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 BEAUTIFUL BLUE: Hydrangeas are as much a part of the Lowcountry as pluff mud, and you're invited to spend a Sunday afternoon walking and talking among the hydrangea gardens at Rosebank Farms with Sidi Limehouse, a master hydrangea grower and farmer. From 4 p.m. to 6:30 p.m., Sidi will conduct tours for a limited number of guests followed by wine and appetizers at his home along the Haulover Creek on Johns Island. Several garden areas will be featured on the tour, which is accessible either walking or driving. Tours will be held four consecutive Sunday afternoons, May 29, June 5, June 12 and June 19. The cost of the tour and refreshments is $10 per person and advance registration is required. Reservations are taken on a first-come, first-served basis and may be made by calling the farm office at 768-0508. Photo by Marsha Guerard. |
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MAY 23, 2011 -- A group of community members have joined together in a new initiative to collectively address children who have been exposed to and affected by domestic violence.
Last month, in honor of Child Abuse Prevention Month, Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson and Dr. Elizabeth Ralston from the Dee Norton Lowcountry Children's Center, announced the initiative, which unveiled 30 community recommendations for action to be addressed by a newly established multi-disciplinary committee. Research shows that as many as 15 million children witness domestic violence each year. Not only do these children experience significant physical, mental, and emotional harm, they also are more likely to become involved with the criminal justice system in the future.
"Violence breeds violence. We must take action to protect our youth and help them grow to be healthier, responsible adults," Wilson said. Domestic abuse tears apart the family unit through violence, power and control and children often are innocent pawns in the dynamics of these relationships. We as a community must recognize the criminal nature of these acts when children are involved and we must work to identify solutions that will address the needs of these families.
The newly formed committee, ranging from health care providers to social service case workers, law enforcement officers, prosecutors, victim advocates and service providers, will develop guiding principles and plans of action to improve the response by agencies when children are involved in, witnesses to, or exposed to incidents of domestic violence. "This is an issue that deserves our community's full attention and we plan to facilitate successful change through this focused committee of professionals," Ralston, executive director of the Lowcountry Children's Center, said. We hope this initiative will help stop the vicious cycle of domestic abuse, and together we plan to take a stand against this invasive community problem
MAY 23,
2011 - On paper and on the stump, "privatization" of parts of
government has a great appeal to proponents of less government.
But a word
to the wise. Based on experiences in other states, be careful. You might
just get less than you want. In recent
weeks, Gov. Nikki Haley has been toying with ideas to privatize mental
health care for 120 sexual predators and about 200 mentally ill patients.
She's also asked for suggestions on the merits of having a private company
run the state's school bus fleet. The rhetoric
- put faith in the private sector to offer services more efficient than
that nasty, old government can ever do - may sound good. But in reality,
turning over the keys of state services to private companies or partnering
with them through creative strategies isn't working that well everywhere. Just last
week, The
New York Times
reported that privatized prisons in Arizona offered no real savings,
or in some cases, cost $1,600 more per inmate than government-run prisons.
With South Carolina's per-inmate cost being the lowest in the nation,
it's hard to see how turning over prisons to outsiders would save money.
[Not to mention that having for-profit companies keep track of prisoners
could be a security risk.] Other examples
that highlight privatization pitfalls:
Respected
government analyst Richard Greene, a principal with Barrett and Greene,
Inc., of New York, urged caution for states considering privatization. "There's
no reason to assume that the private sector can do anything so much more
efficiently than the public sector -- and that it can make a profit and
deliver the service just as well," he said. Sometimes, he suggested,
the public sector can do a better job, in part, because it doesn't have
to make a profit.
He said any government really needed to do three things before moving ahead with privatization of services:
If South
Carolina's leaders keep flirting with the idea of privatizing some services,
it's probably wise first to take the evaluative baby step of setting up
a blue ribbon Privatization Task Force to look realistically at which
state services might be better run by outside vendors. Then it should
do cost-benefit studies to see if privatized services would save money
and be effective here. Only when officials have more than textbook, knee-jerk
political rhetoric should the state move further.
Three local women have been honored by the Trident United Way's Women's Leadership Council. This year's winners are Amy Kovach as the Behind the Scenes Hero; Barbara Kelley Duncan of Carolina Youth Development Center as the Non-Profit Leader and Mary Thornley of Trident Technical College as the Role Model.
Amy Kovach is a marketing, sales and communication executive with 17 years of industrial manufacturing expertise. As a community volunteer, Amy has dedicated time, talent and treasures to organizations such as Trident United Way, serving as a volunteer on several committees, a Day of Caring facilitator, and as a workplace campaign coordinator. Amy serves the Metanoia Community Development Corporation as a Young Leaders mentor and on the annual Jubilee planning committee. She is currently chair-elect of The Education Foundation and a board member of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce where she leads the Leadership Charleston Steering Committee. Amy, her husband Chris, and their three daughters Leah, Lindsey, and Lacey moved to Charleston from Cleveland, Ohio, in 2008.
