Recently I drove out to Berkeley County, South Carolina to visit Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist monastery near Moncks Corner.

The area dates back to the family of one of the Lords Proprietary of South Carolina way back in 1681, and has been in a monastery since 1949.

When I went, I was too late to see all of the spring colors, but what I could not escape was all of the green. It was as if even the air was green and you could actually breathe in the color. It was the deepest, richest green I’ve ever seen.

It’s a long way out, but I think it’s a good place to go if you need to just be alone for a while and talk to God, or meditate, or even feel a bit sorry for yourself. It happens to all of us at some point or another, you know.

Here are a couple of quick photos, but they don’t do the green justice. I also included a pair of black and whites of some statues…I think they look better without the color.

If you’ve read my posts about Maymont in Richmond, you know that I like Victorian homes. One of the most famous ones in Charleston is right on the battery and it is known by its address: No. 2 Meeting Street.

Built in 1892, it was a father’s gift to his daughter. Today, it is a respected Bed & Breakfast and I’d love to get a look inside some day. In the meantime, here are a few pics that I hope you’ll enjoy.  It’s hard to get good shots of the home without invading anyone’s privacy, so I did my best.  I think you’ll get an idea:

Yes, Charleston has an Apple Store (complete with a Palmetto tree out front) and today was the big Grand Opening.

Unlike fellow Charleston blogger Jared, I was not one of the first 1,000 to get in.  (My dogs had a vet appointment.)

By the time I arrived there late this afternoon, there were two police officers out front making sure that order was still being maintained.  It was, and while I was in the store browsing around, they left.

It’s nice to have an Apple Store in town.

It’s also a little dangerous.

We’re nearing the one year anniversary of the Sofa Super Store fire in Charleston. I suspect that most of my readers, no matter where they live, have at least heard of the June 18th inferno at a furniture store in the West Ashley section of town. Nine city firefighters died in that fire, and we’ve spent the last eleven months in a near-constant state of finger pointing and name calling about who is to blame.

Yesterday, the city’s fire chief, Rusty Thomas, announced his retirement effective June 27th. Thomas has been the focus of the majority of the criticism. He is a 32-year veteran of the city’s fire department. His father was a firefighter. So he literally grew up knowing firefighting would be his life. Thomas is a nice guy who clearly cares about his men and felt the loss of his nine colleagues personally. He’s the kind of guy that most everyone — except his harshest critics — just wants to like.

Prior to his announcement yesterday, there were many mixed feelings among his supporters and critics alike. Some on both sides felt that he shouldn’t be held to blame for the deaths. Others on both sides felt that he should be fired immediately for the chain of problems that they say created the scenario in which the deaths occurred.

A detailed government report on the fire itself and the events of the evening was just released today, and as anticipated, it pulls no punches about a series of failures that night: Continue reading “Battling Over Blame”

Patrick’s Place received some sad news that involves local television as well as the world of local writers in the Lowcountry:  author and former broadcaster Red Evans is fighting cancer and was placed in hospice care just before Christmas.

Originally known as “The Rockin’ Redhead” on local radio, and then as a local television journalist, Evans, 75, calls himself a three, possibly four-career guy:

“Thirty years in broadcasting, as The Rockin’ Redhead and then as a TV journalist. I’m a three-career guy, maybe even four. A radio personality when I was young, spinning Elvis, Fats, and the drifters. I was the Rockin’ Redhead, a wisecracking, adlibbing deejay with voice mimics and catch phrases. Alas, I outgrew all that and got serious, turning to news which occupied my focus for the next twenty years and eventually led to lobbying Congress in Washington, DC and public speaking. Fifteen years later, after I retired I began my fourth career, writing fiction and playing with my grandchldren in Charleston, SC where I reside with my wife of 50 years.”

That description of Red, written by Red, is found on his blog, which he just began back in November, after publishing his first novel, On Ice, an unusual road trip story about a corpse being kept literally on ice in a kiddie pool, a farm boy and a flatulent dog.

More on the novel can be found at the publisher’s site, incidentally.

Upon learning of his diagnosis, according to Evans’s son, Mike, Red didn’t abandon his sense of humor.   “He said his cancer now has cancer and that the tumors in his body are all trying to join up with each other.”

I’ve never met Red officially, though I know we were recently in the same building when he stopped by to talk about his novel during a guest segment.

Another local author, Dave Moulton, told me the other day that Red read a passage from his book during last month’s meeting of the local writers group I’ve been attending.  Unfortunately, I missed that session.

Please keep Red and his family in your thoughts and prayers.

Keep fighting, Red.

My parents came to town today to visit, and we made plans to drop by the Coastal Carolina Fair, a regional (versus a state) fair held each year in Ladson.

I’ve only been to Ladson one other time in my life, and it was last year, when I went to the same fair. If things had happened that time the way they did today, we’d have never made the trip.

Fresh off their hour-and-forty-minute trip into town, we chit-chatted at home for a few minutes before piling in a car bound for the fairgrounds. I had Googled the address and I knew that I had two choices when it came to an exit off of I-26: I could either take 205B or 203. I chose 205B, because it looked like a more direct route.

As we were driving merrily along, we passed one of those lighted electronic signs that are used to relay messages to motorists. The sign read, “Fair Traffic, Use 205B.”

All the better, I thought to myself. My choice seemed to be the one they wanted me to make. (They being the highway patrol, of course; I doubt seriously whether the fair organizers cared which exit we used, as long as we showed up.)

So we took exit 205B, as instructed, and found ourselves right on Highway 78, which is where the fairgrounds is. There was just one problem: there was massive amounts of traffic. So much traffic, actually, that my mom, who’s easily the most patient of the three of us, said she was ready to turn around and forget before we got into the fairgrounds.

