Charleston Currents #14.02 | NOV. 8, 2021
LARGE BUSINESS OF THE YEAR. Hats off to the Charleston Animal Society for receiving the 2021 Large Business of the Year Torch Award Nov. 3 from the Better Business Bureau serving Central South Carolina and Charleston. Pictured from left are Charleston Animal Society’s Sean Hawkins and Joe Elmore with the BBB’s Chris Hadley with CAS team members Bryant Taylor, Lisa Pearce and Erin Nosker. “Our team goes to great lengths to run an open and transparent organization,” said Charleston Animal Society President and CEO Joe Elmore. “We are honored that the Better Business Bureau has recognized our lifesaving efforts and business practices.” See something you think our readers would enjoy? Snap a shot and send it along. Photo by Andy Brack.
FOCUS: Area Rotarians celebrate $2 million of charitable giving
COMMENTARY, Brack: Gun shop’s abusive product represents threat to democracy
IN THE SPOTLIGHT: Magnolia Plantation and Gardens
NEWS BRIEFS: State to have extra billion in cash in coming year
FEEDBACK: Looks forwards to seeing Johns’s show
MYSTERY PHOTO: Six columns
CALENDAR: New exhibition showcases landscape prototypes
Area Rotarians celebrate $2 million of charitable giving
Rotary International President Shekhar Mehta and his wife Rashi met Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg Saturday afternoon at the Francis Marion Hotel. Also pictured are former Rotary International Vice President Anne Matthews of Columbia and the local Rotary district’s current president, Paul R. Walter of Hilton Head Island. Photo provided.
By Andy Brack | South Carolina’s generosity was on full display Saturday night as about 50 big-donor Rotarians celebrated at a gala in Charleston’s Francis Marion Hotel — the very place their predecessors helped to build 97 years ago.
In attendance to pat them on the back was the most prominent Rotarian in the world — Rotary International President Shekhar Mehta of West Bengal, India. Mehta, an accountant by profession, visited the Holy City to thank Rotarians from the eastern half of the state for raising more than $2 million in new gifts of $10,000 or more over the last 18 months to help Rotary International’s philanthropic projects around the world. Among its top efforts are global projects to eradicate polio and provide clean drinking water to third-world countries.
Mehta
“There are super-generous people in your area,” Mehta said in an exclusive interview. “They’re doing amazing things in the world. Like bringing water to people who do not have water, bringing homes to people without homes, bringing food to the hungry. They bring health to the needy. All this is being done in your backyard through an organization called Rotary.”
Rotary International, founded in 1905 in Chicago, is one of the world’s largest nonprofit community service organizations with 1.4 million members in 35,000 clubs. Sixteen years after five business leaders in Chicago organized the first club, 22 Charleston businessmen started the organization’s 624th club and first in the Lowcountry. Called the Rotary Club of Charleston, one of its first big projects was to sell $50,000 of stock (worth about $800,000 in purchasing power today) in the Francis Marion Hotel to help it get started. The complex, which hosted the club’s meetings for years, now is owned by local Rotarian Steve Dopp.
Since 1917, Rotarians around the world have contributed more than $4 billion to sustainable projects, the organization said. Mehta shared how he had been involved in helping more than 2,500 children in India get life-saving heart surgeries over the last 15 years.
“It’s a story that touches your heart,” he said, recalling how parents who earn $100 a month can’t afford surgeries that cost more than they earn in 20 years. “It’s so expensive. And they cannot bear the thought that their child may die. Then comes Rotary. The magic wand gets the surgery done. And changes lives.”
Anne L. Matthews of Columbia, who served as the first female Rotary International vice president, said she’s known Mehta for more than 20 years.
“There is nobody — nobody — who epitomizes ‘service above self’ more than Shekhar Mehta,” she said. “He’s just done so much in India that’s very deserving and has earned the title of president of Rotary International.”
In recognition of the more than $2 million raised by the local Rotary district, which has more than 80 clubs and 3,400 members, Gov. Henry McMaster, a longtime Rotarian, proclaimed Nov. 6 as “The Rotary Foundation Day” in South Carolina. He encouraged residents to recognize Rotarians “for their contributions that improve the lives of people around the world.”
