Charleston Currents #13.05 | Nov. 30, 2020
A STUDY IN BLACK AND WHITE. Charleston photographer English Purcell offers a compelling photo essay of McLeod Plantation Historic Site on James Island in this issue’s special Photo Focus below. Above, one of the slave cabins at the site, which now is a part of the Charleston County Parks and Recreation system.
PHOTO FOCUS: A study in black and white
COMMENTARY, Brack: Here’s to two good friends who will be just a click away
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: SCIWAY
ANOTHER VIEW, Palm: Suffer the children
NEWS BRIEFS: COVID-19 cases in state top 200,000
FEEDBACK: Send us your thoughts
MYSTERY PHOTO: So, who’s the king?
CALENDAR: Gibbes to offer annual Antique Stroll on Dec. 2
A study in black and white
By English Purcell, special to Charleston Currents | I grew up on James Island and was always fascinated with McLeod Plantation. Its slave quarters were visible near one of only two ways off the island. The owner at the time, Willie McLeod, always sat behind my grandmother at St. James Episcopal Church.
More recently, I took one of the interpretive tours at McLeod. It focused on enslaved Africans and their lives there. I decided to shoot the series from the perspective of the enslaved on a plantation to draw attention to what they saw in their everyday lives. I must note that the enslaved were not just on plantations. Behind just about every big house on the peninsula of Charleston were slave quarters: laundries, kitchen houses, carriage houses and stables.
This series tells a story without words. The title “A study in black and white” has, of course, a double meaning: Black, representing the enslaved, and white, representing the slave owners. I also edited the photos in black and white.
Each photo is meant to evoke an emotion. For example, there’s the diminutive size of the slave cabin versus the grandeur of the big house. I also can imagine the enslaved gathering near the big oak tree and peaking around it at the big house. In one of the photos, the tree is the focus, with the house a bit blurred in the background.
Many of the bricks used in the building of antebellum Charleston were made on plantations by the enslaved. You can often find their fingerprints if you look hard enough. The bricks in the chimney are a reminder of the immense contributions of enslaved Africans to the building of our city. This series is meant to honor those who were enslaved and tell their story subtly, but poignantly.
English Purcell is a local photographer who also serves as an administrator of the popular Facebook group, “Charleston History before 1945, and serves on the board of trustees of the Charleston Museum. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@charlestoncurrents.com
Here’s to two good friends who will be just a click away
Nathalie Dupree ran as a write-in candidate in 2010 in an attempt to unseat U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint. 2010 photo by Andy Brack.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | In this season of thanks during a year that’s challenged everyone in new ways, let’s remember and honor friendships.
Friends make our lives richer. They open new worlds and ideas. But they’re so familiar and comfortable that you kind of want them to never change and always be there.
Two longtime friends, cookbook author and foodie rock star Nathalie Dupree and historian husband Jack Bass, are leaving Charleston soon to live closer to family in North Carolina. I don’t want them to go, but at the same time, I’m happy they are embracing a change.
They’ll both be missed in Charleston, where Jack wrote powerful books and taught students at the end of a distinguished reporting and academic journalism career. In person and in print, he offers clarifying insights about South Carolina’s role in history, politics and leadership. He’s precise and literal, occasionally spending extra time in a grocery store searching for exactly the item that Nathalie asked him to pick up.
Bass
It can be a little frustrating, she’ll tell you, to live with a literalist — a person who chooses words carefully and means what he says. But she’s been in love with him and Charleston since she moved here more than 20 years ago.
That’s when she captured my heart by being kind enough to throw a high-dollar fundraiser when I ran for Congress. I lost, just like Jack did years earlier in his bid for Washington, but goodness, we had fun then and in the years since.
Nathalie is a cooking doyenne, a visionary who embraced her Southern heritage and spread the gospel about cooking good food in traditional and simple ways using local ingredients. Want to know how to make biscuits? She’s got a book on that. Want to know how to entertain comfortably? Read the book. Want to learn the ins and outs of “New Southern Cooking?” Yep, there’s a book with 350 recipes from a past cooking series on PBS.
