Dr. Richard Porcher (interviewed by Jessica Mischner and Lisa Hayes on August 24, 2023)

Dr. Richard Porcher (interviewed by Jessica Mischner and Lisa Hayes on August 24, 2023)

2023-08-24

Richard Porcher was born in 1939 in Charleston. He grew up in Moncks Corner and has had a long career as a biologist. Dr. Porcher has written several books on cotton, wildflowers, rice culture and cultural history. He served on the Library’s board and reflects on his time in the Library doing research for his books. He gives an overview of his team’s current efforts to connect the history, geography, and the cultural history of a place all into one end-product, with a framework that can be adapted by others in other places.

Mischner, Jessica

Hayes, Lisa

Cox, Danielle

MP3

Audio

English

RichardPorcher_OralHistory_20230824

59:57/605.1MB

0:00:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, so we're just gonna ask you, thank you for filling out this questionnaire. It was incredibly thorough. also I think would make anyone feel unaccomplished about their lives because of everything that you've done. I know you've worked with Lisa before, you've been here for, since college you said, was your sort of first introduction and we just wanna go a little bit deeper into your relationship with the Library Society. So I'm gonna start out of order, if that's okay. Since we're already talking about your time on the board here, Could we just start there?

0:37:00 Richard Porcher

Sure.

0:38:00 Jessica Mischner

And then we can back up into your introduction here, but I think--

0:41:00 Richard Porcher

You don't wanna start when I was in college?

0:43:00 Jessica Mischner

We can start at college, yes.

0:45:00 Richard Porcher

Well, that's my first introduction.

0:46:00 Jessica Mischner

Okay, let's start there then.

0:48:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, well, I went to College Austin, and I can remember coming down here. I don't remember just what I was looking for, but I do remember I first introduced you to the Library Society. It was like this mystical place I remember. And I do remember coming down, I think I took a course in art history, took a course in musical history, and I do remember coming down to the Library of Society. I just don't remember what I was looking for at the time.

1:14:00 Jessica Mischner

Did a professor or someone at the college send you here, or did you—

1:18:00 Richard Porcher

It was a course. It was a research course. I took a course in cultural history of something or architecture, and obviously you come down to a place like this that—so I remember coming down and doing work. I just remember what it was, but I do remember my introduction to this mystical place. We heard so much about the Library Society. And my mother would talk about it because she'd always mentioned the Library Society, so I'd known about the Library Society ever since college.

1:48:00 Jessica Mischner

Do you remember your impression when you walked in?

1:52:00 Richard Porcher

Not really. That was so long ago, my word. That was back in the 1960s, '57, '60s, something like that. I remember the building, how beautiful it was, but I don't remember much besides that.

2:05:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, you said you've researched four books using materials. Oh, yes, one here, one right here. Right. So when did that start?

2:13:00 Richard Porcher

I started really when I did the Sea Island Cotton book. My first book was two books on wildflowers, which I didn't use the live it. When I first did the book on Sea Island Cotton, in fact, here's one of those little diagrams right here that came from the Library Society. So I've--

2:32:00 Jessica Mischner

The map of John's Island, 1820.

2:36:00 Richard Porcher

So I've done four books that have related, that I've used the Library Society extensively. The Sea Island Cotton book, the book that is finished called Our Lost Heritage, which I've published privately. I think I gave you all a copy of it. I did the Market Preparation of Carolina Rice and now I finished up a book on the Santee Canal with two other authors. So there are four books on history that I've used extensively in these four books.

3:03:00 Jessica Mischner

About how much time would you spend here doing your research?

3:07:00 Richard Porcher

Oh Lord. I remember.

3:08:00 Jessica Mischner

Maybe it's just your research in general, but I'm curious to know how much of a primary source was this outside of the field.

3:16:00 Richard Porcher

Well, the Hinson collection, this is a primary source for everything I've done. You've got all the newspapers going back to 1700s. And then I said, "Where do y'all keep those now?" Oh, the old newspaper.

3:29:00 Lisa Hayes

Those are in the building where the bookstore is and they're in the vault down there.

3:34:00 Richard Porcher

In the vault? Yeah. So I remember sitting, going through those, what do you call it, the turn of the crank and going through hundreds and hundreds of newspapers. I couldn't tell you how many hours I spent doing that. Especially for the book on the Sea Island Cotton and the Rice Country Book. Tracking down the slave histories and going through those newspapers. I don't know how to put any hours out, but I guarantee you, the day after day after day, I spent in the library going through the newspapers.

4:03:00 Jessica Mischner

Would you work with any librarians here, or did you see other researchers recur?

4:10:00 Richard Porcher

Well, they would tell me where they were. They would always have to go to the Hinson Collection and pull things out of it. You know, the Hinson Collection is extremely valuable.

4:20:00 Lisa Hayes

The pamphlets, Mr. Hinson Collection?

4:22:00 Richard Porcher

All the pamphlets. Oh yeah, my lord, all those pamphlets. I mean, I use those extensively. I can't remember who sent the set up the Hinson Collection, but it is an incredible archives. So I use those extensively in this book and the book on rice culture.

4:38:00 Jessica Mischner

When you—was the Hinson Collection in the rabbit hole at that point?

4:43:00 Lisa Hayes

So is this in the 1980s when you were coming to do research for the books, or like what years were you coming to do your book research?

4:54:00 Richard Porcher

I guess it started this book right here. I published this book. Because before this I was doing Wildflower books, and so I didn't have any reason to come to here. This was published in 2005. So I meant early 2000, I was starting to use the library extensively. Cause I did this one, came out right after that, I did the book on rice culture, and then the book on Our Lost Heritage, and then doing the book on the Santee Canal. So basically from a little before 2005, I've been down here continually.

5:36:00 Jessica Mischner

So you come from a family of archivists, documentarians, curators, authors, publishers, and people who have turned field work really into or have just always felt the need to catalog.

5:51:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, I've come from so many people, historians and architects and everything.

5:56:00 Jessica Mischner

I love how you describe that sort of your work wasn't something you set out to do as much as who you were. And I wonder to what extent your personal collection informed your work and then did you find anything here that was sort of like a missing piece. I'm curious about your research process.

6:17:00 Richard Porcher

Oh God, that thing down here don't exist anywhere else at all. I found things down here I didn't know existed. I do have some old family archives, but we supplement those with what you all have down here. people didn't realize what's here until they had to come here and start working. And they started pulling things out of the red book room. My lord, that's a gold mine. I just sort of go through this sometimes and I spot things I didn't even know they were there. So because we were here, and also what y'all do is people realize is you'll have all the cultural programs. A lot of them based on the things that y'all have here.

