Category: EC Events

The Broken Season

Jim Haughey

September 25, 2026, (Friday), 11:00 am, On Zoom and In person, Lunch and Presentation, The Broken Season: A Tale of Murder and Mystery in the Blue Ridge Mountains with Dr. Jim Haughey. Eve of the Civil War, remote Appalachia, and hundreds of Irish laborers are clawing out a rail tunnel through the granite of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Blasting powder will kill some, rock falls will claim others, and drink, crime, and disease prey on the survivors in their squalid camp. Just convicted of murdering another laborer, young Michael Corvan is soon to be hanged. When Jeremiah Sweeney, a world-weary priest, arrives to give Corvan his last rites, he stumbles on a secret too dark for the condemned man to confess. Will Sweeney and his assistant get past the miners’ code of silence? Will they live to see justice done? 

Or will they ever leave the mountain alive? 

EMAIL emerituscollege@clemson.edu for the Zoom Link

Book Signing: books will be available for sale – $16

Complimentary Lunch

Register to enjoy a complimentary lunch at the Emeritus College while learning more about the research on the pre-Civil War Irish community that worked on Stump House Tunnel and that inspired author Jim Haughey to write his first work of fiction, The Broken Season (released July 2026).

REGISTER HERE

Jim Haughey attended Clemson University on a track scholarship and doubled majored in English and History. He earned an MA in English Literature at Clemson and his PhD at the University of South Carolina. He currently teaches at Anderson University in Anderson, SC. Prior published work includes The First World War in Irish Poetry (Bucknell University Press, 2002) and essays on 20th-century Irish literature in publications like The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (2012).

The Broken Season is Haughey’s first novel.

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On Thursday, May 28, 2026, 10:00 am – 11:30 am, Hybrid, Bert Fox, retired photo editor for the National Geographic (1996-2007) will present “Celebrating the First Ascent of Mt. Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay” at Clemson University’s Emeritus College 511 Westinghouse Rd, Pendleton, 29670. Open to the public so bring your friends and family!

Bert Fox will discuss producing the visual content for National Geographic Magazine’s 50th Anniversary edition celebrating the first ascent of Mount Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Bert was responsible for the entire visual production of the May 2003 issue of the magazine. His fieldwork included travel to New Zealand to meet Sir Edmund Hillary, and to Nepal to retrace the British trek to the summit and contact several Sherpa families. Upon his return to National Geographic’s offices in Washington DC, he directed the selecting, editing, and arranging of the visual content for the issue. 

Bert Bio
Bert Fox was a photo editor for National Geographic from 1996 – 2007, during which time he edited the visual content for over 100 stories from ideas to print – procuring, negotiating contracts, overseeing work, editing the photographs, and selecting those that would be included in the magazine. Bert began his 40+ year career as a newspaper photographer. He was a photo editor and Sunday Magazine art director at the Philadelphia Inquirer from 1982-1996. Over the course of his career he was a five-time winner of the prestigious “Photo Editor of the Year” prize awarded by the University of Missouri and National Press Photographers Association in their “Pictures of the Year” International competition. In 2007 he and his wife Nanine Hartzenbusch moved to Charlotte to raise their son Charles, and they relocated to the Upstate in 2019.

Join the Emeritus College on a tour of Susan Lenz’ Mouse House Studio [ Register below!]

Cateechee was once an active, self-contained mill village with a church serving those who labored in the Norris Cotton Mill, the first big manufacturing plant in Pickens County. The village included a company store, school, post office, cafe, barber shop, hotel, and more than ninety houses. The mill closed and the village declined. In 2023, the church was purchased by Susan Lenz and Steve Dingman and renovated into their home and sanctuary-sized fiber arts studio.  They moved from Columbia in March 2024. The tour will include both the studio where artwork is for sale and the two-story living space that was once Sunday school rooms and office space. Susan’s artwork has been part of both the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Smithsonian Craft Shows. She has pieces in the permanent collections of the Textile Museum and the Department of Interior Museum, both in Washington, DC.  Susan creates a variety of artwork, from inexpensive but original greeting cards to wall-hanging work that is also carried by the Grovewood Gallery in Asheville North Carolina and Spiralis Gallery in Easton, Maryland.

Place: Mouse House Studio [Cateechee Mill Church]

Date: April 8, 2026

Time:  Meet at the church at 9:45 am

Park:  Parking is on the grass on the left side of the structure

Bring: Cash and card in case a piece of art catches your eye

Register Here

PDF Invitation

Registration Link for Current Members of the Emeritus College