There is an unsettling disconnect in the rhythms of South Carolina these days, when normalcy and crisis clash and co-reign.

More than a year and a half into the coronavirus pandemic that has killed some 12,000 South Carolinians — nearly 1,900 dead in the past month alone, as the fatality rate speeds up — early fall life looks much like it always has for many people who crowd into restaurants, sporting events, concerts and church services.

While tens of thousands gather in college football stadiums, hospitals strain under a worsening surge of COVID-19 patients. While one community mourns the deaths of two schoolchildren, among COVID’s youngest victims, passionate crowds fill school board and council chambers to protest mask mandates. While lines of cars wait for hours at a drive-thru coronavirus testing site in the state capital, half of the state’s eligible residents still wait or refuse to be vaccinated.

The discord is striking in that each of these moments coexist with the others — the mirth alongside the sorrow, the fear alongside the vitriol.

As the pandemic worsens, these clashing moments mingle across the Palmetto State.

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Tens of thousands gather in college football stadiums, while hospital ICUs filled with hundreds verge on chaos in South Carolina. As the pandemic worsens, clashing moments mingle in day-to-day life across the state. https://t.co/PwQIlYN8Ou

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) October 4, 2021

MaryRita Watson says her job as a fourth- and fifth-grade reading specialist is 110% more stressful these days.

As the delta variant continues to spread across the United States and leads to more coronavirus exposure among students, Watson says she has been forced to embrace the hybrid model of teaching, where she simultaneously has to educate students both in-person and virtually.

“It’s difficult. I feel like the students who are at home aren’t getting the best of me, and then at times, the students at school aren’t getting best of me,” says Watson, who teaches at Oakbrook Elementary School in Summerville, S.C. She has switched between in-person and virtual classes over the last year and half due to the pandemic.

Watson is among millions of teachers across the nation who are in their second year of teaching either in-person, online or both – depending on the state, city and district they live in. Like many other professions, teachers’ jobs have become increasingly complex due to the pandemic. This year, many students are back in the classroom, but teachers have to constantly adapt if there is virus exposure. There aren’t specific guidelines on how best to teach students using the many technologies that are available. Teachers are also struggling to keep students engaged while learning new tech tools that are required to make online classes successful.

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Millions of teachers across the nation are in their second year of teaching either in-person, online — or both.

Teachers are struggling to keep students engaged while learning new tech tools that are required to make online classes successful. https://t.co/Hwk9E8A8o9

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) October 1, 2021

Sacrifice of Isaac – Caravaggio, c. 1603. (Uffizi Gallery, Florence). #art pic.twitter.com/r46nfBEQLD

— EUROPEAN ART 💭 (@EuropeanArtHIST) November 8, 2020

The Diocese disassociated from The Episcopal Church in the fall of 2012, along with 80% of its congregations and members. That action was taken in response to attempts by TEC to remove the Rt. Rev. Mark Lawrence as Diocesan Bishop. Litigation in this case began the following January. The Diocese and Parishes filed this action seeking a declaratory judgement to clarify the rights of the Diocese and its parishes. In February 2015, the Honorable Judge Diane Goodstein ruled that the Diocese and those parishes in union with it, “are the owners of their real personal and intellectual property and that [TEC and TECSC] have no legal, beneficial or equitable interest in the Diocese’s real, personal and intellectual property.” TEC and TECSC were permanently enjoined from using, assuming or adopting the marks of the Diocese.

Judge Goodstein’s ruling was appealed to the South Carolina Supreme Court, which ruled on August 2, 2017 in the form of five separate opinions. The lack of agreement among those five opinions required clarification. The Diocese and Parishes filed a Motion for Clarification on March 23, 2018.

In his ruling, Judge Dickson made several important conclusions of law. Chief among them was his ruling on the central issue of interpreting the Collective Opinions. As he noted in quoting former Chief Justice Toal, “The Court’s collective opinions in this matter give rise to great uncertainty, so that we have given little to no collective guidance in this case or in church property disputes like this going forward.” He concluded that, “This court must distill the five separate opinions, identify the court’s intent and produce a logical directive.”

With respect to parish property, the law of this case follows the precedent of All Saints Parish, Waccamaw (2009). In his deciding opinion, Chief Justice Beatty, “found that the Dennis Canon, standing alone, does not unequivocally convey an intention to transfer ownership of property to the national church…” In accordance with established South Carolina law, establishment of a trust interest must meet the standard of being “legally cognizable”. Judge Dickson concluded there is no evidence that any parish agreed to the Dennis Canon: “This court finds that no parish expressly acceded to the Dennis Canon” and “defendants failed to prove creation of a trust.” He further concluded, “TEC’s argument that their unilaterally drafted Dennis Canon created a trust under South Carolina law is rejected.”

