Here you will find the proposal and rough working plan of what I hope will be a nifty compilation of information and oddness on the Old North State, what I call home (and what others call unmentionable. But it's all Blue Heaven to me).

What I hope to be the end result for this project is inclusion in the larger Unofficial North Carolina homepage and maybe even continued existence as an exhibit on MetaLab. It all depends on what can be done and how well it can be done.

Contribute what you can. Remember no need for huge stories if you don't want to say anything -- photographic 'exhibits' are welcomed also; and "pictures" can be as simple as a matchbook from He's Not Here or a business card from Tar Heel, North Carolina. Be illustrative, but not overzealous.

Idea for the Project

The inspiration for the Virtual North Carolina project came to me one day as I stood in the Intimate Bookshop in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, perusing the bounty of books which are offered on our state. One such book caught my eye -- not for the tourist areas it lauded, but for the weird oddities upon which it expounded. Called "North Carolina Curiousities" and written by a native Tar Heel, Jerry Bledsoe, it is an entertaining and engaging little book about obscure places to visit and famous festivals which are indigenous to certain areas of NC (the Spot Festival in Hampstead, for example, or how about the World's Largest Bureau, in High Point?).

I began to think about a travelogue which wouldn't necessarily detail all of the attractions of our state, but would give an overlying view of the beauty and diversity of the Old North State. Something that people could read and not stop to look at phone numbers or gold buckets for restaurants. Blech.

Incorporated into this travelogue will be photos and, where permitting, audio and video clips of the intrepid journeyers. The places mentioned in "North Carolina Curiousities" will be used as a starting point, but are not necessarily the only places which will be discussed.

For the first part of the project, I chose the port city of Wilmington to be the pilot example. Doing some basic background research into the area first, I took photographs and conducted interviews with residents of the New Hanover-Pender County area, and to visit some of the places mentioned in "North Carolina Curiousities". It was a great trip, and I met some fascinatingly weird people. (Note: This segment has yet to be put on-line, though all the materials and research are in place.)

Contributors should be willing to use their own photographs, writings, and other materials providing that they are attributed properly. Short stories and reflections on life in North Carolina are encouraged as well -- they don't have to be long descriptions of the local A & P, but they shouldn't be one-liners about well-known monuments, either. We're striving for something off-the-wall, but useful; something which represents our state's diversity and oddball nature.

Should you care to check out the beginning stages of this project, look at

http://metalab.unc.edu/kelly/vnc/index.html

If you want more information, specifics on file formats/size/editing or want to know who the hell I am, send mail to

kelly_garner@unc.edu

Cheers,
Kelly