North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 06/23/1994

We are we're here. Tonight meet environmentalist Thomas very good to the planet is ducking us to another tremendous record in this country with losing four to six billion tons of topsoil I want every single year. Thank you.

Thanks Good evening everyone I'm Mary Lou Hart Charke I'm so glad you could join me I guess I should say I'm vacates Bailey is off tonight. She has two very well-deserved days off and that's because she's going to enjoy her niece's wedding to take place this weekend. So she's helping out with all the last minute stuff and I'd like to say congratulations and good luck to Audrey's nice as well and have a good time this weekend. We're going to have an exciting show for you tonight we've got some great feature stories. One by Michel Lewis who spoke to Frank Barrow a wood sculptor. You'll be meeting him tonight. And also before she left a very busy Audrey Cates Bailey went to the kitchen with our Gretchen Lange and she is cooking rice pilaf So if you haven't eaten supper yet this might be a good side dish for you to consider for tonight to get your piece of paper and pencil ready to take down a recipe tonight and also a wonderful guest tonight environmentalist named Thomas Berry. And our John Bass and spoke with him last week before he went on to do his legislative news. So we'll be hearing a little bit from him as well. Now for those of you who have a

lot of patience you'll enjoy this first story woodcarving takes a very special talent and temperament. Well there's a man in Shelby who has spent half a century wiggling anything from wildflowers to walking canes and has received state wide recognition. Michel Louis takes us to Shelby to meet Frank Barrow. My grandfather was a whittler anything to do with it. He was almost a master of it and as a young boy around 10 or 12 years old I used to hang around him quite a bit and I think of some of his techniques that way. Deep in the basement of his Shelby home Frank Barrow continues the woodworking tradition of his grandfather. He has been a wood carver for nearly 50 years and has developed a unique eye for the gram. For example what seems to be a stick to many of us that are looks upon it as a beautiful flower literally. I can do a blossom in three to five minutes and I can put aside a caucus I paid about two seconds sprain in

some painting of a take me maybe about an hour. Something like that and I have to be careful to make sure his comes out right. Barrow says he became interested in making flowers by watching his mother make floral arrangements. Some of the flowers barrel creates are his original designs gains are another barrel specialty canes are made out of a different type of wood. If he's straight and I think it's a beautiful piece of wood and finishing that I use it to use Outlook for sassafras. You may come out ahead green also. And nobody would I mean the thing that would barrels canes are in high demand. It usually takes them three to four hours to finish one cane. If he's not working on anything else some of barrels walking sticks have the distinction of being on display at the North Carolina Museum of History. I feel proud because something that I want to do is share with other people something that you have talent. And so often

people have a talent they don't use it. And so this is one way I can use my talent about and they knew about and know that I have something to contribute to. The state of North Carolina and the people who come to visit carving figurines on buses are also part of Barrows repertoire he says many of his carvings are everyday people and animals. A favorite piece of barrels is one he began working on and noticed the face looked like that of baseball great Satchel Paige. So he kept it and lovingly named his creation satchel. Beverly has never taken an art class and his techniques are highly original. He also has a unique way of producing rich color in his artwork. This is tense you pies here. I just remember being just like you part of me having shoes and make sure his Alderwood is covered and then let it dry and using a brush in buffet then maybe put about 2 or 3 coats on his keep buffing it and it come out a beautiful barrel says he'll try to carve anything although it may take him a while but there is one project

that this master craftsman has been longing to undertake whereas Argh I have the diagram already made out and and that I'm going to call of at least 20 of animal on the ark. Is this going to be the actual size of the hoods Arcturus is going to be the new ones are going to be approximately two feet long and I see a lot of halfway to the bronze for barrels work ranges from 20 to $200 depending on how much time he spent on the piece and how much detail has gone into it. Someone sick in hospital just gave a flower. But when I'm out with my booth there they have a price on it as well I expect that sometime I get Taliban. Well Barrow has another unique distinction. He was the supervisor of a special missions team at Andrews Air Force Base responsible for the safe departures and

