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The James B. Hunt Library at N.C. State

June 15, 2014 by Richard Callahan Leave a Comment

The James B. Hunt Library on N.C. State’s Centennial Campus is winning awards right and left. And after experiencing a guided tour of this amazing building, I see why it’s garnering so much wide-scale attention since opening in 2013. Featuring a very cool, 2-million-volume capacity bookbot, quiet study areas, spaces for collaboration, fully-equipped music rooms, 3-D printers, a video game lab, and even a sustainable rain garden on a roof area, this beautiful library seems to have everything a 21st-century college student could possibly need or want. There are free mobile tour apps for Apple or Android. Or better yet, experience it yourself and join a walk-in tour on Wednesdays at 9:30, Fridays at 3:30, and the second Saturday of each month at 10:30.

And then there are the chairs. Chairs? What’s special about the chairs? There are more than 80 different styles of chairs at the Hunt Library. We tested out and photographed a sampling of them.

I love this video detailing the story of the Hunt Library:

Inside the N.C. Governor’s Mansion at Christmas

December 21, 2012 by Richard Callahan Leave a Comment

While the North Carolina Governor’s Mansion is a beautiful place every day of the year, it is spectacular when it’s dressed up for the holidays and full of visitors with live music performed by school groups from across the region. There’s always a Christmas tree decorated with artwork made by children of active-duty servicemen and servicewomen and another tree adorned with decorations important to our state such as cotton, cardinals, seashells, pine cones, dogwood flowers, and tobacco leaves. The mansion docents add so much extra detail, and the doormen give the experience an extra-special touch.

The N.C. Governor’s Mansion Gardens in Autumn

October 13, 2012 by Richard Callahan Leave a Comment

On this glorious October day while walking through Downtown Raleigh between the Glenwood South Global Fare street fair and the Cooke Street Carnival, I stopped to admire the grounds of the North Carolina Governor’s Mansion. With our run of mild weather, the annuals and other summer plantings are quite large and still blooming and showing off their colors and the leaves on the trees haven’t yet started to turn.

But signs of the seasonal transitions are easy to spot. Many of the vines and trees have hanging seed pods. And while there are still bell peppers and other summer produce growing in the kitchen garden, the cool weather collards are off to a great start, too. The groundskeepers have begun planting pansies, that sweet flower that seems to be made for N.C. winters. And there are so many flats of fall plants and flowers lined up on the sidewalk inside the gates of the Mansion waiting to be put into the ground.

It sure would be nice if the governor’s gardening crew would come a few blocks east and give me a hand in my gardens!

That’s Life in Raleigh.

Inside the Gates at the Governor’s Mansion

May 18, 2010 by Richard Callahan Leave a Comment

I was lucky enough to go on a spring tour of the gardens at the N.C. Governor’s Mansion. This was a free event with knowledgeable docents leading groups around the grounds. And the gardens were quite a treat! They’re fanciful and beautiful, yet practical. Everything is beautifully laid out. There’s rose gardens and lawns and everything is perfectly trimmed and maintained. (True fact: The labor is provided by prison inmates.) There’s a koi pond and even play equipment for Governor Purdue’s grandchildren when they visit. Beehives were recently added that are expected to produce six gallons of honey per year. One of the most colorful spots on the grounds was the staging area where hundreds of plants were still in nursery containers waiting to be placed in their proper spot.

The very best part of the gardens to me, though, was the vegetable gardens. There is a very large vegetable garden producing food and herbs that are used in the kitchen of the Governor’s Mansion, with the excess donated to Urban Ministries. It’s the most beautiful vegetable garden I’ve ever seen and the variety is quite impressive. Not only are there plenty of the expected tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers, but there’s rattlesnake beans, muscadine grapes, mushrooms, and artichokes. Vegetable crops are grown in the spring, summer, and fall. The head gardener was on hand to share information, advice, and samples of sugar snap beans and strawberries.

I left there inspired to work harder on my own gardens and grounds. But there are a few things I need. For one, I could use some pleasant helpers. When my kids work on our grounds, they don’t act as eager and nice about it as the prisoners at the governor’s place do. Secondly, I could use some of those bees to fly over here in my direction to help me out with my plants. And finally, I wonder if any of those armed security guys could help me out with these squirrels.

That’s Life in Raleigh.

Raleigh’s Outdoor Ice Rink

February 20, 2010 by Richard Callahan Leave a Comment

What an amazing treat! A real outdoor ice rink in Raleigh, N.C. It’s true. For two and a half months this winter AT&T sponsored Raleigh Winterfest, an outdoor ice rink in Downtown Raleigh. Besides offering the unusual thrill of being able to ice skate outside in central North Carolina for a very reasonable $6, the Winterfest Ice Rink also offered lots of very cool events such as date night specials, sledding ramps, moms-with-strollers specials, and outdoor movies.

While I can’t say that I actually donned skates myself, I did enjoy watching the skating action. I only wish I had been able to witness one of the moms-with-strollers events, because I really can’t picture how that one works.

That’s Life in Raleigh.

Downtown Raleigh Winterfest Ice Rink 1-29-10

Grocery Shopping at Its Best

February 15, 2010 by Richard Callahan Leave a Comment

So today I went grocery shopping at Harris Teeter at North Hills, the newest store in town. Now, I don’t really mind ordinary grocery shopping, but this was grocery shopping at its finest. Fine grocery shopping? It’s true, and I’ll list just a few of the reasons why the grocery store trip was one of the highlights of my day today.

1: I didn’t need my umbrella. Yes, it was raining, but I didn’t need my umbrella. They have covered parking. Harris Teeter has a parking deck! Rain, wind, snow, heat—-none of that matters when you enter the grocery store through the parking deck.

2: I got a meal in addition to my groceries. You know how they say you shouldn’t go to the grocery store hungry? Well, that doesn’t apply to this store. Of course they have an in-store deli with plenty of sushi, subs, and prepared foods. But here they also have an extra-long salad bar, a soup bar with 5 kinds of soup, and an Asian hot bar buffet with almost 20 items. And there’s even nice tables and chairs where you can eat your food while it’s hot. No need to stock up on those free cookie samples when you shop here.

3: You need a map. Seriously. This store is HUGE. And they actually have maps of the store in little map stands all around. But this is Harris Teeter, so it’s not the warehouse-store kind of huge; it’s huge and stylish.

4: This store has two levels. You can take your cart up and down in an elevator! Or you can take the winding staircase if you’re just there for an express lane trip. It’s one of those things you have to see to believe—-taking your cart in an elevator in the grocery store.

So I think we may possibly have a new tourist destination in Raleigh. Harris Teeter at North Hills, sightseeing at the grocery store. Just like me, a lot of the shoppers there today came because they were curious about the logistics of a two-story grocery store. Well, I’m here to tell you, it is big, beautiful, and worth checking out.

That’s Life in Raleigh.