The Old North State
terrasig | July 17, 2010Jon Shain and his Trio will be performing this evening (Saturday, July 17) at The Soul Cafe in Durham, NC, together with Washington, DC's The Grandsons and Pat Wictor. The Soul Cafe is an alcohol-free venue near Durham's Brightleaf Square. Sadly, I'm out of town and can't attend - but you should. Click here for more information on tonight's show from Jon's Facebook page.
Times Right Now is the 6th album by Piedmont Blues guitarist Jon Shain since he went solo in 1998 after a decade with his folk-rock group, Flyin' Mice, and their spinoff, WAKE.
Shain's album covers as much diverse ground as…
terrasig | June 17, 2010In the 18 years from my first faculty appointment, one of the most satisfying parts of the journey has been watching students come through my life who you can tell - you just "know" - are going to make a huge difference in the world. (I previously wrote of one of these here, Arizona clinical pharmacist, Sandra Leal, PharmD.)
Well, two years ago, I was at the kickoff of a Juneteenth celebration at my new institution and was immediately drawn to this striking young man who, after speaking with him for a spell, convinced me that he was going to be one of these kinds of students.
It's not just…
terrasig | June 14, 2010As launched with yesterday's post, we'll be spending this week presenting my impressions of a symposium held on June 3-4, 2010, entitled, "Setting the Agenda for Historically Black Colleges and Universities." Sponsored by North Carolina Central University, one of five HBCUs in the University of North Carolina system, this gathering of national education leaders culminated a year long celebration of the centennial of the 1910 founding of the institution by businessman, teacher, and pharmacist, Dr. James E. Shepard.
A native of Raleigh, Shepard earned a Ph.G. in pharmacy (the original pharmacy…
NCCU Centennial HBCU Symposium - Setting the Agenda for Historically Black Colleges and Universities
terrasig | June 13, 2010
On June 3rd and 4th, I had the pleasure of attending a fabulous program on the modern role and future sustainability of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the United States. The HBCU Symposium: Setting the Agenda for Historically Black Colleges and Universities was the culmination of the 100th anniversary of the founding of North Carolina Central University (NCCU).
NCCU is one of five HBCUs in the University of North Carolina system and among 11 such institutions of higher learning in the state (list and links here). I currently serve on the faculty of this institution…
terrasig | June 10, 2010Homer alert.
The title pretty much covers three of some of my favorite things about living in Durham, NC. From the Pharmboy mailbox and Durham Magazine website:
Catherine Clabby - former reporter extraordinaire for The News & Observer, current editor extraordinaire for American Scientist magazine and a long-time Durhamite extraordinaire - spent hours finding out why The State of Things host Frank Stasio has fallen head-over-heels for Durham. Sometimes it takes an outsider to help us all appreciate how good we have it. Frank's doing that in a big way, both through his work at NPR and in…
terrasig | June 5, 2010This is not your father's North Carolina.
On my trip last weekend to southern Virginia, I passed by this business park in Roxboro, NC in Person County. The county sits immediately north of Durham County, home of the Research Triangle Park, and runs to the Virginia border.
This is a microcosm of today's North Carolina. Tobacco is still relatively strong, particularly as smoking continues to grow in Asia, thereby allowing us to slowly kill a whole new market. However, tobacco jobs pale in comparison to what they once were with many people out of work.
But I credit the state's best economic…
terrasig | May 10, 2010I did not turn on the computer yesterday (yes, it was glorious) so I missed Mother's Day coverage in our local newspaper. When we returned home, I was happy to see that on the front page of the print copy the dean of Duke School of Medicine, Nancy Andrews, MD, PhD, was featured with her daughter in the lab on their fun Saturdays together.
Also cited and pictured in the article was Duke vice dean for research and professor of pharmacology and cancer biology, Sally Kornbluth, PhD, and her daughter.
Written by News & Observer science editor Sarah Avery, the article describes how women are…
terrasig | April 25, 2010
So you ran any number of 5K charity races yesterday or went on the Piedmont Farm Tour. But it's a rainy Sunday in the Southeast and you're wondering what to do with a house full of cooped-up kids, especially if it's too soggy to do day two of the farm tour.
Let me suggest that you get to Durham, NC, to MakerFaire:NC.
Maker Faire is an annual event organized by the people who bring us MAKE Magazine. Maker Faire:NC is a fully sanctioned event but is being planned and coordinated by Raleigh/Durham locals. Our goal is to bring together Makers, Crafters, Inventors, Evil Geniuses, Scientists,…
terrasig | March 28, 2010Something about Sunday mornings leads me to really enjoy listening to folk and other acoustic music. These guys ended up being electric, though.
The Byrds were a Los Angeles-based group that grew out of the folk music scene in 1964. The original line-up was Jim McGuinn, David Crosby, Chris Hillman, Gene Clark and Michael Clarke. The distinctive sound of the band came from the electric 12-string Rickenbacker guitar of McGuinn - in fact, all three guitarists played 12-strings.
On the recommendation of jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader, Miles Davis, Columbia Records offered The Byrds a…
terrasig | March 6, 2010I want to get this quick shout-out for local hero, blogger, musician, and all around too-cool Princess Ojiaku before her band, Pink Flag, plays tonight at 10 pm in Durham, NC, at The Broad Street Cafe. From their website, "They're a regular three girl rhumba dancing on the common ground of a love of early post-punk, riot grrl and top 40 of the 1990s." Their name pays homage to the 1977 album by Wire (that also includes the song "Three Girl Rhumba"). I like these kids, paying proper respect to their elders.
