The Replacements

I'd like to repost this page here, but I'm not sure if I can do that given my limited web skills, so here's the link, which will be active until it isn't.

http://www.thepilot.com/news/features/article_aabbc64c-d383-11e2-9a3b-0019bb30f31a.html

The guys in the photo with the story are not identified, but the "Clay Buckner" mentioned as opening with the "Clackalacky Sisters" replaced me in the combo back in the winter of 1981. They appeared at a great venue in the little town of Aberdeen, NC, where I've played as well. Janet Kenworthy, the proprietor, does really wonderful work in keeping such an outstanding venue afloat in a little railroad town that is probably paddling pretty hard these days itself, particularly with our current state Rethuglican Government working in a veritable frenzy to outpace Wisconsin in its Kochification efforts.

____________________________________



I started out the year thinking to chronicle the various remarkable efforts of our Legislature, but it's been too big a task, and if you want to follow the doings you can read daily reports at www.wral.com. Probably you have better things to do. I've been around long enough to have sat on a bench at the State Capitol Building in Raleigh and watched a Klan Rally in full pointy-capped regalia march past on a cold winter day--it was some sort of show of force re the uppity negras or something, I have no idea now. I was just sitting there on a bench enjoying the day and around the corner they came. I do know that back then we had the relatively liberal governor, Terry Sanford in office. John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated too. Anyways, so far things aren't quite that bad, and the Vietnam War had not even kindled in earnest on that winter afternoon in 1963. I won't be surprised, however, if we continue, or are dragged kicking and screaming, down this same hell-path a good piece farther. People are rallying in Raleigh each Monday to protest the appalling legislative arbeit, and many are being arrested. Our Governor, who hails originally from Ohio, mutters about "outside agitators." It all looks to me rather like what my dear old mother used to describe as the doings, post Civil War, of the "carpetbaqgers" and "skallywags." This is of course the bland demographic story of North Carolina--since I was born in the early '40s we've gained many millions in population, the greater proportion coming from the North and West. Far too many of these immigrants find it far too easy to make much of some Mexican and Central American people who came here in the '90s to work odious, difficult jobs that nobody else would work for the bad pay available, and certainly not someone hailing originally from a union state. (NC beat Wisconsin to the "right to work" punch by some 50 years.) It's really pretty sad.

Further Reading: http://www.theygaveusarepublic.com/diary/11594/no-nation-can-endure-permanently-half-slave-half-free