Here’s how magazines start: “We were having a rare lavatory chat about how rare conversations are in the bathroom. From there, the idea rolled on to a literary publication dealing with bathrooms, distributed exclusively in them.” Philip McFee pauses, “It’s the same old song–too much energy, too much time.” McFee and co-creator Travis Smith bundled […]
John Valentine
Bio: John Valentine lives in Hillsborough, where he's written about life on and off the farm for more than two decades.Email: [email protected]
Posted inNews
Supplies and demand
The year of the gel pens was the turning point for me. That was the year my feeble argument, “You can only write with one pen at a time,” was met with an all-knowing, all-worldly and all-confident smile, “So?” Most pen packages came in nice little boxes of four or six. The Milky Gels, Hybrid […]
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Summer slumber party issues
The Ides of August mean one thing in North Carolina. Lethargy. Torpor in the Piedmont. Hard sometimes, to finish a thought. Hard sometimes, to finish a sentence. Hard sometimes, to remember what you just read. Real hard, sometimes to turn a page. Finding reading matter to keep your attention is a sometimes a challenge in […]
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Natural chaos
Bulbous, white mushrooms dot the winding paths to the garden and the orchard, as magical markers to a bountiful, colorful and unexpected harvest. If you tilled your garden early and stayed up with the mulching, nature took care of the rest this year, with regular monsoon downpours, freakish hailstorms and Weather Channel-worthy micro-bursts. Ping-pong ball […]
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Michael Chitwood
Michael Chitwood has a good attitude about this global warming heat and humidity we seem to be glued into this Piedmont summer. After all, isn’t that what we’ve come to expect of our favorite local poets? “The humidity makes me glisten, and every poem or story should be written while the writer is in a […]
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Beach reads
The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden By William Alexander Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2006, 288 pp., $22.95 The last frost was early this year. So if you were one of the lucky ones who tucked […]
Posted inGuides
Summer’s here and the time is right
The best things about family summers: no homework and the nights go on forever. Come July you won’t be mowing the lawn anymore, and there’ll be plenty of time to chase fireflies together, shoot free throws to win an ice cream prize, and jump through the sprinkler. The summer calendar doesn’t have to be all […]
Posted inArt
Sartorial Splendor
Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets and Growing Up in the ’70s. Bloomsbury, 192 pp., June 27, 2006, $19.95 In New York publishing circles this spring, the buzz around Margaret Sartor’s Miss American Pie was palpable. Everyone was calling around for galleys or advance reading copies. The Durham author was whisked to the […]
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April’s Big Day
We are a nation of Days. April starts with Fool’s Day and ends with Louisiana Purchase Day. This week starts with Earth Day and ends with Arbor Day. Are they trying to tell us something? They are. Because the biggest day in April is Last Frost Day. The Last Frost Day means two things. No. […]
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Chicken hoops
Before each big game, we went out and bought a new bag of chips. Maybe some dip, some salsa, some guac. It was all so exciting, many teams to root for, many “six degrees of allegiances.” Underdogs, colleges with names like our kids, universities near relative’s homes, teams we wanted a second chance at. After […]
