Posted in From the Stacks, Tar Heelia on January 31, 2007 | 1 Comment »
The price of rocks in North Carolina is getting pretty steep. The State of North Carolina has just purchased Chimney Rock Park for $24 million. The scenic park, with its iconic cylindrical rock formation, had been offered for sale before. I found an article in the North Carolina Collection newspaper clippings from 1961, when the [...]
Posted in From the Stacks, Literature on January 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
All loyal readers of the Harry Potter books know that when the young wizard boards the train at platform 9 3/4 at King’s Cross Railway Station, he is whisked away to . . . western North Carolina? In Thomas Wolfe’s book The Hills Beyond, first published in 1941, there is a short story entitled “The [...]
Posted in History, Tar Heelia on January 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
A little over a year ago, we pointed out that North Carolina had amended its law on cockfighting, making the practice a Class I felony. That may have curbed chicken battles in the state, but apparently hasn’t stopped North Carolinians from engaging in the age-old pursuit. WRAL reports that 145 people were arrested for cockfighting [...]
Posted in Tar Heelia on January 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Several loyal readers of North Carolina Miscellany have written to ask for more information about Langston Hughes’s visit to Chapel Hill, which I’d mentioned in an earlier post. Hughes describes his visit to the town in “Color at Chapel Hill,” a short chapter in The Langston Hughes Reader (New York, 1958). Hughes came to the [...]
Posted in History on January 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Yesterday the North Carolina Democratic Party released an official acknowledgement of and apology for the actions of party members leading up to and during the 1898 Wilmington Race Riot. The events of November 1898 have been well documented of late with the report of the Wilmington Race Riot Commission and “The Ghosts of 1898,” historian [...]
Posted in From the Stacks, New Books on January 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The North Carolina Small Town Fact Book, published by the North Carolina Rural Economic Development Center, is a great source of fun and interesting facts. Just this morning I’ve learned that, as of the 2000 Census, there were 478 towns in our state with populations of less than 10,000. Over 900,000 North Carolinians live in [...]
Posted in Tar Heelia on January 18, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The University of North Carolina has hosted a number of well-known literary visitors through the years, including Robert Frost, William Faulkner, and Langston Hughes. I wasn’t aware until recently that Gertrude Stein had passed through Chapel Hill. She remembers her visit in her 1937 book, Everybody’s Autobiography: “I had never heard of Chapel Hill but [...]
Posted in History, Postcards, Tar Heelia on January 11, 2007 | 2 Comments »
The Old Well, the symbol of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will be familiar to everyone who went to UNC and, indeed, to many who have even visited the campus. But how many have seen it looking like this? We have many historic photographs of the Old Well in the North Carolina [...]
Posted in Tar Heelia on January 5, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
I was not surprised to find a video about shag dancing in a comprehensive collection like the North Carolina Collection, and I expected to see the popular dance covered in a thorough source like the Encyclopedia of North Carolina, which is discussed below, but I have to admit I was a bit taken aback to [...]
Posted in History, New Books on January 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The appearance of editor William S. Powell’s Encyclopedia of North Carolina (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) comes at the same time as the publication of The South Carolina Encyclopedia, edited by Walter Edgar (University of South Carolina Press, 2006). The coincidence of publication dates practically invites comparison of these two compendia of Carolina knowledge [...]