Through the years, she’s written 15 books to connect to followers all over the world. Along the way, she’s picked up three James Beard awards — the Oscars of the food world. More importantly to Charleston, she’s been a vital cog in making it a destination city for foodies. She’s founding chairman of the Charleston Wine + Food Festival as well as the founder of the Charleston chapter of Les Dames d’ Escoffier, a national organization of women leaders in the food and hospitality industry.
“She asked me if I would want to be her recipe tester and help her out with her book (Nathalie Dupree’s Favorite Stories & Recipes), said Jeni Lata, owner of {TK} Culinary Consulting + Test Kitchen in an interview with the Charleston City Paper. “Because it was her favorite recipes, it was like going down this big old walk down memory lane with her. Nathalie is going to forever be a teacher, so it was cool because she wanted to teach me no matter what. She’s sort of this figurehead of the culinary community, and I think we’re losing someone who made it their life’s work to foster young talent.”
Nathalie and Jack are connectors who bring people together to form new friendships. At their Queen Street home, hundreds of people have sipped on a glass of wine as they talked with one of their friends from Atlanta, South Carolina, New York or Washington who had a new book out. Anyone who attended would load up on a plate of good food, meet some new friends and be able to talk with the passing luminary, such as the late John Lewis who once joined the throng to offer a book.
I’ll miss these two friends being nearby, an easy visit to gab about South Carolina politics to food. But we’ll keep up by email, social media and occasional visits.
The good news is they’re never far away because we’ve got their books. Any day of the week, you can taste Nathalie’s South by cooking one of her recipes. And in Jack’s books, you can enjoy the precision of language in nine works, from his modern history of the Palmetto State to an award-winning tome that highlights how Republican judges integrated schools across the South.
Good luck, friends, in your new endeavors. We’ll miss you.
- Note: Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg proclaimed Nov. 24 to be Jack Bass and Nathalie Dupree Day.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Charleston Currents, and publisher of the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
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Suffer the children
By Fred Palm, contributing editor | The good news of three highly effective vaccines gives realistic foundation to the hope that the COVID-19 infection growth curve can be bent in 2021. More vaccines are in the pipeline. All need careful medical follow-up.
The ongoing raging COVID-19 community transmission that is expanding, like this year’s wildfires and tropical storms, will continue to impact children beyond this season. It is not over yet for them. Nor will it end for them.
Children’s lives, like the lives of adults, are being damaged in many ways. But children have much less experience to return to. Adults have memory and lived perspectives.
Research on natural disasters makes it clear that, compared to adults, children are more vulnerable to the emotional impact of traumatic events that disrupt their daily lives.
Children, parents are hurting
Children are hurting educationally, mentally and physically. So are their parents.
We know that for children, the experiential coins, incorrectly placed, will reveal themselves later as a bent stack. Understanding of COVID-19’s displaced childhood developmental needs are well-documented in research literature. We need not overlook and hinder children, as we adults return to the place we call normal.
We adults debate the masking in schools while South Carolina is mired in a let-100-flowers-bloom approach to protecting children and staff. Teaching methods, assignments of teachers to instructional methods, Internet availability, multiple interacting disparate impacts, if and how to grade students who did not learn the needed lessons this year take our time.
- What should we do with the rapid COVID-19 test kits dumped on the schools by our governor this week that is far less than what will be required awaits an answer.
- And what should we do with kids who answer “yes” to the screening question, “At any time during the Thanksgiving/Christmas recess did you and your family spend time indoors with people outside of your household?”
Plan in winter, spring for summer experiences
We should plan the traditional June to August 2021 summer break period as our most important first opportunity to attend to the many wounds of the COVID-19 for adults and children. We need to lay the foundation this winter and spring for the design of ameliorating experiences that are most urgent for the children to learn in what needs to be an unusual summer unbreak.
