New in the collection: Swinging bridge pinback

Pinback featuring a colored image of the swinging bridge and the words "I crossed the Mile High Swing Bridge. Grandfather Mountain, N.C."

“The swinging bridge was one of two options when [Hugh] Morton decided to get visitors from the gift shop-museum parking lot to the rocky overlook. ‘We had to have some way to get them across, and we could either have a stationary bridge or a swinging bridge,’ he said. ‘We decided the swinging bridge would be more fun, and would make a good conversation piece.’
“Some 30 percent of women visitors, and a smaller percentage of males, however, think it best not to cross the bridge.”

— From the Greensboro Daily News (Oct. 1, 1978) via A View to Hugh

 

Too much a Bostonian to exult over Grandfather?

“[Naturalist John Muir seems to have had] an underlying ambivalence toward his Eastern associates. A friend once reported that after Muir and [Charles S. Sargent, director of Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum] reached the top of [Grandfather Mountain] in North Carolina, Muir ‘began to jump about and sing and glory in it all’ before he noticed Sargent ‘standing there as cool as a rock…a half-amused look on his face.’

“When Sargent explained, ‘I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve,’ Muir burst out: ‘Who cares where you wear your little heart, mon! There you stand in the face of all Heaven come to earth…as if to say, “Come, Nature, bring on the best you have. I’m from BOSTON!” ’ ”

— From “John Muir: Brief life of a Scottish-American conservationist: 1838-1914” by Steven Pavlos Holmes in Harvard Magazine (November-December 2014)

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Ngram Viewer is back, and it’s taking (N.C.) names

It’s been a while since I last dumped a batch of North Caroliniana into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, that instantaneous measure of phrase frequency over the decades.

Caveat e-lector: This is data at its rawest — conclusions should be jumped to for entertainment purposes only.

Here goes:

— Duke lacrosse vs. Duke football and Duke basketball

— Grandfather Mountain vs. Cold Mountain

— Oprah Winfrey vs. Michael Jordan and Colin Powell

— Charlotte North Carolina vs. Raleigh North Carolina

— Southern fried chicken vs. Buffalo wings and Chicken McNuggets