Walter Edgar's Journal (Classical)

The U.S. Highway 17 widening project in Mount Pleasant affects the heart of the traditional sweetgrass basket-making community in South Carolina, and is part of the Gullah/Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor, a National Heritage Area, which extends from Wilmington, North Carolina to St. Augustine, Florida. Working with a number of partners, the town of Mount Pleasant has created a plan to minimize the impact of widening U.S. 17 on the basket- makers roadside stands, many of which have been in...

Dr. Edgars guest is renowned Charleston watercolorist Mary Whyte. Whyte has gained national recognition for her figurative watercolors. Most noted for her depictions of the African American Gullah women of Johns Island, South Carolina, near where she lives, Whyte has, in recent years, turned her attention to paintings of southern workers. Fifty of these paintings and drawings are now part of atraveling exhibition of her work, called Working South, and a book of her paintings by the same...

The presidential primary season is in full swing, with South Carolinas Republican Presidential Preference Primary coming up Saturday, January 21. South Carolinas presidential primaries have proven important to presidential nominees of both major parties. This is particularly true for the Republican contenders. State Senator John Courson has been active in Republican politics for over thirty years and was one of the organizers of the first SC Republican Presidential primary, in 1980. He joins...

(Originally broadcast 04/08/11) - Over the past three decades, Columbia native Don Belt has traveled to 65 countries, working as a writer and editor of articles for National Geographic magazine. Along the way, he has covered the defining issues of our time, such as environmental degradation, vanishing cultures, Islam and the West, the effects of global climate change and the geopolitical trends that are shaping our world. As senior editor of National Geographic from 1998 to 2010, he helped...

Nathalie Dupree joins Dr. Edgar to talk about her new book, Southern Biscuits, co-authored by Cynthia Stevens Graubart. Dupree is the author of eleven cookbooks about the American South, entertaining, and basic cooking. She has hosted over 300 television shows on the Food Network, The Learning Channel and PBS. She has been a spokesperson for Wild American Shrimp, The Catfish Institute and many other organizations. She currently writes for The Post and Courier in Charleston, S.C., as well as...

Billy Cate and John Cely, Land Protection Director of the Congaree Land Trust, talk with Dr. Edgar about the Trust and its Focus Area in the Cowasee Basin. The Trust is currently working on conservation easements totaling 3,700 acres, of which 700 acres are in the Basin area.

Dr. Edgar and his guests take a look at wetlandswhat they are and why they are so ecologically important, focusing particularly on a recent ruling by the S.C. Supreme Court extending legal protection to isolated wetlands. The suit was filed over a 0.332-acre lot in Pawleys Island, 0.19 acres of which is an isolated wetland, meaning it does not have a direct connection to other waters or wetlands. Such wetlands were previously ruled outside of the Department of Health and Environmental...

About 184,000 South Carolinians served in World War II, and thousands more, who moved here after the war. ETV and The State newspaper partnered together to tell the stories of these veterans in their own words. The result is a new Emmy-nominated documentary series, South Carolinians in World War II. The series returns in November with its final episode, A Path to Victory. Executive Producer John Rainey, Co-Producer Jeff Wilkinson, and two veterans featured in the series--Dr. Jack Keith and...

Dr. Edgar has a lively conversation with William W. Starr, author of Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster, a twenty-first-century literary pilgrimage to retrace the famous 1773 Scottish journey of James Boswell and Samuel Johnson, two of the most celebrated writers of their day. Starr enlivens this crisply written travelogue with a playful wit, an enthusiasm for all things Scottish, the boon and burden of American sensibility, and an ardent appreciation for Boswell and Johnsonwho make...

Mary Chesnuts diary, originally published forty years after the Civil War as Mary Chesnuts Civil War, is generally acknowledged today as the finest literary work of the Confederacy. Spiced by the author's sharp intelligence, irreverent wit, and keen sense of irony and metaphorical vision, it uses a diary format to evoke a full, accurate picture of the South in civil war. Her words, however, were originally complemented by three personal photograph albums that were filled with annotated...

Linda OBryon began her work as President and CEO of ETV in December of 2010. She talks with Dr. Edgar about her career in public broadcasting and about her work at ETV. They also look at the opportunities and challenges in ETVs future, as well as ETV Radios move to its new studios in October. Linda O'Bryon has previously served as Chief Content Officer at KQED/Northern California Public Broadcasting in San Francisco. She is also the founding executive editor of PBS' Nightly Business Report...

How important is South Carolinas first-in-the-South Republican Primary in the 2012 presidential election? To discuss the question, Dr. Edgar is joined by James Hammond, Editor of the Columbia Regional Business Report; Peter Applebome, NY Times writer and author of Dixie Rising; and Dr. James Guth, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Political Science at Furman University. Note: this program was recorded on Tuesday, August 30, 2011.

In 1887, The US Army Corps of Engineers chose Brigadier General Francis Marion, The Swamp Fox, for the honors when they named Marion Park, which sits on South Carolina Avenue, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, D.C., and is one of four Capitol Hill East National Parks. Over a century-and-a-score years later the Palmetto Conservation Foundation is leading the effort to place a monument in Marions name in the park. President Obama and signed the enabling legislation for the monument into law on...

(Originally broadcast 04/30/10) - A genteel southern intellectual, saloniste, and wife to a prominent colonel in Jefferson Davis's inner circle, Mary Chesnut today is remembered best for her penetrating Civil War diary. Composed between 1861 and 1865 and revised thoroughly from the late 1870s until Chesnut's death in 1886, the diary was published first in 1905, again in 1949, and later, to great acclaim, in 1981. This complicated literary history and the questions that attend itwhich...

(Originally broadcast 12/10/10) - Greenville's downtown began to languish in the 1960s, as shopping centers lured the major retailers to the suburbs. Downtown was left with countless vacant buildings and no people. Greenville faced what other cities faced, a dying downtown in the midst of a growing region. To meet the challenge, Greenville embarked on "downtown redevelopment," remaking Main Street and creating an atmosphere conducive to office, residential, specialty retail, entertainment...