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Welcome 2026—Maybe

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Tuesday, 13 January 2026

Written by Margaret Dickson

A new year often brings a sense of freshness, possibility, and, yes, of hope.
Once the holiday decorations are out, our homes look cleaner and sleeker, uncluttered and ready to face whatever the new year might have in store for us. We are tempted to imagine that a new year may show us ways to deal with our problems and turn our dreams into realities.
In short, we are hopeful.
As 2026 unfolds, I am not so sure much of that is the case.
I am beginning to feel that we are becoming a nation of cynics, having divided ourselves into “us” and “them.” Some of the division is political, “Rs” against “Ds.” Some of it is economic, the “haves” against the “have-nots.” Some of it is educational attainment, or not, and some of it is cultural, some religious, and some reflects differences from race to whether we live in a city or in a rural area. All are distinctions we have created among ourselves. None are naturally occurring.
In addition, modern polling tells us our feelings have become more negative than in years past.
CNN reports for the first time in over 10 years, more than half of Americans of all stripes believe our nation’s best days are behind us. Fully 3/4 of us think our political system is badly in need of major reforms, perhaps even a complete overhaul. Equally if not more alarming, the Wall Street Journal reports that fully 80-percent of us believe that our children may end up with more difficult lives than we have had.
Religion does not seem to be a large player in our national angst.
Gallup finds that while 81 percent of us say we believe in God, that percentage is falling and is well below the 90-plus belief rates of the 20th century. Empty seats in religious gatherings all over the nation demonstrate this decline, and the people who are in the pews are more likely to be closer to senior citizens than to teenagers who will eventually birth potential new worshipers.
Piled on top of all that is the passing of the 5th anniversary of the insurrection and attempted coup in Washington, an event marked by an official plaque honoring the police who defended democracy that day. It has now gone missing and is not on display as required by law.
The cold, hard reality of today’s United States is that few among us can do anything to affect the events and personalities that unfold both in our country and around the world. This helplessness no doubt underlies our increasing pessimism about our lives and those of future generations. We feel unheard and demoralized, both of which are accurate and reasonable assessments of our situation.
In 2026, I have decided to focus on my own world and to do all I can to help those around me find reasons for hope, as so many of us struggle not only with the pressures of our own daily living but also with the implications of national and world events on all of us. I will focus on what I can control, or at least affect, and try not to allow what I cannot control to get me down. I will remind myself of what is positive in my world and embrace those situations, qualities, and people.
I will remind myself daily of all that is right and not dwell on all that is wrong.
And, I will educate myself and vote for agents of positive change in 2026.

2025 according to Jimmy Jones: The year America looked in the mirror and argued with itself

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Tuesday, 06 January 2026

Written by Jimmy Jones

A Storyteller, a Community, and 30 Years of Gratitude
Jimmy Jones' connection to Up & Coming Weekly began in 2007 when he attended a writing class at FTCC. His instructor, the late and great Melissa Clements, encouraged him to share his stories and suggested he reach out to us. He did—and soon became a fixture here, chronicling life on the road and the stories that shape and inspire our community.
Jimmy has a storyteller’s eye and a gift for uncovering meaning in the ordinary. One unforgettable series followed his motorcycle ride to the Arctic Circle, where he carried a copy of Up & Coming Weekly and a plush toy of the Kidsville News! mascot, Truman the Dragon, sending photos back to our readers along the way.
He also partnered with us on many company events like the annual Hogs & Rags Charity Motorcycle Ride, helping raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for local charities and the Kidsville News! literacy programs.
Jimmy’s writing is authentic. His signature style blends humor, honesty, and what he calls “the question behind the question”—a thoughtful approach that invites readers to look a little deeper while enjoying the ride. We are proud to continue sharing his insights and storytelling with our readers throughout the Fayetteville and Cumberland County community.
As you enjoy Jimmy Jones’ 2025 Year in Review, we invite you to look ahead with us to a wonderful and exciting 2026 as our nation celebrates America’s 250th Anniversary. This milestone year also marks Up & Coming Weekly’s 30th Anniversary as your trusted local community newspaper.
Thank you for reading, supporting, and believing in Up & Coming Weekly. We couldn’t have done it without you.
—Bill Bowman, Publisher

