North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 06/29/1998

It's Monday June 29. Tonight struggling to hold back development in North Carolina. Now Hello I'm worried about your eye thanks for joining us as we kick off a new week here in North Carolina now. Are you one of the countless North Carolinians trying to balance family life with career responsibilities. Well I guess this evening is here to help. She is a sociologist from NC State who's written a book called gender Vertigo American families in transition. She has some advice that might make that balancing act a bit easier. Also

tonight put the stress behind you with a relaxing trip to the mountains. Billy Barnes will take us aboard the Smoky Mountain Railroad. But up first tonight trying to balance between progress and conservation. The economic pressures of urban sprawl are driving up land prices and making it difficult for many farmers to keep their land in production. Tonight producer Ginger long takes a look at one way farmers and other rural landowners can ward off unwanted development. We want to look like a dove that we don't want to look at 50 houses out our front porch to a rural person that's beautiful. The land is beautiful. Bob and Chris Nutter are similar retired dairy farmers. Their land includes Maple View farm a dairy just outside of Chapel Hill. All around them farms are rapidly becoming subdivisions. When we came here this land was were far from a $300 an acre. Well it won't grow any more corn or any more hair any

more and other things than it did then. And then the value of it has increased considerably. In fact the land could sell now for thousands of dollars per acre because it is in prime development territory. Just a few miles from Chapel Hill. What's happening is the high value of property is making transfer from Farmer to Farmer almost impossible. Because of that the farms around them are slowly disappearing. BRIAN DOBBINS a planner in Apple and worked with the netters to help them determine their options. They wanted to battle growth they wanted to battle fields rounding up what houses they wanted to take a stand as landowners and say there is a better way to do this in the eastern and western part of the states. There's been a lot of work done by the Nature Conservancy and other Conservancy is to protect endangered species well here in the Piedmont are endangered species says the family farmer. Once the nutters had an idea of what they wanted to do with the land Dobbins got them together with

Dixon of the triangle Land Conservancy. The TLC is a nonprofit organization that protects natural scenic and agricultural land in the Triangle area. The nutters for interested in saving their farm they have a very strong conservation ethic which is obvious to anyone who talks to them and that they also realize that because of the value of their land that they face texturing estate tax problems that a lot of large landowners. And that very often means farmers a lot of people in their situation face where they may not have a whole lot of cash. They may not think of themselves as wealthy but their land values have gone up so dramatically in the time that they've owned the land that at their death even if their family wants to keep that land they're in danger of losing it. So the nutters have a plan to put much of their farm under what is called conservation easements. One hundred and seven acres are already under easement. More than 200 additional acres will go under the easement over several years.

What that means is that they continue to own the farm with their permanent legal restrictions that will always carry with the deed. So even if they sell it or they leave it to their children those restrictions are always going to be there in conservation easements landowners donate or sell some of their rights to the property. For example the right to mine the land or the right to take timber from it. These rights are transferred to an agency like the triangle land conservancy in an area where you're getting the rapid growth the rights that typically have carried the most value and the most threat for development rights. And so a conservation easement in this location would typically transfer development rights to another agency. When you do that you continue to own the land the land still the land owners property they still have the right to convey their property they can sell their property they have the right to their privacy on their property. But they just eliminated some of the rights to the land conservation easements offer several incentives the lower land values which decreases estate taxes significantly. This also allows land to be passed from Farmer to Farmer

and farm prices rather than development prices. Since the nutters donated their development rights the drop in value is considered a deduction for income tax purposes. Chuck Roe of the Conservation Trust of North Carolina oversees 18 land trusts and Conservancy's across the state cumulatively more than 20000 acres of land have been protected through the use of conservation easements statewide and that's growing rapidly. Almost all of the land trust are using the conservation easements tool which is very attractive to private landowners who are interested in protecting the land that they live maintaining that have private ownership. In some cases receiving substantial tax reductions for those guarantees that the land will be protected. It has a beauty that. Easement can be tailor made to allow for a certain amount of future development. Certainly land uses but not intensive

damaging kinds of development so you can a family can have its cake and eat it too. Love love the land and then you have the assurance that that land will say stay essentially as it is forever encouraging conservation easements in rural areas however does not mean stopping development there entirely. In the Nutter's case parts of their land have already been sold. Providing them with some cash flow and there will be homes lights even on the property under conservation easements on this particular hundred seven acres. There are three reserve blocks for homes but they are very carefully sited to protect the views because the views were the important part of the easement. Perhaps it takes a little bit of looking to the future and land for tomorrow if you believe the concept. If you have loved your land to begin with wouldn't you want to have people love it in the future and to value it as as much as you do its kind of a a gift to your children your grandchildren and and to people everywhere who live around

