Month: August 2010

Pictures from an Institution (Chautauqua, that is)

Notes from a recent week at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York state:

— During the late 1800s and early 1900s (before radio and the Depression) the Chautauqua Movement spread adult education across the land in a variety of forms, first with Daughter Chautauquas, later with touring tent Chautauquas.

From what I could piece together from the Chautauqua archives, the closest North Carolina came to establishing a Daughter Chautauqua may have been at Lake Junaluska. According to a surviving flyer, William Jennings Bryan headlined the “Chautauqua Features” during the 1916 session.

Using the Chautauqua brand requires no approval from the founders, so it has been borrowed often (and casually) as a label for adult ed projects.  In 1979 the Chautauqua Institution received an inquiry from Mary Jo Clark, “Chautauqua project coordinator” for the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, who had “received a grant to develop a comprehensive plan for a North Carolina Chautauqua”…. Does anyone know the fate of that idea?

— Summer regulars frequently trace the name of Chautauqua Lake to a Native American word meaning “bag tied in the middle,” a reference to the lake’s narrow midsection. But Chautauqua archivist Jonathan Schmitz acknowledges the North Carolina Gazetteer’s version as at least as feasible:

“Chattoka, a Tuscarora Indian village appearing on the Lawson map, 1709, and the Moll map, 1729, between the Neuse and Trent Rivers, central Craven County. The name meant ‘where the fish are taken out.’ When the Tuscarora Indians moved to [that is, fled to] New York, they took the name with them and it has survived as Chautauqua.”

— Finally, in a week of delights from far afield, what a provincial thrill to hear the always provocative Bishop John Shelby Spong, a Charlotte native,  and to meet Patricia McBride, associate artistic  director of North Carolina Dance Theatre, which serves each year as Chautauqua’s resident ballet company.

Pictured: A pinback button from a “circuit” or “tent” Chautauqua.

Midweek link dump: Civil War ‘not even past’

— Revisionism has its way with the “firsts” of Henry Lawson Wyatt.

— No black soldiers among North Carolina’s Civil War dead? What about Franklin Cuzzens?

— Am I the only one who hadn’t heard of the Cherokees’ enemy-ridiculing Booger Dance? Photos from 1936 include mask made of hornets nest.

— Provocative batch of online responses to “Who Were Southeastern North Carolina’s Most Famous Conjoined Twins?”

— If you’re among those Southern men who never noticed that seersucker was out, you may not be aware that now  it’s in. (George Frazier, style columnist for Esquire in the ’60s, insightfully observed that a man in seersucker suit could always get a check cashed.)

A Final Farewell

Sunset Beach Floating Draw Bridge

I’ve just returned from my family’s annual pilgrimage to Sunset Beach, a trip that we’ve been making since 1969. And the thought just occurred to me that I may have crossed for the last time the floating drawbridge that connects the barrier island to the mainland.

The bridge is an iconic structure – one that has graced the fronts of postcards for decades (strangely we don’t seem to have a copy in our postcard collections). It’s even been featured on the cover of a novel.

Cover of Sunset Beach

A floating bridge has linked Sunset Beach to the mainland since at least the mid-1950s. The current one-way bridge was put in place in 1961 and it’s said to be the last floating drawbridge on the East Coast. It opens on demand for commercial boat traffic and on the hour for recreational boaters. As a child I, along with my brother and cousin, had the good luck to be walking across the bridge when a boat approached. The bridge keeper agreed to let us stay with him as opened the bridge. He headed down to a water-level room, hopped on to what appeared to be a wheel-less tractor and started the motor. Slowly winches began pulling cables and the mid-section of the bridge slid across the water to create an opening for the boat.

But the days of such simple mechanics are numbered. In the coming months the floating bridge will be taken out of service and beachgoers will no longer need to wait their turn to cross. A new multi-lane bridge will make a high arc over the Intracoastal Waterway, leaving plenty of room for boats to travel underneath. The new structure has been years in the making. There were court battles, environmental impact studies and budget woes. But now the pylons are firmly planted and the roadway mostly paved.

As for the floating draw bridge, its fate seems unclear. One group is hoping to include it as part of a waterfront park overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. But members need to raise more than $3.75 million to bring their dream to fruition.

