When the Hollow Rock String Band’s 1968 album Traditional Dance Tunes was re-released on CD in 1997, Jim Watson gave it a spin. But the first thing to cross his mind was not the music. It was fiddler Alan Jabbour’s foot. “On the very first cut, what you hear is Alan’s foot,” Watson says, stomping […]
David Potorti
Posted inNews
Dot-commies
When I heard that there were no unions at Amazon.com, I immediately rushed to their Web site to see if it was really true. I typed in the word “union” and did a search. There was a book on “Union and Confederate Submarine Warfare in the Civil War”; State of the Union, a 1948 Spencer […]
Posted inNews
New Traditions
New TraditionsThis evening is for you … for the good of this place … for the good of the world,” says Jeanette Stokes to the assembled circle of 130 people. “We invite you to enter into this time, and into this circle, in a way that’s appropriate for you. Being open to sharing your own […]
Posted inNews
Sharing the Wealth
If the sight of Al Gore and George Bush up close in Winston-Salem left you wondering, “Where do we get these people?” one answer may be found in the fact that “we” have very little to do with it. Unless, of course, we’re members of the moneyed interests that contribute big bucks to federal election […]
Posted inMusic
Because it’s in me
Sanford banjoist Marvin Gaster wasn’t old enough to drive when he played his first house party in 1948. But he remembers making music at neighbor Walter Wicker’s house like it was yesterday. “We played in the hall, with the dance rooms on either side,” Gaster says. “There were cracks where the floorboards were joined together, […]
Posted inNews
Small Change
Hovering over the cheese counter at the Durham Wellspring is a full-color photo of Fleming Pfan, a local cheese maker, hugging a particularly cute goat. Pfan is co-owner of Celebrity Dairy in Silk Hope, about 10 miles west of Pittsboro, and the goat is one of many responsible for her goat cheese. But although you […]
Posted inNews
The home team
“And now, the ugly side of the convention,” intoned the anchor on one of our stellar TV-news outlets in Raleigh, “the protesters.” Funny, I thought the right to engage in nonviolent protest and civil disobedience were the hallmarks of a free society–hardly ugly, but living proof that we were still free. And I would have […]
Posted inNews
Field work
It’s a humid Sunday afternoon, made all the more so by rain that comes and goes just long enough to leave steam rising off I-40. I’m heading east toward Wilmington, but exiting at Faison, past fields of strawberries, tobacco, peanuts, sweet potatoes and cucumbers, to the home where Mary Lou stands stirring rice in a […]
Posted inNews
Deep thinker
The N.C. Museum of Art’s Rodin exhibition is an impressive collection of bronze and marble statuary with an informative exhibit guide. But I was surprised to learn that the Rodin Gift Shop was lacking a guide of its own, leaving art lovers to wander about with little sense of the featured items’ significance in Rodin’s […]
Posted inGuides
The Red Clay Ramblers
“It’s a band of ideas as much as it is a band of musicians,” says Jack Herrick, explaining how the Red Clay Ramblers have managed to thrive, survive, and remain eminently entertaining–with one lineup or another–through 28 years and 14 albums. Nevertheless, the uniting theme from day one, and present still in today’s core membership […]