my future. 

Some of us gals at The Smoky Mountain News have been invited to attend a burlesque dance class. As we were mulling around the idea recently, I told them I could only do it on a weekend my boys were with their dad. 

Upon seeing Hannah McLeod’s recent guest column published in these pages on May 29, my first reaction was that it belongs in the same category as those rants whose message boils down to, “It’s da Jooz.”  

Ms. McLeod’s seething anger about what she perceives, rightly or wrongly, as the victimization of the identity groups she most cares about may explain her passion, and may even call forth sympathy for their — and her — wounds. However, her fervor does not excuse her vicious caricatures of the views and motivations of those with whom she disagrees and her distortion of facts that she should have checked before writing about them. As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but no one is entitled to his own facts.” A basic principle of good analysis — which she ought to have been taught at App State — is to base it on primary sources before expressing definite opinions. This she evidently has not done.

The final school bells have rung. 

When I was teaching, the last few weeks of school were grueling and felt never-ending. Once students were finished with end-of-grade testing, they kind of went wild, as if they’d held it together all that time and could no longer maintain their instinctive desire to run, jump and talk nonstop.

My wife, Lori, and I recently attended the wedding of my nephew in Fayetteville. While there, we wandered around downtown for a couple of meals and I was reminded of how the city’s affiliation with the monster military machine of Ft. Bragg defines this Southern town.

Fort Bragg is the largest U.S. Army base by population, with more than 52,000 active duty soldiers. The base also has more than 12,000 reservists, almost 9,000 civilian employees and 63,000 active duty family members. Throw in almost 100,000 retirees and their family members, and you begin to get the scope of the military’s impact. All told, the census bureau pegs the metropolitan area’s population at about 375,000.

By Hannah McLeod • Guest Columnist

Living outside the United States makes it easier to ignore the day-to-day whirlwind of political and social bull that pervades our society. The back and forth, the focus on optics instead of outcome, the now-faster-than-24-hour news cycle. My days here in Costa Rica are centered around making sure everyone gets fed, that the house runs smoothly, and whether or not there is good surf. Presence is a must. 

I wish I knew where Mike is. I haven’t seen or heard from him in 10 years at least. I like to think of someone reading this column, connecting some dots, and then sending him a link, or maybe scissoring it out of the paper and mailing it to him. I like to think of him waiting to get his teeth cleaned at the dentist, picking up the paper and reading this column that is for him, because the memories I have of the stories, the essays, the poems, the short stories and the songs he wrote in my classes haunt me sometimes. He shared his stories with me, and the least I can do his share his story with you. Well, at least part of his story. I wish I knew the rest. Or at least I think I do.

By Norman Hoffman • Guest Columnist

Most psychiatric conditions require the clinician to interact directly with the individual to determine a diagnosis. For example, most of us have experienced some level of depression, but few of us have reached the threshold for a diagnosis of major depressive episode, which requires additional criteria, such as loss of appetite, sleep disturbance, slowed concentration, feelings of guilt, and/or thoughts of death.

However, there are a few conditions that can be determined from observable behavior. One of these is narcissistic personality disorder. Of the nine criteria, five are required to indicate a diagnosis, and most can be determined from observing behaviors. Here are the nine criteria:

I was seven years old when my parents first took me to New York. We couldn’t afford to stay in the city so we rented out part of a home in New Jersey and commuted to Manhattan. These were the days before Airbnb and VRBO, so I commend my parents for being resourceful enough to find a way for us to make the trip, despite a tight budget. 

Let’s be honest for a minute. Most of us lie to our friends on a fairly regular basis and are, in turn, lied to by them. Furthermore, that’s the way we want it. It is an unwritten contact that we rely on to keep our friendships burnished to a nice sheen, as well as a way for us to continue to perpetuate certain kinds of delusions that make us feel more comfortable in various areas of our lives.