IN THIS ISSUE of Charleston Currents #11.10 | Jan. 714 2019
FOCUS: King Day events in Charleston to continue Jan. 17
COMMENTARY, Brack: New “Beach” read offers critical conservation, political insights
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Morris Financial Concepts, Inc.
GOOD NEWS: Chamber offers six priority areas for state legislature
FEEDBACK: Send us a good, snippy letter
MYSTERY PHOTO: Maybe this one will be easier
S.C. ENCYCLOPEDIA: Artist Jonathan Green
CALENDAR: Charleston Jazz Festival starts Jan. 24
FOCUS: King Day events in Charleston to continue Jan. 17
Staff reports | While area churches held services commemorating Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his legacy on Sunday, community events and celebrations get started in earnest Thursday, Jan. 17, with the MLK Racial Equity Institute.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering a speech.
The nationally-recognized sessions will be held 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Jan. 17 and Jan. 18 at the College of Charleston’s North Charleston campus, 3800 Paramount Drive, just off Interstate 526. Leaders and others who attend will work to understand institutional racism and will ““come away with dramatically changed worldviews,” according to YWCA Greater Charleston. Learn more.
Throughout the week, an estimated 30,000 people will be impacted by celebrations on Dr. King’s legacy. The YWCA’s inaugural event in 1972 — 42 years ago — was one of the first national tributes of its kind. Other events scheduled for this week include:
- MLK Youth Poetry Slam: 2 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 19, Charleston County Public Library, 68 Calhoun St., Charleston. Aspiring poets are encouragecd to participate as Marcus Amaker, the city of Charleston’s poet laureate emcees the event. Learn more.
- MLK Ecumenical Service: 4 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 20, Morris Street Baptist Church, Charleston. Bishop Samuel L. Green, Sr., presiding bishop of the Seventh Episcopal District of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, will be keynote speaker at an ecumenical service for the whole community to commemorate King’s life and work.
- MLK Parade: 10:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 21, in downtown Charleston. Thousands will watch more than 100 bands, floats and groups march through downtown. The parade route will run from Burke High School along Fishburne Street north to Sumter Street, east along Sumter Street to King Street, and then south to Marion Square, turning east onto Calhoun Street. More details.
- MLK Breakfast: 7 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 22, Charleston Gaillard Center, 95 Calhoun St., Charleston. Some 700 people will gather for this sold-out event. The event will feature businesswoman Cynthia Bramlett Thompson, vice-chair of the board of Spoleto Festival USA, as keynote speaker and Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg as honorary chairman. More info.
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- To learn more about the week of festivities, visit YWCA Greater Charleston.
- Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com
New “Beach” read offers critical conservation, political insights
Scene from Bowen’s Island looking toward Folly Beach, S.C.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Conservationist Dana Beach years ago described how to keep development from mauling everything into a mess of sprawl.
Don’t, he said, talk or write about merely “protecting land.” Instead, use words to conceptualize protecting “special places” in South Carolina. The first approach is kind of clinical and vanilla. It outlines what one wants, but doesn’t link to what someone else may really care about. But the second method connects conservation with a reader’s innate definition of keeping safe his or her own special place, whether it is a spot on a beach, a pristine stretch of river, a favorite area to see birds, a trail in the mountains. In other words, it allows the reader to be involved in framing the concept 
of what protection means.
In a new book that tells 10 conservation success stories in South Carolina over the last 30 years, Beach and his wife Virginia share keys to keeping a lot of the Palmetto State’s special places safe from threats of sprawl, development and, in one sense, human greed.
“A Wholly Admirable Thing: Defending Nature and Community on the South Carolina Coast” is more than a remembrance of 30 years of conservation work by Beach and the Coastal Conservation League. It’s a celebration of how people — Republicans, Democrats and political independents — can work together to make South Carolina a better, friendlier place by keeping what attracts us here in first place.
When the League got off the ground just before Hurricane Hugo slammed into South Carolina in 1989, Beach envisioned better laws and state policies, better rules for land use and more public education about the “long-term needs of our coastal environment.”
He didn’t necessarily envision working with affiliated people and groups, such as the Nature Conservancy, Ducks Unlimited, the S.C. Environmental Law Project, the Southern Environmental Law Center and various land trusts, to help to establish a 1.25 million-acre greenbelt of permanently protected Lowcountry land around urban boundaries to safeguard marshes, small islands, maritime forests, birding areas and more.