Read it all and where necessary follow the links.

#SouthCarolina Supreme Court sets hearing date
4 TEC’s appeal frm Judge Dickson’s interpretatn of the
2017 Collective Opinions in
Church Property Dispute https://t.co/S4exAsZOKE #law #parishministry #anglican #churchhistory #ethics #stewardship #churches #religion #lowcountrylife pic.twitter.com/GOAmwA8I65

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) September 24, 2021

South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control Director Edward Simmer shot down reports that his agency was getting in the way of doctors who push therapeutic treatments that are not considered effective against the virus but that people are now requesting in large numbers.

Simmer said Wednesday the agency was not preventing physicians from prescribing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, both unproven COVID-19 treatments, or sanctioning doctors that do so, even if it advises against the practice and promotes vaccination as the safest and most effective means of preventing COVID-19 infection.

“We don’t punish physicians or patients for clinical decisions. Nor do we determine what are acceptable uses of available medications,” Simmer said during a five-hour Senate Medical Affairs hearing where physicians testified about COVID-19 treatments. “But what we do offer is the best evidence we possibly can, the best scientific evidence regarding what is effective, both prevention and treatment, for COVID.”

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'While the vast majority of medical professionals nationally+in #SouthCarolina do not prescribe or promote unauthorized #COVID19 treatments, many of the doctors who testified at Wednesday’s panel were highly supportive of ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine' https://t.co/1XLBTHwzpF

— Kendall Harmon (@KendallHarmon6) September 23, 2021

Institution of Kyle Holtzhower as Rector of Christ-St. Paul’s

On Sunday, September 26, 2021 at 5:30 p.m. Bishop Mark Lawrence will Institute and Induct the Rev. Kyle Holtzhower as the Rector of Christ-St. Paul’s, Yonges Island. An institution is a time for celebration throughout the Diocese and a time to hold the new Rector and the parish in your prayers. If you’re unable to be present, do make time to pray. Clergy are invited to process wearing red stoles. View invitation. Learn more about Kyle.

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Just a peaceful boardwalk through a rare old-growth bottomland hardwood forest. This timeline cleanse has been brought to you by @CongareeNPS in South Carolina.

Pic by Rose Digianantonio pic.twitter.com/ojbFRXbApF

— US Department of the Interior (@Interior) September 19, 2021

This time last year, we were contending with the reality that the summer of 2020 was a bust. We had just started the school year, virtually in most cases. Yet hopes were high as we, as a nation, eagerly anticipated the arrival of a vaccine that would herald the end of this pandemic.

As a doctor of 20 years, I anticipated some vaccine hesitance. It is only natural to be wary of the new. I did not, however, anticipate the sustained degree of difficulty it has taken to get even half of South Carolinians vaccinated. We have been at that plateau for months.

This anomaly to me underscores the general loss of confidence in institutions, as well as the tribalism that pervades our society.

As a physician, I honor my oath. I do not question how you came to be at the state you were in. I do not modify my practice based on how well you stuck to preventive medicine guidelines. But as a human, there is an emotional cost that I and my colleagues suffer as we contend with crowded emergency departments, frustrated patients and overworked support staff. And it is so unnecessary.

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While this state recently ranked as the very worst in the country for the rate of new COVID-19 cases, the numbers — at least for now — don’t appear to be climbing anymore. https://t.co/ZKVk8j7a43

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) September 21, 2021

All this melting ice raised sea levels across the globe, just as dropping ice cubes into a whisky drink eventually makes a mess. Except some ice cubes in Greenland can be half the size of Manhattan.

There’s more: The Greenland ice sheet is so massive that it generates its own gravity. It pulls the Atlantic Ocean toward it like someone tugging a blanket. South Carolina is at the other end of this blanket, which means that Greenland pulls water away from our coast, lowering our sea level. But as the ice melts, its gravity disperses and its grip loosens. Seas at the far end of the ice’s power slosh back.

That’s one reason sea levels in South Carolina have risen faster than many other places around the globe.

Greenland is 3,000 miles north of Charleston, but this distant land of ice, polar bears and reindeer already has reshaped our coastline. It has made Charleston’s tides higher, our flooding worse. And what happens in Greenland in the future will largely determine the Lowcountry’s fate.

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Our new project, The Greenland Connection, began a few years ago after I did a story about the Gulf Stream slowing down. I half-joked to @SCMitchP that we needed to go to Greenland. He said something like, “yeah right.”#longreads #longform #SUndayLRhttps://t.co/u7XvRYLScs

— Tony Bartelme (@tbartelme) September 19, 2021

Elizabeth Clark has had days when she felt unsafe. Days when she hasn’t felt like she can help everyone who needs it. When she’s overwhelmed. When she’s dealt with frustrated people who “say things they wouldn’t in another situation.”

