TheState.com: Living

Faith events in and around Columbia, May 18-24 and beyond

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:23 EDT

Email photographs from your Midlands faith events – pastor anniversaries, programs and services and community outreach – to dkujawa@thestate.com. We will post them at thestate.com/religion.

Read more about spiritual life and events at thestate.com/religion.

ANTIOCH BAPTIST CHURCH: Women’s Day celebration, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. today and Women’s Day worship service, 11 a.m. Sunday, 5715 Koon Road. (803) 786-0119

BETH SHALOM SYNAGOGUE: Religious School end of the year family picnic, 10 a.m. Sunday at Sesquicentennial state Park. (803) 782-2500

BETHLEHEM BAPTIST OF COLUMBIA: 100th anniversary events, 10 a.m. today and 11 a.m. Sunday, 1218 Lyon St. (803) 254-5651

Candice Glover's American Idol win still sinking in

Sat, 18 May 2013 01:00 EDT

After being selected the new “American Idol” on Thursday night, Candice Glover sang her coronation song, “I Am Beautiful,” through a voice choked with tears.

She struggled to get through her final performance on the show, and for the first time this season, her pitch wasn’t perfect.

She was thinking about all she’d gone through to get to that moment.

“Mostly I just thought about the fact that I’ve been here three times already,” the 23-year-old, who had auditioned for the show’s ninth and 11th seasons, said in a conference call Friday afternoon.

Her mother, Carole Glover, struggled to find the words to describe that moment.

Harmonic patterns: New exhibit at Columbia Museum of Art

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:08 EDT

Steven Naifeh composes happiness by creating art.

“Found in Translation: The Art of Steven Naifeh,” an exhibition of Naifeh’s geometric abstractions, has an almost inescapable allure. Touring the exhibition is like attending a joyous celebration without music — and yet there is melody exploding on the Columbia Museum of Art’s walls.

The art is colorful and incandescent, and many of the 26 works have a geometric heart — a center — from which the patterns expand, some appearing to be in motion. They resonate, the shapes becoming notes stacked on top of notes until the gallery swells to a crescendo.

“It starts small and it explodes,” Will South, the museum’s chief curator said “And there’s nothing in here that’s negative. These things are defined, in part, by what they’re not.”

In this show, the first retrospective museum exhibition of Naifeh’s paintings and sculptures, the artist invites viewers to experience work informed and influenced by Arab and Islamic art. There are expressions of harmony, order, balance and perfection.

Things to do and see, May 17-23

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:11 EDT

Friday, May 17

Columbia Children’s Theatre will host Review Revue: Celebrating Our Past to Benefit Our Future at 6 p.m. Friday, second level, Richland Mall, 3400 Forest Drive. Event will feature many of the high points of the past 47 Mainstage and Youtheatre productions along with heavy hors d’oeurves, cash bar and a silent auction. The revue is being produced by CCT’s S.T.A.R. (Student Thespians Achieving Results) program, a philanthropic group that allows Columbia area youth to participate in performance opportunities benefiting nonprofits. Tickets are $15 and may be purchased at http://www.columbiachildrenstheatre.com

Saturday, May 18

The S.C. Book Festival will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center, 1101 Lincoln St. On Saturday, a panel headlined by author Pat Conroy, the newly appointed editor-at-large of The USC Press new Story River Books series, will be at 11:20 a.m. Best-selling author Ron Rash will headline panels Saturday and Sunday. The festival also pays tribute to the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice.” Admission is free. Print out the two-day schedule of events posted at www.scbookfestival.org,

George Benson gets a taste of Columbia at Black Expo event

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:13 EDT

George Benson readily shared his secret strategy for making hit records.

“People like simple things they can get with,” said Benson, a guitarist and vocalist who will perform at Taste of Black Columbia Friday night at the Carolina Coliseum. The event precedes the Columbia Black Expo on Saturday at the Colonial Life Arena.

He used “Turn Your Love Around,” a R&B hit from his 1981 album “The George Benson Collection,” as an example. The song is built on drum samples, layered synthesizers and horns.

