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Issue
4.40 | Monday, Aug. 6, 2012 TODAY'S
FOCUS CURRENTS FOOD
+ WINE GOOD
NEWS HISTORY
ALSO INSIDE :: FEEDBACK: Welch wins tickets :: SPOTLIGHT: Piggly Wiggly :: BROADUS: Ribbon-cutting :: CALENDAR: This week ... and next :: THE LIST: Two beach tips :: QUOTE: On sportsmanship |
ABOUT US CharlestonCurrents.com offers insightful community comment and good news on events each week. It cuts through the information clutter to offer the best of what's happening locally. What readers say WHERE IS IT?
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AUG. 6, 2012 -- It seems as though we have been planning for the 2012 PGA Championship for as long as we can remember - and now it's hard to believe it's finally here!
Despite having earned more than our fair share of awards and accolades, landing the PGA Championship stands out as a truly unique achievement. Hosting an event of this caliber is a singular opportunity for the Charleston area to shine on the domestic and international stage as never before! The Charleston Area Convention & Visitors Bureau is taking full advantage of this unique opportunity to showcase the Charleston area to people who can influence future travel to our region. The bureau is hosting two familiarization (FAM) tours for highly qualified corporate and association meeting planners. With the international appeal of this event, we also are hosting two additional FAM tours for two wholesale package tour operators from Germany and the United Kingdom. We've also been providing background information, video and photography of the area, as well as planning itineraries for the visiting media. We'll also be hosting the entire media corps for dinner each night during the week of the Championship. The most
obvious impact of the Championship will be its effect on our area's economy.
According to the PGA, the 2012 PGA Championship is expected to have a
$193 million economic impact on South Carolina, with $92 million in direct
spending by over 50,000 visitors, $26 million in labor income necessary
to produce the tournament, and another $75 million in media exposure generated
by over 150 hours of television coverage.
No less
important is the Championship's impact on visitor perception of the Charleston
area. Hosting one of golf's four majors -- and the only one ever played
in the state of South Carolina -- speaks volumes about the quality of
the Charleston experience. When considered along with annual events such
as the Family Circle Cup and Cooper River Bridge Run it brands our region
as one of the south's premier sporting destinations for both spectators
and participants. Interestingly, the bureau is working with a golf group
from China that is coming specifically for the Championship and is staying
an additional six days afterwards just for the opportunity to play The
Ocean Course! It may
come as a surprise that the biggest impact of the Championship may well
be the residual effect we will feel in the years to come. Just as being
named the Number 1 U.S. city in the 2011 Condé Nast Traveler Readers'
Choice poll generated an incredible amount of publicity, hosting the PGA
Championship is an honor that further solidifies and enhances the Charleston
area's growing reputation. You can count on this distinction being leveraged
by the bureau to attract leisure and convention visitors for many years
to come. Just as Kiawah Island still reaps the rewards of hosting the
1991 Ryder Cup, the entire Charleston area can expect to feel the positive
impact of the 2012 PGA Championship well into the future.
AUG. 6,
2012 -- O.K., so here's a grand idea: For the time of the second biggest
shopping period of the year after Christmas, enact a law for a tax giveaway
to lure people to stores when they're going to go anyway.
Well, it's
already a done deal called the state's annual back-to-school sales tax
holiday, the three-day weekend that just passed during which families
saved 6 cents in sales tax as well as extra local sales taxes on exempt
school-related items, like paper, pens, pencils, clothing and shoes. Oh,
and other things that don't sound so school-related: towels, blankets,
bed linens, shower curtains, adult diapers, bandanas, ski boots, corsets,
furs, hunting vests, nightgowns, prom dresses, Scout uniforms, skin diving
suits, tuxedos and waders. Ladies
and gentlemen, this sales tax holiday weekend was nothing but a gimmick.
