This one is from the heart.
Sometimes I manage a return to Chapel Hill — Those times are pilgrimages of a sort for me and I never see nearly even close to all of the people so dear to my heart in that timeless place. I love Chapel Hill/Carrboro and it holds magic for me in so many ways. I walk the streets, sidewalks, and brick pathways, and history, personal and public, swells up in my mind and soul of souls. I romanticize. Of that there is no doubt. I lived in Chapel Hill from 1976 to 1983 and then again from 1986 to 2009. It is my truest home and my heart is there in so many ways. In recent trips I have gone to campus at dawn with the dogs and I have taken joy in their eternal sense of exploration as we walked beneath the giant trees and across lawns that have been trod by so many infused with hope for 200+ years. They remind me of my own exuberant first days and weeks in August of 1976. Going back to the mind of Freshman-Me is itself renewing.
I am well aware that there are sordid chapters in my Alma Mater’s story though I admit that I was not always so enlightened. Events both distant in time and recent have been shameful and hurtful and have pained so very many. I am also glad, even grateful, for the great many positives that UNC has brought forth across time. Like a family member who strays yet remains beloved so too is Carolina for me.
These days the helm once captained by Frank Porter Graham and necessarily lesser folk but nevertheless well-intentioned educators has been captured by a gang uninterested in broadening but rather in narrowing ways of seeing…in making small what has most often been far-reaching. From afar I watch with great love and interest as thinkers and do-ers at my Alma Mater struggle - as they have done through other dark times when weak minds with a monopoly on force have worked to diminish the spirit of the place. I do fear this time that the darkness is stronger than in a very long time and that the struggle afore all who care is nigh Sisyphean - and cross-generational. Lux Libertas friends - we’re not in this alone. The fight is on North, South, East, and West - from Manteo to Murphy, Asheville to Atlantic Beach, and Boone to Beaufort. So too is the battle on state by state. The goal of the Darkness is to close the mind and kill the ideas. These days almost all of our colleges and universities are under attack. Alma Maters bend under the weight of misrepresentation born of a not-unfamiliar ill-will. Creativity, imagination, and hard work has never been more needed for this battle is essentially one of Truth-David fending off The Propaganda-Goliath. May 1 Samuel Inspire and serve as blueprint in these times of challenge.
The photo below is of Bynum Hall, originally the home gymnasium for Tar Heel men’s Basketball. Between 1910 and 1924 UNC WAS 61-15 in this building. So a precedent of success at that most beautiful game was set right there. Bynum was where you paid bills during my time at Carolina and ultimately where I submitted the final copy of my dissertation in 1999. That last function was far more tense than it ought to have been because the manuscript had to pass inspection by the Office of the Secretary of the Graduate School located there, who was not the least bit interested in content but rather proper margins, headers, and footers — any of which we were warned, if improperly rendered were bound to stall the doctorate in its tracks. For a time the Journalism Department lived in Bynum and plenty still remember the University Cashier office there. Today there is a fountain in front but when I was an undergrad that spot was occupied by a very simple volleyball court at which every Friday afternoon scholars met and very informal games were played. Bynum Hall is a bit of a microcosm of Carolina if you know the history of the place. It helps I guess to have lived some of it too. May Light Prevail Over The Current Darkness. Lux Libertas.
