Bright red. Sticky-soft. Some first-time visitors can hardly believe this Piedmont clay of ours. It looks so dramatically different from the soil they know. It’s hard to move, hard to farm, but we’re proud of it, this iron-rich foundation of our work and art. Red clay inspired one of the oldest continuous pottery traditions in the country, a long-running string band and an ahead-of-its-time literary journal. It’s a link to our past, so stubbornly prominent that we accept it without always remembering it’s there. We tromp through the soil, our feet sinking into the soft earth. We go on our way, bits of history clinging to our heels.
Kim Ellington drinks his coffee from a stoneware pottery mug. It’s greenish-brown and mottled with darker drips and lines.
Despite the mug’s darkness, it catches the light and shines dully, as if through thick glass. The mug is one of thousands made by Ellington and other prominent Catawba Valley potters…Click here to read more.
Like the stubborn Piedmont soil they’re named after, the Red Clay Ramblers seem to get everywhere — they’ve toured internationally, scored Broadway musicals, appeared on A Prairie Home Companion. But they’re rooted in Chapel Hill, a town known for live music.
“Music from around here has always…Click here to read more.
On Armistice Day in 1926, eight years after the conclusion of the Great War, Greensboro mayor Edwin Jeffress stood in front of the gleaming arches of the new World War Memorial Stadium. He dedicated it to “the soldier boys” who “wanted no hollow granite,” but “something that would be useful; that would help develop mind and body … a perpetual memorial to those who have passed.” Click here to read more.
The Red Clay Reader featured some of the most prominent writers of the time: Doris Betts, Fred Chappell, Reynolds Price, Paul Green, Max Steele, Alice Walker, Betty Adcock, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Joyce Carol Oates. Charleen Swansea encouraged students to write about things other journals wouldn’t publish, touching on issues relating to race, class, and gender… Click here to read more.
In North Carolina, spring brings the scent of fresh-cut grass and memories of helping Dad mow the lawn.
Nostalgic burger joints are like time machines, delivering something extra special that keeps us coming back.
This tiny city block in downtown Greensboro once had a gigantic reputation. Not so much for its charbroiled beef patties — though they, too, were plentiful — but for its colorful characters and their wild shenanigans.
In the 1950s, as Americans hit freshly paved roads in shiny new cars during the postwar boom, a new kind of restaurant took shape: the drive-in. From those first thin patties to the elaborate gourmet hamburgers of today, North Carolina has spent the past 80 years making burger history.