It was designed by politicians to make you believe you are getting a real
big tax break when, in fact, you're getting peanuts. Just look
at the total amount of revenue the state doesn't receive because it doesn't
collect sales taxes this weekend: $3 million, according to the state Department
of Revenue. That's 1/25th of 1 percent of $6.6 billion in overall state
tax revenues. While $3 million is nothing to blink at, it amounts to less
than $1 per person in the Palmetto State. (Remember, the holiday applies
to anyone in the state, not just families with school-age children, so
there's no reason that Granny can't head to the big box store and load
up on towels and new bedroom slippers.) What rankles
about the sales tax holiday from a practical perspective is that it's
just dumb. People generally are going to buy required school supplies
and clothing for their children anyway. With the holiday, all of those
people are going to crowd stores to get a small break -- when retailers
may already be lowering prices to do the same thing that the state is
trying to do with the holiday: lure people into stores to spend more money.
Around
our house before the holiday, we bought about $60 in school supplies for
a third grader. It was worth the $3.60 in lost tax savings to be able
to cruise stores without a gaggle of people. As best as we can tell, the
only real beneficiary of the sales tax holiday are computer stores where
people can save about $30 on purchase of a $500 computer. But there
are other reasons that make the sales tax holiday a bad idea. Second,
the holiday is just short-term relief and does little to address the regressive
nature of sales taxes for the other 362 days of the year. Economists say
sales taxes are inherently regressive because they require poorer people
to pay a larger share of their income on staples like food and clothes.
Third,
the holiday has a measure of unfairness in it. While the savvy retailer
may lower prices to attract more people for a big sales weekend, others
may decide to leave prices the same -- or make them slightly higher --
because they figure people will get a break anyway. In other words, the
savings that you get because of the state's holiday may, in fact, mask
a higher price kept by a retailer and you might end up paying more in
the long run. Fourth,
what about people who are out of state during the tax holiday weekend?
They don't get the benefit of the break. For them, that's unfair. It's far
better for the state to make comprehensive sales tax reforms -- like removing
some of the $3.1 billion in special interest sales tax exemptions -- to
make things better for all consumers. If lawmakers could get rid of just
$400 million in exemptions, for example, they could lower the 6 cent sales
tax rate by a penny for the whole year. That's a much better gift to taxpayers
than one long weekend of breaks.
So, what's on your mind? So drop us a line and tell us what's on your mind or what's bothering you? Or send us other thoughts. We love getting input from you. If you have an opinion you'd like to share (150 words or less, please), send your letters to: editor@charlestoncurrents.com. We look forward to hearing from you!
Founded in 1947 in Charleston, Piggly Wiggly Carolina Company proudly serves customers at more than 100 stores throughout South Carolina and coastal Georgia. Piggly Wiggly offers the finest quality meats, cut to order by skilled, in-store butchers, more local produce than anyone in the state, and freshly prepared deli foods that satisfy the Southern soul. The Piggly Wiggly family provides legendary customer service, delivered every day by the Employee Owners of our 100 percent employee-owned company. By using their Pig Card, customers earn Greenbax that returns incredible value by offering free gas, free groceries, free gift cards, and many other opportunities to cash in and save. Piggly Wiggly remains deeply committed to investing in the communities we serve by supporting not-for-profit organizations of all missions and sizes to enrich the region’s quality of life. Piggly Wiggly’s roots run deep in the Lowcountry, and Mr. Pig invites Charleston Currents readers to invest in our local economy by shopping The Pig! More: http://www.thepig.net.
AUG. 6, 2012 -- It's hard to imagine shrimp and stone-ground grits not being on local restaurant menus, or heirloom tomatoes from Johns Island, or chicken raised as close by as Walterboro. But that was the status quo 20 years ago in Charleston.
This month, a special 20th anniversary edition of the book will be released, and Taylor, who now lives in Bulgaria, will head back to the States for a book tour that will bring him home to Charleston in early October (see box). Reminiscing recently by phone from Bulgaria about how things have changed since 1992, Taylor said, "I cannot tell you how thrilled I am to see all this taking off and being a part of daily life again -- not just the stone-ground grits, but the heirloom vegetables -- all of it. I'm thrilled that people have started serving shrimp and grits again. I'm also very proud that I was a trailblazer. I just wanted to educate people."