Some years whisper. Some years tiptoe. 2025 kicked the door in and asked for coffee. It was not subtle. It was not quiet. And depending on where you stood politically, it was either the dawn of American greatness or the end of Western civilization. There was no middle ground.
Donald J. Trump was sworn in again, this time as the 47th President, and instantly the country split into its two favorite camps. There were those ready to crown him a savior and those ready to blame him for global warming, rising sea levels, and the McFlurry machine being down. The new business model for the media was simple: praise him like you are auditioning for state television or hate him so loudly that dogs three counties over can hear it. Clickbait became the national sport. Headlines were not written, they were weaponized.
But for all the noise, real things happened. Big things, messy things, and a few that even counted as good news.
Western North Carolina spent 2025 clawing its way out from under the destruction of Hurricane Helene. The storm hit hard, but the political aftermath hit harder. Regulators slowed recovery by blocking people from working on their own damaged property at the exact moment families needed speed, not signatures. But citizens refused to quit.
Neighbors helped neighbors. Volunteers from across America rolled in with tools and grit, pushing forward despite the delays. The new Trump administration released billions for Helene recovery, sped highway and housing money into Western North Carolina, and cut enough federal red tape around debris and permits that work finally began to match the promises.
There is still much work to be done, but for many people, the response restored something deeper. It reminded them of the determination of ordinary Americans and the old spirit of goodwill that still shows up when things are at their worst.
Early in the year, Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear program in a strike few saw coming. He negotiated the release of every American held by Hamas and brokered a fragile peace treaty for Gaza. Back home, he pardoned more than 1,600 Americans in a single year, which either restored justice or set it on fire.
Congress also managed something. It created the longest federal shutdown in American history. Democrats dug in so hard that Trump found it easier to negotiate with terrorists than with Congress. When a government stays closed longer than seasonal beach rentals, it is no longer a shutdown. It is a lifestyle choice.
This was the year the penny died. After decades of being ignored on sidewalks and rejected by vending machines, the last penny rolled off the mint. Even the currency was tired of inflation.
The economy did what the economy does. It looked great on paper while insulting everyone at the grocery store. Jobs climbed, markets hit new highs, and inflation cooled, but try telling that to someone staring at the price of a carton of eggs. It was the best economy ever, except in the places where you spend money.
Tariffs became Trump’s foreign policy yo-yo, swinging in every direction as he used them to drag world leaders back to negotiation tables, which they thought they had left behind. Economists cursed, diplomats blinked, and somehow it kept working.
Trump insisted prices were down, but most Americans did not feel it. Inflation may have cooled, but everyday costs still stung. Part of the problem is our slide into a digital-first economy. Tap-to-pay, online checkout, and QR menus all come with invisible fees, and retailers quietly tack on an extra few percent. It is not on the tag, but it is there. The math says we should be winning. The checkout screen says otherwise.
2025 was a big year for “science,” or at least the kind billionaires call science. Jeff Bezos sent five women on a Blue Origin flight and proudly labeled them astronauts, even though NASA uses a much stricter definition. Many praised the crew’s “scientific contributions.”
Engineers nodded in respect while Americans wondered how the capsule’s hatch survived space after Bezos botched a photo op that showed the door swinging open more easily than a cheap shower curtain.
While the rockets flew, artificial intelligence crept into every corner of daily life and became the new electricity. We used it for simple questions, medical advice, legal explanations, and turning everyone into an expert on trivia night. Businesses baked new AI into every piece of software. The government was still trying to remember how to spell AI when Trump and a guy named Elon dropped bombs on the federal workforce with “Fork in the Road,” “Five Bullets,” and a wave of reductions that made clear nobody in government was untouchable. Bureaucracy suddenly found itself replaced by a single brutal metric: return on investment.