Barbara Kelley Duncan has served as CEO for Carolina Youth Development Center since 2003, and serves on the boards of the New Morning Foundation and the South Carolina Association for Children's Homes and Family Services, and the National Freedom Schools Committee for the Children's Defense Fund. She is a member of the Charleston Rotary, the Mayor's Commission for Children, Youth and Families in Charleston, and previously served as chair of the Mayor's National League of Cities Youth Task Force. She is a recipient of numerous awards including the Luminous Award for Women of Distinction, Raritan Valley Chapter of the Links, Inc., and the 2008 Charleston Regional Business Journal Influential Women in Business award.
Dr. Mary Thornley has been president of Trident Technical College since 1991. She holds a doctorate of education in curriculum and instruction from the University of South Carolina; a master of arts in teaching English from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and a bachelor of arts in English and French from Mars Hill College, N.C. She has received numerous awards and recognitions including the Joseph P. Riley Leadership Award from the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, the Shirley B. Gordon Award of Distinction from Phi Theta Kappa, and the Southeast Region Chief Executive Officer Award from the Association of Community College Trustees. The Women's Leadership Council received nominations for these awards from the entire community. A nominating committee, composed of members of the Women's Leadership Council, made the final decision on these three women. The Women's Leadership Council membership is composed of women who contribute at least $1,000 annually as an individual or $2,500 annually as part of a couple to Trident United Way. More than 500 women comprise the council and influence nearly $2.5 million in contributions annually to Trident United Way. Community Foundation honors Dr. Theodore S. Stern A key meeting room at the new Coastal Community Foundation Center in downtown Charleston has been dedicated in honor of one of the Community Foundation Founders, Dr. Theodore S. Stern.
The Theodore S. Stern Meeting Room is part of the newly constructed Community Foundation offices at the corner of Rutledge Avenue and Huger Street. It is a place where donors, nonprofits, civic leaders, and staff come together to discuss community issues and how to address them using local philanthropy and resources. A proclamation honoring Dr. Stern was presented and signed by 38 individuals who attended a recent dedication luncheon making the room and occasion both personal and special for Dr. Stern and his family who were present. Stern, a past president and longtime member of the Rotary Club of Charleston, was among several Rotarians who founded Coastal Community Foundation in 1974; he was also an organizer of the Spoleto Festival and served as chairman of the board from 1977 to 1985. Noted bookstore to close this week The sour economy of the last few years hasn't been kind to local independent bookstores.
So it comes with great sadness to share that a favorite local bookstore, Ravenous Reader on James Island, is slated to close Saturday after 17 years of business. Located the last five years in a brick red building at 792 Folly Road, the store operated for a dozen years in a nearby grocery store complex. The shop will be open this week from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. with the remaining books in stock at 50 percent off. The store's last day is Saturday, when it will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Contact the store.
The Charleston Renaissance was a multifaceted cultural renewal that took place in the years between World Wars I and II. Artists, musicians, writers, historians, and preservationists, individually and in groups, fueled a revival that reshaped the city's destiny. Such organizations as the Charleston Sketch Club and the Charleston Etchers' Club, the Society for the Preservation of Spirituals, the Jenkins Orphanage Band, the Poetry Society of South Carolina, and the Society for the Preservation of Old Dwellings provided opportunities for groups to foster artistic expression deeply rooted in Charleston's past. Many individuals, largely natives, were responsible for shepherding these organizations: Alice Ravenel Huger Smith and Elizabeth O'Neill Verner; Augustine T. Smythe and Herbert Ravenel Sass; DuBose Heyward, John Bennett, Josephine Pinckney, and Julia Peterkin; Susan Pringle Frost, Alston Deas, and Albert Simons.
The Charleston Renaissance benefited from a large number of books, many illustrated with paintings and prints by local artists, as well as documentary photographs. A seminal volume was The Dwelling Houses of Charleston, South Carolina, published in 1917 and consisting of house histories by D.E.H. Smith accompanied by picturesque drawings by his daughter, Alice Smith. Ten years later Albert Simons and his partner Samuel Lapham issued the lavishly illustrated volume The Early Architecture of Charleston. Both books instilled a sense of pride in Charleston's architectural past and stimulated the historic preservation movement. Spurred by these individuals, Susan Frost, and others active in the preservation society, the municipal government in 1931 passed the nation's first preservation ordinance and established the Board of Architectural Review to oversee all demolitions and changes to structures in the historic district. That same year the spiritual society issued The Carolina Low-Country, a compendium of essays on plantation life, with an emphasis on spirituals. These and the many other books published at this time served to document Charleston's cultural heritage, and because they were accessible and easily transported they served to disseminate the charms of the Lowcountry to a broad audience. One story, more than any other, brought national attention to Charleston: the tale of Porgy, by DuBose Heyward. It appeared in 1925, first as a novel, then as a play on Broadway in 1928, and finally in its best known form, as the folk opera Porgy and Bess in 1935. Although an art colony per se never emerged, artists created images that served