The State of Things; 250; Prisons/Lottery/Lost Colony/Felder Commentary

primary our events coming up on the state of things how some north carolina inmates are telling their stories in hopes of keeping troubled teenagers out of prison my guests are the prison i've never been in prison before all things that the tv was black and forgot that they play are asking if it is it's a tv nobody is right also a new theory about what happened to the lost colony of roanoke and some facts and figures about how state lotteries work that and more right after this news fb welcome steve i'm very hard to do in a

wide range of stories we talk with an author who has a completely new take on the fate of the lost colony of roanoke the prospect of a state lottery still being debated we talk with an expert on the pros and cons of state sponsored gambling but first the story of some inmates were trying to keep kids who are often in trouble out of prison there's some places that you can only understand by experiencing them firsthand and prison is a prime example of that however a group of north carolina inmates is trying to tell some at risk kids what it's really like to be in prison in hopes that their stories will motivate the kids to stay out of trouble i've never been in prison before he was a white collar business of the week nobody is going to present that when i would guess that

dr john douglas were raised he said oh i swore i don't see that they get this guy here yesterday well i visited a funny guy leaves of magnolia is a performance put on by inmates at the brown creek correctional institution in poked and early this spring some feral cats were taken to the all male medium security prison see the show and talk with inmates leaves is the brainchild of a lease your roof are all a folklorist and research associate at unc chapel hill's southern oral history program the show grew out of tape sessions where inmates told stories of their lives

and try to figure out how they came to be incarcerated in the first place a lease here is here's a day as is martina dunford she's the director of the new horizons in durand it's an alternative program for kids that have been suspended from school and have nowhere else to go out she's the one who brought the app ms durant kids to their program to watch the plain talk with him afterwards elise even the leaves of magnolia it was first put on by the brown creek inmates in nineteen ninety nine the roots of it go back to nineteen ninety six when you first did your oral history project there that first project oral history project of all in to what these guys are doing now well the whole project really started with an oral history workshop that i did with a colleague of mine kathy wahlberg from southern orchestra program we were asked by our winnie bennett ensign community college's social worker and chair of the human relations program very believe i am to come down and do some oral history workshops in the community and she felt as

though brown creek correctional institution was part of a community and therefore we should hold an oral history were chapter and winnie bennett found me up and asked would i be ok with doing a workshop in the prison and i said of course that would be fine and then a couple of months later when i went to see dead man i realized oh my gosh i'm i'm about to go into in this case a medium security facility i really need to do some some preparation research and be prepared to do a workshop they're so i contacted him a fellow named mark anthony hinds who was on faculty danson community college he also taught at the prison and he agreed to facilitate this workshop and at that workshop i talked with the inmates about oral history about life review and we also talked about the idea of performing one story and i mentioned to the inmates there one possibility for reaching the at risk youth might be to take their stories and

try to create a play out of those narratives so in many ways that concept was born right then in nineteen ninety six about workshop and then i when i'm through the support of the humanities council the north carolina he marries council i'm to do the project and so what happened was that i was working with marc anthony in and winnie i basically created this project where we would do these tapes life or be sessions on various topics following the trajectory of their lives of the inmates lives and those group sessions became the basis for much of the script and we spent eight months doing in tapes like for these sessions and script development sessions the inmates did the writings poetry that we included in the performance that play titled leaves of magnolia draws from one of the poems we also did some improvisation and we drew some of their improv scenes into the vat scrapped and you brought a copy of one the

performances of leaves of magnolia one of the performances from march of this year we will listen to a little bit of that tape ninety one when i first was able to see things sell the past week alone ii is good what you would really yeah no well why don't we will about why she thought that males are in the midwest there is the use of the dream means that universal is the threat you know any road road route innovation that they're investigating that

they use it's cold that's a little bit from leaves of magnolia it's a performance put on my inmates at the brown creek correctional institution in poked in this i basically came out of the real life experiences of the inmates a lazy river all is a folklorist and research associate at unc chapel hill southern oral history program and she really helped them put this together now this is a three act play it begins in a they come out we just heard someone i'm talking about yeah how they got into trouble and what their life was like and it goes on from there sort of duty and talking about turning points in their lives right the three acts are drawn really from that notion of life are you trying to follow the arc of the lives of the inmates there earlier play was far more detailed and following that family

