Through a Townie’s Lens

In our neighborhood this week, the Halloween skeletons are back in the closet (sorry, I couldn’t resist), the elections signs are down, mostly — and families are wrestling with how to handle the most bizarre Thanksgiving on record.

Somewhere midway through my photo class lecture on apertures and shutter speeds, there came a small but persistent tapping on the classroom door in Howell Hall. Then, without bidding, the door opened slightly, revealing a woman’s smiley face wearing a mischievous grin.

A recent column focused on the documentary significance of the simple snapshot, the older the better. Cleaning out a desk drawer this week, I ran across another example that testifies dramatically to the emotional power of such seemingly innocent images.

Fifty years ago this past spring, four outstanding 18-year-old Black graduating high school seniors from a rural high school in Western North Carolina teamed up to express their gloves-off opinions…

Since our poor fractious nation is suffering from LDD (Leadership Deficit Disorder), we get our guidance from where we can. Confoundingly, even the otherwise simple mandate of mask-wearing divides us into a cold civil war between Maskers and Anti-Maskers…

Early one Saturday morning back in 1975 found me at the main street newspaper office in Forest City sweeping the front room, when an old farmer wearing faded overalls came through the front door (no keypad, no buzzer, no armed guard) wanting to see the editor.

In all the years of UNC’s long and storied history, there will be no University Day quite like this year’s celebration, Monday, Oct. 12.

Scratch me, and you get a photographer. It was photography, not writing, that got me to the dance. So, it should come as no surprise that this column is photo-driven…

Perhaps you’ve seen him — this happy man zipping along the streets of Southern Village, his recumbent trike low and fast — a jaunty multi-colored pennant bobbing merrily in his windy wake.

Up until now, in this space I have avoided the temptation to say anything even vaguely political; but herein, I succumb. The latest outrage over service members being called “losers and suckers” is my tipping point.

Maybe you can’t hug a photograph — as “Data,” played by Jonathan Ke Quan, the adorable inventor kid, tells his father in the ‘80s classic feel-good film, “The Goonies.”

I love stuff. Old stuff — books, hats, cameras, typewriters, photographs, magazines, tools, odd-shaped rocks, broken mugs full of pens that I haven’t used in years.

The Idiot Check. I forgot to do the Idiot Check. So, that makes — guess who — the idiot. It’s a vital travel tactic I learned from my rocker son, Jon, who taught me how after each gig…

In this political and cultural inflection point in which we find ourselves as a nation, it is gratifying to be able to bring to our community “a little good news today.”              

Last week’s earthquake up in the northwestern corner of North Carolina gave me a shake, too. Beginning in the summer of 1968, right out of college and green as grass, I served as editor…

Ask any college town “townie” what’s their favorite time of year — and many are likely to say, now. From Athens, GA, to Lawrence, KS; to State College, PA, to Chapel Hill-Carrboro, the start of the fall semester brings with it a wave of youthful energy, intellectual ferment and…

Sixty-four years ago, I went to Narnia, where I became a lion named Aslan. To get to that foreign land, I didn’t need a passport. But I did need a great teacher to open the magical door through the old wardrobe.

As the calendar turns to the dog days of summer, our thoughts turn to ice cream, which leads us to Maple View Farm.

Father’s Day, in the home in which I grew up, didn’t exist. The third Sunday in June was just another day. But I’m certain that wasn’t true for my heartbroken divorced mother, nor for my big brother, Nick, traumatized by the betrayal of his beloved dad. Father’s Day was a cruel reminder of abandonment. How does a 7-year-old boy grow up when he feels rejected by his own father?

This week especially we could all use something to celebrate about. To that end, I offer two stories that should help restore a little of our faith in the human race.

Henry David Thoreau knew a thing or two about social distancing. In 1845 he self-quarantined for two years and two months at a one-room cabin he built himself on the shores of Walden Pond outside of Concord, Massachusetts. Neither by edict nor necessity, but rather by intention, Thoreau wanted to “simplify, simplify.”