Staff reports | Charleston’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival returns May 28 with a slate of all-free, all-outdoor performances and safe, pandemic-friendly exhibitions that will scratch that itch you’ve been feeling to get out and experience the Holy City’s creative community.
You can find the printed 16-page Piccolo Spoleto 2021 guide in the Charleston City Paper and at venues around town. But because this season’s free events are being continuously updated, you might want to also check at charlestonarts.org to get the most updated information on events. Piccolo is a companion celebration to Spoleto Festival USA, which also starts May 28 and ends June 13.
This year’s Piccolo Spoleto Festival includes a number of surprise pop-ups around Charleston, a series of unique outdoor poetry recitations downtown and performances you likely won’t see even as precautions are phased out and the festival returns in 2022. And of course, Piccolo Spoleto features the outdoor arts exhibition that you know and love in Marion Square, with two weekends of crafts markets nearby.
In other recent news:
More work to rein in opioid crisis. Members of the S.C. House of Representatives say they know they have a lot of work still to do to combat the state’s crisis of opioid addiction, but they also say they’ve come a long way. Since 2018, lawmakers have approved more than a dozen bills to put a dent in opioid addiction including opioid-related measures to monitor prescriptions, requiring informed consent for medications given to minors, updating drug laws, adding some community services, prescription limits, processing changes, and more that $11 million in prevention and capital improvement funding. Despite legislative success, things are getting worse as opioids are the cause of almost 70 percent of the nation’s overdose deaths. South Carolina, a new Quotewizard study says, has the fifth highest overdose death rate in the nation with 1,568 overdose deaths in 2020 compared to 1,107 the year before. Bottom line: As thousands of South Carolinians died from COVID-19 in 2020, overdose deaths went up 41.6 percent. Learn more from the original story in Statehouse Report.
Tough storm season predicted. Weather officials predicted Thursday that the 2021 storm season, which starts June 1, likely will include “above normal” hurricane activity. They said there is a 70 percent chance that there will be 13 to 20 named storms. And of those, six to 10 are expected to become hurricanes and as many as five could strengthen into major hurricanes. More: National Public Radio | The Post and Courier.
Death row inmates sue after being forced to choose between firing squad or electric chair. South Carolina is now asking death-row inmates to choose between the electric chair and firing squad, citing a lack of lethal injection drugs. More: SC Public Radio | NPR.
S.C. lawmakers lean in on jail reform bills. As the fallout around the January death of Jamal Sutherland in a Charleston County jail mounts, members of the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus is pushing for reforms — in bills already filed and others in consideration as the session breaks. The bills focus on the way law enforcement officials treat people with mental illnesses and seek to ensure more accountability. More: The Post and Courier | WCBD.
Internet access expanding in rural S.C. as part of utility partnership. A pair of rural utility cooperatives announced a five-year, $150 million project to install broadband internet service in the mountainous, far-western reaches of South Carolina. More: The Post and Courier | Spartanburg Herald-Journal.
SCDOT’s paving program to be ‘largest in S.C. history.’ The S.C. Department of Transportation (SCDOT) announced Thursday its new 2021-2022 paving program, which DOT officials promise will rehab nearly 1,000 miles of roads through funding from the state’s gas tax. More: WSPA TV
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