arrivals of the president and other dignitaries. Now bear also supervised the departure and arrival of President Nixon's historical trip to China. For more information about Barrows woodcarving you can write him at 500 settle street Shelby North Carolina 2 8 1 5 0. Or you can go ahead and call him at 7 0 4 4 8 2 4 9 0 5 and I hope you have that piece of paper and pencil out because now Gretchen Lange is back with a delicious recipe using aromatic buzz Madi Rice. This rice dish can be used as a side dish or as a light yet nutritious summertime meal on these hot humid days. And now a wonderfully fragrant rice pilaf. Yeah ivory Rice is a real important crop for us here in the North Carolina and South Carolina area. But it wasn't always in fact the first rice crop planted by the colonists was a terrible failure and the people that made rice an important agricultural product were the African slaves

who brought their rice farming skills to the United States and bailed out the colonists and saved the rice crop. Exactly. And here today we have several different kinds of rice to look at this is just a sampling there are many many different kinds. Pretty right aren't they beautiful all different colors and shapes. This is a brown sweet rice which is very sweet and starchy it's very sticky. When it clicks and you can see it has small round short grains. And this is a beautiful red rice called Wee honey rice that was developed in California. It's a question they prepare all of the rice the same way more or less although different cooking times for the different prices. And some need a little more water some need a little less worry about washing it. It's a very good idea to rush to wash rice before cooking especially if it's not highly processed to get dust and debris and so forth out of it. What's that. This is long grain brown rice which has the bran and

germ intact unlike white rice takes longer to cook because of that but wonderful nutrition has all that is still left in there good fiber and so on. And this is the rice that you usually have with sushi. And again this is a stark glutinous rice sticky when it cooks up and you can see it has a beautiful sort of pearly trans Lucerne look to it. This is. That's right. This is wild rice and you're right it's not a rice at all it's a grass seed you can see that it looks quite different from the others and although we call it rice it's a seed and it's still harvested from commutes by Native Americans. Northwest you know I'm sauteeing here in olive oil and I'll tell you it's I'm going to tell you about the rice we're going to use to make our peel off. This is basmati rice and it smells so good. It's wonderfully aromatic it's one of my very favorite races of all and cooks very quickly this is white basmati and we're going to put this into the pan here with a little olive oil and some chopped

shallot. Now shallots look like this. It's a member of the onion family but it's got a slightly more delicate sort of spicy complex flavor. Some people think. It's got a hint of garlicky flavor to it and we've missed some of those and put them in there. And we're also going to add to our mixture of some currents baby raisins. They look a lot like raisins. They're they have a more tart flavor than raisins which makes some nice for savory dishes they're not too sweet. And we're just about a quarter cup we're going to just put right in there and stir them in rice and lastly we have here two cups of chicken broth that I have heated. I you just use the microwave to reheat it. You can use vegetable broth. Oh sorry that's not good. That's why we have a fridge that's right you can use vegetable broth if you prefer not to let me stir that right in and cover it with that and we're going to reduce the heat to 3 on our dial 1 to 10. Let's see

what's going to live long enough to pop in that how a teaspoon of salt and a little bit of bread. Pop up and we're going to let that strike a boil soda and then we're going to let it soak for about 20 minutes trying Audrey. And when it's all done Yeah we have some that we prepared ahead of time so you could see it. And in addition to the currents I've added into this pool some toasted pine nuts the New Orleans wonderful. They're delicious really sweet and again very fragrant when they're toasted like this just toasted in the oven in a shallow pan until you turn brown. And lastly right before you're ready to serve some fresh minced parsley and this gives a beautiful color as well as flavor. Just stir that right in there. Oh that looks so good and it's ready to eat. And that's just what we'll do. Thanks very good with roast poultry by the way. Another success.

Well now that we've made you all hungry if you would like to get a copy of tonight's recipe send a self-addressed stamped envelope to recipes Peo box 1 4 9 0 0 RTP NC 2 7 7 0 9. And coming up Michel Louis will bring us up to date on the events making news around North Carolina. And later in the show John basin returns to chat with environmentalist Thomas Barry. So don't go away. Good evening I'm Michel Louis with a review of today's news from around North Carolina.