background childhood young adulthood and so forth to reach the young people we felt we really need to consolidate their stories we needed to really bring a lot of power to that performance to be able to drive young people so the first actor's life before brown creek which talks about how they landed from greek life at brown creek is the second where they talk about what it's really like to be in prison and the third act is called turning the corner making choices making meaning finding alternatives and then again it's linked to that notion of life or view the whole point is we review our lives we make meaning of it and then we have the opportunity to make changes you're listening to the state of things i'm mary hartman time talking today with police you river all she's a folklorist and she did a lot of work with some prisoners at the brown creek correctional medium security prison and end up putting together a play called leaves of magnolia they put this play on for at risk kids recently a group of kids from durand came and saw the show martinez dunford of the new horizons probe brought the kids to the show and in a

minute we'll hear some leakage opinions about what they heard in what it meant to bound to hear these prisoners stories and latino what do the kids think when he first told me that they are going to see the show they weren't sure exactly what we're gonna go do and sometimes with the racket because there's sixteen album i make the decisions hassett think is their opinions coming out of a beaver ever turn feed at our sausage in the longer be going to art to the present to it and it would you apply that the inmates have written about them why martin and how they ended up in brown's creepy and brier creek and being understood where we were going and at that point what mukwonago when npr was really concerned wanting to them to really understand the a profound the things that they're doing now are some of the same things that they're that they've

people who are now at brown's creepy did they use to get away and there was one that brown creek who i'll make sure that he said to the kids that if you ever think that one time don't mean something then look at me because i'm pulling thirty two years bit and this was the first incident so you think coming right up face to face with someone who basically heads of the same problems that they're having right now we'll have a big impact on our lives or great impact because when you understand and can visibly see people are going to think it's not always expressed alarm as much as they used to me in this postseason after american culture and family and community it will go all in our house stays in our house locals on in this family stays in his family so they'll get a chance to really say but they know within themselves that the same things and this guy is had gone through going to man oh this is what a ringing in the ears is like does that mean our end up here if i

continue to do some things that aren't so yes actually having a contact we're people who are all one in the same room it would make a tremendous impact on the outcome of their lives and we have a tape of whites only kids had to say after they saw the play leaves of magnolia back in march let's hear a little bit of some of their reactions oh i play it because the way they were talking about their watery imprisoned for with a cat call and tell my family put him in prison and now stuff help them get to that were the war the region on the new orleans is closed the border towns grew because they had some stuff goes off campus that i was going to take you know what was it and the hindus jews this coup athena played by mamie icann the city of movie because of us to know mike has

acquitted of the record pokemon songs so we're still waiting one alton brown created a massive he points to become a skincare you know there's more first offense and attack in the way of us don't have to leave school you love for graduate this is going on and i went into a house of the marijuana business and i liked to play because every day no sense through about dave discuss equipped and so david told me change my mind about the world and about wanting to hang around with people we hang around me to have made it imposes on the ticket price sometime ago

it is good those are some kids from the new horizons program in durham after they saw the play it leaves of magnolia put on by some prisoners in poked and marty dunford is the director of the new horizons program for risk kids it we heard some kids they're talking about how they felt after they start the show and elise he was just saying oh what a big impact it had what you see our weekly came back the next day and the one thing that kept that came out from a number of the kids was the fact that one of the inmates spoke to them about been imprisoned and been imprisoned did not necessarily mean being behind bars but always having something that's holding over you that i'm thinking usually in the best it can be or being the person that you actually are an odd couple the kids at the outset to me and even in the letter the way kids wrote it was that odd are really understand about being imprisoned