6:59:00 Jessica Mischner

Yes.

7:00:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, no. No. Go ahead.

7:03:00 Lisa Hayes

Well, I was sort of going back to the archives. Do you remember directing some of your students to come here for any of their projects?

7:10:00 Richard Porcher

My students? Do we have? One of the recidital? No, because I was a field botanist. And I don't think there was anything, if I had been a historian or something like that, that would have been different. But I don't think that you have anything in field botany and wildflowers and things here. Just not not not what you have.

7:28:00 Jessica Mischner

So I was just gonna ask again about your sort of approach to documentation really which is so in line kind of with the ethos of this place and we're getting to your time on the board. Do you feel like it's a uniquely Charlestonian thing to self-publish to have this desire to document. Well because I love here. I feel like I don't see that many places.

8:00:00 Richard Porcher

My folks go back to, Lord the 1685 and they first came. My whole life has been wanting to document the history of the Lowcountry.

8:07:00 Jessica Mischner

Self-publishing didn't really become sort of a widespread thing until Amazon made it easier for people to publish their own books but here and in Camden where I grew up too to a large extent, people felt driven to record what they saw and what they knew. And I think that's part of what animates this project for us. And I'm always curious, because it's not without labor to not only do the work, but then document the work that you've done. And I just wonder, was there ever a question of whether you would do that or not?

8:47:00 Richard Porcher

Was there a question that I didn't want to document? No, no. Of course, I started documenting as a botanist, the wildflowers and the botanists. That was my first area. It wasn't until I got into this book that I started doing history and then realized I needed to document. We've got a big project right now in the Santee Delta. One of the biggest projects I'll ever be involved in for trying to document the entire cultural history of the Santee Delta. That could be a five-year project. We're right now at 27 LCC, but that's just a different way. The main thing we're trying to document in the Delta is the enslaved life that lived out of the Santee Delta. So this is the same type of project we're talking about documenting the history of the Low Country.

9:31:00 Jessica Mischner

Tell us more about that project.

9:35:00 Richard Porcher

Well, the entire Delta was basically the largest section of rice culture in the country. And the name of the Delta was a cypress swamp and all cleared by enslaved labor and created into the rice fields. Enslaved people lived out of that Delta as they worked the rice fields. In fact, some of them probably lived into the Delta and never ever got to the mainland. The entire life was spent in a little section of the San Diego Delta working rice fields. When emancipation came, enslaved people gradually left the Delta. Nobody documented their history. Most of the villages, the wooden structures rotted away, people came out and stole all the bricks over the years. So there's not virtually any of their history left except underground. So I'll put together a team of people, archaeologists will be out there doing work, digging down in the ground, trying to see if they can put together how these enslaved people lived up, where to get their food from, where to bury the dead. Nobody knows anything about their history at all, zip zero. So we got sort of a five-prong study. We'll do the foundation culture, the natural history. I always worked with Hayden Smith on the agriculture, the rice culture, and then we got the archaeologists who will work down in the slave villages where these people live, trying to go down in the ground and find some idea of how these people live. So it's a very large project. It'll take us five years even to even finish it

11:09:00 Lisa Hayes

Excuse me, can you tell us how you determine where to dig like well we found we find the village you do

11:18:00 Richard Porcher

Well, I did a survey that back in the 90s and 2000 hundred did a survey when I went We take a boat every time we see a little tree or shrub we get out the boat and go to see what was there So I've located all where the villages were you can still see the remains of the cabin even though most of the bricks are gone You can still see the bases all the well the cabins were so I've located all the well all the villages were So we've got that as a background and I spent what I did to work on the rice culture I had to go study the Delta So I've got this map of the Delta which every rice mill everything that's every brick out there I've got it all marked out. So now the team, when we start doing the work, we know where these structures are. So they will go right up. Hayden Smith, I don't know if you know Hayden Smith or not. He did a book on rice culture. He and I will do the aquaculture, basically the rice culture.

12:14:00 Jessica Mischner

When did you start in earnest, this project? It sounds like you had a lot of--

12:20:00 Richard Porcher

About last year. About as though-Yeah, right now, the main thing is now getting an, also on LTC so people can donate funds. It's supposed to be pretty well finished. The historical Charleston foundation will be the, they will hold the funds for us from the LTC. So people will raise funds. We need something like, I think it's $750,000. That's our budget. So people can donate, organizations will donate money. It'll go to the LTC which is held by the historical Charleston foundation and then they will dispense the funds to us. of the funds go towards the archeology, high, people that go out and do the work. People on my level get no salary at all. Everything I do is free, so people on my level aren't getting any money at all. All the money is for expenses.

13:10:00 Lisa Hayes

Just one quick question. Do you think you'll be doing some field work also, or are you mainly overseeing how things go?

13:21:00 Richard Porcher

I set it up. It was my idea to set it up. Once it's set up, I'll probably step back and turn it over to some other people who, I've got too many other projects, but I can see the idea and sort of set it up. But once it's really in place, we'll probably hire a coordinator and some of the other people who are involved in it will probably be more involved, will probably sort of take over that part And I'll back off because I'm doing a book right now called A Field Guide to Saving South Carolina's Rarest Native Wildflowers. I'm in the middle of doing that too. So I can't oversee it anymore, but Hayden Smith and I will simply do the rice culture aspect. And I'll turn it over to some of the more people, people who are being more involved out actually going out doing the research in that field.

14:16:00 Jessica Mischner

Has all the work that you put into teaching at the beginning of your career, paid off at all in terms of being able to bring some of these students into any of this work?

14:27:00 Richard Porcher

Anyway, I said again, what?

14:28:00 Jessica Mischner

So teaching, that's a big part of your career.

14:33:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, sure, I've got one.

14:34:00 Jessica Mischner

So have you had former students who--

14:37:00 Richard Porcher

I guess I've mentored about 15 students over the years that got interested in botany and history based on going out in the field with me or taking courses, yeah.

14:47:00 Jessica Mischner

And some of the younger students and people at the Citadel?

14:51:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, some people took, some of the cadets who took courses went into field botany, oh yeah.

14:57:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, that's great, I mean, I keep, I was looking at the list of all of these projects that you've either been an advisor on or consulted on or spearheaded and thinking about time you put in the classroom. You sure hope you get a return on that output. But do most of these projects originate with you or do they originate with other organizations who need your expertise?

