Hutchinson House
Posted in architecture, Arts & Culture, Charleston South Carolina, Gullah, South Carolina History
A June birthday as Wonder Woman.
This is a poem written to me 10 years ago, by the poet Chuck Sullivan © Zen Matchbox 2008, Rag Street Press. Worth remembering.
Chance Meeting Its Match
for Charlotte
Sheldon Church Ruins
I remembered you
before I knew you
before I knew you
were the most beautiful
question to the trick
answer of my heart
I remembered you
before I knew you
before I spread
my narrow hands
to gather to me
your moveable feast
of spices and sweets
of which I ever will sing
of how, “… I on honeydew
hath fed and drunk
the milk of Paradise.”
I remembered you
before I knew you
before I dared to enter
your body’s delicate drowsy
humming before I would be
wet in the fully yes
murmur of your soul’s flowing water
I remembered you
before I knew you
before the fingered little miracles
the fiery illuminations
of your touch
its match struck
unexpectedly in the darkness
surprising the dreaming candle’s
wick with a burning dancing kiss
I remembered you before I knew you
before I knew you
before my eyes felt
the dark-charmed silk
of you dressed in the quick-study
of your shadow’s welcome
dwelling in barest lavish sketch
Art’s empress in the doorway
Wonder Woman framed like the soul
arrayed within the body
making light of the darkness
around me as we met upon the intimate
threshold of our first perfect chance
meeting its match of our blood burning
in the spilled pulse of our Valentine’s fire
Posted in art, Poetry, women, Writing
The Hutchinson House on Edisto Island
I am thrilled to announce, today that the Edisto Open Land Trust has purchased this amazing place. Thank you, Jenks Mikell, for relaying the good news!
Oh, God of Dust and Rainbows/ Help us to see/that without the dust the rainbow/Would not be. – Langston Hughes
This red-roofed handbuilt house on Point of Pines Road was built about 1885 by Henry Hutchinson for his bride, Rosa Swinton. Today the skeleton of this house still stands. In the spring the house is covered with flowering wisteria, and all you can see from the road now is a purple haze, the color of indigo. It is slowly being reclaimed by the earth.
According to the South Carolina Department of Archives and History this is the oldest identified house on Edisto Island associated with the black community after the Civil War.
“Henry Hutchinson… according to a local tradition, built and operated the first cotton gin owned by a black on the island, from 1900 to 1920. He was born a slave in 1860” (and was the son of James…
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Whitney Plantation in Louisiana. A Slave Museum.
Blue House ©2015 C.Hutson Wrenn
My good friend, Joseph McGill sleeps in Slave Dwellings all over America. His Slave Dwelling Project bravely shines a steady light on history that has been largely untold.
He posted a piece by the Smithsonian today about Whitney Plantation which is a museum devoted to slavery in the U.S. South that is preserved in Whitney Plantation Historic District near Wallace, Louisiana, in St. John the Baptist Parish.
The museum opened on the plantation property in December 2014. The following are some excerpts from the Smithsonian piece, written by Jared Keller. “The 15-year restoration effort was backed by John Cummings, the local lawyer and real estate mogul who purchased the land from a petrochemical company and invested $8 million of his own money into restoring the property and developing the museum “When you leave here,” he told the New Orleans Advocate, “you’re not going to be the same person who came in.”
That is the key to how the Whitney Plantation is unlocking the grim story of America’s greatest shame, a tale too often masked by a genteel preservationist approach to plantation history that has pasted romantic Gone With The Wind wallpaper over slavery’s appalling reality.
©2013 Charlotte Hutson Wrenn
“Often, plantation exhibits were established for those who lived through the Civil Rights era and yearned for a less complicated time,” says Ashley Rogers, director of museum operations. “And that’s an easy thing to accomplish when you have a ‘chandelier’ tour. Where the previous focus at plantations has been on the house and the culture of Southern gentility, things are changing.””
And the Whitney is taking the lead. “We care about the Big House, but it’s not about that,” says Rogers. “This is a slavery tour.” The Whitney Plantation is explicitly not a rosy exercise in Southern nostalgia. The grounds contain imaginative exhibits and original art works, such as life-size sculptures of children to symbolize the thousands of children who died while in slavery. Here is the amazing Smithsonian article with photographs, about Whitney Plantation called Why @Whitplantation is America’s Auschwitz. It is arresting.
Posted in architecture, Arts & Culture, Gullah, travel
Roots of the Spirit, Charleston and Edisto Island
Happy Easter, 2016
“Draw, preachuh, draw/ Draw roun’ duh haltuh/ Draw preachuh, draw/Draw til the break ob day.” – Draw Lebel, Shouting Spiritual Lyric sung on Edisto Island. (published in the book, The Carolina Low-Country, 1932)
Charleston is nicknamed the Holy City. That is a pretty hefty responsibility. But honestly, the city is one of few that I know of in the United States that is defined by a low lying city skyline that boasts more church steeples than tall banks, or business structures. Joseph Campbell teaches that one can tell what runs a city (what is the city’s mythology?) by looking at its tallest buildings.
Charleston began as a city of tolerance. It was one of the few cities in the original thirteen colonies to provide religious tolerance, albeit restricted to non-catholics, embracing the Dissenters who rebelled against the Church of England, French Huguenots, Quakers, Baptists and Jews, who were…
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Hutchinson House Edisto Island
©2016 Charlotte Hutson Wrenn
This is a painting from a photograph by Walter Sanders, originally published in Life Magazine in an article on segregation in Alabama and Edisto Island. The painting is 7″x 5″ and for now is not for sale. Giclee prints will be available soon.
The Hutchinson House on Point of Pines Road, Edisto Island, SC was built by Henry Hutchinson around the time of his marriage to Rosa Swinton in 1885. It is the oldest house identified with the Black American community on Edisto Island after the Civil War. Hutchinson was born a slave in 1860. According to local tradition, he built and operated, from c 1900 to c. 1920, the first cotton gin owned by a Black American on the island. Hutchinson lived in this house until his death in 1940.
– from http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/charleston/S10817710151/
The Light. Happy Solstice!
Day 12. The Light. $99. no tax, free shipping. Thank you so much for honoring this Twelve Day project with your eager support. So…cheers to the places in our worlds that bring us light.
Light & Love,
Charlotte
Posted in art, Arts & Culture, beauty, Green, spirituality