He didn’t expect the nascent organization to evolve to fight battles over factory hog farms, polluting coal plants, an expanded port or a highway that would have split a national forest. But he and colleagues fought those battles as described in the bulk of the book, which focuses on successes, such as preservation education at the Penn Center on St. Helena Island, saving Sandy Island in Georgetown County, nurturing local farmers to grow and sell $7 million of vegetables through the GrowFood Carolina network, and embracing concepts of new urbanism to bolster density and new ways to live in better harmony with the coast.
Beach
“A Wholly Admirable Thing” is a lyrical chronicle of successes for organizing and defending South Carolina’s special places. It’s a tribute to persistence. The book’s stories inspire awe, surely even among detractors who have cursed the League over the years.
But students of politics will also enjoy Dana Beach’s succinct, realistic description of the murkiness and challenges of Palmetto politics in the book’s introduction:
“Politically, South Carolina is bright red; but the state is neither conservative nor liberal, at least by conventional definitions of those terms. Instead it is a pre-modern, tribal society controlled by a network of friendships, kinships and business relationships with power vested in a small leadership clique that migrates across the rural landscape — from Edgefield and Barnwell, St. Matthews to Moncks Corner, Kingstree to Florence. It is a modern manifestation of a corporate state, like those that exist in Eastern Europe.
“Our temperament is one of wounded honor and easily hurt feelings. Just below the good-natured, jovial countenance of a South Carolina leader, lies a tightly wound, tender bundle of emotions waiting to explode.”
It’s much the same today in the legislature as it was 50 years ago or 150 years ago. In some sense, it doesn’t matter whether Republicans or Democrats are in control because what really shapes the state is a continuing heritage of political elites who don’t want to be told what to do. “A Wholly Admirable Thing” is a critical read for anyone who wants to get something actually done.
- Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com
SPOTLIGHT: Morris Financial Concepts, Inc.
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GOOD NEWS: Chamber offers six priority areas for state legislature
Staff reports | The Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce recently unveiled its 2019 legislative agenda with six priority issue areas ranging from taxes and education to workforce housing and the state’s fiscal health. Priority issues are:
Entrepreneurship: Reauthorize the Angel Investor Tax Credit program to maintain an important source of funding for South Carolina start-up enterprises.
Workforce housing: Support legislation to facilitate development of workforce attainable housing by allowing builders to easily partner with non-profit organizations on tax exempt projects.
Talent, education and workforce: Increase base teacher salaries to meet or exceed the southeastern states average by the 2021-22 school year. Also:
♦ Support the Higher Education Finance Act to increase funding for state colleges and universities and relieve the tuition burden for South Carolina students.
♦ Secure $25.6 million to renovate Trident Technical College’s Berkeley Campus for advanced manufacturing and flexible classroom spaces.
Taxes and regulation: To meet the needs of rapidly growing school districts, amend millage caps established in Act 388.
S.C. fiscal health: Support reforms to the current South Carolina Retirement System that will eliminate the unfunded liability by closing the state pension system to new employees and moving to a defined contribution plan.
Military base retention and expansion: Support the statewide military retention plan created by the South Carolina Military Base Task Force and fund its implementation. Also:
♦ Fully exempt military retirement benefits from state income tax.
♦ Ensure that development of offshore wind energy facilities do not threaten the mission, training or operation of state military installations.
♦ Change the Military Service, Education and Credentialing Act to make it more efficient for transitioning military families to earn professional licenses in South Carolina.
Also in Good News:
Happy birthday! The Charleston Museum celebrated its 246th birthday on Saturday. It was established Jan. 12, 1773 — and has been preserving ever since!
Port growth. The South Carolina Ports Authority last week reported 6.4 percent year-over-year container volume growth, with a record 2.3 million 20-foot equivalent container units (TEUs) handled in 2018. Last year marked the third consecutive calendar year of record TEU volume. The port moved 199,701 TEUs in December alone, a 9.2 percent increase over December 2017 and the strongest December in SCPA history, according to a press release.
Bidding on Santee Cooper ends today. The General Assembly is accepting bids through today from organization to manage, buy or buy parts of state-owned utility Santee Cooper, which is headquartered in Moncks Corner. As Lindsay Street reports in our sister publication Statehouse Report, it’s still unclear what the state will do with the utility, mired for more than a year in a $9 billion debacle over a now-shuttered nuclear plant project.
