-
Jul 23, 2024 | 
californiaglobe.com | Elizabeth Riddick
It shouldn’t take four years of headaches, legal briefs, and hard-fought battles just to get a permit to build a small addition on your property. But that’s exactly what happened to my family when we applied to build a modest home on our Malibu property for my mom, Renee. Mom is a lifelong resident and a longtime leader in our community. She’s been a schoolteacher, a college professor, and a family law attorney. She’s always been my rock: supportive, steadfast, and loving.
-
Jan 29, 2024 | 
ourstate.com | Elizabeth Riddick |Chloe Klingstedt |T. Edward Nickens |Lynn Wells
Bathed in low light, a man in rugged Western attire leans against the wall of an old log cabin and speaks of outlaws and the frontier in the late 19th century. The actor, starring in a production of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, blends into the setting, a historic cabin on Smithfield’s Front Street. The venue — with its dark wood and spacious stone fireplace — has provided a backdrop for countless performances over the past decades.
-
Oct 23, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | Susan Stafford Kelly |Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick
For nine decades, Our State has made its way into homes across North Carolina, the United States, and the world. To celebrate, every month this year, we’re paying tribute to the readers who inspire us, offering a taste of our earliest recipes, and revisiting old stories with new insights. Follow along to find out how our past has shaped our present. Even after 50 years in North Carolina, Helen Aneskewich still doesn’t consider herself a Southerner.
-
Oct 23, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | C.A. Carlson |Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick
Crafted from an old photo album and nibbled by mice in the family smokehouse on South Turkey Creek, where it had lain for years, the homemade cookbook that Erica Abrams Locklear inherited 20 years after her grandmother’s death in 1996 surprised her. The professor of humanities at the University of North Carolina Asheville expected to find only recipes for dishes that used homegrown produce and reflected her family’s seven generations in the mountains.
-
Oct 23, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | Drew Perry |Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick
To call it a guesthouse would probably be to oversell it. I call it the writing shed, or just the shed. My parents call it the casita, but they like to be fancy. The previous owner used it as a backyard shop, a 12-by-20 building where he milled all the woodwork that he used to do repairs in the house. It’s a simple structure on a concrete slab — or it was, before we tore it down to the studs.
-
Oct 23, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick |Genie Safriet
Ruth Little stared at an empty patch of earth in a Harnett County graveyard. Ten days earlier, on her way to survey a nearby house, the historic preservationist had walked past a rare 18th-century Scottish gravestone carved with a heart and a face. The memory of the stone had haunted her, and now she was back to take a photo. But the marker was gone. Shocked by the loss, she vowed to document North Carolina’s early graveyards before they were destroyed by weathering, vandalism, or theft.
-
Oct 23, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | Katie Kane |Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick
Alongside locally carved duck and goose decoys, a white tablecloth-covered buffet table awaits the lucky group of 200 to 300 Currituck County residents and visitors who have secured a spot at BJ’s Carolina Café on Thanksgiving. Silver chafing trays warm the homemade classics: glazed baked ham with raisins and pineapple, Currituck-grown collards, corn pudding, sweet potato casserole with pecans, and roasted turkey.
-
Oct 23, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | Rebecca Woltz |Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick
Hunter Strickland pours hot water onto loose tea leaves in a gaiwan, or Chinese teapot. He then transfers the tea into a server and dumps it onto a small figurine of a rabbit. This ritual of discarding the first rinse of tea activates the essential oils in the leaves before brewing. “You can think of the first infusion that dried tea leaves yield as sort of like the first pancake: It’s never the best,” says Strickland, owner of High Climate Tea Company in Asheville.
-
Oct 19, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | Brad Campbell |Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick
When Greg Carter is out in the woods, foraging for mushrooms with his students, he’s in his element, happy as a preacher in a new pulpit. He bounds along the trail, his blue eyes sparkling with equal parts mirth and mischief.
-
Oct 16, 2023 | 
ourstate.com | Mark Kemp |Katie King |Hannah Kaufman |Elizabeth Riddick
Each month, Our State senior editor — and resident soundtrack maker — Mark Kemp, a former music editor of Rolling Stone, curates a one-of-a-kind Spotify playlist featuring North Carolina songs and musicians. Appalachian music, old-time mountain music, bluegrass — those are just a few of the tags that folks have pinned on the guitar-, banjo-, and fiddle-based musical styles that have been played on front porches in western North Carolina for at least the past 200 years.
