It was a ragtag group that put out the first issue of the Independent in April 1983. Our average age was 26. We owned a couple sticks of furniture, a broken-down typesetting machine and two of those newfangled desktop computers. We printed 10,000 newspapers, but we didn’t have any news racks to put them in. […]
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Posted inNews
Reynolds Price at Duke
The encomiums heaped upon Reynolds Price since his death last week at age 77 somehow miss the man. Sure, he left Duke for a Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford and returned to his alma mater to teach for the next 53 years, authoring 40 books and winning literary prizes along the way. Naturally, various obituaries treat […]
Posted inFestivals
Hopscotch II?
I have no idea how two young whippersnappers like Greg Lowenhagen and Grayson Currin convinced me months ago that the Independent ought to throw a gigantic music party in Raleigh. Greg’s experience running a music festival? Zilch. Grayson’s organizational abilities? Look at the pile of junk on the floor of his office here at the […]
Posted inCulture
Reading the newspapers in Cape Town; rooting for Ghafana Ghafana
CAPE TOWN—It’s a joy reading the vibrant, provocative Cape Town press. The Cape Times today leads with a mammoth headline—”Cup gets 9/10 from tourists,” and I believe the headline is not far off. Then the news that the Ghana team, newly dubbed “Ghafana Ghafana” by the supportive South African fans, will get some face time […]
Posted inCulture
World Cup reveals “hopefulness, a newness, a sense of progress” in South Africa
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — Cape Town, June 29, noon, and the streets are filling up with fans of Spain and Portugal wearing their scarves and wigs and jerseys, the national flags draped across their backs, faces painted. The vuvuzelas already blare, as they do almost every moment. Andy Mead/YCJBzzzzzzzz off, vuvuzelas. So let’s talk […]
Posted inNews
World Cup reveals “hopefulness, a newness, a sense of progress” in South Africa
CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA — Cape Town, June 29, noon, and the streets are filling up with fans of Spain and Portugal wearing their scarves and wigs and jerseys, the national flags draped across their backs, faces painted. The vuvuzelas already blare, as they do almost every moment. Andy Mead/YCJBzzzzzzzz off, vuvuzelas. So let’s talk […]
Posted inNews
Lee Richardson, 1953-2010
Not many corporate hotshots at the software heavyweight SAS Institute immerse themselves in Durham’s rough-and-tumble politics, but Lee Richardson did. When I met Lee in the mid-’70s, he was a Duke undergraduate down from the mountains. He had big hair, an endless smile, a hankering for politics and a newfound obsession with Buddhism. Who knew […]
Posted inNews
Postmodern publisher
Let’s face it. Even at our hippest, there has always been something both deeply earnest and slightly dowdy about the Independent. Some combination of self-righteousness and hominess. We are fundamentally compelled by the old sacrificial virtues. Substance first, then styleif there’s any time left for style. It’s hard to imagine a place where people take […]
Posted inNews
Elizabeth Freeman, 1919-2006
Once upon a time, the founders of the Independent conceived the publication as a statewide, subscriber-based newsmagazine. To that end, we sent a small squad of people to North Carolina’s cities to sell subscriptions at universities and political gatherings and coffee houses. We had about 3,000 subscribers at one time–most of them right here in […]
Posted inNews
‘Nothing but champions’
It is deep twilight when the ref blows his whistle, the shadows cascading over the soccer field at Durham School of the Arts. We are the underdogs, the boys from Brogden, come down to play our archrivals from DSA. The winner will be Durham’s middle-school champion, and now–after two overtimes–we’re going to a shoot-out. One […]