Some of you may know Princess from having met her at ScienceOnline2010 in January or…
terrasig | March 2, 2010The NCAA basketball season traditionally brings to the Piedmont region of North Carolina the Tobacco Road battles between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, the private school in Durham about 12 miles to the northwest (actually 10.79 miles from the Dean Dome to Cameron Indoor Stadium).
But what I'm wondering is why a coal war hasn't erupted between the two institutions.
In the last couple of weeks, much hand-wringing has occurred on the UNC campus regarding the fact that the campus burns coal to generate heat for the university buildings. Rather than burning…
terrasig | February 25, 2010A year ago we wrote about a death of a San Jose teenager from poisoning by hydrogen sulfide gas, or H2S. At the time, I had hypothesized that the death might have been from an attempt at synthesizing methamphetamine gone awry.
But while one can mistakenly generate hydrogen sulfide gas from improper meth synthesis, I soon learned that intentional suicides with H2S is an increasing US trend imported from Japan. One can easily mix commonly-available consumer products to generate the gas and high enough concentrations can cause death. The gas acts in a manner similar to cyanide by binding to the…
terrasig | February 22, 2010A very nice surprise greeted me this morning on the local page of my AP News iPhone app: an interview in the News & Observer with Dr. Misha Angrist of the Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy by freelance journalist, T. DeLene Beeland (also on Twitter @tdelene).
Angrist is perhaps best-known as the fourth of the first 10 people whose genome was sequenced for George Church's Personal Genome Project. Not surprisingly, his work focuses on the societal implications of the personal genomics movement and what knowing one's DNA sequence means today and will mean in the future. We last…
terrasig | February 21, 2010Younger readers and readers outside the southern United States may not completely grasp my preoccupation with the Jim Crow segregation era "sit-ins" over the last several months. These non-violent acts of civil disobedience in the 1950s and 60s challenged the "separate, but equal" provisions for public facilities that were upheld in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson US Supreme Court decision and continued more than a decade after the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Buses, trains, waiting terminals, restrooms, water fountains, and areas of private businesses were kept separate for whites and blacks (…
terrasig | February 20, 2010Among the many things that LungMutiny2010 has taken from me is the chance to take advantage of all the rich cultural offerings in the North Carolina Research Triangle area during Black History Month.
Regular readers will remember that I wrote a few months ago about the segregation era sit-ins, beginning with the 1957 Royal Ice Cream sit-in in Durham and the immortal 1960 Greensboro Woolworth's sit-ins that garnered national attention.
Those who came to the ScienceOnline2010 session with me and my colleague, Damond Nollan, will also remember that I spoke at length about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther…
terrasig | January 1, 2010To launch our 2010 blogging, here's a cultural take on our core theme of folk medicines and prescription drugs derived from natural sources (plants, fungi, marine creatures, and microorganisms terrestrial and aquatic).
I've lived in the southern United States for a combined 15 years but it was only when I married into a southern family that I was assimilated into the tradition of eating collard greens and black-eyed peas to kick off the New Year.
I'm told that the custom is a mashup of African American tradition adapted by southern whites that sustained all through the Civil War and the…
terrasig | December 27, 2009Sitting back today looking at news and webcams in my former home of Colorado had me also reflecting on the events that conspired to put me in North Carolina. This unexpected turn in my life also opened me up to a local community of remarkably creative people with national and international reputations in their respective fields.
One of these people whom I am fortunate to call a local hero is journalist Barry Yeoman. Barry was described in the Columbia Journalism Review as, "(One of) the best unsung investigative journalists working in print in the United States.... Yeoman specializes in…
terrasig | December 22, 2009Audio documentarian, local hero, and Pharmboy family friend, Richard Ziglar, let us know over the weekend of some employment opportunities for music and tech-minded folks at Zenph Studios in Research Triangle Park.
What is Zenph, you ask? Zenph takes classic piano recordings, often from long-departed performers, dissects them digitally to capture nuances of the live performance, and then "re-performs" them live in a recital hall on legendary Steinways driven by the software. These are *not* digital remasterings but recordings of an actual replaying of the original work.
Listen to this…
terrasig | December 17, 2009
If you think that the H1N1 pandemic is slowing down and have grown complacent with vaccination now that vaccines are more widely available, please learn something from last night's tragic loss of local college student from Rhode Island, Lillian Chason:
A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student, who friends said was battling complications from the H1N1 virus, died Wednesday evening, according to UNC Hospitals and a Facebook post made by her father.
Freshman Lillian Chason had been in critical condition at UNC Hospitals for weeks. Friends told WRAL News on Tuesday that she started…
terrasig | November 29, 2009I had the honor today of witnessing the recognition of a civil rights landmark here in The-Town-That-Tobacco-Built.
This afternoon, North Carolina Historical Marker G-123 was dedicated at the site of the 23 June 1957 segregation protest at the Royal Ice Cream parlor, just north of downtown Durham.
The 1960 Greensboro sit-ins sparked a national movement but were not the first such action. Individual and group protest actions prior to 1960, generally isolated and often without wider impact, took place across the state and region. A protest in 1957 in Durham had wider consequence, as it led to…