Flat Tire Delays Blount Street Move
As I post this, the 350 ton house being moved from Wilmington to Blount Street is sitting in the road, stranded by a tire blow-out that created a sound heard for blocks. A large crowd is on hand as National Geographic films the event. Workers are developing a plan to winch up that corner of the house and replace the tire, which is deemed necessary before further progress can take place.
crowd watches preparation for next shift
sliding down on to Blount Street
Goodnight, Raleigh! post
Raleigh Rambles Blount Street page
Follow Up
The picture above is this massive house while west of Blount Street. Below it is safely parked in its future lot east of Blount. The move took a couple of hours longer than planned. We were sitting inside our house on Person Street when we heard a huge sound – not the tire blowing out but the lurch/shift of the house afterward. I had been going back and forth all morning and missed being on the scene. Once they got the tire replaced and got the house safely across Blount they started moving the smaller green house to its position on Person next to the Murphy School (along with 2 other previously moved structures). The final picture of that move was taken at 3PM this Saturday afternoon. A long day for Blake House Movers of Greensboro, a long wait for the utility workers waiting to restore the lines along Blount – and a circus of a morning for Oakwood residents, assorted vendors, and the ever present representatives (with brochures) from the Blount Street Commons development.
Blount Street Commons and the Pell Street River
My Blount Street Project page is partly about my fascination with all construction sites – this one being across my street is particularly convenient. Moving houses is always fun to watch. This large imposing structure just made it’s move. But we are obviously watching for the pros and cons of this project with respect to our own interests. The Pell Street River is a big “current” concern. It was given that name by our children as they played years ago in the large rainwater flows that gush down our tiny side street after a big rain. With the new drainage system (at the front end, at least) and the large exposed areas of red clay, we knew there might be problems. I have written a story on the Blount Street page about the problem.
Pell Street River descends
Below are a few more house moving images. It sure is fun to watch. Progress is a back and forth thing!
- where it came from
(pictures click to enlarge)
White Squirrel Update
So I start this blog just as I’m furiously finishing my school year. Before I know it, time for a 6 day Env. Ed. teachers camp in Brevard, home of the white squirrels. I get back, and my nature blog’s been attacked by a robot hack and has to be rebuilt. Take care of that and promptly get sick. Rare visit to the doctor, start my Z-pack, and it’s time for the week of full time teaching at Artspace I’m in the midst of. So that’s why I didn’t tell you sooner,
I’M FEATURING AT ARTSPACE’S STAMMER THIS FRIDAY NIGHT!!
Stammer is a wonderful, quirky, imfamously late-running, over-packed event that very much follows in a direct line of downtown open mike traditions reaching back to The Paper Plant. Mz Julee, seen below, ministers to a fervent and incredibly diverse cast of performers. Stammer has seen experimental music, health department sex ed films, a massuese interspersing his body work with poetry, break dancers, and along the way a few poets. The audiences are usually large and appreciative. The open mike runs late in the event, but always has pleasant surprises. Doors open at 8 o’clock – an early start that will be part of Artspace’s “First Friday after July 4th” event, which is being celebrated by several other galleries, such as Adam Cave and Flanders.
I can’t wait to get back to health and time to write – it’s been a great early summer for art. Susan Toplikar opened a fantastic show consisting mostly of a deconstructed notebook of bird drawings, her husband Mike Cindric has a fascinating new structure at the Art Museum, and Artspace has an interesting artist in residence working on an installation to open later this summer. I should mention that Grimenesa Amoros had a show in Miami extended to August 31. Images of her work and more about all of the former will come soon.
And if you want more of the white squirrels, you’ll have to check Raleigh Nature – after I get caught up!!
update
the white squirrel post
and picture album
Person Street rambles out to the big wide world!
Here we go and you are welcome for the ride. Raleigh Rambles. A Raleigh native’s rambles. Raleighites making art and making good. The city of Raleigh rambles out to the big wide world. The big wide world rambles into Raleigh. All of the above. This is my personal blog – mostly art and culture, but whatever else as well, because it is all good, all is good. Everything we do is art – or can be. Welcome to my new blog.
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This online world is a hoot and a holler, isn’t it? It’s been fun to watch and even more fun to join. I’ve been very lucky. My school had a Nando account, allowing us to use gophers and ftp’s to look at a few data bases, before the World Wide Web came to exist. I have watched my buddy Clyde take the Net by the horns and shake it like a money tree for some time, while building his hip hop web empire. My friend Richard has been hand-rolling a blog since before there were blogs – I guess that means he helped create the blog culture. Blogs seem very much to be the universal multi-media uberform that Clyde and I dreamed about in the late seventies. I like them very very much.
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Raleigh is blessed with great local blogs. Raleighing was fun while it lasted. New Raleigh does a most professional job, as recently with their slideshow of Rebusfest, and a review of my new neighbor, Rosie’s Plate. And RDUwtf, of course, has my biased adoration, and is back in business after a nasty spamlink attack. Here, I’m not trying to review Raleigh – I’m portraying myself and my cultural mileu as a native Raleighite.
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A fine cultural mileu indeed! World class museums, enough of a city to be a city but rural scenes a ten minute drive away. Greenways galore, which I blog about at Raleigh Nature. A decent music scene, I understand, but you will not read much about any music other than jazz here. My favorite piece of Raleigh is the whole scene anchored by The College of Design -with Sadlacks’s as its lodestone. I love to run into old friends or find out what young art entreprenuers like Sarah Blackmon are up to. And I still get to enjoy catching somebody up on The Paper Plant and being reminded it is still remembered.
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So here goes my personal take on Raleigh, old and new, work and play – living the examined life in the New South. Join me when you have a chance!
CAM staying alive at Moore Square Museum Magnet
Lee Moore and Nicole Welch conduct an afterschool program each year at Wake County’s Moore Square Museum Magnet Middle School. CAM, Contemporary Art Museum, has sponsored art programs associated with the school “since its first conception,” said Welch at the recent culminating event for the program. It was held at the Raleigh City Museum, which was the perfect venue. Amidst large images of Raleigh’s history, the young students got up in front of a good crowd of parents, friends and artsy fartsies like me, and described their efforts at coming to grips with the real history of Moore Square, essentially part of their schoolyard, and also the ways in which downtown Raleigh operates. They shared research photographs, artwork and tales about the urban history surrounding Moore Square. The Raleigh trivia game they conducted was a riot, and it’s clear that Lee Moore has found a wonderful venue for her wonderful mix of interest and talents. Lee has enriched the Raleigh art scene in so many different ways, with her music, her art, her studio, curating and promoting art through Rebus Works, participating in global art exchanges which have brought fascinating and important art workers into the area – and so much more.
Lee Moore, artist and educator, speaks at the Raleigh City Museum
Lucky kids. And lucky CAM, which has used programs such as this to maintain a presence and demonstrate viability during its long hiatus as a public space. Hopes are high with the new director, who says work to bring the West Street building up to code will begin soon. NewRaleigh just posted on the most recent design plans.
Below is the window display at the Raleigh City Museum in the old Briggs building on Fayetteville Street.
The visual products of the program are on display at several locations in downtown.
Way to go, Lee, Nichole, and Luke! hang in there, CAM!
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raleighrambles.com
portrait by Guillermo Velasco
Raleigh Rambles 