Burnin'

I think he’ll be to Rome
As is the osprey to the fish, who takes it
By sovereignty of nature. -Shakespeare

Our local power provider, Palmetto Electric Co-op, is offering the community a chance to learn more about majestic raptors in our midst.

For years electric transmission towers have served as nesting homes for the migratory Osprey. As you drive across the Intracoastal Waterway to Hilton Head Island, you can spot the Ospreys congregating on the towers during the spring and summer months. Another tower—in Palmetto Electric’s own backyard—has also served as home to Osprey since 1988.

Each spring our feathered friends return to reside high atop the communications tower that overlooks Palmetto Electric’s Hilton Head Island operations center. This year new residents have taken over the nest and are settling in for the summer. Join Palmetto Electric in our second Osprey season as we get a bird’s-eye view thanks to a Web camera mounted nearby.

Osprey, commonly known as a “seahawk,” live to be 20 or more years old. They mate for life and migrate to South America and back every year. Their diet is 99% fish.

Click here for Palmetto’s Osprey Blog. Or here to hear the Osprey’s call.

Port Royal is a charming community tucked into the marsh between Paris Island and Beaufort. It has an historic downtown like Beaufort, Bluffton and Savannah. Hilton Head doesn’t offer this, and it’s a flaw in their carefully-crafted design, in my opinion.

See more Port Royal on Flickr

One of our favorite restaurants in the area, Bateaux, recently relocated to historic Port Royal from Lady’s Island. Today, we ventured over to try Old Towne Coffehaus and McPhearson’s Serious BBQ, both of which were excellent.

We walked around a bit and saw lots of For Sale signs on homes and business properties. We also saw a new development going in, and evidence of others. Port Royal, like Bluffton, is being discovered. Marshfront living is alluring, there’s no doubt about that.

Before heading back to this side of the Broad we motored up to Boundary Street to find Higher Ground in its new location. Of course, my shoe radar went off and it brought me in direct contact with a pair of Keen’s in my size at 50% off retail. Who can resist a bargain?

Interestingly, there’s a new microbrewery in town in the next retail bay over from Higher Ground. Brewer’s Brewing Co. is a 7 bbl, 90 seat brewpub and claims to be a green operator. I ordered a Brickyard IPA and was impressed with the intense hop profile. Brewer’s says it’s one “for all you hop heads out there” and it is.

p.s. While drinking iced espresso at the Coffeehaus, I picked up the front page of today’s Charleston Post & Courier and smiled when I saw my friend Phil Sellers there. The paper is interested in his CityTrex startup, as well they should be.

Fall Saturdays in South Carolina are known for big hits and rough play. But not in January. January is more genteel. Except for yesterday. Yesterday, as the votes were counted in the Presidential primary, all the sporting analogies came out.

John O’Connor at The State got in on the action with a racing allusion.

Barack Obama left the Democratic field in his red clay dust Saturday, easily winning South Carolina’s first-in-the-South Democratic presidential primary.

Second place finisher, Hillary Clinton jetted off to Nashville, wanting to put South Carolina behind her, quick like. Despite his third place finish in the state he won four years ago, John Edwards pledged to continue to fight for those with no health insurance, the poor and those worried about their jobs.

“Your voice will be heard in America and it will be heard in this campaign,” Edwards said.

Obama supporters, such as former Gov. Jim Hodges, said the margin of victory bodes well for later states. Obama’s win, he said, cannot be written off as Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 S.C. caucus victories were. Sadly, for Bill Clinton, he did suggest just that yesterday afternoon, mid-route.

“It was a first round knockout,” Hodges said. “(Jackson) didn’t win like this. Nobody’s won like this.”

BONUS CLICK: Obama’s victory speech from Columbia, SC.

As a South Carolina resident and periodic voter, I’m sorely disappointed that I will not be able to cast a vote for Charleston native Steven Colbert in the upcoming Democratic primary.

According to MTV, the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party shot the funny man down on November 1, despite the fact Colbert paid the $2,500 filing fee necessary to get into the race.

Colbert’s bid was voted down 13-3. Using random criteria such as whether the candidate was recognized in the national news media as a legitimate candidate and whether he’d actively campaigned in the state, the committee put the kibosh on the Colbert bid.

One of those who voted in favor of certifying Colbert was South Carolina Representative and social-work administrator Gilda Cobb-Hunter. She said having Colbert on the ballot would be a good way to bring a national spotlight on issues of concern to the Palmetto state. “Also, quite frankly, I think we — and I mean elected officials and party officials — take ourselves a bit too seriously and I think an injection of humor would have added to the process.”