Americans also found time for protest, and the most successful one of the year was the No Kings movement. It worked beautifully, since as of this writing, America still does not have a king. Speaking of kings, Jesus made quite a comeback in 2025. Churches across the country reported a quiet revival, especially among Gen Z. Some say the rise started after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Others credit the success of The Chosen television series. Jesus said it was the work of the Holy Spirit. However it happened, faith found its way back into the headlines.
In foreign affairs, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. He then amassed the largest military buildup off the coast of Venezuela since anyone can remember, making geography teachers relevant again. He also brokered a peace agreement between Israel and Hamas. Whether it lasts remains to be seen, but for a brief moment, the Middle East took a breath instead of throwing something.
The Epstein Files came to a head. The story began quietly under the Bush Justice Department. It exploded under Trump’s in 2019, when the Southern District of New York brought charges and Epstein went to jail. It spiraled into the most controversial in-custody death of the century. When the files finally dropped in 2025, no one got the closure they wanted. The case was such a mess that anyone even remotely connected to it walked away looking contaminated.
America also spent the year arguing with itself at a level that would impress a dysfunctional family reunion. Public trust in the federal government sank so low that even after Trump promised transparency, half the country still waited for the fine print. Conspiracy theories filled the gap. It reached the point that if the media made up a story that Lee Harvey Oswald had shot Charlie Kirk from beyond the grave, half of America would fight the other half. That was the national mood. Suspicious. Exhausted. Constantly bracing for the next twist.
Charlotte spent 2025 painting a black eye on North Carolina. A young girl was stabbed on the light-rail train by a repeat offender, landing like proof that their courts were turning dangerous criminals loose. Raleigh passed new laws forcing local jurisdictions to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement, and Charlotte pushed back. The atmosphere got so tense that the running joke was that 7-Eleven took down their ICEE machines to avoid bad optics.
Back home in Fayetteville, history went out like a boomerang, swung wide, and found its way right back where it started, bruising some egos in flight.
The post, formerly known as Fort Bragg and then Fort Liberty, reverted to Fort Bragg.
Mayor Mitch Colvin secured his fifth term, proving that Fayetteville loves consistency or simply does not have the stamina for another campaign season.
The biggest local mess of the year was the Crown Event Center, a roughly 145 million dollar downtown performing arts project once billed as the county’s next crown jewel. Instead, it burned through about $36 million in planning and site work before the newly elected Cumberland County Board of Commissioners weighed in with justified suspicions.
After prudent vetting, vision, and common sense, the board voted in June to shut the project down and invest instead in rehabilitating and refurbishing the existing Memorial Auditorium, hoping it will become the spark that ignites commercial development and eliminates one of the ugliest and most blighted areas of Fayetteville.
No event center will be built on that vacated lot, leaving behind frustration and the lingering question: “What will go there?” It stands as a costly lesson in what happens when oversight, transparency, and alignment are overtaken by unchecked ambition.
Many Americans have become increasingly concerned about crime, jobs, AI, and housing shortages. Millions of unauthorized immigrants arrived in recent years, while tens of millions more entered legally on visas or as new citizens. Assimilation has given way to a patchwork of tribes, languages, religions, cultures, and geographic enclaves that no longer pull toward a single American identity. In the name of freedom and equity, the unifying force that once shaped newcomers into Americans is quickly fading. It leaves many wondering whether we are slowly destroying the American way from within. History will be the judge.
We made it through a loud, wild, unforgettable year. The Declaration of Independence reminds us that we are endowed with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. As we head into 2026, America will celebrate its 250th birthday, the Semiquincentennial, a reminder that we are the beneficiaries of 250 years of sacrifice, perseverance, and faith, and stewards of what must endure for the next 250. For 2026, we hope you find a way to pursue your happiness to the fullest.
May God bless you and your family. Happy New Year.

