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UNC president visits Duplin
Bowles/Oblinger toure of Eastern North Carolina
New UNC
system head in the field
Bowles/Oblinger toure of Eastern North Carolina
NCCU
parking not growing with boost in enrollment
Parking on UNC campuses
Triangle
is evolving past oil
Steve Kelley, College of Natural Resources, N.C. Solar Center
Political
season starts in turmoil
Andrew Taylor
Mixed-use
HQ in Raleigh warehouse district to be developed by Grubb Properties
Marvin Malecha, College of Design
HEART
AND SOIL
Steve Hodge
Learn
to cope with stress of life changes
Deborah Bost, Extension
Skin
Problems in Horses
Hillary Jackson, Richard Mansmann
Ordinary
People Have Best Ideas
NCSU graduate student (Leslie Hester) and her idea on public education reform
Feb. 2, 2006
Goldsboro News Argus
By staff report
© Copyright 2006
KENANSVILLE -- Solutions to problems within the North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service do not come from Raleigh, they come from people working in individual counties, said the new president of the University of North Carolina.
Erskine Bowles visited the Duplin County Extension Office on a tour of eastern North Carolina Tuesday. The site was the location for a meeting of the 31-member Cooperative Extension State Advisory Council.
The tour was designed to give Bowles a chance to talk with people in four counties about how the Extension Service and North Carolina State University can better serve the region's educational needs.
"Solutions don't come from the home office. Solutions don't come from headquarters. They come from the people here," Bowles said. "Tell me what we need to do to get more people educated. You've been in the field. You know what people need and what can help."
Bowles said education becomes more important every day. Americans cannot afford to sit back and assume the economy will advance if the nation's workers cannot keep pace with technology and the global marketplace.
"The velocity of change: If it doesn't' scare you it should," Bowles said. "I visited Beijing, and I saw 40 first-graders, all sitting in front of computers studying math -- in English."
More students in China take the Scholastic Aptitude Test than they do in America, he added. And Chinese students outperform their U.S. counterparts in several areas, especially mathematics. If the U.S. is to maintain its position as a world economic leader, it must find new ways to improve education, Bowles said.
Low-skill, moderate-income jobs are gone, he said. "And they are not coming back."
A huge problem is the lack of qualified teachers, Bowles said. North Carolina is in need of 9,000 teachers right now, he said.
"We have to get more people better-educated," he said. "Our first obligation is to K through 12. We need to turn out more teachers."
High school graduates need to be better-prepared to continue their education and find work, he said.
"We need more mentoring programs, and when they graduate, it needs to mean something."
The university system needs to focus on access and affordability, Bowles said, adding that he is committed to lowering tuition costs so that graduates don't enter the workforce saddled with large debts.
Bowles noted the changes in the Extension Service and the wide range of services the organization provides. He said that during his tour he found extension agents doing everything from helping farmers fill out tobacco forms to teaching a new mother how to breast-feed her newborn baby.
Accompanying Bowles on his trip were N.C. State University Chancellor James Oblinger and the deans from four schools at the university, Engineering, Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Veterinary Medicine and Agriculture and Life Sciences.
The group had made previous stops at Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, the Center for Marine Science and Technology at Morehead City and the Cunningham Agriculture Research Station in Kinston.
Bowles commended Duplin leaders on the new Duplin Commons facility, which houses the extension offices.
"It's about time rural North Carolina got something nice," he said.
Feb. 2, 2006
Kinston Free Press
By Bob Shiles
© Copyright 2006
Cunningham Research Station’s role in developing and marketing new crops will help ensure North Carolina a bright economy in the future, Erskine Bowles, new president of the University of North Carolina System, said Tuesday.
Bowles and North Carolina State University Chancellor James L. Oblinger visited the station in Kinston as part of a tour designed to introduce Bowles to the impact N.C. State’s research, extension, and economic development programs are having on North Carolinians. Other stops on the tour included the Naval Air Depot (NADEP) at Cherry Point, the Center for Marine Science and Technology in Morehead City and the Duplin County Agriculture Center in Kenansville.