and so we get into a discussion about what that meant and we sort of went around the room and everybody get a chance to sort of look at themselves deeper and trying to find out what it was what was what a work it's something in your life that has held you back from being on the person that you wanna be or from doing some the things that you want to do an internet sleuthing in out of that came i think pj did recognize me but these are just blown holes in that but i can break through because once you recognize it's a problem in in what has captured and we sort of teach them from that point on how to amend it warm or foreign operatives didn't to do with it thing that i really noticed about this the difference between earlier efforts you know the scared straight efforts were you take kids to prison and people just you know telling horrible stories and then leave him sitting there the thing that's a little different about this is that it not only has those stories but it has the background of the

people and also it it has been talking about turning points in their lives where they realize that they can make a difference that they can change their attitudes and change their behavior the one thing that i'm really actually i live up in the wind of the show called in and talking about bob merlis of ignoring and the play and bring the kids was that i knew how realistic it was i'm about real cruelty at the kids can really identify and understand i knew then that they will take something out of that and by firsthand and in people being real and they're not putting ben days or stop the nickname in the gas and brown creek were open and they were honest and the things that they said to the keys worked on reasonable situations or whether they were things that the skits experience every day and again they may not say iraq is to not say oh or sort of indicate that that's how my house is to you know those are things as one of them alike but it you could sort of see through them

and even to some of the experiences when they were when we came back to school in an inn from that point all one on us or changes happening in some because that no one associated with the fact that they really it here at some of the information because we met it was a gag from the prism of the big as a brown creek we also re inaugurated as much as i could and smith say to them this gospel in life by haim a similar situation that you're about to give in to an end and once i try to keep them on their minds constantly could see our kids say or he keeps saying things like why are now that's not the writing the door i want to do that one of the things that resonated when i watched the tape was that they're talking about kids and gangs and wanting to hang out with my fear best pals and do whatever they do and several of the inmates said well you know i when you present your resin all by yourself

you do time all by yourself be your friend is probably didn't begin when testifying against you as an accurate maps of the animal in the process mark west is for them to always understated nobody has you back your acting your kid there's nothing that these other kids have that you necessarily need they can help you with anything if you go to court to day that that one of those cute that you will win with can help you don't have your back so you know why you can't mourn them they cannot follow you everywhere you go there's some ice trying to pick you are then oh surely they're not going to do what when you got to the sixth gang members with you but i'll pick you off when you're by yourself that you're not all along the job that so we try to get them to see up front even the situations that they get in and then they were good and accuses in school you you defending john and john efforts to join john stones will be suspended till you get

back in school back and then i'm breaking things down and just be real with it an unpalatable does bring a dal happen to understand unless they saw that as it were offered me anything you do not that we don't need is tilted to dismiss people right is everybody needs somebody but in situations where you're trying to go he can't help you you know it's interesting if i can just respond to martinez comment on how similar the dynamic is among young people in her group and you know in relation to the inmates at brown creek many defensive and working with our to mid twenties incarcerated since age twenty it's almost like they're at and older group of at risk youth still some of them very much so and that holds story she's talking about with big a

member of one of the young people in her group who is now affiliated with again that issue came out in the taped session that i did with people and it is very interesting watching the other young people hold him accountable much as i saw inmates holding one another accountable for their behavior because what they've learned of brown creek is that if they're gonna get out they can emulate them to get out and not come back they can emulate the same behaviors behind bars because in a way they're not breaking the cycle ultimately what's your little bit of the tape of the prisoners themselves talking after one of the shows one of the performances of leaves of magnolia no it's not that obvious your hands ah the potential to hit somebody else and if it is it is it makes it easier to spills wallenstein oh man the sailing is it

dozens and i wouldn't be here right now in all have been in the position to be you know monkeys in a day that keeps you know who knew it really is areas

in the past yeah every day even the prisoner so this and in a sunni city those are a few of the

prisoners talking after performance of leaves of magnolia elise you when you're working with the managers at first just trying to get them to talk about their their lives doing a lifer view thing that you start out with did it take them a while to open up because of what we're just talking about that at these guys grow up in households maybe where you know you dont tell things about yourself and you just you keep yourself to yourself part of what made a difference i think for them and opening up is the time that i spent there at the facility with them i really was there a lot further a number of months over course of several years and i think being consistent being fair be nonjudgmental made a huge difference for them i think in terms of opening up the other piece of the equation is it really collaborate with a lot of different people it's one of the joys of working someone like martinez everyone bring so much to the table and i i collaborated with other partners might