Taylor was living in New York in 1984 and was in Newport, Rhode Island, when he stumbled on a handmade book of recipes from antebellum plantations in Berkeley County. What struck Taylor most about the book, "Old Receipts from Old St. John's," was that even though he grew up in the Lowcountry, he didn't recognize about half of the recipes. "Had so many Lowcountry recipes disappeared in just a few decades?" he thought. So he started researching what had happened, not just to the recipes, but to the heritage of knowledge -- the almost instinctual parts of Lowcountry cooking that everybody "just knew" and that were captured in those old receipts. "The farther back I went, the more elaborate the food became, and the more I found that had just disappeared off the charts," he says. "In the 1980s, nobody had heard of rice bread, and it was the daily bread of Charleston for 200 years. People were throwing away the heads of the shrimp. That's where the flavor is -- are you crazy? I wanted to bring this great food back." In 1986, Taylor moved back to the area to open Hoppin' John's, a culinary bookstore that was located on Anson Street downtown. "People visiting Charleston would ask me, where can I go to get real Lowcountry food? I would always tell them, 'You have to come to my house or to the home of a hunter or fisherman who hasn't lost touch with the land or the water and is still eating rice every day as a matter of course -- as a matter of personal history -- because that's what you do.' " A year later, he was asked to give a speech to a Society for Cuisine in America conference being held in Charleston. The research for that speech became the basis of "Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking." Vogue magazine hailed the book as "the best regional cookbook in many years." The New York Times said Taylor's recipes "should be on a National Registry of Great American Food."
Renowned chef, teacher and author Madeleine Kamman summed up the book perfectly: "Excellent recipes accessible to cooks of all levels, research without peer, and a lively, personal writing style make John Taylor's fascinating book the prototype for any serious American regional cookbook." So how did all those recipes and all that home-grown food knowledge get lost in the first place? "The Civil War was the biggest thing," Taylor said. "It took all the men. People lost their farms. People were very, very poor for a very long time. It wasn't until Fritz Hollings came along (as governor from 1959 to 1963) and starting bringing some industry to the state that things started to turn around." Then, to the lingering devastation of the war, add the disappearance of the black cooks who had run the Lowcountry's home kitchens and had so many of the recipes in their heads, and the end of the rice plantation economy, too. "When you stop planting the crop that's the foundation of our cuisine, things are bound to change," Taylor says. Ultimately, what Taylor did was to clarify, focus and renew Lowcountry cooking. "Things had become gloppy. I just tried to make the flavors brighter and clearer," he says. "You know, I've never said my recipes are absolutely traditional. I just tried to use the philosophies of a bygone era." Those are the fresh, local, seasonal philosophies that are on everyone's lips these days. One other thing Taylor is proud of is that he drew attention to culinary history as a field of study. "I've really always thought of myself as a culinary preservationist," he says. "When I was doing all that research, culinary history was a brand new field. Now you can get all kinds of degrees in it. You can do your Ph.D. on the breads of the South." You can
bet such a Ph.D. thesis would include Charleston rice bread. And for that,
we can thank Hoppin' John.
Charleston Stage opens its 35th season at the end of the month with a year-long lineup of nine plays and musicals to be performed at the historic Dock Street Theatre, America's first theatre.
"Dedicated
to the very best in professional theatre, as well as Charleston Stage's
35-year commitment to education, we are pulling out all the stops this
season -- a season we don't want you to miss," said founder and producing
artistic director Julian Wiles. This season's
performances include:
Junior
Naturalist program returns next month Students
across the Lowcountry will be able to get their hands dirty in pluff mud,
pull a seine net, and learn about birds, insects and flowers as part of
the county parks' two-month Junior Naturalist Program that starts next
month.