“The secret is to take a song that is sophisticated and make it uncomplicated so people can absorb it,” Benson said. “I jump on it and just get to the essentials.”

The rhythm is simple, but funky and Benson’s vocals cajole and encourage the object of his desire with a hint of blues.

Otis Taylor’s Picks of the Week

Thu, 16 May 2013 17:22 EDT

8:30 tonight: Ned and the Dirt at New Brookland Tavern. Ned and the Dirt, formerly known as Ned Durrett and the Kindly Gents, will release “Giants,” a record that is all over the place. Making no mistake, the preceding phrase was a compliment. Rock, Americana, blues, blue-eyed soul, Durrett, accompanied by an articulate working band, has documented the strength of his songwriting range. The key to presenting such robust ideas is making sure they remain cohesive, and “Giants,” recorded at Archer Avenue Studio, succeeds. Durrett’s falsetto on “Turkish Delight” is nothing short of gripping — and pleasantly surprising. It’s a risk that was worth taking. “Closer,” a clever rock song about a lover’s dwindling influence, has him closer to the radio than to burying his career in, well, the dirt. With Where’s Wolf, Foley and Ben Patat. NBT is at 122 State St., West Columbia. $5 for over 21, $7 for under; www.newbrooklandtavern.com

6 tonight and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday: Back to Rockafellas’ at Jake’s Bar and Grill. The Jam Room Music Festival, scheduled for Sept. 21, is hosting a weekend fundraiser by turning Jake’s back into Rockafellas’, the vaunted local rock club that was the leader of the local music scene in the ’80s. (Jake’s now operates in the space where Rockafellas’ rocked.) The three-day event will be similar to a typical weekend at Rockafellas’: rock shows Friday and Saturday and a punk matinee on Sunday. Tonight Buck Stanley, Say Brother and Death On Two Wheels will perform. Saturday it’s Octopus Jones, People Person and Rachel Kate. On Sunday, The Fishing Journal, Bully Pulpit, Abacus and Deathstill will play the punk matinee. In the evening, there will be an acoustic set by Adam Corbett, Brian Hannon, Daniel Machado and Lawdan Mazloom. Go hungry, because the food at Jake’s earned a NFL-sized endorsement last week. Former USC star Marcus Lattimore, who was drafted by the San Francisco 49ers, tweeted about Jake’s on May 7: “Everybody go check out the food at @JakesofColumbia.” Jake’s is at 2112 Devine St. $5 for each show; (803) 708-4788

7:30 tonight: The Sensational Epics at The Lourie Center. The Sensational Epics will play for the shag and swing dancers at the former Capitol City Center. Bring your own beer. The center is at 1650 Park Circle. $20; ( 803) 779-1971

USC professor studies the collision of nature and man, starting in his own backyard

Thu, 16 May 2013 00:11 EDT

A wind chime tinkles as a morning breeze stirs the cool, springlike air.

Below the eaves – and the chime – hangs a mailbox that a family of wrens has filled with its nest, despite the fact that nesting boxes hang, unused, throughout the surrounding yard. Clipped to the mailbox with a wooden clothespin is a note directing letter and package carriers to the back door. Best not to disturb the nesters.

And herein lies the unintended lesson for James Barilla, an assistant professor in the Master of Fine Arts program at USC whose family turned their Heathwood yard into a habitat where people and wildlife can live together:

You can have your hopes for harmony, but nature will do what nature wills.

“It’s really kind of a stress buster . . . a form of meditation,” Barilla says of creating the habitat, certified by the National Wildlife Federation. “The only time I get impatient is when I’m in conflict with other critters.”

3-Day Weekend

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:30 EDT

Thursday

Power of the Purse

Women in Philanthropy will host the 10th annual Power of the Purse event from 5:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday at the Hall at Senate’s End. There will be a silent and live auction that will feature handbags donated by businesses and individuals. Tyler Ryan of WACH-57 will MC the event catered by Dupre Catering, and DJ Irv Thompson will provide music. The hall is at 320 Senate St. $40; www.womeninphilanthropy.com

Friday

Children’s theater gala

Back home, Candice fans cheer

Thu, 16 May 2013 08:13 EDT

On the finale of “American Idol” on Wednesday night, the judges gave all three rounds to Candice Glover.

