Charleston Currents – Special to Charleston Currents

Articles by: Special to Charleston Currents

Dome inside the refurbished Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, S.C.

FOCUS: Grad students revel in everything Charleston

Staff reports | Looking at Charleston through the eyes of outsiders is revealing.

During Spoleto Festival USA and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival, seven graduate arts journalism students from Syracuse University wrote more than three dozen previews, reviews and stories to connect enthusiasts with the city’s bubbling art scene. Along the way, they noticed things about the Holy City. You might know some of them; others may be novel. Regardless, their observations highlight the depth and breadth of what it is to be in Charleston — for visitors and residents.

1: Charleston green. The color “Charleston Green” has a storied past, one that now makes me wonder about the history of other iconic colors. Whether the murky, dark shade came from mold on dark shutters, degrading paint or color-loving locals fighting against government-issued black paint by mixing it with yellow and blue, it has its place in the city.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 06/21/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Uncategorized

FOCUS, Saul: Why telling the truth is so important

By Dr. Robert Saul, special to Statehouse Report | Truth-telling is an essential skill for personal life, for interpersonal social interactions, for community activities and for governmental decision-making.

This obviously goes without saying, but I would argue that we are suffering from some of the recent ill effects of “less than truth-telling.”

Before everyone starts pointing fingers at each other or at the other political party, let’s settle back and just be honest with each other. Truth-telling can be hard at times (it has consequences) and listening to truth-telling can be hard at times (it can change our thoughts and actions). And it indeed takes a good deal of perseverance.

Truth is not in the eye of the beholder. Truth is a series of facts that often need to be proven or investigated. Truth is not an opinion. Truth is not a series of alternate facts because a series of alternate facts is a series of untruths. The search for truth can be frustrating but eventually leads to the correct way to live and to conduct oneself.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 03/08/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, My Turn, Views

Travel writer Bill Thompson says he's itching to get on the road to places like the Lake District in England. Photo via Unsplash.

FOCUS: Time to plan travel is now says local author in new book

By Bill Thompson, special to Charleston Currents | Feeling claustrophobic? After a year of social distancing and, for many, relative isolation, you could be excused for feeling the walls are closing in.

Thompson

Though the progress of distributing and administering COVID-19 vaccinations has been spotty, those receiving them finally have a chance to take a deep breath and have a glimpse of what life may be like not too far down the road. But no matter how well-appointed our homes or numerous our diversions, the avid travelers among us are bound to be getting itchy.

Count me among them. It’s been a long, if sometimes productive, wait.

I have traveled and written about travel for 40 years. And while I daily count my blessings and good fortune, it does not diminish my eagerness to be on the road or in the skies again, to set foot on another land, in another city, or hike the wilderness.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 02/22/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

Fordham, left, with Campbell, who passed away Saturday. Photo provided.

FOCUS: Remembering Jim Campbell

By Damon Fordham, republished with permission | Mr. James Campbell, who taught adult education with Malcolm X in the Organization of Afro American Unity, has passed at the age of 96.

I learned a lot from this man. Here are some of his gems of wisdom.

“You give a youngster the power of reading and you’ve put the world in his hands. You must read the literature of the world. Then you can sort out what is garbage and what are gems.”

During President [Barack] Obama’s initial campaign, I complained to him about the large numbers of Black people who dismissed his run as folly. He replied, “Damon, you must remember that the experiences of many of our people has left behind a culture of despair that will take much work to overcome.”

by Special to Charleston Currents · 02/01/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus

King during the 1963 March on Washington. Via Unsplash.

FOCUS: Kick addiction of racism with King’s prescription

By John L.S. Simpkins, republished with permission | In what would be his final speech as the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Martin Luther King Jr., spoke of sin, addiction and redemption. After rattling off a litany of the preceding year’s programmatic achievements, including effective economic boycotts led by a young Jesse Jackson and what would come to be known as Rainbow PUSH, King shifted gears.

“And if you will let me be a preacher just a little bit,” King importuned as he shifted from organization man to man of the cloth. He then told the story of Nicodemus, the Pharisee who asks Jesus how he could be saved through a dialogue about the meaning of being “born again” or, as the Greek translation would read, “born from above.”