15:25:00 Richard Porcher

Well, now, I got people interested in the field, like Dr. Joe Gramling. He took a course under me about 20 years ago, and all of a sudden realized, hey, I like the botany, what can I do? So I said, you go to Chapel Hill and you get your PhD under so and so. And by the time you finished, I was retiring position to open up, so now he's just taking my position. So I've got numerous on Celia Daly. I met her about 15 years ago, just by chance. And now I got her into graduate school at the Citadel and now she's out doing, I don't have any projects working on the book with me. So all through my career, this is what we do, not just me. Dr. Batson, when I went to Carolina, I was a zoologist. Didn't even know what a plant was. They put me, Dr. Batson, store field course at Botany. And first thing he says, Richard, you know who Henry Reb now was? I had no idea who he was, so I called Mama. Who's Henry Reb now? Well, he was your great uncle, he was a botanist. And so through Dr. Batson and knowing who my ancestors were, I switched to field botany. So that's just what we do as professors. We just get people interested in what we do and then they come along and follow us. It's a continuation. Dr. Batson, to Richard, to Joel, to Seeley, it was a continuation.

16:44:00 Jessica Mischner

It just seems like so much, how do you balance your time? I mean, you've done so much and you're clearly, it's such a resource for people, just thinking about how you do that and write and have a minute to sleep or eat, seems a little superhuman. I don't know,

17:02:00 Richard Porcher

I just get up in the morning and start working. (laughing) Every morning I wake up, I start to work, I never thought about it that way.

17:11:00 Jessica Mischner

And it does seem like these projects-One thing I've done though, one thing I did,

17:16:00 Richard Porcher

I've always, mentally, always worked with people, put a team together. Two of us did this book, Billy Judd and I did the Rice Culture book. I could not have done the diagrams, the "Lost Hairseats" book. I had two other people working on it. So I think my main thing is I've been able to put a team together. Follow me? Just like with the Delta project, I put about 15 different people together in that project. I couldn't do that by myself, no way. I could not have done the rice culture myself cause I could not have done all the diagrams. Let's see what else, the Santee Canal book, I've got Village Judd and Little Miss Connor, all three of us putting it out. So all of us, so my main thing I've done is to partnership or bring people into a project and then do the project jointly.

18:02:00 Jessica Mischner

What do you look for in team members beyond just the fundamental expertise?

18:06:00 Richard Porcher

They've got to have a passion for the work and then also the skill, Village Judd. can't even tell you what that man has done. The diagrams he's done. I mean, he has a passion for doing diagrams. All the machinery he drew in the rice culture book, nobody in the world could have done that. He had the passion to do it. So it's just people who have the passion to do the work. Just like I do.

18:27:00 Jessica Mischner

How often do people exceed your expectations?

18:31:00 Richard Porcher

Say it again.

18:32:00 Jessica Mischner

How often do people exceed your expectations when you bring people into your teams?

18:38:00 Richard Porcher

How often do they do what?

18:39:00 Jessica Mischner

How often do they exceed your expectations?

18:43:00 Richard Porcher

Always.

18:44:00 Jessica Mischner

Like, yeah, that's good. I've never had anybody involved in a project that didn't do the job.

18:51:00 Jessica Mischner

And they surprise you?

18:53:00 Richard Porcher

They what?

18:53:00 Jessica Mischner

Surprise you? Surprise you, do they surprise you?

18:57:00 Richard Porcher

No, not really, I knew Billy's there before. I knew these people before. I know Celia Daley, she's working on the new rare plant book. four people who worked in a while, if I worked Pat and I know them from Clemson, you're gonna go, "Lord, I know what he was gonna do before you started."

19:14:00 Jessica Mischner

So before we get back to the Library Society and your time on the board, I did wanna ask you about the intersection between natural history and cultural history, because you focus so much on both.

19:29:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah.

19:30:00 Jessica Mischner

How much of that came from realizing it in the field when you were working with plants and you were doing botanical field work.

19:40:00 Richard Porcher

The whole system of rice culture. When I was out leading field trips and bought botanical trips, I'd come across these chimneys, rice chimneys. I'd go down to Middleburg to look at the rice fields and there's the chimney there. So I simply thought of asking people, what do these chimneys represent? And there was nothing at all. You had nothing in the literature at all. See a steam engine out in a swamp somewhere. What is that steam engine you know here? So a lot of us doing the cotton work, I'd be out in a swamp or someplace. I could see the old rows where the cotton field was worth it. What are these looking like? They're rows. What are people doing, growing stuff out in the middle of a swamp? So much of the work I did based on the things I began finding out in the field as a field botanist. When you go to St. Adelpha, check into the vegetation out there and you find remains of chimneys and remains of villages, He simply asked you, what the hell, what is this?

20:37:00 Jessica Mischner

But it does seem like it wasn't something that people were putting together in an academic way or publishing. I mean, it really was, now you have archaeologists who are landscape archaeologists or excavations taking place for different reasons, but it wasn't the natural landscape and the cultural sort of history, wasn't something that there was a lot of people talking about when you were first.

21:03:00 Richard Porcher

Well, a lot of things I was doing out there, nobody even knew about them.

21:07:00 Jessica Mischner

That's right.

21:08:00 Richard Porcher

No, I mean, nobody even knew, nobody documented chimneys. I couldn't find a soul to tell me what these rice, what these steamings were doing out in the woods. A lot of the material, a lot of the stuff I started, it didn't totally forgotten. I mean, still people went, when they did the article three years ago in the news and courier, our secret Delta, and I started explaining to the guy who was doing the article, took them out to where the villages were. Nobody even had any idea that all that's been forgotten. Totally forgotten. So we're bringing to life a lot of the things that just go on by the wayside. People didn't realize they were out there, what they were.

21:49:00 Jessica Mischner

So let's go back to the Library of Society. So you are here, you're doing your research. At what point did they approach you about joining the board?

22:01:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, I think Henry Grimball was on board and he recruited me if I remember correctly. I can't think we were sitting chatting at a social function when they had made it to your club. And I think he started talking with the library side and he said, "Why don't you come on and be on the board?" Something like that. Anyway, Henry Grimball recruited me for a member. He saved the library society. I don't know if you all know what I'm talking about. It was going financially downhill. It was in trouble. I'm not gonna get into that why. If y'all wanna get into that with him or someone else, you can. He came on board and basically saved the library society.

22:40:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, it seemed like an instrumental time to be a board member.

22:44:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, I was.

22:45:00 Jessica Mischner

I mean, without going into any sort of proprietary details that we don't really need, what was it like to be on the other side of shepherding an institution like this?

