Ghosts and specters
From Kenyan Railways to haunted alleyways; your late October Mercury Newsletter
Do you feel it? That nagging uncertainty that comes with living with one foot planted firmly in the arena of “American Gladiators,” the other on the dance floor at “American Bandstand.” We recognize the nagging dichotomy in our lives the minute we roll out of bed and try to determine if we need to turn up the heat or turn down the air conditioning; we must decide if we get one more day in our shorts and flip-flops or if boots and jackets are in order.
We feel that we’re so close to that much-anticipated change of season when we see our calendars filling up with oyster roasts and pig pickings and deer hunts and cocktail parties and the myriad of other social gatherings so important to the lifestyle in our beloved Lowcountry. Then there’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s … and let’s not forget the end of Daylight Savings Time … all glorious opportunities to celebrate with our loved ones. Yet, because the impending mid-term election reminds us of what’s on the line for our future, we’re still wearing our game faces, we’ve got a few more fingers to point, and another nose or two to punch (figuratively speaking, of course) because we’re passionate about what’s next for America. Yes, we’re all feeling a bit like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; Katniss Everdeen and Clem Kadiddlehopper.
In this issue of our newsletter, both faces of our seasonal split personality come out. We’ll begin with week’s “Crab Pot” with one-heck-of-a-tale about an African road trip taken long, long ago by our own ink-stained wretch. Then, we’ll switch gears when Mercury contributor Bill Connor gives us the lowdown on the impending hegemonic catastrophe, followed by guest columnist Todd Atwater’s explanation of the impact of climate lawsuits on our businesses and families.
We’ll end with a fun (but real) ghost story by Charleston native Robert B. Simmons IV and wrap up this issue with everyone’s favorite, Lowcountry Rambler.
Before you dive in, just one last note … this month the Charleston Mercury celebrates its 20th anniversary providing news, information and entertainment to the Lowcountry. It’s you, our readers and advertisers, who have supported us through these two decades who made the journey not only possible, but worthwhile. Stay with us, friends … we’re have more stories to tell.
Crab Pot
The most exotic road trip I ever experienced
By Charles W. Waring III
Sometimes the road element is the smallest part of an adventure, and such was the case when a group of us went from Nairobi to Funzi Island in the early 90s. A friend of a friend had an uncle who operated a tropical paradise resort on Funzi Island, and we were going largely “on the house.” We climbed aboard first-class seats (never buy anything less in the Third World) on the overnight train from Kenya’s capital to Mombasa and chugged along through the Nairobi National Park and beyond, watching a variety of animals at sunset while we were having our self-catered cocktails in our sleeper car.
The Kenyan Railways are not always the cleanest operation, but they offer value in the experience of an East African train ride. When you wake up below Tsavo and think of the man-eating lions and Val Kilmer’s movie, you are near the Shimba Hills with more plains game to view — now at breakfast. I had hoped to see a sable antelope but that was not in the cards. The sable has sweeping antlers and is a very large antelope that remains greatly prized by sportsmen.
A magnificent sable antelope.
Photo by Chris Stenger on Unsplash.com.
If it sounds magnificent, you can take that to the bank; it was one of those cool things that you may still do. However, Funzi Island is off limits for now because it is no longer in operation as a place to stay. The island is now in the hands of an Italian tycoon named Alessandro Torriani; stay tuned, as things change, and a new president of Kenya, William Ruto, is lining up his priorities.
I thought so much of the sable that I had a chap on Nairobi’s Biashara (means business in Kiswahili) Street print up some stationery with the sable at the top, which one of Robert Ruark’s professional hunter protagonists did. Cultural nuances and the history of special places are not lost on me; I do deep dives because I want such experiences to become a part of who I am. So, when we landed in Mombasa, I was keenly aware that I was in an old Arab trading town that was largely settled by Omanis via sailboats known as dhows. The Arabs and locals intermarried and became the Swahili culture; the Arabic tongue flooded the local language and Kiswahili resulted after a few centuries. Search for images of the centuries-old siwas carved from ivory, and you can get an idea of what the height of this trade was producing.
When in Mombasa, you are visiting the town where Karen (née Dinesen) married Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke in 1914; they were not hitched in Nairobi at the Muthaiga
Country Club, which you might have believed if you watched Out of Africa. No, they married at the Mombasa Club, which is much older than Muthaiga and has rooms that overlook the more than 400-year-old Fort Jesus (built by the Portuguese) and the gorgeous blue water of the Indian Ocean. You will want to find a way to stay there, but I digress.
