Charleston Currents

Features

REVIEW: Delicious!

Delicious! tells the tale of Billie Breslin, a Californian in her early twenties who takes a job as an assistant at the most iconic food magazine in New York. Billie has an unusual talent for identifying spices and combining flavors, which attracts the attention of her new colleagues and culinary acquaintances in the city. When Delicious is surprisingly shut down, Billie is offered a job to stay behind in the magazine’s deserted downtown mansion offices to answer the magazines “Delicious Guarantee” and respond to complaints and recipe inquiries from the public.

by Charleston Currents · 01/04/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Reviews

HISTORY: Emancipation Day celebrations

S.C. Encyclopedia | The tradition of marking the end of slavery with Emancipation Day celebrations began in South Carolina on January 1, 1863—the day the Emancipation Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln declared three million slaves in the Confederate states to be “thenceforward, and forever free.” Since then, African Americans in South Carolina have gathered annually on New Year’s Day to commemorate the “Day of Jubilee” with food, song, dance, and prayer.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 01/04/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

PALMETTO POEM: I heard irises blooming

Al Black: By Al Black

Yesterday, in her voice
I heard a little girl who
walked rows of beans
picking worms from the vine
to plop in a tobacco can

by Palmetto Poem · 01/04/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Palmetto Poem

HISTORY: Joel Roberts Poinsett

S.C. Encyclopedia | Joel Roberts Poinsett was born on March 2, 1779, in Charleston, son of the Huguenot physician Elisha Poinsett and his English wife, Ann Roberts. As a child, Poinsett spent six years in England, where his formal education probably began. In 1794 he entered the Greenfield Hill, Connecticut, academy of Dr. Timothy Dwight but stayed only two years because of his frail health. Returning to England, Poinsett attended private school at Wandsworth, where he excelled in languages.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 12/28/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

REVIEW: It Ended Badly: 13 of the Worst Breakups in History

It is common knowledge that “breaking up is hard to do,” yet Jennifer Wright’s narration of the most extreme relationship collapses in history seems too bizarre to be factual.

by Charleston Currents · 12/21/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Reviews

HISTORY: Spanish moss

S.C. Encyclopedia | Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is a gray tree-borne epiphyte native to the coastal plain of the southeastern United States. As an epiphyte, Spanish moss gets water and food from the air and does not harm the host tree. It is not a true moss but a relative of the pineapple family in the genus Bromeliaceae.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 12/21/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

REVIEW: Mr. Mercedes

Fans of the TV shows Criminal Minds and C.S.I. will thoroughly enjoy Mr. Mercedes. This is the first hard-boiled detective novel written by Stephen King, the renowned author of the horror genre. King sets his novel in present day with flashbacks to the recession and a single event: the day a Mercedes sedan plows into a line of unemployed people waiting to get into a job fair.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 12/14/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, Reviews

HISTORY: The New Deal (part 2)

S.C. Encyclopedia (part 2 of 2) | Aiding the National Recovery Administration (NRA) in effecting business recovery was the Public Works Administration (PWA), which stimulated purchases in construction and related industries such as steel, cement, and lumber. In South Carolina the PWA was synonymous with the construction of public housing at University Terrace, Gonzales Gardens, and Calhoun Court in Columbia and Cooper River Court, Meeting Street Manor, and Anson Borough Homes in Charleston, eighty-seven schools and ten city halls and courthouses across the state, and massive hydroelectric projects at Buzzard Roost in Greenwood County and Santee Cooper in the Lowcountry.

by Charleston Currents · 12/14/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

HISTORY: The New Deal

S.C. Encyclopedia, part one of two| The New Deal was a collection of federal programs enacted between 1933 and 1939 to solve the problems created by the Great Depression. In South Carolina the New Deal brought three R’s: recovery for farmers, bankers, textile mill owners, and small businessmen; relief for the unemployed and destitute; and reform in labor-management relations, banking, sale of securities, and retirement. In the process the New Deal radically increased the role of the federal government in the state’s economy by creating permanent acreage allotment programs, agricultural credit, compulsory minimum wage / maximum hours requirements, protection for laborers who sought to unionize, Social Security benefits, a public welfare system, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to protect depositors, the Federal Housing Administration to expand housing opportunities, and the Rural Electrification Administration to electrify the countryside.

by Andy Brack · 12/07/2015 · Comments are Disabled · Features, S.C. Encyclopedia

PALMETTO POEM: The Christmas Apron

By Marjory Wentworth, contributing editor

Unfolding my grandmother’s apron, tucked
deep in a box of Christmas decorations,
I rub my hands across the wrinkled
cream colored cloth as thin as gauze
and the bright red and blue boxes circling
the hem and see her standing at the stove
wearing her Christmas apron, stirring pots
on every burner, a turkey already roasting
in the oven, plates of gingerbread men
cooling on the counter.