22:58:00 Richard Porcher

I don't think any different. It was just two different roles. I'd still come down and reason the library research. It didn't, using it as research didn't, I didn't think about it as being on the board at the same time. It was just, they were two separate things. But I knew being on the board that we were saving, we were doing things that ensured that all this material that I use in research is being saved. That's the key to it, things we're doing. we're making sure that the archives of this library would be here forever. So that meant I'd have these things for them the next day, put another hat on or down here doing research.

23:36:00 Jessica Mischner

I ask because I'm trying to constantly figure out how to wear two hats because sometimes I'll be at my computer doing the work that I, you know, am here to do. Apparently. And then I'll end up in the stacks and I'll find Lisa and just, I'll realize I've just been mesmerized by something that I found. or some sort of pamphlet that documents a piece of history that I had only loosely known about. And so it's overwhelming to be around a treasure like this.

24:09:00 Richard Porcher

I agree.

24:10:00 Jessica Mischner

I mean, it's not that different than being out in the field, I guess, too.

24:14:00 Richard Porcher

Look, with always being on the lobby, if I needed anything, all of a sudden Janet would say, "I'll get it for you right off."

24:21:00 Jessica Mischner

She's a card catalog. Sure, yeah. It's in her head.

24:23:00 Richard Porcher

Just because I was on the board and everything doing my job on the board, I always had preference, let's put it that way.

24:29:00 Lisa Hayes

Janice commented that you took the job on the board very seriously.

24:34:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, certainly.

24:35:00 Lisa Hayes

You came to so many events and really were a great advocate for the library.

24:40:00 Richard Porcher

Well, I've had every function you have. I haven't done, I have a hearing problem, so I really can't do what I used to do. I can't come to our lecture anymore. I can't hear. I just know in the world. It's not that I don't want to, but I do come to the music games. I can still hear the music, but somebody giving a lecture, I just can't pick up enough to -and I'm trying to get this new hearing edge right now and see if they'll help me a little bit, but the ones I have right now are worthless. So I just don't -I can give a lecture, but I can't hear lectures anymore. I've got to go to France in August, in October, and give a lecture to the Rabinera Union. I've already got it all set up.

25:20:00 Jessica Mischner

Do you enjoy giving lectures?

25:22:00 Richard Porcher

No, that's what I love. I really enjoy giving lectures. That's my first love right now. I can't hear anybody else, but I can give a lecture.

25:31:00 Jessica Mischner

Sometimes that's the best way.

25:33:00 Richard Porcher

I have these PowerPoint presentations. I just finished a Ravenel history, and I'll give that in Vitrinex, I guess, in 1st of October. So I really enjoy that.

25:45:00 Lisa Hayes

Do you speak French?

25:46:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah.

25:47:00 Lisa Hayes

Will you do it in French? Do you speak French?

25:49:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, it's the Ravenel reunion. The Ravenel family. We're going over to Vitre. Rick, you know, Rick Wilson is down here. Rick and David, they set up this trip for the Ravenel. 80 of us going over to Vitre. That's where the original immigrant came from, Vitre, France.

26:06:00 Jessica Mischner

But do you speak French? I mean, some of the Ravenels like to dabble in...

26:11:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, no. I flunk French in college.

26:17:00 Jessica Mischner

So no part of this will be delivered in--

26:19:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'll give it. I'll never mind. In Berkeley County-ese, how's that? That's what I generally speak. But a lot of the material in my lecture, like things that actually came from the library society. Cause I've got, you know, I've copied things over the years, so I'll use those same things again. The indigo, remember the diagram on the indigo? I've got that in the lecture. So I use the material I get from y'all all the time.

26:50:00 Jessica Mischner

So one of the things you remarked on about what's changed in Charleston was the loss of natural habitat, natural history, and then the awareness of African-American history.

27:04:00 Richard Porcher

The key to me is African-American history.

27:06:00 Jessica Mischner

I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that because I think that's really, really interesting.

27:11:00 Richard Porcher

Well, the entire wealth of the low country based on slavery. Everybody knows that. Up until the point where the African American Museum really hasn't been discussed or talked about, look at what's going on down in Florida, the Disantis. I don't want to get into it anyway. Up until Riley started its museum, I don't think we really concentrated on the role of African Americans, what they played in the Low Country. That's what we do in the Delta. The reason I'm down in the Delta doing this project is to document that aspect of African American history. We're doing the rice culture and building nothing but the main emphasis. I'd go out and when I started this project in the Delta, locating all the rice culture things, then I started coming across the villages where the slaves lived. There's one called Crow Island. It banked off the marsh and then the slave cabins were in that banked off area. And I'd go out there and I'd just start to sit and say, "What do these people do when they came in from the rice fields? What did they talk about? Where did they get the food from? What did they tell the children? What aspirations did they have for the children? I couldn't even have any aspirations out there. What was their life like?" So that's, in the early 2000s when I started thinking, somehow we've got to tell this last aspect of African-American history what they did out in the Santee Delta. The ones that lived on the high land, we know about their villages there, right next to the plantation, we knew more about them. But the ones that lived in the Delta, we know nothing about their life. For me, it's the last major aspect of African-American history I think we can uncover. The museum is doing a lot of it, Africa will do a lot. But we've got to go out in the field and try to find out how these people survived out in that delta. If you've ever been in the delta in August, it's 110 degrees, the mosquitoes, the flies, everything, I just don't know. We may never know.

29:22:00 Jessica Mischner

There was an organization from Spain, well it was international, but it was called Cook It Raw. They came years and years ago, but one of David Shields, sorry, and a few people who were in the food culture when that was sort of becoming a topic.

29:42:00 Richard Porcher

Who was it?

29:43:00 Jessica Mischner

David Shields.

29:44:00 Richard Porcher

David Shields? Oh, I know him well.

29:46:00 Jessica Mischner

I love David. had organized this trip for us all to go out and harvest rice. I cannot imagine, I mean, I will never spill a grain of rice ever again. I mean, when you think about what it takes and just a simulation of what that culture was like and how brutal and grueling you appreciate the lives behind.

30:12:00 Richard Porcher

That's what I'm trying to do. We have never really appreciated what those people did for the low country, the wealth that they produced in the low country. We've sort of forgotten about just how rough a life it was. I couldn't survive.

30:31:00 Lisa Hayes

Has your research taken you to Africa? Have you been—?

30:35:00 Richard Porcher

I went three weeks in Africa. What did you do while you were there? I was just trying to understand how they grew rice over there now. I took a course. I did my masses at the Citadel. I took the nine courses and never did research, so I didn't get the degree. But one course I took, the students went over to Africa for three weeks and I went with them and sought a sign up for a research course, I guess. And that was just trying to track down some of the ways they were still growing rice up in Africa. So that's what that was for. didn't really have that much impact on what I'm doing here cause it's a whole different system. But still, I enjoyed it three weeks over there.