Bowles listened intently as N.C. State researchers and N.C. Cooperative Extension Service personnel outlined programs — such as the N.C. Specialty Crops Program — that are currently ongoing in Eastern North Carolina. The specialty crops program, a partnership between N.C. State University and the N.C. Department of Agriculture, is headquartered at the Cunningham station.
"I believe we are looking at a bright agricultural future here in North Carolina. There are huge markets and the potential is here," Bowles said. "But there are enormous changes taking place in the economy. With the loss of tobacco, we have to move toward new crops, opportunities and markets.
"I’m familiar with the business of farming" Bowles added, "and I worry about rural North Carolina and what we are doing here. We have to create new jobs. We have to move to the new jobs of the future. We have to find ways to help people become more productive."
At the station, Bowles asked the gathering of officials, educators and researchers for ideas on how the university system can best assist their programs.
"I’ve learned that the best ideas come from those working in the field," Bowles said. "Agriculture is such a big part of North Carolina and its economy. I want to make sure that I understand your priorities and how I can help you."
Oblinger said Bowles requested Tuesday’s tour so he could see "up close and personal" the impact the university system is having in Eastern North Carolina.
"He wants to learn as much as he can, as quickly as he can," the chancellor said. "He wants us to tell him how he can help us.
"This (tour) is a great opportunity for President Bowles to get a true sense of how N.C. State listens to the needs of North Carolinians and then uses its strengths in innovative research, extension outreach and economic development to provide results," Oblinger added. "We’re proud of our accomplishments all across the state. Under President Bowles’ leadership, we look forward to doing even more for the state and its citizens."
Political season starts in turmoil
Feb. 2, 2006
Charlotte Observer
By Carrie Levine
© Copyright 2006
JIM MORRILLjmorrill@charlotteobserver.comPolitical season starts in turmoil Inquiries in D.C., Raleigh may rock races Dates to Remember • Feb. 13: Candidate filing opens for all N.C. races (closes Feb. 28). • March 16: Filing opens in South Carolina (closes March 30). • April 7: Last day to register for N.C. primary. • May 2: N.C. primary • May 13: Last day to register for S.C. primary. • June 13: S.C. primary. • Oct. 7: Last day to register in South Carolina. • Oct. 13: Last day to register in North Carolina. • Nov. 7: General election.
Jim Morrill
North Carolina's political season formally kicks off this month against
a backdrop of scandals in Washington, criminal probes in Raleigh, and an
intense focus
on local politics.
All that could affect the outcome of elections for Congress, General Assembly
and local governments across the state. For the first time in 12 years, there
are no statewide races.
Democrats will promise to bring a higher level of ethics to a Republican-run Congress. Republicans will promise to bring the same thing to the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. Andrew Taylor, a political scientist at N.C. State University, says voters may be caught in the middle.
" Do you blame the administration in Washington or the administration in Raleigh?" he says.
Candidates start filing Feb. 13 for the May primary. It's the earliest
primary in six years. Redistricting battles delayed the 2002 and 2004
primaries for
months.
S.C. voters will elect a governor and other state officials.
For the second year, N.C. statewide judicial races will be nonpartisan.
With no statewide partisan races to drive turnout, parties face new
challenges to get out their supporters.
Parties and candidates all will have to fight voter apathy, always
higher in nonpresidential years.
In 2002, for example, just 37 percent of voting age adults went to the polls in North Carolina. In South Carolina, less than 36 percent voted.
Congress
Big pictureHow hard is it to win a congressional race? In 2004,
99 percent of incumbents who ran for re-election won. In South
Carolina,
no incumbent
saw less than a landslide, 20 percentage point margin. Changes
in the U.S. House usually come through retirements, not elections.