Clark is the only full-time school nurse at Gilbert High School, in the middle of a school district that has had some of the highest rates in the Midlands of COVID-19 spread and exposure since the new school year started just weeks ago.

Since classes resumed in mid-August, the normal maladies that come to a school nurse — from the minor but incessant to the potentially quite serious — have competed for attention with the near-constant focus on COVID-19. At one point, more than 6,000 students in Lexington 1 were excluded from class and multiple schools were teaching online-only classes.

“Two weeks before school, we get health cards on all our students,” Clark said. “I have 1,100 students, and I try to read through every single one by the first couple weeks of school. We just started on those this week. I try to orient myself to my students, but… COVID is so huge and in our face, it’s almost the only thing you can see.”

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Nurses feel like they have a limited tool kit with prevention measures like mask mandates taken off the table. “I think we all cry more than we have other years,” one nurse said. “I have.” https://t.co/m7XEx4nLyo

— The State Newspaper (@thestate) September 20, 2021

I am putting up the one in which I participated here at Saint Philip’s, Charelston:

But please note there are three others to choose from. Please do take the time to watch through at least one.

In a prepared statement, MUSC spokeswoman Heather Woolwine acknowledged that the pandemic has put stress on health care institutions.

“The sudden increase in overall patients, and particularly very sick patients needing intensive care, is challenging,” she said, and explained it takes time to hire more medical professionals to meet this new need. “Our clinical team also must significantly modify how they take care of patients yet remain safe and provide high quality care. All of this is quite stressful to the care team. We recognize this is occurring as we attempt to care for as many patients as possible across the state. The courage and dedication that our MUSC Health nursing team continues to demonstrate despite these challenges does not go unnoticed and our appreciation for their incredible work is heartfelt.”

MUSC employs more than 3,000 nurses across its facilities, Woolwine said, and the hospital system has already directed millions of dollars to support nursing retention since the start of the pandemic.

Still, some nurses who spoke with the newspaper say measures implemented by the hospital haven’t been enough. And they are scared that the ratio of nurses to patients has become dangerous as the hospital is overwhelmed once again by COVID-19. They say their co-workers are leaving in large numbers for positions with more money and the ones left behind are depressed and exhausted, fearful that the shortage at MUSC has reached a critical tipping point with more than 600 openings for nurses unfilled across the hospital system, according to the hospital’s human resources website.

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A group of nurses who work for the Medical University of South Carolina has been meeting with hospital leaders for weeks to address their concerns about alarmingly low staffing levels during the latest surge of the coronavirus pandemic. https://t.co/4vME0jS4VV

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) September 16, 2021

The Charleston City Council has passed the first reading of a wide-ranging mask ordinance that would impact everyone in the city, including public and private schools.

City leaders passed the ordinance Tuesday night with a 10 to 3 vote. The ordinance still needs two more readings before going into effect.

The ordinance would require almost everyone over the age of two to wear a mask in public and private settings. In addition, there are built-in exceptions for certain medical conditions, eating, drinking, smoking and in situations where it is not feasible – like while exercising.

It’s the most expansive local ordinance and it applies to anyone regardless of vaccination status. The mandate would apply indoor building – both public and private – as well as permitted gathering like protests and concerts

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Microbiologist John Bonaparte can count on one hand the days he has taken off from work since South Carolina recorded its first cases of the coronavirus in March 2020.

One of his co-workers in the state’s public health laboratory, Kendra Rembold, has missed three seasons of her children’s soccer games while pulling 12-hour shifts to keep up with the state’s unprecedented demand for COVID-19 testing.

And one of their supervisors in the Department of Health and Environmental Control’s cramped lab in Columbia, Christy Greenwood, decided she couldn’t adequately juggle the demands of the pandemic and her responsibilities as a single parent. So she took her 5- and 7-year-old children to stay at their grandmother’s house until things calmed down at work.

More than 550 days since the coronavirus took hold in South Carolina, that respite still hasn’t come for the hundreds of public health workers who toil in the background of the state’s response.

Instead, they say, COVID-19 has proven to be an unending nightmare, serving up 12- and 15-hour shifts, seven-day workweeks and a buffet of anxiety, frustration and fatigue.

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NEW: We went behind the scenes @SCDHEC, where public health workers have pushed themselves to their mental and physical breaking points in the first 550 days of COVID-19.

They're exhausted, frustrated as the Delta variant extends their pandemic nightmare https://t.co/sC3MB1j9wR

— Avery Wilks (@AveryGWilks) September 12, 2021

Dear Clergy and Delegates,

To help you get to know the candidates for Bishop Coadjutor of The Anglican Diocese of South Carolina before our upcoming walkabouts and election, we are providing individual videos which we hope will give you a more personal introduction to each candidate.   Please view these in their entirety before the walkabouts. If you have not yet registered for a walkabout you may do so here.

