Charleston Currents #13.39 | Aug. 16, 2021
BUSY. If you’ve been on King Street near Calhoun Street lately, you’ve likely noticed a lot of slow car traffic, thanks to multiple road projects, as well as a lot of foot traffic from shoppers and returning students. With all of this interaction, here’s a reminder to be careful on the streets. See something you think our readers would enjoy? Snap a shot and send it along. Photo by Ashley Rose Stanol.
FOCUS: State animal shelters declare state of emergency
COMMENTARY, Brack: What happened to courage and pride in South Carolina?
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: SCIWAY
NEWS BRIEFS: On Medicaid, federal funds and port traffic
FEEDBACK: It’s time to protect the children of South Carolina
MYSTERY PHOTO: Where’s this streetscape?
CALENDAR: Grape-stomping festival set for Aug. 28
State animal shelters declare state of emergency
Staff reports | Pet shelters across the state are swamped with thousands of homeless animals leading them to declare a state of emergency and a rescue program that will run through August 22.
“Nearly every shelter in the state, including the largest shelters [Greenville County Animal Care, Charleston Animal Society, Horry County Animal Care Center and Columbia Animal Services] are at the breaking point and need help now,” said No Kill South Carolina 2024 Chief Project Officer Abigail Appleton in a statement. “These lifesaving organizations are critically overcapacity and there’s no sign of it letting up, especially as the pandemic is surging again and folks are not getting out as much as they did earlier this summer.”
Locally, the Charleston Animal Society said it had more than triple the number of animals it has the room to house at its shelter in North Charleston, caring for over 700 animals despite only having the space for about 230. While summer months are typically crowded for the shelter, this year has been particularly harsh. Hundreds of dogs, cats and exotic pets are waiting for their “forever homes,” officials said.
To solve the crisis, shelters across the state have joined together to launch “Summer Slam Emergency Rescue Operation.” This emergency event is being led by No Kill South Carolina 2024 and the South Carolina Animal Care and Control Association (SCACCA).
“We are in uncharted waters, in a perfect storm. We have the end of summer slowdown in adoptions, the peak of hurricane season and the pandemic resurgence,” said SCACCA President Shelly Simmons.
To help with the emergency, you are encouraged to visit a local shelter to adopt or foster animals at-risk.
“We don’t declare a ‘state of emergency’ unless the situation is dire and we know that if we work together, thousands of lives can be saved,” Simmons said.
Adding to the emergency is the veterinarian shortage and reduced staff due to COVID.
“Many shelters are waiving their adoption fees or significantly reducing them in an effort to get more people to take home a shelter pet. We’re asking all shelters to implement managed moratoriums and accept only animals in danger or who present a danger to others, until we get out of this state of emergency,” Appleton added.
HOW TO HELP
- Citizens can adopt or foster animals or sponsor adoption fees
- Businesses can become adoption ambassadors for animals
- Veterinarians can help shelters through the backlog of animals with spay/neuter
- Rescue groups can take in additional at-risk animals
- Government shelters and animal control agencies can implement managed moratoriums
- Learn other ways to help at NoKillSouthCarolina.org
- Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
What happened to courage and pride in South Carolina?
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | More than 10,000 South Carolinians have died in the last year and a half from COVID-19. With the availability of incredibly effective vaccines and the common-sense step of wearing masks in crowded places, we have the tools to win the COVID War.
But too many people will continue to die because too many still aren’t vaccinated and too many get huffy about wearing masks when indoors. They talk about personal freedom instead of respecting community safety. They’re getting played by false Internet memes circulated by Russians and anti-vaxxers, instead of believing cold, hard facts from science. They conveniently forget how the vaccines they got when they were kids kept them from getting horrible diseases like polio, measles, rubella, diphtheria and smallpox.
Vaccines work. Masking works. But South Carolina, like many Southern red states, has among the lowest vaccination rates in the country. This forces us to ask: Where is our sense of pride, our sense of dignity? Do we always have to be at the bottom of lists, especially when it’s relatively easy to get our state out of the cellar by getting people vaccinated?
Furthermore, if more people will get vaccinated and get to the top of the list, families throughout the state will be safer. Hospitals will be able to get back to treating people’s regular problems, not a pandemic. If the half of eligible South Carolinians who aren’t vaccinated get the shots, it probably would take just two months to create a safe environment across the state, which would generate a relatively quick return to normal instead of the slow drip of the continuing contagion that is locking down our day-to-day life and business.
People across South Carolina have pride in the state’s beautiful places, football teams, heritage, history, sense of independence and quality of life. Why can’t we have a statewide sense of pride in beating COVID-19? Why can’t everyone pull together, protect their families, protect their neighbors and protect their communities so we can get back to normal? We have the tools.