That's why the GOP's House majority -- now 28 seats -- seems hard to crack.
There are no U.S. Senate races in the Carolinas.
Races to watch
8th District | Concord Republican Robin Hayes, trying for a
fifth term, has easily fended off challengers before. But
Democrats consider him
vulnerable. They'll remind voters he said he was "flat-out, completely, horizontally
opposed" to a trade agreement just before casting the deciding vote for
it last July.
11th District | Brevard Republican Charles Taylor, set to run for a ninth term, has always sported a Democratic bull's-eye. Despite his ties to two men convicted of bank fraud, a business partnership with an ex-KGB general and other unsavory headlines, he's dodged all challengers. This year's may be former football star Heath Shuler.
12th District | Look for a wild Republican primary in this Democratic district. Vernon Robinson of Winston-Salem is expected to face Salisbury's Ada Fisher. Robinson raised $3 million in a slash-and-burn 2004 race in the 5th District. The winner faces incumbent Democrat Mel Watt of Charlotte.
Wild cards
An Elon University poll found that North Carolinians
gave President Bush -- who twice won the state with
56 percent
of the vote
-- a 41 percent
approval rating last October. Bush's popularity,
the progress of the war and fallout
from congressional scandals could all play into election
year politics.
IT gets interesting if
"
The issue of ethics and corruption in Washington becomes the centerpiece of
the `06 elections. Will (that) give Democrats the traction they've been looking
for against (Republican U.S. Rep.) Charlie Taylor?" -- Amy Walter, analyst
with the Washington-based Cook Political Report. -- jim morrill
Mixed-use HQ in Raleigh warehouse district to be developed by Grubb Properties
Feb. 2, 2006
Carolina Newswire
By staff report
© Copyright 2006
Charlotte, NC – Grubb Properties, the North Carolina real estate firm known for its expertise in high-profile urban mixed-use environments, announced its selection by the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh (CAM) to redevelop a 0.57 acre site and 20,000 square foot warehouse owned by CAM into a permanent home for the museum. The site, in Raleigh’s emerging warehouse district, will likely include residential, retail and/or office space components integrated into the museum setting. Final designs will be prepared following a three-day planning charrette in February to solicit early-stage community input into the vision for the project. The charrette will be conducted by Urban Design Associates of Pittsburgh, PA, a nationally recognized design firm specializing in urban and mixed-use projects.
Grubb Properties, with a current managed portfolio of nearly 2000 apartment residences and one million square feet of office and retail space, has become recognized primarily for two large-scale mixed-use projects in Charlotte:
Morrison, a 24-acre shopping, dining and residential neighborhood in the heart of Charlotte’s upscale SouthPark shopping district; and Elizabeth Avenue, a five-block revitalization project along Charlotte’s planned streetcar line – just blocks from the city center, the district will feature the city’s first Whole Foods Market and an assortment of shopping, dining, entertainment, office space and upscale multifamily residences.
“We couldn’t be more excited about this project,” Clay Grubb, president of Grubb Properties, said. “The Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) has a distinguished history and an important role in Raleigh and in the state of North Carolina. They help ensure an ongoing appreciation for contemporary art, and they provide much-needed access to modern artistic expression alongside the spectrum of cultural and creative offerings available to the community. Both of those contributions are essential components of social and economic well-being.”
“This is also the perfect opportunity to bring our urban mixed-use experience into the market. We’ve developed and managed office, retail and residential properties in the Triangle for some time now and are committed to the community – but frankly, we’re not all that well-known here. CAM has been wonderful to work with, and we’re looking forward to upcoming stakeholder input sessions to gain even more insight into making this a dynamic, visible anchor in Raleigh’s vibrant urban lifestyle.”
The CAM property, at 409 West Martin Street, is one block from the proposed Triangle Transit Center. Preliminary design discussions include two full levels, soaring interior space and two adjacent parking lots - as well as a short list of key functional components such as: both large and intimate gallery spaces; classrooms to serve teachers, students and school partnerships; and new technology as both an art form and educational tool.
