North Carolina Now; North Carolina Now Episode from 07/20/1998

If you take the life one night a battle between hunters and hikers in North Carolina now. Hello I'm sure I welcome to this Monday edition of North Carolina now how should almost 10000 acres of some of the most pristine land in our state be used. That's the debate in the General Assembly as lawmakers try to decide how they can see gorgeous in western North Carolina should be designated. We'll also take you to the other end of the state this evening to Hatteras Island.

Our guest has written a book about the people and the nature of this outer banks community and we'll stop in New Bern the home of the taste born in the Carolinas. Pepsi is marking its 1 100th anniversary But up first tonight to Transylvania County. Ninety six hundred acres near Bovard on the subject of debate in the general assembly. Lawmakers are trying to decide how to lose this large tract of land known as the jewel Castle gorgeous which the state is planning to purchase from Duke Energy. One plan calls for setting aside three fourths of the acres for the establishment of a new state park and allowing hunting on the remaining one quarter. Another provision calls for all the acreage to be open to hunters and possibly logging producer Clay Johnson takes a look at the land in question. When I get older I'm writing to friends of a new county has a gorgeous work and nothing but water. And for the most part succumb to that temptation. There are so

many and they are so beautiful. Some people might wonder why anyone would want to shoot anything else 300 million years ago with pollution of the earth plane blown mountains as high as the Andes here and geologically what we have left is just the roots of these mountains these ancient mountains that were thrust up because the rest of them have been has been worn away. Those roots are called the Blue Ridge escarpment the escarpment is nearly 4000 feet above sea level high enough to trap warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico. It brings almost 100 inches of rain a year into that you can see gorges. The soil rainwater runs into four rivers tumble 2000 feet. Step by step like water down a long winding staircase in the South Carolina like to pass it and as it passes over each step there's a waterfall.

There are at least 50 of them in Joe Cassie's Three Gorges the F-4 rainbow poles are higher than Niagara. People who come here on a rare sunny day can see rainbows form an alumina spray. We'll then give what people call the bus tour but Paul just asked the kids to lie down on a hot summer day. But it takes someone like Bill Thomas who's hiked the borders for 15 years to find balls like Bear wallow like so many of the falls here. They are so far from a paved road so deep in a gorge so shrouded by trees and rhododendron grove that the view is seen only by a hardy few is kind of remote. It's difficult to get around then. If you want to see all the waterfalls you have to work real hard climb up and down slopes in and bushwhacked through the woods. But the reward is finding what many see as a state treasure. There's nothing like this in North Caroline. There's nothing like this on the East Coast. I don't think there's anything that could even approximate this east of the Cascades

and it could be you'd have to go to Prince William Sound in Alaska to find something that was more spectacular in terms of waterfalls of this area. Is beauty also presented itself here in very unspectacular way in the silent stealthiness of salamanders and snakes and millipedes. There are endangered species like the green salamander caught here in one of Bill Thomas's photographs and there are 81 rare species of plants like the endangered o Coney bells which thrive here but nowhere else. They owe their evolution to the fact that you can see Gorges was never covered by glaciers or oceans throughout its entire ancient history. The fact that this land has been continuously habitable for three hundred million years means that the processes of evolution have been able to go on and on and on. Interrupted Thomas and other nature lovers say North Carolina has a chance to help keep it that way for future generations. Because Duke Energy better known as to power

is giving the state a chance to buy nearly 10000 of the 15000 acres it own is here in the heart of the jackass he Gorges as a park. It would be banished by the State Division of Parks and Recreation as a state owned game land open to hunting. It would be managed by the way. Wildlife Resources Commission the North Carolina chapter of The Nature Conservancy is working with both agencies to resolve the conflict over who would control the land and how it would be you. The Conservancy has helped protect 400000 acres in North Carolina and is willing to allow some hunting to add that you can see Gorges to its trophy case and get some things with the populations of different species or end I or you could say that but uses can be accommodated. And that's what we were trying to work towards is to forge a compromise since there are already more than 100000 acres of hunting game lands in Transylvania County and less than 1000 hunters using them. The Sierra Club

thinks the local hunters have plenty and the state's millions of taxpayers who would help fund the purchase of the land deserve to reserve this piece of property for a little of their own peace and quiet. What I would visualize is a true little trail network couple miles worth radiating out from the central visited a facility and then beyond that pretty much leave the place alone. Thomas is the Sierra Club's point man on the project and once all of the land to be a state park. But if giving up control of some of it to the Wildlife Resources Commission enta hunters will keep it in the hands of all of the citizens of North Carolina. I'll accept that to be in the Nature Conservancy one. As for the Cassie borders to be protected from private developers with visions of homes and condos in their heads who could yank it away from both hunters and hikers and then sell pieces of this peace and quiet to a wealthy few who could keep it to themselves.

