I’m there on the first row kneeling and hands folded in lap between 9-year-olds named Herbert and Virgil, one black, another white. On the back row at the side stands Mrs. Scott, also black, a somewhat stout figure in a simple navy dress and shiny black dress shoes. In the picture, I also see Joey Jackson, Douglas Shaw and Mark Wiggins, three childhood friends who I haven’t seen since our family moved from Jesup in 1974. Looking at the photo forces other names to the surface — Michael, Greg, Dawn, Joanne, Tony, Chuck, Wayne and Christy.

Back in July 2006, I wrote Mrs. Scott to let her know how she was the best school teacher I ever had:

“I want you to know how much I appreciate your compassion, kindness, strength and warmth all of those years ago. Enclosed is a book of columns I’ve written over the last four years in South Carolina newspapers. Read and you’ll easily see the influence of my parents, Elliott and Barbara. Read a little more closely and you’ll find your influence too. While some of them are about arcane pieces of South Carolina politics and policy, the columns strike recurring themes of fairness, justice, tolerance, acceptance and common sense.”

Nine days later, Mrs. Scott, then 75, replied:

“I looked at the envelope and said, ‘Who could be sending me a book from South Carolina?’ So I began to open it up and the first thing I saw at the top was ‘Andy Brack.’ I said, ‘It can’t be. Andy from the fourth grade. Not my fourth grade class.’ So I began to thumb through and saw the autograph. I said, ‘It must be.’

“I was so happy it brought tears to my eyes. You really made my week and added another year to my life (smile). I really know that my 37½ years of labor with children in Wayne County, plus three of my own, was not in vain.”

With schools across South Carolina and the country back in session now, we need to remember – and thank – our teachers and those of our children.

If you really think about teachers, you realize they’re one of the nation’s most precious resources. Every year, we entrust those most precious to us, our children, to their care so they can develop into educated, young citizens who eventually will lead our cities, state and nation.

Our teachers in public and private schools often aren’t paid enough, work long hours and have to deal with situations (bad behavior, kids with cell phones, lack of resources, and on and on) that interfere with what they want to do – teach the children. Many stay up late at night grading papers or put in long hours coaching eager athletes on the field.

And for all they put up with, they stick to it.

As South Carolina embarks on another political season, we really ought to think about how we treat teachers. We ought to pay them more than a Southeastern average. We ought to invest better in their lives, just as they’re investing in our children’s lives. And we ought to recognize them for how they’ve impacted our lives.

I’m fortunate to have written the best teacher I ever had, Mrs. Scott, before she passed in 2008.

“I will cherish this book and letter,” Mrs. Scott wrote at the end of her 2006 letter. “May God continue to bless you and your family. Thanks for such fond memories. Overlook the shaky writing. It is 75 years old now (smile).”

Tell one of your former teachers how much they meant to you. Or inspire a younger one by recognizing their hard work. You will make their day.

ALONG THE GULF COAST

It wasn’t an overpowering scent, but a faint fragrance similar to what you might smell a few minutes after spraying WD-40 on something.

For all of the people I met and talked with during a weekend long exploratory tour of what’s happening along the Gulf coast from Dauphin Island, Ala., to Apalachicola, Fla., this change from the normal salty sea breeze to slightly oil-tinged winds is something that won’t be easy to shake.

To be clear, I didn’t see a bunch of goo on any of the white sandy beaches that are as typical of the Gulf coast as sugar is in sweet tea. But here are some observations:

•    People are very worried about what the oil is going to do to the tourism and fisheries businesses along the coast. And they’re more worried about the impact of the spill for wildlife.

•    But they’re apparently not worried enough yet not to swim in the water. It was surprising how people would bathe in the clear, green waters as crews periodically combed beaches for pea-sized tarballs.

•    Contract crews were spotted in Dauphin Island, Ala., and just south of Pensacola Beach, Fla. They wore makeshift haz-mat suits – yellow plastic boots that were duct-taped to their pants. The stuff they picked up seemed small – no larger than a silver dollar, one observer said. It wasn’t hard to wonder whether these crews were on beaches more for public relations purposes than for significant clean-up work.

•    The red and yellow strings of boom around parts of the shoreline seemed pretty flimsy, making us wonder just how much oil they can keep out.

