Monday. A day. I humped up into the BB&T, across from the PR, pulled around the building and had to stop short. As I maneuvered the clunky old Golf around a polished BMW 5 series berthed in the freaking middle of the parking lot lane, I recalled: First, that if you happen to smack a […]
peter eichenberger
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A ferry ride to an Orwellian future?
My new obsession takes me far afield: cable ferries. I have been driving down some really obscure roads in Eastern North Carolina looking for them, not propelled by any sort of motor, but pulled, literally pulled, across rivers by a cable that winds around spools on both sides of the river. One, the San Souci […]
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Getting behind the wheel, again
Prepare a cold drink, find a comfortable place to sit down and brace yourself for a shock. After a determined, righteous, zealous run and a one-man crusade to save the planet, a supposed need (the oldest of excuses) has destroyed the work that commenced years ago. I have become the most highly developed sort of […]
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Saving Dix–and what she stood for
A century and a half ago, Dorothea Dix harangued Massachusetts legislators into funding mental care at a time when the troubled were, she said, routinely “chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.” But today in North Carolina, Google gets $260 million in tax breaks and mental care gets $90 million a year, or […]
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Goodbye, Latta House
“Even a good dog has to die,” said Betty Howard, wife of engineer T.C. Howard, as Raleigh’s swoopy Catalano House succumbed to the demo crew six years ago. So it was with the shambling, weathered Latta House, the last vestige of Latta University, a dream child of the Rev. Morgan Latta, a freed slave who […]
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The GFOS in Raleee, Nawfkehalinah
James Brown sang of Agustuh, Gee Aay, as where he was from. Augusta was one of the poles of his most famed driving experiments. Barnwell, S.C., was the other, where he was slapped alive, stillborn in a shack in the woods. JB was “a complicated man.” I mean, Al Sharpton used to do his hair. […]
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Too little music, too much noise on the street
In the quiet, non-toxic climes of the Morning Times on Hargett Street, I lingered over a dang good dollar cup of coffee. Outside, Eugene Taylor and Gerald Alexander softened the bustle of the urban afternoon with smooth jazz vibes of a Djembe drum and a tenor sax. Professional street musicians in dear dumpy Raleigh? Whoazee, […]
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Big change or big business as usual? We’ll see.
What do I make of this “dramatic” polar shift of the politik? I remain expectant and hopeful. But as any differences in the “parties” are incremental, illusory and contextual, I remain realistic, tempered. We’ll see. One way to predict how things will go is to study the past. Locally, ever since I began paying attention […]
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Moving Raleigh’s racism off of city property
Raleigh, bless its heart, is being draggedblinking and stunnedinto the light, judging from SparkCon, last month’s symposium of artists and business people. I attended the inclusion workshop and was buoyed by what the speakers had to say about the black/white thing, something Raleigh has had problems with. Change is often unbidden and inexorable, thought I, […]
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In the U.S., business comes before patriotism
Fidel Castro showed up at my house one sunny afternoon in 1959. It was daddy in a mask. Over the months, I watched the George Washington of Cuba (The New York Times) transmute to Robespierre in about nine minutes, as I remember. I’ve been interested ever since. So when Bernie Reeves of Metro Magazine, Betsy […]