While any number of rabid college basketball fans could have spouted off endless statistics and clever quips from athletes and coaches to illustrate this classic feud over shades of blue, Blythe goes far beyond the court and the locker room to explore the culture of the South, of North Carolina, of family and religion and class and history. For those who don’t quite understand why grown men start flailing their arms and screaming at TV sets in the winter months, tune in to this book to understand what inspires Tar Heels to love hating those Dookies so much.

Commondreams.org

Tired of being spoon-fed the same, pathetic, fast food celebrity gossip? Disgusted by the fodder that comes from the Bush propaganda network known as FOX “news”? Ready for a hearty bite of political wit from a progressive Web site? Surf on over to commondreams.org. Find out what’s really going on in the world before mainstream media glosses it over and corporations sex it up for infotainment. Common Dreams gives you the news you never thought you were missing but now realize you can’t live without. Whether its secrecy in the government, commentary on political interworkings, or news stories that often get overlooked, Common Dreams is a must-read for those who value a well-rounded diet of news perspective.

Collecting Postcards

I’m not talking about the touristy, “Hey, we’re here and having a great time!” kind of postcards. I mean art postcards — the portraits, paintings and peculiar illustrations or images that inspire their own kind of stories. A black-and-white reprint of an 1895 train wreck of cars toppled out of a second-story building. Early dawn streets of Montmartre in Paris. A trio of men looking through bookshelves at a bombed-out London library after a German air raid in World War II. A map of Tolkien’s Middle Earth. A bride and groom dressed for a wedding and walking a highwire tightrope. A family of snails balanced on top of each other. Photographed portraits of E.B. White, Carl Sandburg, Allen Ginsberg, Thomas Wolfe, and Tom Robbins. It’s my own inexpensive art gallery gathered from book stores and art shops and kept in a bulging photo album that would be one of the first things I’d grab if I had to evacuate my house.

— By Michael Beadle