The American South
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 19, 2010A couple of reader questions came in this week following our interview with the inspiring African-American leader and mentor, Jason Dorsette.
I had mentioned therein about first meeting Mr. Dorsette two years ago this week at a local Juneteenth celebration. A few readers, even those in the southern United States had not heard of this commemoration. So, since today is the ascribed date of Juneteenth and the US Father's Day weekend is typically the time that municipal celebrations are held, I thought I'd leave you with a brief description and some good links.
I can't do any better than TIME's…
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 16, 2010Was just checking the old SiteMeter stats before foraging for dinner and saw a surge in search hits for "Amy Bishop."
Yup. Lo and behold she has been charged with murder - for the 1986 death of her brother.
From an article an hour ago by Donovan Slack and Shelley Murphy at the Boston Globe:
The slaying of Seth Bishop was declared an accident by Norfolk County authorities at the time. But questions were raised about the investigation after Bishop, a college professor, was charged in February in a shooting rampage at the University of Alabama Huntsville. Three of Bishops' colleagues were…
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 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 | June 2, 2010Just the other day, I wrote about how DrugMonkey and I have experienced unprecedented and sustained blog traffic for posts we wrote in February on K2 Spice, one of a couple of marijuana-like "incense" products still sold legally in the United States.
Every morning, I dial up my SiteMeter blog statistics and take a look at what posts readers first land upon when coming to visit the humble world headquarters of Terra Sigillata.
Last week, 2,700 to 2,800 of the 4,000 most recent hits were landing on our February K2 Spice post. (You will also note below the sad state of my readership in that…
terrasig | May 31, 2010
In addition to my own photos herein, Tom McLaughlin posted a nice slide show of the day at his South Boston News & Record.
Despite two trees that snapped and fell in my driveway within six feet of my car in an impressive thunderstorm Friday evening, I drove on Saturday morning to Clover, Virginia, for the dedication of a gravestone that finally marks the final resting place of Henrietta Lacks, a concrete honor, if you will, to recognize the source of one of the most valuable medical tools of the 20th century and today.
For those who are not regular readers, Henrietta Lacks was a rural…
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 | February 13, 2010First and foremost our condolences go to all our our colleagues at the University of Alabama at Huntsville and others in the Huntsville science community such as Twitter friend, @girlscientist, Dr. Chris Gunter.
As we are learning, yesterday's shooting occurred after UAH Assistant Professor of Biology, Dr. Amy Bishop, learned that she would not be awarded tenure. My sentiment is very much that of my colleague, DrugMonkey. Originally appointed as a faculty member in 2003, she had previously been an Instructor at Harvard University after earning her PhD in Medical Sciences there in 1998.
We…
terrasig | January 23, 2010With all the technopop, hip-hop, sampling, and all kind of nonsense in music today, it's always refreshing to see an incredible songwriter kick total and complete ass with just a glorified wooden box, some steel strings, and her/his own voice.
This is Lake Claire/Atlanta-based singer-songwriter Shawn Mullins singing perhaps his biggest hit, "Lullaby (Rock-A-Bye)" in the studio of WRVR in Memphis back in 2006. This is a killer version enhanced further by his great taste in wearing a Colorado state flag T-shirt. Joining him is Clay Cook, another Atlanta musician who was instrumental, as it…
terrasig | January 19, 2010This past weekend's international science communication conference, ScienceOnline2010, also saw the first, final hardback copies of Rebecca Skloot's long-awaited book make it into the hands of the science and journalism consuming public. Moreover, an excerpt of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks has just appeared in the new issue of Oprah Winfrey's O Magazine. And already, those online science communicators who left the conference with Skloot's book are registering their praise via this Twitter feed that was so active it was a trending topic at the science aggregator, SciencePond.
The story…
terrasig | January 6, 2010The US FDA has released a statement based on finding from the Texas Department of State Health Services on December 23, 2009:
The Texas Department of State Health Services is warning consumers, especially pregnant or breastfeeding women, to avoid consuming a traditional product called "Nzu" because of the potential health risks from high levels of lead and arsenic.
Nzu, which is consumed as a traditional remedy for morning sickness, has been found by DSHS food inspectors at two African specialty stores - one in the Dallas area and one in Houston. It was also found at a distributor in Houston…
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 28, 2009
In discussing the Christmas birth of a son to ScienceBlogs launcher and science journalist Christopher Mims and his wife, I neglected to note another addition to our tribe of science, from a science blogger specifically.
ChemicalBiLOLogy blogger, Arlenna, gave birth on Christmas Eve to a beautiful girl, pictured here with Mr. Arlenna. In her brief post, "I had a baby!," Arlenna posited:
. . .whoever invented epidurals and started using them in childbirth should win the Nobel Prize.
Despite my lack of training in anesthesiology or obstetrics, I thought I might look into this a bit. I had…
terrasig | November 23, 2009Last Monday, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi dropped a bombshell in his new budget proposal. From the Jackson Free Press:
In his Nov. 16 budget proposal, Barbour announced that the state was facing a $715 million budget shortfall in fiscal year 2011 and another $500 million shortage in fiscal year 2012. In addition to merging the state's HBCUs, he suggested many draconian budget cuts in response to the impending shortage.
"This budget proposes merging Mississippi Valley State and Alcorn State with Jackson State. No campus would close, but administration would be unified and significant…
terrasig | November 13, 2009Twenty years ago this morning, I had to defend a body of work that contained this paragraph on page 24:
HeLa cells are a human cervical carcinoma cell line having a doubling time of 24 hr and were obtained from Dr. Bert Flanegan, Dept. of Immunology and Microbiology, University of Florida. HeLa cells were maintained as subconfluent monolayer cultures in minimal essential media (alpha modification; GIBCO) with 10% fetal bovine serum (GIBCO) at 37° under a humidified atmosphere containing 5% CO2. Cells were maintained in logarithmic growth by subculturing every other day using 0.05% trypsin/0.…
terrasig | November 9, 2009Hella HeLa!
Skloot is PWned, as it were.
I learned late last night that author Rebecca Skloot was to be featured on the cover of this week's issue of Publishers Weekly. So, I clicked on the site this morning before the coffee was even done brewing and there is our wordsmithing hero.
I know that "The Making of a Bestseller 2010" is sure to make any author nervous but my reading of the manuscript tells me that the prediction is entirely consistent with the work.
Regular readers will know that we featured Ms Skloot here last week to brainstorm about her upcoming, self-supported book tour…