donbosco
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Chapel Hill, Carrboro, & UNC Stuff
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I’ve seen it many times. Saw them in Manhattan the first time they played there.
Bland happens to be a neighbor.
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I see I’m mentioned on that article."
We had our chance, you know. We had our chance to make a deal with the devil. We danced with him, we flirted a little, maybe we even led him on. But I’m not so sure we ever took his offer. Here’s how it went down.
It was the summer of ’92 and scores of magazine reporters and music-industry types, looking like robotic ravens in their standard-issue black T-shirts and jeans, sweated hiply in the Chapel Hill heat. They came to see what sarcastic locals had named the Big Record Stardom Convention. They came to see 49 North Carolina bands over four days.
Late one night, when all the shows had ended and the after-parties were in full swing, a reporter from Spin magazine was holding court, dissecting our local culture, trying to find its essence. “What is the Chapel Hill sound?” he implored partygoers.
“Pffft!” Someone opened a beer can right in his face. “That is the Chapel Hill sound,” came the response. Laughter erupted. “Pffft!” This was our answer to the devil."
The Rest of The Story is at the link...
Running with the devil
We had our chance, you know. We had our chance to make a deal with the devil. We danced with him, we flirted a little, maybe we even led him on. But I’m not so sure we ever took his offer. Here’s how it went down. It was the summer of ’92 and scores of […]indyweek.com
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Not the real me, but my username.
donbosco
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Nicely Done - do you remember the parking lot where Davis Library now stands?
Wasn’t it Orange County gravel? That grainy orange-hued stuff that was some sidewalks before they were bricked over? Or, was it regular gravel?
I’d swear that the parking rows were marked out with railroad ties (the rows, not the spaces).
donbosco
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I think the railroad ties recollection is correct. And there was gravel but about as often there was mud.
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Once, when I was a student in graduate school at Pitt and as I was walking (on a bricked surface) to my first class of the morning, I noticed a middle-aged man in a business suite get out of his car and walk, ACROSS THE GRASS!, to get to his building. Immediately called out to him and pointed out he was walking on the grass while I was staying on the bricks. Then I gratuitously added that I had attended undergraduate school at UNC and UNC had a whole team of people dedicated to bricking over the short-cuts student made through the grass. This man, hung his head in shame and confessed that not only was he a new hire at Pitt, buy he had been hired away from UNC. He retraced his steps to his car and took the bricked in path to his building while promising me he would preach the virtues of bricking where students actually walk rather than hoping students would walk where the existing brick paths were.
Long ago, UNC needed to make the stone walls a lot higher; maybe as high as 5-feet.
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Mending Walls by Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun;
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, ‘Good fences make good neighbors.’
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Beautiful tribute @donbosco
donbosco
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Date(s): SATURDAY, NOV 15th 2025
Type of Show: Live Music & Comedy
Showtime(s): 7:30 pm
Tickets: $35 in advance / $40 day of show
artscenterlive.org
Type of Show: Live Music & Comedy
Showtime(s): 7:30 pm
Tickets: $35 in advance / $40 day of show
November 15th: Reverend Billy C. Wirtz | The ArtsCenter
Date(s): SATURDAY, November 15th, 2025 Type of Show: Boogie Woogie Music and Comedy Showtime(s): 7:30 pm Tickets: $35 in advance/$40 day of show Triangle favorite, Master of the 88 Key Disaster, Rev. Billy C Wirtz!
artscenterlive.org
sringwal
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That is a good fucking article."
We had our chance, you know. We had our chance to make a deal with the devil. We danced with him, we flirted a little, maybe we even led him on. But I’m not so sure we ever took his offer. Here’s how it went down.
It was the summer of ’92 and scores of magazine reporters and music-industry types, looking like robotic ravens in their standard-issue black T-shirts and jeans, sweated hiply in the Chapel Hill heat. They came to see what sarcastic locals had named the Big Record Stardom Convention. They came to see 49 North Carolina bands over four days.
