George Washington Vanderbilt was the youngest of his parents’ eight children. Because of the age difference between George and his siblings, some of his closest family ties were with his nieces and nephews. One niece, Edith Shepard Fabbri, visited Biltmore in late 1905 with her husband, Ernesto G. Fabbri, and their two children. Ernesto Fabbri, described in his New York Times obituary as a “world traveler, linguist, and former president of the Society of Italian Immigrants in New York,” was the heir of Egisto Fabbri, a J.P. Morgan partner. He and Edith Vanderbilt Shepard were married in 1897 and divorced in 1923.

Apparently, Fabbri was an amateur photographer. The North Carolina Collection recently purchased an album of photographs that Fabbri made during that 1905 visit to Biltmore. The seventeen large (7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inch) photographs include images of the exterior of the mansion, the model village, farm buildings and animals, and the ferry across the French Broad. The final image in the album shows George Vanderbilt’s wife, Edith Dresser Vanderbilt, setting up her camera on a hillside on the estate. Several of the images appeared in Ellen Erwin Rickman’s Biltmore Estate (Arcadia Publishing, 2005), but most have not been published. The first image in the album is shown here.

This is a great season for reading North Carolina literature, with new novels by some of the state’s most respected writers coming out within a few weeks of each other. Lee Smith’s On Agate Hill, set in Civil War era Hillsborough, has just been released and Doug Marlette’s Magic Time comes out this week. Follow the links from each title for recent reviews in the Charlotte Observer.

These two books should keep anxious readers busy until October 3, when Thirteen Moons, Charles Frazier’s long-awaited second novel is released. Raleigh News & Observer columnist J. Peder Zane has already declared it a “worthy successor” to Cold Mountain.

As an undergraduate I took a “Weather and Climate” class, which I have to admit was one of my favorites. I don’t remember everything we discussed, but I definitely do remember that precipitation has nothing to do with radio waves in the air. This fact was called to doubt, however, as I was reviewing the Biblical Recorder (which was and is published in Raleigh) for another subject. In its “Current Topics” section for 2 June 1926 I found a piece titled “Is the Radio to Blame?” In the late spring of 1926, sections of the United States were experiencing a severe drought–the worst in forty years, and the Recorder reports that Thomas Edison blamed radio waves for the lack of rain. He believed that “moisture [was] being absorbed from the air by the radio, thus preventing the formation of rain clouds.” The Recorder went on to say that coming from Edison this theory was worthy of consideration and “it would be better to abolish [the radio] than have the earth parched as it has been for the past two months.”

This great advertisement is from a promotional brochure published by the Chesapeake and Ohio lines — the “C and O.” I ran across the brochure in a volume labeled simply “Miscellaneous Pamphlets.” The volume bears the signature and date “R.G. Cherry October 10 1931.” At the time, Cherry was in his first term in the North Carolina House of Representatives. Fourteen years later he was elected Governor of North Carolina.

Today’s Asheville Citizen-Times reports on the recent Bigfoot sightings in Madison County. Apparently, Sasquatch himself has appeared around the mountain town of Hot Springs. This is exciting news indeed, but I was most impressed to learn that this is not Bigfoot’s first visit to our state. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization has an excellent website documenting all known sightings, which are arranged by state. The North Carolina page lists 42 Bigfoot sightings in the Tar Heel state. Predictably, he has shown up most often in the mountain regions of North Carolina, but has popped up a few times in other parts of the state, including Mocksville in Davie County and at Camp Lejeune in Onslow County.

Our friends at the North Carolina Office of Archives & History have just released an impressive new website at http://ncmarkers.com. The site taps into a database of information about the North Carolina Historical Marker Program — those black and silver signs scattered along highways around the state denoting historic people and events. Users of the new site can search by keyword, browse by county or subject, and, in many cases, see a picture of the actual sign and read a short essay giving more information on the topic.

You’ll find this site especially handy if, like me, you’ve found yourself so caught up in reading one of the historic markers that you nearly drifted into oncoming traffic. Now that I know I can find the text online later, I’ll keep both eyes on the road.

I’ve just been looking through John T. Edge’s latest, Donuts: An American Passion. Despite the fact that there are no North Carolina places listed in his “Black Book of Donut Shops” (the closest place to us is Mulligan’s in suburban Atlanta), that hardly means we’re suffering a donut deficiency here. Of course, everyone knows that North Carolina is home to the headquarters of Krispy Kreme, but we can also be proud of the Tar Heel roots of the Doughnut Plant, which is currently producing some of the most delectable donuts in New York City.

The Doughnut Plant was started in 1994 by the grandson of Herman Isreal, who operated the College Pastry Shop in Greensboro for decades. The store on Tate Street was a popular hangout for students from Women’s College from the 1930s through the 1960s. Isreal’s grandson came across the recipe for the donuts in the early 1990s, made a batch, and before long people throughout New York were discovering what students and alumna of Women’s College had known for years: these donuts were something special. The whole story is on the Donut Plant website.

Since the Doughnut Plant seems to be doing well these days, I think it’s time the owners honored their roots and opened a branch back in North Carolina. It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Greensboro. Something in my neighborhood would be just fine.

Does any other state have as many literary festivals as North Carolina? We knew about the big North Carolina Literary Festival held every other year in the Triangle, and the annual Novello Festival in Charlotte, but we just learned about another one. The Carolina Mountains Literary Festival will be held September 15-16 in Burnsville. They have an impressive number of authors scheduled to attend, including Sharyn McCrumb, Joan Medlicott, and John Ehle.