During the trip, I talked with Peck Thompson, a 77-year-old retired sheet rock worker who was fishing for croaker in Mobile Bay. He said he wasn’t too sure how much longer he’d be able to fish like he’d been doing for the last 60 years.

“It’s a disaster right now,” he said Saturday. “It’s going to shut a lot of businesses down – bait shops and stuff and the people who make their business fishing.” He said business at the bait shop over which he lived was about half of what it should be.

A few minutes later, I ran into Drew Wheelan of the American Birding Association. He had been sent from Washington state to find out the impact of the spill on wildlife. He had, he mournfully said, a bunch of pictures of oiled birds.
Later that day, Capt. Billy Lyons, president of Volco.LLC marine contractors from Spanish Fort, Ala., described how he came up with an idea to protect Weeks Bay and its national estuarine research reserve. Because Weeks Bay, a relatively small inlet off Mobile Bay, is only about 600 yards across before it opens into a large area, Lyons said he was implementing a plan to block the entrance of the bay by positioning three long barges across the neck of the inlet buffeted by sectional floating barges. The barges would knock down choppy waves from Mobile Bay and allow the boom, positioned behind the barges, to do their work. Otherwise, he said, the waves would jump over boom, carrying oil with it.

Early Sunday, Tampa, Fla., TV reporter Don Germaise told viewers during a live broadcast from Pensacola Beach, that the spill was “only going to get worse.” The day before, he said he had seen a bunch of tarballs on beaches east of town. When Germaise finished his shot, a salesman for ‘oil-eating microbes” tried to get the news team to do a story about their product for which a display was set up nearby.

Moments later at a beach in Gulf Islands National Seashore, 36-year-old Larry Femrite of Pensacola was walking off the beach with a camera. He explained he had just left an overnight shift at a nearby WalMart and was on his way home. In recent days, he had started to stop to check to see what he could see of the spill on the beaches. On Saturday, he said he saw oily specks washing ashore. On Sunday, he didn’t see much of anything, other than a goo-covered empty Gatorade bottle that washed ashore.

“It should be a wake-up call to the oil companies and government,” Femrite said. “They should have better procedures in place in case something happens. I don’t know if the ecosystem will ever recover.”

A couple of miles away, National Park Service Ranger Mark Whipps dug into the sand near the tide line to see if any oil detritus had been buried in the white sand. “I’m extremely ecstatic that it’s not deep,” said Whipps, who had been sent from his regular park (Natchez Trace near Tupelo, Miss.,) to Gulf Islands for a 14-day tour of patrolling the beach.
As about 20 contract workers prepared to look for oil pollution on the beach, he noted, “One of the good things since I’ve been here is the crews have gotten here right away. It’s kind of an ongoing process.”

If you’d like to see more pictures of the weekend trip, visit a new photo blog that will chronicle what’s happening along the Gulf. Go to: www.BetterGulf.org.

Photo: This oil-covered plastic bottle washed onto the beach at Gulf Islands National Seashore Sunday just south of Pensacola Beach, Fla.

Andy Brack is publisher of CharlestonCurrents.com and president of the Center for a Better South, which is offering the photo blog as a way to keep track of how the spill is impacting people’s lives. Brack can be reached at: publisher@charlestoncurrents.com.

CHARLESTON, S.C.

But I am befuddled by the newly-unveiled poster for the 2010 Spoleto Festival USA, slated to begin at the end of the month in Charleston.  The world-renowned festival and world-renowned artist it commissioned have thrust something into the public domain that doesn’t seem worth the paper on which it is printed.

Maybe that’s the point – to offer a poster that is so controversial artistically that it gets people talking about Spoleto which, in turn, may drive people to attend the 17-day event of art, culture, music and more.

Artist Maya Lin, best known for designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, offered an “excavated map” as this year’s poster.  What she apparently did was to take an atlas and open it to the South Carolina page.  (Opposite is a page of Rhode Island.)  Then she cut holes on each side of the atlas all the way down to the cover.   So what you see are maps of Rhode Island and South Carolina, each with holes that show layers of “excavated” pages.

Festival general director Nigel Redden told The (Charleston) Post and Courier that he loved the whimsy of the poster.  He said he asked Lin to do something for Spoleto involving maps of the eastern United States after seeing some of her other map excavations.  “She agreed very kindly,” he told the paper.  “I thought people would think it strange if she used a map of China or middle Europe, so we asked her to consider the eastern United States.”

