No other figure in the arts elicits such a strong emotional response as does Beethoven. People may pity van Gogh, respect Michelangelo and Shakespeare, admire Leonardo da Vinci but Beethoven immediately calls up a powerful, positive image: the tough, angry genius creating deeply expressive masterpieces in the face of adversity.

Local high school students exhibit artwork at SoBA gallery

Artwork from more than 50 Bluffton and May River high school students will be on display through February 1 at The Society of Bluffton Artists (SoBA) gallery in Old Town Bluffton. An opening reception is slated from 5-7 p.m. January 10 at the gallery. These events are free and open to the public.

Wherein the Author Gets a Window Into the Movie Business. Literally.

By Mark Shaffer, Editor at Large

This is it. I finally made it into the movie business. It’s almost like I imagined it would be as a kid. I’m dressed to kill in a white dinner jacket and black bowtie, hair combed back like a mid 20^th century matinee idol, cigarette in my right hand (unlit), my left hand caresses a tumbler of bourbon. I am positioned – no, posed – at a café table shrouded in linen and littered with vintage World War II identification papers in both French and German.  At my back is an old fashioned upright piano. All of this and me are on display in the massive center window of Beaufort’s NeverMore Books. And if you haven’t figured it out, I am a very poor stand-in for Humphrey Bogart’s iconic Rick Blaine character in Casablanca, the cynical, world-weary American ex-pat owner of Rick’s Café American and some of the best lines ever uttered on film.