Age-appropriate educational-emotional rebirth-growth experiences are a most important step to more the new beneficial normal for our children. Done well, this can be the initial injection of the needed restorative vaccine for the mental hurt, pain, injury and suffering of our children, as the emerging vaccines are for the health and well-being of their bodies.
Rally behind our children
Our governor is proud that he and the legislature directed close to $1 billion of federal CARES COVID-19 funding to shore up the state unemployment fund so that South Carolina businesses do not pay out additional premiums. South Carolina businesses were not hindered by this particular COVID-19 economic hit on their wallets.
We need to do the same for South Carolina’s children. Anticipate the impacts and provide funds for their nurturing as well as we do for our business’ interests.
Our governor is missing in action for our children even if he proudly wears his emergency black shirt signifying that he is in charge. This governor wears no clothing. Actually, Gov. Henry McMaster is AWOL in this crisis offering little more than a leadership made up of symbolic gestures lacking form and substance. Business leaders in particular need to rally to the side of this COVID generation. Many will be looking for work.
- More reading: Resources for supporting children’s emotional well-being during the COVID 19 pandemic, ChildTrends.org.
Fred Palm of Edisto Island is a retired professor of oversight and investigations at the John Jay College School of Public Management and a former executive director of the Association of Inspectors General. He writes about the Common Good.
COVID-19 cases in state top 200,000
Staff reports | More than 200,000 South Carolinians have been confirmed to have contracted COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. The news came over the weekend as Palmetto State residents enjoyed Thanksgiving with family and friends in what many believe may signal the trigger of a surge on top of a surge.
On Sunday, state officials reported 1,053 new cases of coronavirus for a total of 202,422 cases since the beginning of the year. Through Sunday, 4,050 people in the Palmetto State have died from the virus. That’s more people than live in Manning, population 3,875, which is the county seat of Clarendon County.
South Carolina’s positivity rate — the number of people who test positive — remains in dangerous double-digit territory. On Sunday, 12.2 percent of the 8,279 people tested were positive.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, “a high percent positive means that more testing should probably be done—and it suggests that it is not a good time to relax restrictions aimed at reducing coronavirus transmission. Because a high percentage of positive tests suggests high coronavirus infection rates (due to high transmission in the community), a high percent positive can indicate it may be a good time to add restrictions to slow the spread of disease.
“As a rule of thumb, however, one threshold for the percent positive being “too high” is 5 percent.”
In other recent news:
Telehealth is booming. Telehealth is booming at MUSC and hospitals around the state – largely because of the onslaught of COVID-19, writer Rodney Welch writes in our sister publication, Statehouse Report. Through MUSC’s Center for Telehealth, medical professionals come together to reach patients and doctors throughout the Palmetto State. It is being used particularly effectively in rural areas and among risk groups, such as pregnant women with opioid addictions. “It’s really an integrated care team,” said Dr. Constance Guille said. “Obstetricians, nurses, psychiatrists and addiction specialists are all kind of working together to take care of these women.” Read the full story.
Wilson offers holiday album. Some of Charleston’s most talented session performers join vocalist Bill Wilson in a new holiday album, Soul of Christmas, Heath Ellison writes in the Charleston City Paper. He offered the album to lift up people’s spirits after a tough year: “If you have nothing else to think about, think about just being able to celebrate, being able to just be here. We lost so many people this year and I’m sure they were probably thinking of Christmas, too, just like we are.”
Whyte wins awards. Charleston artist Mary Whyte has won two national honors for her contributions to the nation’s veterans through her We the People watercolor portraits exhibited across the country and because of the formation of the Patriot Art Foundation, according to a release. White received the DAR Medal of Honor, the most prestigious award given by the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the NSDAR Women in Arts Award from the Eliza Lucas Pinckney chapter in Charleston of the National Society Daughters of the American Revolution.
New children’s book. Ravenel author Rhonda Jennings offers a new children’ book, Faith of an Anthill, in hardback ($12.99) and paperback ($9.99). It encourages children in their faith and seeking God when things look bleak. It’s available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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So, who’s the king?