If it is acquired for public uses by the state I think it'll be lost entirely. A few people will be able to enjoy it but not the numbers of people that could enjoy it if it was protected. There are already signs of what a lack of such protection can bring. Careless steps taken by people who may love the gorges but don't take the careful steps needed to preserve the beauty that inspired their love in the beginning. So as the beginning was 300 million years. 8.4 million dollar purchase option expires in October. Governor Hunt has included seven and a half million dollars in his proposed budget for the purchase of the land. The state Senate has proposed allocating 5 million. Supporters of the deal are optimistic about a plan to make up the difference with the money from private sources and several available trust fund accounts. Well still ahead on the program the people of

Hatteras Island. But first here is Mitchell Lewis with a statewide news summary. Thanks Marina. Good evening everyone. Topping our news a U.S. district court judge has declared there to be serious flaws in an EPA report on the adverse effects of secondhand smoke. The ruling comes in a federal lawsuit filed by the tobacco industry against the EPA tobacco industry lawyers argue that the agency did not use accepted scientific and statistical practices in assessing the effects of secondhand smoke on non smokers. Many scientists not affiliated with tobacco also agreed that the agency used too low a standard to make its findings. The EPA is expected to appeal the decision. The House Appropriations Committee is considering a provision that will give the state legislature the power to appoint district court judges. Currently the governor makes the appointments. But some legislators feel the process is too slow and could be made more expedient. Under the proposed provision the speaker of the House and the Senate president pro tem would make recommendations for the judgeships and the legislature would make the appointments. The Senate president pro tem would

recommend judges for the eastern part of the state and the triangle and the speaker of the House would recommend the rest of the seats. It appears that some Duplin County voters have been voting in the wrong district since 1991. According to the State Board of Elections a problem with a boundary between the 10th and 97 House districts has resulted in nearly 100 voters being assigned to the wrong district. The state board ordered the Duplin County Elections Board to identify and notify those voters by the September 15 special primary the primary is in the 10th district between Representative Cindy Watson and Hong farmer Johnny Manning. Watson lost an earlier primary by less than 20 votes but the state ordered a new election because of problems with voting. Members of the Oconee band of the supposed nation held an administrative hearing today in Chapel Hill to request recognition by North Carolina as an American Indian tribe. The state commission of Indian Affairs has denied acknowledgement of the Oconee CI on two previous occasions. The commission questions whether the Oconee use of pony can adequately document and trace its bloodlines back 200 years.

If the Oconee cheats a pony can gain state recognition. The group would be eligible for federal recognition which confers special rights privileges and federal subsidies and grants. And now for a look at tomorrow's weather. High temperatures will be in the mid 80s to around 90 in the mountains. The rest of the state will see the mid to upper 90s. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast for most of the state. And there's a slight chance of thunderstorms for the mountains. In business news North Carolina seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has dropped to its lowest level since the current formula was adopted 20 years ago. The rate fell from three point three percent in May to just 3 percent in June. The chairman of the State Employment Security Commission calls the numbers unprecedented. With the state rate actually falling 1.5 percentage points below the national level. In addition to the lower jobless rate the Employment Security Commission reported that some of the 600 jobs were added in the state last month. Employers now have an electronic option when it comes to filing their quarterly wage reports for the first time ever the documents required by the employment Securities Commission

can be accessed and dispatched via the Internet according to the Employment Commission. A majority of the state's more than 160000 employers use some kind of computer technology to file their reports. Internet applications can be found on the Employment Security Commission's website at w w w e s c dot state DOT NC DOT us. And now for a look at what happened on Wall Street today. Oh. Our guest this evening is spent more than a year exploring how to risk the island from its sand