This particular trip to Mombasa was quite brief and took us to a neighborhood where our host’s mistress insisted on cooking us breakfast, although we had already nibbled earlier. A professional photographer from London was the friend of the friend and they were buddies via days spent with the British Army. My pal was a lawyer I knew through the Muthaiga Club. Before we left, our host insisted that we all watch a video that his British intelligence pals had given him, and it showed how the Seychelles military was mimicking North Korean parade drills. It was an odd moment, but our host was a classic British eccentric. To protect the innocent, the names of my travel companions will be omitted.
We climbed in our host’s Land Rover, and he drove us to a landing about ten minutes to the southwest of the city; this was the aforementioned brief and uneventful road trip. We were piled in tightly and it was something like a scene in a movie where you are expecting Hugh Grant to be driving to a wedding. Four of the six were British, so this was indeed out of the “Notting Hill” sort of lifestyle where the Brit attitude was getting on the nerves of the two Americans, but we just laughed instead of getting into an argument about what forces dominated the great victory of Desert Storm. They naturally thought the British SAS had been the key to the win of President Bush’s coalition during the Gulf War.
When we arrived at the landing, we walked over to a dock and pair of local Swahilis grabbed our luggage and welcomed us aboard their dhow. This traditional wooden sailing craft had a small outboard to get us out of the small marina and into a place where we would hoist the sail and turn off the noise. Before too long, a single white sail was full and our captain was smiling very proudly, sporting a colorful kikoi, which is the long cotton cloth that hangs from the waist to below the knees and is worn by men and women on the coast to protect their legs from the intense sun. I was also sporting a kikoi as well as a field shirt from the old Stafford’s store in Thomasville and boat shoes from the erstwhile Luden’s.
Dhows have been sailing up and down the Swahili Coast for centuries.
Photo by Harshil Gudka on Unsplash.com.
As we sailed along for about 20 minutes, the peaceful journey became an opportunity for faux time travel, projecting one’s thoughts to what had happened here and the settlement of the coast, starting in the second century A.D. The truth of the matter is that the Omanis were slavers first and goods traders (ivory/spices/hides) second. As with so much of Africa, the ugly past clings to the spectacular beauty of the innocent faces and beautiful landscapes. Roger Whittaker references this in his song “Shimoni,” which is a spot further down the coast from Funzi.
I learned that you know an Arab slave trading route because fruit trees are planted in clusters near water sources, which is akin to an oasis in a desert. When you get to Funzi Island, you are not far from the Pemba Channel, which meanders by perhaps the most exotic of all places — Zanzibar, which is part of Tanzania. Pemba holds many big gamefish, and it was the primary reason I wanted to come here.
We settled into our open “rooms” with makuti roofs; this covering is a thatching made with sun-dried leaves of the coconut palms. Our crew did not have the opportunity to see how that style of roof would hold up in the rain. All the beds were Swahili-style carved four-poster beds with ample mosquito netting. It looked like something the talented Tara Guerard would have designed. Our host said that the fishermen could have a go in the creek via the dhow, and we all went and caught a few spotted seatrout and red drum and returned for sundowners. Our guide was very happy to carry those fish home and feed his family; we would go after offshore species in the morning and had high hopes for tuna and dolphin for the next evening’s supper.
Steady breezes kept us plenty cool, and we listened to stories about Kenyan legends and heard about recent celebrity visitors to the resort island. Seems we missed seeing Peter Beard by a week, but I had supped with Peter a few weeks earlier at his ranch outside of Karen; it is a long story for another time. Our host was a serious big game fisherman and told us about the massive marlins he had battled in the Pemba Channel. He whetted our appetites for adventure as we dined upon spiny lobster tails and delicious prawns, which were accompanied by a never-ending supply of well-chilled Pouilly-Fuissé.
Just when I thought the evening could not get better, our host explained that he was not partial to brandy but his friends kept bringing bottles as gifts. The age on the bottles he produced went north of 30, and I was keenly aware this was something I’d likely never get to try again. I had a few snorts and have never had the opportunity to try it since — because such sporty brandies are the private jets of adult beverages. With an inspired big grin, the wretch slumbered quite nicely until rising for a light breakfast and trip to the sportfishing boat at the dock.
