Accept no substitutes

Category: Alumni and other friends (Page 18 of 38)

Part of being a pirate…

Is not having all of your parts. So goes the chorus of the sing-a-long song from Capt. Rob Temple of the Red Sailed Schooner, Windfall, as he and his daughter led us all at the Ocrafolk Festival Thanksgiving Concert last night. The sold out show at the Community Center featured all kinds of local Ocracoke talent lead by the Molasses Creek folks — Fiddler Dave and Gary Mitchell. Lou Castro of Coyote added slide and dobro to a lot of the selections. Martin Garrish and his 80+ year old uncle Jule sang together. Donald Davis told a wonderful tale of deception over a red coat. Roy Parsons who is easily as old as Jule Garrish and then some played his famous single chord. Cheryl Roberts showed the crowd that a fiddle can be a violin and can play more than bluegrass (not that bluegrass is bad, but she def took us down a classical track with a bit of new Old Time tossed in).
This was a fundraiser for the upcoming 2006 Ocrafolk Music and Storytelling Festival to be held June 3 and 4 on the Island.

Albert Styron’s Gone

Coming to Ocracoke after about 18 months off island brings some surprises. First the Jolly is closed for Thanksgiving as is the Silver Lake Hotel which is part of the same enterprise. Next we walked over to the lighthouse and noticed that Albert Stryon’s Store is now a printing company. “No longer retail” reads the sign on the steps. Along the road on the point, the North Carolina Coastal Land Trustees have purchased some property and made a nice walk out to the inlet available. Along the way is the grave of Sam Jones who is seriously awaiting resurection. The rumor is that Sam is buried with his horse. At the blast of Gabriel’s trumpet, Sam will jump on the horse and ride to Glory. Teach’s Hole our favorite pirate store gave us a scare. They has a For Rent sign on their building. Our last trip they told us that their landlord was going to boot them and install a bakery in their place. Our waitress at the Pelican, where we had a grand Thanksgiving dinner, told us that Teach’s would be moving to the Main Road up across from the Variety Store.
[more tomorrow]

Tyndall Holiday Show

Sylvia pulled Sally and me out of the crowd and took a couple of pictures of us at the Tyndall Galleries Holiday Show on Sunday.
Later on Sylvia’s group, the Janes (no relation to Jane Tyndall), sang a set, then Sylvia and jazz pianist Chris Reynolds sang some duets. We had to run out before the duets really got going.
The great thing about the Holiday Show is that all the artists show up and hang out. And you get a good selection of all the work that Jane Tyndall represents.

Afro-Celts Talk

Michael Newton’s talk in the Afro-Celts were not only a good one but one that kept people talking during a long question time. And it drew an interesting collection of people who seemed to belong to every cultural configuration available including a sociolinguist who might be called Afro-American but is also Catawba and probably Scotts as well. A wonderful woman who sang “Motherless Child” in a duet with Michael whilst he sang a song in Gaelic about the Highland Clearances. Several people wanted to talk about geneology and several wanted to claim themselves as Scots-Irish which Michael would say is not a Celtic culture, but a culture of those who rejected Gaelic and who sided with the English rejecting the culture of the Highland Scots. For Michael, to be Celtic is to speak Gaelic and to embrace the culture of those who are Gaelic speakers; that is, Highland Scots and anyone who would be like them or better would be adopted by them. So that if an African were to enter into Scots culture and speak Gaelic then … There is plenty of evidence that Scots culture in music and in dance and even language (as well as mixing of Scots and Africans) happened often in North America and in the Carribean .

Triangle Bloggers Blast

Tucker and I are just back from the Triangle Bloggers Blast. It’s a school night and Tucker is underage and not going to hang out at a nice smokefilled pool hall/bar so we’re home earlier. The turnout was amazing. Over 70 folks were in the WUNC studios eating that good Lulu supplied food and seeing the new setup there. Anton got a great collection of people out and Joan and Keith and Kevin and the other WUNC folks were gratious hosts. The Blooker Prize got some great air from Jeremy, Jason, Peter and other Lulus. Folks from WRAL and BlogAds were buying drinks as we left.

I was impressed by the progress at the American Tobacco Historic District. I was last there a year ago for the Independent Holiday Party which was I think in the “Public Space” adjoining what is now the WUNC area. The whole place was lively for a Tuesday night in November. The balmy weather had folks eating outside at several restaurants and the water running through the place made it seem like an oasis of sorts.

The Lulus tell me that some great blooks are already submitted including Jessica Cutler’s The Washingtonienne: A Novel. I will not be swayed by her blog entries about the contest no matter how real her bribes might be.

