History's Lost Moments
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Simple, but elegant was the way that Clare Boothe Luce ordered her surroundings. The second wife of Time, Life publisher Henry R. Luce, she was mistress of a 59-acre estate in Stamford, Conn., and a 7,000 acre plantation in South Carolina. Her personal stationery was embossed with only "The House" for the Connecticut property and "Mepkin" for the Carolina place. Enough said - for the receipt of a billet-doux from Mme. Luce incited scenes of cozy gatherings of well-heeled New Yorkers mixing with ...
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Simple, but elegant was the way that Clare Boothe Luce ordered her surroundings. The second wife of Time, Life publisher Henry R. Luce, she was mistress of a 59-acre estate in Stamford, Conn., and a 7,000 acre plantation in South Carolina. Her person ...
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
One of the more sensible minds to come out of the early 20th century was Gustav Stresemann, the chancellor of the Weimar Republic. "Just as the British subject loves England despite her faults, so we must insist that all Germans who were part of the ...
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Driving south on U.S.-17 is pure excitement for history lovers. Well, one does have to be "in the know," for very little of the history is marked. However, for those who care to read the treasured lore of the Lowcountry - or even tap a few keys on th ...
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
How quickly our heritage is slipping away. Each day the obituaries toll the passing of more souls of the "greatest generation." With each passing of these grand dames and gentlemen goes a pocket load of Carolina cultural lore that will never be known ...
Tuesday, January 03, 2012
In the realm of confidentiality, hardly anything exceeds the patient / physician relationship. The physician's code of ethics is one of the most sacred trusts in our society. Yet, even that almost inviolable trust has its limits. When the doctor's pa ...
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
"I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity," so said John D. Rockefeller, the chairman of Standard Oil. Old man John D. Rockefeller, age 78, was not invited by President Woodrow Wilson to be a part of a secret committee in the winter ...
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Locating a marker honoring John Locke, the English philosopher who wrote the first constitution for Carolina, is a frustrating assignment. It stands to reason that Charleston's connection with the preeminent political philosopher of the 18th century ...
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
Wherever you turn for news these days you are confronted with the most polarized political views we've had in this country in four generations. It's as if no one - no one reads the early documents associated with our nation's founding. In times past ...
Wednesday, December 07, 2011
"It is what it is," has become an oft repeated but meaningless idiom in our ineloquent culture. When words fail us or when matters become too complex to explain, we fall back on our idioms. With The Citadel being in the news lately and much of its pr ...
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
In the protracted debate over slavery, Northern intellectuals were surprised that Southern congressmen rarely resorted to Aristotle's well-known defense of slavery found in that sage's "Book 1 of Politics." Time and again defenders of the "slavocracy ...
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Call us what you may, but we southerners are a romantic lot. Perhaps it is because so many of us hailed from the hinterlands - Scotland, Wales, Cornwall or Ireland - that we're drawn to the turf and the sound of thundering hooves and the sight of tho ...
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
"If you aren't in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?" T.S. Eliot wasn't speaking of the Bretton Woods Agreement when he penned those words to a friend, yet, the phraseology seems apropos as the world's economies are perched perilously ...
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
Sordid, salacious and the ultimate betrayal of trust is how the Hamptons, Prestons and the Mannings viewed the matter. Maligned, framed and too gentlemanly to utter the truth is how James Hammond saw it - "it" being the scandal of the century that in ...
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Greed, lust, pride, arrogance and envy are a sampling of character flaws on public display in Jason Ryan's "Jackpot: High Times, High Seas, and the Sting That Launched the War on Drugs" (Lyons Press, 2011). If you have not read this new work of nonf ...
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Archie Butt had company this week. The Archie Butt is the semi-submerged hull of an old troop ship that you see from the Ravenel Bridge as you near Mount Pleasant. Archie Butt's ferrocement hull has lain in the pluff mud for 82 years and it's an icon ...
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
The first export to the Lords Proprietors from the colony of Carolina were four large logs, one each of yellow pine, red cedar, white oak and black cypress. That event happened almost 340 years ago, and Charlestonians still value lumber as the area's ...
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
War is one of life's crucibles -- a dangerous time of testing where opponents contest for blood and treasure. National interests and strategic objectives often get forgotten in the fog of battle. These desperate struggles of kill or be killed, winner ...
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Not to worry if you're a southerner who has no knowledge whatever of the 1864 presidential election. For our ancestors then, the U.S.A. was a militant rival and its politics were contemptible. After all, the South had elected Jeff Davis to a six year ...
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
To set the record straight, French botanist - Charleston native - Andre Michaux did not willingly conspire against the government of the United States with regard to the Louisiana Territory in 1786. Michaux was, however, the unwitting dupe of that sl ...
Tuesday, August 09, 2011
Oldest continuing school board in the country taps former Moultrie News news editor
A few weeks ago an honor was bestowed upon Sullivan's Island resident and Summerville native, William (Bill) Lawrence Walker. Readers will recall that Bill Walker wa ...
Tuesday, August 02, 2011
Did you miss the headline on Monday, July 25 - the one touting gold at an all time high? "(Reuters) - Gold rose to fresh record high on Monday as talks over lifting the debt ceiling appeared to be stalling just days before the Aug. 2 deadline, raisin ...
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
For Southern boys growing up in the 1950s and early '60s, the only television that interested us was Fess Parker's Daniel Boone, the goofy Maynard B. Kreps of Gilligan's Island, and Marlin Perkins' amazing Wild Kingdom. Episodes from those TV shows f ...
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
When civilians talk of the art of war, the menial business involving the pick and the shovel pale in public interest to that of the cannon, the musket, and the sword. How many monuments have been dedicated to brilliant military engineers? Ask a care ...
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Anyone who thinks that the Battle of Gettysburg is all that Abe Lincoln had on his mind in July of 1863 needs to think again.
Lincoln was so concerned in the last week of June that he ordered more Federal troops posted around Washington, D.C. Old Ab ...
Wednesday, July 06, 2011
Just when you're sure you've heard everything, there comes a story to top it all. There are few things that thrill us more than hearing about sunken treasure and the discovery of old shipwrecks long forgotten. Ever since Jacques Cousteau captivated u ...
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Luces of Mepkin were no ordinary couple
Crosswalk improvements on the way for Park West
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Developers submit design for old Family Dollar property
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