31:12:00 Jessica Mischner

What do you feel a sense of urgency about? I mean, you've accomplished so much, but you're still hard at work. Do you feel more urgency about the cultural history, the natural history, the retreating landscape?

31:27:00 Richard Porcher

I'm doing, I've got the new book. We did last year, we did the new Wildflower Book. A wildflower book gets people interested in wildflowers. They get out in the field and track down all the beautiful wildflowers. So the wildflower book gets people interested. Now the next step is getting those people involved in trying to protect what we still have. That's why I'm doing a book called The Field Guide to Saving South Carolina's Rarist Native Wildflowers. We'll take the rarest plants, talk about 'em. We understand now that the population of plants starting to decline, decline, decline. We want to document that in this book and really get people involved in trying to say what we have, you know, maybe stop the decline, but we know that climate change is going to happen. The whole issue of the delta now is climate change because for too long that delta will be underwater and all right history will be gone because nobody's going to go down underwater and excavate a slave village. So we're in a hurry now to get this project done before some of those areas are flooded.

32:34:00 Jessica Mischner

How much of it your work involves working with communities that descend from some of these, like the Gichigola, like...

32:46:00 Richard Porcher

I really haven't gotten that involved with the... because I guess what I'm doing out in the Delta there, it didn't... not many people can go out there. It's such a inhospitable place. but all the people here we gather we hope will be used by these communities.

33:03:00 Jessica Mischner

Right.

33:03:00 Richard Porcher

Put it that way. They all could be, "Well, Herb Frazier will be with us." That's right, yeah. You know, I mean, I think you know her, what he's done.

33:09:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, Herb.

33:09:00 Richard Porcher

Didn't even give a lecture here recently, didn't it? Did. How did it go? I couldn't. I couldn't.

33:12:00 Jessica Mischner

It was great. It was fantastic. Yeah.

33:14:00 Richard Porcher

But he's on the team, by the way, on the Delta team.

33:17:00 Jessica Mischner

I mean, he's such a, anybody who's been in journalism is such a legend. And so, and I had interviewed Joe in 2016, maybe, and when he was just starting the slave dwelling project.

33:27:00 Richard Porcher

Well here's what we're gonna do in the wintertime I'm gonna get all our whole team together with Herb and Joe and we're going out on Murphy Island and camp up for night in the old in the village. That would be great. There's nothing left but the chimneys and everything but that's in my plan to get us all up there one night and spend it like he did in the cabins we'll certainly be up there in the remains of the villages so that's that's on my goal.

33:56:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, so Joe had introduced me really in 2015, 16 to some folks up at the Baruch, the Bernard Baruch's place who were working with the community on Sandy Island, who took me over to Sandy Island. And just thinking about communities like that that are still trying to maintain a way of life while being open to people. Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

34:19:00 Richard Porcher

Just why people are trying to say Phillips community.

34:22:00 Jessica Mischner

That's right.

34:23:00 Richard Porcher

You know what's going on out there?

34:26:00 Lisa Hayes

In Mount Pleasant.

34:27:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, yeah, certainly. I mean, the people up there in Dunes West they could care less about, they wanted the Firebane Highway to go right through Phillips Community rather than go an edge of there. Anyway, I can't get involved in that. Y'all know what's going on out there.

34:42:00 Jessica Mischner

I'm gonna let you ask anything you wanna ask, but what's the most excited you've ever been after a day in the field? or a day giving a talk. I mean, everything--

34:55:00 Richard Porcher

Come by and find some of our real wildflower.

34:57:00 Jessica Mischner

Okay. Yeah. What's your favorite flower?

35:00:00 Richard Porcher

Well, some of the orchids.

35:01:00 Jessica Mischner

Which one, any?

35:03:00 Richard Porcher

Not any, they all get all so beautiful again.

35:06:00 Jessica Mischner

Yeah.

35:06:00 Richard Porcher

Just basically. And the carnivorous plants too, I guess. Everybody, fascinating about the carnivorous picture plants and the orchids.

35:13:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, we--

35:15:00 Richard Porcher

Cause I'm still going out on this. We're up that boat now. I'm heading down to Brookgreen Garden. I'm working on Huntington Beach after I leave here looking for a plant that's in the book, and then I go up to Pass Myrtle Beach to Heritage Reserve trying to find another rare plant photographing for this book. So the fun of what we do is finding these rare plants.

35:35:00 Lisa Hayes

How do you get access to the land where you find these?

35:40:00 Richard Porcher

Well, state property or federal property is no problem. But remember, I've been here since 1685, so I know other plantation people from the Yacht Club, and things like that. I generally have access to a lot of property that most people wouldn't have access to. And so I can take my field, my botany friends out to these plantations.

35:59:00 Lisa Hayes

When you're in these private plantations, do you ever educate them about the use of like Roundup or things like that? You must see that.

36:09:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, they ask me, you know, what can I do to protect these plants? They will tell them what to do, they will give them some advice. I don't go out and start telling them right off, you need to do this, you need to do that. That's not the way it works. But if I can get them interested and show them that you've got these beautiful wildflowers and then they'll start saying, well, I'll show them you need to burn it every year, you need to do this, that's where you work it. Let them sort of ask you what's the best way to protect these plants, that's how you do it. We had one botanist who went down to Okeetee and really started telling people, Okeetee, what the hell are you doing wrong? Well, we can't get back on those.

36:48:00 Jessica Mischner

Yeah, a gentle approach.

36:51:00 Richard Porcher

That's not the way you do it. But once you show them, when you bring the wildflower book, you can't amaze him any copies of wildflower books. I have to buy them $40 apiece, but every time I go to a private land, I give them a copy of the new wildflower book. I can start pointing out in there, "Hey, you got this plant right over there." And that gets him interested in it.

37:12:00 Jessica Mischner

Do you keep a journal or a diary, something that's more personal or fiction?

37:16:00 Richard Porcher

I've been writing in the journal for sixty years.

37:19:00 Jessica Mischner

I think about your stories, Ben Moise, you know, when he was the only game warden for so long. All of his stories about his work were so interesting.

37:31:00 Richard Porcher

I write in the journal every night.

37:33:00 Jessica Mischner

Where are you going to leave those papers? Where are you going to give those papers? When you finish, is that a collection you would consider sharing with the Library Society

37:46:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, it wasn't that, no problem. Have you thought about that?