We inched along for a couple of miles. It was literally an hour and four minutes before we got into the fairgrounds! From my front door, we had reached the appropriate exit in about ten minutes.

I grew up with the South Carolina State Fair in Columbia each year. The fairgrounds for the State Fair are located right across the street from Williams-Brice Stadium, where USC plays football. There are, for reasons I’ll never understand, days in which USC has a home game on one of the Saturdays that the fair is in town. As you can imagine, tens of thousands of cars in the same place trying to attend one of the two events can create tremendous traffic jams.

But I’ve never waited an hour in that traffic. And the traffic in Ladson involved far fewer cars.

Sunday morning after church, I stopped by my favorite coffee shop for the far-too-expensive caramel macchiato (made with low-fat milk and sugar-free ingredients) and I asked a city cop sitting at a table why traffic was so bad. He says it’s because people who live there don’t want the road expanded, despite the fact that it clearly can’t handle the traffic load.

If that’s true, maybe they ought to move the fair somewhere else. I’d be a lot more likely to return next year if I knew that kind of traffic delay wouldn’t be the “norm.”

It is 1709 miles from the heart of Charleston to Santa Fe. The distance is notable because today Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico ordered flags in his state flown at half-staff to honor the nine firefighters killed Monday night here in the Holy City.

In a press release today, Richardson said:

““Firefighters are trained to make the ultimate sacrifice — to walk into the worst danger and to risk their lives without hesitation,” said Governor Bill Richardson. “Early this week, nine South Carolina firefighters ran into a burning building to protect the lives of their fellow citizens trapped inside. These firefighters taught us the true meaning of the words courage, honor, and duty.”

“The citizens of New Mexico are grateful for the actions of these selfless heroes and it is with great sadness that we extend our thoughts and prayers to the families and friends that were left behind.”

For a lot of people, a big swimming pool in the backyard is a sign of success. For me, I could do without the swimming pool. I’d much prefer something like this:

While my parents came to Charleston, my mom and I walked down Meeting Street in the downtown historic district, and we stopped at No. 16 Meeting Street, Calhoun Mansion.

We didn’t tour the inside of the home…we’ll do that during a future visit. But we did walk around the Japanese water gardens on the property. I’d love to have a home with this much green space…rich, fragrant, healthy green space. Imagine how at peace one could become if this is what waited right outside your door!

I made a visit recently to Magnolia Plantation in the West Ashley area of Charleston. The site was founded by the Drayton family way back in 1676. It’s actually the oldest public gardens in America.

Everywhere you look, you see azaleas, magnolias, camillas, irises and countless other blossoms. Walking down the paths, you’re met with some of the sweetest fragrances you’ll ever encounter.

I saw this gazebo across a pond as I was chasing an egret for a photo. The egret wasn’t in a cooperative mood, but the gazebo sat perfectly still.

I love the beach…with conditions. First, there should be no one else around but me. There’s nothing like a nice, quiet beach with nothing but the sound of crashing waves to listen to.

When I find a scene like that, along with an empty chair facing out towards the blue horizon, it occurs to me that I might have stumbled upon the best seat in the house.

On St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to avoid the drunken masses with a trip to the beach. It’s hard to believe that I now live less than a half-hour from the ocean. (I hope I’ll still like this fact after Hurricane season!)

Here’s a nice shot of the boardwalk leading to the beach on Sullivans Island. I like the way the wooden boardwalk seems to just disappear into the sand dunes.

Here is another image from my visit last month to Middleton Place Plantation, located along the Ashley River in Charleston.

The house shown is all that remains of a grand three-story home built in 1741 by Henry and Mary Middleton. In 1755, two companion two-story buildings known as flankers were constructed on the north and south sides of the home. The north flanker housed a library of more than 10,000 volumes, paintings and other artwork. The south flanker was used by visitors and also contained the plantation’s business office.

Unfortunately, the main house itself was burned by Union soldiers on February 22, 1865. Henry’s grandson, also named Henry, had signed the Ordinance of Seccession to begin the Civil War, and the Union soldiers went on a rampage in retaliation, destroying as much as they could of the buildings and beautiful gardens on the property.

By the end of the Civil War, the south was in financial ruin, and it would be four more years before the south flanker, the least damaged of the three structures, could be restored by the Middleton family; this then became their primary residence. The Great Earthquake of 1886 leveled the ruins of the other two buildings; you can still see piles of original bricks half buried where the home stood.

Walking inside the building is something of a shock for someone who had grown accustomed to Maymont House in Richmond, one of the earliest homes there to be built for electricity. Obviously, there was no electricity available for homes built in the early to mid 1700s, but it is amazing how dark the inside of the home appears, even in daylight. Candles were very much a requirement. Also, unlike the polished wood floors and carpeting of Maymont, the floors are more bare. It’s hard to imagine living back then…I don’t think I’d have liked it that much, but it’s still a fascinating place to visit.

Over the weekend, I visited Middleton Place Plantation in Charleston. Besides what’s left of the original home, the 200-acre site is also famous for its sprawling gardens. At the moment, it’s mostly camellias that are in bloom, and there is a wide variety of them. Some are white, some are a brilliant scarlett, and others have petals of both colors.

This one was one of my favorites.

I was walking around in downtown Charleston, just a block from Market Street, and I came upon several row houses being renovated. Then I took a look across the street and found a pair of pleasant pastels waiting for their closeup.

You can see the second house, the orange one, through the porch of the house in the foreground. Somehow I was reminded of the original Miami Vice and Don Johnson, but I didn’t see him anywhere nearby.