From teen sports stringer to California artist
Shay Alderman was a 15-year-old sophomore at Pinecrest High School when I hired her to help me with sports coverage at the old Citizen News-Record of Aberdeen, N.C.
She didn't know how to write, but she was friendly and brainy and I figured I could at least use her minimal photography skills and show her how to write along the way.
She did the best she could, calling me in advance when she was unable to do any of her assignments.
She went to the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and that was the last I heard of her, except for hearing that her father, Joe Alderman, passed away in 1990 or 1991. She has a kid brother, and as far as I know, her mother Linda still lives in Pinebluff. Shay was born in West Virginia and moved to Moore County sometime during her childhood.
Until this week.
She visited my profile at Classmates.com, after I'd visited hers. Then my curiosity got the better of me when I learned she was living in California, and I searched her.
I found four or five sites with information about her. Two of these sites displayed an individual piece of her artwork.
She has become a prolific artist, living in Oakland, with a studio there. I lost track of her when I couldn't find her name in the UNC listings (the list also had Starr Davis and Steve Gratz, whom I also knew at UNC). Last night I found the list of alumni from the UNC art school. She graduated in 1993 (going a straight four years after high school), with a BFA.
I was so pleased to hear how she made out. I thought the world of that young woman. I am glad she turned out to be such a success. The last couple of months she worked with me, the job was wearing her out. She had not learned to use the terminal and the editor at the time was leaning on me to get her to learn it, rather than turn in her notes from the game and me "transpose" them into a routine game story.
That editor's (what a douche bag!) insistence prompted her to quit. Right after I did.
That is some of the best news I heard yet, about how she has turned out. For awhile I figured she'd gotten married and gotten tied down with her family and everything, but if she has a family, she'd not letting it hamper her career in the arts.
I am so pleased to find out about how she has turned out. That is fabulous news.
Labels: Unpublished newspaper columns about Moore County
Venting after the Virginia Tech shooting
The scary thing about Cho Seung-Hui: There are a lot of people like him. That could include you and me.
I try to dwell on bad news so much, but details unraveling in the news about the Virginia Tech shooter have caught my attention. He was quiet to the point of being bizarre, not even answering questions. The stories didn't mention any girlfriends, but two women before that had complained about him stalking and IM'ing them. He was apparently obsessed with his first victim, a 19-year-old woman, but there was no evidence she knew him.
He did not have a police record, so he had the legal right to purchase a weapon. He also had his head together enough to reach his senior year. Existing gun laws would have been unable to stop him.
ASIDE: This case may weaken the arguments for gun control, but it hasn't converted me to NRA membership; the gun rights crowd's frequent battle cry that he'd have stopped him if everybody on campus packed a pistol is an even weaker argument. (Don't tell me you'd feel any safer with a bunch of drunken frat guys around and all of them packing heat. Don't think so).
Cho was sent to a mental health unit one time, instructors had told him to seek counseling. The law or the university couldn't force him to go without proof positive that he'd commit a serious crime without human intervention.
His messages railed at rich kids and females.
Apparently he felt so jacked around that he got up on a Monday morning and decided declared war on the world.
Just like I feel like doing sometimes. Just like a lot of people feel like doing when they have a whole work week ahead of them.
That's the difference between Cho and the rest of us. It's bad enough to feel that way, but it's a hell of a lot more normal than acting on that feeling.
I can't help thinking if he had found somebody to talk to, he wouldn't have done that. Somebody would have talked him out of it or called the police on him.
It's what I've done when I've been at the end of my rope. That's one of the reasons I've recently sought counseling. The young black woman who mentors me only meets me once a month. She can't control what I do when I leave the office, but she doesn't let me fall too far off the radar screen.
The people I frequently have contact with have their own lives and can't always drop everything to hear me out. But there are always hotlines, emergency lines, and you can talk to a total stranger.