37:50:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, I think your USC would probably like to have them, too.

37:53:00 Richard Porcher

USC wouldn't know they wouldn't. They'd have no interest in field lightning anymore.

37:58:00 Jessica Mischner

Yeah. I mean, as an English and history major, the liberal arts and the sciences, the life sciences aren't really anything anyone's really interested in.

38:10:00 Richard Porcher

Well, I think what he promised. Oh, I what he promised and my general.

38:13:00 Jessica Mischner

Oh, okay, good. Oh, I forgot, yeah.

38:15:00 Richard Porcher

Okay.

38:16:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, I asked Anne to promise us her letters.

38:19:00 Richard Porcher

I forgot about that. Yeah, I've already had her promise her years ago. You can stack them up and have them need from the floor like this. I mean, almost 60 years of a journal.

38:31:00 Lisa Hayes

Not anytime soon.

38:32:00 Jessica Mischner

No, and I'm not suggesting that this has to be posthumous. I'm just saying if you need room in your garage or something, what do you have in there?

38:38:00 Richard Porcher

I'm already told Anne and all my journals would be given to a lot of society.

38:42:00 Jessica Mischner

I'm trying to pry Anne's letters out of her hands every time she comes in here. All the people she correspondes with.

38:47:00 Richard Porcher

So many things in the archives that people have that refuse to give them up and they need to be in the archives. I had a, my Charleston made sideboard and I gave it to the Historical Charleston Foundation because it belongs in the archives somewhere, people can study it. So, I don't have any things I've pried over the family. We finally got the Pashé Bible at the Huguenot Society. It was in McClellan. Percy had it, and I finally got him to give it. I don't know how many things like that I've gotten people to donate to the library to different places.

39:23:00 Jessica Mischner

It's hard to be a steward all around. Stewarding everything.

39:27:00 Richard Porcher

We were just begun. We got so many things. We haven't even begun yet to document all the wildflowers and real plants in the low country. That's just an ongoing thing.

39:39:00 Jessica Mischner

Really?

39:40:00 Richard Porcher

We're still identifying new species that we didn't even know existed.

39:43:00 Jessica Mischner

Wow, that's amazing. So when will your next book be out?

39:46:00 Richard Porcher

The Santee Canal book comes out in April. That's already, it's in production.

39:50:00 Jessica Mischner

Right. Those books, I got those with the Conrad Settle. She's the first author because I didn't have time to do the working with the US Press. I did the research and Billy Ye did the diagram. So that comes out in April. So if you don't want to have a book signing your weapon, yeah.

40:05:00 Jessica Mischner

Great.

40:06:00 Richard Porcher

Well, it'll be in the warehouse in April and the bookshelves in May.

40:10:00 Jessica Mischner

That'd be great.

40:11:00 Richard Porcher

That's what I've heard.

40:12:00 Lisa Hayes

Yeah, we'd love for you to come for that.

40:14:00 Jessica Mischner

One thousand percent.

40:15:00 Richard Porcher

I've got a beautiful program of proud want presentation already set up for it.

40:21:00 Lisa Hayes

That'd be great.

40:22:00 Richard Porcher

It will bring Herb and Billy, three of us, going to give it together.

40:26:00 Jessica Mischner

Okay. We'll take you up on that.

40:28:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah.

40:29:00 Jessica Mischner

Truly.

40:30:00 Richard Porcher

Okay.

40:31:00 Jessica Mischner

So expect an invitation to come.

40:32:00 Richard Porcher

Well, I think I didn't see Ellen Cotton book here. Maybe I can talk Rick into who I'm talking about. I'll make sure he helps along with some of the food. I'll get that out. I'll see that in this afternoon and I'll tell him he needs to help with that.

40:52:00 Jessica Mischner

That's nice added value. We always like a little extra.

40:54:00 Richard Porcher

I think I gave you a copy of the Lost Heritage too. That was almost fifteen years of work.

41:01:00 Lisa Hayes

That's quite a massive publication.

41:05:00 Richard Porcher

It was too big, too complex to do in an academic press, so I just had it published myself. If I'd gone to an academic press, I'd still be trying to go through all the changes. I wrote the book the way I wanted to. This is what I'm writing, period. And so we simply ran copies off at a printer.

41:25:00 Lisa Hayes

Yeah.

41:26:00 Jessica Mischner

So I found there are two types of writers, those that love writing and those that love having written because you feel like you have to get it out but the process itself is torturous

41:38:00 Richard Porcher

maybe it's just the anticipation. When you get a box in the mail and you open it up and you pull up this book and you look at it you're hooked.

41:43:00 Jessica Mischner

So you like writing the act of writing itself when you get into it?

41:51:00 Richard Porcher

I enjoy the research part. Not so much sitting down and doing the typing that's that's that's just needle work but I love doing the research right and being able to put it all together into a document and then have people say oh my that's so beautiful that's what I like when you see this book you sit I'll sit back and tell them and I'll say hell that almost where did all that stuff come from?

42:13:00 Jessica Mischner

Well hat's the best is when you impress yourself after the fact you can't believe where they're all came from.

42:26:00 Richard Porcher

That's right. That book on Lost Heritage, there's 600 something pages. I have no idea where all that stuff came from. It just boggles your mind.

42:33:00 Jessica Mischner

But now it exists and you don't have to worry about it anymore.

42:36:00 Richard Porcher

Don't have to worry about it again. So now the canal book is done. Working on the rep and I think I'm going right to that's a new end of our work on the rare plant book. And we move it along on the delta. We probably get three or four smaller books out of the delta project. And then Pierre Manigault's gonna publish everything into one large volume, which includes everything.

43:01:00 Jessica Mischner

Oh, wow.

43:01:00 Richard Porcher

So that's the plan.

43:04:00 Jessica Mischner

That's amazing.

43:05:00 Richard Porcher

Post-incurator. So he's said he's hired the lawyer to do the LTC, and I hope in a month or so we'll be back in the Delta.

43:15:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, you know, Pierre was the patron saint of Garden and Gun, so.

43:18:00 Richard Porcher

That's right.

43:19:00 Jessica Mischner

He was the patron saint of Garden and Gun, too, so when I worked there.

43:23:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, yeah, yeah.

43:24:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, that'll be a good Christmas present for people. We'll make sure to put that on our list.