Do sternly worded letters win wars?

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Tuesday, 13 January 2026

Written by John Hood

It was 250 years ago last week that a displaced governor issued a proclamation intended to restore him to power in North Carolina. Instead, it led to the first major engagement of the Revolutionary War in the Southern colonies — and a decisive defeat for his cause.
The governor in question was Josiah Martin, a Dublin native and British army officer appointed in 1771 to replace William Tryon as the king’s top magistrate in the future Tar Heel State. As resistance to illegal British taxes and sympathy with the residents of Boston spread across North Carolina, Martin catastrophically mishandled his relationship with the provincial legislature and was essentially chased out of the capital, New Bern, in April 1775.
Taking refuge in a British sloop anchored off shore, Martin spent the early months of the Revolutionary War concocting various schemes to regain power. All came to naught. Then he received word the British government wanted to pursue a Southern strategy to win the war, beginning with the capture of Charleston, South Carolina in early 1776.
An emboldened Governor Martin instructed his emissary, Alexander Shaw, to propose an alternative: first capturing Wilmington. Taking the smaller but strategic valuable city, then reasserting royal control over the rest of North Carolina, would weaken Patriot manpower, supplies, and resolve, Shaw argued, making it easier to seize Charleston and Savannah. With the Carolinas and Georgia back in the fold, British regulars and Tory militia could then move north against the largest province in revolt, Virginia, in late 1776 or 1777.
Shaw proved persuasive. British leaders agreed to converge on Wilmington — Gen. Henry Clinton sailing south from New York with one army, Gen. Charles Cornwallis west from Ireland with another. As for Governor Martin, he promised to raise many thousands of Loyalists, most either Scottish Highlanders from the Sandhills or ex-Regulators from the Piedmont with longstanding grievances against the coastal elites now running North Carolina’s revolutionary government.
Another part of the plan, at least in the minds of some British agents, was to draw Carolina militiamen away from coastal defense by inciting and arming the Cherokees to open a second front in the backcountry.
Martin threw himself wholeheartedly into the plan. On January 10, 1776, he issued a proclamation calling for Loyalists to muster into militia companies for the impending conflict. He also promised “every aid, encouragement, and support to all such as shall come to vindicate and support the violated laws and Constitution of their country,” while fuming that “a most daring, horrid and unnatural Rebellion has been exerted in the Province against His Majesty's Government, by the base and insidious artifice of certain traitorous, wicked and designing men.”
This was his public proclamation. Also on January 10, Governor Martin dispatched messengers to Loyalist militia commanders in Anson, Cumberland, Chatham, Guilford, Mecklenburg, Rowan, Surry, and Bute counties to march their forces to a central location by February 15. They soon settled on Cross Creek, now Fayetteville, as their initial destination, with the intention of then heading down the Cape Fear River to Wilmington to meet up with the incoming British regulars.
Because you know how the Revolutionary War turned out, I won’t worry about spoilers here. Britain’s first Southern strategy had too many moving pieces and was based on the faulty intelligence — much of it from Josiah Martin himself — that most Carolinians sided with the king. Nothing went according to plan. General Clinton showed up late. General Cornwallis was even later. The Cherokee attacks came too late, as well, and converted more than a few previously neutral frontiersmen into passionate Patriots.
As for the Loyalists, many fewer took arms than Martin predicted. And they never made it to Wilmington. To learn more about the resulting battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge (February 27, 1776), please consider attending North Carolina’s First in Freedom Festival. It will be held on and around the Pender County battlefield this coming February 21 to February 28. Visit NCFirstInFreedomFestival.com for more details.

Editor’s note: John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His books Mountain Folk, Forest Folk, and Water Folk combine epic fantasy with American history (FolkloreCycle.com).