“Jesus didn’t get bogged down on the kind of isolated approach of what you shouldn’t do,” King explained. “Jesus didn’t say, ‘Now Nicodemus, you must stop lying.’ He didn’t say, ‘Nicodemus, you must stop drinking liquor if you are doing that excessively.’

by Special to Charleston Currents · 01/17/2021 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

PHOTO ESSAY: Botany Bay is a Lowcountry treasure

By English Purcell, special to Charleston Currents | Botany Bay Plantation Heritage Preserve and Wildlife Management Area is a Lowcountry treasure, and its “boneyard beach” is one of my favorite places to photograph.

Opened to the public in 2008, the 3,363-acre Botany Bay tract (map)is a significant wildlife habitat with several equally significant historic assets.

The Wildlife Management Area is also an active archaeological site where the remains of two prehistoric Native American shell rings are being threatened by erosion.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 01/04/2021 · 1 comment · Focus, Good news, Photo Essay

PHOTO FOCUS: 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.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 11/30/2020 · 1 comment · Focus, Good news, Photo Essay

Historians and art enthusiasts believe that when Charleston artist Edwin Augustus Harleston was denied entry to Magnolia Plantation and Gardens, he painted an image of himself in this 1920s panoramic view of the White Bridge at Magnolia, as shown in this close-up view. The bridge, built from cypress in the 1840s, is currently undergoing extensive repair after a mass tree fell on it this summer. A copy of the original Harleston photo is on sale at Magnolia’s gift shop. (Photos by Herb Frazier)

FOCUS: Act of resistance embedded in mysterious Magnolia Gardens photo

By Herb Frazier, special to Charleston Currents | A hand-tinted photograph captures a unique panoramic view 90 years ago of the iconic White Bridge at Magnolia Plantation and Gardens with a glimpse of the pointed cupola of Magnolia’s Main House.

What gives this old-fashioned picture an even more intriguing tinge, however, is a haunting image of a well-dressed artist painted into the photo as a bygone act of defiance against southern racial norms at that time.

Wearing what appears to be a seersucker suit and straw hat, the artist, seated before an easel, is dwarfed by the foot bridge, towering oaks and bushy azaleas in a late 1920s snapshot of America’s oldest garden.

Today, a copy of that original wide-angled view hangs in the sitting room of Magnolia’s Main House where the artist ̶ presumably Edwin Augustus Harleston ̶ would not have been invited for dinner because of his mixed parentage. …

by Special to Charleston Currents · 11/23/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS, Morris: Divided federal government may help economy

By Kyra Morris, contributing editor | History shows the American economy prefers checks and balances. Since 1945, the S&P 500 stock index under a divided federal government has had a 14 percent return whereas under a unified government the experience was 12 percent.

Morris

The 2020 elections are not completely over, yet the probability is for a Joe Biden presidency, a tight GOP majority in the U.S. Senate and a tighter Democratic majority in the U.S. House than before the election as more seats were taken by the GOP. We will have a divided Congress at least for the next two years. Assuming the eventual transition, how will history be written under this administration?

First, political appointments will be meaningful and more competitive, particularly at independent commissions, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission, where personnel is policy.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 11/16/2020 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news, Money, Views

FOCUS: F*ck cancer

By Catherine Brack, special to Charleston Currents | October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and for many, it is pink: Pink ribbons, walks and fashion shows featuring pink clothing, shoes and cocktails. If there needs to be an awareness month to inspire more women to schedule mammograms and have real talks about their health with their doctors, then great. Keep it up.

But if this is about the symbolism of a month or a ribbon or socializing at walks or parties, then that’s nothing but Barbie-fying breast cancer. It desensitizes the public to the reality of breast cancer. It fails to illustrate how difficult this disease is to detect, much less treat.

Breast cancer is vile. It is soul-destroying. It is physically painful. It is an emotional terrorist. It is my reality, every single day.

I talk openly about cancer because I want people to understand the face of cancer. I never wanted this reality. I never wanted the surgeries or scars. I never thought I could be facing death at my age, 51, and yet, here I am. Cancer sucks, but that’s not even close to sufficient description.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 10/19/2020 · 1 comment · Focus, Good news