A counterpart
to the Charleston County Parks and Recreation Commission's adult Master
Naturalist Program, those attending six of eight sessions will be certified
as "Junior Naturalists." CCPRC's
Environmental Education Specialist Rachel Herold introduced the program
in 2011. "The kids had fun making friends and learning about the
Lowcountry, and I really enjoyed watching them grow into confident explorers,"
she said. "I'm looking forward to meeting the next batch of Junior
Naturalists in September!" The program
starts 4 p.m. Sept. 5 with salt marsh investigations at Palmetto Islands
County Park and concludes Oct. 27 at Caw Caw Interpretive Center with
a program on animals. To learn more about the program, its schedule or
to register, go online to the commission's
Web site. If you're
looking to commit an act of good citizenship for one day, the county is
looking for a few good poll managers to staff voting precincts on Nov.
6, election day.
The precincts
where poll managers are needed are located in Edisto Beach, Isle of Palms,
James Island, Johns Island, McClellanville, Kiawah Island, Mount Pleasant,
Ravenel, West Ashley (St. Andrews precincts) and Wadmalaw Island. Poll managers
are paid $120 -- $60 for training and $60 for working on election day.
Benjamin Guerard, the son of John Guerard and Elizabeth Hill, was baptized in Charleston at St. Philip's Church on May 23, 1740. The exact date of his birth is unknown. Both his father and grandfather were wealthy Charleston merchants, planters, and public servants. As such, Guerard enjoyed a privileged upbringing and went to England in 1756 to study law at Lincoln's Inn. He was admitted to the South Carolina Bar on January 9, 1761, and set out to follow in the footsteps of his forebears. On November 30, 1766, Guerard married Sarah Middleton. Their marriage was childless. Guerard represented St. Michael's Parish in the Commons House of Assembly from 1765 to 1768, but spent most of the late 1760s and early 1770s in litigation involving him as the executor of the vast estates of his father and Middleton in-laws. During the Revolutionary War, Guerard lent over {L}20,000 to the state and served in the militia. After Charleston fell to the British in May 1780, Guerard and other prominent Carolinians were held captive on the prison ship Pack Horse. While a prisoner, Guerard attempted to raise funds for the relief of his fellow captives and offered his estate to the British as security. Since the estate had been confiscated, the gesture was rejected by the British but was not soon forgotten by those Guerard had tried to help. Although he maintained a town house in Charleston, by 1778 Guerard listed St. Helena's Parish as his legal residence and the remainder of his public career was associated with this place. Between 1779 and 1786, Guerard represented the parish four times in the General Assembly: three times in the state House of Representatives and once in the state Senate. In early 1783, Guerard was elected governor by the General Assembly, many members of which were ex-prisoners of war. As governor, Guerard pledged to lead South Carolina "from the Calamities of the uncommonly cruel War" into the "Return of the Blessings of Peace." The task he faced was daunting. South Carolina was deeply in debt and its population, stewing in old war animosities and class antagonism, was badly divided. The governor sought to suppress outlaws plaguing the backcountry and to provide "some small relief" for Charleston's poor. He also led the move to incorporate Charleston in 1783. But while taking a conciliatory stand on most issues, other actions made Guerard some powerful enemies. In an address to the General Assembly on February 2, 1784, he attacked the influential Society of the Cincinnati as aristocratic and undemocratic because membership was based on descent through the eldest line from Continental army officers. A year later, the Pinckney-Middleton-Rutledge political faction saw to the election General William Moultrie, president of the South Carolina Society of the Cincinnati, as Guerard's successor in the governor's chair. On April
7, 1786, the widower Guerard married Marianne Kennan and retired to Fountainbleu,
his 1,474-acre plantation on Goose Creek. Their marriage was also childless.
Guerard died on December 21, 1788.
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Two beach tips
especially for this week
But the championship
will affect traffic approaching Kiawah Island, Seabrook Island and the
beach park. If you want to visit Beachwalker Park this week as more than
200,000 people descend on the area daily, you might want to follow these
two guidelines:
The beach park will
not serve as an access point for the PGA Championship. “It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling."