The sportfishing was more than reasonable, but we did not hook up with any billfish. I had caught a 354-pound black marlin a year earlier up the coast at the Hemingway’s resort at Watamu, so the billfish issue was something of a checked box for me. We did, however, boat many fresh yellow-fin tuna and dolphin. We were too far from Zanzibar to see it, but I imagined it as a much larger Lamu, where I had been a year earlier, and it had left a powerful impression on me. I could still hear the calls to prayer echoing through the narrow streets and feel the rhythmic bounce of riding on a donkey at dusk, which I had experienced just in time. A couple of months after my trip, the Lamu city council banned the activity because too many young boys had ridden side saddle at a fast clip through the narrow streets and knocked down pedestrians. Among other cultural attributes, the Swahili islands of Kenya and Tanzania have famously carved doors and unique architecture, making these remote spots a lure for hippies and a wider variety of sightseers for decades. (Check out this architectural blog.)
Our final evening gave the fishermen some bragging rights and the opportunity for everyone to eat fresh sashimi from tuna as an appetizer and grilled dolphin as the main course. The conquering warriors of the sea are always happy men, and my non-angling friends were full of good words for a Yank and his new British pal who could bring back fish. I had much to ponder as we departed the next day by dhow, awaiting another long trip on the “Lunatic Express” back to Nairobi where I would plan my next adventure.
For further reading, give this volume a look.
Charles W. Waring III is publisher and editor-in-chief of the Charleston Mercury. He is a graduate of Porter Gaud, The University of the South and the higher education one gets attentively listening to older gents on long car rides and happy hunting trips.
Antonio Gramsci’s counter hegemonic catastrophe
Beyond all “internal” challenges currently facing America, including an implosion of the economy and an explosion of crime, the upending of family and gender norms portents the greatest threat to the future. Through the progressive onslaught of radical ideology in schools, media, and other influencers, we have seen an assault on our cultural norms. In just the past five years, the percentage of our young identifying as transgender has doubled. Though 13- to 17-year-olds make up only eight percent of our population, they now make up 18 percent of transgenders and while 18- to 24-year-olds are 11 percent of our population, they now make up 24 percent of transgenders.
Along with the dramatic increase in youth transgenderism, 20 percent of the incoming students at Harvard and Yale in 2018 identified as non-heterosexual, and recent polls show that number to have increased to as high as 30 percent. This dynamic is followed by the consequential effects on the family and society. Early 20th century Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci, envisioned this kind of a counter-hegemony to destroy institutions like the family and church. We must admit that the “new” hegemony is a catastrophe that must be reversed. Let me explain.
First, the increasing brazenness of the progressive push to undermine the family is relentless. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed into law what amounts to youth transgender radicalism. According to Newsom, California SB 107 makes California a sanctuary “go to” state for transgender “treatment” (aka genital mutilation) of youth. This law goes beyond allowing all in the United States to bring their children for life-altering “surgery,” it even grants courts “temporary emergency jurisdiction” over out-of-state minors if they are seeking transgender drugs, surgery or mental healthcare. The California Family Council claims the law will “usurp the rights of parents across the nation and allows minors to make medical decisions on their own that can result in irreversible genital mutilation.”
This comes as many Western countries and progressive states are trying to censor or even criminalize criticism of this “gender affirming care” or even parental attempts to dissuade their children from it.
Antonio Gramsci wrote in his “prison notebooks” how to bring communism to Western nations outside Russia. He differed from the traditional Marxist primary focus on economics, and believed that the alleged “hegemony” (dominant ideological power) of a society must be overturned first to bring a communist revolution. Gramsci wrote of undermining a society’s alleged “superstructure,” which included family and religion. Like Marx and Lenin, Gramsci was rabidly opposed to Christianity and the traditional family. He wrote, “Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity … in the new world order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of a society.”
A primary target Gramsci encouraged communists to attack was a society’s “heteronormativity.” As it has been described, “Heteronormativity is defined as the belief that heterosexuality is the normal or default sexual orientation and the basis of family.” Gramsci put particular emphasis on the nation’s schools to help bring about undermining of traditional family, gender and religion.
Gramsci died in prison in the 1930s, but his ideas permeated throughout socialist circles. German Marxists of the “Frankfurt School” started in the 1920s as traditional “economic” communist academics, but eventually came to Gramsci’s counter-hegemony and what became known as cultural Marxism. In particular, the new dynamic was to focus the attack on heteronormativity as a way to undermine the institution of family. Herbert Marcuse, most well know of the Frankfurt School after they came to America before World War II, wrote his seminal Eros and Civilization in 1955. This book was both an indictment of capitalism, and also an explosive critique of sexual norms holding Western families together.
Marcuse helped bring about the sexual revolution of the 1960s and many of the radical extremes of modern progressivism such as Critical Theory. He was given the title, “The Father of the New Left.”
