South Carolina ETV

Walter Edgar's Journal

Podcast
Fridays at noon on Your Classical NPR News Station
Fridays at noon and Sundays at 8:00pm on Your NPR News Station

From beach music to barbecue, Walter Edgar's Journal takes listeners on a journey that delves into South Carolina's past while providing insight into the state's current affairs.



This week:

07/25/2008 (Originally broadcast 1/18/2008) - Nicholas Butler is a musicologist who is also an historian, an archivist, and a musician. Originally from Greenville County he now lives and works in Charleston works as an archivist. His doctoral dissertation, Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecilia Society and the Patronage of Concert Music in Charleston, South Carolina, 1766-1820, has recently been published as a book by USC Press. Votaries of Apollo draws from many historical sources to tell the story of the fifty-four seasons between 1766 and 1820, when Charleston’s exclusive St. Cecilia Society functioned as the premiere musical organization in North America. Note: The music featured on this program is from the album "Highlights from the Contemporaries of Mozart" and is on the Chandos label (catalog number CON 0011). The selection we sampled was the Allegro from the Symphony in G minor by Leopold Kozeluch, played by the London Mozart Players and conducted by Matthias Bamert.
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09/26/2008
Judy Russell had no idea that trying to put names with faces in old family photos would lead her to an overgrown Quaker cemetery, a book and some 300 family members - including a friend. A casual query to a genealogical internet listserv back in 1996 started her on a journey which eventually led her and acquaintance Pam Armstrong to an overgrown cemetery in Newberry, SC, where members of a Revolutionary-era Quaker community, and their descendants, were buried.

She joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the restoration of the cemetery, the uniting of living descendants of that early community to reconstruct and preserve their family's history.
09/19/2008
Walter Edgar's Journal is now being heard on WNSC-FM, Rock Hill/Charlotte. In honor of our new listeners this episode will highlight one of the great educational institutions in the region: Davidson College.
09/12/2008
The Palmetto Trust for Historic Preservation is a non-profit organization operating in South Carolina since 1990, dedicated to preserving and protecting the irreplaceable architectural heritage of South Carolina.

Executive Director Michael Bedenbaugh about the goals of the Trust, including advocacy, education, preservation, and helping preservationist across the state to work together.
09/05/2008
(originally broadcast 4/20/2007) - In 1983 Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir was published by Simon & Schuster's Free Press. It was the work of Mamie Garvin Fields and her granddaughter, Dr. Karen Fields. The book recounts the "stories," or memoirs, of the life of Mamie Fields, who was born in 1888.

The book has been described as a blend of "the scholarly with the personal, addressing the tensions between family and professional loyalties to produce a work meaningful in both spheres." Past Distinguished Visiting Professor at USC's Institute of Southern Studies, Dr. Fields joins Dr. Edgar to talk about the book.
08/29/2008
(Originally broadcast 1/25/2008) - First published in 1971, The Unexpected Exodus is a poignant memoir by grade school teacher Louise Cassels recounting the displacement of the residents of Ellenton, South Carolina, in the early 1950s to make way for the massive Savannah River Plant, a critical cold-war nuclear weapons facility.

The book has been reissued by USC Press with a foreword by Dr. Kari Frederickson, an associate professor of history and director of the Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama. She joins Elliot Levy, Executive Director of the Aiken County Historical Museum, to talk about the book and about how the coming of “the Bum Plant” dramatically changed the lives of some 15 hundred South Carolina families.
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