Trouble continues to mount for the tobacco industry. The U.S. Justice Department is looking into allegations that tobacco company executives may have lied to federal regulators and to Congress. The inquiry is prompted by allegations from lawmakers that the chiefs of the nation's seven largest tobacco firms may have perjured themselves when they testified before Congress in April. The testimony by the tobacco executives was that since the 1950s they had found no evidence that nicotine was addictive. Attorney General Janet Reno says the Justice Department is looking into the allegations to determine if any action should be taken or if a full scale investigation is needed. There has been some confusion among state workers about the pay raises being proposed for them. And this year state budget executive director of the State Employees Association Bob Irwin says it's because there are two versions of that budget which will have to be reconciled by the General Assembly. There are really two distinct recommendations one by the House and one by

the Senate. The Senate would give state employees basically a 2 percent COLA which is cost of living increase a 2 percent in their pay grade which we call career growth and a 1 percent bonus one time bonus the first two and two would be in the base pay and would be given to them each year in the 1 percent would be a one time bonus. They would see only once the House provisions much different in the Senate they would link all of that to their evaluations. The House provision would give it a 4 percent across the board having nothing to do with performance plus four hundred eighty dollars to everyone regardless of their pay grade. A one time bonus again due in July. So in both cases the way if you want to compare and all things being equal the Senate would give a total of 5 percent. One being one time money the House would give 4 percent plus for 18 for 18 long time money. All state workers are evaluated yearly on their performance. And when state funds are

available. Merit pay can be distributed based upon these assessments of their work. However for a number of years no merit pay has been available. Belum says his organization which represents a large number of state workers is currently leaning toward the house version of the budget. Robson County will be the home of the new Indian cultural center. Governor Jim Hunt signed a 99 year lease today dedicating 400 acres of state owned land for the cultural center. It will create a cultural and educational park highlighting the historical contributions of the various Native American tribes of North Carolina. The Indian cultural center will provide our state with a unique opportunity to showcase our rich Native American heritage. It will be an opportunity to teach our children about it about the important contributions that Native Americans have made in this state. For over fourteen thousand years.

Governor Hunt has been a big supporter of the NDA and cultural center ever since its first administration in 1977. Officials hope the center will provide educational cultural and economic stimulus for eastern North Carolina a fund raising campaign will now be hell to help finance the 50 million dollar center. Law makers and law enforcement officials hope keeping detailed and high tech records of convicts will help prevent or solve future crimes. That's the idea behind one law that's already on the books and another law that's up for consideration beginning in July state officials will start building a DNA database. They will take blood samples from inmates in the state prison system convicted of murder sex offenses arson and 14 other crimes. The inmates are required to give a DNA sample before they can be released from prison. The database is intended to make solving and prosecuting future cases easier because DNA samples can be taken from physical evidence found at a crime scene and compared to the DNA samples on file with the state and bureau State Bureau of Investigation. Meanwhile another bill up for

debate in the state legislature would require daycare center job applicants to be fingerprinted and subjected to a thorough background check. The law would require a check of all standard criminal records on file at county courthouses. A clean report would result in clearance by the state to work in daycare. It was another hot hazy day today with highs mostly in the 90s. Thirty seven counties in the foothills and the coastal plain have been under a severe thunderstorm watch since this afternoon. That watch expires at 9:00 p.m. tonight will be partly cloudy with a 20 percent chance of thunderstorms statewide. Lows in the mountains will be in the mid 60s. But the rest of the state will have lows in the 70s tomorrow. We'll have more of the same weather we've been having. Skies will be partly cloudy and there will be a 40 to 50 percent chance of thunderstorms from the triad West. The chances for storms in the eastern part of the state a smaller about 20 percent. Highs will again be in the 80s

and 90s. House Committee today approved a bill that makes major reforms to North Carolina's worker's compensation system. This measure was introduced last year by Senator George Daniels. It's now on its way to becoming law after a compromise version was reached last week. House Speaker Dan Blue has voiced his approval of the Worker's Comp overhaul. So passage by the full House appears likely the House will also take up another piece of worker's compensation legislation which has already been approved by the Senate. This measure sets up a fund to help pay medical costs of workers injured on the job when their employer doesn't carry workers comp insurance. The fund is financed by a small tax put on businesses. More Sara Lee workers are getting formal word that they're losing their jobs. The latest cuts in North Carolina are at Sara Lee has championed products operations. Forty jobs will be cut at the champions headquarters

in Winston-Salem another 200 10 positions will be eliminated at 9 of champions 11 plants there in Asheville. Clayton Dunn Laurel Hill and Weaverville. The stock market more than any race to Wednesday's gain with a sharp drop today. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell twenty five and a half points to close at thirty six ninety nine point nine. Decliners lead gainers by two to one on volume of 256 million shares the Standard Poor's 500 index was down three and a half points and the Nasdaq composite index was down nearly 12. And now for some stocks of North Carolina interest in. The

