Tar Heel Tavern #87

Welcome to this week's edition of Tar Heel Tavern, a roundup of all that is good about blogging from the state of North Carolina. If I missed your submission or if it's Sunday morning and you think, "Dang, I forget to submit anything," just fire me an e-mail and I'll quickly add your work. So, let's cut to the chase:

Of all the posts, nothing captured Fall in North Carolina like the beautiful pictures Laura sent in from Moomin Light from her annual two-week trip to the mountains.

Down in the state capital, there's one more day left: Mr. R reflects at evolving education on this year's visit to the North Carolina State Fair. I hadn't known that Mr. R and I shared a Colorado heritage.

Even since before moving to the state, I have always been impressed with the level of literary intellect indigenous to North Carolina. Ogre reminds us at Ogre's Politics and Views that anyone can be a novelist and encourages us to take part in the National Novel Writing Month. "If you can write blog entries, you can write a novel."

Of course, our past experiences dramatically affect our enthusiasm for writing. etbnc discusses at Another blue puzzle piece how he has been overcoming his fourth-grade aversion to and civil disobedience against book reports by writing book reviews to round out his frequent book recommendations. Yes, etbnc, we all carry scars from elementary school.

Speaking of writing, Billy the Blogging Poet reminds us that once you have that finished work, there is that small issue of self-promotion. But like Billy, I think that we all gain greater satisfaction from promoting others who we admire: "Promoting other poets is probably the most important thing I've ever done."

One poet always worth promoting is Ron Hudson. Ron posts at 2sides2ron on the double-wide Southern adaptation of the haiku. Maine humor, Southern style.

Bora Zivkovic, the great Coturnix, holds forth at A Blog Around the Clock on his experiences at ConvergeSouth in Greensboro. Now I'm beginning to understand why my Seed ScienceBlogs friend seems to know everyone in the blogosphere.

Speaking of Elizabeth (and John) Edwards, Coturnix also ran into Jude at ConvergeSouth. Jude Nagurney Camwell's Iddybud Journal is filled with pictures from her recent visit to Charlotte and Concord.

I had a great little hike tonight with PharmPreK'er in a little oasis in the middle of our fair city. I was reminded by the SustainabilitySoutheast post submitted by etbnc that as we have reached a national population of 300 million, we must continue to pay attention to the choices we make today, not just for our own quality of life, but that of our children, grandchildren, and so on.

THT ringleader, Erin Monahan, continues to amaze with the strength and sense of purpose I think few of us would ever be able to pull together after losing children to congenital heart defects. Just as her Alexis and Nova fuel her life, so does their memory continue to touch the lives of others. A lovely surprise at Our Childrens' Memorial Walkway in Charlotte's Frazier Park is Erin's submission from Poetic Acceptance.

Parks and the people who design them and their features have a special place in the lifeblood of our towns and cities. Photographer and videographer, Kenneth Corn, paints us a nice picture with his words at Colonel Corn's Camera about Tom Risser and the new skatepark in Waxhaw. I agree with the commenters, Colonel: get yourself a skateboard...and a big bottle of Aleve.

Finally, I'll add my own post from my Friday fun feature, The Friday Fermentable, singing the praises of North Carolina's craft beer-brewing industry and their unprecedented showing at the nation's foremost beer competition.

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While we have the attention of NC bloggers, I just had two final announcements about events of interest for the upcoming week.

First, Chapel Hill's independent, non-profit, Cornucopia House Cancer Patient Support Center, will be attempting to break the Guinness record for the World's Largest Yoga Class next Sunday, October 29, at the RTP Sheraton. This fundraising event will be the kick-off for a year-long celebration of the 10th anniversary of this great, free public resource for cancer patients and their families.

Second, NC bloggers will be hosting Chris Mooney, author of the New York Times bestseller, The Republican War on Science, as he talks and signs copies of the book at Quail Ridge Bookstore in Raleigh on Saturday, 28 Oct, and The Regulator in Durham on Sunday, 29 Oct. Chris will also be giving a lecture in the Medical Ethics and Humanities program at Duke University Medical Center on Monday, 30 Oct. We're all pretty stoked to show our version of Southern hospitality to one of the nation's premier science writers. So, drop me a note if you are interested in meeting Chris at any of the impromptu gatherings that might emerge around these events.

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One final reminder: next week's THT will be hosted by Mr. R at evolving education; e-mail your submissions to him by midnight next Saturday. Hosting THT is always a great deal of fun and gets you in touch with your neighbors with whom you might not otherwise cross paths, say, while being a science blogger. So, I encourage anyone to drop a line to Erin and volunteer to host a time or two.