Elite 8? Link dump already down to its final 4

— Did Civil War actually claim more Virginians than North Carolinians? Don’t miss this one — keen reportage by Cameron McWhirter of the Wall Street Journal.

— Won’t you come home, George Washington?

— Asheville’s monumental forgetfulness

— Pa, you can cancel that tsunami insurance….

One generation’s graffiti, another’s history lesson

“Civil War soldiers often signed their names at mustering sites before heading off to fight. Countless signatures have been painted over. But on a plaster wall at the courthouse in Gates County, N.C., you can still see signatures dated June 12, 1861. One signer was 18-year-old John Gatling, who survived the war and returned to the courthouse in 1915, at age 72, to speak at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the war’s conclusion.

” ‘Those signatures are a momentary record, captured in time,’ says Josh Howard, research historian with the North Carolina Office of Archives and History. ‘If you touch their names, you’re literally touching history.’ ”

— From “Erasing Signatures from History” in the Wall Street Journal (March 2) — fascinating and far-reaching.