sit down for you hasn't affected your life are still easy and they're not alice martin and pit them it isn't a long project trio and it has been i mean i guess if i had turned to say how i've been affected by it arm i've seen that even people who've made huge mistakes and really regret those mistakes can find opportunities for for correcting that process singh says the inmate's arm try to go about the process of restitution here and one of the inmates who took to people's lives and landed a brown creek and hearing him grapple with that i guess you learn something about humanity both our weaknesses inner strength and it teaches you that i guess we can't jags even while we have to hold people

responsible for things that make sense and i think that's had a very large impact in just how i how i see the world how i how i look at people how looking young people i see such great potential in the kids knowing that if i was able to move out of that environment that he would've been he's a fabulous parties but not have a new the resources allow times to to do with and then haven't returned right back to the community where he was having to defend himself i'm hurt the process an insult but it and it makes my heart filled good one i know that i've done as much as i could do and i say that because i said the mic to them a graduation basically that i've done all i could do over this past year so figure trouble next year don't call me is a blackened safe asset auditioned i save a different enough that if the media will always be we've been talking about leaves of

magnolia it's a performance but on my inmates at the brown creek correctional institution in compton and leaves of magnolia grew out of a life stories project that elisa river all started she's a folklorist and research associate at unc chapel hill southern oral history program and all so with us you just heard from marty dunford she's the director of the new horizons it's an alternative program for at risk kid syndrome who've been suspended from school she's talking about how she brought the kids to the show what they got out of the play you're listening to the state of things on ninety one point five w and c i'm very hard that's still a common new book that claims the lost palace may have been abandoned on purpose also how lotteries have affected the states that have already adopted them editorial teacher comments on education reform that's right after this break stay with us he's big and it would have the unc i'm

very hard that's coming up some thoughts on education reform and a controversial new book on the fate of the lost colony the first a look at what happens when states adopted lotteries gambling and the proposal for a state lottery in north carolina continues to be hotly debated in the state legislature critics say a lottery is immoral they say it's a tax on the poor those who support a lottery say that we need the money to pay for crumbling school buildings and also to build more school buildings for the expanding population dr charles clotfelter is a professor of public policy economics and law at duke university and he's done a lot of research on gambling and lotteries you know your colleague philip cook have really been at the heart of this national controversy over state lotteries and you wrote a book about gambling in nineteen eighty nine it was called selling hope state lotteries in america he also helped out with the national gambling impact study commission you testified before the house select committee on the state lottery is well now he seems like you're so

deeply involved in the us have had that happen i got interested in their usual lottery when i was a graduate student in massachusetts back in the seventies massachusetts had one of the early lotteries i and a friend of mine and i started looking at lotteries and look upon it as just one way of raising money and we applied that the rules that economists do to taxes to lotteries and ask is this a good way to raise money i was surprised to find out the lotteries and help pay for things like the jamestown settlement harvard college in the continental army now if owners are so controversial why why do they have this amazing history but one of things you didn't mention in their list of items at them financed by lawrence was some at least one building of university of north carolina back in the nineteenth century they had been controversy oh because gambling is an issue

that divides people on moral grounds and there are some religious organizations that take a stand against gambling even a sword while others say it's not a problem unless it becomes a financial burden or divert people's attention for more important things and i guess the other reason was that in the nineteenth century lotteries came to a crescendo of really corruption in the great state of louisiana with the louisiana lottery near the end of the nineteenth century and it lead to the bribing of the shoals federal legislation to prevent cross state lottery operations and and it came to a dead stop after that was closed down until nineteen sixty four what about backing in history say in the eighteenth nineteenth century world where they're things like that going on and then as well those boys on corruption but there's certainly a lot of lotteries going on in our country's history as well as in europe and other parts of the the world and the new franklin and george washington played the lottery as you

