A champion falls …

It should no  surprise that the eastern hemlock was my favorite tree growing up.  It ALWAYS provided shade for those trout streams that I fished with my father, ALWAYS embraced the cold and deep swimming hole where I swam as a kid, and ALWAYS  with verdant comfort dotted the winter  landscape scenery of the Blue Ridge Parkway.  When they began to die off in my  backyard of Haywood County, I felt for the first time my own impending mortality.  What…

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They call me “The Corn Man” …

Larry Chamber's family in Haywood County (NC) has been farming for years, and their farm (Chambers Farm Market) has some of the best bottom land in the county.  Local citizens patiently wait  for his first corn crop --- which is displayed in an appealing produce market style on the back of his flat-bed farm truck at the "corn corner" of Lake Logan Road and U.S. 276 in the "up-river" Bethel community of Canton, NC. "We…

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2000 years of medicine in 18 feet ….

Dr. John D. McConnell, CEO of the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, formally received the donation of the mural from North Carolina artist and humanitarian, Nicholas B. Bragg of Winston-Salem.  The original oil on panel, composed and painted by Mr. Bragg, was given to the Medical Center in honor of his wife, Nancy, on January 18, 2011. Its title is "Medicine on Our Planet." Mr. Bragg consulted over 30 references on medicine and its evolution…

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Looking for the best tomato … sandwich

A summer joy of mine is feasting out on an-of-this-world tomato sandwich whose juices run down the non-lickable inside of your fingers and drip from your chin as you devour one.  This is  presuming that you started with a great tomato.  I might live in the wrong decade or the wrong place, but I am having a tough time just finding predictably the necessary first ingredient - a great tomato.  When I was growing up, a great tomato was…

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Migrant Workers vs. Migrant Medfords

I was caught by an image in my native county this past weekend when I passed by this migrant home (it's tomato picking time) in the Cruso Valley of Haywood County. The immediate image appeal was the backlighting, the colorful clothes hung on a chain link fence, and a flash-back to having spent time in the Third World.   The children playing on the other side of the chain-link fence retreated instinctively to inside their…

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