Heritage Classic Foundation Donates $300k to Local Charities

courtesy of www.islandpacket.com
By JOSH McCANN
jmccann@islandpacket.com
843-706-8145
Published Thursday, December 10, 2009

The Heritage Classic Foundation, which runs Hilton Head Island's PGA Tour event, dipped into its reserves to distribute some of the $300,000 it awarded to area charities Thursday.

David Ames, chairman of the Children's Center and chairman emeritus of Hope Haven, encouraged the charities at the luncheon at the Harbour Town Conference Center to discuss at upcoming board meetings how they can help the tournament. Verizon announced it will not continue its title sponsorship after 2010.

Such efforts would serve as a "thank you" to the foundation, which has provided the "lifeblood" of many nonprofits over the years, he said.

"I think the Heritage Classic Foundation deserves our thanks and that of our community," Ames said. "But it also deserves our help and support at this time in our island's circumstances."

Other charity leaders were invited to speak, too.

Some spoke of the benefits the tournament provides for their organizations. Others shared strategies on how to use the foundation's Birdies for Charity program, in which agencies collect pledges for each birdie players make during the tournament.

Vera Bailey, executive director of the Pregnancy Center & Clinic of the Low Country, wished foundation leaders the best as they search for a new title sponsor.

"I know it's our collective prayer they will find a sponsor (after) next year," Bailey said. "We need you," she told the tournament's organizers.

Including Thursday's grants, the foundation will give more than $1.3 million to charity this year, down from the nearly $1.8 million distributed in 2008. About $200,000 came from reserves, said Ed Dowaschinski, the foundation's vice president of finance and administration.

Tournament officials attributed the decline to the economic downturn, which hurt secondary sponsorships and ticket sales, they said.

Money is distributed in several ways besides grants and the birdies program, including scholarships and a concession program in which charities run booths during the tournament to raise money.

The foundation has distributed almost $20 million since it took over the tournament in 1987.

---

Verizon Heritage Lodging Packages

A White Christmas in Hilton Head? Rare, but true!

Courtesy of www.islandpacket.com
Published Thursday, December 10, 2009

It started snowing Friday afternoon, Dec. 22, 1989. It didn't stop until the next day, after 3.5 inches coated Beaufort County.

Temperatures remained below freezing for several days, preserving the snow and providing an extremely rare white Christmas for Beaufort, Bluffton and Hilton Head Island.

As expected, there was some fallout.

Power failed for about 1,000 homes on Hilton Head because of blown fuses, Palmetto Electric reported at the time, and pleaded with people not to flip on heat pumps and space heaters as soon as power was restored to keep circuits from overloading again.

Airports along the coast, including Hilton Head and Savannah, closed for days. Little could be done to clearrunways, so crews had to wait for the snow to melt. Crews spread sand on local roads to keep them passable.

Snow fell in a band from Wilmington, N.C., to Florida, giving thousands a holiday to remember.

Tell us your memories of that storm and if you have photos, send them. We'll post the stories and photos online and publish a few in the newspaper.

Send them to Lisa Allen, city editor, P.O. Box 5727, Bluffton, SC 29938 or lallen@beaufortgazette.com.

Blue-bottle trees -- A throwback to Gullah traditions

Article courtesy of www.theislandpacket.com
By JEFF KIDD
jkidd@beaufortgazette.com
843-706-8175
Published Friday, December 11, 2009

An authentic relic of African culture, or a modern-day fad with the historical relevance of a Snuggie?

Spirit-catcher, old-time bug zapper or mere decoration?

Shabby chic, or just plain tacky?

Blue-bottle trees adorn many a Lowcountry garden and roadside stand, and their cobalt ornamentation makes them undeniably eye-catching. They generally are believed to be derived from African-American folk art, but little is documented about their origins, according to Rosalyn Browne, Penn Center's director of history and culture.

And that only adds to their mystery.

So The Beaufort Gazette and The Island Packet pose seven questions to explain the history and appeal of the blue-bottle tree.

• So which is it -- do blue-bottle trees have roots in African-American culture, or are they simply a fad designed to tap the wallet of gullible tourists?: Browne says that despite scant documentation of their origins, blue-bottle trees are an authentic piece of southern and African-American culture. She points to a book by a professor at the State University of New York tracing their use to religous rituals in the Congo.

Mary Inabinett Mack, owner of the Red Piano Too Art Gallery on St. Helena Island, agrees blue-bottle trees are authentic.