“That girl can plumb, flat out sing,” judge Randy Jackson said after Glover’s final performance of the night of Ben E. King’s “I (Who Have Nothing).”

“That was a winning performance,” Jackson said. “You just shot this night to a whole other level.”

It was the last of three emotional performances for the St. Helena Island native. The night was billed as “soul verses country,” with Glover competing against the soulful, bluesy sound of Kree Harrison of Woodville, Texas.

Judge Keith Urban was touched by the presence of Glover’s family in the audience.

SC Book Festival highlights

Wed, 15 May 2013 17:07 EDT

The S.C. Book Festival will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Columbia Metropolitan Convention Center, 1101 Lincoln St. Admission is free.

Make your own book festival master schedule

It can be tough to pick and choose among the authors and workshops at the S.C. Book Festival. (Would that you could be in two places at once!) So your best approach might be to print out the two-day schedule of events posted at www.scbookfestival .org, pull out a highlighter and make a personal master schedule.

Remember: If you want to meet a particular author, the place to do that is at a scheduled signing. Those usually take place in the exhibit hall after an author’s workshop. If you want to be first in line, you’ll have to have friends in high places or sneak out at the end of a session. (Not that we’d advise such unfeeling behavior . . .)

Ali Rogers, Miss SC, to appear at Harbison store Saturday

Wed, 15 May 2013 15:18 EDT

Ali Rogers, 2012 Miss SC and first runner-up for Miss America, will be in Harbison Saturday for a promotional appearance.

She is scheduled to be at Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse from 3 to 5 p.m. for a promotional event for Pink and Pepper shoes. Off Broadway Shoe Warehouse is at 262 Harbison Blvd.

Midlands health notes

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:34 EDT

Hospital earns grant for breast cancer screenings

Lexington Medical Center has received a grant from the Susan G. Komen For the Cure Foundation’s SC Mountains to Midlands affiliate to provide 230 breast cancer screenings for uninsured and underinsured women in the Midlands.

Lexington Medical Center will offer the screenings to women who meet specific financial requirements. The grant money can also be used to assist with transportation to Women’s Imaging Centers in Lexington Medical Center’s network of care.

The goal is early detection and treatment. Early detection is key to successful treatment of breast cancer.

Lexington Medical Center got a similar grant in 2011 and provided approximately 250 screenings to women in the Midlands. During those screenings, two breast cancers were detected.

Infographic: Happy birthday, Stephen Colbert

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:25 EDT

Back in the day, we did it right

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:54 EDT

When I was a child, back in the Parenting Stone Age (aka the Parentocentric Era), your parents were the most important people in the family. They paid the bills, bought your clothes, prepared the food you ate, took care of you when you were sick, drove you to where you needed to be, tucked you in, and kissed you good night. They were essential.

Your parents acted like they were bigger than you were too, like they knew what they were doing and didn’t need your help making decisions. In fact, your opinion really didn’t matter much. When they spoke to you, they didn’t bend down, grab their knees, and ask for your cooperation in a wheedling tone. They spoke in no uncertain terms, and they thought you were smart, so they only said anything once. The rule was very simple: They told you what to do, and you did it, because they said so.

Your mom and dad paid more attention to one another than they paid to you. You didn’t think about that at all. It was just the way it was. But looking back, you sure are glad you weren’t the center of the family universe. You were a satellite, orbiting around their solid presence. They even told you, on occasion, that you were just a little fish in a big pond. You didn’t understand what that meant, of course, until you got out in the big pond and began to realize that putting oneself into proper perspective greatly improves one’s life and the lives of those around him.

Today’s parents still pay the bills, buy the clothes, prepare the food, and so on, but by some strange twist, they treat their children as if they are the most important people in the family. Parents don’t act bigger any more either. When they talk to their children, they get down to their level, like they’re petitioning the king, and they whine, as in, “Do you think you can stop what you’re doing for a minute and help Mommy carry in the groceries?” The rule seems very simple: Parents ask children to do things, and children take their requests under consideration.

