Posted in From the Stacks, Literature, Tar Heelia on May 11, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
From the Durwood Barbour Collection of North Carolina Postcards “Special attention is given to the use of electricity. Twenty years’ experience has proven it invaluable in cases of nervous prostration, incipient paralysis, insomnia, the opium and whiskey habits and those nervous affections due to uterine or ovarian disorders.” -Promotional copy for Glenwood Park Sanitarium “In [...]
Posted in History, Just A Bite, Literature, Tar Heelia, tagged a tree grows in brooklyn, ailanthus, betty smith, chapel hill nc, outer banks nc on April 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“[The ailanthus tree] rarely lives more than 50 years, so any chance of finding [Betty] Smith’s original tree still growing in Brooklyn was out of the question. “But [Nancy] Pfeiffer told me about the ailanthus her mother planted in the walled-in garden behind her home in Chapel Hill, where Smith lived almost her entire life [...]
Posted in History, Literature, Tar Heelia, tagged bigfoot, eastern north carolina, front porch, prelinger archives, songs about wilmington nc, southern highlanders, tony bennett, zagnut on February 9, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
– Eastern North Carolina: Birthplace of the front porch? – From the Prelinger Archives, an earnestly hokey look at “Southern Highlanders.” – If only Tony Bennett had left his heart in Wilmington…. – What a coincidence — Bigfoot’s eyes are the color of Zagnuts!
Posted in From the Stacks, Literature, Tar Heelia on January 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A few remembrances of Reynolds Price have noted his deep, resonant voice. Those tributes struck a chord with me because my introduction to Reynolds Price came not through his published works, but, rather, through his voice. His essays on National Public Radio always caught my attention. In my bookish family, his name was a familiar [...]
Posted in History, Literature, Tar Heelia, tagged a long and happy life, bill clinton, reynolds price, rosacoke mustian, wesley beaver on January 20, 2011 | 1 Comment »
In 1998 Reynolds Price read from “Roxanna Slade,” his new novel, at a Borders in Charlotte. Afterward, he recalled having visited the White House at the invitation of Bill Clinton. How big a fan was Clinton? Accompanying Price on the elevator, he shocked his guest by reciting the famous opening sentence of “A Long and [...]
Posted in Literature, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk, tagged ernest hemingway, f. scott fitzgerald, hendersonville nc on January 20, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“In Hendersonville… Today I am in comparative affluence, but Monday and Tuesday I had two tins of potted meat, three oranges and a box of Uneedas and two cans of beer… and when I think of the thousand meals I’ve sent back untasted in the last two years. It was fun to be poor — [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, Literature, Tar Heelia, Tar Talk, tagged boone nc, laura linney, playwrights, romulus linney, romulus zachariah linney, taylorsville nc on January 16, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
“During the Depression, my [physician] father went back to Boone, and I lived for four years of my early life in Boone…. The other plays are OK, at their best, but the pitch of the voices… in my Appalachian plays… is a little sharper because I heard that when I was a child.” – Playwright [...]
Posted in From the Stacks, History, Literature, Tar Heelia on December 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
“Far away, it seems now, on the winter prairie of Dakota I was impelled with the desire to read again for my own enjoyment Charles Dickens’ immortal ghost story, A Christmas Carol. Fresh from Harvard, I was then a very young instructor at the State University of North Dakota. That was twenty-five years ago, although [...]
Posted in Just A Bite, Literature, tagged george plimpton, look homeward angel, of time and the river, paris review, thomas wolfe, tom wolfe on December 19, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
George Plimpton: What about Thomas Wolfe? Did he float into your consciousness at all? Tom Wolfe: Yes, he did. I can remember that on the shelves at home there were… Look Homeward Angel and Of Time and the River. Of Time and the River had just come out [in 1935] when I [at age 4] [...]