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First Day Festival: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., Aug. 10, Liberty Square at the S.C. Aquarium and Charleston Maritime Center. This community event emphasizes the importance of having kids start the school year right. You can bring nonperishable food to donate, participate in a school supply drive or volunteer. More online. CALENDAR: ONGOING AND SOON (NEW) Annual port briefing: 10:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., Aug. 16. The Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce will host its annual port briefing and tour with updates on the Navy Base terminal site and Union Pier redevelopment. Cost: $75 for members; $150 for nonmembers. Registration closes Aug. 7. More online. Homegrown Concert: Aug. 17-18, Family Circle Magazine Stadium, Daniel Island. Hootie & The Blowfish will host the 10th annual HomeGrown Concert to raise back-to-school supplies for the Charleston County School District. Tickets ($31) are on sale at Ticketmaster outlets. More online. (NEW) 5th annual Bachelor Bid Bash: 7 p.m., Aug. 18, Hippodrome, 360 Concord St., Charleston. The Charleston Jaycees will present this charity bachelor/bachelorette auction to benefit S.C. Jaycee Camp Hope. Live auction begins at 8 p.m., followed by entertainment by the Groove Junkies. Tickets: $25 to $50. More online. (NEW) One woman band: 11 a.m., Aug. 19, Kronic Cafe, 915 Folly Road, James Island. Want to see a singer/songwriter who can play four instruments at one time? Check out Laura Thurston when she offers folk music highlighted by guitar, harmonica, foot tambourine and suitcase kick drum. As she strums out delightful melodies, she gives her songs presence and energy with the strength to capture your attention and lift your soul. NOTE: If you miss the Aug. 19 show, Thurston is scheduled to be at Morgan Creek Grill on Aug. 18 and Awendaw Green on Aug. 22. More online. Yappy Hour: 4 p.m., Aug. 23, James Island County Dog Park. Rawberry Jam will provide live music as dog lovers meet for fun after a long day of work. You and your pup can mingle with friends until sunset. Beverages will be available for purchase. More online. Bird walks: 8:30 a.m. to noon, every Wednesday and Saturday. This is the time of year that a great variety of migrating birds fly through the Lowcountry so what better time to take part in one of the regular early morning bird walks at Caw Caw Interpretive Center in Ravenel. Pre-registration is suggested. Cost is $5. Learn more online. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
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Over
250 credentialed media from around the globe will be here to cover the
Championship in print, on-line and on television. We know from past experience
with two World Cups and the 2007 Senior PGA Championship that the destination
itself quickly becomes an integral part of the media coverage of the tournament.
Whether it's a live shot of shrimp boats plying the waters off Kiawah
Island, or footage of a family taking a leisurely carriage ride through
the historic district, the Charleston area plays very well on TV - both
domestically and internationally. An estimated 580 million households
will be able to tune in to televised coverage of the 2012 PGA Championship,
and the bureau has been working diligently for many months to make sure
the media have everything they need to produce impactful and compelling
coverage of the area. 
Congratulations
to James Island resident Robin Welch for her insightful
Then
"Hoppin' John's Lowcountry Cooking" happened. John Martin Taylor's
game-changing book launched the region's rise to culinary fame, established
our cuisine as distinctive in the South (and the world), sparked culinary
history and preservation as viable career fields, and changed the face
of the Lowcountry. Taylor was all of 2012's culinary buzzwords -- fresh,
local, sustainable, seasonal, heirloom -- two decades before they were
cool.
Mount
Pleasant writer and editor Ann Thrash can be reached at: 
More
than 150 professional actors, singers, dancers, musicians and technicians
will join the company's anniversary celebration with more than 160 performances
from the end of August through April. Throughout the performance year,
more than 12,000 Lowcountry youths will take part in Charleston Stage's
enriching education programs during which young performers and technicians
have the opportunity to learn their craft from working professionals in
a true professional theatre setting.
For
students who are ages 8 to 12, the program invites children to become
naturalists through investigation of the natural world. At sessions held
in parks at beaches and marshes all over the county, they will learn about
the Lowcountry's unique habitats, plants and animals. 
"Poll
managers have a unique opportunity to serve the community, meet their
neighbors and become involved in the democratic process," said Joseph
Debney, executive director of the Charleston County Board of Elections
and Voter Registration.
With
the PGA Championship this week at Kiawah Island, devoted beach-goers might
wonder what's going on with one of the best public beaches in the country.