The unveiling of the annual poster is a big to-do for the festival.  It’s so anticipated as a way to introduce the festival’s 17-day program that it gets big media coverage across the state.

But across Charleston, this year’s poster seems to be making many people wonder, “Huh?”

Local graphic designer Gil Shuler wrote on his blog that he couldn’t stop laughing because he thought Lin’s inspiration for the poster was a well-publicized, rambling answer by a Miss Teen USA contestant from South Carolina in 2007.  You might recall that when Caitlin Upton was asked why one-fifth of Americans couldn’t locate the U.S. on a map, she replied some people didn’t have maps and referenced South Africa and “The Iraq.”

Here are some comments lifted from Twitter and my Facebook page:

— “Call me a traitor, but I think the Spoleto poster is dumb.”

— “It’s a freaking map. An ugly uninspired map.  Maybe they should just spell out ‘Spoleto’ in Helvetica black on white and be done with it.”

— “Yuck. Really. My least favorite. Ever.”

—  “Van Gogh = Starry Night = legendary, inspiring, dream worthy.  Maya Lin = 2010 Spoleto Poster = AAA road map, FP kindling, what the ?? RI??”

—  “Well, I’m no artist, but it looks like it is promoting a comic book convention, to me.”

— “Looks like a 4th grade art project.”

A couple of people were more charitable.  A Columbia resident saw Lin’s work as “an interesting effort by a renowned architect to make flat art appear to be multidimensional.  I don’t like it at all, but then, I don’t like the design of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., either.”

A North Carolina woman observed, “It’s a cool concept but not a very gripping image for a poster.  And I wish it were presented with S.C. on the right axis instead of turned 90 degrees. Plus, I have no idea why Rhode Island is on a Spoleto poster (the article said there was a story to connect them, but I don’t know the story). There, I’m done…”

Regardless of how you feel about the poster, at least it has people talking.  We wonder whether the talk will turn into money and action at the box offices.  Let’s hope this odd art experiment works out for the folks at Spoleto.  (Note to Spoleto for next year – get something that looks a little better on a T-shirt.)

Andy Brack is the publisher of StatehouseReport.com and CharlestonCurrents.com.  He is president of the Center for a Better South.

Link to Post and Courier story: http://www.postandcourier.com/news/2010/may/05/maps-point-way-to-spoleto-2010/

Link to Shuler blog post: http://shedartcompany.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-spoleto-poster.html

Our War Between the States tested America and its notion of freedom. In the broadest sense, the war grew out of regional insecurities about slavery that evolved since the earliest days of the republic. Southerners felt they needed slaves to work the land in their agrarian-based economy. They long championed states’ rights and self-government to prop up a social, economic and political structure based on race. As the North industrialized, it sought a more centralized system that promoted economic development and expansion without slavery.

In the midst of two increasingly different outlooks, some sought compromise to bring people together. The war, historian Avery O. Craven wrote, “did not come simply because one section was agricultural and the other industrial; because one exploited free labor and the other slaves; or because a sectional majority refused to respect the constitutional rights of the minority.” Rather, he said, “politicians and pious cranks” ratcheted up the rhetoric on issues that could have been compromised (sound familiar today?) and whipped up the South against the North, and vice versa.

The war devastated the South. As Mark Twain observed in 1883, “In the South, the war is what A.D. [anno Domini] is elsewhere; they date from it.” Reconstruction rubbed salt in the war wounds of the white elite to the point that they figured out a way – Jim Crow laws – to constantly pick at scabs from the war and keep the free black man down for decades. Only after millions of Americans fought overseas during World War II did GIs returning to a segregated South start questioning America’s peculiar apartheid. “I fought the Nazis and returned home to find this?” many wondered.

The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case drove a stake into Old South segregation in schools. Then black leaders from the South led the civil rights movement to help America better realize its true dream of freedom and equality for all.

Today, despite huge leaps of progress, the country is still suffering from a Civil War hangover. Almost mimicking the spirit of those Pace salsa commercials on television, Southerners routinely are distrustful of new ideas and policies that emanate from New York City, Washington or places that are “off.” In turn, Northerners seem to still have caricatured impressions of Southerners and their values of faith, duty, honor, tradition and respect for the past. The residual effect is that there’s a lot of hollering and little listening, much the same as there was just before the start of the Civil War.

