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Greensboro's downtown S. H. Kress & Co. Building, not far from the F. W. Woolworth. These were anchor retailers in many cities large and small throughout the United States -- back when free standing surburban shopping malls and airport terminal malls were matters for science fiction. The Kress buildings were and are impressive, and have been mostly reutilized. Kress five and dime stores had lunch counters and were also, like the Woolworth counters, part of the sit-in movement.
Have you noted any Kress or Woolworth buildings in your nearby cities? If so, what are they being used for now? One Woolworth building I know of has a smoky jazz club in its basement.
Today's Rune: Defense.
A model for the world: Samsø, Denmark, population 4,300. Energy self-sufficient thanks to a cooperative alternative energy system developed since 1997. Something to be proud of, take hope in, be a part of, spread around the world. Community initiatives, leadership, follow-through. Let's get going! The Danes have been at the task since the 1970s. The USA dropped the ball when Ronald Reagan ousted Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. But: thirty years late is better than never . . .
My Dad and I caught an update on Samsø thanks to an episode (5) of PBS' Need to Know aired on Friday, June 4, 2010 (with John Larson). Seeing that and a re-broadcast of an interview with Neil Young by Charlie Rose were both synergistically inspiring.
Photos courtesy of the Samsø Energy Academy:
http://www.energiakademiet.dk/default_uk.asp
To mix metaphors wildly in the wind mill: crying over spilt oil won't amount to a hill of beans if we don't take off in another direction -- and "right quick."
Today's Rune: Movement.
Last night in Saxapahaw for a while. Today, took my parents to Hillsborough, another place brimming over with history and culture. The modern town of about 6,000 people dates back to the mid-18th century, and it was also the site of Occaneechi Town before that. The Eno tribe lived in the area for a time, as did what is now known as the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. Though the Eno were apparently absorbed into the Catawba and probably other groups, the latter still live in North Carolina. In fact, they're having a pow-wow in nearby Burlington next weekend. How cool is that?
We had lunch at the Gulf Rim Café and chatted briefly with one of the proprietors, Joe Tullos, orginally from -- if I got it right -- Paroisse de Saint-Jean-Baptiste or St. John the Baptist Parish, Louisiana. We tried a delicious Cuban pork sandwich, a shrimp sandwich and a couple of other items, all excellent. Plus, they carry Abita beer from Abita Springs, Louisiana! Mr. Tullos, who runs the Gulf Rim with his wife Andrea, is also a musician, a singer-songwriter. Here's a link to their website: www.gulfrimcafe.com
Hillsborough, a de facto capital of North Carolina during the American Revolution, was seized by General Charles (Earl) Cornwallis' army for a time; and Loyalist David Fanning launched a surprise attack on it late in the war, capturing the Whig governor and his retinue and hauling them off to Wilmington after a sharp fight. Not the kind of thing that Americans now like to boast of, anymore than they do about the British-Canadian-Indian capture of Detroit during the War of 1812! Fanning eventually went to Charleston, South Carolina, then to Saint Augustine, Florida until it was transferred back to Spain after the war, then on to Nassau in the Bahamas, and then to New Brunswick, Canada. It's always fascinated me what happened to the Loyalists after the war.
There's an interesting article on him by by Robert S. Allen in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Here's a snippet: Tough, wiry, plagued for a time by scald-head or tetterworm, Fanning was a stubbornly determined man who was a zealous and often brilliantly effective loyalist military leader. He was not a gentle man nor was he that type of philosophical loyalist, exuding refinement and contentment, who sat out the war in relative comfort in New York, Charleston, or England. Fanning fought tenaciously, fiercely, and sometimes cruelly against his ex-friends and neighbours, and his successes made him unpopular with the privileged loyalist “nabobs” of New Brunswick.
Overall, Hillsborough is a jumble of houses and other structures, many dating back to the 19th century, on hilly, wooded ground above the Eno River. Seems like a perfect place for artists and writers, which is probably why Annie Dillard, Lee Smith, Hal Crowther and Allan Gurganus all live there, at least part time.
Today's Rune: Defense.
Oh, man, last night made the Cat's Cradle scene with Linda and Roy. The club, a dive or hole along the lines of CBGB, has hosted a ton of terrific bands over the decades, and last night's show was exactly in this tradition: The Legendary Shack Shakers, Cracker and The Reverend Horton Heat. More on all three at some point.
