The sad story of Kenny Cross

I was searching the Internets today when I ran across this excellent article by freelance writer Emily Badger. Badger tells the story of Kenny Cross, a young black man raised in Raleigh in a loving, supportive, well-off home but who deliberately took a wrong turn in life. Cross had the potential to become an Olympic swimmer but fell in with the wrong crowd in college. Convinced he needed to prove he was “black enough,” Cross joined his criminal friends on an armed-robbery crime spree across the Southeast, holding up dozens of motels and check-cashing stores. He’s now in prison serving a 15-year sentence.

Though Cross’s mother is a doctor and his family apparently did everything right, Cross still chose a life of crime. As his father put it, “He’s stealing from people $300 when he could have called home for a thousand. It made no sense. It still doesn’t make any sense.” Cross had such a promising future but he threw it away. Why?
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Hunting Isaac Hunter’s tavern

Wake Forest Road in 1965


On a whim I looked back at the 1965 aerial photo I got from the North Carolina Geological Survey when I was researching the Raleigh Speedway. It turns out this photograph nicely covers the Wake Forest Road area north of the Beltline! This means it probably shows Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, but the question is where?

Looking at this shot you can see many residential-type buildings along the road. At the bottom is the Beltline, still being constructed and at the top of the photo you can see the eastern half of St. Albans Drive branching off. This area roughly corresponds to this modern-day view shown on Google Maps.

Now my Navy military-intelligence training did not make me a satellite imagery expert, but looking at this photo and comparing it to the roof of the tavern as shown in the Flickr images it’s pretty easy to rule out many of the buildings shown. Second-story homes cast longer shadows and the tavern is decidedly single-story. There are also homes with much fancier rooflines than the tavern, so those are easily ruled out. What does that leave? I’ve (crudely) highlighted two buildings that seem like good candidates.
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Isaac Hunter’s Tavern

Courtesy North Carolina State Archives

This post over at New Raleigh got me wondering again about the long-lost Raleigh landmark, Isaac Hunter’s Tavern. In its day the tavern was known far and wide. It drew our early state representatives together long enough for them to decide to create a new state capital, and thus decreed that this capital would be located within ten miles of the tavern. Yet, in spite of its historical significance to our city and state, no trace of the tavern still exists. Sad, isn’t it?
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Downtown lowdown

I was wandering around downtown this afternoon, on a mission to update the Wikipedia photos for Raleigh and also Memorial Auditorium. As I snapped pictures of Memorial Auditorium a man walked up to me and asked for things to do around town. He was a bit shorter than me with curly shoulder-length hair and wore a tam-o-shanter cap and dark sunglasses. I imagined that he had just gotten off a plane from New York City.

“Isn’t there a museum nearby?” he asked.

“Yes, there are a few. Perhaps you’d like to go to the North Carolina Museum of Art?”
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Columbus Day

Columbus

I’ve got Columbus Day off today, for the first time I can recall. Most businesses keep chugging away on Columbus Day, and while I appreciate an extra day to get things done I have to say that I don’t think Christopher Columbus is the kind of guy we should be celebrating.

Columbus was a greedy, murderous, slave-trader who cared little for the indigenous people he met: the same people who repeatedly saved his bacon in spite of his cruel behavior. He was deluded to the day he died that he had discovered a path to India. Not exactly a role model, in my book, but I’m grateful for the day off anyway.

Secret media cabal weighs information future

Ok, not really. I was invited to participate in a roundtable discussion today about the state of the Triangle media by Fiona Morgan of the New America Foundation. The roundtable was to three general questions about our community:

1. How healthy do we consider the Triangle’s “information community?”
2. What are the challenges as we move into a digital age?
3. What are the opportunities for the Triangle and its communities?

Joining me were a number of leading media experts, both traditional and so-called “new media.” John Drescher of the N&O, Steve Shewel of the Independent Weekly, Barry Moore of the Garner Citizen (whom I last saw wearing a badge when I lived in Garner and was working closely with Garner PD), Kevin Davis of Bull City Rising, Paul Jones of Ibiblio fame, Gail Roper of the City of Raleigh, and many, many others. I felt a bit out of place in the room, as my experience with journalism ended when my high school journalism class did. Fiona has been impressed with my East CAC efforts to connect my community, so I provided perhaps a nontraditional angle to the discussion.
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Coyote sighting

Late last night a man walking his dogs in the Cameron Park neighborhood spotted a coyote as it crossed the road about 20 feet in front of him. The coyote trotted on to the property of St. Mary’s College, apparently paying no mind to the man’s dogs.

I’ve had a friend report a coyote sighting in East Raleigh, too, but her sighting took place along the wooded Middle Crabtree Creek greenway east of Raleigh Boulevard. I think a coyote roaming around St. Mary’s is that much more unusual because of how urbanized that area is. It’s amazing how adaptable some wildlife is.

Street smarts

My buddy Ken Thomas wrote about intelligence and wisdom in a recent post, pondering which one is acquired versus which one is inherent. It’s a good question, as is the question of which is more valuable to have, intelligence or wisdom?

I’ll add more to what Ken wrote by asking about a third type of wisdom, known as “street smarts.” Street smarts is wisdom and intelligence combined: applying the wisdom of an environment with the intelligence to figure it out. Situational awareness, really.

Early in our relationship, Kelly and I took a vacation to the mountains of Asheville. Domestic terrorist Eric Rudolph was still loose somewhere in the woods and I joked to the tourist-booth lady about the odds that I might find him.

The old lady chuckled at the thought. “You wouldn’t last a minute out there,” she scoffed without looking up.
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Answering machines

I called someone at the city today and my call got sent to what sounded like an ancient voicemail system. I was subjected to a lengthy computerized lesson on how to leave a message and it struck me as so totally irrelevant here in the year 2010.

Answering machines have been around a long time. A man named Vlademar Poulsen invented the first one in 1898. Dubbed the telegraphone, it was a manually-operated means of recording a telephone conversation. It wasn’t until 1935 that a machine that could answer itself was invented by Willy Muller. It was later still (1960) before answering machines were first sold in the U.S.
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Lunchtime bike ride

I co-conducted a four-hour training session this morning at work, so afterwards I was ready to move around some. I’d been looking for someone to go biking with me during lunchtimes so Kelly volunteered to join me. She’s training for her upcoming triathlon so she was motivated.

We got in 45 minutes of intense riding on the Crabtree Creek Greenway, riding ten miles total. It was a pace I’m not used to riding as we usually have the kids along. And, uh, truth be told we were going faster than the greenway “speed limit” so don’t tell anybody!

Now it’s close to 10 PM and I’m feeling a little achy. It sucks getting old!