“This museum will be a dynamic environment for encouraging and inspiring creativity,” Rhonda Peters, executive director of the Contemporary Art Museum, said. “We chose Grubb not only for their development expertise in these types of projects, but also for their demonstrated sensitivity to the importance of public art in a community’s intellectual, cultural and economic life.”
Based upon patterns seen here and in other cities, Grubb and CAM envision this project as yet another cornerstone for a wave of additional economic development in Raleigh’s slowly emerging warehouse district.
In a related point, in February 2006 a new relationship begins between the Contemporary Art Museum and NC State University’s College of Design. The Contemporary Art Museum becomes an initiative of the College of Design under the College’s “Art + Design in the Community Initiative”. This affiliation combines the powerful exhibitions presented by CAM with the educational expertise of the University to create a transformational museum experience.
“The Contemporary Art Museum is a tangible expression of the importance of creativity in our society,” Marvin Malecha, dean of NCSU’s College of Design, said. “This is a meshing of sympathetic missions. Both entities encourage creativity and community engagement through art and design. It is a further expansion of our ability to get beyond the boundaries of the traditional university.”
About Grubb Properties
Grubb Properties was founded in 1963 in Lexington, NC. After an initial focus
on building, financing and selling affordable homes to low-income families,
the company has grown to become one of North Carolina’s premier real estate
firms with integrated expertise in residential, commercial and mixed-use
development, acquisition, financing, construction, property management, sales
and leasing. Grubb Properties now has approximately 119 employees and oversees
a portfolio of roughly 2,000 apartment homes and nearly one million square
feet of office and retail space. The company is headquartered in Charlotte
and maintains regional offices in Cary and Lexington, North Carolina. For
additional information about Grubb Properties visit www.grubbproperties.com.
About The Contemporary Art Museum
The Contemporary Art Museum (CAM) was established in 1983 as the City Gallery
of Contemporary Art to address a gap, identified by the City of Raleigh Arts
Commission, in the area’s cultural community. CAM has a long and distinguished
history of presenting important exhibitions representing both national and
international artists. CAM’s mission is to present contemporary art and design
in order to explore the role of creativity in everyday life and to inspire
understanding and appreciation of our changing world. CAM’s facility will
address its role as an urban cultural center, a downtown meeting place, a
catalyst for change, and vital element in the region’s urban renaissance.
Its exhibitions will explore the intersections of art with every aspect of
life to motivate the creativity that gives each of us our competitive edge.For
additional information about the Contemporary Arts Museum, visit www.camnc.org.
Feb. 2, 2006
Charlotte Observer
ByRICHARD MASCHAL
© Copyright 2006
Pitchers are tough. But catchers are even tougher.
Pitchers for the Charlotte Knights touch a knee to the red clay mound at Knights Castle. After a few innings, a red stain about the size of a salad plate builds up on each man's uniform.
That's nothing compared with the problem a catcher's uniform presents to Ramon Santiago, Knights clubhouse and equipment manager.
" Some of the time he's sitting basically in clay mud, so it really sinks in,'' says Santiago. "His I have to leave overnight to soak. His might take four times before I can get the clay out.'' It can be frustrating.
" I curse the red clay,'' says Santiago. "They have it in Florida but it's not as bad. And I've been to Texas with the teams I've worked with but it's not as bad as anything around here.'' Other parts of the country do have red clay. But it dominates the landscape of no other region as it does the Piedmont, that rolling plain between the mountains and the sea - extending from Alabama to New York - but forming the heart of North Carolina.
" It is a striking fact of the landscape,'' says Al Stuart, professor of geography at UNC Charlotte.
It is even more than that.