you or who may just come by. For more information on conservation easements you can call the Conservation Trust for North Carolina at 9 1 9 8 2 8 4 1 9 9. Well still ahead on the program it's all aboard the Smoky Mountain Railroad. But first here is Mitchell Lewis with a summary of today's statewide headlines. Thanks Marina. Good evening everyone. A last minute snag has stalled the Senate budget plan for at least another day. Senators were supposed to unveil their new budget today. Senate President Pro Tem Mark bass tonight has declined to comment on what has derailed the package but yawn saying his fellow senators quote just aren't there. The delay is not leading to speculation that the Senate's 12 billion dollar budget may not even be ready when the new fiscal year starts this Wednesday. The admissions policies of a number of campuses of the University of North Carolina are being questioned by a Washington D.C. public policy organization. A study prepared for the Center for Equal Opportunity concludes

that six of the systems public universities discriminate in favor of black applicants. The study looked at admissions data from 1995 for us in campuses and Asheville Chapel Hill Charlotte Greensboro Wilmington and NC State and concluded that among the six schools the average black student was not as qualified as the average white student. You NC officials have not yet received the study but you and the president Molly broad sense the University of North Carolina has consistently sought to make educational opportunities available to as many North Carolina citizens as possible regardless of race. Broad adds that any analysis of admissions data cannot provide a full or valid picture since college admissions decisions are never made solely on the basis of standardized test scores and high school grade point averages. The issue of racial balance has also become a matter for the state legislature and the law governing charter schools. Under consideration is an amendment that would exempt certain predominantly black charter schools from a law that says charter school enrollment must be racially balanced.

Specifically the amendment would remove the wording that says the schools must reasonably reflect the racial makeup of their district. If the amendment were adopted predominantly black charter schools and mostly white school districts would have to make a good faith effort to achieve racial balance. So medical researchers are using a new study to support their claims that HMO tend to limit the access of patients to experimental drugs. The study shows eligible patients enrolled in an HMO or other managed care plans are half as likely to enter a clinical trial as those with some other kind of insurance. The director of Wake Forest is Cancer Center helped launch the study and says denying patients access to such trials is denying them a chance to receive state of the art medicine. On the other hand managed care officials say not all experimental trials are in the best interest of their patients. And now for a look at tomorrow's weather. High temperatures in the mountains will be in the 80s. The rest of the state will see highs in the mid 90s. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast statewide with a chance for afternoon showers or thunderstorms. In business

news Governor Hunt plans to lead a North Carolina delegation to China for a two week trade mission starting in mid-September. The trip will focus on broadening business opportunities for North Carolina companies and industries such as telecommunications energy banking transportation and agriculture. Tentatively plans to make stops in Beijing and Shanghai as well as Bangkok Thailand and Hong Kong. The trip will be on six foreign missions since he returned to office in 1993. And now for a look at what happened on Wall Street today. Dads

make fine mothers but families moving beyond gender based parenting are struggling for acceptance in a society that is clinging more to an astounding Ozzie and Harriet family image. That's according to this evening's guest who has written a book on how to balance family life with workplace responsibilities. She is Dr. Barbara's been a professor of sociology at NC State and author of the new book gender Vertigo American families in transition Dr. Roseman Welcome to the program. What have you found about the role of the Father. Can a father have

just as much responsibility and make a just as good of a mother as a woman can. My research suggests that fathers can do mothering just as well as women can but they don't usually unless they don't have wives to do it for them. The families where I found fathers were most likely to develop really good nurturing skills were single father families in these families. What I found was that without a wife to jump in and to take over the responsibilities men develop skills and even personality traits that they didn't know they had. How did you go about conducting this research you looked at various different types of family groups correct. Right. This particular study although there are lots of different studies reported in the book itself was a study of single fathers who had wives who either deserted their families. Or who died and so I found these fathers and they all had children under the age of 12.

So these were men who were raising children who hadn't really they hadn't fought for custody they hadn't you know decided this is what they wanted to do with their lives they were fathers who were there every day dad who all of a sudden had kids all by himself. And what I did with I compared the relationships between those fathers and their children with relationships between single mothers and their children between fathers who had wives in the labor force and their children and fathers who had wives who worked at home primarily. And it was a survey question. Now if you have found that fathers can be just as good as mothers why or more men taking on their role. I think there's lots of reasons and there's been lots of research on that as well. And mostly it has to do with the expectations I think we have for what it means to be a mother. Think of the words we're use in we're talking about mothering. What does that tell man right away. It tells them that this is something women do. And even when

I say Can Man mother I'm perpetuating in some sense the problem because when we think of a good mother we think of someone who takes care of children who hogs who pays attention to how people feel when we think of what a good father we think about someone who plays ball but mostly who supports a family. So I think in many ways it's even when women are working full time we still come into marriage and into parenthood with different expectations for what it means to be good at it to be a good mother or good father and man meet the expectations that we hold for them which is sometimes not always Nobody ever meets all the expectations but that when fathers think about being good fathers they think about being good breadwinners and not about. Taking care of people's feelings or cleaning up messes or paying attention to the emotional life of the home.