Today’s typical mom and dad pay a lot more attention to the children than they do to one another. They also talk more to them, do more for them, and take more interest in them. It would seem that today’s parents are the satellites, orbiting around the children, who are obviously big fish and getting bigger all the time. And so, today’s kids leave home later, and many of them come back home (the so-called “boomerang child”) because they never learned certain fundamentals, as in don’t spend more than you earn.

Local book events, 5/12-5/18

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:54 EDT

Email event details along with a contact phone number to books@thestate.com.

ADULT BOOK CLUB: The Lexington County Public Library, Cayce-West Columbia branch, 1500 Augusta Road, West Columbia, hosts an adult book club for ages 18 and older Wednesday from 10-11 a.m. This month’s discussion is on “Maus” by Art Spiegelman. (803) 794-6791

CAMDEN BOOK CLUB: The Kershaw County Public Library, Camden branch, 1304 Broad St., hosts its monthly book club meeting Wednesday at 6:30 p.m. This month’s discussion is of “The Kitchen House” by Kathleen Grissom. (803) 425-1508

“BETWEEN THE LINES”: The Lexington County Public Library, main branch, 5440 Augusta Road, hosts a children’s book discussion for ages 8-12 at 4 p.m. Thursday. The monthly discussions include refreshments. (803) 785-2600

BOOK SALE: The Lexington County Public Library, Irmo branch, 6251 St. Andrews Road, hosts a book sale from 8:30 a.m-4 p.m. Saturday. Gently used book donations will be accepted through Wednesday. (803) 798-7880

Arts Planner

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:53 EDT

“Found in Translation: The Art of Steven Naifeh” opens Friday at the Columbia Museum of Art. The show is the first retrospective museum exhibition of Naifeh’s paintings and sculptures. A full-color, 135-page catalog will accompany the show. A members-only opening party is at 2 p.m. May 19 when Naifeh will lecture and sign books. In February, the museum unveiled a sculpture by Naifeh. “Jali,” a 13-foot high work made of blue galvanized steel, is an abstract piece. The exhibition runs through Sept. 1. The museum is at Main and Hampton streets; www.columbiamuseum.org

Jasper Magazine and the Columbia Museum of Art will present a panel discussion at 7 p.m. Tuesday on “Red Social: Portraits of Collaboration by Alejandro Garcia-Lemos,” an exhibition of more than 20 portraits of local people that was extended into the book “Red Social – Portraits of Collaboration.” The book features Garcia-Lemos’ portraits and short fiction stories about the characters by Cynthia Boiter, Jasper’s editor. $5 or free for museum members

The Baker & Baker Foundation’s Art of Music series will feature classical guitarist Marina Alexandra at 3 p.m. Saturday at the Columbia Museum of Art. The concert will be held in the permanent collections galleries. Free with membership or admission

Pat Conroy to lead new USC press fiction series

Sat, 11 May 2013 22:54 EDT

Best-selling author Pat Conroy will become editor-at-large for a new fiction series offered by the University of South Carolina Press — a series Conroy says just might prevent the demise of the Great American Novel and help repay the debt he owes to the state that has made him famous for fiction-writing.

The first book in the new Story River Books series won’t appear until 2014, but Conroy was so excited by the “seductive powers” of the series that he volunteered his name and his services during a recent lunch with press director Jonathan Haupt.

It came as a happy coincidence that Haupt had named the nascent series after a river Conroy went swimming in as a kid, he says. That river ran along Fripp Island. Today, Conroy lives in Beaufort.

“We could start something that could maybe become a center . . . for terrific stories that can’t get heard in any other way,” says Conroy, 67. “This is going to be one of those (efforts) that saves the novel in this country.

“(That) they’re doing fiction at the USC Press seems amazing to me, and wonderful.”

Baz Luhrmann wants to ‘reveal’ more of ‘The Great Gatsby’

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:24 EDT

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is widely recognized as a literary masterwork. Yet as even the book’s editor, Maxwell Perkins, said to Fitzgerald about a draft of the 1925 novel, the title character “is somewhat vague.”

