Charleston Mercury

01/11/2024

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Our goal is to provide our readers with a first look — filtered with our best discernment — at the latest news and goings-on around the state, Monday through Friday and for the weekend. Each day will include reports from various precious pearls of the Palmetto State and Western North Carolina, f...

31/10/2024

Thank you all for your many gracious and lovely birthday notes. If not before, I'll see you Nov. 25; go to the Mercury's website and sign up to buy books, which is the way you get into this gathering. This is a deeply local and grand event, and I want to greet all of my friends and wish them well. Top shelf h***h, venison and shrimp. This will be downtown and all the details are on the website. --wretch

17/10/2024

Greetings: The keys are: Sign up online to buy lots of book and then share this with your inner circle so that they can also get books and join you. Feel free to send me a PM if you have questions. Oh, the book cover sketch by Chris Snedeker will be available at silent auction. All proceeds from book and silent auction go to Quail Forever of the Lowcountry. --wretch

03/10/2024

Christmas trips overseas remembered: Do you have one you might care to describe in writing? If so, pitch me by PM only, and I'll let you know. Serious inquiries only. Thank you. --wretch

02/10/2024

Did Chris Snedeker crush it with his cover illustration or what? Please get your books now; then, learn how ordering books will open the door to a soiree and holiday gift fair on Nov. 25 downtown. There is so much more to tell, and I'll do so in future posts. The key is to order books now. All proceeds benefit Quail Forever. Just click www.charlestonmercury.com to secure your place with your friends. Share widely. Thank you. --wretch

04/09/2024

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21/08/2024

Following up on the "Best of the Pluff Mud Chronicles" book launch, we have established Monday, Nov. 25 from 3-8:30 and have an elegant venue in downtown Charleston. It will be just right and include full Charleston hospitality. Save the date and engrave in stone. We will give further instructions when we have the cover of the book completed. Chris Snedeker is our cover artist for the book of columns by David Farrow and yours truly. All participating artists are very talented, and I look forward to telling you more. All 16 chapters have illustrations. Even the wretch has a few!!!

01/08/2024

Get ready for the best of the Farrow-Waring exchanges in a book I am editing that will be out in the fall. You will hear much more about this. I am going to give you three graphs of one of David's best, and this is from eight years ago. Enjoy. ... The six teens sat on and around brownstone stairs discussing everything and nothing in a way that 15 year-olds can. A transistor radio was blaring WTMA Tiger radio while hanging off the handlebars of one of the six bicycles strewn on the sidewalk, leaning against wrought-iron fences. Through the tinny speakers, The Doors wanted to know our name, The Rascals demanded people got to be free and Cream had been waiting so long.
What summer it had been — surfing at the washout, going to the Rockville Regatta and riding our bikes through the streets past the unstuccoed brick and peeling paint. We weren’t urchins, but we belonged to the streets and they belonged to us. We couldn’t do too much during the day; we knew every family and they knew us.
Night, however was a different story. I remember going to the Sergeant Jasper, buying a Ballantine Ale and feeling very adult sipping that beer while watching a baseball game at the ball field at Moultrie Playground and then meeting 10 boys in the Logan Street graveyard drinking Berger beer amid the graves of beer drinkers long since past. ...

11/06/2024

Do send a PM if you have any offshore fishing photos or fly fishing photos from the mountains. Please identify all left to right; one or two max. Greatly appreciate your consideration. --wretch

30/04/2024

Larry Kobrovsky is not putting up with those students who are tools for terrorists, and we agree. See his op/ed here:

Homepage for the Charleston Mercury — news, arts, culture, history and more in the South Carolina Lowcountry

15/04/2024

Trout tips for Oconee County's Whitewater River and Nikki Haley's next steps; these features and more will be in the Tuesday edition of the Carolina Digital Daily. "If you are not getting it, you are not getting it," said a wise Carolina lady. Sign up here:

Homepage for the Charleston Mercury — news, arts, culture, history and more in the South Carolina Lowcountry

08/04/2024

Don't look! Save your shooting eyes.

05/04/2024

Here is a little warm-up essay ahead of my tribute to the late Roger Pinckney XI. He was very appreciative of my review of his book, but I had the delight of reading something magnificent and writing about it. I think I made out on top. Anyway, here it is:

Washed in the BloodBy Roger PinckneyHardback 144 pp. $24.95(Evening Post Books, Charleston, 2021)By Charles W. Waring IIIImage provided. Liquored-up lads on a Bertram 31’s transom were the first to speculate that Roger Pinckney XI would place a puma right in the center of his latest novel, Washed ...

05/04/2024

Proud of my sister's budding flower business.

Love the first sweet peas! These are from the home garden but we have some coming up soon on the farm. Best time of the year 🍃🌸