According to Wonkette, one of the humorless ones is Waring Howe, who said, “Over my dead body will Colbert’s name be on the ballot.”

A recent poll of likely 2008 voters showed that in his short time in the running, Colbert was coming in at 2.3 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, which put him in fifth place above Governor Bill Richardson (2.1 percent), Congressman Dennis Kucinich (2.1 percent) and former Senator Mike Gravel (less than 1 percent).

Colbert said on his show recently, “ABC News says my campaign is ‘no joke.’ I ask you, is anyone saying that about Richardson or Biden?”

Yemassee—Hundreds of sightseers got an eyeful on this crisp November weekend, as history and architecture buffs from as far away as Virginia and Florida made their way to the rural northwest corner of Beaufort County. The reason for their journey? Auldbrass, one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterworks and his only project in the Lowcountry.

see my entire Auldbrass Flickr set

Wright started work on Auldbrass in 1939 and continued to improve the project until his death in 1959. The plantation–as all such properties are known in these parts–was commissioned by an industrial engineer from Michigan, C. Leigh Stevens. After Stevens’ passing, his daughter lived on and maintained the property for 20 years, before selling it to a group who used it as a hunting lodge.

Modern day Auldbrass began in 1986 when Joel Silver, the famous (and rich) Hollywood producer came on the scene. Silver hired Eric Lloyd Wright, the legend’s grandson, to help restore the place to its original magnificence. The pair had previously joinded forces to restore Wright’s “Storer House” in Los Angeles.

Thanks to Silver’s generosity, the public is invited to see the property once every two years. The showing is coordinated by Beaufort County Open Land Trust.

The town that helped end school segregation offered Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a backdrop Thursday to offer a variation on a familiar theme: the two Americas.

“We still have two school systems in America,” he told a group gathered in the library at Scotts Branch High School. “We have one for the affluent and one for everybody else.”

Edwards’ remarks came in the town that spawned the Supreme Court ruling that, in 1954, ordered the desegregation of schools. It was part of a daylong tour of S.C. counties known as the “Corridor of Shame” for their impoverished schools and economies.

Edwards pushed a litany of remedies for failing rural schools. Among other things, he would offer universal preschool, a bonus of up to $15,000 to teachers in needy schools, and a new “teaching university” he compared to West Point. It would offer a free education to those willing to commit to teaching.

[via The Charlotte Observer]

Palmetto Bluff is so Hollywood. A couple of years ago, Oscar attendees received free vacations at the exclusive May River resort. Now, the property is benefitting from free advertising care of the CBS daytime soap opera “The Young and the Restless.”

On the sopa, characters Nikki and Victoria Newman are busy developing fictitious “Clear Springs,” a community taking its cues from the very real Palmetto Bluff.

Palmetto Bluff gets this free publicity in exchange for providing the show with artwork to use as a prop, which is a pretty sweet deal considering product placement deals can run into the millions of dollars.

Tom Gardo, a spokesman for the Inn at Palmetto Bluff commenting on incremental business said, “It’s been great for us.”

Crescent Resources, a unit of Duke Energy, developed the property. The Inn at Palmetto Bluff is run by California-based Auberge Resorts.

[via The Island Packet]

According to The Beaufort Gazette, St. Helena farmer Sara Reynolds, 56, introduced her newly certified organic produce to the public Wednesday at a new market off U.S. 21 behind Gullah Grub restaurant.

photo by Bob Sofaly

The market is still in its early stages, but organizers hope it will include other local farmers interested in growing produce using fewer chemicals.

From noon to 5 p.m. Wednesdays at the market, Reynolds will sell an array of organic seasonal produce including tomatoes, cucumbers, okra, cantaloupe, watermelon, bell peppers and yellow squash for $15 a box.

The mixed produce boxes are roughly enough to add to recipes to feed a family of three for a week and must be reserved in advance.

For more information search Local Harvest, an online directory of organic farms, farmers and farmers’ markets.

The South Carolina Department of Agriculture is embarking on a branding campaign to benefit the state’s farmers and rural communities.

From the official Press Release:

The new Certified SC branding campaign was designed to stir-up state pride and loyalty, and change South Carolinians from consumers into advocates and customers who ask for and prefer Certified SC Grown products – driving the demand for the quality, diversity and availability of homegrown products and contributing to rural economic development for the state.