dunes to its villages to absorb every possible detail about the nature and the people of this ecologically friendly coastal community. The result of her observations are a series of 10 essays combined held in a book called Hatteras Journal originally published in hardcover in 1987 it's now available in paperback. And joining me now is the author Jan Bloom is the blue Welcome to the program here. Tell me first about the purpose of this year of discovery. I wanted to write some about a coastal environment and I had an opportunity to publish a book on the subject. So I moved out to the outer banks because it was the one stretch of shoreline I could think of that was really still pretty much on spoiled along the East Coast with the Cape Hatteras National Seashore there there's you know just a huge amount of open land. So I moved out there thinking you know I really want to look at a landscape that's natural that hasn't been touched by by people in that still behaving in the way that a barrier island system behaves and of course I moved out there in the Middle East found that it has been affected very much by people. There was a line of

dunes that was built you know artificially back in them from the 1930s through the 1950s. Actually three lines of dunes from the Virginia state line all the way down to the edge of oak or Coke Island. And it affected the erosion rates severely. But you know my rule my real reason for going out there was to learn as much as I could about Barrier Island processes and about the animals and. You know just the coastal island processes and what I ended up doing was it was finding that I love the people out there so much that I really concentrated quite a bit on them in the book as well. You know I just there's a kind of pioneer like spirit to people who live on Hatteras Island because of all the storms and the you know the fact that you know when you live on a barrier island a storm can come along and redraw the entire ship of the island just overnight. So you are you are a nature writer by trade. So you originally went with this approach to to talk about the ecology of an area but then also involve the people so that you had a hard time separating the two. You can't separate them and you know one of the things that I found so fascinating about the area is that

there are many wonderful stories about the way people's lives have been shaped by the natural world and there's also a lot of mystery to it you know to living on an island just you know it's a very romantic notion. But. Things are so exposed out there that the people kind of think differently about the natural world in their interactions with it. And I'll give you an example. For years and years back in the early part of the century when people built houses on the Outer Banks on Hatteras specifically they didn't build them on pilings and anchor them to the ground. They built them you know just up on a on a foundation and they would make them so that when a storm came along and flooded the islands the houses could be floated off their foundations and set down someplace else it's a real interesting story you know they had found from long experience that if you tried to tie a house down in one place the ocean was washed away one way or the other. And to this day there are plenty of people who live on Hatteras Island who own certain pieces of land simply because their houses were flooded there by a hurricane at one point or another. This this book is the book intended to have an ecological message or is that just

as a result of what you've observed only in the sense that it is especially on a barrier island system you can't expect nature to behave in a predictable way. What I wanted to really get across was that the people who do bet the best on the Outer Banks are the ones who are willing to accommodate themselves to nature rather than having you know basically drawing a line in the sand and saying to the ocean you cannot pass here. You know building houses that they expect to last you know a hundred or a couple hundred years because you know the way storms come along you just never know what's going to happen out there. Accommodation is the name of the game and there's you've had an offshoot of this book you've written a new book and it's about the wind the wind. Ok why a book about the wind. Well one of the things that really struck me when I moved to the Outer Banks was how drastically just the simple feel of a day could change depending on which way the wind was blowing I mean think about it here we are in the middle of the summer on a hot summer day if you happen to be at the beach and there's a nice ocean breeze you feel wonderful you know there's a lot of damp air coming off the ocean the ocean waters are

clear. You can just go out and kind of lie around in the surf and you know hop over waves or you know border surf or whatever but have that wind shift around to the southwest and the entire feeling changes the air becomes very humid the heat is just oppressive biting flies show up on the beach. You know you can really tell what which way the wind is blowing based on how the tourists are feeling at their real cranky and irritable you can tell it's a southwest wind if people are happy and and full of energy it's because the winds from the north east. So then they got me started thinking OK if you know the wind effects things so subtly in that manner how else might it affect not only the outer banks but the whole world. When I began collecting stories about women from people of different ways that they had survived big winds hurricanes tornadoes or ways that winds had touched their lives and what I ended up finding out was that Windows had a real profound effect on our our history. It's featured in different ways in our religion certainly it affects the way we feel physically and psychologically and it's just in the result has been this whole book it's been a wonderful project.

