Tag Archives: North Carolina
Predicting North Carolina’s future: if GOP wins again in 2014, expect a severe case of brain drain
Via our boy Dr. Jim Booth: BuzzFeed last week presented “11 Things The North Carolina Legislature Gave Us This Session.” The list isn’t pretty. It includes: Moral Mondays Harsh abortion restrictions hidden in a motorcycle bill The most restrictive Voter ID laws in the country The decimation of public education as North Carolinians know it The assumption that all those
Read moreThe devil is in the details: WHICH Christianity are we making the official state religion, exactly?
Legislators in North Carolina recently introduced a bill to make Christianity the official state religion. That bill has now been turfed, but we can probably expect similar moves in the future. An Omnibus Poll, sponsored by YouGov.com and the Huffington Post, reveals just how far from the nation’s roots we have traveled on the subject of separating church and state
Read moreNorth Carolina’s Amendment One and America’s youth: more on winning the battle and losing the war
Rachel Held Evans nails it: When asked by The Barna Group what words or phrases best describe Christianity, the top response among Americans ages 16-29 was “antihomosexual.” For a staggering 91 percent of non-Christians, this was the first word that came to their mind when asked about the Christian faith. The same was true for 80 percent of young churchgoers. (The next
Read moreAn important life lesson, courtesy of Facebook and Amendment One
Facebook reminded me of an important lesson this morning. When I was young, I was an idiot. A well-intentioned idiot, to be sure. And in my defense, it must be said that I was probably less of an idiot than most kids my age. But still, I look back on the things I did, the things I believed, the insecurities
Read moreTunesDay Special: a fond goodbye to Earl Scruggs
Earl Scruggs, the legendary master of the bluegrass banjo, is dead at 88. It was just a few days ago that I was writing about the music that I grew up with, and rest assured, Flatt & Scruggs were welcome in the Smith household. There’s honestly not a lot I can say that I feel is worthy of the man’s genius
Read moreDemocracy & Elitism 3: burning down the straw man, and who are these out-of-touch “liberal elites,” anyway?
Let’s begin with a quick trivia question. What legislator’s Top 20 donor list includes the following? Blackstone Group (Financial Services) Bain Capital FPL Group (Energy) DLA Piper (Corporate law firm, representing Global 1,000 and Fortune 500 companies) Kindred Healthcare Beacon Capital Partners Comcast Corp Brownstein, Hyatt et al (Corporate law firm) Venable LLP (Corporate law firm) Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Read moreColumbine and the power of symbols
Part three of a series. In the days following the murders at Columbine High School I visited the school and the grounds of Clement Park. Those walks produced this piece, which was originally published ten years ago today. We have learned a great deal about the events that took place at Columbine since this essay was written (for instance, we
Read moreConfronting racism, then and now: a confession and an apology
I’m about to share with you the most humiliating moment of my life. This morning something deeply disturbing happened to my 13 year-old nephew, Christopher. He got a text message, which had been forwarded around from person to person, from one of his best friends, a girl we’ll call Ashley. It went something like this: America has elected a nigger.
Read moreDon’t mourn Jesse’s death – mourn that his legacy lives
On his outstanding Prodigal Son CD, North Carolina folk and blugrass legend Mike Cross presents us with a high-stepping little ditty called “Bill is in His Grave.” Bill, it turns out, was a scoundrel of the first order, and he’d been recently deceased. The narrator is asked to say a few words at the funeral, a task that proves daunting
Read moreTunesDay: what is, what was and what almost was – the S&R interview with Don Dixon
I’ve been a very big Don Dixon fan since the late ’70s, so when his new CD, The Nu-Look, dropped I was bouncing around the living room like Snoopy doing a happy dance. Sadly, a lot of people don’t know Don’s music – although many know his work as the producer of Murmur and Reckoning by REM and multiple records
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lullaby pit 