You may read the candidates’ spiritual autobiographies and view their resumes here.

Take the time to go through all three.

Even as COVID-19 cases start to level off in some Southern states, the virus is showing no signs of slowing down in South Carolina, where more than 20,000 confirmed and probable cases were recorded by the state Department of Health and Environmental Control over the Labor Day weekend.

Compared with the rest of the country, COVID-19 rates are very high in South Carolina. The New York Times calculated Sept. 7 that, once again, the rate of new cases in the Palmetto State is higher than anywhere else in the U.S….

Dr. Celine Gounder, an infectious disease specialist at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, said on PBS Newshour on Sept. 6 that a South Carolina resident who is fully vaccinated now runs the same risk of catching COVID-19 as does a New York state resident who is unvaccinated.

“And that is simply because there is so much more virus circulating right now in South Carolina,” Gounder said, “that even with the protection of the vaccine, you could still get infected.”

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Even as COVID-19 cases start to level off in some Southern states, the virus is showing no signs of slowing down in South Carolina.

https://t.co/c0YmfJj6F9

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) September 7, 2021

Echols comes with experience not only in teaching in theological settings but also with experience in recruiting teachers, building teams and developing educational programs. She taught Pastoral Theology for 3.5 years at Ridley Hall in Cambridge and ran the Perspectives course at Trinity School for Ministry in Pittsburgh. She taught public reading and worship at Union Biblical Seminary in India and also taught Cross Cultural Communication at Jeffery Seminary in Indonesia. While a full-time student at Trinity, Echols ran the Jan Term program and started the June Term program.

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Several hours each week, Bill Glover visits Jean-Marc Bollag at the apartment he and his wife share on Daniel Island.

He works on exercises with Jean-Marc and they take walks. They spend time together on the computer, answering emails, a lot of time talking. Sometimes Glover drives Bollag to Shem Creek or to Starbucks or to run errands.

“He is a very good teacher. And I’m a very bad student,” Jean-Marc, 86, said with a smile.

Glover is a 67-year-old professional caregiver — one of relatively few men in the industry — who launched a second career in 2014 after retiring as a clinical mental health counselor. These days, he works almost exclusively with clients like Jean-Marc Bollag who have been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

Nearly 6 million Americans live with Alzheimer’s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and that number is expected to triple in the next 30 years.

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Bill Glover was recently named North American Caregiver of the Year by Home Instead, the home care firm where he works.

He beat out 65,000 other caregivers for the top honor. https://t.co/xpdvZl0DH1

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) July 26, 2021

“Because of the global burden of infection that’s out there, it’s going to be very tough to put the genie back in the bottle,” Sweat said. “This idea that…well it will eventually go away or it’s gone away, everything is back to normal…is just not going to happen. So, we need to think about our public health strategies, work on getting people vaccinated. We may likely need boosters in the future. So, I believe we are into an endemic stage, and it’s hard to take that in a way. It’s kind of like we were hoping we could get rid of this. Doesn’t mean we can’t manage it and get back to our lives though.”

Sweat suggested the focus should now be on managing COVID-19 infections, especially as schools prepare to reopen next month.

“One of the big issues on the horizon right now facing us, next month schools reconvene,” Sweat said. “The state government has limited mandating masks in schools.”

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As COVID-19 infections rise once again in South Carolina, some doctors warn we could be dealing with the coronavirus for years to come https://t.co/nAp0gmyDoh

— Live5News (@Live5News) July 23, 2021

Actually, there’s a good bit to worry about, and it’s everybody’s business. This is particularly true in South Carolina, where the high number of willing hosts — just 50% of the eligible population had received one shot and only 44% were fully vaccinated as of Monday — combined with the emergence of the much more transmissible delta variant is driving infection rates back up to numbers we haven’t seen since the vaccine was still being rationed.

After remaining under the CDC’s “safe” 5% threshold for months, the rate of positive tests in South Carolina is on the rise: up to 10.8% Tuesday. Daily deaths and infections remain low, but as we learned last year, when the number of hospitalized and dead people hovered at low numbers until suddenly they didn’t, there’s a lag time between infection, serious illness and death.

Why should the vaccinated care? Beyond human compassion, there are at least three reasons it’s in everybody’s interest to get our vaccination numbers up….

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The COVID-19 vaccine brought tourists back to Charleston and Charlestonians back out in public. A resurgence can drive people back into shelter.https://t.co/fWn0lrS2W7

— The Post and Courier (@postandcourier) July 23, 2021