Sweetgrass Highway, SC Nov. 2010

Last month I took a shortcut back to I-95 S. from Myrtle Beach that turn out to be a super cool by-way route... Traveling down Highway 17 around Charleston, S.C., and you’ll see a collection of American artists plying their trade, a trade that’s been passed on from parent to child for centuries.

Armed with a broken spoon — called a bone — and strips of dried sweetgrass, bulrush and palmetto leaves, these artists, known as sewers, create coiled baskets in much the same way African slaves did 400 years ago.

Sweetgrass baskets today are more frequently ornamental, but their history is tied directly to slavery and to rice cultivation...

until this trip i did not understand the quote:

“Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.”

Charles Kuralt