By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | House Speaker Jay Lucas is a man on a mission to reform South Carolina’s failing education system for the first time in more than 30 years.
“We have left generations of children in poverty behind in this state and every year that we don’t act [on education], we’ll continue to do that,” said Lucas, a powerfully built Hartsville Republican whose tired eyes mask a palpable intensity.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | The ghosts of our past are boiling in a cauldron that is spewing fury and distress across America like lava jolting from a volcano.
And just like climate change, many deny or ignore how different segments of our society are colliding, getting hotter and hotter week after week. There’s an increasing sense that America is out of control, preferring dysfunction and confrontation to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Pick up a newspaper in many towns in South Carolina and you’re likely to find something missing: a robust editorial page.
Over the last few years, editorial pages have been dying as big media organizations with an eye to profit made cut after cut, relegating many pages of opinion to shadows of their former selves.
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | If you want real education reform, give a free book a month to every child under five in South Carolina.
It’s a common-sense, quick, practical, affordable and proven investment that can make more of a difference than most of the fiddle-faddle in thick policy papers. It’s low-hanging fruit. And it’s easily achievable because there’s a delivery network already in place. It’s something Gov. Henry McMaster and legislators like GOP House Speaker Jay Lucas and Democratic Sen. Vincent Sheheen should embrace now.
A reader sent in this red-roofed Lowcountry-style house, which makes sense because it’s located in the Lowcountry. But what and where is it? Hope this one isn’t too hard. 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: Our previous mystery, “It’s not a resort,” sparked some interesting guesses, such as a golf clubhouse on Kiawah and a visitors’ center in Berkeley County. But the image was of the main laboratory building at the Baruch Institute in Georgetown County …
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | South Carolina will again play an outsized role in picking the next presidential candidates for U.S. voters. It’s where the political rubber hits the road.
In large part, the story is told by the numbers …
By Don Campagna, special to Charleston Currents | During World War Two, Charleston was homeport for 23 Army-operated hospital ships and was where 75,000 of those most grievously wounded in the European and African campaigns returned to America.
But now, Palmetto Railway, a division of the S.C. Department of Commerce, is in the process of demolishing buildings on the National Register of Historic Places that are located in the Charleston Naval Hospital Historic District in North Charleston.
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 …
By Andy Brack, editor and publisher | Two people can look at a painting or watch the same football game and see two completely different things.
One person, for example, might see little more than an abstracted bull, horse and people in Picasso’s Guernica. Another might be moved to tears over human suffering.
Staff reports | A new study by a College of Charleston professor could tell us more about the shape of water. Physics professor Mike Larsen is working on a project that has allowed him to measure the three-dimensional statistical structure of water drops in clouds, according to a press release. These cloud droplets grow by the diffusion of water vapor before collisional growth turns the tiny droplets into drizzle and rain.
Also inside: Chloe Knight Tonney has been selected as Trident United Way’s next president and CEO, the organization announced early this morning.
We Can Do Better, South Carolina! (2019) by editor and publisher Andy Brack offers incisive commentaries on the American South, politics, the common good and interesting South Carolina leaders. Available exclusively for Kindle for $7.99. A paperback version will be ready soon. Learn more.
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