Fresh History

Welcome to my blog about Charleston, South Carolina. A place proud with history, beauty, and art. Sometimes we feel a call, to be, to go, to do. I felt that about Charleston many years ago upon the discovery of a large trunk of letters and photographs about the Carolina Lowcountry, written by my grandmothers, cousins and aunts. I also felt the call to be an artist, even when I was in my teens, when my favorite haunt was a tiny bookstore on an old street in Asheville, where I was living and attending an all girls boarding school. I can remember being deeply moved by poems, by art, even then. Our ancestors are a part of who we are today. The African American culture has understood that I believe more than my own, and have recognized the presence of the ancestors in the everyday, perhaps a practice brought from the traditions from Ghana and Angola. I have been called to this task, to tell some of the stories of this place, not only so I can remember, but so that we will continue to make and tell our own stories. Today I will begin with some that surround these weathered cobbled streets in the French Quarter of this glittering holy city.