GOOD NEWS: Big check to chase away cancer

Chase After a Cure recently presented a $120,000 check to the MUSC Children’s Hospital in its annual donation to fund childhood cancer research and equipment.  Started in 2009, it has raised almost $1 million to thwart rare, hard-to-treat cancers.

Pictured, from left, are Chase After a Cure representatives Debbie Rupert, founder Whitney Ringler, Chase Ringler, Tom Orth, Adam White, Kim Lenz, Margaret Marcoe and MUSC pediatric oncologist Dr. Jacqueline Kraveka, Dr. Michelle Hudspeth, Dr. Mehrdad Rahmaniyan and Dr Li Li.  The charity got its start by Ringler after her son Chase survived an aggressive form of cancer.  Photo provided.

Also in good news:

Small

Honor for the Blues Doctor:  The National Endowment for the Arts recently honored a blues guitarist familiar to many across the Lowcountry — Drink Small.  Named a National Heritage Fellow earlier this year, Small participated in an Oct. 2 concert in the nation’s capital as rains that deluged South Carolina were beginning to fall.

Marco Werman, host of PRI’s The World radio show, told us that Small had fun leading up to the Friday performance:  “During rehearsals at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium, he’d sit quietly in the green room, his diminishing sight leaving me the impression that he was staring into space, and then from seemingly nowhere, he’d wheel out a thunderous one-liner:  ‘I’ve got a big mouth and I’m from the South!’ or ‘I went from the workhouse to the White House,’ referring to a performance he once gave in Washington. Drink Small was the life of this party.”  More.

Book launch:  Award-winning authors Aida Rogers and Josephine Humphreys will launch “State of the Heart, Volume 2” at noon Oct. 22 a Blue Bicycle Books Charleston Author Series luncheon at Halls Chophouse.  Rogers is book editor and Humphreys is one of the 38 writers who contributed to the second volume of the work that celebrates and commemorates how South Carolina inspires her writers.  Tickets are $30 for the talk and a three-course lunch and includes a champagne reception at the bookstore afterwards.  Copies of the book also can be purchased.  More:  BlueBicycleBooks.com

Shoutout to Brian Hicks:  Hats off to The Post and Courier columnist for telling it like it is, warts and all, about libraries on James Island:  “[County] Council asked the library board to recommend sites for the new branches. The board did its homework, and offered several options ranked on cost and proximity to the most residents.  It was a model of efficiency — and Council promptly ignored it.”  More.