Hello! My name is Mickey (Michele) Knapp - Gifford. I was born 2/3/57 in Cortland, NY, and have lived most of my adult life in and around the Charleston, South Carolina area. I've lived about 40 miles from Charleston on the Edisto River for the past nine years where I own three+ acres, three kids (well I don't exactly own them...besides two are married now!) and numerous pets. What you don't see in pic above is my red/white one room school house! The very first thing we did when aquiring our property was to convert this into an office/library (mostly library!) I think this building was the major factor in our decision to buy our property although the seclusion and proximity to the river helped!
My hobbies range from marble collecting to hide tanning (livingroom walls are covered with deer hides and a caraboo hide (I didn't do this one...), antiques (old) to archeology (digging), computer (way too much!) to theatre (not nearly enough!)! My main interest though is learning! And to do that I read, read, read! For pleasure reading? I prefer Gothic! Poe, (favorite: the "Black Cat") Hawthorne (favorite: "Rapacinni's Daughter"), and King (favorite: "Pet Cemetary") My least favorite are romances! Yeck! (To give credit here...I do like romance but only incidental to a story not the whole topic!) My favorite all time book?...haven't read it yet apparently...none stand out...Poetry? Definiately William Blake! (go figure...)I have tons and tons of books but as my interests change often I never seem to have what I'm looking for so I'm always adding to my collection and visiting the public library! I've also enjoyed my computer immensely in the three years I've had it and the internet is a wonderful resource although it by no means can replace a book yet...I discovered this in doing my research on Germelshausen for my webpage, finding little info on the story and author, and what I did find is in German! You can find the English translation now on one of my other pages. See link on my home page. LOL Needless to say I won't be getting rid of my books any time soon!

My dogs love the river more than we do I think!

As I said , I'm from the Charleston, SC area and I'm very proud of my town, so I would like to include here some of my favorite links to sites on the web concerning Charleston. These sites will give you an inside view of some of the many things available in Charleston.

Charleston Net: is a wonderful place to start. It's affiliated with the local paper so you can get local news and entertainment, but also a history of Charleston and links to places of interest.

WCIV Television: If you are interested in weather, you can find some great freeware and shareware weather software here.

Southern Pride Online Magazine: showcases many historical sites and events in and around Charleston and the lowcountry of South Carolina. It is a tastefully done site with beautiful pictures!

Insiders Guide to Greater Charleston: a comprehensive tour of Charleston.

Charleston Public Library: an outstanding and ever growing resource provided by the Charleston County Library System!

Civil War @ Charleston:contains a wealth of civil war information and pictures.

Riverdogs Baseball: Charleston's baseball team! YAY!

Welcome to South Carolina: a governmental resource from our state capitol in Columbia!

And lest I forget!