“Lost Voices of the Afro-Celts” Thursday

What: “Lost Voices of the Afro-Celts”
Who: Michael Newton, PhD Celtic Studies
Where: Toy Lounge, Dey Hal, UNC
When: Thursday November 17th, 3:30 PM

Summary: Modern American consciousness is highly racialized: we are told implicitly and explicitly that our skin color determines our race, our identity, to whom we belong and what belongs to us. The reality of American history, even in the South, is not so easily segregated, however. There have been many fascinating exchanges and interactions between people of African ancestry and people of Scottish Highland ancestry.
African-Americans came to speak Gaelic fluently during the eighteenth century, and services in Gaelic lasted even longer in black churches than in white churches. African-Americans, as professional musicians in the South, played a variety of instruments and styles, including Scottish Gaelic tunes for dances. Like every other group of European immigrants in America, Scottish Highlanders took different roles in the institution of slavery: many Gaels, especially in the South, became slave-holders, while others were fire-brands agitating for
abolition. In both cases, Highlanders left their mark on the history of African-Americans. Those expressing the injustice done to Scottish Gaeldom, especially during the Clearances, made explicit parallels with the African experience.
This lecture will explore some of the forgotten connections between African-Americans and Scottish Highlanders and remind us of the rich cultural interactions between people of all ethnic origins in North America. Celtic heritage is not reserved exclusively for “white” people: it is an important element in the history of our nation and belongs to people of all colors.

More on Michael Newton:
Dr Michael Newton has a PhD in Celtic Studies from the University of Edinburgh. He has written several books and numerous articles on Highland history and tradition, and has become the leading scholar on the culture and history of immigrant Highland communities in the United States. He is a fluent Gaelic speaker, a proponent of Highland song and dance, and a published creative writer in the Gaelic language.

Sponsor:
The Centering the American South lecture series of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Ocracoke discovered

Yikes! Our favorite secret is a front page NYTimes Travel section feature. Does this mean more people will be on the Island complaining about the slow service at the eateries? (Really are you in a hurry? There is no where to go which is sorta the point.) More people asking “What do you do here?” (Really do you have to be entertained? Doing nothing is sorta the point.)

But worse the writer stays in the same little place on Silver Lake where we stay often and have rooms reserved for Thanksgiving. The picture the Times published is our favorite view. Several of the places she eats are our favs as well (Howard’s, Pelican, Ocracoke Coffee Company, Fig Tree, Cafe Atlantic), but several secrets are better kept and I’m keeping them myself.

The Times automatic indexer managed to link Rudy Austin’s last name to a city in Texas. His father took me over to Portsmouth Island way back in the 1970s.

Triangle Bloggers Blast – Tuesday

Mister Sugar writes on blogtogether to remind us of the Triangle Bloggers Blast:

Who: Bloggers, podcasters and anyone who wants to socialize with us.

What: A reception at the new WUNC studios and a happy hour with free drinks.

Where: American Tobacco Historic District, Durham (across from the Durham Bulls Athletic Park)

1. Start at new WUNC studios for tour, talk about podcasting and reception with catered food. Short welcome messages from Joan Siefert Rose and Keith Weston of WUNC, Michael Goodmon of ATHD, Stephen Fraser of Lulu.
2. Then move next door to Tyler’s Speakeasy for drinks and socializing. Short welcome messages from John Conway of WRAL.com and Henry Copeland of blogads.

When: Tuesday, November 15, 2005 7-9 p.m.

Why: Why not? Let’s meet and greet each other, talk about blogging, or not, and share a few drinks.

How: Sponsors and supporters include: Blogads, WRAL.com, Lulu.com, ibiblio.org, mistersugar.com, WUNC, ATHD and podcastercon.

Jones on Blooker in NandO

In what appears to be a play to get an article mentioning me in every section of the News and Observer during the months of October and November, I just completed an interview with Roger van der Horst about the Blooker prize.

I talked about Charles Dickens as the most respected English serial novelist and about Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny appartment kitchen by Julia Powell as an example of a good blook. Wil Wheaton’s Just a Geek personal memoir and Chris Anderson’s Long Tail a book on economics and technology that is forthcoming are two others.

However I expect and hope to be surprised by what we will be reading among the finalists. Blooks create an open environment for writing — one that as a poet I would not likely participate in although I have been publishing a potential chapbook project in the News and Observer a poem at a time — that allows interaction with readers as critics as well as enforcing a discipline of regular writing that new writers need. The form also allows for digressive and unusual inclusions which could make for some new styles of writing.

That said I expect to be reading good writing. Good sentences and paragraphs. Well-told tales. The stuff you would expect in any book prize finalist.

I am holding off on several sections of the News and Observer. The Obits for example.

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