This Saturday, Clemson University is hosting a the Tri-County Lawn Mower exchange. It’s open to residents from Anderson, Pickens and Oconee County residents.

The event promotes using electric lawn mowers and offers in a $100 discount on a Neuton electric mower. Vouchers and free delivery are also available while quantities last.

Clemson reports that 54 million Americans will mow this year, consuming 800 million gallons of gas, causing 5% of US air pollution. The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control also states that “one hour of mowing is the equivalent of driving 350 miles in terms of volatile organic compounds.”

Also, if you are the kind of person who likes to start their mower at 7 AM on a Sunday morning, do your neighbors a favor, and get a plug-in one!

Read more about the event (PDF)

Find out more from our SC Green Building Guide

When one thinks of jazz, New York, Chicago, and New Orleans come immediately to mind - but rarely does one think of Cheraw, South Carolina. Regardless of first impressions, Cheraw is the birthplace of jazz-great Dizzy Gillespie.

John Birks (”Dizzy”) Gillespie was born in Cheraw in 1917. His father was the leader of a small band and exposed Dizzy to numerous instruments during his youth. He started playing the piano when he was just four years old. Shortly after his father’s death, when Dizzy was ten, he settled on the trumpet and began playing in public.

Dizzy is well-known as one of the founders of Afro-Cuban jazz, jazz music with a slight Cuban or Spanish flavor. He was also highly “instrumental” in the development of bebop jazz, along with Charlie Parker. He would start his songs by verbally pronouncing the notes, like “dee-ba-pa-n-bebop.” Soon his fans were asking for “bebop” music and saw it as part of the song, not just a vocal warm-up.

His unusual nickname was taken from a comment by fellow band-member Palmer Davis about Dizzy’s excited stage-presence. “Man, this is a dizzy cat,” Davis said, and the name stuck. Dizzy played around the world, and regardless of what continent the stage was on, he typically started his show saying “I’m Dizzy Gillespie from Chee-raw, South Carolina.” Up until Dizzy died of cancer in 1993, he had an incomparable 60-year career. Dizzy performed all over the globe for world leaders and dignitaries, including eight presidents spanning Eisenhower to Bush.

Besides Dizzy’s profound audio stylings, some of his physical attributes were standouts as well. His trademark puffy chipmunk-cheeks are a bane of music teachers everywhere. He also often sported a beret as well as horn-rimmed glasses. He played on a bent trumpet, where the horn points skyward. His first upward pointing trumpet was a result of an accident with a drunken party-goer, but Dizzy claimed that it helped him hear his own sound better.

Dizzy’s unconventional style led him to surprise the world in 1964 when he ran for president. The platform for his run was abolishing racism and spreading world peace. His purpose was solemn, but his campaign was lighthearted. His tongue-in-cheek proposition was that upon winning, he would rename the White House, the “Blues House.” He also stated that he’d appoint Miles Davis as CIA Chief and Malcolm X as Attorney General. His campaign song showed his good-natured spirit with lyrics like “Your politics oughta be a groovier thing / So get a good President who’s willing to swing.”

The South Carolina Jazz Festival takes place in Cheraw each year around the time of Dizzy’s birthday - October 21. In 2010, the festival will run October 16-18.

See more Cheraw events and festivals.

Hear one of Dizzy’s tunes on SCIway’s South Carolina Soundtrack.

Find out more about notable SC African-Americans.

According to a Washington-based consumer advocacy group, Families USA, one in three South Carolina residents has gone without health insurance at some point during 2007 and 2008 (read more from Families USA report: New Report Finds 1.3 Million South Carolinians Were Uninsured at Some Point in 2007-2008.)

Some recently unemployed residents have opted to purchase COBRA, a federal insurance program that has been around since 1986. It allows for a recently terminated employee to receive the same benefits as when they were employed, paying 100% out of pocket. COBRA rates can be a little out of reach for some when income comes to a halt. The Wall Street Journal reports that fewer than 1 in 10 who are eligible for COBRA sign up — possibly because the annual cost of COBRA for a family is around $13,000. When maximum unemployment benefits for a South Carolina worker are just over $1,200 a month, it makes continuing insurance with COBRA a very costly option.

Fortunately, Congress recently passed The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  This allows unemployed workers to receive a nine-month subsidy to cover 65 percent of the COBRA premium (read more about the subsidy from The Department of Labor.)

Other options, instead of completely going without insurance, include a scaled-down policy. There are many options out there that have a reduced amount of coverage. Catastrophic policies and policies with high-deductibles might be a better band-aid than going completely without coverage. Companies like Golden Rule and United Health Care One have a variety of different plans for different budgets.

To help you shop for other insurance policies, we have a few pages on our site to assist you.

Our Quick Guide to South Carolina Insurance Resources has links to pages like:

South Carolina Department of Insurance,

South Carolina insurance laws,

Consumer services,

and a glossary of insurance terms.

SCIway also features a directory of South Carolina insurance agents and agencies.

Everyone knows the economy is in a crunch and South Carolina is really feeling the pressure. We have the second-highest jobless rate as posted by the S.C. Employment Security Commission at the end of March in 2009. (Read more from The State in their article Thousands Scramble to Find Work in SC.)

