UNC, Chapel Hill, and Carrboro History:Scholarship Pulled

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donbosco said:
Don Dixon (as it says in the title) with Parthenon Huxley (AKA Rick Rock) and on drums, Rob Ladd (of Pressure Boys/Red Clay Ramblers fame)
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I always thought Rob Ladd was much closer to my age (CHHS 1980) than Don Dixon’s age (I think of Don as being my neighbor’s age, Bland Simpson).
 
Zoo_View said:
I always thought Rob Ladd was much closer to my age (CHHS 1980) than Don Dixon’s age (I think of Don as being my neighbor’s age, Bland Simpson).
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That's about right on Rob's age...but he was a bit of a prodigy. This line-up, Dixon, Parthenon Huxley/Rick Rock/Rick Miller, and Rob Ladd is cross generational for sure with Dixon and Miller coming from more Arrogance times and Ladd coming along later. This clip is from 1985 though. Huxley soon moved to California and did a lot of session work then got on with Electric Light Orchestra II.

Huxley recently wrote a memoir.

Electric Light Odyssey: My Zigzag Life and the Iconic Band that Changed Everything: Huxley, Parthenon: 9798990848818: Amazon.com: Books

Electric Light Odyssey: My Zigzag Life and the Iconic Band that Changed Everything [Huxley, Parthenon] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Electric Light Odyssey: My Zigzag Life and the Iconic Band that Changed Everything
www.amazon.com
 
Zoo_View said:
I always thought Rob Ladd was much closer to my age (CHHS 1980) than Don Dixon’s age (I think of Don as being my neighbor’s age, Bland Simpson).
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Tell Bland that Hunter and Susannah's old childcare giver and her husband said hi.
 
donbosco said:
This one is from the heart.

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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.
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www.unc.edu

Cool off at Fordham Fountain | UNC-Chapel Hill

An oasis in Bynum Circle, with 1995's Fordham Fountain at its heart, provides seating, shade and a cooling spray.
www.unc.edu www.unc.edu
 
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This Week 31 years ago. ‘Creatures of Cool” ’The Independent, August 17-23, 1994.’ (Art by Eric Knisley) hit the racks. The Indy’ was a very important paper back when papers were important (It still carries on as key resource). So too was ‘The Chapel Hill News’ once upon a time. ‘The News and Observer’ and ‘The Durham Herald’ also served The Triangle, in ever-shifting focuses on one niche after another. And of course, ‘The Daily Tar Heel’ brought campus free to Chapel Hillians and Carrboroites five days a week. Think back far enough and you’ll probably snatch some fond recollections of searching the “Help Wanted” and “For Rent” section of ‘The Village Advocate’ or of “The Spectator” and the battles it waged with ‘The Independent’ for newsweekly supremacy. And lest we forget, ‘The Triangle Comic Review’ fostered wry smiles, actual “Laughter Out Loud,” and refrigerator door post-ups nigh every week. ‘The Anvil’ and ‘The Community Sports News’ helped fill out our internal databases. Particularly keen ‘in those times’ was that our great and attentive chroniclers were our friends, neighbors, and soulmates.

I still buy a paper now and then but I seldom pick up the free ones that list upcoming events and SHOWS. I don’t go to a show five nights a week anymore. Clearly though, plenty of people do. I also don’t have a coffee shop that serves as my living room anymore either. Indeed, I no longer have a true “Third Place” in my life. (Home-Work-Third Place) Thankfully I do have a place or two where far, far from “everybody knows my name” but at least a few do.

Those newspapers were once strewn pell mell across the bar and nearby tables at The Hardback Cafe and Bookstore. I no longer see such a scene anywhere I go. Who bought the pages that daily comprised those random piles of stories and editorials and photographs and cartoons and critiques and crosswords anyway? I guess we all chipped in. Jim Smith wrote us a theme song: “We all read the local paper, we all read the New York Times, but the comics and the crosswords seem to monopolize our time. We make a team sport out of moral support so we all seem to do quite well. As long as we have some faith in ourselves then the world can go to hell. And we leave our ambition at the door around here. We like it best that way. We always find a friend in here — at the Hardback Cafe.” = Theme Song.

This is not a lamentation by the way - times have changed - as they do. I get plenty of news still. And my life and lifestyle have altered over time along with my location(s). I’d have to slow down considerably if I were to even cultivate a “Third Place” these days and even then it would likely be odd — and convincing the rest of the world to join in with me would also be a monumental ask. I know some of you still have a semblance of such a thing regularly in your lives and I number you among the luckiest on earth. Count your blessings both past and present.

And enveloping that setting steeped in print media was a scene or three. There was a lot of political apathy and thoughtlessness all around in those times. My ignorance — OUR ignorance — was deeper than we could even imagine on our best days. Understanding of race, gender, identity, rights, and privilege was still stuck in the 20th century. The measure of progress made is how well we now comprehend the distance we have yet to go. Also so clearly manifest today, only fuzzy back then, is the opposition to that very forward movement.

