In December 2007, Lew Powell of Charlotte donated 2,698 North Carolina-related pin-back buttons, badges, ribbons, cloth swatches, promotional cards, and stickers to the North Carolina Collection. These items cover a variety of topics, including politics, sports, clubs and organizations, and controversial causes. While the origin of most of the buttons in this collection is clear, a couple of the buttons are untraced to any cause or organization.

This 1918 button from Asheboro remains a puzzle. Mr. Powell purchased the button along with another from Randolph County, and suggests that one possibility is that the button advertised the Randolph County Sunday School Association. On the other hand, the flag motif suggests it might have something to do with World War I.
Any ideas?

Frolics, hops, germans, socials, midwinters, proms, balls…dances have a long history as a crucial part of social life at Carolina. Today’s UNC Dance Marathon shows how much this activity has evolved since the days of the dance card:

This is an 1885 dance card from our UNC ephemera collection. The name written on the front, presumably the gentlemen who originally used the card, is H.W. Jackson. The other penciled notations on the front read: “My first ball,” and “I carried out Miss Daisy Deason.” I’ll leave it to you, dear readers, to interpret that latter notation for yourselves.

Mr. Jackson appears to have been a very popular guy, since he listed not one, but two ladies for many of the dances inside the card:

Curious about this suave fellow, I consulted several resources here at the North Carolina Collection, including the Biographical Index, Powell’s Dictionary of North Carolina Biography, and Ashe’s Biographical History of North Carolina, and found that our gentlemen was Herbert Worth Jackson (1865-1936). Herb was the first basemen and captain of the varsity baseball team during his time at UNC, and later went on to become a banker, civic leader, and UNC Trustee. He eventually married Annie Hyman Philips, whose name, incidentally, does not appear on his dance card.

Today’s Raleigh News and Observer reports that Tim Tyson’s award-winning Blood Done Sign My Name will be made into a movie. Luckily, it appears that the film will be shot in North Carolina, with the article mentioning potential locations such as Hillsborough, Oxford, and my adopted hometown of Mocksville.

I’ve been catching up on the new additions to the North Carolina Collection and today I added over 200 more titles to our “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” page. To be more exact, today’s list has 217 new titles, including more than 50 books of poetry, 35 works of fiction, 11 biographies, two books on North Carolina’s wild horses, and nifty foreign language editions of Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain in Polish), Kaye Gibbons (Ellen Foster in French), Sarah Dessen (This Lullaby in German), and Jim Grimsley (Comfort and Joy in German). Check out the full list by clicking on the link in this entry or by clicking on the “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” link under the heading “Pages” in the right column. As always, full citations for all the new titles can be found in the University Library catalog and they are all available for use in the North Carolina Collection Reading Room.

He’s no Broadway Joe, but the Plott Hound will be seen around Manhattan this week. The Plott Hound has been the North Carolina State Dog since 1989. This week the breed makes its debut at the 132nd Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. The show is taking place today and tomorrow at Madison Square Garden. The best of the Plott Hound competitors will be chosen in judging at noon today. The best of the breeds compete against each other in the group competitions over the next two nights, with the grand champion of the show selected tomorrow night. The USA Network and CNBC are carrying the evening judging. The Plott Hound is known as a quick-foot, tenacious hunter rather than an over-groomed lap dog, but if our big dawg proves to be the star of the Hound Group, who knows what’s next–the role of arm candy for Paris Hilton?

Late last week I added more than 100 new titles to our “What’s New in the North Carolina Collection?” page. This listing of the North Carolina Collection’s latest selections is updated several times a year and you can check it out by clicking on the link under the heading “Pages” in the right column. Full citations for all these new books can be found in the University Library catalog and they are all available for use in the North Carolina Collection Reading Room. Enjoy!