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Tell us what you love about the Lowcountry. Send a short comment – 100 words to 150 words – that describes something you really enjoy about the Lowcountry. It can be big or small. It can be a place, a thing or something you see. It might the bakery where you get a morning croissant or a business or government entity doing a good job. We’ll highlight your entry in a coming issue of Charleston Currents. We look forward to hearing from you.
MYSTERY
MYSTERY: Maybe this one will be easier
Whew. The last mystery was so tough that only two people even guessed. So maybe this one will be easier. Send your guess to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live.
Our previous Mystery Photo
Only the super photo sleuth, George Graf of Palmyra, Va., had the stick-to-it dedication to identify last week’s mystery as the new Baxter Patrick James Island Public Library currently under construction. We’ve got to give a big shout-out to Chris Brooks of Mount Pleasant who almost put two and two together with this question, “Knowing your passion, is this a library somewhere?”
Expecting great things from lots of people with the sunset photo — Andy Brack
- Send us a mystery: If you have a photo that you believe will stump readers, send it along (but make sure to tell us what it is because it may stump us too!) Send it along to editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
HISTORY: Artist Jonathan Green
Image via Charleston VA
S.C. Encyclopedia | Born in rural Gardens Corner in Beaufort County on August 9, 1955, painter and printmaker Jonathan Green is the son of Melvin Green and Ruth Johnson. A graduate of Beaufort High School, Green served as a U.S. Air Force illustrator before enrolling as a textile design student at the East Grand Forks Technical Institute in Minnesota.
In 1976 he began his formal study of drawing and painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1982. He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree by the University of South Carolina in 1996. While studying in Chicago, Green met his partner and business manager Richard Weedman. Weedman made it possible for Green to pursue independent study abroad to supplement his formal education. While traveling and visiting museums, Green realized that “the best artists are those who paint what they know best. It took a trip to Switzerland and Mexico to return me to Gardens Corner, South Carolina, and begin my body of work ‘Gullah life reflections.’”
Best known for depicting the people and landscape of the lowcountry, Green refers to memories of local African American traditions, as well as tales and stories told by members of his extended family and friends. The artist’s paintings reflect an authentic historical understanding of lowcountry culture, although he sometimes takes poetic license with his subject matter. Green’s lowcountry subjects may or may not be factually realistic, but they communicate a strong sense of conceptual accuracy.
Green’s mature style conveys a narrative historicity, simplicity of form, and passionate energy that has been favorably compared with African American masters such as Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden but might also be compared with classically modern Europeans such as Gauguin and Matisse. Green’s education at the Art Institute of Chicago raised his awareness of traditions in Western and non-Western art that utilize color as a symbolic element—one of the most important stylistic aspects of his work. Green’s work also subtly reflects his formal study of textile design and the contemporaneous influence of the Pattern and Decoration movement. Reaching maturity as an artist in the 1980s, he shared in the renewed interest in figurative painting among contemporary collectors and museums.
Coming on the heels of the second of four solo traveling exhibitions, the 1996 publication of Gullah Images: The Art of Jonathan Green brought Green’s work to a wider and more diverse audience. The artist has been invited to give one-person exhibitions in major museums nationwide and is represented in numerous private and public collections, including those of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts, Naples, Florida; the Morris Museum of Art, Augusta, Georgia; the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; the Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston; and the McKissick Museum of the University of South Carolina, Columbia.
— Excerpted from an entry by Jay Williams. This entry may not have been updated since 2006. To read more about this or 2,000 other entries about South Carolina, check out The South Carolina Encyclopedia, published in 2006 by USC Press. (Information used by permission.)
CALENDAR: Charleston Jazz Festival set to start Jan. 24
Staff reports | More than 100 local, regional and national jazz artists will descend on the Lowcountry Jan 24 for the start of the fifth annual Charleston Jazz Festival, a four-day string of performances ranging from home-grown talent to legends of jazz and emerging artists.
Performances of note include Latin Grammy Award-winner Nestor Torres on Jan 24 at Charleston Music Hall; Bobby McFerrin with Ranky Tanky at the Charleston Gaillard Center on Jan. 26; and Family Jazz Day Jan. 27 at the Sottile Theater in downtown Charleston.
This year’s festival will be a variety of venues throughout Charleston including the Charleston Gaillard Center and Sottile Theatre. Nearly 3,000 attendees are expected during the festival to celebrate America’s quintessential art form. Learn more and buy tickets.