mentioned the o'connell army was financed by lottery in part dorms at at what war is now columbia and harvard university were financed by large bridges and other public construction work we're on plans by law reason that this was just one of the ways that the public raise money for capital or one time projects he testified before the house select committee about state lotteries and one of two conclusions was there a lottery is really a hyatt progressive implicit tax know we think about taxes we talk about progressive taxes people that make more money get taxed at a higher rate so regressive taxes the opposite but there are really three things in in the question one as high one is regressive and one is implicit the implicit bargain that a lottery is not to tax it is an operation run by usually state government and it has a prophet and the prophet is like a tax but

it's not a tax so we look upon the lottery is having two parts one is you're selling something and the other is you're implicitly passing so that's that's one thing the second is how high the texas and if we did you're thirty seconds of of what happens to the dollar of a lottery bridges and power goes into three parts out fifty five cents this is on average and larissa that fifty five cents go back to players in for prizes about twelve cents of the dollar goes to finance the operation of water including the computers that are on the desks of all the merchants and the commissions that are paid to the convenience store operators that leaves thirty three cents for profit or net revenue to the state so out of the dollar thirty three cents is razed by the state if you compare that to something like our sales tax in

north carolina which is six percent six percent of the sales that is closer to a fifty percent tax so it's high the third thing that you mentioned was regressive than the definition used by economists is that a regressive tax is one that has a higher percentage of the income of low income individuals and of high income individuals and compared to other taxes the implicit tax on lottery is not only regressive but it is heavily progress so what youre saying is its lightly people on the lower end of the income scale are playing the lottery the average dollar plague doesn't really change my income level but as a percentage of one's income it is a bigger portion of the income of people at the bottom and since the implicit taxes more or less a proportional tax on the play then the implicit taxes a higher percentage of those at the bottom that those who thought a lottery could be designed a number of different ways it turns

out that almost every lottery in the us now is based on the same system that is high amortizing very high tax impose a tax rate soared north carolina we're going to run that kind of lottery they can expect to get about thirty three percent of a hundred fifty dollars for every person in the state because that's the average expenditure in the us so would raise some money so how much money we waste i think i have to have my calculator out but i think we've got about seven million people multiply that by twenty fifty dollars the one that by thirty three percent and that would be a back of the envelope estimate that would be like three and fifty billion dollars three hundred fifty million dollars a year so the new village and it would be people that want to have a lottery in north carolina lawyers point to the fact that people run up to the virginia border and down of the georgia border when they have these big games and they put a lot of money

into this stuff and they say well there's that money and it's it's going out of the state when you know we've got this big budget all nearly eight hundred fifty million dollars in our schools are falling apart is that one way to capitalize on something people are gonna do anyway it seems to be the fact that the lottery would be popular i think the carolina poll has consistently said that sixty percent of those polled would they were a lottery and that's like the sixty percent who would play two people would play and people would go to virginia and georgia less often course there are people who object to the lottery just on the moral basis that what you're doing is you're preying on people's weakness in a way to think that they're going to get something for practically nothing and then there are people who are going there we can get without excellent in some states said that they've introduced lottery specially and say like i won the midwest there's certainly been a big increase in the number of people who've gone to gamblers

anonymous and things like that so i would thing about the moral side and the argument let me take a two aspects of what you said one is the addicts and the other is i guess the harmfulness of it something on the order of two percent of lottery players are going to turn out to be hard core problem gamblers who are gambling addicts how are you that is not our specially where commerce we're not psychologists a but that appears to be the case that there will be a hard core and the research that we know about seems to indicate that people who have a tendency in this direction are encouraged when gamblers opportunities are very easy when his availability and a state lottery would create availability so if you know lottery you would create some problem gamblers and that would be on the state's conscience and then they could have such social programs but there's just

