Finding Your Lane: A Quest Worth the Journey
I listen to music often. When I am working on my farm it is common to hear my playlist blasting extra loud on my bluetooth speaker or to see me wearing my earphones as I do my chores. It was a day like this recently when a Tom Misch song captured me. It captured me in a way that made me put the song on repeat for over an hour. After the third replay I added it to one of my playlists, the one entitled My Frequency. His song It Runs Through Me is about why I even have a playlist called My Frequency. On this playlist are some songs […]
Perspective on Ending My Senior Year in Quarantine
Quarantine Everyone has a different idea on how everyone else is handling it because, let’s face it — we’ve got the time to think about it. So I thought I would share a little bit of my perspective on quarantine. My name is Anaya Armstrong. I have worked for Bella for some months now; among other responsibilities, I am in charge of the Bella Buzz Community Calendar. I am a graduating senior at South Aiken High School and I turned 18 in February. For me quarantine has been a rollercoaster of emotions and feelings. As a senior in high school, my experience with quarantine was at first very hard. I […]
The Tail of Two Kitties
On a bitter cold snowy New Year’s Day in New Hampshire, my friend Brian accompanied me to Advent Hill Cattery to pick out a Maine Coon kitten. I had done my research on the breed, but I really just wanted a replacement for Misty, my rescue cat who had passed of old age a few weeks earlier. Brian had discouraged me from raising miniature horses instead, and since he ended up carrying most of the kitty litter to the trash, this turned out to be a wise move on his part. The cleaning routine at Advent Hill would have made any coronavirus doctor proud. We disinfected our shoes, scrubbed our […]
Facts for Life in 2020
One thing is for certain in life — it goes on. Whether or not a vaccine makes our world safer again, life goes on. The past months have been a wake-up call that demonstrates how little we really control. We all have hopes and dreams for the future, but we are all impacted by current conditions that affect our lifestyle, our workplace, and most definitely our finances. Since the last issue of Bella, we have seen some of the worst and best weeks in market returns. How much of that were you able to control? Unless there is something I am not aware of, the only control that you have […]
Riding the Words
I have a friend who used to ride the rails. It was back in the 1970s. And he was photo-documenting the lives of railroad tramps — a culture and lifestyle that was fast disappearing, even then. His photographs are haunting and harsh and starkly real in unflinching black and white. They tell stories of deprivation and pride; stories of living on edges and in shadows; of the addiction to it all, the blatant freedom and mindset of it; the habitual moving and leaving and never arriving, never staying. The work is brilliant. The photographs are utterly compelling. But what captures my mind and imagination the most are the words he […]
Be Evolving
“We keep thinking that the human is evolving. No, the human has evolved to its extent. What’s happening now is the organization of humans: just like cells organize to form people, people are organizing to form humanity.” Bruce Lipton We are evolving. Businesses have initiated changes and innovations over the last few months, and ours have led to the rebuilding of Bella’s foundation. Our mission is to facilitate a positive community lifestyle by creatively informing, inspiring, and entertaining. Our vision is to remain relevant and accessible through time, technology, and community changes. Within the pages of this month’s issue you will finally see the first glimpse of our new Palmetto […]
