Big changes are afoot regarding Aiken’s oldest multidisciplinary performing arts series. This past weekend, at a launch party at the Etherredge Center, the 2013-2014 USCA Cultural Series was announced or, to put it more accurately, at least four...
For nearly every field of endeavor, there is a list of practitioners who have achieved preeminence. These individuals are the inspiration for the concept of the hall of fame. Sometimes these “halls” are made of brick and mortar, like the Rock...
In a short poem extolling the beauty of women, 19th-century Romantic poet John Keats asked the memorable question, “Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?” If he were alive today and living in Aiken, he might very well find...
An argument might be made that we are in the heart of Woodrow Wilson Country. Just 15 miles to the west is Augusta, which boasts the 28th President’s boyhood home. For almost 11 years, while his father served as the pastor of the First Presbyterian...
Although it can properly claim a greater number of T-shirt shops and miniature golf courses per square mile than any other town in South Carolina, Myrtle Beach offers the more discerning visitor at least one attraction that rivals those in more traditional...
The Historic Aiken Foundation has been in the news quite a bit lately. At the organization’s recent annual meeting, seven preservation awards were announced, and this newspaper launched a series of informative articles featuring each of this...
Betty Ryberg couldn’t contain her enthusiasm as she welcomed an overflow crowd for a Juilliard in Aiken concert at St. Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church Sunday.
When they bought the 60-room mansion known as Joye Cottage in 1989, award-winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith gave little thought to what the final disposition of the property might be. After all, as chronicled in their delightful memoir...
In my new book “Hidden History of Aiken County,” I describe the first meeting of Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto and the Native American ruler of the land that would one day become South Carolina.
Years ago, when I was studying the family history of my favorite author, American novelist Henry James, I noted that his father had become enamored of the writings of Swedish scientist-turned-mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. Accordingly, I spent some time reading...
Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape, wrote French journalist and critic Louis Leroy after he encountered Claude Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise” in an exhibition in 1874. In his negative review, Leroy went...
“That was the best acceptance speech for anything that I’ve heard in my life,” exclaimed John Lithgow, actor and host of the 2011 National Book Award ceremony, after poet Nikky Finney had claimed her prize.
If this year’s International Film Festival at USCA can be said to have a theme, it might be that all people, at some point or at multiple points in their lives, undergo a rite of passage. These events, either formal or informal, mark a transition from...
A capacity crowd turned out for the opening reception of the late artist Lynn Carlisle's exhibit Sunday afternoon at the Aiken Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame and Museum.