(Photo courtesy of First in Freedom Festival's Facebook page)

New Year's tradition: Happy 100th birthday to 1926

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Tuesday, 06 January 2026

Written by Pitt Dickey

Howdy Buckaroos and Buckarettes, it’s time for our annual celebration of a year that is turning 100. Our birthday year 1926 doesn’t look a day older than 75. Botox does wonders for years as well as for movie stars and Mar-A-Lago groupies. 1926 was a wild and wacky year, holding up a thin wall of time between 1925 and 1927. Get on board Mr. Peabody’s Way Back Machine, we are heading back into the life and times of 1926. 
6 January: The year started with a bang as our old buddy Sheik Abdulaziz Ibn Saud became King of what turned out later to be Saudi Arabia, future home of 9-11 pilots.
26 January: John Baird made the first public demonstration of Television leading to that pinnacle of culture The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
27 January: Physicist Erwin Schrodinger, published his theory of wave mechanics and later went on to create his famous box containing a cat that was both alive and dead.
6 February: Heads Up!  Pancho Villa’s grave was robbed and his skull was stolen and never found.
8 February: Walt Disney Studios were opened creating a wonderland of money and talking rodents.
7 March:  The first transatlantic phone call was made from London to New York paving the way for today’s modern blessings of cell phones and social media.
10 March: The Book of the Month Club was announced which ultimately led to Clark Griswold receiving the Jelly of the Month Club instead of his expected Christmas bonus.
7 April: Italian dictator Mussolini escapes assassination attempt with only a bullet wound to the nose.
9 April: Birthday of Playboy Publisher Hugh Hefner,  leading to millions of red-blooded American boys discovering hiding his magazine under their mattress does not always fool Mom.
1 May: Philosopher and Baseball Hall of Fame Pitcher Satchel Paige played his first game in the Negro Leagues.  To quote Mr. Paige: “How old would you be, if you didn’t know how old you were?”
1 June: Birthday of Marilyn Monroe, America’s Sweet Heart (and possibly President Kennedy’s and his brother Robert F. Kennedy’s sweet heart as well). 
3 June: Birthday of Beat Poet and eternal optimist Allen Ginsberg who wrote: “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked.” 
23 June:  The first college board exam the SAT is given in the United States, leading to the creation of many jobs in the SAT test preparation industry.
28 June:  The Mercedes-Benz corporation is formed after a merger of DMG and Benz & Cie corporations, creating  a relatively harmless outlet for many men’s midlife crises.  
8 July:  Birthday of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross who invented the five stages of grief:  Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance.  These five stages are experienced annually by UNC Tar Heel football fans  every gridiron season. 
16 July: National Geographic magazine produces the  first color underwater photos.   Teenage boys are not as interested in these photos as in the pictures of native culture.
20 July:  The Methodist Church votes to allow women to become ministers.  Not every denomination agrees with this decision.
6 August:  Gertrude Ederle becomes the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Not every man can do this.
13 August:  Agrarian Reformer and Commie Rat Bastard Fidel Castro is born in Cuba.
23 August:  Movie Star Heart Throb Rudolph Valentino dies at age 31 causing major freak out among lady person fans of the female persuasion.
20 September:  Trouble in Gangland as gangster Bugs Moran attempts to kill Al Capone in a failed drive by shooting.  This would not be the last drive by shooting in America.
25 September:  Henry Ford announces the 40-hour work week at Ford Factories.
23 October:  Leon Trotsky is kicked out of Russian Politburo by Stalin.  Leon moves to Mexico to stay with Frida Kahlo where he meets his untimely end at the end of an ice pick to the brain.
31 October:  Harry Houdini dies after a series of punches to his stomach. Moral:  Don’t solicit stomach punches.
3 November:  Sharpshooter and Star of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show Annie Oakley dies of anemia.
6 December:  Overcome by grief at the death of Annie Oakley, French impressionist painter Claude Monet dies.
25 December:  Prince Hirohito becomes Emperor of Japan leading to Pearl Harbor,  World War II, and countless Made In Japan jokes in post war 1950’s America.
Happy 100th birthday to 1926.  
Gentle Reader, you are now free to roam about the country, armed with your newly reinforced knowledge of our old pal 1926.  Happy New Year.

(Illustration by Pitt Dickey)