Late one night, when all the shows had ended and the after-parties were in full swing, a reporter from Spin magazine was holding court, dissecting our local culture, trying to find its essence. “What is the Chapel Hill sound?” he implored partygoers.
“Pffft!” Someone opened a beer can right in his face. “That is the Chapel Hill sound,” came the response. Laughter erupted. “Pffft!” This was our answer to the devil."
The Rest of The Story is at the link...
Running with the devil
We had our chance, you know. We had our chance to make a deal with the devil. We danced with him, we flirted a little, maybe we even led him on. But I’m not so sure we ever took his offer. Here’s how it went down. It was the summer of ’92 and scores of […]
Seriously.
That article fuuucks.
I don’t know if I have, in my lifetime, read even a half dozen articles that fuck as much as that piece does.
I’d put it right behind the ‘05 championship article in the DTH.
Well done, Indy.
I’m pleasantly surprised.
donbosco
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Reimagining the Pit - Carolina Stories
Generous gift helps launch renovations to beloved campus plaza
carolinastories.unc.edu
donbosco
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Among the nabs, peanuts, and honey buns - treats - for sale in the ‘social mixing’ and ‘tall-tale-telling’ area of #BonleeHardware you could also choose a BC Powder. Maybe the gossip that went down there along with the occasional politicking called for some headache relief - or it could have been the hard and often precarious economic life of a chicken farmer or even the back aches of the timberman that kept that analgesic so close by and ubiquitous. What I didn’t realize as a boy was that the regular users of powders were also getting a pretty solid caffeine pick-me-up along with that chalky, pungent, pain-relieving charge. Add in the Co-Cola or Pepsi pulled from the old refrigerator in the back that washed down that BC and I see now that we actually had our own version of a Coffee Shop going on right there in ‘downtown’ #DeepChatham #BonleeHardware.
Deddy didn’t ‘do’ headache powders though it wasn’t because of an aversion to caffeine. From earliest recollections my mornings in our Bonlee home were saturated with the sound of a percolator and the aroma of strong coffee. I think maybe Deddy just didn’t like the ‘process’ so much. Taking a headache powder is a skill whether it be Stanback, Goody’s, or BC and it has to be done just right for maximum effectiveness as well as comfort. The ‘Taker’ has to first carefully open the cigarette-length, and width, but flat not round, wax paper packet. Folded lengthwise, the powder lay inside with each end crimped down so the mix couldn’t fall out. Opening up the packet was a bit delicate for some battered work hands I suspect. Deddy, missing all of his fingers on his left hand from a teen-age molasses mill accident, may have found this opening maneuver simply too clumsy.
Once the packet is open and balanced in your main hand, the next step is to take, and hold, a good swig of Co-Cola in the back of your mouth. Quickly then, pour the powder from the opened wax paper packet into the back of your mouth - right on top of the Co-Cola. The next step is also a fast one - splash another bigger swig of your drink into your mouth and swallow. If you do this right the nasty taste of the medicine goes unexperienced. This entire operation should take less than 3 seconds and the remedy overall will be working in 5 minutes max.
Growing up I watched that ritual go down countless times with great fascination. I didn’t try it until I was in my late teens to be honest, which was just about the same time that I learned that a lot of people drank their moonshine washed down with beer in a similar rhythm. So while I was learning these life lessons what I didn’t learn, nor do I think anyone around me knew, was that the very first headache powder, BC, was invented by a fellow Chathamite! The inventor may have lived just north of Siler City as a boy as a Piney Grove School is mentioned in some of his biographies. A revelation that my 102 year old Aunt Irma bequeathed me that her father, Floyd E. Womble, had done some teaching, leads me to wonder if he might have worked at that very school in fact.