Four years ago I lost a job I'd held almost 15 years. I wasn't quite familiar with the unemployment process and it flipped me out. Sometimes I had panic attacks in the middle of the night. The local mental health services had somebody manning their phone round the clock, that could call an on-call counselor if somebody was really having some problems. I made two such calls in the middle of the night. The counselor's advice: Let's figure out who to talk to about the issue that's got you so freaked out. And stop worrying about things at times you can't do anything about them. Such as the middle of the night.
I have an old classmate I've been worried about. He has gotten into trouble with the law for getting into fights and harassing people, I understand. Last fall he went to jail for several months for violating probation. K---- is not some dumb redneck, he's a well-read person who attended a prestigious college and has children in college themselves.
Other people who know him have said things about him that he never told me. For one thing, he suffers from bipolar disorder, and his legal troubles have come from instances where he wasn't taking his medication (so one person has told me). Another person told me he was harassing people, including old high-school teachers. I don't always take this latter source's comments as gospel, but it has made sense to me.
A few times last year I've gone to a pub and met K--- there. He's supposed to be one the wagon and I never saw him with a drink in his hand. I'm not sure what he was doing there unless he was trying to pick up women. Most of us in his old crowd have "outgrown" the pub scene -- even confirmed bachelors like me -- and most of the patrons are young enough to be his children.
He went to jail just before Patty Duke came to the Sandhills Sept. 30-Oct. 1, 2006. It was too bad. I think it would have done K---- good to go see her.
I'd have hoped it would have done Cho a bit of good.
Labels: Unpublished commentary in general
A Blue Knight in Red Devil Country; an old rival's affection for Aberdeen
Submitted to Aberdeen News & Views, April 6, 2007In 1969, I would never have believed I would be writing for a magazine devoted to Aberdeen. I lived in Southern Pines during my teens, and off and on after that, and to this day I remain fiercely patriotic about Southern Pines.
But that doesn’t mean we didn’t find anything about our Aberdeen neighbors to love. Such as several clothing stores, a nice movie house that showed the current popular films, a Dairy Queen, and a popular lake to cool off in during the summer. And I miss Aberdeen’s Fourth of July parade.
Aberdeen Lake, in fact, makes up a large part of my memories of the first summer I spent in Moore County.
I moved to the Sandhills from Winston-Salem in the fall of 1966, just as I was starting eighth grade. In those days, when the towns had their own school system, and I only knew one youth from Aberdeen, a classmate who transferred from Aberdeen to East Southern Pines High School after he had gotten into a bit of trouble at Aberdeen.
Aberdeen and Southern Pines also had their own newspapers: The Pilot and the Sandhill Citizen, two weeklies. The Pilot is still in existence, printing three times a week. The Citizen evolved into a daily publication called the Citizen News-Record, before it folded early in 1996.
Those who have moved to the Sandhills since 1980 may have hardly any idea of what relations were like between the two towns. With a smaller population, fewer businesses and, as I noted before, two separate school systems and two different newspapers, the citizens of Southern Pines and Aberdeen stuck to themselves more, unless they held drove to jobs in other towns.
Another huge difference: Southern Pines had more golf courses than Aberdeen did, while Aberdeen had a larger industrial area – chiefly manufacturing.
I also came of age in the days where most of the time, you could walk to everything. All the major businesses and food and clothing stores, the pharmacies, doctors and dentists, police, fire departments, town hall, post offices and the schools, were mostly within walking distance in both Southern Pines and Aberdeen.
I remember this part of local history from an adolescent’s-eye view.
Especially the athletic rivalries between Aberdeen and East Southern Pines high schools.
It was like UNC and N.C. State. The Blue Knights (East Southern Pines) and Red Devils (Aberdeen) scheduled their games at the end of the regular season – the top rivalry in the conference. Southern Pines won the last two football games between the two schools – in the fall of 1967 and 1968.
The fights after the games between Aberdeen and Southern Pines were part of local lore. They usually took place whenever the two groups of kids encountered each other at one of the popular eateries along U.S. 1. I was more of a peace-loving kid than most of my friends, so I never got into any of the fights myself.
At East Southern Pines, we had our own images of the Aberdeen residents, and it was not too flattering, so I won’t go into it. I have no doubt the Aberdeen High students had the same stereotypes of Southern Pines kids.