So your new book like Hatteras Journal is also a collection of stories. It's a collection of essays about the wind. You know I my hope of course is that all the essay is tying together. But you know I do have a chapter on the way the world's histories have been affected by wind a chapter on the way the world's religions portray women have been affected by Win's their wonderful myths about when for instance. Another chapter on the on the way that humans have used to and over the ages to for commerce or for transportation. Lou I thank you for being here tonight and sharing your stories with us and it's important reading for anybody in North Carolina who likes to visit the author but it was a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me. Thank you. And again the name of the book is Hatteras Journal. The author is blue and it's published by John Boyer. Thing

with with 100 years ago a pharmacist in New Bern came up with a new soda fountain drink that soon swept the country. Now it's one of the largest selling soft drinks in the world and it's named Pepsi Calum McHenry takes a look at how it all started. Teddy Roosevelt his rough riders charged up San Juan Hill and a new music old ragtime was their way. The pharmacist across the country were whipping up new drinks containing the cola nut and the coca leaf which is where cocaine comes from. Back then I thought it was good for you but right here in New Bern at a drug store on that corner a pharmacist was cooking up something different. He was concerned about the health effects of the coca leaf and his drink didn't have any. His name was Caleb Braddock.

Our member Mr. Brad light yesterday Lyla Taylor of Newbern was just a young girl when Bratton was pouring free samples of his new drink from a jug in front of his drug store. You didn't call it that. No not to matter now it is his color. Would you like some of my cola and we would go and say yes. And he would pull this little cone shape up and we were just had a good day. We have to be known became so popular Brad and decided to sell it nationwide. He changed the name to Pepsi Cola and the taste born in the Carolinas quickly became an American favorite. That's a claim to cure nervousness and make it more cheerful. Well it certainly did a lot for Caleb rattle but a sugar crisis in World War one forced Reddam to sell his stake in Pepsi for $30000 candy sales when Charles just took over and came up with an idea that would save Pepsi

from extinction. Twice as much for the same price. Take back my face my two than the 12 ounces for a nickel Floyd was a huge success. And today Pepsi relics are worth a fortune including this stallholder made in 1909. If I sold it today it would sell for over $7000. Well the last one auction sold for Sunday 500 so I assume this would do even better this is what one of the best I've ever seen of that of the very few that are around a stronghold and stronghold that you know right. How to do a story and this was inspired by the team. When you saw Elvis was shaking a bottle of Pepsi in 1957 and you remember the year the Pepsi generation do.

It was 1963 that same year seated used a diet cola. They called it diet. How do you know the push to launch that went flat so to speak. They changed and a Diet Pepsi which had a lot more success and so did the song written for it recorded it. In fact Pepsi over the years have become a part of the American landscape. And the first TV ad in the 40s to the 70s and this Pepsi classic I am I am. Soon

perhaps he was popping up on television shows that it happened and feature films. I don't want is a Pepsi. I've got one of the bottles from the the movie Back to the future to the bottle shoots out of the counter so fast. I've got one of those bottles and in the 80s Ray Charles sang a new phrase into the English language. You got the right bang bang in 1984 Pepsi safe history and your record now Vyvyan and Elvis for an entertainer to endorse its products. Who else but Michael Jackson did it taste. Born in the Carolinas doesn't set you on fire. Earth movers Pepsi museum will give you plenty to drink in most of this belongs to collector Bob Stoddard who has more Pepsi stuff than almost anyone in the world including one of the first Pepsi cans dated 1949.

The metallic flavor change of flavor cups as these cans that do very well it was until 1960 the Pepsi got cans again looked like Mota. 100 years of memory borne along with its role you hope just be gracious. And how's this for Carolina pride. Just recently the board of trustees at East Carolina University voted overwhelmingly to approve a ten year seven million dollar contract giving Pepsi the exclusive rights to sell soft drinks on campus. Well that's our program for tonight thanks for having been a part of it. On tomorrow's edition of North Carolina now we'll have an interview with Democratic senatorial candidate John Edwards. Plus Marie Lundberg tells us about an outreach program underway at the North Carolina Zoo to aid in the preservation of endangered animals in Africa. Enjoy your evening everyone and make plans to be with us

again tomorrow night for another edition of North Carolina now. Good night everyone.