Disclosure: Brack is a past president of the Rotary Club of Charleston. He also edited the club’s history, “Service Above Self.”
- Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
Gun shop’s abusive product represents threat to democracy
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Imagine if a gun shop started selling an accessory for an AR-15 rifle that offered to change the names of the three settings on the firing mechanism from (safety)-(single shot)-(full-auto) to F@CK-DONALD-TRUMP.
Quite a few people would hit the ceiling. Somewhere, there would be blood in the street. Most likely, the store would face a riot reminiscent of what happened Jan. 6 when right-wing, authoritarian zealots stormed the U.S. Capitol in a fury of treasonous gall now seen as the most serious threat to our democracy in generations.
So now let’s turn to a surprising story this week in The State newspaper. Seems like the Einsteins at gun shops operated by Palmetto State Armory are offering a gun accessory for AR-15s with three settings that slam President Joe Biden, not Trump, just like in the imaginary example above.
Protests? Riots? Nope. Reactions are giggles or intellectual disappointment or cries that a business has far overstepped the bounds of decency. But no violence.
In other words, many South Carolinians just shake their heads and think, “Well, that’s the way it is here.”
Unacceptable. It shouldn’t be this way. We shouldn’t blithely accept such obscene criticism of Biden, much less any president or elected leader. All Americans must take this kind of seditious nonsense more seriously. So shame on Palmetto State Armory for this latest incendiary entry into the marketplace. It’s vile, wrong and highly inappropriate. It further fans the flames splitting our country. It’s harming our system of governance and, if you want to get right down to it, it supports our enemies. If you want to let the Russians and Chinese control the world, just keep it up.
That’s why we suggest all South Carolinians — gun owners and those who don’t own guns — should boycott the business, which is preying on people’s political opinions to do what it really wants to do — sell more guns and make more millions a year by arming South Carolina. Don’t Palmetto State Armory’s customers realize they’re being used by the company’s clever marketers? Are they so blind as not to realize they’re being manipulated?
We support responsible gun ownership. But anyone who crawls out from under a rock just to sell something that says F@CK! JOE! BIDEN! is the lowest of the low. It’s not funny. It’s not something children should be subjected to. It’s certainly not something that would make a grandmama proud.
It’s virtually impossible to talk with any of the leaders at Palmetto State Armory. We reached out to someone who reportedly is a co-owner. Got crickets. We tried to send a message through its lobbying firm, Nelson Mullins, which has received $100,000 in the last year to represent the company on federal gun issues. Again, nothing.
So here’s what the company and those like it should know: If you continue to push anti-American memes and messages like the filth on the gun accessory, you are seeding a downward spiral that debases the principles of freedom offered in the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution. By defiling the public debate with vile language and products, you promote dangerous insurrection..
Our elected officials must cry out against this politically divisive behavior. Unfortunately, some of them are more interested in dividing America than helping Americans. Just look at how U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina has been wearing a “Let’s Go Brandon” mask. The phrase is a politically abusive meme among right-wingers that is nothing more than more coded ridicule of Biden. (The gun accessory is stamped with this code: “Letsgo-15 multi Brandon 00000”.)
Stop fomenting division. Start making American work by pulling out the partisan earplugs, listening and compromising. That’s the real American way.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of Charleston Currents, and publisher of the Charleston City Paper. Have a comment? Send to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com.
Magnolia Plantation and Gardens
The public spiritedness of our underwriters allows us to bring Charleston Currents to you at no cost. Today we shine our spotlight on Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, founded in 1676 by the Drayton family.It has survived the centuries and witnessed the history of our nation unfold before it from the American Revolution through the Civil War and beyond. It is the oldest public tourist site in the Lowcountry and the oldest public gardens in America, opening its doors to visitors in 1870. Open 365 days a year, Magnolia offers its visitors splendid tours of nature and history and the role African-Americans played in the development of its award-winning Romantic-style gardens.
- Visit www.magnoliaplantation.com to learn how you can experience a complete plantation experience.
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State to have extra billion in cash in coming year
Staff reports | South Carolina economists are expected to announce that state lawmakers will have an extra billion dollars to spend in the 2022-23 budget thanks to federal pandemic relief funds and better-than-forecasted tax revenue collections.