Hazy doesn’t work in cinema, so when director Baz Luhrmann decided to bring “Gatsby” to the screen, he and his creative team went on the filmmaking equivalent of an anthropological dig. The goal: unearth what was left unsaid in Fitzgerald’s slender tale of Jay Gatsby, a millionaire bootlegger, and his unrequited love for a married socialite, Daisy Buchanan.

The film, opening Friday, overflows with all the touches you’d expect from the director of “Moulin Rouge!” — elaborate production and costume design, modern music in a period setting, theatrical acting — while hitting the seminal scenes and lines in Fitzgerald’s classic.

But Luhrmann recognized the danger of missing “Gatsby’s” emotional forest for all of the novel’s expositional trees. So he, co-screenwriter Craig Pearce and a cast headed by Leonardo DiCaprio (who plays Gatsby), Carey Mulligan (Daisy) and Tobey Maguire (narrator Nick Carraway) looked for clues wherever they could be found — and then came to their own storytelling conclusions.

Luhrmann delved into Fitzgerald’s life, letters and other writings, ultimately relying heavily on “Trimalchio” — an early draft of “Gatsby” — and biographies of his wife, Zelda, whom the novelist described as the first American flapper. One of Daisy’s lines comes from a note the novelist sent to his early love, Ginevra King.

Movie review: ‘The Great Gatsby’

Fri, 10 May 2013 10:06 EDT

Jazzy, fizzy and often quite fun, Baz Luhrmann’s “Pretty Good Gatsby” takes F. Scott Fizgerald’s Great American Novel out for a sometimes dazzling, always irreverent spin.

The gauzy picture-postcard 3-D production design and superb leading players breathe life into the Jazz Age novel. But the “Moulin Rouge!” director’s barely contained determination to Australianize, if not outright bastardize, “The Great Gatsby” is constantly at war with a book and a cast that scream “classic.” And Luhrmann isn’t having that.

Gatbsy’s orgiastic parties are set to hip hop music. A clumsy sanitarium-set framing device gives Nick Carraway (Tobey Maguire) a tad too much Fitzgerald autobiography and too little Nick, the shrewd but passive observer. And some of the supporting player choices take you right out of the movie. Seriously, what Luhrmann and “colorblind casting” do to the “gambler” and gangster Meyer Wolfsheim is so far removed from Jewish caricature or stereotype as to be laughable.

But Maguire is close to perfect as Nick, the struggling bond salesman, would-be writer and teller of the tale of his neighbor, the mysterious, “richer than God” Jay Gatsby, and of inbred aristocracy that Nick’s cousin, Daisy, was born into and married into. Carey Mulligan makes for a cannier Daisy than the hapless ditz Mia Farrow turned her into back when Robert Redford played Gatsby in 1974. Joel Edgerton (“Animal Kingdom”) makes the brawny, bigoted Tom Buchanan an understandable, if not remotely sympathetic, guardian of his polo-playing “ruling class.”

And Leonardo DiCaprio brings depth, neediness and focus to Jay Gatsby, who has copied the manners, affectations and dress of America’s not-noble nobility, all in pursuit of his feminine ideal — Daisy.

Family ties McCollums to music

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:27 EDT

FAMILY MATTERS: On “Bored Hands,” a song off “Quasi-Hymns, Murder Ballads, and Tales of How the Hero Died,” the new album by Stagbriar, Alex and Emily McCollum’s harmonized vocals coil and pop, gently, like a slinky going down a carpeted staircase. Their voices stretch words — and contract — so smoothly together. It’s ironic that song is about control.

The storytelling and feel of the “Quasi-Hymns” is vintage, with the vocal patterns and delivery intimating years of use and practice. But get this: Stagbriar has only been an official band for about a year.

In fact, as of a few years ago, Alex and his sister, Emily, didn’t hang out much at all.

“We weren’t friends until I was 19. Actually, no, until I was 22 I guess,” the 24-year-old Alex said. “We lived the brother-sister lifestyle.”

“We didn’t talk,” Emily, 20, added.