South Carolina – Page 13 – Random Connections

Visiting Cross Hill and Mountville – Part 1

March 17, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

History and Genealogy, Photography, Rambling

Saturday morning I joined several folks from the Laurens County Museum and the Clinton Museum for a trek across lower Laurens County. Our route would take us through the communities of Cross Hill and Mountville. Both museums have recently received grants to develop tours of the area, and our intent was to find and document locations that might be included.

On this day the trek party would consist of Mary Ellen Lives and Julius Bolt from the Laurens County Museum and Elaine Thorpe from the Clinton Museum. Sean Green from Pickens would serve as the official photographer. I was tagging along to add my expertise in GIS/mapping and media development. I would be taking photos, too, but mainly I was just thrilled to be included, and looking forward to gaining access to some locations I’d not been able to visit.

We gathered at the Clinton Museum, located in an old house on North Broad Street just north of the town square. Sean was already waiting for us. Sean is another one of those folks I’ve known online for a long time, but had never met in person. His Flickr stream came to my attention when he was finding some interesting abandoned places, some of which led to ghost towns that I’ve documented. He also has an extensive collection of contra dancing photos. Laura and I used to dance all the time, and now Sean is documenting those dances.

Soon we were joined by Mary Ellen, Julius, and Elaine. I had already met these folks, and we had met a few weeks back for an initial discussion about how they wanted to create maps for the tours. The initial tours would be walking tours because the grant was for health-related activities. Today we were looking at areas we might want to include if we were to develop driving tours as well.

Quick Trip to Donnelley and Beidler

March 13, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

Photography, Rambling

Alligator B&W — Alligator at Donnelley Wildlife Management Area

I did it. I pulled the trigger on a new super zoom telephoto lens for my camera. I have a very old Celestron C90 telescope that I can use with my camera and a T-Mount. The magnification is amazing, but it’s almost impossible to focus properly, and I have to put my camera in full manual mode. That makes it difficult to use for wildlife photography.

About this time last year I had rented a Tamron 200-500mm lens and we made a rainy trek down to the ACE Basin and Beidler Forest. Even though it rained most of our trip, I got some great shots that weekend, and enjoyed using the longer lens. I started saving my pennies so that I could get one.

I didn’t get the Tamron, but found a Sigma 150-500 that I liked that also had image stabilization. It arrived last week.

Since it was the start of Laura’s spring break, we decided it was time for another Lowcountry birding trek to get the new lens a trial run. We repeated our trip almost exactly except without the rain, visiting the Donnelley Wildlife Management Area in the ACE Basin on Monday and the Francis Beidler Forest on Tuesday.

Edisto from Whetstone to Greenpond

March 12, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 1 Comment

Paddling, Photography

Edisto from Whetstone to Greenpond-094 — Oxbow Lake on the Edisto River

Another second Saturday and it was time for another Lowcountry Unfiltered trip. It was also time to get back on the water. While our group loves any kind of exploration, from swamp stomping to biking, our preferred form of travel has always been water.

We bounced several ideas for the March trip back and forth. Finally, we settled on our old standby, the Edisto River. We would be doing a new stretch (for us) from Whetstone Landing down to Greenpond Landing. The route would be about 13.6 miles.

Composite Greenville History

February 28, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 5 Comments

History and Genealogy, Local, Photography

On our latest Lowcountry Unfiltered trip down to Bonneau Ferry I enjoyed creating some composite images from old photographs. These show a historic photo of of the plantation superimposed over a present-day photo. The photos proved popular, and I wondered if I could do more with local historic photos.

I love historic photos. I’m a sucker for those little historic images books from Arcadia Press. When I first got involved with multimedia design for the classroom, one of my first projects was to create an interactive display comparing historic images of Greenville taken from the same vantage point over time.

Finding suitable images can be tricky. Copyright issues aside, I could scan the images from my books, but I’d prefer to find something available online. The best, most extensive collection is the Coxe Collection. The Greenville Historical Society has those locked away, available only at low resolution and watermarked to hell and back. The Library of Congress has some good images, as do the South Carolina Digital Library collection and the Greenville County Library.

Recently I discovered that Greenville History Tours had been posting some cool photos of Greenville on their Facebook page. Some of these were perfect for my project, and I spent one afternoon greedily downloading images from their site.

Thursday of this week was a beautiful day, and seemed like a perfect opportunity to put my project to the test. I printed out copies of the historic images so that I could try to line up my photos with the original. I think some of these turned out quite well. I’m going to be posting larger than usual images in this post because of the nature of the project, so I apologize ahead of time to the bandwidth-challenged.

Return to Chappells

February 25, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 3 Comments

Photography, Rambling

It was an absolutely beautiful day. I had planned to go to the gym then spend the day writing. Instead, I needed to get out of the house. About the time I made that decision, I got a text from Keith Dover asking what I was up to on this fine day. It sounded like a perfect excuse to get out and do some photography.

I had been wanting to get back to the ghost town of Chappells before spring and before foliage obscured the old buildings. Late February, early March is the perfect time for ghost towning. There are still no leaves and greenery to hide things. More importantly, though, daffodils are blooming. Daffodils are often tell-tale signs of old home places and former residential areas.