Also on the Calendar:
Restaurant Week: Through Jan. 20, throughout the area. You can get deals at more than 100 restaurants throughout the Charleston area during Charleston Restaurant Week, which starts Jan. 9 and lasts through Jan 20. Check out this website to learn about all of the participating Lowcountry restaurants, the deals they offer and how to reserve your table.
January’s Gaillard events. Check out these awesome January events at the Charleston Gaillard Center, 95 Calhoun St., Charleston:
- Through Jan. 18 (business hours): Prints in Clay photography exhibit, free. It’s a collection of photographs to support the Slave Dwelling Project. A celebration of spiritual music will be held 5 p.m. Jan. 13 with world-class singers and music.
- Jan. 17, 7:30 p.m.: Charleston Symphony Orchestra presents “Around the World in 80 minutes.”
- Jan. 22, 7:30 p.m.: Martha Graham Dance Company.
- Jan. 26, 8 p.m.: Bobby McFerrin with Ranky Tanky.
Library Society’s annual meeting: 5 p.m., Jan. 15, 164 King St., Charleston. The Charleston Library Society will hold its 271st annual meeting and reception with special guest speaker Victoria Johnson, author of “American Eden: David Hosack, Botany, and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic.” Spaced is limited; please RSVP to 843-723-9912. More info.
MLK tribute concert: 5 p.m., Jan. 19, St. Matthew Baptist Church, 2005 Reynolds Ave., North Charleston. The City of North Charleston Cultural Affairs Department will sponsor a free concert by Lowcountry Voices to honor the memory of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and singer Aretha Franklin.
Lowcountry Oyster Festival: Jan. 27, Boone Hall Plantation, Mount Pleasant. It’s the world’s largest oyster festival and features oyster shucking and oyster eating. More than 80,000 pounds of oysters are expected to be consumed. General admission tickets are $17.50 now; $25 on day of festival. Check it out here.
Chaplin/Amble art show: Through Jan. 31, North Charleston City Gallery at the Charleston Area Convention Center, 5001 Coliseum Drive, North Charleston. Paintings by the current City of North Charleston Artist-in-Residence Quintin Chaplin, as well as photographs by local artist Richard Amble will be on exhibit More.
The Curious Gardener: 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Feb. 10, Yeamans Hall Club, Hanahan. Anna Pavord, a well-known English writer on gardening, will be featured speaker at a lunch with the Charleston Horticultural Society. Spaces are limited. Tickets are $145 per person and include reception, signing of her book (The Curious Gardener), silent auction and her presentation. More: 843.570.9922.
Southeastern Wildlife Exposition: Feb. 15 to Feb. 17, downtown Charleston. This grand, annual three-day festival focuses on what people across the region love about wildlife and nature. SEWE has an incredible lineup of events – from fine art exhibits, conservation education, sporting demonstrations and parties. Learn more.
Women, Wine & Shoes: 6 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Feb. 21, Hotel Bennett, downtown Charleston. This fun annual benefit for Florence Crittenton Programs of South Carolina will feature designer shopping, wine tasting, great food and a fashion show. Tickets are $175 per person and seating is limited. Learn more.
Commissioning of USS Charleston: 10 a.m., March 2, Columbus Street Terminal. Charleston. A commissioning ceremony for the new USS Charleston (LCS 18), an Independence-class littoral combat ship, requires anyone who wishes to attend to register this month and soon through the Navy League of Charleston. In late January or early February, the Navy will send an letter to those who registered online with further instructions. Then the Navy will send invitation tickets to successful registrants. If you can’t attend, you can watch online here. More info.
Early morning bird walks at Caw Caw: 8:30 a.m. every Wednesday and Saturday, Caw Caw Interpretive Center, Ravenel. You can learn about habitats and birds, butterflies and other organisms in this two-hour session. Registration not required, but participants are to be 15 and up. $10 per person or free to Gold Pass holders. More: http://www.CharlestonCountyParks.com.
AREA FARMERS MARKETS
SATURDAYS: Johns Island Farmers Market operates each Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. year-round with more than 50 local farmers and vendors, food trucks, music and more. The market is located on the campus of Charleston Collegiate School, 2024 Academy Road, Johns Island.
- If you have an event to list on our calendar, please send it to feedback@charlestoncurrents.com for consideration. The calendar is updated weekly on Mondays.
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Charleston Currents is provided to you weekly by:
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