Luchadoras, Durham, NC

November 20, 2011 in events

First Luchadoras Mexican-style female wrestling even at Motorco Music Hall in Durham, NC. Only three matches for this first-time event, but well organized and more than worth the $5 ticket price.

Dionaea Muscipula (Venus Flytrap) Sarraceniaceae (Pitcher Plants)

July 09, 2007

Sometimes I forget the magnificent aspects of living in North Carolina. With the mountains in the west and coastal plains in the east, the diversity and accessibility of natural beauty can be easily taken for granted. Growing up in the mountains, I lived just a few miles from the Blue Ridge Parkway, countless hiking trails, and gorgeous waterfalls. Nature scenes usually seen in documentaries were just steps beyond my back yard. Yet, at the time I felt the area to be uninspiring and constricting. Only after leaving for college did I appreciate the beauty of my hometown and the state in which I’ve always lived.

On the east side of the state, people visit places like Wilmington for fun on the beach, exploring the famous battleship, or drinking at the downtown bar scene. However, in the most unlikely location, some locals recently brought me to see carnivorous plants, which grow natively there. A bog rich with venus fly traps and pitcher plants sits just behind an elementary school, just a few steps away from the major shopping mall. Some species, unable to inhabit any other global location, live here, of all places. This year has been particularly dry, with a drought in full effect. These plants survive due to bog lands and special climate conditions. Needless to say, the plants are not nearly as beautiful as usual, but still seem to have a romantic, if not prehistoric, look even when dry and withered. This is a documentation of what plants have survived through the summer heat, promising a future of lush greenery when normal weather conditions return.

Rural North Carolina Factory Demolition

June 11, 2007

Saturday June 9, 2007. I traveled to the foothills of North Carolina, close to the South Carolina border, for my annual visit to Forest City. This is my grandmother's hometown, most of her family remains there, and other than visiting relatives it tends to be a sleepy, if not utterly uneventful town. Each year I make the drive down from Greensboro for a family get-together, usually involving potluck lunch, group snapshots, a few rides around the church on a 4-wheeler, and getting back on the road before the afternoon is in full swing. My drive is certainly much longer, in either direction, than the actual visit. I suspect the same is probably true for most folks on family reunion weekend. This year, as I began my drive home, I made a few purposeful wrong turns, discovering a demolition site for an old cotton mill in Cliffside, NC. Many years have passed since I last scaled a fence or ignored "no trespassing" signs but perhaps that was the appeal. It's possible I just needed something a bit more dangerous in my afternoon than a 3-hour drive and the freshly loaded queue of Chinese language pod casts awaiting inside my MP3 player. So, between the crack in the fence I crawled, and spent the next hour in 100 degree sun gathering images of broken windows, piles of bricks, and toxic water gathered in the remains of a building that formerly employed a large percentage of the Cliffside population. This story is common across North Carolina, as the age of American industry seems to have turned the page in favor of cheap, overseas labor and profit lines. In the past, textiles were an important contributor to the North Carolina, but these days one would have a much easier time finding partially demolished or condemned mills than plants which are still functional or actually in operation. These are the ghost towns of North Carolina, the mills and factories which have left hundreds of workers in their wake and employed a generation of rural folk who were forced to find other means of feeding their families when doors were closed and the American industrial landscape changed forever. I have no knowledge of the specifics of this particular mill, only that my grandmother says that it was a cotton mill and some of my distant relatives were once employed there.

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO

©2007 John F Rash / RASHPHOTO