Hidden Tunnels and Safety Coffins

February 24, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 9 Comments

History and Genealogy, Photography, Rambling

In the first part of our Ferris Bueller Day outing, Dwight Moffitt, Jami Sprankle, and I visited the Camp Asylum archeology dig on the State Hospital grounds on Bull Street. However, our day of adventure was not over.

Just about any city has rumors of underground passageways. Larger cities have the obvious subway lines, but there are other systems of tunnels to support both utilitarian and other more nefarious purposes. Columbia is no different. There are rumored to be three distinct tunnel systems in Columbia. There are supposed to be a set of tunnels near the Five Points area, a set of tunnels from the Statehouse down Main Street and to the Congaree River, and a well-documented set of ventilation and utilitarian tunnels under the USC campus. For our second adventure of the day we sought out the entrance to one of these tunnels.

Visiting Camp Asylum

February 23, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 5 Comments

History and Genealogy, Photography, Rambling

I’ve been wanting to have a “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” for some time now with two of my great friends from Furman, Dwight Moffitt and Jami Sprankle. Since both live in Columbia the idea was that I’d ride down and we would see what all the city had to offer. While our day didn’t quite live up to the idealized movie standards, we still had a blast with a day full of insane asylums, hidden tunnels, harpsichords, safety coffins, and bagels. Oh Yeah!

The opportunity presented itself when Dwight forwarded me information about a tour of “Camp Asylum.” A group of archeologists from USC are excavating a Civil War prisoner of war encampment on the grounds of the old South Carolina State Mental Health Hospital on Bull Street. The site has been sold to developers, so the archeologists wanted to study as much about the site as they could before it was no longer available. Historic Columbia is offering tours of the dig on Fridays through the end of April. Jami starts a new job on Monday, so this Friday was the perfect time to explore.

Plans flew back and forth all week. We looked at the old Hidden Columbia videos on Facebook as well as other guidebooks and things to see what we might want to include in our Ferris Bueller Day. A cool soundtrack was a necessity. In the end, weather and family obligations limited our choices.

Picker’s Paradise in Newberry

February 4, 2014May 16, 2014 Tom 2 Comments

Family, Local, Miscellaneous

Two times in less than a week I’ve been drawn in by an “as seen on TV” sign. First time was a rather bad experience at a restaurant in Gaffney. This time, C. T. Summer Hardware Store in Newberry turned out to be a real winner.

It was my sister, Beth’s birthday, so Glynda and I drove down to take her out to eat. We had dropped by Prosperity to pick up our mother, and then drove back to meet Beth at The Cabana Cafe. We had a great lunch (sorry, no cafe review this time) and were surprised by Beth’s son, Mason, who had come in for lunch during his work day.

During lunch Beth mentioned that we needed to check out the hardware store next door. I had spotted antiques in the window, and had seen the “American Pickers” sign on the front window. Having been burned once recently by a TV show advertisement, I was skeptical. Glynda and I said we would be back on a less cold and rainy day. Mother, on the other hand, said she wanted to go right after lunch. Looks like we were visiting a hardware store.

The Beer Commercial Float

August 19, 2013May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

Paddling

This trip almost didn’t happen. Actually, it was supposed to have happened back in July, our traditional date for the annual Lowcountry Unfiltered Rope Swing and Beer Commercial Float on the Edisto River. However, the second Saturday in July had the highest river levels seen on the Edisto in years. It was a no-go. Even delaying a week didn’t help. The river stayed at flood stage, so we were forced to seek out an alternate trip on Lake Marion.

So, we decided to try again in August. The second Saturday came, and the waters were still high, but no so much as to make the trip impossible. I got up early and drove on down to the meeting point at Givhens Ferry State Park. Two new guys, Jim and Dan Hill, were there waiting for me. Soon the rest of the guys showed up. We redistributed boats, then drove up to our put-in at Mars Old Field Landing. Ultimately, there were nine of us on this trip – a good number. John Nelson turned on his charm and drafted a young lady to take our group photo.

Read More “The Beer Commercial Float” »

A Bridge to Nowhere

August 12, 2013May 16, 2014 Tom No Comments

EdTech, History and Genealogy, Paddling, Photography

Sparkleberry Swamp Altered — Sparkleberry Swamp

Somehow I found myself taking one last course for certification this summer. I’m taking one of the PBS Teacherline courses online. The course is on Dynamic Media and Digital Storytelling, a subject with which I’m already quite familiar. However, I just needed the course credit.

The course itself is been…so, so. There’s been more time spent on “Educationese” and gobbledy-goop catch phrases that I used to detest, than on actual digital storytelling.

Even so, I did manage to put together a decent (in my opinion) project. My digital story was entitled “A Bridge to Nowhere”, and it’s a summary of a previous blog post about the controversial Briggs-DeLaine-Pearson Connector, a proposed bridge from Lone Star to Rimini across Lake Marion.

The 12 minute video summarizes the history of the Santee Cooper area, and briefly touches on the controversy. I used photographs I’d taken from several paddling trips to lakes Marion and Moultrie, coupled with GoPro video. I filled in with a few maps, newspaper clippings, and historic shots to complete the video.