There’s more. Not only do citizens have a responsibility to get vaccinated, our leaders need to have the courage to lead and get beyond all of the emotional, political rhetoric that has infected common-sense, science-based reasons to get vaccinated and wear masks until things are safer.
We haven’t seen courage from our governor, Henry McMaster. Instead of pulling out all of the stops with campaign rallies in communities across the state to pump up the volume on vaccinations and masks, he makes meek suggestions as more people get the disease.
We also haven’t seen many state legislators pushing statewide safety against the pandemic. Rather, they hunker down too afraid to admit they were wrong to pass an anti-mask mandate which will lead to more school children getting COVID-19 until they can get vaccinated.
About the only leadership on display has come from Columbia Mayor Steve Benjamin and Columbia City Council. Earlier this month, Benjamin issued an emergency declaration requiring masks in most Columbia schools to protect students. On Aug. 11, council members voted 5-1 to approve that order.
That’s leadership. And all of our political leaders, regardless of party, need to be leading now, not hiding behind some poll or anti-science ideology. More cities and counties need to challenge the state’s dumb anti-masking law in court and by ordinance (remember home rule?) to lead our state toward safety from COVID-19.
This disease doesn’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat or independent. It cares whether it can get inside you, infect you and make your life a living hell. But if we get vaccinated — and wear a mask when near others — we can make a quicker return to normal. Let’s get it done, South Carolina.
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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On Medicaid, federal funds and port traffic
Poll shows strong support to expand Medicaid. There is strong support to expand the federal Medicaid program in the Palmetto State across party lines with nearly eight in 10 South Carolina voters ages 50 and older registering their support, according to a new study by AARP.
A report on the study will soon be sent to lawmakers, according to a story in Statehousse Report. Poll findings could spark state leaders to reconsider a long-held stance against Medicaid expansion, which could bring millions to the state to provide health care to more than 200,000 uninsured state resident. Nearly two -thirds of those surveyed say they would be extremely or very favorable toward state lawmakers who voted to expand Medicaid health care to South Carolina residents who earn less than $18,000 a year.
In other news:
House committee to discuss use of $3B in federal funds. South Carolina legislators will meet starting this week to begin talks on how more than $3 billion in federal funds will be spent. On a Tuesday agenda for the House SRS and ARPA Appropriations Ad Hoc Committee is how nearly $2.5 billion from the American Recovery Plan Act (ARPA) passed by Congress will be spent in the Palmetto State, as well as $525 million from a U.S. Department of Energy settlement over radioactive waste stashed at the federal Savannah River Site.
New leader. Hats off to Lowcountry attorney Bert “Skip” Utsey, who recently was elected to be president of the South Carolina Association for Justice, the state’s largest association of lawyers. Utsey is a partner with Clawson Fargnoli Utsey LLC, with offices in Charleston and Walterboro. He is a Walterboro native who graduated from the USC School of Law in 1987. “There is an organized and well-funded movement by big business to help protect their bottom line at the expense of average citizens taking place right here in South Carolina. My main goals are to help the Association raise awareness to special interest groups’ attempts to limit access to our legal system and to fight for pro-justice policy,” Utsey said in a statement.
Big grant. The Patrick Family Foundation has awarded a $10,000 grant to support the Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired South Carolina’s new Low Vision Occupational Therapy program, according to a press release. The program provides comprehensive rehabilitation and educational training to adults with visual disabilities to help them develop skills and techniques to capitalize on their remaining vision, maximize their independence and reduce the impact of their disability.
Big traffic. South Carolina Ports had a strong start to fiscal year 2022 with its highest July on record for containers moving through the Port of Charleston. The agency handled a record-setting 244,821 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) in July at Wando Welch Terminal, North Charleston Terminal and Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal. This is up 38 percent from a year ago. July’s volume marks the second highest all-time monthly record for containers handled at the Port of Charleston, according to a statement.
It’s time to protect the children of South Carolina
To the editor:
Now is the time to put politics and partisanship aside and focus on the health of our children. As a pediatrician, president of the S.C. Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and representative of the 750 pediatricians in the state, I am asking you to contact your elected officials and urge them to reverse the law that forbids public schools from requiring masks.
The Delta variant of COVID-19 is significantly more contagious than the original strain in circulation over the past school year. Many schools that have already started back are experiencing outbreaks, and we must reinstate mask requirements for children in schools and allow school districts to act in the interest of maximum safety for children.
The fact is that anyone at any age can become infected with COVID-19, but masking reduces that risk and vaccines reduce both risk and severity of illness. Children less than 12 cannot yet receive the vaccine, and about only 25 percent of 12- to 18-year-olds are vaccinated, so why aren’t we doing everything we can to reduce their risks?
Masking in schools is now also urged by the CDC, AAP and S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control. The top medical experts and scientists in the U.S. and S.C. are in agreement, but our politicians are not. Find and contact your legislators at scstatehouse.gov/legislatorssearch. By working together we can beat COVID!
