Mark Sanford’s striving for personal excellence would be admirable, even with his failings.

In him you can see a man battling between strong feelings and doing what is right. He wants his mistress with that deep yearning so many people have from their first loves. But he also knows adultery isn’t right.

Mark Sanford versus adultery. Nay, Mark Sanford versus the very Devil himself — fighting the nagging tug at his loins with only the help of his wife and friends.

We’ll call him Ned. He’s 19 years old and in a few months will become a father. He goes to school every day but only for half a day. His job – he’s a mechanic – begins at noon. That isn’t enough hours to graduate anytime soon, but now he has a new opportunity.

You probably haven’t heard of PACE, a new type of schooling with a mind-blowing, higher-than-education title: Personal Alternative Choice in Education-Virtual Schools online computer classes. It’s now being used by hundreds of Orangeburg County children.

Perhaps you’ve read the book of John in the New Testament. Perhaps you haven’t. I find this book to be one of the most challenging and enlightening books included in the Holy Word. It gets to the heart of who we are as people and how Jesus taught us otherwise.

For instance, I would wager that many people reading this column today believe they are nice people. They live in a nice house; they wear nice clothes; they drive nice cars; they make a decent living; they spend time with their families; they contribute to the community; they give to charitable causes. Really, isn’t that what we believe about ourselves?

At least Gov. Mark Sanford faced the music alone — and I’ll bet the music running through his head was one of those dramatic, sweeping tangos that provide the perfect soundtrack for a visit to Buenos Aires. Tango lyrics are, essentially, blues lyrics in Spanish: somebody did somebody wrong. And that’s what happened.

The only commendable thing Sanford has done lately was to stand before the television cameras by himself as he admitted that his mysterious five-day absence was in fact a trip to Argentina — to see the woman with whom he has been having an extramarital affair for the past year.

On Father’s Day, we had a large, relatively quiet gathering at the Mizzell pond house. We enjoyed my four favorite Fs — family, friends, food and fellowship. When we planned for a pond-house outing, we did not plan for elegant cuisine. Instead, we had a most wonderful covered dish smorgasbord of country-style fare, which included roast beef, ham, chicken, roast pork and some fresh vegetables from various family members’ gardens. My favorite vegetable, of course, was some tender corn-on-the-cob — my first of the summer season — that Aunt Carolyn and Uncle Dennis Mizzell contributed. My cousin Chris Mizzell grilled the corn on site. It was totally fresh and so delicious!

Have you had any fresh corn this summer? If you haven’t, rush out and buy some at your local grocer or roadside produce stand. If you have dental problems, or just don’t like eating off-the-cob, take the raw or boiled, tender ears of corn and use a sharp knife to cut the kernels off of the cob. Unless your taste buds are totally dead, you will quickly taste the difference between canned or frozen corn and fresh corn. Here are some yummy corn recipe ideas that you may want to try.

I’m going to revisit last week’s column. I wrote a little about the much-loved television series, “Little House on the Prairie” and its depiction of folks caring, sharing and helping one another in that bygone era in America. I asked if hard times are really good times.

The subsequent response I received was a mite surprising in that many seem to think when life was simpler and slower – even though most people worked harder but had less – those times were, indeed, more happy and contented.

By DR. JOHN RHENEY

As a guy who grew up in the South and specifically the Orangeburg area, I have been stunned ever since I found out four years ago what has happened to our area.