come no way around that but for the vast majority of the people that is not any more harmful than eating cookies or are playing video games it's arguably less harmful than things we now legalize namely alcohol tobacco so one might argue why would the state law or prevent people from doing something that's really not harmful for most of them and the answer is that some people have very strong views on and has historically been illegal to the way the state distributes our call that would be one way of distributing lottery tickets nobody other than new hampshire in the early days did this but one could say we're going to sell lottery tickets you go to a unmarked building you you walk up know our ties in a nice person on the other end doesn't try to sell you something that would be willing to if you wanna buy and you walk away but there's no hype there's no cute ads on television only one way to operate a

lottery but nobody's chosen to do it because you don't make as much money for the only way to make this a quote unquote success if you know in the same terms that new jersey and massachusetts and georgia do it is with a heavy dose of continual advertising and just that he was sort of cast your eye in the future to say what the north carolina look like when it adopted lottery bilbrey billboards that will tell you how many million dollars isn't a lot of jackpot this week every night at six o'clock even before we get the piece he sees course we will find out the three digit number that one and we'll also find out what the six numbers for the law though will be and what the panel that we'll also see frequent stories at the six o'clock news of a nice couple in one bill that just won a lottery and we'll find out how that affected their law so it will be an extremely visible thing in those who are morally opposed to it are not unlike say would you buy a lottery ticket

i have bought lottery tickets but that if they could easily have been justified as professional expenditures week we had to see what they were doing on the day of that lotteries in general and also how a state lottery might affect north carolina with dr charles clotfelter he's a professor of public policy economics and law at duke university he's written a book about gambling it's called selling hope state lotteries in america professor clotfelter also made a report to the national gambling impact study commission on state lotteries you're listening to the state of things on ninety one point five w and c i'm gary hart that for hundreds of years the fate of the one hundred fifteen columnist that disappeared off the north carolina coast on roanoke island has been unknown each leader john why he returned in nineteen ninety to find his family and all the other is gone from that small settlement a new book is shedding light on this old mystery roanoke solving the mystery of the lost colony

tells the story from the viewpoint of an anthropologist author lee miller is offering a new theory about the fate of the lost colonists using anthropological methods miller traces the trail of those policy she says were forced to go into the interior of north carolina miller also says the group was sanitized as the result of a complex political cover up back in england better than any new adventure story could ever come up in a hollywood movie and yet it was true life just amazing complexity with fermin street with industries within mistreatment and very haunting and infecting you come up with in my opinion are a really chilling theme behind the whole story which is here is here are innocent people who get caught up in this whole lot of corruption and intrigue going on at the court that had nothing at all to do with them they come to roanoke island where there's another group of innocent people which is the pecan in the nation that live there and both of the two groups get completely and utterly destroyed by huge power ranger going on around them

the one one powering with happening with all the corruption rivalry gingrich core another woman came to town jamestown had a very definite agenda to want to try to cover up the fact that there were lost colony fighting they were powerful enough to retrieve the lost colony if they knew exactly where they were they were last at the time there are a lot of big powering operate within the indian world through a nation known as the mandela so far the theme of this which had a lot of relevant thing david that this is really scary stuff from either innocent people are completely ground down in and corruption power that that care about them you describe very vividly is the scene where john white lee's the colonies dairy conservative imagine what that was like and then as he tries to come back and one thing that's puzzled people for a long time is why it took him three years back there were nation that have been given for fifty years or not verifying in any way shape or form

a first the first thing that they did is that john white and have chronic nerve forgot roanoke and even having complied and if the main committee nobody would think you know the little stranger mean if you be like lemmings if they show up to me your health and realizing that every photo me how to how it a mistake like that happens and we look back at the regional accounting <unk> happened they had very definite instruction to pick up food and supplies in the caribbean along the way and they were not allowed to stop and pick them up that the first that the first four red flag the second word i when they got off a roanoke they were going to put that in there and then continue on to the chesapeake bay and the ship pilot refused to allow them to do that there should be a second life like it that deafening sabotage if you never knew me but the explanation for some reason i had been given a shift well john white with it effectively are here with a weak guy he didn't get along with the ship captain captain probably wanted to go off and be a pirate from ships and make money will ever make that the logical at all the ship pilot with