The caffeine-packed headache powder also strikes me as the ultimate drug for a Right-To-Work’ un-unionized factory setting such as was once the case when cigarette and furniture factories and textile mills dominated the North Carolina landscape. After all, the din of crashing machinery, the relentless pace of assembly lines combined with long shifts could make a worker reach for both a stimulus and pain relief. So the once ubiquitous represented a perfect industrial pick-me-up for the weary, overworked and poorly compensated Southerner.
‘Conny’ Council’s family moved to Durham when he was quite young. He was both a Tar Heel and a Blue Devil too - though in those days the enmities had yet to crest nor had the Durham institution become the refuge for out-if-staters that it is today. If you haven’t tried a headache powder you probably ought not to. If you have then you ‘do you.’ So…
#OTD (October 31) in 1886 Commodore ‘Conny’ Council, inventor of BC Headache Powder (Durham-1906)was born in Chatham County. Raised in Durham he attended UNC & Duke & became a pharmacist, inventing BC Powders in 1906. An Aspirin/Caffeine combo manufactured in Durham- it was heaven-sent for the textile worker accosted by pounding machinery and driven by the time-clock. Commodore Council Invented BC Powder in Durham
#OTD (October 31) in 1886 Commodore ‘Conny’ Council, inventor of BC Headache Powder (Durham-1906)was born in Chatham County. Raised in Durham he attended UNC & Duke & became a pharmacist, inventing BC Powders in 1906. An Aspirin/Caffeine combo manufactured in Durham- it was heaven-sent for the textile worker accosted by pounding machinery and driven by the time-clock. Commodore Council Invented BC Powder in Durham
Only 20 when he was mucking around with those chemicals in derm...that the Chatham County raisin' for ya.
I don’t see a “pedestrian and bicycle” plaza functioning well on that section of Weaver Street.
You’ll have two types of cyclists (count scooter riders as cyclists). The primary group will be commuters. They’ll be in a hurry. The secondary group of cyclists will be families with young kids slowly heading to Weaver Street Market.
The commuters on bikes/scooters and the pedestrians “meandering” in the “plaza” will not function well in the same space.
If you’re going to close that section of Weaver Street to cars/trucks, close it to through bikes/scooters.
donbosco
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Twenty-Five Years Later Gavin talks to Ron about 1992, music, art, New Jersey, and other stuff, including tending bar at The Hardback Cafe.
www.chickfactor.com
An Interview with Ron Liberti: Art Lifer – chickfactor zine
www.chickfactor.com
donbosco
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A tale from Carolina Days Past. Remembering Dr. Reckford.
I had my very first class at UNC, “Classics 31: The Hero and The Journey,” in a corner room of Murphey Hall. It was a recitation with a graduate student. Her name was Nina. We also met in the auditorium there where Dr. Kenneth Reckford gave eccentric and raucous lectures on ‘The Aeneid,’ ‘The Odyssey,’ and ‘The Lord of The Rings.’ It was the Fall of 1976. The whole thing was like nothing I had ever experienced. That campus, those old stone walls, the untapped potential for thoughtfulness enveloped me. I loved that scene so much I decided to make a career of it. For a while I even wore a corduroy blazer with elbow patches. Dr. Reckford also fought for civil rights and is mentioned in John Ehle’s ‘The Free Men,” — if you live in North Carolina and haven’t read it, you ought to.
The fall season often finds me revisiting classics - and in some cases grappling with them for the very first time. In other cases I see them in a much different light. Where we shine the light in 2023 can be quite different than what caught the sparkle in 1976. Almost 50 years have passed and find myself teaching first years this semester and on good days I can kind of feel the spirit of Dr. Reckford looking on. Back then I fell into a bit of a fascination with Aeneas, the Trojan adventurer and progenitor of Rome as well as, Aragorn, Strider, Tolkien’s Ranger of the North.