The state Board of Economic Advisers will release projected revenue numbers during a 1 p.m. meeting on Nov. 10, according to two Statehouse insiders who asked not to be named.
“We’re on a sugar-high,” one analyst observed. “Part of it is due to under-forecasted revenues” because economists widely predicted state revenues to take a big hit because of the coronavirus pandemic. But that didn’t happen. While some businesses across the state continue to struggle with revenue shortfalls, they appear to be the exception, as highlighted by trends such as the state’s booming port activity, the return of tourism, low unemployment and a $1 billion state revenue surplus from the 2020-21 budget year. Read more in Statehouse Report.
In other recent news:
Charleston expected to pick up state Senate seat. A proposed map of new South Carolina Senate lines based on 2020 U.S. Census data moves one district from Richland County to faster-growing Charleston County. The State newspaper reported South Carolina experienced more than 10 percent growth since 2010. The influx of almost 500,000 people pushed the state’s population to more than 5 million with areas along the coast, parts of the Upstate and the area around Charlotte getting big growth. The changes led to the proposal to transfer Senate District 20, currently held by Democratic Sen. Dick Harpootlian, to the Charleston area.
Pandemic update: 5.6 percent positivity. S.C. health officials reported 825 total cases of COVID-19 Nov. 5, with 560 confirmed. A total of nine new deaths, six confirmed, were also reported. With 21,853 tests reported, 5.6 percent were confirmed positive. Meanwhile, Gov. Henry McMaster issued an executive order Thursday that would keep state cabinet agencies from enforcing federal vaccine mandates. More. AP News.
Hometown hero to lead Jan. 1 parade. 2020 Olympic silver medalist Raven Saunders, a Charleston native and Burke High School graduate who achieved international acclaim at the Summer Olympic in Tokyo, will be the grand marshal for the 156th annual Emancipation Proclamation Parade, Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg announced Nov. 4. The nation’s oldest parade commemorating the Emancipation Proclamation, the event has been held on New Year’s Day since 1866.
Big gift from Boeing. The Boeing Company last week announced a donation of $150,000 to the Lowcountry Food Bank’s childhood hunger programs. Its investment throughout 2022 will provide more than 165,000 nutritious meals to more than 23,000 area residents who struggle with hunger, according to a press release. “This amazing donation from Boeing helps us expand our impact toward ending hunger in our community,” said Nick Osborne, president and CEO of the food bank.
Roper hospital to leave peninsula. Roper St. Francis Healthcare, which runs one of the three hospitals in downtown Charleston’s medical district, announced plans Wednesday to move its flagship hospital off the peninsula, citing the threat of continued flooding, earthquakes and other natural disasters.
McMaster wants to use COVID education funds to pay for 2-year degrees. Also this week, the governor said he wants to spend the last $17 million of his COVID-19 education relief money to fully pay for anyone to go to a technical college for two years to train to enter high demand jobs. More: Associated Press.
Labor secretary talks about shipping slowdowns in Charleston. U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said Wednesday that slowdowns and bottlenecks at the nation’s shipping terminals are the result of an ongoing pandemic, coupled with problems like stagnant wages for some workers along the supply chain. He made the remarks while visiting South Carolina’s Port of Charleston, the nation’s ninth-busiest port, and after a roundtable discussion with truck drivers at a union hall in Charleston. More: The Post and Courier, WCIV.
Palmetto State Armory selling accessory with setting aimed at Biden. West Columbia-based Palmetto State Armory is marketing a gun accessory for AR-15s with three firing settings: “F@CK!” “JOE!” and “BIDEN!” The swear word is the safety mode, the president’s first name will fire, and his last name will go full-automatic. More: The State.
Grand jury indicts Murdaugh, Smith in Labor Day weekend shooting. A grand jury has indicted Alex Murdaugh and Curtis Edward Smith in connection with Murdaugh’s shooting over Labor Day weekend. More: The Post and Courier.
- Want more headlines every business day that are like this? Visit our friends at SC Clips.
Looks forwards to seeing Johns’ show
To the editor:
Thank you for writing about the Jasper Johns shows. I really, really hope to go!
