Good Morning Lowcountry

GMLc doesn't feel very amusing today. Flags are at half-staff all over the Lowcountry after the loss of nine firefighters Monday night. The mood is subdued, and even commuter traffic seems to move half-stunned. We join the community in a salute to the service and bravery of these men.

Diaspora

This year is the bicentennial of the 1807 abolition of the slave trade in Europe and then the United States, being observed by heritage groups re-establishing the Lowcountry's cultural ties to Barbados and West Africa.

A large number of the people enslaved in West Africa were transported and sold through Barbados to Charleston.

The plantation owner ties between Barbados and Charleston helped to establish Charleston as the wealthiest city in Colonial America, on the backs of its slaves.

Friday, Bishop John Gaskins of Barbados arrives in the Lowcountry to spread the word about Dream Africa, a delegation of African ministers trying to reconnect the descendents of the slavery diaspora with their homelands and peoples.

Dream Africa "is one of a number of groups of people thinking about the historical role of slavery, its legacy and the current slave trade," said Simon Lewis, who directs the College of Charleston's Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program.

The Charleston Lowcountry African-American Heritage Association also is looking to establish cultural and economic programs with West African countries, "to put a more coherent face on Charleston and the Lowcountry as absolutely central to the African-American experience," Lewis said.

"Basically, tying family members back together again."

Gaskins is being hosted by the owners of the Borough House on Calhoun Street.

Deborah Grace, one of those owners, met Dream Africa ministers at a recent celebration of the bicentennial in London, leading to the invitation.

Dream Africa is now promoting a National Day of Reconciliation in London Oct. 5-7, highlighted by a formal apology to African tribal chiefs, and working to make it an international event.

The Borough House owners are putting together an itinerary for the two-week visit. A luncheon at the college is planned for Wednesday. For more information call 766-6679 or 953-1920.

A more perfect union

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

This whole idea of freedom and the people's right to govern themselves had only begun to be wrestled with 219 years ago, when the Founding Fathers basically balled up and tossed into the trash the Articles of Confederation, the original plan for trying to make this grand experiment work.

The articles very coolly granted independence to each of the states but broke down on little details such as how to get the states to work collectively to handle problems such as law and order, defense, taxation (then and now a dirty word), regulating trade and the biggest bugaboo of all — paying off a rather large and ungainly national debt left over from the hostilities with the now-alienated mother country.

In its place, they designed a cumbersome set of rights and rules, checks and balances, and means for reworking the entire contraption if necessary.

It turned out to be sturdy enough that we continue to grapple our way along with it today. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the Constitution, the last one needed to make it law.

High summer

At 2:06 p.m. today, it's summer. Whoa, never mind rushing after the swimsuit. You've already been left behind. Not waiting for stragglers, the sun is celebrating summer in the Caribbean; it reached solstice in the sky somewhere around Cancun, Mexico.

But relax, the waters off Folly are comfortably in the 80s — fine swimming temperature — and will stay there well into the fall. And GMLc has a lovely, freebie parting gift for you: two seconds.

Today is the longest day of the year, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 56 seconds of daylight. That's two more seconds than you had yesterday, two more than you will have tomorrow. It's a breath of the new season. Settle back in the beach chair an extra moment.