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Our previous Mystery Photo
Our Nov. 23 photo, “Building with history,” shows Temple Beth Elohim on Screven Street in Georgetown.
A hat tip to these photo detectives for correctly identifying the picture: George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Bill Segars and Don Clark, both of Hartsville; Jim McMahan of Charleston; Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas; and Jay Altman of Columbia.
Graf shared that the temple “was established in 1904 when the Jews of Georgetown, who were worshiping in peoples’ homes and at the Winyah Indigo Society, formalized their congregation by becoming the sister temple to Charleston’s Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. Jews arrived in the historic seaport of Georgetown, SC in the mid 1700’s and by 1800, were a small but important portion of the population. Abraham and Solomon Cohen, along with Mordecai Myers, were some of the founders of the early mercantile business in Georgetown. There is now a temple community of 43 families who are involved in the congregation. Services are held every Friday night and an Oneg (social function following services) is held the second and fourth Friday of each month. A great deal of work has been done to maintain and enhance the building and grounds, as well as to the interior.”
- 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.
Gibbes to offer annual Antique Stroll on Dec. 2
The Gibbes Museum’s signature Antique Stroll is just in time for the holidays! Capacity is limited due to COVID-19 protocols, but the event will forge ahead for two hours starting at 6 p.m. Dec. 2 at the museum.
Like so much else, this year will look a little different. To ensure our guests are comfortable and safe, instead of making site visits to our stalwart antique dealers along King Street, we’ll be inviting them to the Gibbes to take advantage of our ample space. Each vendor, chosen from some of Charleston’s top antique dealers and designers, will be curating a special experience for strollers, highlighting select pieces from their collections and sharing their stories. Tickets are $25 for members and $35 for non-members.
Also on the calendar:
LAST CHANCE: From Etchings to Pastels: Through Nov. 29, Lowcountry Image Gallery, The Charleston Museum. The museum has partnered with the Pastel Society of South Carolina to present new interpretations of etchings stemming from the Charleston Renaissance Movement about 100 years ago. Learn more.
Two exhibits in one: Dec. 1 to Dec. 31, City of North Charleston’s Park Circle Gallery. North Charleston photographer Dawnita Hall’s exhibit, Signs of Life, is a series of nine metallic print photographs of found signs and lettering. More: DawnitaHall.com. Painter Susan Irish of Charleston offers a series of abstract impressionist, mixed-media paintings with color palettes and compositions inspired by nature In her exhibit, I See You in My Garden. Free. More: SusanIrishArtist.com. The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesdays to Fridays, and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
Holy City Farmers Market: 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., Dec. 2, Holy City Brewing. The brewery hosts a pop-up event on its lawn every Wednesday to celebrate local farmers and small businesses. Location: 1021 Aragon Ave., North Charleston. More. Oh, and you probably can get a beer.
Jazz at Firefly: 6 p.m., Dec. 4, Firefly Distillery, North Charleston.. A limited number of tickets are available for Holiday Swing Live at Firefly. More info. Tickets are $30.
Grisham and Conroy via Zoom hybrid: 6 p.m. Dec. 8. The Charleston Library Society will present writer John Grisham in a conversation with author Cassandra King Conroy as they discuss the dynamic process of writing best-selling novels in addition to covering Grisham’s new book, A Time For Mercy. Grisham will join on Zoom, but King King will join an in-house audience to enjoy the evening in person. Buy tickets.
Holiday Festival of Lights: Through Dec. 31, 2020. The annual event, now in its 31st year, opens Nov. 13 and will offer a dazzling array of displays and about 2 million lights at James Island County Park. The festival will be open every evening nightly from 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. You can take a heartwarming cruise along the three-mile display of glimmering lights with your closest companions. The driving tour features over 700 light displays, most of which were created in-house by park staff. For details, visit HolidayFestivalofLights.com.
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