to attract visitors to the area. Initially, the artwork of Alice Smith, Elizabeth O'Neill Verner, Anna Heyward Taylor, other local aspirants, and Alfred Hutty (a transplanted northerner) emphasized picturesque views that veiled the reality of a city that had seen brighter times. The country gradually became Charleston-conscious, and as a result tourists began to come, especially in the spring, to "America's Most Historic City." Tourism was enhanced by improved transportation, not least of which was the opening of the Cooper River Bridge in 1929, which facilitated automobile traffic with the north and provided makers of sweet-grass baskets direct access to passing motorists. Hotels such as the Francis Marion and the Fort Sumter were built in the early 1920s to accommodate the influx of visitors. Azalea festivals, musicals, and house and garden tours were offered as entertainment but also served as fundraisers. Former plantations, such as Magnolia Gardens and Middleton Place, welcomed tourists to their newly restored gardens. Most of the visitors were northerners, and many of the wealthier ones purchased derelict area plantations, which they restored and transformed into hunting preserves. Among the more notable figures who came to coastal Carolina in the 1930s were Solomon R. Guggenheim, who loaned to the Gibbes Museum of Art his collection of nonobjective painting for its inaugural exhibition; Archer M. and Anna Hyatt Huntington, who acquired various Allston family plantations to form Brookgreen Gardens; and Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin Kittredge, who transformed the old rice fields at Dean Hall plantation into Cypress Gardens. Through words, melodies, pictures, and even a dance step, the idea of Charleston was broadcast across the nation. Although local residents realized that Charleston was undergoing a dramatic revitalization, the phrase "The Charleston Renaissance" did not get widespread usage until the 1980s, although the word "renaissance" occurred occasionally in newspaper accounts. The designation coalesced in 1985 when the Catfish Row Company sponsored a production of Porgy and Bess on the folk opera's fiftieth anniversary and the Gibbes Museum of Art mounted an exhibition, Charleston in the Era of Porgy and Bess.
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Five steathy cell towers Today's list is a little different -- a visual list provided by our friends at STEALTH, a North Charleston company that conceals cell towers in clever ways. Check out how they camouflage wireless antennae and towers in places you might not expect:
"If the English
language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with
fur."
Upstairs at McCrady's: 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. sets, May 25 to June 10, McCrady's, 2 Unity Alley. Jazz Artists of Charleston announces its 4th Annual JAC Jazz Series, regular sets at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. featuring some of Charleston's premiere jazz musicians, along with regionally, nationally and internationally acclaimed artists. The series will include two special events, Holy City Homecomin' featuring Art of the Song and The Charleston All-Stars. Detailed ticket and program information are online. (NEW) Lowcountry Local First Happy Hour: 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m., May 26, Surf Bar, 103 West Cooper Ave., Folly Beach. Kick off the Memorial Day weekend, and meet other local business owners and managers. Slavery
in the Movies: Myths and Misconceptions: 6:30 p.m., May 26,
Mount Pleasant Regional Library, 1133 Mathis Ferry Road. This fascinating
presentation shows how the portrayal of slavery in movies has changed
over the years. Presented by Donel Singleton and Nate Johnson of Fort
Sumter National Monument. Pro Bono Law Seminar: Immigration Law: 6:30 p.m., May 26, Dorchester Road Regional Library, 6325 Dorchester Road. Robert A. Condy will lead the seminar with a lecture followed by an open discussion. Shakespeare
Alive: 6 p.m., May 28, 4 p.m., May 29, Gage Hall, 4
Archdale St., Charleston. The Charleston Chamber Opera presents "Shakespeare
Alive!" as part of the Piccolo Spoleto Festival's Spotlight Concert
Series. Join Puck from "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on a journey
through some of opera's most intriguing settings of Shakespearean works.
Interwoven with narration by actress Terry Bell-Aby with piano accompaniment
by musical director Steven Morris, the concert marks the debut of Savannah,
Ga., soprano Rebecca Patrick Flaherty, Columbia, S.C., soprano Mary-Therese
Heintzkill, and Boston-based tenor Kevin Hayden, with the return of Greenville
Light Opera's baritone Christian Elser, and Charleston's own mezzo soprano,
Lara Wilson. Tickets are $26 and are available through OvationTix, Piccolo
Spoleto, or at the door. CALENDAR: ONGOING AND SOON My Father, Myself: Creative Resilience in Aging: 6:45 p.m., May 31, Main Library, 68 Calhoun St. Can art save us from the ravages of dementia, or transform the experience of aging? Jerald Winakur discusses how art can help the aging and their caregivers cope with the changes in their lives. Winakur is the author of Memory Lessons: A Doctor' Story which chronicles his life as a geriatric doctor and his experiences caring for his father, who suffered from Alzheimer's disease. A book signing will follow the lecture; books will be available for sale. Chamber's Annual Meeting: 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., June 2, Francis Marion Hotel. The Charleston Metro Chamber's annual meeting will feature Scott Lillie on Inside the Magic: Leadership Principles from a Life at Disney. Cost: $179 for non-members; $129 for members. Register. North
Charleston Arts Festival: The city of North Charleston's Arts Festival
continues through June 13 with dozens of lectures, concerts, displays
and performances. Admission to these events is free. Go
online for a complete listing. A few highlights:
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Often
when governments consider privatizing functions, they do so in a tight
fiscal environment to save money. But that often puts them in a weak negotiating
position, according to a 
