One Lowcountry dad offers his perspective on parenting

“When I found out we were expecting our first child, I said to myself — like most men, I assume — that I would be happy either way, but I secretly wanted a boy,” said Lee Edwards. “And yet, as soon as our first popped out and I saw it was a girl, I was absolutely thrilled to have a daughter. Maybe even more so than if it had been a son.

TIPS TO HELP YOU STOP STRESSING OUT ABOUT INFERTILITY

The desire to have a child for many hopeful parents can be all-consuming and stress-inducing. Some women might battle conditions like endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and poor egg quality, while others may find themselves asking, “Why can’t we conceive?”

For decades, scientists have tried to determine if the worry of infertility causes stress, and therefore infertility, or if the everyday stress of our daily lives causes infertility. While there is still no clear answer, researchers agree that managing stress levels may increase your chances of becoming pregnant. Here are three holistic options to help reduce stress.

MUSIC AND ART FESTIVAL JAZZES UP THE CITY IN MAY

If your perfect day includes visiting a fine art gallery or museum, chatting with local artisans, listening to talented musicians or enjoying live theatre, dance or comedy, you need to head to Greenville in May.

The city’s Artisphere festival takes over downtown’s Main Street from May 11-13, showcasing 17 different mediums and more than 250 artists. The weekend also features more than 20 concerts by visual and performance artists, demonstrations, an “Artists of the Upstate” exhibit, and Artist’s Row, featuring 135 artists selected by a jury from more than 1,200 applicants.

Gloria Origgi is an Italian philosopher, and a tenured senior researcher at CNRS (the French National Centre for Scientific Research) in Paris. Her latest book is Reputation: What It Is and Why It Matters (2017), translated by Stephen Holmes and Noga Arikha. 

There is an underappreciated paradox of knowledge that plays a pivotal role in our advanced hyper-connected liberal democracies: the greater the amount of information that circulates, the more we rely on so-called reputational devices to evaluate it. What makes this paradoxical is that the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced.

Carl Stevens, home for the holidays, sent me a photo of an otherworldly landscape, the ocean edging against a snow-white beach. The winter storm had grounded his flight to warm and sunny Los Angeles, where he currently lives and works in creative marketing.

“I have two big fears,” he said. “Snakes and I do not get along. And then I have this huge fear that I’m going to die without really pushing it as far as it goes.”

ISLANDERS RAP ABOUT FADING GULLAH TRADITIONS

There’s a moment on “Ride for the Island,” the opening track to Spiritual Gangster’s self-titled mixtape, that some might find shocking. To others, however, it might just sound like everyday life.

It comes at the point when the song — about how the Gullah residents of Hilton Head Island are slowly being swept away by the tides of change — stops in the middle of a radio-friendly tune and presents the very real struggle native islanders face.

A PLANT-BASED DIET COULD HELP YOU REACH YOUR HEALTH GOALS IN 2018.

Looking to get healthier in 2018? You might want to consider a plant-based diet.

Drastically reducing or cutting out animal products can help with weight loss, improve energy levels, prevent health issues and even reverse some diseases. Not sure where to begin? Remedy Food Project can help.

It’s hard to prepare to be resilient, but when faced with adversity, most people are surprised to find they can rise above. Their stories were on display on Oct. 20 at the inaugural TEDxHiltonHead talk, held at the rooftop bar at Poseidon Coastal Cuisine.

TED is a nonprofit group that was originally conceived as a conference to focus on technology, entertainment and design in 1984. Today, the talks cover almost all topics — from science to business to global issues — in more than 100 languages and have earned a global following online. Independently run TEDx events, like the recent forum on Hilton Head Island, help share ideas in communities around the world.

This online exclusive follows a story from my regular column “Where Are They Now”.

Nicole Arnold can sleep wherever she lays her head. She’s slept on the floors of airports, she’s slept on strange couches, and deep in the starry desert. Sometimes, she’s chosen to go without sleep altogether.

Not content to take the requisite summer cruise or well-trodden trip to Paris before diving straight into college, Nicole graduated high school early and defied expectation when she toured the U.S. coast to coast by bicycle. There’s no doubt this journey of a lifetime steeled her travel ethos.