Earth and how we treat it is the subject tonight of tonight's newsmaker interview tonight we're honored to have internationally known environmentalist and Greensboro native Thomas Berry as our guest Mr. Barry thank you so much for coming in. How would you describe the work that you do the work that I do is to preserve something of the natural world as a proper context in which humans need to develop. We need the experience of the natural world of the term he used the birds or the crickets and the worms even of the earth. We are genetically oriented toward that if we're deprived that we lose. It's not simply an economic loss it's a soul box. We lose our

interior inspiration of poetry the mystical quality of life. So it's a spiritual connection you see between between humans and the earth that maybe we are losing because of our manmade world. Well you can call it spiritual you call the film this is a very film and want to talk about soul. That's what makes us human. So it's not spiritual exactly in the sense that people generally think that. This has to do with the very structure of what it is to be a human being. And when we turn to the natural world for use primarily that's a terrible distortion because the natural world is not their primary use. It's probably there to be entered into in some kind of a deeper poor have some sense of the mysteries of life and existence and the poetry of life. And so you see a problem inherent in our society where we draw on the earth for resources but not just to recharge our

batteries so to speak. When we talk about the earth as a natural resource and that is terrible degradation of the planet and that is what has led us to destroy the planet then we are disintegrating the planet is dying. At the present time at a tremendous rate in this country we're losing 4 to 6 billion tons of topsoil every single year in the layer of topsoil that is all there is between us and death. And for all if it creates it's because the entire world of the living depends on the top so it's a very precious thing. And worldwide we're loosing 25 billion tonnes of topsoil every single year and it takes an age of 500 to a thousand years to bake a single inch of topsoil. So this is probably one of the one of the biggest problems on the horizon that you see some of the biggest problems it's also has to do with the whole agricultural process

of putting chemicals into the soil deadening the soil and we can for a while and still we are corn and so forth from the soil even though we abuse it so much. But it's a killing process and then all the chemicals wash away into the streams and poison our water and we end up with a poisoned plan. Let me give you this the cigarettes not exactly what they're called but since the Second World War we've become progressively a chemical planet. I was looking the other day at a history of chemistry and in the 1950s were you making 500000 tons of industrial chemicals every year. That's half a million. Now we are making 200 million tons each year. So from half a million to 200 million tons of industrial chemicals gives you some idea of what has happened since the Second World War.

Just in the post-war era of the post war what do you see is some of the problems maybe we're facing here in North Carolina and some solutions that you would suggest of the problems that we have here. Well I think North Carolina throughout that center is trying to be the big industrial state of the South and copying the industrial achievements of the north road building transportation and business generally I think is neglected and has been a process devastating it's not for a moment. In other words I don't think North Carolina has been true to its genius. When I talk to colleges and university of North Carolina and sports wealth don't come home. So develop your culture your native culture develop in the internal economy develop an education suited for people here who are not part of some industrial world with them. We have a book we want to hear from you.

Simply call our view or comment line at 9 1 9 5 4 9 7 8 0 8. Or write us at P.O. Box 1 4 9 0 0 RTP NC 2 7 7 0 9. You can fax a message to 9 1 9 5 4 9 7 0 4 3. Or try our Internet address UN CTV at aol dot com and please give us a daytime phone number in case we need to follow up. Well that's Kamal from the news desk with some really important information that we want to share with you before we leave you tonight. And Dede for some time now North Carolina chapters of the American Red Cross have been putting out urgent pleas for blood donations supplies statewide are low and one thousand six hundred fifty daily donors are needed to keep hospitals statewide supplied through the Fourth of July holiday. Today we hear of you and CTV trying to do our part. Members of our staff rolled up their sleeves in an effort to

reach our goal of 50 pints. We supply asked our goal and got 65 pints. If you would like to help the state blood banks replenish their supplies. Call your local chapter of the American Red Cross to find the location nearest you where you can donate. And also we want to say that we reached our goal thanks to the help of some employees from DuPont the North Carolina State Education Assistance authority and the Enrichment Center said thank you so much Frank and well. And we want to add that tomorrow have a wonderful show for you kind of a theme show about empowerment we talk to some people about how you can empower yourself through the media and also really important story that I did about women how you can empower yourself for self-defense or you don't want to miss that one tomorrow. And I'll be here Friday and of course with tomorrow being Friday we'll have our usual legislative week in review package. That's all for now. I'm Michel Louis shark United. Good night.