Throughout this next year, America has a choice on how to remember the Civil War. In one path, we honor the dead from both sides who gave their lives. We embrace a full, open discussion of what happened a century and a half ago. And we learn from it so we can take steps to make our democracy stronger. Or the country can go down the familiar path of vitriol and hatefulness, needlessly fighting old battles that can only cause more division, more problems and more pain in our over-partisanized, media-saturated America that is hurting more each day.

As Americans, we know what the right thing is – to engage in spirited, respectful discussions on issues to move forward to a common goal, a stronger country. So when it comes to the Civil War, let’s avoid the bitterness that tore the country apart 149 years ago, be respectful, pull together and focus on how our great divide from the past can make us stronger now.

Andy Brack is president of the Center for a Better South.  He can be reached at:  brack@bettersouth.org

CHARLESTON, S.C.

But two photographs in Evans’ series were different. They included mules. [See some of his photographs by clicking on this link.]

“Mules did everything,” remembered retired Army Corps of Engineers Gen. Carroll LeTellier of Charleston during Saturday breakfast at the Marina Variety Store.  Mules pulled plows. Mules graded roads and plowed snow. Mules pulled carts from farm to town. Mules filled the countryside during the depression. In short, mules ruled.

These days, mules are pretty hard to find. About the only place you can see them with some regularity around here is in downtown Charleston when you spy them pulling tour wagons packed with often overweight tourists.

Back in 1930, there were about 5.4 million mules in the United States, according to Census data.  More than half – 2,807,082 mules – were found in 11 states of the South. Today, the number of mules and donkeys nationally (the Census Bureau counts them together these days) is about 5 percent of what it once was – 283,806 animals.

In South Carolina, it’s worse. Mules and donkeys number 1,620 for the whole state, less than one percent of the 188,895 mules in the Palmetto State in 1930.

So what happened? Mechanization and World War II.

“When the army started to get tanks, mules pretty much went by the wayside” because they weren’t needed to pull artillery and do other work that could be done by machines, said Leah Patton, registrar of the American Donkey and Mule Society in Lewisville, Texas.

Farmers started plowing with tractors. Farm families started traveling by car or truck. Because mules, a cross between a horse and donkey, are sterile and can’t breed, the species’ numbers dropped dramatically.

Patton’s society has more than 70,000 donkeys and mules registered in an attempt to keep alive the interest in the animals. Most people, she noted, don’t register mules because they are only around for their lifetimes.

But mules are still revered in some corners where people use them for more recreational purposes – showing them and riding them. And you can still find them hard at work in developing countries where people live off the land and don’t have enough money for tractors.

Andy Brack is publisher of CharlestonCurrents.com. He can be reached at: brack@brack.net.

In fact, he periodically invites key members of the press corps into his office overlooking the White House’s north lawn to give preliminary briefings on major news events. But with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle and the immediacy of information delivered by blogs, Twitter and the Internet, there are fewer gaggle briefings than in years past.

During a one-on-one conversation early Tuesday in his White House office, Gibbs outlined the grinding weekday work cycle that often begins at 6 a.m. and finishes at 10 p.m. On weekends, he gets a break – he’s only in the office about eight hours daily.

His life these days is much different from 1998 when Gibbs served as press secretary in the last re-election campaign for U.S. Sen. Fritz Hollings, D-S.C.

“You realize when you go to meetings here, there aren’t any easy decisions,” said Gibbs, the only Southerner in Obama’s inner circle. “Every day is a very grueling thing. You are going from one thing to another, none of which is easy.”

He realizes the long hours take a toll, but that’s been true for anyone in a major position in any recent White House administration.

“There are days in which your quality of life is not good, from a purely personal perspective, meaning being able to do what you want to do. But if you’re in public service, you realize you can be in a meeting and make a point that will change the outcome of what the entire administration is doing.

“If that doesn’t get you excited about what you’re doing, it’s time to look for new work.”

The biggest frustration Gibbs says he currently has is the lack of news context provided by the competitive, insatiable news media.