Marx once claimed his primary mission in life was to “dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” Dethroning God with counter hegemony is the thread that most connects Marx with Gramsci, then radicals like Marcuse. Their way to overturn a Christian-based, family-oriented society has been through anti-Christian counter-hegemony. After these past years, we have all had the unfortunate experience of seeing the counter-hegemony in power — defunding police, breakup of family, attacking the church and undermining gender. Most now realize these ideas sounded good to some in theory but proved bankrupt and destructive in reality. It’s time to end this catastrophic experiment and get back to what we know works.
Bill Connor is a 1990 Citadel graduate, 30-year Army infantry colonel (ret.) and combat veteran. He is a writer and attorney and lives in the Charleston area.
Climate lawsuits worsen inflation and hurt S.C. businesses and families
By Todd Atwater
Due to a combination of armed European conflicts, supply chain stresses and domestic monetary and fiscal misfires, inflation continues to surge in South Carolina and around the United States. The consumer-price index report for August showed prices rose 8.3 percent during the past 12 months, one of the fastest rates in four decades. Though many of us are feeling the sting of inflation across all types of goods and services, the price increases in electricity, gasoline and other energy sources have been particularly problematic for families and businesses.
I have spent much of my career in business and public service, and I know first-hand how important it is for government policies to help and not harm small business, their employees and families around the state. That’s why I find it particularly troubling that some elected officials are taking action that could push energy prices even higher.
States and localities across the country, including the city of Charleston, are pushing climate litigation against the very companies that produce and sell us the energy our families and businesses rely on for their livelihoods. Their goal is for state courts to make the companies pay billions of dollars to help “climate proof” communities. Although it may be tempting for some leaders in the Lowcountry to seek a quick injection of funding for such projects through these lawsuits, the practical reality is that putting the burden on the energy companies — as one of the lawyers in the cases said — means saddling us consumers with those costs.
Indeed, the lawyers representing these communities have said in comments to the media that they want to “raise the price” of our electric and gasoline bills. That’s part of their political agenda. Nothing could be more damaging to our hardworking families and businesses that rely on affordable energy to keep their lights on and our economy charged. Climate litigation disregards the financial struggles that many South Carolinians, including those in Charleston, face every day. Do we really want governments to drive up the cost of energy even higher than they were earlier this year? That’s a resounding, NO.
Worse, this climate litigation burdens only Americans and our allies. It seeks untold damages from American oil and gas companies, including some local distributors in S.C., in an effort to keep these cases in state court. So, we pay while China, Russia, and other oil producing and using countries go scot-free. That makes no sense given the global nature of carbon emissions — particularly when American companies and citizens are already doing a lot to produce energy in cleaner way, and these foreign entities are not. This litigation is simply unpatriotic.
Government works best when it is defending and advancing their citizens’ interests — not working against us. During my time in the S.C. House of Representatives, I was proud to stand with our great small business owners, their workers and their families. I was appointed to serve on the Special Committee on Comprehensive Tax Reform to craft solutions to help them reduce their tax burdens. Climate lawsuits in Charleston and elsewhere, however, would hamper the progress we’ve made, and could effectively raise the costs of doing business in S.C. without addressing any of the purported causes of climate change. There are also state and federal funds available for communities that need to address their infrastructure needs now.
Leveraging market-driven solutions to develop technologies that will allow Americans to have cleaner energy while ensuring our competitiveness is the right way to promote a greener future. Accomplishing such a goal is possible but not if misguided lawsuits get in the way. If the cities and groups advancing climate litigation are serious about promoting a cleaner energy future, they would push for real solutions from Congress and private sector innovators, not this half-baked climate litigation.
Todd Atwater is an attorney and a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives. Todd Atwater is an attorney and a former member of the South Carolina House of Representatives.
The Dr. John Lining House at 106 Broad St.
Photo courtesy of South Carolina Historic Records.
A Wandering Charlestonian
A real Charleston ghost story
By Robert B. Simons IV
Charleston’s oldest wooden building (and probably the state’s oldest European structure — but that’s another story), has been a commercial building for most of its history, as it is now. For a brief period at the end of the last century however, it was used as originally built, as a home for a growing family, and I grew up there.
The Dr. John Lining House is associated with that correspondent of Benjamin Franklin, and the second oldest scientific weather observations known (some town in China has us beat for oldest). But the building is much older. When Charleston was founded across the Ashley in 1670, settlers quickly realized that the peninsula was a far safer location. Not all the natives were friendly, nor were the Spanish. Construction on the east side quickly outpaced the original settlement, with a surrounding wall reaching approximately as far west as where Meeting Street is today.
A block farther west is King Street, which was once the King’s Highway, but long before that it was the ancient Indian trail down the spine of the peninsula to the rich oyster beds where White Point Garden is now.