Red clay is the ground of our being, the material that has shaped, nurtured and sustained us. So different from the dark gumbo soil of the Mississippi Delta or the yellow sands of the Carolinas coast, it has produced crops, provided building material for schools, houses, churches and factories and shaped our sense of ourselves in ways large and small.
Embedded in our history, it is the soil "as red as blood'' described by John Lawson, who in 1700 was one of the first Europeans to explore the land; the stuff Catawba Indian women fashioned into their distinctive stamped pottery; the material spit from the wheels of the first race drivers' cars on the sport's earliest dirt tracks.
Gluey enough when wet to pull the shoe off your foot, it tormented Revolutionary War soldiers waiting in Charlotte in 1780 for a new commander, Nathanael Greene, and bogged down the doughboys at Camp Greene more than a century later.
Out of the Piedmont grew the Red Clay Reader, a literary magazine published in Charlotte, and the Red Clay Ramblers, a string band out of Chapel Hill. Place-names such as Redland, a community in Davie County, sprout from the rubicund earth, as do bits of folklore: It was Yankee blood, shed during the Civil War, that colored the ground.
Yet for all its impact on us, red clay is something we don't think about, perhaps until a cut in the Earth for construction reveals it, or we find it under our nails after a day in the garden, or ground into the knees of our children's jeans after a day outdoors.
"
The longer you've been here, the less suspecting you are of how startling it
is,'' says David Goldfield, Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at UNCC. "But
it's good to be reminded of it every now and then.'' Red clay is not the sole
determining factor of who we are. The qualities of our people, their skills
and aspirations, as well as forces such as the climate and the vagaries of
history, have played a large part. But the soil provided the stage on which
the drama was enacted. As we have molded it, it also has molded us.
The engine growled and the scoop of the backhoe dug
into Oaklawn Cemetery on Charlotte's west side, lifting
clumps
of clay from
what soon would
be a grave
waiting for an occupant. Crew chief William Berry watched
with an expert eye.
When as a 22-year-old he began digging graves for the
city in April 1960, the work was done by hand, with
a broad
shovel, a
narrow
shovel called
a sharp
shooter and a pick.
Two men would start standing face to face and back
up. "You'd dig your
end and he'd dig his end,'' says Berry, his shoulders broad from years of labor.
It took about four hours. On hot summer days when sweat and red dirt matted his shirt and pants, Berry would go home at midday to change clothes.
In 1973, the city replaced strong arms and shovels with backhoes. Now it takes less than two hours to dig a rectangular hole with the proper dimensions: 8 feet long, 38 inches wide and 4-1/2 feet deep.
The sod, cut off by the three-man crew and carefully set aside so it can be put back, is yellowish-brown. The underlying clay is dark red with a dull shine. Clean and smooth, it looks as though you could tunnel through it all the way to China.
The red clay doesn't go quite that far, but
in some places it goes down 100 feet before
bedrock.
Geologists
and
soil experts call
it an "ultisol,''
soil formed over billions of years.
About 450 million years ago, the supercontinent
of Gondwanaland in the Southern Hemisphere
began to
move through the
action of plate
tectonics, whereby masses
of land float on the Earth's crusty surface.
Almost 150 million years later, it crashed
into what is
now North
America, pushing
a piece
of Africa into
the continent.
Several things resulted. The present coastline of the South, from Maryland down to the Gulf Coast, was formed by the new land. And the impact created a huge new mountain range, with towering peaks and volcanoes that would dwarf the present Blue Ridge.
The Piedmont plateau, 300 million years later, is the much-worn remnant of those mountains.
" We're sitting deep inside a mountain chain that's taken millions and millions of years to get to this point,'' says Stuart.
Upheavals and especially weathering wore down the mountain rocks, rain over time washing out many of the other minerals in the soil but leaving the iron. That mineral, after contact with oxygen, became iron oxide. That explains the red we see all around us.
" It's as if there's a buildup of rust,'' says Stuart.
The iron explains not only the clay's color, but also what it does to kids' jeans and catchers' pants. The clay is sticky. And the rust stains.