“Because of the fact that the media has changed so much – that there are so many different outlets and because of the economic situation of media – I think there’s a far greater, right now, desire to be first with something than there is to step back and describe for people what is going on and how it affects them.

“No doubt these are trying and tumultuous times, [but] I think we need an institution that doesn’t just cover what somebody screams the loudest because they scream it, but that covers the importance of what is being debated and discussed because of how that impacts them. ”

Gibbs said he found hard to fathom that it had been more than 11 years since he was on the campaign trail with Hollings in South Carolina.

“There isn’t a day I wouldn’t like to be having dinner in Charleston, South Carolina,” he said before focusing back on his job of pushing President Barack Obama’s message:

“Whether you agree with every decision he makes or not, every day he is working to get most fundamentally the economy back on track and that will help everybody, regardless of whether you like him or not.”

Andy Brack is publisher of Charleston Currents. He can be reached at: publisher@charlestoncurrents.com.

“The whole idea of ‘Sound Tracks’ was essentially to take the ‘Global Hit’ segment I produce for radio — for ‘The World’ — and give it visuals,” Werman said in an interview. “It works extremely well with music that’s happening around the globe because artists tend to occupy spaces that many of us don’t get a chance to see. In radio, you can get transported to those places, but you ‘see’ them in your imagination. On the other hand, radio has the advantage of being the perfect music medium for obvious reasons.”

If you’re scratching your head thinking that Werman’s name sounds familiar, it might be that you recognize it because he now hosts “The World” national radio show 3 p.m. Monday through Friday on public radio stations, including WABE in Atlanta. He’s been with the show since 1997, when he pioneered regular in-depth stories on global music news and trends to an audience that now approaches 3 million weekly listeners. Before joining the Boston-based show, he managed an upstate New York public radio station, produced news for the BBC World Service from West Africa and volunteered with the Peace Corps. He’s even won a national Emmy award for his online reporting on international music and news for PBS’s “FRONTLINE/World.”

Sounds pretty impressive, huh? It’s the natural progression for a guy who started a short-lived alternative paper with me that featured his interview with reggae artist Peter Tosh.

Werman says the new show, which he hopes will be picked up soon for a six-show season, has a big buzz with the bigwigs at PBS. He and his team are excited with a bunch of great story ideas. “The course we’re tracking is to build further excitement among viewers, and as important, funders,” he said in an interview. “We’d love to be shooting some of those stories by later this year.”

For a longtime radio reporter, television is a little different, although Werman and company seem to eschew the make-up and obsession-with-appearance part of TV for the relaxed, third-world reporter look.

“The actual craft of television was a big discovery for me, as someone immersed in radio for so many years,” he said. “Radio, minus the script editing, is basically a one-person operation, and that means as a reporter, you can be pretty self-contained. Like print reporters, you can easily assume the fly-on-the-wall.

“With TV you have to accept that you are part of a larger collaborative effort. I like feeling part of a team. Though in the field, even a three-person crew attracts attention. … There’s more artifice with TV. It’s fun, though, and the teamwork is refreshing. But it’s not radio.”

Stories on “Sound Tracks,” like those of “The World,” may open up a new (pardon the pun) world for many Americans.

“In a very clever and subtle way, stories about why and how people make music around the world go much further than conventional news coverage in explaining why things are the way they are,” Werman said. “Want to know about Nigerian politics? Listen to Fela Kuti. Want to get inside the head of Russian politicians? Find out why they need to be flattered by pop music nymphettes. And so on.”

Andy Brack is publisher of Charleston Currents. He and Marco Werman both attended Duke University. Werman is also a graduate of Broughton High School in Raleigh, N.C.

Programming Note: You can watch “Sound Tracks” 10 p.m. Monday on most public television stations. If you don’t get a chance to view the pilot, check it out online here.

CHARLESTON, S.C.

In 1964, artist Norman Rockwell, the well-known illustrator of iconic images of the American dream, unveiled the first of his civil rights paintings, “The Problem We All Live With.” It’s very likely you have seen this painting that debuted in a two-page spread in Look magazine. It’s very different from most of Rockwell’s work.