In the summer of 1969 some kids in Southern Pines would hang around the town park, predicting what would happen when Pinecrest opened and the kids from the different schools in Pinehurst, Southern Pines, Aberdeen and West End got together. There would be fights all over the place.
They were wrong.
As a matter of fact, many of the kids from different schools became close friends. Once they played football and basketball together and joined the same clubs, we all put aside our differences and decided those other folks weren’t so bad after all. We all went to parties together, and I still count a lot of past and present Aberdeen residents among my closest friends.
Even before the schools opened, I went to Aberdeen a lot. I got my first job in the Aberdeen town limits, at Hardee’s. I bought a lot of clothes from the merchants downtown and saw many a movie at the Town and Country Cinema (which, sad to say, has just closed). Among these movies were “The Dirty Dozen” “Bonnie and Clyde” “You Only Live Twice” and “Romeo and Juliet”.
Some of us Southern Pines kids even rode our bicycles to Aberdeen Lake. I remember riding along with one of my more athletic friends, in the middle of July. It wore my out trying to keep up with him. We rode them on the main drag, too; I wouldn’t dare attempt that now.
Aberdeen, we see, has changed a lot since then. The Dairy Queen folded about 30 years ago; the Aberdeen Law Enforcement Center is now on that site. At least two of the clothing and shoe stores I often patronized have closed, and these kinds of businesses are now out in various malls – far beyond walking distance. Since 1996, Aberdeen has received its news from outlets that are not in the town limits. And Aberdeen no longer holds its time-honored Fourth of July Parade.
The change is not all bad. The town has its own recreation department, and at least one art gallery and one music store. There are some good places to eat and shop along the main drag.
Some things have remained, however. The lake remains a popular recreation area, with a fabulous evening celebration and fireworks show on the Fourth of July. Then there is the annual Malcolm Blue Festival in the fall.
It’s really kind of a treat to be writing for a publication devoted to Aberdeen and its neighboring communities, such as Pinebluff, Addor, Ashley Heights, Roseland etc. Check it out!
Labels: Newspaper columns
The Sandhills Needs Another Beatrix Potter
The recent movie “Miss Potter” played at the Sunrise Theater. It was coincidental that this biopic of the famous children’s author played in Moore County the same week that a moratorium on development became a key issue with the county commissioners. Beatrix Potter, the early 19th-century author of “Peter Rabbit” became quite a conservationist in the wake of her artistic success. She purchased a farm in the district where her family spent their summers. In the movie, the author (one of Renee Zellweger’s best performances) outbids a developer for another nearby farm in England’s Lake District, offering 3,000 pounds, an outrageous amount in 1904. That leaves the developer fuming mad and some members in the audience clapping.
In real life, Beatrix Potter bought up and bequeathed a number of rural tracts of land to Great Britain’s National Trust upon her death. The United Kingdom in the early 1900s had a problem with rampant development, acres upon acres of farmland was being chopped up for commercial and residential development.
The same thing has, unfortunately, been happening in North Carolina, and especially the Sandhills. Both the county’s elected leaders and the citizens of Moore County are aware of that. Many citizens who have lived here for years cringe at the sight of bulldozers along the roads and who patches of trees being chopped down. On the other hand, everybody is aware that the county needs plenty of business, loves its tourists and has a traffic problem that it must alleviate. They see the paving of more roads as a necessary evil.
In some other local battles, a dealership in Raleigh has been suing the Town of Southern Pines to build a dealership around Midland Road, and citizens of Pinehurst are protesting a roundabout around the Carolina Hotel and the Pinehurst Country Club; Gregg Davis, a local engineer with the North Carolina Department of Transportation, said about 92 trees would be uprooted in the construction of this roundabout.
We need more Beatrix Potters in this county. Every time somebody wants to buy a huge tract of land for a subdivision or a shopping mall with big-box stores all over the place, some deep-pocketed conservationist buys out that same land, and turns it into a nature preserve. When somebody has to sell a farm or a country homestead, some philanthropist will buy it and fend off any development.
Like Superman with a checkbook.