paid a call on the voyage he was selected for the voyage he wouldn't associate in the corporation so he had a vested interest in bringing the caliph over here for the more he he didn't go off the tea party maybe you live straight back for england there are a lot of places where somebody should be questioning the account the third baby that john white was unable to get back with applied for three years because of the spanish armada that i made it made it more difficult for their worship for getting out other ships were we're very deftly able to get out and of of all of all the people that should've been able to get out and should've been john white picketed colony live part of roanoke which we don't fully established to you know counter counter spain they should have they should have by all rights been getting shipped out with soldiers and shipping them off as quickly as possible to roanoke dinners that the spanish treasure fleet ever come across i have the mothership challenge and white and they have to start you know digging a little bit

deeper and you start realizing that there is a lot of compelling evidence for sabotage then you have to debate could it be that somebody was preventing them from getting back in rescuing them and i think that there is the strongest possible evidence for a concerted plan to do away with the last column from the minute they left england you also dead there seemed to be a concerted effort not to locate the people from the lost colony when a lot of the evidence pointed to the fact that they do gone inland around fifty miles where one of the indian nation and automating thing of all over again for fifty years we've been told by my story of that life conniff probably continued up to the chesapeake bay where they had originally intended to go and they're probably killed by the poet and indian know the funny thing is no evidence supporting that at all and yet at the same time there is quite a bit of evidence a substantial amount of evidence pointing to their existence in the interior then a real crime never really investigated now by historian by detective you would not drop the eminent i i i would

estimate that probably ninety percent of the hard they'd have the hard evidence that they completely thrown out by historians because not fit their standard theory which is that they went to the chesapeake bay were killed the poet comedian and found there were five five different teeth within the confederacy that said driving through north carolina that people there james brown fan out numerous search party and the third party cannot come back empty handed one third party thought mark and crawford cut on the bark of trees and i remember thinking at the time this is a lot like the pier the opiate abuse story and in our pig they were desperately trying to get messages out that we are here and what have the faraway they'll they actually the falloff caliphate at it than the original account of the jamestown search party with the night's speech were found though they knew they were there is again if there's a lot of parallel the vietnam situation and they believe important thing with james brown behavior jamestown very much wanted to established that colony the colony was sinking fast i mean

most of the month or the first expedition brought the jamestown was dead by the next year they were getting a lot of flack home there with it a huge movement in whether the time which i find fascinating again huddling in taking indian land people in england think that was wrong you shouldn't do that and of course they had a financial interest in wanting to establish a colony though they're not going to put out in public though they're being in you know in which people are being held in it in purebred indian people we can get them back with pretty bad publicity so there were definite cover up i mean that that nominee speculation had known there were reports that job like with putting back and they both were not the report that became publisher the time we tried that took some of the lost columnist with them and basically they have they went back and son became slaves some went to work in copper mines and they were part of this this trade route right most people have a very flat one dimensional image of american

indian people especially in the southeast and yet it was a very vibrant very powerful region particularly there were the tribe meaning for north carolina had a trade route that went five hundred miles in both directions with many many artery that went you know beyond that to really carry their influence you know many hundreds of miles beyond that and these are powerful people that controlled the trade route when you know as powerful and as many of the big movers and shakers in europe at the time and a lot on an unfortunately fallon the reason why they got in trouble with actually because of an expedition or ollie got roanoke island the year before they did and just wreak havoc on only did they spread disease which you know what the drug later fault of the drug will fall but they didn't do it on purpose but they also really wreak havoc with local politics and they beheaded some of the leader of the kidnapped from the weird it was a really terrible situation you write about there being a connection between the indian

nation that to control of a lot of the last connoisseurs are brought them into the interior and it now and do you think that they're the same people yeah that i think that that's been one of the main street all the time who are the mandela and pretty intriguing to the word man though actually mean your enemy another nation that the identify who they are and you have to throw our nation to look at the evidence and i think i think they have very compelling that with you know with bishop corey and of course they were the big mercenary the middle men that went to the trading market without republican et cetera welcher names but it becomes clear in the book and i think it opened up a whole new world of people that really have been used to thinking about the indian thought the three fifth round something to remote kept having to mention too and i think one of the things that this book achieved has really brought out this really vivid dynamic image of the indian fathi that i think will be a real eye opener to a lot of people that's lee miller an anthropologist and have no historian who's got a new theory about what happened to the lost

