Charleston Currents

Focus

FOCUS: Wine and cheese are for more than a cocktail party

By Dr. McLean Sheperd | For eons, humans have been enchanted by fine wines and the culinary arts. The spell cast upon us by this delicious duo has inspired us, fed us and nurtured communities around the world for generations. Food and wine alone are wonderful, but together they create happiness — and happiness, after all, is the secret to health and well-being.

Here in Charleston, we celebrate this important connection every year at the Wine + Food Festival, a gathering recognizing that what we eat becomes us. Our skin celebrates with us when we respect the balance between feeding our minds, bodies and souls.

by Charleston Currents · 03/07/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS: Charleston Tells storytelling festival set for March 11-12

Set under magnificent moss-draped oaks, the fourth annual Charleston Tells Storytelling Festival on March 11 and 12 will bring together some of the best national and local storytellers with performances that reminisce about the carefree days of childhood, showcase humorous slice of life moments and transport audiences to significant times in history.

The festival, held at Wragg Square in downtown Charleston, offers full weekend passes for $40 each before March 10. Click link above to find other prices and more info.

by Charleston Currents · 02/29/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS: Be wary when renting a car for any trip

Summer is coming eventually, and you may want to take a last minute trip. Rental cars have become essential for many vacations or business trips, but rental contracts are often misunderstood. Better Business Bureau Serving Metro Atlanta, Athens and Northeast Georgia advises consumers to read contracts carefully before signing.

by Charleston Currents · 02/22/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS: Tales about Lowcountry haints aren’t just for Halloween

By Embe Charpentier, special to Charleston Currents | Consider the last place among your travels that possessed a mythology all its own. Perhaps you heard a Caribbean fable after a Junkanoo parade, were regaled by an Appalachian storyteller or listened to a legend of Marie Laveau’s reign as voodoo queen of New Orleans. When you review the trip in your mind years later, the folklore lives on as intimately as the tastes, sights, and sounds of the region.

Charleston’s peculiar myths left me with an irresistible need to research. Where else do people so actively resist the incursion of the supernatural? Charlestonians paint a porch ceiling “haint blue.” Why?

by Charleston Currents · 02/15/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS: 48 years ago today: The Orangeburg Massacre

By Jack Bass | On the night of Feb. 8, 1968, police gunfire left three young black men dying and twenty-seven wounded on the campus of South Carolina State College in Orangeburg. Exactly thirty-three years later, Governor Jim Hodges addressed an overflow crowd there in the Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium, referring directly to the “Orangeburg Massacre”—an identifying term for the event that had been controversial—and called what happened “a great tragedy for our state.”

The audience that day included eight men in their fifties—including a clergyman, a college professor, and a retired army lieutenant colonel—who had been shot that fateful night. For the first time they were included in the annual memorial service to the three students who died—Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith.

by Special to Charleston Currents · 02/08/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, S.C. Encyclopedia

FOCUS: Meet Teck’s team

Staff reports | With a new mayor comes new staff members who will guide the city. We thought you’d want to learn more about five new senior staff members who will work for Mayor John Tecklenburg to manage the city of Charleston.

Planner Josh Martin and longtime arts executive Rick Jerue will serve as top advisers for Tecklenburg, who reportedly will delegate more projects to them to allow him to keep on top of the big picture and major projects. Martin and Jerue essentially fill roles formerly held in the administration of former Mayor Joe Riley by Lawrence Thompson, who will work through spring in the transition, and Mary Ann Sullivan, who has retired. Rounding out Tecklenburg’s senior team are Jack O’Toole, Mike Whack and Robin Griffith.

by Charleston Currents · 01/25/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS: On Haley’s accolades, raspberries and revisionism

Staff reports | Gov. Nikki Haley earned a lot of accolades last week for moderate comments, particularly on immigration, during the nationally-televised GOP response which she gave following President Obama’s final State of the Union address.

Haley said the country needed to head in a “new direction,” but added that Democrats like Obama weren’t totally to blame for the nation’s problems.

by Charleston Currents · 01/18/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS: What Mayor John Tecklenburg said today

“First, I want to personally thank the citizens of Charleston for this incredible opportunity to serve. It’s a great honor to become Mayor of my hometown — and at the same time humbling and exciting.

“Never before in our city’s history has a mayor taken office at a moment so rich with the promise of a better, brighter future for all our citizens – we must only have the will, and the wisdom, to work together to claim that promise.

Everywhere we look — from West Ashley to James and Johns Islands, from Daniel Island to the Peninsula — we see that promise …

by Charleston Currents · 01/11/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus, Good news

FOCUS: Tecklenburg to be inaugurated today

Staff reports | For the first time in 40 years, Charleston will get a new mayor today when businessman John Tecklenburg takes the oath of office at noon. He’ll be replacing 10-term Mayor Joe Riley, who retires today.

The swearing-in ceremony is set for noon today at City Hall, 80 Broad Street, in Charleston. Nearby roads will be blocked to traffic as hundreds are expected to fill streets to watch the transfer of power. After a reception in Washington Square, Tecklenburg is expected to sign an ethics pledge he made during his campaign, meet with senior city department heads and get to work to build efforts to push completion of Interstate 526.

by Charleston Currents · 01/11/2016 · Comments are Disabled · Focus