The painting shows a full-length profile of a young black girl in a white dress and tennis shoes on a sidewalk. She’s sandwiched between two pairs of federal marshals. You can’t see the full bodies of the marshals – just from their shoulders to their shoes. Scrawled on a wall that serves as the painting’s background is the nasty word, “Nigger.” Scratched at another place is “K.K.K.” The only vivid color in the piece, marked mostly by its muted grays, tans and yellows, is the carcass of a red tomato. It lay on the ground, splattered just below where it hit the wall.

“The Problem” is a simple, but remarkable work. North Carolina artist Kenneth W. Laird, who did his master’s degree thesis on this and other paintings, calls Rockwell’s piece “arguably the single most important image ever done of an African American in illustration history.”

Part of the reason is Rockwell, himself.  Viewed during his career as a “conservative artist” whose work represented an ideal America, Rockwell left the Saturday Evening Post in 1963 after 47 years of illustrating kids at soda shops, dogs, patriotic themes, family life and other All-American subjects.

The 1960 story of how six-year-old Ruby Bridges became the first black girl in New Orleans to attend a white school inspired Rockwell, an early member of the NAACP.

In “retirement,” he started working on subjects that represented greater diversity of American life. Laurie Norton Moffatt, director and CEO of the Norman Rockwell Museum, described the artist’s move to more realistic subjects in a Sunday story in the South Florida Times:

“He was very socially concerned, but he wasn’t able to paint that in the Post because of editorial policies. I think it was very liberating for him as well to be able to paint on a wider spectrum of subjects, and [he] was particularly able to create a bridge for people to see the unfairness, the anger, the meanness and the injustices that were happening to our children all over the United States.”

Murray Tinkelman, an award-winning illustrator who is a professor emeritus at Syracuse University, highlighted the impact of “The Problem” to Laird. For the John F. Kennedy’s American public, not yet pummeled into submission by media from television, cell phones and the Internet, Rockwell was an artist “embraced by the most conservative elements in our country [who] would make these people stop and think that maybe there is a problem. And the problem is racism. Purely and simply.”

Singer Andy Williams, a Rockwell fan, noted in a book about Rockwell’s America, that the artist didn’t always paint about the happy moments in American life:  “He wasn’t afraid to show us what was happening in America – the good and the bad. His painting ‘The Problem We All Live With’ makes us feel the shame of segregation in America. It shows a young black girl being escorted by guards to an integrated school in the South, when racial segregation was the norm. I think it’s a great painting and exemplifies the greatness of Norman Rockwell.”

A framed print of this Rockwell painting has been on my office wall for several years. It’s worth looking at every day to remind us how far we’ve come … and how far we still have to go.

Photo: Visitors to the Norman Rockwell Museum look at “The Problem.” Photo by Jeremy Clowe. ©Norman Rockwell Museum. All rights reserved.

Andy Brack is publisher of Statehouse Report (www.statehousereport.com) and Charleston Currents (www.charlestoncurrents.com).  He is chairman and president of the Center for a Better South (www.bettersouth.org).

More information on this story: Ken Laird’s thoughts on the painting: http://hubpages.com/hub/The-Problem-We-All-Live-With—Norman-Rockwell-the-truth-about-his-famous-painting

Norman Rockwell Museum:  http://www.nrm.org

First, only 1 percent of the 770 registered voters who responded to our new InsiderAdvantage/Statehouse Report poll had no opinion of what should be done about the governor’s behavior, which has turned South Carolina into a running joke everywhere from water coolers to late night television. For only 1 percent of people to have no opinion about options for his fate shows just how deeply his personal failures have cut into the state’s psyche.

Second, a majority of those polled — 51 percent of respondents — said the S.C. General Assembly should move beyond Sanford and get down to real work of helping people throughout the state. So instead of impeaching him or censuring him or saying he should resign, most South Carolinians pointed their fingers away from Sanford and directly toward the legislature.

The clear message of the poll was that most people – and more Republicans and Independents than Democrats – think it’s just time to move on. As one wag has suggested, we’re just plain worn out by the live soap opera known as “Sanford and Wife.”

So what’s next? South Carolinians apparently have another 13 months to live with Sanford, whose libertarian fanaticism and radical romanticism would have challenged and fascinated the great writer William Faulkner. The governor faces likely censure by the General Assembly, continuing ethical inquiries, divorce and a fight to remain relevant in a state that is turning its back on him. Instead of spouting political rhetoric with passion on a bully pulpit, he’ll struggle to cough convincing words as he seeks pit stops of political relevance.

