Best of Our State

 Our first event of the New Year was  The Best of Our  State event put on by our wonderful North Carolina definitive magazine, OUR STATE.

This event is held once each year at the historic Carolina Hotel Resort in Pinehurst, North Carolina.  It features speakers, authors, musicians, all from the state of North Carolina.  It has been my privilege to tell stories at four of these events and to be invited back for 2024.

It is a special treat to be at the Carolina Hotel and Resort because my daddy used to come to this same place each year during my childhood to the State Bankers’ Convention. He would tell us all about it and  I’m sure he loved coming here.

Elizabeth Hudson, the brilliant Editor in Chief of OUR STATE, opened the event following a two year hiatus due to COVID.  She explained the editorial decision to keep the positive tenor of the magazine going through the pandemic by never using the word “COVID” in an article and by never showing a photograph of a person wearing a mask.  She is so upbeat in every way.

I then opened the full event with a fun hour of stories for me with a wonderful audience.

Other presenters for the weekend included Eliot Engel with Edgar Allen Poe and bluegrass music with Balsam Range.

The event next year will be back in Pinehurst the first full weekend of the New Year.  Among others, I will be joined there by dear friends, The Chatham Rabbits, with their original music.

If you are not an OUR STATE subscriber, you must not be a real North Carolinian.  They have been publishing North Carolina since 1933.