The old mountains wearing down let in the Atlantic Ocean, which covered what is now the coast for millions of years. So that region got a very different soil. Many of us become most aware of the difference between the Piedmont and the coastal plain when we drive to the beach. Along about Wadesboro, the land changes, the red soil giving way to brown-yellow soil and different vegetation.
Bound as we are by a sense of time measured in hours and days, the vast geologic process that produced red clay seems almost incomprehensible.
But its impact can be made highly particular.
In some areas the red clay left behind by the weathered mountains is like a sponge.
That causes the state no end of problems building roads.
" If it's real dry, it's real hard, but when it absorbs water it gets unstable,'' says Harold Landrum, a geo-technical engineer with the N.C. Department of Highways. "You can step in it barefooted and it'll squeeze up between your toes. Clays are not one of our choice materials to build highways on.'' So roads won't crack and wear out too soon, the state puts an extra layer of rock lime or concrete under highways where the clay is unstable to make the pavement thicker and stronger.
It saves money in road repairs but still is costly.
On average statewide, stabilizing clay soils adds about $17,000 per mile for a two-lane road.
For half a century, members of the Outen family worked with red clay at the Matthews Pottery, making milk crocks, butter churns, rabbit feeders and flower pots for a steady trade of farm families. Until manufacturing ceased in 1976 because of a bad economy and high fuel prices, the company turned out as many as 30,000 pieces a week.
The business
now sells
pottery made
elsewhere,
crafts and
silk flowers,
having made
a transition
typical for
Mecklenburg
County:
factory
to suburban
boutique.
Once, Kenneth
Outen, his
grandfather
William Franklin
Outen and
his father,
John Gordon "Bud'' Outen, hand-made pottery on a wheel. Some of the clay
came from Anson County. Kenneth Outen still owns about 9 acres near White Store.
Early on, much of the clay came from nearby farms.
" We'd go out and dig it up out of people's cow pastures,'' says Outen.
Selling yards of clay turned up a little extra income for the farmers. But it was hardly worth the trouble in Mecklenburg, or wherever the red clay extended.
Red clay is not a good soil for growing things. It tends to be acidic, which is why for a backyard vegetable garden you very likely have to add lime and fertilizer. But a bag of 10-10-10 (equal parts of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium) was not an option for the first European settlers. Their treatment of the soil had consequences for them, their descendants and the land.
Early settlers tried to grow corn, which requires a good supply of nitrogen. They were for the most part unsuccessful. Though rich in iron, the red clay was poor in other nutrients.
But cotton and tobacco are good "scavengers of nutrients,'' says Steve Hodge, associate professor and soil science specialist at N.C. State University. They became the staple crops in North Carolina, tobacco in the east, where sandy soils are also nutrient poor, and cotton in the Piedmont.
The early settlers had burned and cut the primeval forest, eliminating a primary source of nutrients. Heavy rains washed away the exhausted topsoil, exposing the clay beneath. By the 1920s, this unfortunate cycle reached a climax: ruined soil compounded by the depredations of the boll weevil. Farms went bust and the South met the Great Depression a decade early.
Even 100 years before, the bad soil triggered changes. When the soil played out, settlers tended to pull up stakes and move.
" Depleted soil triggered movement west,'' says Stuart. The early 19th century saw "Alabama fever,'' with settlers in a sweat to move on, followed by signs announcing "Gone to Texas.'' In the 1920s and '30s, mostly blacks but also whites left the rural South.
Agriculture in North Carolina differed along the coast and in the Piedmont, another outgrowth of the soil. The coast tended to support large plantations with slaves, while the Piedmont had yeoman farmers with few slaves. That, and the different backgrounds of the immigrants to each area, led to economic and political disagreements that still persist.