According to The State, the campaign is being paid for with a one-time $600,000 allocation from the state Legislature.

The effort comes at a time when consumers are growing savvier about the food they eat and demanding more information about where it comes from and how it’s grown. Recent bouts with contaminated spinach, peanut butter and pet food have placed the issue on the national and international stage.

[UPDATE] Here’s another post I made about the state’s economic development needs, which are plentiful. South Carolina’s unemployment rate was 5.8% in April, 2007—one of the worst in the nation.

Ware County, GA fire blanketing Jacksonville, FL on 4/29/07

We experienced darkened skies in Bluffton today, but I doubt it was anything like what JAX went through on Sunday (and continues to go through).

[via WTOC TV in Savannah]

photo by Kristin Goode

In yesterday’s paper, David Lauderdale of The Island Packet dropped in on softshell crab season at the Bluffton Oyster Factory. Lauderdale is a seasoned reporter who cares for the subjects he covers and the real life impact his work can have. Thus, he carefully introduces a native species to the human population.

We’re lucky to still have white bellies, red liners, busters and jack ups around here.

They rake around in brackish Lowcountry waters, performing a springtime ritual not visible from the hill, where all the new neighborhoods are starting to spit tainted runoff into the wetlands.

At this time of year — usually around Easter — the white bellies on female blue crabs start showing red lines. That means they’re about to molt — “bust” their hard shells, jack them up and then pull themselves out of their safe, crusty shells, eyeballs and all.

For a few hours their dull gray shell is soft like sponge, their orange snapping claws limp as noodles. If pulled from the water at the right moment, they’re a delicacy sought the world over.

Note how Lauderdale introduces the whole web of life and personal responsibility message in his second paragraph. He’s a pro.

Ben Turner, owner of Native Guide Tours took us on a two-hour May River kayak excursion yesterday. It was a great way to learn some things about the local environment. For one, Ben says pet waste is the biggest threat to the river at the present time. He said people think golf courses are the worst offender, but they’re not because the fertilizer they use for the most part drains back into course holding ponds (by design).

We saw dolphins actively feeding throughout the paddle. Ben explained how the dolphins stun fish by slamming into them with their sides. We also watched as dolphins worked together to corral fish up against sand bars and the river’s banks. At one point Ben said, “Dolphins are all muscle and teeth,” negating the Flipper image we like to hold onto (even as adults). We also saw a stingray, ducks, a variety of seabirds, osprey, oysters, Spartina grass and pluff mud.

At the end of the trip Ben mentioned that the May River had a Triple-A rating when he was growing up here, but it has since slipped to an A rating. He claimed the May needs the help of legal professionals at this time. He said local environmental group Friends of the River does a good job executing its educational mission, but their work needs to be complimented by the threat of litigation to keep unchecked development from ruining the quality of life in Bluffton.

Island Packet columnist and long time Lowcountry resident, David Lauderdale, unloads in his front page opinion piece today. He says Bluffton’s natural beauty makes it a unique place to live, and that it’s wrong to apply the same standards here that are relied upon in “Anywhereville, U.S.A.”

Here’s the essence of Lauderdale’s argument:

In the past five years, Beaufort County has issued more than 10,000 building permits in greater Bluffton, and the town of Bluffton issued more than 3,400. Too few people oversaw the environmental impact of all this construction.

Our dear, wacky Bluffton has been turned into a verb. People now refer to unchecked growth as getting “Blufftonized.” Getting Blufftonized means too much, too fast. It means developers set the pace. It means years of citizen outcry goes largely unheeded. It means sitting in traffic. It means do-it-yesterday growth takes control when local governments need to say, “Do it our way, or hit the highway.”

We need the same things today that were asked for a decade ago: a limited-access bypass, secondary roads, interconnected neighborhoods, parks, and a throttle on the rate of growth so it is timed to the availability of roads, schools and parks.

We need to plant tens of thousands of oak trees all over Okatie. We need a land-buying program for Bluffton.

We need strong enforcement of the laws and regulations already on the books.

Personally, I’ve never seen anything like Bluffton. The pace of building is astounding. When we moved here just over two years ago, I said in jest that soon there would be an interstate running from downtown Bluffton to downtown Savannah, replacing the tree-lined two-lane roads. Having taken those roads to and from Savannah yesterday, I can see that my “joke” is fast becoming reality.