Still, one has to believe that having a “Third Place,” a spot into which we can drop in, stop by, grab a cup of coffee or a pint, and commiserate or reminisce or laugh, is a universal desire…perhaps even a need. If you’ve got it, rejoice. If you’ve had it, you are blessed. If you plan, or hope, to have it again, then may all the fortune of the world fall upon you. And when you’re in that “Third Place” and someone walks in - teleported from days gone by - do yourself a favor and herald them hale and hearty. It will lift us up every one.
 
donbosco said:
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North Carolina is haunted. It is mysterious. It was LOST from the very start of its Invasion History. Sandwiched between “The Mother of Presidents” and a bunch of “Fire-Eating Sandlappers” we (without the slightest irony) proudly claim both humility (To Be Rather Than To Seem) and a homegrown brand of working class stubbornness (Tar Heel is about sticking when others flee, see Bruce Baker’s definitive history of the term here: Project MUSE - Why North Carolinians Are Tar Heels: A New Explanation - Note that the author, a historian, found the term to predate the Civil War), but if newspaperman and author John Harden (1903-1985) is to be believed we might very well deserve the more modern handle, Ghostbusters.

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John Harden is the author of two books that, as best I remember, graced the living room book shelves of every member of my mother’s large family and many others in Chatham: 1) ‘The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mysteries,’ and 2) ‘Tar Heel Ghosts.’ I poured over those smallish reads as a boy and was particularly delighted that the first bore in its very title the name of a mysterious enough place just three miles from my house in #Bonlee, and situated in the Deepest of #DeepChatham — The Devil’s Tramping Ground. I’m not going to try and explain that place here. You can Google and library-search for hours on that but I will say two things about the spot. The first is that I often heard it said by the customers in #BonleeHardware that the place was much less ‘active’ than it once was because the Bad Man was so busy at present that he had little time, or need, for a place to pace and plot. And second, I’ve always suspected that moonshining had just a little something to do with the legend. That comes from my Deddy, who, as I have previously noted, knew about such things.

Those two little books were filled with tales of hoof prints in stone, disappearing hitchhikers, golden arms, and distant, sometimes moving, and unexplainable, lights. The Tramping Ground being so close by — I have visited many times. I’ve been a guide for a significant number of those forays and the telling of a scary story or two along the ride is mandatory. Once upon arriving with a car full of northern cousins as we piled out of my ‘75 Chevelle (The Gray Ghost I called her!) a skinny little dog appeared from the darkness and proceeded to silently lead us up the trail. That little guy then melted into that same darkness just as the wind came up and a loud rumble of summer thunder sent us all recklessly stumbling back down that same path, now laced by what seemed to be cross-trail roots that rose up to meet our feet. It was a glorious fright.

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I often mention North Carolina’s Haunted History in class. I’m sad to report that those books don’t seem to be as popular as they once were. My students don’t know about ‘The Ghost of Maco Station” or “A Colonial Apparition” or “The Little Red Man.” I’m not saying that spooky things and creatures are currently in short supply, after all the creators of one of the scariest horror stories of late, ‘Stranger Things,’ Matt and Ross Duffer are born and raised up Durhamites. Sadly for us, North Carolina’s recent unfriendliness toward the Arts and Entertainment meant that instant classic was filmed in Georgia (and set in Indiana) instead of This Haunted Land.

We began our so-called modern history with a mystery still unsolved - we are thus, still LOST in a way. Perhaps that is the essence of Esse Quam Videri - the great search for being - or, in turn, nothingness?
#OTD in 1590 John White returned to Roanoke Island and found CROATOAN carved in a post. The second sign, one of danger, a Maltese Cross, was not evident (I’ve always thought that they had that backwards. Two signs for safety, a single and most simple one for flight). He left out for England in 1587 for supplies but war with Spain and pirates prevented a quick return. The carving was a sign that the colony had moved. They were-sadly-LOST.



www.ncdcr.gov

Origins of the “Lost Colony” Mystery

On August 18, 1590, Englishman John White returned to Roanoke Island to resupply the colony established on the island in 1587. White found the settlement abandoned. A single word “CROATOAN” was carved on a post in the fort.
www.ncdcr.gov www.ncdcr.gov
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WeeeeHoooo!!!

Scary stuff!
 

A UNC graduate's full-ride scholarship was suspended after he joined a protest 50 years ago. Now, he fears history is repeating itself.​


"We compared our letters — our suspension letters, the letters that we sent to try and keep our scholarship," Forero told WUNC in April. "And it's incredible how similar the language is over 50 years later."


www.newsbreak.com

A UNC graduate's full-ride scholarship was suspended after he joined a protest 50 years ago. Now, he fears history is repeating itself. - NewsBreak

Frank Alexander hadn't thought of the cardboard box stashed away in his closet in almost 50 years. The simple gray container holds dozens of records from h
www.newsbreak.com www.newsbreak.com
 
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