Welcome to Charleston!

All right. Much has happened since I last wrote. I moved to the South. That is right. The Southern region of the United States of America. I now live in Charleston, SC and am currently living in a darling little cottage (temporarily until I can find an apartment downtown) and I have a view of the Charleston Bay. Fabuloso. It is luxurious in a completely different kind of way than my little brick duplex in Kitwe, Zambia or my outrageously beautiful apartment off of Central Park. I can see Fort Sumter from my back porch, which is where the Civil War began 150 years ago. I was talking to a fisherman a couple of days ago who told me, “The Civil War is all this place has going for it.” Ha! A bizarre claim to fame. The guy then asked Clark, “Which side are you for?” He replied with a laugh, “I’m all for the war being over.”

Charleston is beyond charming. And fascinating. And strange. And beautiful. Sultry nights, sunshine, white beaches, palm trees, cobblestone streets, and no-see-ums (swear to you- this is what some folks call little biting gnats that are hard to see). I have been met with warmth, cordiality, and genuine hospitality everywhere I’ve visited in this town, but boy-o-boy is this a whole new world.

Undoubtedly, there will be stories worth telling. I thumbed through a magazine called Garden and Gun the other day. I kid you not. Garden and Gun. Among other things, I found a recipe for bacon crackers. Some people make them for bridge parties. You grill up bacon and wrap them around crackers. That was one of the featured recipes. Bacon crackers.

That being said, this is a FOOD town. I love it. Fantastic restaurants (one-word names are all the rage)—Fig, Husk, Sette, Magnolia’s, Fish, Mercato, Sienna, Tristan, etc. And this doesn’t even count all the BBQ (Clark tells me that the more personified the pig on the sign, the better the barbecue).

I am serving as an Associate Pastor at a church called Mt. Pleasant Presbyterian (www.mppc.net) and I love my new job. The church is not located on a mountain or a hill or even a mound for that matter (as far as I can tell), so I’ll have to do some investigating on the name. I am suspicious of the word pleasant, of course. It is like the word ‘interesting.’ There is something supremely non-descript about it. But if I did like the word, I might actually concur at the town meeting that designated this place ‘pleasant’ so many years ago. When I walk to work I watch the pelicans sweep over the docks, the cardinals sing in the live oaks (Spanish moss draped through the branches), and if I wanted to I could drop by a local general store and order a grilled cheese sandwich and a soda from a guy named Billy Mack or William Chadsworth, III. This is gonna be an adventure y’all. AD-VEN-TURE.

Ha! I cannot say that with any integrity, yet. Y’all. I had to have Clark spell the world.

Signing off,
Your Carmie