For now, let's pull back and peak at Chapel Hill, Carrboro and the Cat's Cradle. The first of these is a small city of about 55,000 people, plus another 18,000 undergaduates and 11,000 graduate students at The University of North Carolina. Adjoining Carrboro has about 20,000 residents; the current incarnation of Cat's Cradle can absorb something above 600 people at one time (with a smoking and break deck out back). This is Cat's Cradle #5. The first four physical incarnations were in Chapel Hill, and I used to frequent #2 and #3. A couple of acts that came to #2 on Rosemary in the early 1980s were -- off the top of my head -- Bo Didley and Romeo Void. Used to go there all the time with friends as an undergraduate. It was our regular place to blow off steam. Still went to that locale when it rebooted as Rhythm Alley and Skylight Exchange. The Cat moved over to West Franklin Street, and that's the incarnation where I saw The Cramps and Lloyd Cole as a graduate student. It must have been #4 where Nirvana played to a small crowd in the early 90s. The Cradle may have to move yet again, but no worries. The tradition will continue. If you go anywhere near the Research Triangle of North Carolina and dig live music in an intimate venue, check it out! The cover charge for all three bands last night? $20. Believe me, it was worth every penny and a whole lot more. The crowd was eclectic, of all ages and many came a long way to get there.
Today's Rune: Fertility. Pictured above: cover of Revival (2004), a Reverend Horton Heat album.
The layers and dimensions of Greensboro, North Carolina, must startle any keen observer. A city now of about 260,000 people, its palimpsestic history layers back to Native America and forward to Latinos, Montagnards and, also in the area, Palestinians. Think Frank Lucas, main true life character in Ridley Scott's American Gangster (2007), or Joe Dudley (both were born in eastern North Carolina but relocated to this little mecca) of Dudley Products, featured in Chris Rock's Good Hair (2009). Think Civil Rights, the sit-ins, Vicks Chemical Company, O. Henry (William S. Porter), General Nathanael Greene (the city's namesake). Think last capital of the Confederacy (after Appomattox), General Joseph E. Johnston, Orson Scott Card, Dolley Madison, Quakers, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse, the neary Regulators and Battle of Alamance, Guilford College, Greensboro College, UNC-Greensboro, North Carolina A & T. And more. How about Edward R. Murrow?
I'll return to my earlier theme of Greensboro as American microcosm, well-worth exploring, contemplating, knowing. But tonight, off to Chapel Hill to the Cat's Cradle to see a trio of bands that I'll report on tomorrow, God willing and the Haw River don't rise.
Today's Rune: Partnership.
Greensboro, North Carolina: the USA in microcosm. Deep history, going back centuries. Today, I had the great privilege of touring the recently opened International Civil Rights Center and Museum located in the F.W. Woolworth Co. building where the sit-in movement began on February 1, 1960, the epicenter of a seismic convulsion still in motion. Today, when anti-civil rights pushback is still in raw evidence (in Arizona, for example), too, seeing the Woolworth counter reinforces how far American society has come, and also how little. The actual lunch counter and grill is much larger than I imagined going in: more than fifty seats divided, like the country, into two wings in the shape of an L, or a V widened to a right angle. It's a large space.
My cool Mom came, too, just as she came to see Obama at the Greensboro Amtrak stop back in the autumn of 2008. We were conducted through the Center and Museum by an excellent tour guide along with four other people. The exhibits mix multivisuals with artifacts and multiple insights. The experience is powerful -- seeing many Black Codes/Jim Crow law segregation/apartheid artifacts and their attendant vestiges of violence (lynchings, Emmett Till, firehoses, general brutality) up close. The exhibits end with a montage that taps into the universal drive for civil and human rights, always opposed by the status quo, always opposed by right wingers.
At the Greensboro Woolworth counter on February 1, 1960, four North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (NCA&T) students -- Ezell A. Blair, Jr., Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil and David L. Richmond -- began (or more accurately from a longer perspecive, continued) the earthquake by calmly sitting in the "Whites Only" section of the lunch counter. As the back of my ticket puts it, "They sat down so others could stand up." This is a place to see in person. Fifty years later and still counting, so much still to do, so much counter-push.
For more, please see: http://www.sitinmovement.org/home.asp
Today's Rune: Joy.
A strange find above: the scanned outer cover of a BP-sponsored box set of six little A. A. Milne books put out twenty years ago, including Kanga and Baby Roo Come to the Forest. The proof is in the pudding. Make your own caption.
Another strange find today: Hessian beer. Seriously. I tried a pint. It tasted better than petroleum on a late spring day, probably.
Back in the 1930s or so, German scientists figured out how to make synthetic oil. Problem is, this required vast quantities of coal as a key ingredient. Leftovers were put in stockings at Christmas time for the bad kids. Waste not, want not, you know. . . Happy Hurricane season!
Today's Rune: Defense.
