Author: Margaret Evans

I went down to the crossroadsFell down on my kneesDown to the crossroadsFell down on my kneesAsked the Lord for mercy”Take me if you please.”      – Robert Johnson

In eighteen years covering all of Hunting Island, Buddy Lawrence, Friends of Hunting Island Sea Turtle Conservation Specialist, has never needed to rescue a mama turtle from fallen trees. But on Thursday, July 5, he did just that. A Turtle Team in zone 4, south of South Beach, and nearly to the breach, found a mama turtle stuck in a hole under a downed tree. Lawrence believes she was trapped around 3-4 am. The same mama had made three other non-nesting crawls that same night, attempting to find a good spot to lay her eggs. There are already four successful nests in the same area. But this particular turtle was just unlucky.

Hopeful Horizons, the local Children’s Advocacy, Domestic Violence and Rape Crisis Center has received a $360,000 grant from The Duke Endowment to fund the expansion of their Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) program which is an evidence-based treatment for young children between the ages of 2 to 7 with behavioral and emotional disorders that places emphasis on improving the quality of the parent-child relationship and changing parent-child interaction patterns.

The public is invited to attend the next meeting of Indivisible Beaufort, focusing on the national Poor People’s Campaign and why it’s of importance today. This very special meeting will be held at St. Helena Library, 6355 Jonathan Francis Sr. Rd, 11:30 am Saturday, July 14th.

Laura Morgan didn’t think twice about lugging more than 300 pink flamingos to Bluffton Oyster Factory Park on a recent balmy summer day. With the help of a couple volunteers, she planted the sturdy plastic birds along a pathway near the docks on the May River. Morgan, founder of Pledge The Pink breast cancer awareness event, wasn’t trying to break the Guiness World Record with this plastic flamingo flock. She and her volunteers broke that in 2016 with 1058 flamingos. On this day, Morgan was preparing a photo shoot to drum up excitement for her Pledge The Pink’s FlockStars — the nickname of the 1,500 registrants from 48 states and 17 countries who will walk, run, push a stroller or dance the 10 miles each day in different locales in the Lowcountry this October.  

“They turned the corner and soon were driving along a high, grassy bluff that sloped down to a glistening river that flowed through the main part of town. Live oak trees, festooned with cool scarves of Spanish Moss, and gnarled by a century of storms, loomed over the street. On the left, large white houses with long columns and graceful verandas ruled the approach to the river with mute elegance. Each house was a massive tribute to days long past. In one of the houses, drawling conspirators had planned the secession from the Union; in another Sherman himself had slept after his long march to the sea.”  – Pat Conroy, The Great Santini (Random House, 1976)