colony of roanoke her book is called roanoke solving the mystery of the lost colony miller has written for television documentaries and she's an expert on american indian history and culture you're listening to the state of things on it one point five w and say i'm very hard now nearly everyone agrees that educational reforms should be a top priority for our country but the direction that reform should take as a source of heated disagreement commentator kitty felde are steps out of the high school classroom teachers and offers this advice mr stanford was my seventh grade math teacher he was head of the math department i'm a junior high school and i came as a very deep shock to me to realize that he didn't know math you have to understand that i was just not ready for this i was a teacher's pet when i get a different answer from mr stanford's i raised my hand beautifully and asked why i had gotten it wrong his answer was so far over my head but i just couldn't make sense of it so that

night when i came home i asked my parents they assured me that my answer was right the teacher had gotten along a fluke i thought about the next week the same thing happened i got an answer which was different from history stanford asked about it and he explained what i was wrong i didn't get it and he kept explaining until i finally stopped asking only once again i was right and mr stanford was on his explanations word over my head you are complete nonsense it was months before i figured out how to do with mr stanford if you get something wrong i would wait until all the other kids had left the class and then i would show him his mistake the next day he would say to the class i was looking at this problem again last night and i happen to notice that blah blah kwok kwok he could understand the direction he did admit his mistake but he could not back down publicly and for the seventh grader looking back i have to say that mr stanford did me a favor he took peters off their pedestal and have me grow up a little but if the circumstances had been just a bit different if i hadn't thought of asking my parents or if they hadn't known the math or if i had been just a little more insecure i would have decided that i just don't

understand math and maybe believe that for the rest of my life never underestimate the impact the one teacher can have my friend alice could easily have had an equally strong impact on many students in the other direction house and i went to college together she went on to get her phd in physics and is now leading researcher in her field but she's always wanted to teach and she would make an excellent teacher way a sushi seriously considered applying to the high school where i teach know but she has three kids her husband is the father and moving from an industry job to teaching job wouldn't involve the pay cut of about three thousand dollars a year so houses still an industry in the world is probably lost a great teacher so one telling you all this public education is a hot topic today everyone agrees that it's broken and needs to be fixed personally i believe that the most important piece of the education puzzle is the teacher put an excellent teacher in an old fashioned classroom with twenty year old books and inadequate supplies and students will get a good education but a terrible teacher and a fancy modern classroom with next year's textbooks and state of the art electronics and they'll get nothing most people recognize the truth of the statements but they hesitate when i take this thought to its

logical conclusion if teachers are the key to a good education that we can't fix education by any more computers are tweaking the dress codes we have to take two very difficult steps first pay teachers like the professionals they are make salaries competitive so that allison others like her can seriously consider teaching as an option but wait now or pay minister stanford's of the world much more than they're worth right which leads me to the second step fire mr stanford identify all the teachers who can't teach and get rid of them that's it two steps to a better education for the country attract good teachers and fire the bad ones but it isn't happening the democrats proposed more money with no accountability and the republicans propose more accountability with no money and both sides' core voters by paying lip service to the idea that our top priority as a nation is educating our children kenny felder is a math and computer science teacher at the rally charter school her that's it for this edition of the state of things

sure to join us next week when we talk with when he popped the creator of the teach for america program that trains people in other professions to be teachers also the progress that's been made by a north carolina ballet company and a talk with the author of the new book john henry days colson whitehead that's the state of things next saturday at four pm or ninety one point five w insane if you have any questions or comments about the show you can call us on our listener comment line nine one nine sixty five one thousand and you can email us at s o t a w n c dot org and hear archived editions of the show our website w and c dot org the producer of the state of things is pollock krasner with assistance from beverly abel james time i'm very hard that thanks a lot for listening see you next week