— Dr. Robert Saul, president, S.C. chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Greenwood, S.C.
The choice of NO CHOICE
To the editor,
This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated for the most part. Children are part of the unvaccinated and they are showing up at hospitals.
South Carolina lags by two to three weeks in the explosion of cases involving the hospitalization of children in Florida. It’s another masks-are-optional-in-schools state. Our future is in their present. So we can learn.
Go to the neighborhood school and there you will find optional masking among students and staff. A good percentage will be wearing masks. They or their parent do not want them sick, physically damaged for their life, incapacitated by long-COVID, or, in a rare case, dead.
At the state Chamber, our governor and the freedom-loving cabal of legislative supporters have developed policies that they think implements a heretofore missing freedom. Added to South Carolina’s portfolio of freedoms is freedom from masking.
Mandating that local government bodies cannot mandate the wearing of masks is providing health policy nonsense. School districts that have more than 5 percent enrolled in remote learning are penalized financially to the tune of a 47 percent reduction of some of the budgeted lines. Setting up the no choice-no masks required (policy), no remote instruction is available.
We have been given the only choice of accepting NO CHOICE to respond to the pandemic threats. Boxed in. No way out. Unable to move. Strangled in our beds by failed health policy.
— Fred Palm, Edisto Island, S.C.
Send us your thoughts by email
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Where’s this streetscape?
Here’s a streetscape somewhere in Charleston, but where is it? Send your best guess to editor@charlestoncurrents.com. And don’t forget to include your name and the town in which you live. And if you’ve got a clever mystery photo for our readers, send it to the same address (Try to stump us!)
Our previous Mystery Photo
Our most recent past mystery, “Brick and glass building,” showed a peaceful courtyard outside the Stern Center at the College of Charleston. Thanks to Ashley Rose Stanol of Charleston for the photo.
Congratulation to these sleuths who provided the right answer to the mystery: Stephen Yetman of Charleston; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Don Clark of Hartsville; and Allan Peel of San Antonio, Texas.
Peel provided some extra info: “The building was built in 1974 and was named after Theodore Sanders Stern (1912-2013), who served as the college’s 16th president from 1968 to 1974. The garden depicted in the mystery photo is in a courtyard behind the building, and it is a favorite escape for students who want some quiet studying time or wish to eat their lunch in peace. Because of its peaceful setting, some classes have been known to meet here as well.”
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.
Grape-stomping festival set for Aug. 28
Deep Water Vineyard will celebrate its 17th annual Grape Stomping Festival in a celebration that will give you a taste of locally-grown and imported wine varietal at its Wadmalaw Island location.
Stomping competitions will kick off at noon with a kid stomp followed by adult stomps at 1:30 p.m., 2:50 p.m. and 4:10 p.m. Sign-up also in advance for a tasting time and t-shirt to commemorate the day! You can also get a memorable picture of you and your crew stomping in our barrels. It’s just $10 to taste your way through our wines, including the popular Strawberry Wine. Each tasting includes a souvenir stemless wine glass. Several food trucks also will be on site.
Location: 6775 Bears Bluff Road on Wadmalaw Island from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tickets are available for $10 via www.deepwatervineyard.com or on Facebook @deepwatervines/events.
Also on the calendar:
Party at the Point continues. Gates open Fridays at 5 p.m. through Sept. 10, Charleston Harbor Resort and Marina, 20 Patriots Point Road, Mount Pleasant. Party at the Point, a Charleston-area happy hour Friday concert series that sold out five July shows, will continue with tickets for $10 each:
- Aug. 13: Yesterday’s Wine featuring Wyatt Durette & Levi Lowrey with special guest Faith Schueler
- Aug. 20: Two Weeks Notice featuring Ward Buckheister & Friends
- Aug: 27: The Yacht Club
- Sept. 3: Labor Day Bash with The Midnight City
- Sept. 10: Rattle & Hum, a tribute to U2
Art of Jazz Series: 6 p.m., Aug. 25, Gibbes Museum of Art, 135 Meeting St., Charleston. The 2021 Art of Jazz Series of original music inspired by art at the museum will feature the Geoffrey Dean Trio on Aug. 25. Tickets are $40.
Wine Down Wednesday: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Sept. 1 and Sept. 15, Old Towne Creek Park, WeSt Ashley. Come Wine Down your Wednesday and explore Old Towne Creek County Park, one of West Ashley’s hidden gems. Guests will enjoy wine and live music from a local Charleston performer, while experiencing the beauty of this natural site. A commemorative wine glass is included with your admission. Food truck fare will be available for purchase on-site. Fee: $20.
