John B. Marek

There's a good chance that when your family gathers (or gathered, depending on when you read this) around the table this Thanksgiving, one of the dishes set in front of you will be corn. Corn is arguably the most traditional Thanksgiving food, as it is one that we are sure was served at the original Thanksgiving in Plymouth in 1621. But the corn that the Wampanoag shared with the Pilgrims that day was very different from what you will put on your table.  Corn was cultivated by the indigenous peoples of North America for more than a thousand years by the time the Pilgrims arrived.  Originally a type of tall grass called teosinte with a dozen kernels no larger than the ball of a ballpoint pen, it was selectively bred over hundreds of generations until a handful of varieties resembling what we today call "Indian corn" were created. Technically, all corn is Indian corn since all of the varieties we grow today trace their roots back to those developed by Native Americans.  The...

I was surprised by the raucous crowd in the theater last night for a showing of Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The original Ghostbusters was always a perfectly okay movie to me. I liked it, didn't love it. The tone didn't resonate with me. It wasn't quite funny enough to work as a comedy, and it definitely wasn't scary enough to work as a horror film.  I first realized that other people had different ideas about it as a cultural touchstone when the 2016 remake, featuring an all-female cast, was received with violent rhetoric usually reserved for religious extremism and SEC football. It seems that a relatively significant group of teenagers from the 1980s consider it one of the greatest motion pictures of all time, right up there with Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Our Town Cinemas was packed with those die-hards, their children, and (gasp!) grandchildren last night.  Apparently, they got what they came for since they gave the movie a standing ovation at its completio...

Yesterday, Governor Roy Cooper signed the North Carolina budget into law. This was important for every resident of the state, as we have been operating without a budget since 2018. Teachers and government employees will receive much-needed raises, the personal income tax rate will drop, and a slew of necessary infrastructure projects will finally be funded. A strong argument can be made, however, that no county benefitted more, in relative terms, from the signing of this budget than Anson.  As noted in our post last week, AnsonEDP worked with Representative Brody and Senator McInnis to include two critical line items in the budget. One provides $4 million toward the construction of a sewer line extension connecting the new Atlantic Gateway Logistics Park to the existing pump station at Hailey's Ferry Road and making upgrades to that station to handle the increased flow. This sewer line, which we anticipate will be finished by the end of 2022, will allow for a more diverse mix of te...

A couple of weeks after my wife and I moved onto our first home, an old farmhouse midway between Bowling Green and Perrysburg, Ohio, I got up, went to the kitchen, poured myself a glass of juice, and put two pieces of white bread in the toaster. As I reached to depress the lever to begin toasting, a brown object the size of my thumb scurried from under the toaster, across the counter, and out of sight behind a cabinet. Fifteen minutes later, I was standing in the mousetrap aisle of the Bowling Green ACE hardware store, looking for answers.   Someone had clearly taken the old adage, “build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a  path to your door,” to heart, as there were dozens of different ways to rid your home of vermin. Since we had just acquired a beagle puppy, poisons were definitely out, but that still left a bewildering array of traps, both “humane” and much less so. In the end, I opted for a two-pack of the traditional spring-wire on wood base but hedged my...

The summer of 1977 was the summer of "Star Wars." It was everywhere, from Top-40 hits to tee-shirts to catchphrases. I saw the movie at the Clinton Theater in my hometown of Port Clinton, just after school let out in early June. Like many other impressionable youths who saw it, "Star Wars" had a profound impact on me and how I perceived science fiction. When I returned to school in the fall, one of the first things I did was ask my English teacher, Mrs. Dunham, if she could recommend any books like "Star Wars" for me to read. She told me I should check out a book called "Dune" by Frank Herbert. I went excitedly to our school library that same day, checked the book out, and immediately began reading. I got maybe 20 pages in, lost interest, and dropped it in the RETURN slot a few days later. Herbert used a style of writing called, "just throw a bunch of nonsensical words and phrases out there and get around to explaining them later," whic...

The first James Bond movie, Dr. No, appeared in theaters two weeks after I was born, but my first recollection of 007 was hearing my older brother mention the character Pussy Galore from the movie "Goldfinger" sometime around 1968 or 1969. At that age, I didn't quite understand the joke, but I got that it was pretty hilarious and a little bit naughty. I am fairly certain I saw some of "From Russia with Love" on TV in the early '70s, but the first Bond film I saw all the way through was "Live and Let Die," on television, sometime around '78 or '79. Suddenly, I got the joke and spent the next several years searching out other Bond films on the small screen. During my HBO years in college, I added a few more titles, including the horrible "Moonraker," which turned me off to the whole affair for several years.  The first James Bond movie I saw on the big screen was "Skyfall," and that experience convinced me to tune back in ...

Late night, a week ago Sunday, I watched game three of the American League Division series. The Boston Red Sox, a team I have been a fan of since Carlton Fisk's epic homer in game 6 of the 1975 World Series, played the Tampa Bay Rays. The teams split the first two games of the five-game series, and the team winning this game would be just one win away from advancing to the league championship. The Red Sox had gone out to an early 4-2 lead, but the Rays fought back and tied the game in the 8th, and although both teams put runners in scoring position in extra innings, it was still 4-4 in the bottom of the 13th, and I was beginning to wonder whether anyone was ever going to score.  
I was also getting hungry, so I walked over to our pantry and started rummaging for a snack. The pickings were slim, but I did find a bag of in-the-shell peanuts that had been part of a Christmas gift basket from my economic development partners at NCSE tucked behind the canned goods. I returned to my seat...