Charleston Currents – 2018

Archive for January, 2018

CALENDAR, Jan. 29+: How to book a singing Valentine

Staff reports | The Charleston Barbershop Chorus and Palmetto Vocal Project will deliver Singing Valentines to that special someone in your life on Feb. 13 and Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day.

For $50, the a cappella singers wearing distinctive red, white and black attire will visit all kinds of places — restaurants, schools, offices, hospitals, retirement communities or homes — and sing for your loved one a love song, deliver a Valentine’s Day card and a long-stemmed rose provided by Belvas Flower Shop of Mount Pleasant.

by Charleston Currents · 01/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · calendar

A rendering of what the museum will look like. Source: IAAM.

FOCUS: New museum slated to start construction in summer

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Construction is expected to begin this summer for the $100 million International African American Museum on the Charleston site where an estimated 100,000 West Africans disembarked into slavery.

“This is an unusual opportunity for the city … to create something of enormous value to our country,” former Charleston Mayor Joe Riley told members of the Rotary Club of Charleston last week “We American’s don’t understand African American history. It’s important for the nation to be well-grounded in itself, its people, their contributions and their history.”

Charleston was an epicenter of the international slave trade at its peak …

by Andy Brack · 01/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

BRACK: What really needs to happen with General Assembly’s nuclear mess

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Until state legislators go through the five stages of grief over the $9 billion failure of building two nuclear reactors, they might just screw up things worse.

It’s easy to see where they are, so far, six months after the announcement by Santee Cooper and SCANA that the project in Fairfield County wouldn’t get off the ground, despite ratepayers paying more for power over the last 10 years.

First is the denial stage – that it couldn’t happen here. Evidence of this is the prodigious finger-pointing as everybody and his brother look for scapegoats.

by Andy Brack · 01/29/2018 · 1 comment · Andy Brack, Views

GOOD NEWS: Series to look at healing from cultural trauma

Staff reports | The College of Charleston is offering a semester-long series to give voice to sociological trauma and the ways in which societies, countries and cultures have worked to heal from conflicts born out of issues such as systemic racism, slavery, genocide and political oppression.

According to a news release, the loosely unified series, titled “When the War Is Over: Memory, Division, and Healing,” brings together a collection of public lectures and forums that address historical trauma and the ways in which sites that have experienced such trauma have moved, or might move toward building a sustainable, peaceful community. From slavery and segregation in the United States to the Holocaust and the impact of the native Brazilian peoples upon the arrival of the Portuguese in the 17th century, the series explores the complexities of how groups move on from a collective feeling of trauma.

by Charleston Currents · 01/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs

MYSTERY PHOTO: Where is this?

Here’s an old photo that might bring back some memories to people in a particular part of South Carolina. Where is it? What is it? Send your guess to editor@charlestoncurrents.com with “Mystery Photo” in the subject line. Please make sure to include your name and contact information.

by Andy Brack · 01/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Mystery Photo, Photos

HISTORY: Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel

S.C. Encyclopedia | The Stumphouse Mountain Tunnel is an unfinished nineteenth-century railroad tunnel located near Walhalla. The variation of the name “Stump House” was drawn from the legend of a Cherokee woman who lived on the mountain with her white husband. Rejected by both their respective communities, the couple lived on the mountain in a log home built atop stumps.

by Charleston Currents · 01/29/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

At a corner in Selma, Ala., near the National Park Service's Selma Interpretative Center. The youths on the trip can be seen in the background.

BRACK: Teaching more about civil rights era will bring us together

By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | A teenager almost started to cry Jan. 14 as she read a passage from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” Her white peers, normally boisterous, were markedly subdued as they witnessed stark museum displays of what life was like for black Southerners during civil rights struggles.

One thing was clear for more than two dozen Charleston youths on a church trip to learn about the South’s special kind of past apartheid: They had no real understanding about what it was like to live in the Jim Crow South of 60 years ago. They didn’t learn it from textbooks and lessons in school. They had no real concept of the flashes of vitriol, hate and anger that rocked many Southern communities as they wrestled with civil rights and big cultural changes following World War II.

by Andy Brack · 01/22/2018 · 1 comment · Andy Brack, Views

GOOD NEWS: Here’s how you can learn about joining a school board

Staff reports | You can learn about what it takes to become a school board candidate or advocate at a special two-hour nonpartisan workshop that will be offered 10 a.m. Feb. 24 by the League of Women Voters.

“The League of Women Voters is deeply concerned about public education and all of our children who are served by public schools in Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties,” According to a press release. “Whatever other educational opportunities there may be, the vast majority of our children depend on public schools. Their education is critical to our democracy and our country’s future. Our public schools need dedicated advocates and school board candidates.”

In the tri-county area, more than 113,000 students count on public schools, the league said. “These students are our next generation of teachers, doctors and first responders. They are our future and they require the best we can offer. School board members are critical decision makers in ensuring that all our children can access an excellent education. In 2018, approximately half of the seats on school boards for the four Tri-County districts will be on the ballot.”

by Charleston Currents · 01/22/2018 · Comments are Disabled · Good news, News briefs

CALENDAR, Jan. 22+: On civil rights photography, breaking barriers, more

Staff reports | The niece of a celebrated civil rights photographer will be at a special event Jan. 30 at Charleston County Public Library on Calhoun Street. Karen Berman will attend an event at the library at 5:30 p.m. Jan. 30 that celebrates photographs taken by her aunt, Ida Berman, in 1959 on Johns Island as residents were organizing to vote and figure for their rights. A display of photos have been at the library since the beginning of the month.

NINE DAYS LEFT, Cuba photo exhibit: Through Jan. 31. Charleston County Public Library, Calhoun St., Charleston. Charleston Currents’ editor and publisher Andy Brack offers photographic insights into Cuba from a 2015 visit to the country. An exhibition is on display in the Saul Alexander Gallery. Free.

Breaking down barriers: 6 p.m. Jan. 23, Emanuel AME Church, Charleston. Former S.C. Rep. Lucille Whipper of Mount Pleasant and Charleston business leader Linda Ketner will share their experiences breaking barriers in this talk moderated by Patricia Williams Lessane, a cultural anthropologist and the executive director of the Avery Research Center at the College of Charleston.

by Charleston Currents · 01/22/2018 · Comments are Disabled · calendar

FEEDBACK: New woodworking group starting in West Ashley

Michael Kaynard, Charleston: “My interest in woodworking was purely defensive. I knew my wife would be retiring within the year and I needed a hobby. When I was turning 65, I asked for a chop saw for my birthday. What I really wanted was a miter saw but didn’t know enough about tools to ask for the right tool.

“Now it’s been a year and a half or so and I have reached my limit of incompetence. I don’t like reading text or watching YouTube to learn new techniques. I need to be shown how to do things.”

by Andy Brack · 01/22/2018 · 2 comments · Feedback