In the interest of full disclosure, Mack's shop sells the yard and garden decorations (sans blue bottles.) But she also recalls her grandmother tying blue bottles to the branches of a magnolia tree in her yard, a memory dating at least to the 1940s.

"That goes back to a tradition in the African-American community when we used to sweep and decorate the yard," Mack said.

• What, exactly, is the significance of the blue-bottle tree?: According to several sources, the trees are used to keep evil spirits --"haints" or "wooly boogers," for example -- out of one's home. They even are effective on a particularly nasty goblin known as a "plat eye" -- in Gullah culture, the evil spirit of someone improperly buried, according to the Web site Moonlitroad.com.

The spirits come out at dusk and are beckoned inside by slanting light refracted through the sparkling blue bottles. Once inside, the spirits are trapped. Some say they are vaporized when the bottles are flooded with morning sun. Others say the spirits simply cannot escape the bottle and that you can hear them moaning in agony when the wind blows through the tree branches.

• Why the color blue?: Today, you can find the trees adorned with bottles of many colors, but blue is particularly popular and particularly true to the tree's origins. Browne says the color blue long has been believed to ward off evil spirits.

"In fact, the aspect of using colors and symbols -- related to good spirits and bad sprits -- came with the Africans themselves, as they came to the Americas from Africa or the Caribbean," Browne said.

That belief in the power of colors also explains blue doors and blue porch ceilings -- both are so painted to keep evil from crossing the threshold into a home. Blue-bottle trees prevent the spirits from even getting that close.

Some say the blue-bottle trees did a fair job of ridding homes of more terrestrial nuisances -- bugs.

According to the blogger The Lazy Gardener, the lime once used to make blue bottles also is an insect repellent that keeps skeeters and noseeums out of your house. This doesn't work anymore, though -- apparently, lime no longer is used to turn things blue.

• How are blue-bottle trees made?: Mack recalls her grandmother tying blue bottles to a magnolia. A crape myrtle mature and sturdy enough to support the weight of the bottles is another popular choice, with the branches simply inserted into the bottle necks.

Some artists now craft artificial trees made of wood or metal rods. Mack sells in her store trees made by a man in Aiken. A blue-bottle tree behind her store was constructed by a Hank Herring, a Beaufort resident, artist, retired Marine and former part-time employee of Red Piano Too.

• What is the most difficult part of assembling a blue-bottle tree?: Many say it is finding the blue bottles, particularly those in the distinctive cobalt shade usually associated with the trees. Milk of Magnesia, Vick's Salve or certain brands of bottled water are highly sought-after.

Mack has a tree in her yard that she has festooned with pint jars she found at a Dollar General store and bottles of the energy drink Bawls. Also used are wine bottles -- she once purchased a case of a particular vintage from a Rhode Island vineyard just to have the distinctive, blue bottles.

"If I see a blue bottle of wine, a lot of times I'll buy it whether I like the wine or not," she said.

• What's the second-most difficult part of assembling a blue-bottle tree?: Sometimes, getting permission, as Hilton Head Island couple Deborah Brooks and James Borton discovered in August 2008.

They erected a tree outside their home -- apropos, it seemed to them, since they lived in a neighborhood carved from land off Spanish Wells Road that long was used by African-American families.

"We moved into an area where our bottle tree could be considered a small part of what we've all taken from this area," Brooks told The Island Packet.

But the Oakview neighborhood has restrictive covenants, and the bottle tree fell among other no-nos islanders are familiar with: No clothes lines, fences, statuary or structures in the yard.

• Just how "Lowcountry" are blue-bottle trees?: They're strongly associated with the area because of their African-American/Gullah roots, but they hardly are unique to the Lowcountry.

One Web site devoted to bottle trees displays pictures of them from many southern states, Australia, France, the Netherlands and even exotic locales such as Oklahoma.

New unit videos on RQ Hilton Head website!

You may have noticed a couple recent upgrades to the RQ Hilton Head website. We've recently added unit videos of each individual unit, so you know exactly what you're getting when you book. All videos are also posted on YouTube, which makes them easily accessible at any time. Check out our YouTube Channel to view all of our units.

Or, look for the video at the unit level page on the www.resortquesthiltonhead.com website. Here's an example

In addition, ResortQuest has partnered with HiltonHead360.com to provide better mapping of all of our complexes. Sea Pines complex maps are added, with more coming soon! Check it out