43:29:00 Richard Porcher

If we get this project the way we want to, it's gonna be something special. I mean, people will not realize what was out in that Delta. It was a city state. I mean, if you went out there in 1850, there were boats, chimneys, belgies full of smoke. Thousands of enslaved people out in the fields, working in the rice fields, villages. Everywhere you see a village, four, five, nine, cabins all in a row, it was a massive city state at one time, and it all forgot totally. And what we're gonna do in the room, but this big, we're going to model the whole delta. Every little river, every little rice field, every little village, every steaming, little models of the whole delta will be modeled out in some kind of, you see people do a city block, That's what we're gonna do for the Delta. That's the plan.

44:23:00 Jessica Mischner

Where?

44:24:00 Lisa Hayes

Where will that be?

44:25:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, I don't know.

44:26:00 Lisa Hayes

Oh.

44:27:00 Richard Porcher

We got the, oh, two, the Clemson School of Design. Is that what it is? Right now, East Bay Street. And then the American College of Building Arts. Got two people on, from either one of their staff. And they'll be, that'll be there for us.

44:44:00 Jessica Mischner

I'm sure they'll love that.

44:46:00 Richard Porcher

Christina Butler, she's--

44:48:00 Jessica Mischner

She'll be here next week.

44:51:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, interviewing?

44:52:00 Jessica Mischner

No, just doing a talk. She'll be one of our speakers on her new book, Horsepower.

44:59:00 Richard Porcher

Which, what's the--

45:00:00 Jessica Mischner

It's called Horsepower.

45:01:00 Richard Porcher

I don't hear about it.

45:04:00 Jessica Mischner

It's about the history of equine transportation and horses and– Of Horsepower.

45:09:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, I didn't know.

45:10:00 Jessica Mischner

Horsepower.

45:11:00 Richard Porcher

Okay. Wait, when she'll ask if she's on the project. That's great. I'm trying to make who else is on the, anyway. So we got, and they'll, either one of those will do, I build a model.

45:22:00 Jessica Mischner

I'm sure Ray Huff is upset that he's not over at Clemson at the design school anymore.

45:27:00 Richard Porcher

Who is he?

45:28:00 Jessica Mischner

He was the head, the former head, but he grew up, he's so interesting, he just retired. But he grew up on Hampton Park when there was still a zoo. And he, they didn't have air conditioning, so he would go to bed at the sound of lions roaring at night, so he just, and he was an architect before he took over. Ray Huff, H.U.F.F.

45:50:00 Richard Porcher

I don't think I've met him.

45:51:00 Jessica Mischner

He's lovely and he might be a little older than you, but he's a lovely man who loves building replicas of parts of Charleston, and especially cityscapes that are forgotten or--

46:06:00 Richard Porcher

Well, it was forgotten, that's what we're doing.

46:08:00 Jessica Mischner

Or planned and never came into fruition, so that's so fascinating.

46:12:00 Richard Porcher

Well, my dream is, as part of the project, is to get that big model of the entire delta built.

46:19:00 Jessica Mischner

It's incredible.

46:20:00 Richard Porcher

And we have little villages once, we know where the villages are, how many cabins are there, what, so that's, that's.

46:27:00 Jessica Mischner

Please keep us posted on that.

46:29:00 Richard Porcher

Well, we will, we will, yeah.

46:31:00 Jessica Mischner

What else, what am I missing?

46:33:00 Lisa Hayes

I don't know. Will you tell us something that you do for fun? I know you had a passion for genealogy.

46:43:00 Richard Porcher

For fun?

46:44:00 Lisa Hayes

History and botany.

46:46:00 Richard Porcher

What do you kind of-That is my fun.

46:48:00 Jessica Mischner

Yeah, read any books like fiction?

46:53:00 Richard Porcher

I don't read fiction, I read the history books.

46:55:00 Jessica Mischner

What are you interested in right now other than the things in your world?

46:59:00 Jessica Mischner

Something totally different. Hot air balloons or cooking?

47:04:00 Richard Porcher

I'm so involved right now in this project

47:06:00 Lisa Hayes

that my mind is-No free time.

47:09:00 Richard Porcher

No free time. No free time right now. The wild blood book, I've got to be out in the field two days a week on the new real plant book. The Delta book is heating up, and that's just all I can think of right now.

47:20:00 Jessica Mischner

Do you carry a notebook in the field with you? Do you carry a notebook?

47:24:00 Richard Porcher

A book book.

47:25:00 Jessica Mischner

A notebook in the field?

47:26:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, certainly.

47:27:00 Jessica Mischner

What kind of notebooks and pens do you like?

47:29:00 Richard Porcher

Like to jot down where I am.

47:31:00 Jessica Mischner

The top spiral or side spiral?

47:33:00 Richard Porcher

Little spiral, side spiral book, yeah.

47:36:00 Jessica Mischner

What kind of pens do you like?

47:38:00 Richard Porcher

Pens? I just use a pencil.

47:44:00 Jessica Mischner

Oh, okay. What kind of pencil? (laughing) I love to know this.

47:51:00 Richard Porcher

It's whatever I can find at the time.

47:53:00 Jessica Mischner

But just a graphite pencil, not a red pencil, or a black lead pencil?

47:57:00 Richard Porcher

Whatever pencil I can find in the floor of the car.

48:02:00 Jessica Mischner

Okay, so you're not partial to anything?

48:06:00 Richard Porcher

No, no, no, no. I have my GPS I can document where we find things, everything we found with GPS that when I come back and put the coordinates on Google and print a map where the structures are. I should have wrote a book with me where I'll have today in the field a little map where these plants are.

48:28:00 Lisa Hayes

Has technology really changed how you research?

48:32:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, the GPS. Oh, I mean, we can document a plant at the coordinates and then we can back to this very spot. I've got things I collected back in the 70s and 80s. I said no these intersections so and so and so and so maybe never find it again but the GPS we can document we find a plant we do the coordinates and ducts and tend to send the coordinates of the state and they're there forever somebody can go right back to the very spot virtually within a few feet where we found the plants well that's the major thing the GPS system. my own map saying mile and a half, southeast of the intersection of highway so and so and so and so.

49:12:00 Jessica Mischner

There's something to that too.

49:13:00 Richard Porcher

But the GPS system now just—

49:14:00 Jessica Mischner

That's incredible.

49:15:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah. And out in the delta, everything we find in the delta, we GPS it.

49:29:00 Richard Porcher

Well my dream is to get 12 books out.

49:31:00 Jessica Mischner

That's amazing.

49:32:00 Richard Porcher

My dream is to get 12 books.

49:33:00 Jessica Mischner

And then you're done?

49:34:00 Richard Porcher

Well no, but I get to...

49:35:00 Jessica Mischner

You'll be happy.