Toast Under the Oaks: 5 p.m. to 9 p.m., Sept. 9 and Sept. 23, Johns Island County Park, Johns Island. Enjoy Toast Under the Oaks while exploring Johns Island County Park. Guests will enjoy wine, beer, and live music, while experiencing the beauty of this 738-acre park. Food truck fare will be available for purchase on-site. Tickets: $20.
Ongoing
North Charleston exhibition: Through Aug. 28, Park Circle Gallery, North Charleston. The space will offer concurrent solo exhibitions of drawings and mixed-media works by artists Christopher Kye of Goose Creek and Christine D. Johnson of Summerville with a free reception at 5 p.m. Aug. 6. More info. The gallery is located at 4820 Jenkins Avenue.
“Tidal Futures” exhibition: Through Sept. 11, Redux Contemporary Art Center, 1056 King St., Charleston. Tidal Futures: Friends of Gadsden Creek is an exhibition that aims to highlight the organization’s outreach program to challenge viewers’ preconceived notions of what contemporary art is. It also seeks to guide them to discover and investigate how social justice work is conceptualized and executed, and to serve as a catalyst for dialogue about the intersection of creative practice and cultural impact.
The Lawn Party exhibition: Through Sept. 19, Charleston Museum, Meeting Street, Charleston. The Charleston Museum is pleased to present The Lawn Party: From Satin to Seersucker, the latest offering in its Historic Textiles Gallery. In an “unprecedented” era when large gatherings have been discouraged and fashion has trended towards leisurewear, this exhibition is a celebration of getting dressed up for an outdoor party. Bringing a hint of glamour to a trying time, the garments on display were selected with the grand idea of “after” in mind. This is a perfect opportunity to come see what to wear for your next outdoor event as we head toward the new “normal.”
Reviving photos. Through Oct. 31, Charleston Museum, Meeting Street. The museum is exhibiting The Lowcountry in Living Color: Making Historical Photographs Come to Life as the latest offering in its Lowcountry Image Gallery. Colorizing black and white pictures allows viewers to see components that otherwise might be overlooked. Buy tickets.
Birds of Prey flight demonstrations: 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Thursdays and Saturdays, Center for Birds of Prey, 4719 Highway 17. Awendaw. The center has reopened its doors to visitors after closing due to the COvID-19 pandemic, inviting people to once again come and explore the world of raptors through an outdoor program and flight demonstration. Tickets: . $20/adult; $15/children age 3-17.
Bird-watching at Caw Caw. Every Wednesday and Saturday — particularly through the end of February — you can see a plethora of birds at Caw Caw Interpretive Center in Ravenel as they make their way through the Lowcountry. The two-hour regular walks, which start at 8:30 a.m., are through distinct habitats that allow participants to view and discuss a variety of birds, butterflies, and other organisms. Registration is not required. Participants are encouraged to bring their own binoculars. A paid chaperone is required for participants ages 15 and under. Max. 10 participants. Fee: $9; free for Gold Pass holders. Open to all ages. More: Caw Caw Interpretive Center.
Farmers markets
Here’s a look at a bunch of local farmers markets where you can find fresh fruit, vegetables, crafts and more. If you know of others, send us a note at: feedback@charlestoncurrents.com.
Mount Pleasant Farmers Market: 3:30 p.m. to 7 p.m., every Tuesday, Market Pavilion at Moultrie Middle School, 645 Coleman Blvd., Mount Pleasant. Check here for more.
Holy City Farmers Market: 4 p.m. to 7 p.m., every Wednesday, Holy City Brewing, North Charleston. vendors rotate weekly to provide shoppers with a tiny but mighty shopping experience. vendors will be selling a range of products from specialty foods, home and body care to arts and crafts. More info.
West Ashley Farmers Market: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., every Wednesday, Ackerman Park, 55 Sycamore Avenue, Charleston. More.
North Charleston Farmers Market: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., every Thursday, Felix Davis Community Circle in Park Circle. The market offers fresh, locally grown produce as well as arts-and-craft vendors, specialty foods and live music. More.
Charleston Farmers Market: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., every Saturday, Marion Square, 329 Meeting St., Charleston. More.
Summerville Farmers Market: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., every Saturday, First Citizens Bank parking lot near Town Hall, 200 S. Main Street, Summerville.
Sunday Brunch Farmers Market: 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., every Sunday, Charleston Pour House, 1977 Maybank Highway, James Island. While the market is discouraging people from spending too much time hanging out during the market, everyone is invited to shop their local vendors. More info.
- If you have any online events, drop us a line (editor@charlestoncurrents.com) and make sure to put “Online event” in the subject line. Similarly, if you’ve got cool ideas for stuff to do while in isolation at home, send them our way.
- ORDER NOW: Copies of our new book, 350 Facts About Charleston, are in Lowcountry-area bookstores now, but if you can’t swing by, you can order a copy online today.
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