Tag: civic engagement
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SEEN / UNSEEN GREENVILLE: What Happens When Multiple Visions of a City Collide at the Same Intersection?
A while back, I became involved in a project called Pleasant Roast — a proposed drive-thru coffee concept planned for a busy Greenville corridor. On the surface, it seemed simple enough: take an underused property, create a practical local business, and build something people would actually use. But the deeper we got into the process,…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: What South Carolinians Say They Actually Want
There’s a strange thing happening in South Carolina right now. On one side, the state is booming. Cranes everywhere. Subdivisions spreading into old fields and forests. Distribution centers. Data centers. Luxury apartments. “Top Places to Move.” “Fastest Growing.” “Business Friendly.” The official story is momentum. But underneath that polished story, there’s another South Carolina talking.…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: The Weird Middle
Many Versions of Kind explores the moral and emotional side of Greenville’s growth and identity. This path asks harder questions about what it actually means for a city to be “good,” not just successful, polished, or profitable. It examines the difference between being nice and being kind, how systems affect belonging, who benefits from growth,…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: The Truth About Greenville, South Carolina
Greenville, South Carolina sits in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, tucked between Charlotte, Asheville, Atlanta, Charleston, and Columbia — close enough to all of them to feel their influence, but increasingly its own thing entirely. Once known primarily as a textile mill town, Greenville has reinvented itself repeatedly throughout its history: from frontier…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: What Is This Actually About?
The other day, I asked my mom about the Ideal Laundry explosion. I expected her to look confused. Instead, she looked at me like I was the crazy one. “Of course I’ve heard of that.” For anyone unfamiliar, the Ideal Laundry explosion happened in Greenville in 1946. A propane leak at the Ideal Laundry building…
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Seen / Unseen Greenville: Let’s Begin With Our Cherokee Roots
Welcome Back to Seen / Unseen Greenville This blog will still wander where life takes it—family, politics, recovery, culture, memory, whatever feels worth examining. But I wanted to mark a direction I’m especially excited about. THis will be an ongoing series exploring this place more deeply—its history, growth, contradictions, bright spots, blind spots, and the…
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Who Tells the Story of Greenville, SC?
There was a time when every city had a stronger sense of itself because it had people whose job was to pay attention. Not perfect people. Not always brave people. Not always right people. But reporters. Editors. Photographers. Columnists. The kind of people who sat through zoning meetings so you didn’t have to. The kind…
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The Etiquette of Disagreement (Or: How Not to Lose Everyone)
I have about three conservative friends left on Facebook. That’s not an exaggeration. It’s also not something I ever set out to do. If anything, I’ve resisted it. I don’t like cutting people off. I don’t like curating my life down to only the people who agree with me. That feels brittle. Unreal. Like building…
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Politics, God, and Grief in Greenville, SC
I I’ve always wanted a real relationship with God. Not just belief. Not just ritual. Something that actually holds up when things get difficult or unclear. Something that means something when the world doesn’t feel like it’s making sense. And living in Greenville, faith is everywhere. It’s part of the culture. Part of how people…
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I Worry About the World My Son Is Growing Into
I worry. A lot. I worry about myself. I worry about my son. I worry about the world we’re handing him and whether we’re even being honest about what that world looks like. Because if I’m being real, when I look at the people in charge right now, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. It makes…
Frank M. Anderson's Writing 