Posted in History, Just A Bite, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk on March 18, 2013 | 2 Comments »
The beauty and abundance of the native flowers of eastern America was impressive even to the earliest explorers and colonists, and the early reports and letters sent back to Europe often made reference to the variety of plants in the New World and to their uses. Although land was cleared for crops, trees were cut [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged great agnostic, nc religion, robert ingersoll, susan jacoby on March 11, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
“When I say I want a miracle, I mean by that, I want a good one. All the miracles recorded in the New Testament could have been simulated. A fellow could have pretended to be dead, or blind, or dumb, or deaf…. “I would like to see a miracle like that performed in North Carolina. [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, UNC History, tagged climate change, dust bowl, global warming, hugh bennett, timothy egan, university of north carolina on March 8, 2013 | 1 Comment »
“It’s one thing to persuade hipsters in Portland, Ore., or Brooklyn to grow organic — hey, how cool is an artisan radish — in their rooftop gardens. It’s a much tougher push to get Big Ag, made up mostly of stubborn older men, to change its ways. “But imagine if a farmer led the cause [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged brown vs board of education, clyde hoey, defending white democracy, jason morgan ward, nc segregationists, sam ervin, william umstead on March 7, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
“Weeks after the Brown [vs. Board of Education decision in 1954], the press hailed the latest poster boy for the ‘soft Southern approach’…. Samuel J. Ervin, a Harvard-educated state Supreme Court justice, arrived in Washington ready to lend his legal expertise and ‘country lawyer’ charm to the segregationist cause. “Governor William Umstead tapped Ervin to [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged cape fear nc, fort anderson nc, freed slaves in nc, jim downs, sick from freedom, wilmington nc on March 4, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
“When the military abandoned the freedpeople in the final months of the war at a Union camp in North Carolina, sickness and disease escalated; the military left no personnel or medical assistance for unemployed former slaves. According to the chief surgeon in North Carolina, General Sherman sent about 10,000 freedpeople ‘down the Cape Fear River [...]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Just A Bite, On This Day, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk, UNC History on February 22, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
The UNC-Chapel Hill student newspaper printed its first issue on February 23, 1893. The Tar Heel‘s editors explained that the paper, issued every Thursday morning, would include “a summary of all occurrences in the University and village of Chapel Hill.” The paper vowed to cover UNC sports, “all society news, personals and every subject of [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged cyrus b watson, john c buxton, katharine and r j reynolds, michele gillespie, william darnell, Winston-Salem on February 22, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
“In 1913, tobacco worker William Darnell, attempting to build a house on a corner lot at Eleventh Street and Highland Avenue, was arrested because he was black and all the other residents on the street were white. The legal case that ensued [challenging Winston-Salem's residential segregation law] speaks to the behind-the-scenes power of R.J.R. to [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, tagged allen c guelzo, battle of seven pines, civil war nc, fateful lightning on February 19, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
“Many of the Civil War’s legendary charges in the face of the enemy were made by soldiers who had been drugged into near insensibility by the liberal dispensing of hard liquor…. “The 16th North Carolina went into action at Seven Pines [Henrico County, Virginia] after the company commissary ‘hobbled down with several canteens of “fire [...]
Literary pantheon: One Wolfe out, one Wolfe in?
Posted in Just A Bite, Literature, tagged andrew ferguson, commentary magazine, thomas wolfe, tom wolfe on March 1, 2013 | Leave a Comment »
“I am old enough to remember when Thomas Wolfe seemed secure in the pantheon of 20th-century American writers, the equal, nearly, of Faulkner and Fitzgerald and Hemingway. He is gone from the pantheon today, and I doubt that Tom Wolfe gets asked about his kinship to Thomas Wolfe anymore. “The obscurity of Thomas is an [...]
Read Full Post »