Sometime between 1690 and 1715, straight out from the city on the good high ground overlooking the trail, Mr. De Bordeaux built the minimum required two-and-a-half stories to be able to get his deed from the king. It was and is a New England saltbox design of four rooms on each main floor, separated by a north/south central hallway. As the staircase approaches the second floor, the handrail is oddly built out from the wall so that the central window lighting the stairs may be easily accessed via an extension of the floor. This position not only gave ready access to open and close the window but also a quick elevated viewpoint looking northward up the trail. To the south the small creaking, twisting stair to the third floor was normally hidden behind the door to the building’s main parlor on the second floor. The third floor was a “half story” of three rooms running east to west within the roofline, and the domain of us children.
But where is the ghost? Well, the house was first sold in 1715, the deed apparently indicating the lady owner of the “old” structure was not of sound mind, and I believe she is still there. That was the year of the Yamasee Indian uprising, and hostile tribes were at one point outside the city walls for hours. Those outside the walls became some of the 10 percent of colonists killed in the war, and what would become 106 Broad was within sight of, and all too far from, safety.
Obviously, the lady of the house survived to sell it, but … a cousin of mine had been reading through old family letters and explained that she had been able to shutter herself safely inside the house, but her family had not been so lucky, and the sound of her family being skinned alive outside left her mind shattered. I cannot think of a better candidate for a ghost, but is she still there?
I do not know. Much of what is above is well-documented history; some is oral and unverifiable. But what I do know is that my old room on the third floor is at the west end of the house and is U-shaped around a central fireplace. When we first moved in, my bed was on the south side in front of the fireplace, and my bedtime was 10 p.m. I was an avid reader and prone to staying up late with a good book. After all, I could hear my parents approach long before they could have seen my light. Except, at ten o’clock my light would turn off. This happened often till I moved my bed to the north side of the room. It was not my father flipping a circuit breaker; it was not overheating. I could (and did) turn it right back on. I can well imagine a mother seeing the war parties coming down the trail and franticly securing the doors and shutters, then fleeing as far as she could from the screams, from north up the trail. I can imagine her 300 years later, gently reminding a child that he needs to go to sleep in that same spot.
Now, this is a ghost story, and I have friends who to this day will not spend the night on the third floor of the house. I still have the lamp — it still works.
Robert B. Simons IV grew up in downtown Charleston, served for many years as an officer in the United States Navy and is known to have more than a few tales up his sleeve.
Newsletter Rambler
Then what, GOP?
Real Clear Politics has predicted the mid-terms will result in the GOP taking both the House and the Senate. Your Rambler traveled to D.C for an interview with RNC chairwoman Rona McDaniel, which proved to be brief.
Rambler: What are the Republican goals, should they take the House and Senate?
McDaniel: Revenge.
Rambler: What else?
McDaniel: Double revenge.
Rambler: What about —
McDaniel: I think we’re done here.
Telegraphing POTUS
In a recent speech, President Biden spelled out the word “Dot” while providing his audience a URL: “If you get any questionable calls, please tell us by going to report fraud … report fraud, D-O-T, F-T-C, dot gov.” Your Rambler applauds his striking improvement in tech understanding, as it was in 2009 he asked an off-stage aide, “Do you know the website number?” Please join us in sending him a congratulatory telegram.
Following the horror story
FitsNews has reported that Curtis “Cousin Eddie” Smith — the accused drug dealer/check-casher for accused murderer, Alex Murdaugh — failed a polygraph test administered by SLED five months ago, when he was asked, “Did you shoot either of those people at that property on Moselle Road?” The question was rephrased two addition times, and he failed both. In the words of Flounder in the film Animal House, “This is gonna be GREAT!”
Seismic football
Scientists at the Federal Seismic Research Foundation reported that the entire nation experienced a significant seismic event — triggered by what they believe was screams of happiness — at 6:31 p.m. this past Saturday. In unrelated news, Tennessee kicked a game-winning field goal to beat Alabama at 6:31 p.m. on Saturday.
On second thought
Jason Jay Smart, a Ukraine-based reporter at the Kyiv Post, recently tweeted: “Elon Musk’s Starlink says it can no longer afford to give Ukraine free service.” Mr. Musk changed his mind a couple of days later and continued to shell out $20 million a month for his service.
Let them eat cake … and watch “The View.”
Speaking of Tweets, “The View” host Joy Behar said Tuesday that she finds the economic concerns of voters “sad and depressing” and said people don't know “what the stakes are” ahead of the midterm elections. Marie Antoinette was unavailable for comment.
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Warm regards,
The Mercury Team