I became even more interested when reading The New York Times review of Mind/Mirror and Johns’ response to the writer, “Asked about the show, Johns said only, ‘I don’t want to be quoted. These are not my ideas. The show is not my idea.’” Now I really must go.
— Kimberly Keelor-Parker, Charleston, S.C.
Send us your thoughts by email
We love hearing from readers. Comments are limited to 250 words or less. Please include your name and contact information. Send your letters to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com. | Read our feedback policy.
Six columns
Here’s a building in South Carolina with six columns. Where is it? What can you tell us about 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
Last week’s mystery, “Bold building,” was a close-up of Philadelphia City Hall, reportedly the nation’s largest municipal building with more than 1.4 acres of floor space. The ornate building, constructed over 30 years starting in 1871, is located smack dab in the middle of the city.
Congratulations to these readers who identified the building: Jean Prothro and Jay Altman, both of Columbia; George Graf of Palmyra, Va.; Brian Carey of Charleston; Maryjane Islan of Summerville; Brian Cox of Richmond, Va.; David Lupo of Mount Pleasant; and Geoff Woodard and William Hulcher. (Please remember to send us your hometowns.)
- 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.
New exhibition showcases landscape prototypes
Staff reports | The City Gallery on Prioleau Street will feature an exhibition that focuses on the unspoken connections that hold communities together. Reservations are required, but the exhibition is free. The show runs through Dec. 19.
Called Prototype for a Landscape, the show offers more than 50 new works by artists Alice Keeney, Mary Stuart Hall and Kate Hooray Osmond, who explore themes of power, transcendence, and generation within our land.
Art pieces that range from small black-and-white photographs to large , bright prints show portraits of healers, agricultural field maps, celestial constellations, and molecular forces to reveal the deeper threads that bind us to our land and to each other.
According to a press release, “the show reflects a shared humanity and reveals that there is much more to a landscape when we consider the connections beyond what can be seen.”
Also on the calendar:
Holiday Festival of Lights: 5:30 p.m. to 10 p.m, Nov. 12 through Dec. 31, James Island County Park.. Visitors can drive through the impressive three-mile light spectacle with more than 750 illuminated displays. The festival also includes other holiday activities like train rides, marshmallow roasting, a climbing wall and more. There also will be a Winter Wonderland, which features the area’s largest holiday sand sculpture made from more than 50 tons of sand. You and your family can also explore the shops, an enchanted walking trail and the amazing dancing light display. Tickets It is recommended that visitors purchase tickets in advance online.
North Charleston art show: Through Nov. 24, Park Circle Gallery, 4820 Jenkins Ave., North Charleston. Mount Pleasant painter Brad Carroll and Johns Island artist Lee Garrard will be featured in this exhibition of paintings by the City of North Charleston Cultural Arts Department. Admission is free. The gallery is open 10 a.m. to 6 pm. Wednesdays through Fridays and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
Elf the Musical returns: Dec. 1-19, Dock Street Theatre, Charleston. The popular musical, sold out in Charleston in 2019, returns for several holiday performances by actors at Charleston Stage. Based on the 2003 film starring Will Ferrell, the musical tells the story of Buddy the Elf who is transported from Santa’s Workshop to New York City. Click here for times and tickets, which range from $32 for students to $36 to $75 for adults..
Winter Wonderland exhibit. Through March 27, 2022, Lowcountry Image Gallery, The Charleston Museum, 360 Meeting St., Charleston. This exhibit showcases colorized photographs of remarkable snow days captured by residents of Charleston dating to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. More on tickets and hours.
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.
- For more events, see this calendar.
Farmers markets
Closing in November
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. More. Closes Nov. 20.
Charleston Farmers Market: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m., every Saturday, Marion Square, 329 Meeting St., Charleston. More. Tentative closing Nov. 27. Holiday market to open temporarily in December.
Closing in December
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. Closes Dec. 18 with holiday market.
Open year-round
West Ashley Farmers Market: 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., every Wednesday, Ackerman Park, 55 Sycamore Avenue, Charleston. More.
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.
Sea Island Farmers Market: 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., every Saturday. Charleston Collegiate Campus, 2024 Academy Rd., Johns Island. More.
Goose Creek Farmers Market: 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., every Saturday, 519 N. Goose Creek Blvd., Goose Creek. More.
- 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.
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