If South Carolina legislators have a half a brain, they’ll forget about the governor’s case, put the whole mess behind them, and start trying to figure out ways to cut the state’s 12 percent unemployment rate and improve its perennially poor education system.

Yes, the Sanford saga soon should be over – but only, of course, if bottom-feeders in the media can also get over it.  It’s been hard to pick up a local newspaper or turn on the television over the last few months without seeing the latest speck of new (mostly meaningless) information about the Sanford family. Either it was the governor at an endless series of Rotary club meetings apologizing for his behavior (a club in Charleston agreed to invite him – at his request – only if he didn’t apologize and instead talked about issues; of course, he couldn’t resist apologizing again for his moral failings.) Or it was Mrs. Governor, First Lady Jenny Sanford, enflaming the media even more by appearing in a national magazine story or giving a big TV interview or issuing a press release about how she was trying to protect her family. Whenever something happened, the too-sensational media was there in full froth to pick up the inanity of whatever was the next Sanford thing.

So as the Year of Sanford comes to a close, let’s ring it out with a pledge to pay more attention to a different Sanford – Fred G. Sanford. Because God knows, Elizabeth, people across South Carolina have been through the big one in 2009.

It’s time to move on.

Andy Brack is  publisher of Statehouse Report, a weekly South Carolina legislative forecast.  A version of this column and more about the InsiderAdvantage/Statehouse Report poll is online at www.statehousereport.com.

We all have a special place that we value, whether it’s a waterfall, a mountain walk, a blackwater river, a country store, a prime fishing hole or a tucked-away corner of a beach. Over the last week, we’ve asked people from across South Carolina to share their hidden gem. Here are some of the best:

Stumphouse Tunnel, Walhalla. State Sen. Kevin Bryant, R-Anderson, suggests a trip to this uncompleted tunnel started during the Civil War. Cool in the steamy summers, it reportedly is where Clemson’s famous blue cheese was housed in the early days. “It’s very dark, wet and creepy in the back,” Bryant says – just the thing for a kid around Halloween time. More.

Williamsburg County. S.C. Coastal Conservation League leader Dana Beach says a great place to check out is this rural, poor county that is abundant with natural resources – “the Black River, Black Mingo Creek, beautiful longleaf pine forests and small towns without the clutter of development.” And if you’re hungry, stop by Brown’s to get some of the best barbecue around. More.

Chesterfield County. Wendy Wagner at Chesterfield General Hospital writes, “Enjoy the peace and beauty of nature in Sandhills Wildlife Refuge in an area with the best air and water quality around – Chesterfield.” More.

Beautiful Charleston view. Former 1974 gubernatorial candidate Pug Ravenel of Charleston recommends a visit to the top floor restaurant on the round Holiday Inn on the Ashley River in Charleston because it has “the best panoramic view in South Carolina – marshes, Ravenel Bridge, the Citadel, Fort Sumter, downtown old houses and the Atlantic Ocean.”

Willington. Charleston politico Phil Noble says a must-visit is to the small McCormick town of Willington, which is rebranding itself as a destination for book-lovers to buy books. “Willington is truly an inspiration,” he says. “It was once a thriving little town that nearly died and is now coming back to life. And they are doing it in a unique and creative way that can show countless other struggling communities – in South Carolina and across the country – what can be done with bold leadership, a sense of a caring community….and just plain hard work. They are true heroes.”

Orangeburg restaurant. S.C. Chamber of Commerce President Otis Rawl couldn’t say enough about the Four Moons Restaurant and says that some of his well-traveled friends rate it as one of the top dining spots in the world. “The menu and wine selection is second to none. The atmosphere is delightful. The quality and the variety of the food is the experience.”

Belton eatery. Not to be outdone is Grits and Groceries, a Belton restaurant that is a favorite of GOP gubernatorial candidate Gresham Barrett. “Grits and Groceries offers a taste of New Orleans right here in rural South Carolina. Heidi and Joe [the owners] always live up to their motto of ‘real food, done real good.’”

Hitchcock Woods, Aiken. Steve Hale says this 2,000-acre preserve in Aiken is “a true treasure and people in Aiken would riot if someone wanted to disturb it.” More.

