A Great Pyramid scheme — but did it happen?

“CAIRO — What’s this? Egypt’s new Islamist leaders want to raze the Great Pyramids, scratch away the images on the death masks of the pharaohs, maybe even wipe the grin off what is left of the face of the Sphinx?
“Someone who reads a lot of right-wing blogs in the United States these days might be forgiven for thinking so, though there is no sign here that any such Islamist clamor to destroy the monuments of ancient Egypt has actually arisen.”

— From “Contrary to Gossip, Pyramids Have No Date With the Wrecking Ball” in the New York Times (July 23)

In 1982, the Times dispatch reminded me, I had a pyramid rumor of my own to chase: In “The Story of Durham” (1927) W.K. Boyd wrote, without details, that “The Bull was once to be seen on the pyramids of Egypt.”
Could that possibly have been true, I wondered, even given the omnipresence of Julian Shakespeare Carr’s unprecedented advertising campaign for Bull Durham? Did Jules Koerner (painting Bulls under the name of Reuben Rink) actually mount a scaffold and apply one to the Pyramid of Khufu?
A 1946 tribute to Carr cited Mark Twain as claiming “that the most conspicuous thing about the Egyptian Pyramids was the Durham Bull.” And in 1978 Thad Stem Jr., writing in the State magazine, mentioned the Bull’s having been painted on — and removed from! — a pyramid.
Alas, on further review — with Nannie May Tilley, author of “The Bright-Tobacco Industry, 1860-1929,” and with experts at Archives & History and the New York Public Library’s tobacco collection — I had to conclude the Bull never found its way to Giza…. But who knows what was on Carr’s to-do list in 1898 when he sold out to American Tobacco?
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When Mark Twain met George Bernard Shaw….

Among the achievements of Salisbury native Archibald Henderson, the wide-ranging UNC mathematician (polymathematician?), were major biographies of George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain.

Henderson (1877-1963) once had the opportunity to introduce the two to each other. “There was the greatest world’s greatest wit and the world’s greatest humorist, meeting face to face,” he recalled, “and nobody said anything funny.”

Instead, Shaw and Twain “stood there and lied to each other. Each man told the other that they had read everything the other had written…. that they were greatly influenced by the other’s writings….

“It was the greatest disappointment in my life.”

 

Politicians: Flip-Flopping is Out. Twisting and Turn is In.

The Raleigh Register‘s description of campaigning à la 1850s could spur today’s campaign strategists to return to some methods of old.

At the polls, there was a slight lack of that calm Roman dignity ascribed to us by our Fourth-of-July orators—inasmuch as the voters skipped about with the vivacity of Frenchmen, and exercised their tongues with the unanimity of old women. If some staid sober citizen was observed making his way to any spot where votes were to be taken and brandy given, he was immediately surrounded by a number of the more particularly devoted lovers of country, who were employing their talents, energies, and lungs, in the work of conversion, and mobbed, and twisted, and turned by them in a very hackney-coachman like style, in order to gain his attention to their various claims, until the four points of compass became with the said citizen a matter of doubt and uncertainty. First, one politician would plant him his face towards the ‘sweet south’—then, a second, by a dextrous manoeuvre (sic), would bring him directly north—then a third worthy, by the assistance of his coat-collar, would twirl him towards the orient east, thrusting in his face ‘the true ticket, free,’ as the orator observed, ‘of all bribery and corruption’—while a forth personage, rather dirty and very tipsy, once more reversed his position towards the west, and solicited his attention to another true ticket, ‘supported,’ as he averred, ‘by all the lovers of order and decency.’ True the coats, vests and other garments of various citizens did somewhat suffer —but what of that? Who is not above such paltry considerations in the discharge of his duty? Besides, some men did this from principle, as all the damage they inflicted upon the woolen cloth of the outward man, afforded a direct and practical proof of their zeal for the encouragement of domestic manufactures.

—Raleigh Register, August 7, 1850

We’ll talk flip-flopping, twisting and turning and any number of other campaign methods at our conference “To Gain Attention to Their Various Claims”: Historic Political Campaigns in North Carolina (If you read closely, then the origins of the conference title should no longer be a mystery). We hope you’ll join us in Chapel Hill on September 14-15, 2012. Details are at bit.ly/nccampaigns.

Check out what’s new in the North Carolina Collection

Several new titles just added to “New in the North Carolina Collection.” To see the full list simply click on the link in the entry or click on the “New in the North Carolina Collection” tab at the top of the page. As always, full citations for all the new titles can be found in the University Library Catalog and they are all available for use in the Wilson Special Collections Library.

“Southern” recipes from the collection.

From Columbus County Cookbook II.

From The Charlotte Cookbook.