While Aragorn remains steadfastly a true hero for me, over the years (and yes I have pondered Vergil’s ‘Aeneid’ from time to time over the decades) Aeneas has plied some rough seas in my estimation. I see better the placement of Vergil’s epic poem of Rome’s mythic origins much more for the motivations of those doing the deciding - at least I think I do. As traditionally promoted, and here I mean no disrespect to Dr. Reckford, ‘The Aeneid’ could be a powerful apologia for empire-building. And thus the popularity of the tome with those Imperial Britishers of the 18th century who passed along the reading of Aeneas as a good conqueror who sought his own ‘Manifest Destiny’ to those educated elites of our own founding. All that turns out to be philosophical low hanging fruit really, though my freshman brain missed it way back in my own Days of Yore. I found exaltation far more fun. Today I grapple more with the Bigger Picture but then that’s The Way of the troubled passage of Time.
So now as part of my studying I have learned more of the veneration of Vergil’s actual prose - and of debates and discussions over translations. I never took Latin - I struggled with High School French à la Bear Creek, #DeepChatham, and worked hard at Brazilian Portuguese at Carolina only to discover a great love of Spanish as learned in the bars, basketball courts, and chicken-buses of Guatemala. Intriguing to me was the find, some few years back, of my dear Deddy’s scribbled in and dog-eared Latin book from his time at Bonlee High School in the 1930s. That he might have pondered that singular scholarly language with all its nuance and regulation whilst plowing behind Ole Bic the Mule - conjugating while keeping the rows straight - is a rather sublime imagining.
It is the Magic of that “dead language” that led me back to this topic. Once while reading and prepping for classes on Topics Ancient and Literary I chanced upon a custom I’d never encountered - at least not specifically. Growing up at Bonlee Baptist Church we did a lot with The Bible. There were Bible Drills and plenty of focus on scripture but one quite unofficial (unorthodox?) activity was asking the book of Proverbs for guidance. If you know your Holy Book you know that dead center of it one finds Psalms and Proverbs. Let’s say you need The Almighty’s counsel in a decision - without looking down open your Bible just slightly right-of-center and place your finger on the text. Voíla! Beneath your finger lies your instruction directly from the inspired author of The Book of Proverbs.
This kind of divination is called Bibliomancy - not so much for the Bible root of the word but for the larger meaning of biblio as book. Indeed, my devout Christian Bibliomancy has a parallel that is actually almost surely a predecessor called The Sortis Vergilianae and it involves ‘The Aeneid’ in the same role to Proverbs - as a vehicle for Divination. It seems that early on the poetry of the Roman Vergil came to be associated with prophecy and the author cloaked in mysticism. After all it is Vergil that leads Dante through Purgatorio and Inferno in ‘The Divine Comedy.’ (Another book that Dr. Reckford introduced us to back in ‘76)
So if you’ve read this far I invite you to engage in your own Sortis Vergilianae modern and online. Go to the link here for the “Random Number Generator” ( RANDOM.ORG - True Random Number Service ) and since ‘The Aeneid’ has 12 books (or chapters) set the generator to choose between 1 and 12. Somewhere along here you should think of the question that you want answered.
Now you have your Book - let’s say that you came up with Book 9 (or IX). Now go to this online version of ‘The Aeneid’ ( P. Vergilius Maro, Aeneid, Book 6, line 576 ) - find Book IX on the left margin and click. You will see then the number of lines in Book IX. That one happens to have 777 lines. Now return to your “Random Number Generator” and set it to choose between 1 and 777. My randomly generated number was 348 so I count out the lines until I arrive at my number.
Finding my line and gathering the full phrase my Sortis Vergilianae was:
“Thus round full folds
of sheep a famished lion fiercely prowls;
mad hunger moves him; he devours and rends with bloody, roaring mouth, the feeble flock that trembles and is dumb.”
Fortunately(?) I had no question or counsel in mind when I approached ‘The Aeneid’ this time. One can imagine where The Fates might have guided me had I in this count! Again, if you’ve read this far give it a try - with or without a query in mind - and see where the prose of Vergil directs you - where perhaps your destiny lies should you divine meaning from these words first penned in 19 BC.
It appears that Dr. Reckford raised up his son right.