Conway. Allen Stalvey of the S.C. Hospital Association recommends his hometown and its “small streets, beautiful old homes, large oak trees, a nice riverfront area near the beach.” More.

The Joe. Charleston RiverDogs General Manager Dave Echols says one of the nicest, soothing spots in Charleston is the back railing near the marsh during sunset at Charleston’s Joseph Riley Stadium.

Glencairn Garden, Rock Hill. Marketing coordinator Laurie Helms says the renovated 11-acre garden is a jewel in the heart of Rock Hill: “No matter who visits, no matter the time of year, Glencairn Garden leaves guests with the strong imprint of the beauty and history that live within its flower-filled borders.” More.

And one of my hidden gems? Caw Caw Interpretive Center near Ravenel. This Charleston County park is a wonder of calming marsh vistas and trails. Wildlife is abundant. On recent visits, my daughters thrilled to the swooping flight of a great blue heron, jumping mullet and baby foot-long alligators within a few feet of their 8-foot mother.

If you have a hidden gem to share, send an email to: brack@statehousereport.com. We’ll keep a running list on our Web site, http://www.statehousereport.com/

Now is the time in the South and nation for courage —  for leaders who will stand up for what’s right, regardless of how it will impact them personally.

What do we have instead?

— Blowhards like Sarah Palin who are more interested in soundbites, making money  and getting on TV than actually doing any work.

— Weaklings like S.C. Gov. Mark Sanford, who drag out the release of a public report of a public investigation by a public body about his failings as a public servant.

— Scoundrels like three Democratic U.S. senators who held out until the last minute on a procedural vote for health care reform because they are scared they won’t be re-elected.

— Partisan boobs like the infotainers Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Keith Olbermann.

— Political lemmings, like many in Southern state legislatures who aren’t able to make up their minds without consulting the polls, lobbyists and special interests.

Where are the Martin Luther King Jrs. of today?  Where are the crusading editors, such as The Atlanta Constitution’s Ralph McGill, who wrote about kicking the Klan in the teeth from the 1940s until his death in 1969?  Where are more leaders like Charleston Mayor Joe Riley, who marched on Columbia earlier this decade in protest of the Confederate flag on the Statehouse?

In 1955 when then-Senator John F. Kennedy published “Profiles in Courage,” he recognized that all sorts of forces seek to dampen the spirit of courage in our elected leaders – the influence from political peers in office, the desire to be re-elected and the pressure from constituents and lobby groups.  In the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, he recognized the increased impact of mass media, which has exploded since Kennedy’s day with the Internet, faxes, Blackberries, Twitter, Facebook and cable television.

But in the end, he concluded that political courage and the ability to compromise without giving up principles remains important for America to remain America:  “A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality,” Kennedy wrote.

Eleven years later, respected Arkansas U.S. Sen. William Fulbright wrote in “The Arrogance of Power,” that it was important to criticize one’s country.  “Criticism is more than a right:  it is an act of patriotism, a higher form of patriotism, than the familiar rituals of national adulation.”

So when there’s news that Republican county parties in South Carolina are censuring U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for diligently working with others to come up with a national solution on carbon pollution or immigration, we think of Graham’s courage and others’ callousness and cowardice.

When we read how South Carolina Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mullins McLeod of Charleston wants the Confederate flag taken off the Statehouse grounds, we easily can predict the firestorm of hatred his campaign will get. And while he may have been trying to kickstart his campaign, at least he had the courage to take a stand unpopular to many.

When we see President Obama trying to fix health care, get better options on Afghanistan and move the economy forward, we know we’re seeing flashes of courage, and not grandstanding.  These are tough decisions.

More of our leaders need to take a political lesson from the daily, unheralded experiences of our police, firefighters, soldiers, sailors and airmen – sometimes it’s just time to say, “Damn the torpedoes … full speed ahead.”  These elected officials need to ignore pollster politics and stand up for what’s right.

More in our media need to stop the hype, ask hard questions and do the real stories that highlight what’s going on in America and our state.

It’s time for political and editorial courage – for people to look into their hearts to do what’s right – to work on big challenges in the economy, education, health care and poverty.  And if not now, when?

Andy Brack is a syndicated columnist in South Carolina and president of the Center for a Better South.  He can be reached at:  brack@bettersouth.org.