Chatham Journal: One on One

Back to the drawing boards on race?

Tue, 18 Jan 2010 16:57:00 GMT

This time last year, most Americans, whatever their political persuasions, celebrated the Martin Luther King Holiday with a special good feeling that King would share the nation’s pride at inauguration of a Negro President of the United States. Of course, even though “Negro” is the word King used to describe an American with African ancestry, it is no longer accepted as a positive term.

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What about North Carolina's seven "natural" wonders?

Tue, 18 Jan 2010 14:57:00 GMT

“Why didn’t you make a list of North Carolina’s seven natural wonders?”
I got this question after I shared my choices for our state’s seven manmade wonders in a recent column. The same group that identified the Seven New (manmade) Wonders of the World, which prompted my earlier column, has also identified the Seven Natural Wonders: The Aurora Borealis (the Northern Lights), Grand Canyon, Paricutin (a cinder cone volcano in Mexico), Victoria Falls, Great Barrier Reef, Mount Everest, and the Harbor of Rio de Janeiro.

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Back in time in a barber's chair

Tue, 02 Nov 2009 16:37:00 GMT

What is the most segregated hour in the week? The 11 o’clock Sunday church service? Or maybe it is the hour we spend every week or two at the barber shop or beauty salon. Those institutions of renewal, relaxation, and exchange of information and opinion continue to be largely divided by sex and race—especially those that serve the older population.

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Dissapointments that follow groundbreaking victories

Tue, 28 Sep 2009 21:50:00 GMT

Thinking about that presidential election still sends chills of happiness through my brain. It was 1976 and my country had, unbelievably, actually elected a real Southerner, Jimmy Carter, to the presidency.

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A story about a story

Mon, 23 Aug 2009 05:01:00 GMT

There is the story, and then there is the story of the story. Both make for good telling. First, the story of the story, which is about how a North Carolina author got her first book published by a major national publisher. It’s got a fairy tale quality. Think Cinderella. Or think American Idol’s Clay Aiken or Anoop Desai.

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Food is the new tobacco

Wed, 04 Aug 2009 06:55:00 GMT

You don’t need to read all of this column to get its message. For North Carolinians it is simply this: Food is the new tobacco. Here’s why. We have known all along that using tobacco products was bad for health. But North Carolina people, as a group, resisted government regulations, restrictions on places it could be consumed, taxes, and even educational programs designed to discourage their use.

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Hiking the Appalachain Trail - A serious matter for one North Carolina writer

Thu, 15 Jul 2009 06:17:00 GMT

Could anyone angrier with South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford than his wife? A North Carolina woman is pretty upset with him—not because he went to Argentina to visit his love interest. She is disturbed because Sanford used her beloved Appalachian Trail as his cover story.

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North Carolina's literary elder statesman - in his youth

Wed, 07 Jul 2009 08:24:00 GMT

“An elder statesman of American letters.” What North Carolina writer comes to your mind when you read those words? These are the words a New York Times reviewer of Reynolds Price’s new book, “Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back,” used to describe Price.

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Suggestions for summer reading - and viewing

Tue, 22 Jun 2009 14:45:00 GMT

It is summertime again and time to put aside a few books for vacation reading. Let me share some suggestions from books I have been reading to prepare for UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch’s new season beginning on Sunday, July 5, at 5 pm.

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Cary Allred's burial ovation

Tue, 22 Jun 2009 02:33:00 GMT

You remember Marc Antony’s speech from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, beginning with: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears.” Should it be this way for Cary Allred, whose recent political suicide and resignation from the state house of representatives was the center of attention in the state’s political news last month?

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Tear down the Lincoln Memorial?

Mon, 21 Jun 2009 04:49:00 GMT

After reading an important and provocative new book about Abraham Lincoln’s ideas about the proper role of freed blacks in post-slavery times, I wondered if somebody will propose that we tear down the Lincoln Memorial. In “‘What Shall We Do with the Negro?’ Lincoln, White Racism, and Civil War America,” Wake Forest history professor Paul Escott discusses the wide variety of opinions in Civil War times about what to do with blacks after the war ended.

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North Carolina's most influential political figure

Tue, 15 Jun 2009 07:50:00 GMT

A lot of people think that the big Walter Davis Library at UNC-Chapel Hill is named after the great basketball player. Ned Cline, the biographer of the Walter Davis for whom the building is actually named, tells how one Chapel Hill student told another that “the library should not have been named for Walter Davis, because Phil Ford was a much better basketball player for the Tar Heel team.”

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Memories surround us at graduation time

Wed, 26 May 2009 08:37:00 GMT

While many other families are celebrating or preparing to celebrate a child’s graduation, my family waits to celebrate the birth of my daughter’s third child. But I still remember her college graduation when I wrote the following: Graduations are over. Caps and gowns have been returned to the rental agency - or carefully folded and put in the top of the closet to save along with other treasures that won't be used again anytime soon.

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Good schools -- The one magic answer?

Wed, 24 Mar 2009 06:51:00 GMT

What really makes for good schools? At a recent conference organized for North Carolina Editorial Writers, the organizer, Ferrel Guillory, Director of UNC-Chapel Hill’s Program on Public Life, presented this question for discussion. To help, he brought several top education experts, including J.B. Buxton, the former deputy school superintendent in charge of day-to-day operations at the Department of Public Instruction; Judith Rizzo, Executive Director of the Hunt Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy; and Bill McDiarmid, Dean of UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Education.

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Cheeseburgers and North Carolina politics -- A mouthful

Tue, 23 Mar 2009 15:37:00 GMT

“Just tell Claxton that I got his message.” It was the last thing North Carolina House Speaker of Representatives Joe Hackney told me after he learned that my friend Jamie May and I were going to eat cheeseburgers at Johnson’s in Siler City.

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