Mother and child

During a routine reference request I came across this charming but unidentified image from the Ingatious Wadsworth Brock Collection. “Nace” Brock was a photographer in Asheville who specialized in portraiture and scenics.

Although a posed image of a mother and child, it did strike me that throughout the years many of one’s childhood memories (or perhaps just mine) center around a bicycle. Learning to ride, removing the training wheels, and the sense of freedom that cycling provides and the desire to then teach one’s own children how to ride.

The cycle continues – pun intended.

Sneads Ferry Struggles

Sneads Ferry Shrimp Festival program

Shrimp have long been a part of life in the Onslow County town of Sneads Ferry. Since 1971 the town has celebrated its ties to the crustacean with the Sneads Ferry Shrimping Festival, held the second weekend of August. But, as in coastal communities throughout the U.S., fishing is hardly the economic backbone it once was. Residents who once depended on the sea for their living now must commute to other towns for work. And those who still haul in catches find themselves competing at the market with farm-raised seafood. Homes held by families for generations are being sold as developers move in to capitalize on a demand for beach homes.

Husband and wife team Matt and Cornelia Barr spent seven years documenting the changes brought to Sneads Ferry. Their film Wild Caught: The Life and Struggles of an American Fishing Town airs tonight at 10 on UNC-TV. The documentary has been updated since its original release in 2006.

Craft Revival: Shaping Western North Carolina Past and Present

NCM received the following announcement and wanted to share it with our readers…

The Hunter Library, in collaboration with Qualla Arts and Crafts Mutual, has mounted a collection of photographs of a delegation of Cherokee craftsmen with Joan Mondale at the groundbreaking of the National Park Service’s Folk Art Center. Taken on the Blue Ridge Parkway, the photos document some of the attendees and crafts demonstrated at the 1977 event. To see the photos, go to http://craftrevival.wcu.edu and type “Mondale” into the Search box.

Craft Revival: Shaping Western North Carolina Past and Present is a project of Hunter Library at Western Carolina University. Its aim is to create a research-based website that documents an historic effort to revive handcraft in the western part of the state. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, western North Carolina craftsmen formed the cornerstone of a revived interest in things handmade to create a movement referred to as the Craft Revival. The online archival repository includes over 4,500 documents, photographs, and craft objects that are housed in the collections of regional museums, guilds, and craft schools. Hunter Library has organized these into a searchable database available via the web.