Farewell old friend. Thanks for all the memories.

As WWII ends, Quakers look back in sorrow

On this day in 1945: Meeting at Guilford College during the last week of World War II, North Carolina Quakers declare, “We bow in penitence for helping to cause this war through selfishness, isolation and lack of vision, for now having loosed history’s most barbaric instrument of destruction.”

Monday morning link dump: Patricia Neal, R.I.P.

— Death noted: actress Patricia Neal, who played opposite Andy Griffith in the prescient and underrated “A Face in the Crowd” and opposite Gary Cooper in “Bright Leaf,” which inspired “Bright Leaves,” Ross McElwee’s  bittersweet documentary on tobacco.

— A big day for challenging long-accepted Civil War numbers: the death toll for North Carolina troops and the percentage of Confederates who owned slaves.

— Baseball Hall of Fame acknowledges error in plaque discovered by Durham blogger.

— “Junebug” screenwriter relishes the serendipity of Winston-Salem’s annual Bulky Item Collection day.

— Just when you thought Walter Dellinger couldn’t be any more ubiquitous….

Search for ‘Flim-Flam Man’ will be rewarded

Paul Krugman’s recent  column in the New York Times got me thinking about Guy Owen, the Clarkton native and N.C. State writing teacher best remembered for “The Ballad of the Flim-Flam Man” (and the subsequent movie starring George C. Scott).

And that got me thinking about how “out of print” is no longer such a disheartening condition. Both the 1965 edition (Macmillan)  of “Flim-Flam Man” and the 2000 reprint (Coastal Carolina Press) are available only second-hand — but thanks to the Internet, that’s no barrier to distribution (even though these transactions leave both publisher and author empty-handed).

And the 1967 movie, though not yet officially released to DVD, is offered by a number of online sellers. Scott called Mordecai Jones, the Eastern North Carolina con man, one of his two favorite roles (the other being Buck Turgidson in “Dr. Strangelove”).

A songwriter’s tribute to ‘Atomic Power’

On this day in 1945: The day after Hiroshima, country musician Fred Kirby composes “Atomic Power,” the first song to acknowledge “The Bomb.” Billboard magazine calls it “the greatest folk song in 20 years.”  The chorus: “Atomic power, atomic power… It was given by the mighty hand of God.”

Other versions will outsell  the original by Kirby, who goes on to become a longtime kiddie-show cowboy at Charlotte’s WBTV.

NC Historical Review online? Um, not so fast

I was excited to see in Carolina Comments (July) that plans were being laid to take the North Carolina Historical Review online, first with a listing of all articles since 1924, later with full text. Editor in chief Donna E. Kelly provides Miscellany readers with the somewhat-less-encouraging details:

“A list of Review articles has been prepared but has not been posted online yet because we are trying to determine the best way to post it. There are no immediate plans to post entire articles online because that would take an inordinate amount of staff time and we have just lost four staff members to recent budget cuts. Moreover, we have so many back issues, that we need to sell out of most of those before we even consider posting the articles free of charge. We might consider posting some of the really early articles, but from the 1960s forward, we have so many back issues, that it wouldn’t make sense to put them online.

“At some point I envision that the Review will be available through online subscription only, but we have not yet explored that route. Our IT people would need to set up a secure way of making the access password protected.

“In any event, just keep checking our Web site periodically for updates. We’re hoping that it will get a facelift at some point, but we have to wait until the DCR IT staff gets around to us.”

What a shame, however budgetarily understandable  — and what a contrast between the current reach of the Review in print and its limitless potential online. Consider, for instance, the attention deficit for David La Vere’s provocative July 2009 article on the Dare Stones.

Midweek link dump: A continental pork chop?

— The creator of the new Greensboro sit-in mural at the UNC School of Government  has less conventional works in his portfolio, e.g.,  “Black People Love Pork Because Africa is Shaped Like a Pork Chop.”

—  “Outspoken people wanted demolition…. I decided it could not be done.”  Happy 90th birthday to the man who stood up for the Historic Henderson County Courthouse.

— How North Carolina swiped rescued the Blue Ridge Parkway from Tennessee.