In their first meeting of this month, county commissioners voted to put the western connector back on the state roads plan, with the proposal to use as many existing roads as possible for the route. This connector route has been proposed to run from N.C. 211 near West End to N.C. 5, north of Aberdeen. Jimmy Melton made the proposal they agreed upon, by a slim 3-2 vote: in addition to the existing roads, to build two or three miles of new road south of N.C. 211, near Pine Valley Lane.
Commissioners remained divided on this issue, whether to use existing roads only or pave two to three more miles as Melton proposed. Tim Lea proposed using existing roads only, but commissioners voted against it, 3-2; Lea and Cindy Morgan, who with husband Richard live around Eagle Springs, voted in favor of it. Melton, chairman Colin McKenzie and Larry Caddell voted against this first proposal; the same board members voted for Melton’s proposal, which followed. Lea and Morgan voted against Melton’s proposal.
“Let’s look at current roads without cutting through virgin territory,” Lea said.
I wish everybody would leave that part of the state alone – around Foxfire Village and other areas. There is some wonderful countryside out there. I remember going for a nice long run up and down the road between Foxfire and Hoffman, and I was amazed to see this much wilderness.
Melton lives close to the proposed area, on Roseland Road. He apparently saw his proposal as the lesser of two evils.
“This is the least destructive route that makes use of existing roads,” he said. “If we don’t do it this way, the DOT is going to come through with a four-lane highway.”
He added that this road wouldn’t be constructed for about 15 years or so.
“It’s going to happen in everybody’s back yard. We don’t want it in our back yard, but it’s coming whether we like it or not.”
Commissioners set a public hearing for April 16 on whether to adopt a moratorium on the development of major subdivisions in a 64-square-mile area northwest of Pinehurst, called Area A.
Lea said it would be better to have a countywide moratorium on building than in just one area of the county. “I don’t like moratoriums,” he said, “but I think if we impose one on one area of the county, we should do it for all of the county.”
I couldn’t agree with him more.
Several of the citizens said some alarming things at the public meeting on the 2009-15 State Transportation Improvement Program, which included the western connector. Before the commissioners voted for the feasibility study to use existing roads except for a few new roads, person said constructing the route would destroy creeks, streams and springs, pass through old-growth pine forests that include the longleaf pine, and destroy valuable wetlands. He said the county has a critical water shortage as it is, and the water comes from the area south of Samarkand and flows into Lake Diamond. He said. It would violate the U.S. Water Act of the 1970s.
Two members of a family that have lived in the Foxfire area since Colonial times spoke up. “It’s pretty pristine out there,” said Sharon McDonald, who lives on Foxfire Road. “It’s the last undeveloped area in that section of the county,” said Amy McDonald.
I have lived in the Sandhills for more than half my life, and having spent plenty of time in other places, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else in the world. Some people here are concerned about Southern Pines, Pinehurst and Aberdeen going the way of Chapel Hill and Cary, once quaint little Southern towns that turned into sprawling metropolitan areas.
All these places are really nice and picturesque, and that could be their undoing: They’re all so pretty that everybody wants to live there. A lot of people are trying, and I don’t blame them, after living in crowded cities full of crime, dope, freezing winters and shopping malls all over the place.
We’d hate to have uniformed guards turning people away at our county borders, but I wish there were some way we could discourage people from moving here. Swelling populations need more places to live, more water, more food sources, more spaces in the schools for their children, more health professionals, more places where they can all work and more police officers to control the proportionate rise in crime.
And it takes land.
In time, we could have so many people living here that the area turns into one of the very places many people wanted to get away from. Who knows if there’ll be any more quaint little rural villages where they can go?
I wish we could tell everybody who explores our still-beautiful county, “Please be our guests, enjoy your visit and spend your money, but go back where you came from. Go to the government meetings in your area and try to improve your own back yard – and thus save your children the stress of leaving their old friends as well. Clean up the crime and join conservation committees.”
Maybe the people who take this advice will make their hometowns look nice enough to be tourist attractions.
We miss you, Miss Potter!
Labels: Newspaper columns