(In South Carolina, however, both coastal and upcountry planters tended to have large plantations with numerous slaves, and so a similar point of view. A unified South Carolina was the first state to secede, contentious North Carolina the last.) Largely without a vast plantation economy to defend, the N.C. Piedmont was hotly anti-Confederate, with perhaps 10,000 members of a group called the Heroes of America. According to Goldfield, they harassed Confederate sympathizers and assassinated Confederate officials in Mecklenburg, Gaston, Cleveland and other counties.
" Geography sets the boundaries,'' says Goldfield. "You can, of course, do many different things within those boundaries and if you really work hard enough you can go beyond those boundaries. But it does set boundaries.'' In his first novel, "Look Homeward, Angel,'' published by Scribner's in 1929, Thomas Wolfe's character Oliver Gant takes a train from Pennsylvania to Altamont, Wolfe's fictionalized hometown of Asheville. Gant stares out from the train window at "the fallow unworked earth, the great raw lift of the Piedmont, the muddy red clay roads and the slattern people.'' The novelist drew a parallel between the raw land and the untidy people, seeing the prospects dim for each. But Wolfe was wrong.
The Piedmont became prosperous, an ironic result of the poor growing qualities of red clay. "Because the soil wasn't very forgiving there's always been a sense among Piedmonters that we had to try harder to make a buck,'' says Goldfield.
The early settlers, many of Scotch-Irish or German descent, in addition to farming, operated forges or built wagons, the kinds of small manufacturing that would one day give the Piedmont an industrial base and help build the more urban New South.
Looking for opportunity, people turned to the raw materials at hand, including the red clay. One result was the brick industry, a distinctive part of the Carolinas that has given a special look to many cities and towns.
One brick maker was George Isenhour. In the 19th century, he had a gold mine in the Gold Hill district of Rowan County. Building chimneys was a sideline. "If you had a brick chimney, you were considered rich, and if you had two brick chimneys, considered real rich,'' says Tom Isenhour, his great-grandson.
George Isenhour realized he needed another line of work when the gold vein disappeared. In East Spencer outside Salisbury, he bought land with clay deposits and in 1896 founded Isenhour Brick Co., the oldest in the state.
Vice President Tom Isenhour is a member of the fourth generation of Isenhours to work in the company, one of three brick producers in Rowan County. To get clay, he says, the company strip-mines deposits on land it owns.
The familiar brick-red clay is not used. "We call that overburden,'' he says. "It's not very good for brick - the shrinkage is real bad - so we remove the first 6 to 10 feet.' Isenhour makes 130 million bricks yearly, each weighing 4 pounds. About half of that, both residential and commercial, is sold within North Carolina, the rest from Boston to Orlando, Fla., and out to Chicago.
" North Carolina is the brick capital of the world,'' says Isenhour.
The state produces more brick than any in the country. According to the Brick Association of North Carolina, the state's 13 manufacturers produce 16 percent, or about one-sixth, of the bricks made in the United States.
In a typical year, the state's manufacturers producer 750 million to 800 million bricks, and 60 percent to 65 percent of them stay in North Carolina.
For more
than a
century, clay,
dug from
the earth,
shaped and
fired, has given
the state's built
environment a
distinctive look.
With colors
ranging from
red tinged with
orange to
deep purple,
depending on
the mineral
content of
the clay,
brick forms
the skin
of houses, churches
and schools.
Brick
is especially
associated
with
two
types
of buildings.
The
textile
mill
has
been
a
fixture
of
Piedmont
cities
and
towns
for
a
century.
So
has
the
two-
or
three-story
commercial
building
that
marks
many
a
downtown.
It
was
only
with
the
prosperity
after
World
War
II
that
the
palette
of
Charlotte's
uptown
changed
from
the
earth
tones
of
brick
to
the
ethereal
hues
of
glass
and
steel.
If
you
make
brick
you
have
to
be
able
to
transport
it.
One
reason
George
Isenhour
put
his
brick
company
in
East
Spencer
was