It would have been beyond the comprehension of local folks 40 years ago to fathom the thought that we have reached a point where we cannot eat the fish from our local lakes and rivers (and obviously ponds too, although most have not been tested) because of mercury contamination. You can go on the scdhec.gov Web site to read the fine details if you like.
The other thing that jumps out at me is the head-buried-in-the-sand mentality with which most of us approach this tragedy. My Lord, we have ruined our streams and yet the only mention of it is an occasional sidebar in newspapers once every couple of years when a new advisory comes out.
Without getting into a lot of microbiology that you folks don’t really want to read, let’s summarize how we got to this point. Very basically, the coal-burning regions of the country that have been heavily industrialized for years are to the north and west of us. Unfortunately, for the Deep South, the prevailing winds and jet stream flow from the northwest to the southeast, bringing the byproducts of this gift from our northern neighbors to us. One of the particulate byproducts of this pollution is mercury. Now mercury also occurs in natural forms, but most of our problem comes from pollution. As this mercury settles out, it eventually washes into our lakes and rivers. It binds to iron that is dissolved in the water and iron-fixing bacteria ingest it. If it were to stop there, we would be okay, but algae feed on the bacteria, and little fish eat the algae, and then big fish eat the little fish. You know who eats the big fish! With each step of the food chain, the mercury increases in tissue concentrations. When it hits a certain level in human tissue, it causes birth defects, and hearing and eye injury. Well that’s bad news, but it gets worse for residents of the South Carolina Lowcountry, including those from the Orangeburg tri-county areas.
As we just mentioned, the uptake of mercury in the food chain is dependent to some degree on iron. We have a lot of iron in our water. Just look at the Edisto River (the longest black water river in the nation now that the Santee is dammed up). So it follows that the problem is magnified in areas with high iron. The large predator fish are usually the problem. For instance, unless you like eating mudfish, you can eat about as much fish as you want out of Lake Moultrie. You are restricted to one 8-ounce meal of largemouth bass per week if caught in Lake Marion or the Diversion Canal area. Here’s the killer. DHEC advises not eating ANY mudfish, largemouth bass, channel catfish, jackfish or flathead catfish caught out of the Edisto River. You are also limited to only one meal per month of blue catfish and one meal per week of crappie, bluegill or redbreast. In other words you can only eat bream-type fish and only 8 ounces of that.
Once the water flows downstream and becomes brackish, the restrictions are raised, although mercury accumulates highly in mackerel, swordfish and tuna just off of our coast. With the exception of Lake Hartwell, which is highly polluted with PCBs, and Lake Jocassee most of the Upstate rivers and lakes do not have an advisory (as of yet) as there is far less iron in the water. Lake Murray has no restrictions, but the Saluda River that connects Lake Murray with Lake Greenwood does, which is a little curious to me.
Like I said earlier, why isn’t this the top story in the papers on a monthly basis? Why is the top story in today’s paper about Gov. Sanford being really stupid? Is it because we have given up on doing anything about it? Like it or not, nuclear energy is looking more and more the lesser of evils for the future energy demands or our country. It is a truism in life that the older one gets the more one longs for the good old days. We want things to be like they used to be. A lot of times, we just romanticize about the positives of a bygone era. In this case, longing for the days when a family could go out and catch a mess of fish weekly and enjoy a family fish fry seems rather surreal.

Many performers can impress or delight, but only a few can astonish.

Michael Jackson did it twice. The first time was October 1969, when the hit single “I Want You Back” introduced a cherubic 11-year-old boy who sang with unbelievable maturity, soulfulness and swing. The second was March 1983, when the prodigy — now grown tall, thin and angular — moonwalked through an electrifying “Billie Jean,” leaving a national television audience slack-jawed at how effortlessly he defied the laws of physics.

Jackson’s personal trajectory, though, was excruciating to watch. I’ve never put much stock in the idea that genius always devours those whom it favors. Jackson had flaws and weaknesses, to put it mildly, but so do we all. Money and celebrity make it possible for the rich and famous to succumb to their worst instincts. The blood-sucking parasites who surrounded Jackson all his life made that surrender not just possible but inevitable.

Children of the recession are facing the ravaging effects of the Great Recession, an economic period with millions of people in its grips. These individuals, of all ages, are making concessions to economic havoc due to the lack of financial stability and continued prosperity.

Some people saw the recession coming and were able to escape it. They were the successful ones, but the masses lingered in their routines and lots. The latter groups have homes in foreclosure, reduced 401(k) accounts, lost jobs, dwindled savings and heartaches.

If riveting reality TV is your cup of tea, you certainly must have gotten your fill Wednesday afternoon when Gov. Mark Sanford admitted his infidelity to his wife at a press conference.

What does it say about our society that we can’t seem to get enough of other people’s misery, other people’s gut-wrenching personal tragedies?