We are at an alarming rate of 11% and competition for the available jobs is getting more fierce. What can the unemployed do to stay positive and get a new job? It’s a simple answer, but a difficult one to do: know where the jobs are and build your skills.

SCIway has come up with a comprehensive job search guide. We have the state broken down by Coastal, Midlands, Pee Dee, and Upstate so you can search by city. If you don’t mind relocating within South Carolina and are more career-minded, you can search our guide by career, field, or type of employer.

Another way to find a new position is to work with a recruiter or a placement service. (View our SC employment agency guide.) MAU Workforce Solutions is a staffing service currently holding seminars about career transition during March and April in Greenville, Augusta/Aiken, and Charleston. (See the cities and dates.)

If your field is shrinking, or if you feel it’s time for a change, learning more skills, and embarking on a new career might be in order. Take a look at SCIway’s Specialized Career Schools and Colleges Guide to see what kinds of opportunities might suit you for specific career training. Our comprehensive higher education guide also has an array of listings that may spark your interest and get you firing off in a new, exciting career direction.

SCIway’s directory of SC jobs has 350,000 pageviews a year, and a featuring listing costs $2 or less a day.

Follow the link if you are a South Carolina employer and would like to post a job listing.

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Speaking of jobs, we are also looking for an Online Advertising Sales Representative. South Carolina applicants are strongly encouraged to apply. If you know someone looking for work who has a love for South Carolina as well as making money in sales, please pass along this link to them. The job has a base salary of $30K plus commission and benefits.

Read more about this job listing.

Everyone expects Spring to bring rabbits and baby chicks, but “penguins”?

This past Saturday, South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston, revealed its new exhibit: Penguin Planet.

Four Magellanic penguins from were flown into Charleston from SeaWorld San Diego in February for their March 21st debut.

The penguins have been adjusting well, by frolicking, swimming, and eating. (See them in action on Penguin Cam[download required]!) Post and Courier reports the penguins have been having a great time in their new home and show no signs of stress. They also reported that Clint Ball, the aquarium’s senior biologist, said they are on loan from SeaWorld for a year and then will return to their 40 member “waddle” (a group of penguins). You can read more about this in Post and Courier’s article Penguins Visit Aquarium.

Typically penguins are thought of as being cold climate fans, but the Magellanic variety actually prefer warmer climes like Charleston. In the wild, Magellanic penguins are found around Chile and Argentina and migrate north to Peru and Brazil in the colder times of year.

Find more SC Zoos, Observatories, Planetariums, and Aquariums.

Read more about SC Wildlife Refuges and Natural Habitat Preserves.

Follow “Waddle” on Twitter.

Well-known Lowcountry author, Pat Conroy, is inducted today into the South Carolina Hall of Fame.

Conroy is the hailed author of Lowcountry epics like “The Prince of Tides”, “The Great Santini”, and “The Lords of Discipline.” Many think as South Carolina-focused as his books are that he’s was born in South Carolina, but Conroy is acutally an Atlanta native. He claims to have moved 23 times before he turned 18. But when his family moved to Beaufort, while his father was serving at the Marine Air Corp Station, Conroy took a stand to root himself, and call Beaufort “home.”

Following the military footsteps of his father, Conroy was educated at The Citadel in Charleston. After which, he took an unprecedented turn towards teaching in a one-room schoolhouse at Daufuskie Island. He based his book “The Water Is Wide” on his experience there teaching the sheltered students and dealing with the rudimentary thinking of the native adults. The novel was later turned into a film starring Jon Voight called “Conrack“, named from what the children would call Conroy since they couldn’t pronounce his last name.

Dedicated in 1973, The South Carolina Hall of Fame inducts one living and one deceased person a year. Previous inductees have included President Andrew Jackson, Cheraw-native jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and former South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond.

Conroy currently lives on Fripp Island with his wife and fellow-author Cassandra King.

The 2009 Induction Ceremony will be 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, March 18, at the Myrtle Beach Convention Center. Admission is free. Call 843-916-7238 for more information.

Discover more books about South Carolina and from SC authors.

Find out more about South Carolina music.

Read more about The Citadel.

Research other South Carolina Convention Centers.

University of South Carolina’s Institute for Archaeology and Anthropology is interested in what lies beneath Charleston Harbor (view a map of Charleston Harbor defenses). Underwater archaeologist James Spirek is traveling to the bottom of Charleston Harbor on an expedition to find remains of Civil War-era shipwrecks.

Spirek expects to find many ships, since Charleston had a “strategic position” in the war. Spirek went on to say, “We’re treating this area as one giant battlefield, as opposed to a number of separate smaller ones.” Finding the exact locations of the ships will also help determine battle strategies on the water, as far as whether a ship was used for tactical or strategic positions, counter-measures, or blockade running. Spirek also expects to find submerged coastal-defense barriers, torpedoes, and other relics of naval warfare.

A secondary effort of the exploration is to mark or begin excavation in the historical areas since beach renourishment projects, channel widening, and other projects involving human intervention could damage the shipwrecks.

“The project is being funded by a grant from National Park Service through their American Battlefield Protection Program,” Spirek said.

The search begins this month.

Learn more about South Carolina’s Civil War Battles.

See more South Carolina’s Civil War Maps.