Cooks talk and this author listens

If Foy Allen Edelman hadn't decided to make a 180-degree turn in her life, she would have never heard the collard poem.

A singular place and time

With music by such rising stars as John Hammond and Doc Watson, poetry readings, jazz performances, art exhibits and an intensely political atmosphere, the Sidetrack was Cup A Joe, Amazon.com, the Cat's Cradle, Lump Gallery, myspace.com and Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary rolled into one.

Sidetrack favorites

During 1965, the peak year for the Sidetrack coffeehouse, some of the most popular acts in the booming folk and blues movement came to Raleigh. You can seek out their recordings, reissued in CD, or listen online to brief selections from each.

Piling rot threatens Boston history

The dried-out wooden pilings beneath Lewis Lloyd's multimillion-dollar Beacon Hill townhouse were rotting out from under him.

Just as Bostonians are worried about the water-encased pilings that support their properties, custodians of North Carolina's Cape Hatteras Lighthouse feared for its similar support system in the 1990s.

Archaeologist still pursues Jamestown's past

In 1957, archaeologists determined that the remains of the historic fort at Jamestown no longer existed and had probably washed into the James River. But a young graduate student named William Kelso wasn't convinced.

Written, assembled and translated over many centuries, the Holy Bible is the most printed and most read book in human history, influencing everything from art and music to politics and pop culture.

Red Tide Blues

From his office window, Olyn Cert watched two tourist kids skipping stones on the river. They played knee-deep at the base of a mountain of riprap, one among the hundreds of palisades of quarried rock dumped along the lower Neuse in an attempt to stop the erosion kicked into high gear by Hurricane Isabel.

After hearing the horrible news that all but one of the 13 West Virginia coal miners trapped in an an underground explosion had died instead of surviving, as first announced, I walked into the brilliant sunshine and breathed deep of the crisp air.