Tag: tony rice

Credit for moon flag not easily determined

“Former workers at the Burlington Industrial Fabrics’ Plant in Rhodhiss and Glen Raven Fabrics in Burnsville recall with pride bulletin board postings at the time saying their plants had woven the nylon fabric…. Company newsletters make similar claims. Glen Raven includes the claim on its website today. The welcome sign at the edge of Rhodhiss proclaims ‘US Moon Flags Woven Here,’ and the town logo features an astronaut planting a U.S. flag.

“There is no way to prove exactly which company wove the fabric, manufactured the flag or sold it to NASA. That’s exactly the way NASA wanted it, to avoid a commercial product being advertised as being used by astronauts – or, as one NASA official put it, ‘We didn’t want another Tang.'”

— From “A little piece of North Carolina on the Moon, maybe” by Tony Rice at WRAL (July 16, 2019)

Nobody has taken a more ambitious swing at the subject than Jeremy Markovich.

Bluegrass master shares ‘Moment’ with Raleigh fans

“In bluegrass circles, it is being called ‘The Moment,’ and some of the people who saw it wept. I heard about it from Gillian Welch. It involved the master guitar player Tony Rice, who was giving a speech late last month in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the occasion of being inducted into the International Bluegrass Music Association Hall of Fame.

“Rice, who is sixty-one [and lives in Reidsville], is a revered figure in bluegrass…. He released his first record in 1973, and the shadow of his articulate and forceful style falls across the playing of nearly all other bluegrass guitarists. If you play bluegrass guitar, you have to come to terms with Rice the way portrait photographers have to come to terms with Avedon….”

— From “An Astonishing Moment from a Bluegrass Legend” by  Alec Wilkinson at newyorker.com (Oct. 14, 2013)  

Wilkinson, a New Yorker staff writer since 1980, has also written appreciatively about North Carolinians  Doc Watson and Garland Bunting.