49:36:00 Richard Porcher

Well never gonna be done. That's true. If I love you 100 I'll be writing forever. Well, I really got to get a, the Canal book will be nine, Ravenel book will be 10, whatever come out of the Delta. And then Rick and David, Rick and I, he's pushing me to do a book on the Porcher family, on Porcher Plantation.

49:57:00 Jessica Mischner

Yeah.

49:58:00 Richard Porcher

So he and I might do that together. That's my family place, place called Porcher Plantation, it's under the lake and it's gone. But so I might get a book on that. So I think I can get 12 books out. If I can do 12 books and cover them natural history, cultural history, architecture, everything, I think I can say I did a good job. That's the goal.

50:23:00 Jessica Mischner

So for so many things that are underwater, do you work with Steven’s Towing, people at the Navy Yard? How do you go in and find some of those, I don't know, artifacts or bits of forgotten structures. Do people at those companies that kind of do, not just dredging, but towing, you know, who are always on these waterways that are deeper?

50:51:00 Richard Porcher

Well, you lost me. How do we protect those things? How do we-

50:53:00 Jessica Mischner

No, just, how do you find some of the things that are deeper?

50:58:00 Richard Porcher

I don't know, I don't do that now. When I did "Lost Heritage," I just documented based on maps and things and what--

51:06:00 Jessica Mischner

You're just looking at what used to be above.

51:09:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, right. On dry land, got it.

51:10:00 Jessica Mischner

And I don't go below. Well, the village here did actually dove in Lake Moultrie and photographed a couple of the locks of the Santee Canal. I don't get involved in that. I can't do that. But there's a lot of underwater archeology people do.

51:27:00 Jessica Mischner

Especially down toward the Yemassee, so I was just curious of you.

51:30:00 Richard Porcher

But Delta will be in the water one day, whether you believe in climate change or not. That's gonna happen. So that's one reason why the state is also involved in this too, 'cause they own so much land in the Delta. And they realize that we don't get it soon. It'll be going forever. So their partnership, DNR is working with us in this project.

51:51:00 Jessica Mischner

So you haven't had trouble with government support

51:55:00 Jessica Mischner

for this kind of work? Nothing to say,

51:56:00 Richard Porcher

Yeah, that's good. yet. Now with some private owners, My dream, which will never come true, the dream is to get to Santee Delta as a World Heritage Site. It would qualify, but there would be some landowners who don't want to do it more than likely. You've got to get everybody in the delta to come on board. People say, "Well, we don't want the government involved in our work because that might restrict what it can do." So we may never get to Santee Delta as a World Heritage Site, but that's what we started working towards one made, the dream, is to get that delta entirely protected forever. So we'll see what happens. And then the idea is to take what we do in the delta and move to Winyah Bay and use the same technology we've done in the delta all the way up to the Waccamaw River study that system. So that's the long-term goal.

52:50:00 Lisa Hayes

You have put in place these big pieces that really could save parts of the East Coast.

53:02:00 Jessica Mischner

I mean, it's scalable. The models are replicable.

53:04:00 Richard Porcher

I'm not one in time. They're buzzing right now. All right, say it again. Sorry. That's all right. It's not your fault. It's my fault.

53:14:00 Lisa Hayes

We were just complimenting on you on building something with your team that is scalable to more properties along the East Coast that you really could help save things.

53:22:00 Richard Porcher

Oh certainly, yeah. That you do the, we do next to the Winyah Bay, maybe some, that may get people to kick fear up there, go back down to Combahee River, certainly. Yeah.

53:34:00 Jessica Mischner

It's remarkable.

53:35:00 Richard Porcher

Well, it's...

53:36:00 Jessica Mischner

It's so impressive.

53:37:00 Richard Porcher

What happened? At the bottom of my, oh God, damn it, Teddy Roosevelt. He had a quote I use all the time. I can't think of it. Those who don't understand history or something, I can't remember what it is right now. I'll have to send it to you. Anyway, we need to know what was in the past that helps us build the future. Oh, I guess that's what he said.

54:06:00 Jessica Mischner

Do you have to repeat it?

54:08:00 Richard Porcher

Something like that. So I use that as a sentence all the time. My ledger on my diary, I have that at the bottom, so it goes right above it every time. So I've had that same sentence for maybe 20 years. I transferred to the new ledger every year.

54:28:00 Jessica Mischner

Well, given how busy and important you are, we're going to let you, we're going to free you from this. This was such a pleasure. Thank you so much.

54:37:00 Richard Porcher

I'll have two hours an hour I'll be at Brookgreen, three hours an hour at Brookgreen, not Brookgreen. How do you reach? Walking at me, looking for a rare plant.

54:47:00 Lisa Hayes

Oh, wow.

54:48:00 Richard Porcher

I'm going up to see Rick and David, Rick Wilson, and I'm going to drop off and say hello to them, because they're at Paulish, staying at Paulish for a while and I'll...

54:58:00 Jessica Mischner

Tell David Shields that Jessica Mischner said hello. I'll send you an email.

55:01:00 Richard Porcher

I'm trying to think, last time I talked to David. Anyway, you know, was he here recently or what?

55:10:00 Jessica Mischner

No, he--

55:12:00 Richard Porcher

You ought to get him down to find the right place to go.

55:14:00 Jessica Mischner

He's great, I mean, I just met him when he and Glenn Roberts first started working on the CILPs and, you know, just the, I mean, so long ago when people were just sort of bringing rice back or, you know.

55:28:00 Richard Porcher

I was on that rice culture board that, when I dropped off it had too many other things going on. It was mostly about food and everything.

55:34:00 Jessica Mischner

It was food, it was bringing back food. And then the native pantry.

55:38:00 Richard Porcher

That wasn't my field. My field was the artifacts and so forth of the rice culture.

55:42:00 Jessica Mischner

And it was very trendy at the time too. But which benefited David's work a lot because he was able to--

55:49:00 Richard Porcher

Oh, he's brilliant, oh my God.

55:50:00 Jessica Mischner

Yes, and all of the research and documentation he had done found this whole new audience though. I mean, it spreaded everywhere.

55:59:00 Richard Porcher

Nobody knew it was there so well.

56:00:00 Jessica Mischner

He had a platform that was amazing because people got obsessed with it. So it was great.

56:05:00 Richard Porcher

This project here for you lost me what are these interviews for?

56:12:00 Lisa Hayes

Well you know we're celebrating 275 years the Library Society is. Oh I forgot that note. So we're doing the theme of storytelling and trying to capture people's stories about the library society. Okay. We're so grateful for your time. Yeah.