From Soup to Nuts: a Cook Book of Recipes Contributed by Housewives and Husbands of Alamance County and Other Sections of State and Country.

From The Junior Service League’s Chapel Hill Cook Book: Tried and Tested Recipes.

From Recipes for Gourmet Eating: A Compilation of Favorite Tested Recipes of Housewives of Greenville and Out of Town Friends.

From Peace Cookbook.

 

 

Last refuge of poor white man: ‘At least I ain’t a n—–‘

“A white man named Billy Harwood, who was imprisoned in 1994, started work at Smithfield [Packing Co. in Tar Heel] after his release in 2001.

“Aghast at the number of Mexicans, Harwood wondered aloud, ‘What the hell’s going on?’ By that year, fully one-third of the babies born at the health clinic in neighboring Robeson County were Latino.

“As Charlie LeDuff reported in the New York Times, Harwood ‘was Rip Van Winkle standing there.’ Locked up for seven years, he had missed the birth of a new kind of Southern racial order. Suddenly, he found himself thrust into the middle of it.

“Harwood still believed his skin color conferred on him a certain kind of advantage. While Harwood found the work terrible, he could take solace. ‘At least I ain’t a n—–. I’ll find other work soon. I’m a white man.’ ”

— From “There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975” by Jason Sokol (2007)

 

Pasquotank County unimpressed by Charlotte

In preparation for the barrage of disrespect sure to accompany the Democratic National Convention, I’m offering a second sampling of past insults endured by the host city:

“They don’t know art from nothing. Half of them don’t even know what state Charlotte is in.”

— Vernon James, D-Pasquotank, describing his constituents’ reaction to the debate over funding the North Carolina  Blumenthal Performing Arts Center (1987)

“The tall buildings, crowded sidewalks and endless stoplights confuse and annoy me. . . . A damp doom descends on me. I feel like my luck just ran out and washed down the gutter.”

— Mike McIntyre, author of “The Kindness of Strangers: Penniless Across America,” recording his impression of Charlotte. (1996)

“A Mickey Mouse ruling delivered by a lay jury in a place that is not known as a great metropolis.”

— A spokesman for the British conglomerate that owns Meineke Discount Muffler, sniffing at a Charlotte jury’s award of $346 million to dissident Meineke dealers. (1997)

“So much to do, I don’t know how y’all made it here tonight.”

— Comedian Chris Rock, commenting oh-so-drolly on Charlotte’s entertainment options beyond his performance at Ovens Auditorium. (2003)

“I dreamed about playing in the National Football League all my life. The Eagles, the Giants, the Redskins, the Bears. But I found myself playing for the Carolina Panthers, wearing this funny-looking uniform, and I didn’t even feel like I was in the NFL.”

— Quarterback Kerry Collins, tracing his problems to his rookie year in Charlotte (2007)

 

You say, I say, we all say….Krispy Kreme brulee?

Given the unabashed enthusiasm Miscellany readers have shown for all things Krispy Kreme, I have to pass along this recipe from the Nose Dive Gastropub in Greenville, South Carolina. (Hat tip, Garden & Gun.)

The essential instruction: “Puree the doughnuts and half-and-half…”

I was surprised to find that Krispy Kreme’s own flavor inventory includes (or has included) a nod to the Francophile favorite.

 

George Washington wasn’t last to knock Charlotte

When I moved to Charlotte in 1974, I soon learned that George Washington had memorably dismissed it as “a trifling place.” But that was only the beginning — as the prototypical overreaching Southern boom town, Charlotte has lent itself to decades of  insults.

Because the Democratic National Convention will test as never before the thickness of our civic skin, I’ve preemptively assembled some notable putdowns from the past (first of a series):

“Charlotte is not Jerusalem. Charlotte is not Mecca. Charlotte is just a big city sitting on the South Carolina line.”

— Rep. Melvin “Pap” Creecy, D-Northampton (1983)

“The ugliest collection of third-rate buildings in America.”

— PBS architecture critic Robert A.M. Stern (1986)

“I hope this doesn’t mean we’re going to become Charlotte one day.”

–– Harry Carter, city manager of Cornelia, Ga. (population 36,000), sharing with The New York Times his worst fears about growth. (2001)

“What are we going to do in Charlotte? Go to the Bass Pro Shop or something?”

— Virginia Tech guard Jacob Gibson, mulling a possible bid to the inaugural Continental Tire Bowl. [The Hokies ended up in the San Francisco Bowl — 1,750 miles from the nearest Bass Pro Shop.] (2002)

“We come from labor, steel mills, blue-collar workers. They are like little daffodils. They wear their hair in a bow and say, ‘I just hate that for you.’ ”

– Teddy Xidas, president of US Airways’ flight attendants union, contrasting members in Pittsburgh with those in Charlotte. (2004)