Arts & Culture
This area has been known for decades for its thriving creative music scene. Many people travel from around the region – and sometimes around the world – to attend shows at the Cat's Cradle and other venues in Chapel Hill and Carrboro. Less famous, but also doing us proud, are visual artists, dancers, actors, and filmmakers around the Triangle. In fact, Chapel Hill was home to the first Flicker festival, which now takes place in ten cities around the world!
As you intelligent readers know, free and fair media is essential to a funtioning democracy, and self-expression is essential to a healthy society. We are fortunate to have The People's Channel here in Chapel Hill who have been doing a great job with minimal resources to keep the airwaves open to residents for whatever we might need to say and do.
That's why I am thrilled to support their upcoming event "A Celebration of Localism" which will highlight the importance of "keeping it local" and also raise badly needed funds for The People's Channel. TPC's Director Chad Johnston has been a strong voice for independent and locally-produced media both here and at the state and national level. We're lucky to have a resources like him in our community.
I think it's great that the event being done with the support (and hosting!) of the Preservation Society. They are also about localism, but in a different way than many of us think of it. I hope to see you there!
I learned on Tuesday that our community lost a great warrior for justice and equality. Ever since I met her nearly 20 years ago, Lisa Garmon was a festive rabble-rouser and a tireless worker for what's right. She died of cancer on Tuesday.
I worked with Lisa on environmental issues, on making local media, on organizing peace and justice protests, on keeping Internationalist Books afloat, and on countless other causes. I remember her amazing energy and dependability. She was great for things like coming through with a last-minute food donation for your fundraising event. She was there for you.
Lisa was mostly a face-to-face grassroots organizer, so there's not much of an online legacy to show her work. One great testament to her is the early archives of HA!, a feirce feminist 'zine that she founded in the mid-90's. I remember working on the first issue only to hear that the printer had refused to publish it because it included penis graphics! Never mind all those female body parts, right?
Wow. Today I discovered the Counter-Cartographies Collective, a group at UNC using mapping and visual information to help us see our environment in a new light. One of their major works so far is the "disOrientation Guide" produced last fall. It's two poster-sized pages packed with useful and insightful content. Although it's designed for newcomers, any local veteran will learn something new from the new perspectives on things we thought we knew, and from the hidden information uncovered in these maps.
The Orange Chat blog reports that the Chapel Hill News has received 12 submissions for it's Draw Your Own Mural contest. The deadline is Monday. I wonder if the Chan's gave them permission to determine what would be painted on their wall or if they're just making suggestions. Here's one:
"The mural meant a tremendous amount to Club Nova," Karen Dunn at Club Nova writes. [...] I ask that Club Nova remain the focus in the next mural. This could be a wonderful opportunity to reaffirm our place in the community, especially in what has become some of the worst times for community mental health."
- newsobserver.com |Orange Chat - Carrboro mural update
This is just terrible. Carrboro's mural between Weaver and Main Street is gone. The work was originally created as a fund raiser for Club Nova in 2002 and found new life as a poem by Carrboro's first Poet Laureate in 2003. Now it's a blank slate.
On Tuesday, the mural on the side wall of the Jade Palace Chinese restaurant became a blanket of sea-foam green after three men said a man offered them money to paint over it.
"One part of it was something my nephew painted, and that meant so much to me," restaurant co-owner Jenny Chan said. "It breaks my heart. It's so sad to see it all destroyed so quickly."
- newsobserver.com | Carrboro mural painted over
Even sadder is how it was done:
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