Something a little bit different about your research is that you also looked at success stories of families that equally share the responsibilities. Right. That's one thing that I did that very few other people have done. And one thing in addition that this particular piece of research focuses on and no one else has is that I also looked at the kids raised in these families and what I found was that there are success stories out there although most of the research finds that when women work full time they still do the lion's share of work at home. In my research I actually found families where the husbands and wives were equally responsible for earning a living and doing the work that it takes to run a household and raise children. And they were doing it very well. Now these families weren't easy to find. They were hard to find because they were rare but they do exist. And in many ways they are. B. Bellwethers of the future. Well what

benefit then if you say that the bellwethers of the future what benefit can be gained from both the man and the woman sharing equally in the child rearing. Well I think the first benefit that's very clear is that the women are not nearly as exhausted as mothers who work full time and then come home and put in another eight hour shift all by themselves. And there's been lots of research recently suggesting that women who do work full time and then do more than their share of work at home feel emotionally estranged from their husbands and angry end and that there's a problem with marriages where women are that stressed out. And so these are marriages where the couples tend to be really close friends best friends the marriage is a very strong. So I think that one benefit is that women aren't so overburdened. Another benefit is the marriages seem to be very strong marriages. Another benefit is that the children are being

modeled for them. A relationship full of equality. And that's good for girl children but it's also very good for boy children to have the role models of how to be a nurturant parent because they won't have to do the same kind of struggle that their fathers hail to be different. Dr. Roseman it's fascinating research and I thank you for sharing it with us this evening. Thank you for having me. And if you would like more information on this topic you can pick up a copy of Dr. resins book it's called gender Vertigo American families in transition is published by E.L. University Press. North Carolinians living in the Piedmont and the coastal plain try to beat the heat by heading to the

mountains this time of the year. Billy Barnes has a suggestion for a relaxing excursion which allows you to take in the breathtaking scenery of the mountains and a little bit of history as well. To get this is a story about the little North Carolina train that once upon a time deep in the North Carolina mountains a work gang came to build a railroad. They were mostly convicts hundreds of them hacking through the mountains with picks and shovels mujhe and drag bands. After several decades the last leg was completed 67 miles of track that brought the outside world to deal's borough. Bryson City was here all Monday and Murphy for more than a century the trains hauled lumber mining products animal hides and tourists thousands of tourists eager to inhale the cool clean air of summer and marvel at a symphony of relief colors in the fall.

Then the highways came bringing tractor trailers and station wagons. There was less and less money for the royals in the 1980s the Norfolk Southern Railway decided to abandon these old tracks they had served the people well for one hundred ten years and forty men died building this railroad. But I marches on and the demolition crews were on their way. At the last possible moment the state thought the railfan $650000 and immediately leased it back to a new company. The Great Smoky Mountains railway this little raucous re-incarnated railroad is dedicated to the child in all of us and since 1988 it has carried well over a million passengers along the frosty took a seat to nobody in the rivers across the great steel bridges and through the rocky how we tunnel with a box car parked on a siding here

and there reminds us that the railway still serves commercial customers and sometimes you see a load of grain or lumber or rock look down to one of the passenger trains. The old railroad has provided atmosphere for. Your major motion picture Jack Lemmon and James Garner came to shoot train scenes for the movie. My fellow Americans and a spectacular train crash scene in The Fugitive was staged here in the beat up buses and engines still lie resting beside main track but mostly it's ordinary folks with an extraordinary love for train travel. And while they're waiting at the bill's burrow station they often visit Floyd McEachern train museum and marvel at Floyd's three thousand items or railroad memorabilia at the Bryson City station.

Now the news it feels weird to grab a snack of iron. Horse will you wait for your train. Even on the train you'll find roving musicians. Even time with the rhythm of the right. So let's find AC. The choices include air conditioned coaches Cup buses club cars diners and every photographer's favorite. The open air units made from old baggage cars to progress cars over the mountain. There are three diesel engines and one good old locomotive olive oil. Daniel was in a tin cell sit back

in its stance and Dr. Larry. Yeah yeah all the times and Colby was named was he me. Just grab the ring

from her. Wow the bus the railway also offers twilight dinner excursions Santa Claus express a New Year's Eve champagne run murder mystery trains and a wheen Express. If you would like more information call 1 800 8 7 2 4 6 8 1. And that's our program for tonight. Thanks for joining us we'll see you tomorrow. Good night everyone.

Thank you. Thank you.