So who's a TarHeel?

I moved here three years ago, one of those "damned Yankees" who comes here to visit and stays. Slowly I'm learning to become southern - to slow down, quiet down, watch college basketball games. Basketball qualifies as a religion in Chapel Hill. One doesn't schedule a dinner party without checking to see if there's a game. All normal social life ceases during the ACC tournament. The Super Bowl is largely ignored.

Last year I was back home in Rhode Island and ran into someone who hadn't seen me for a while. This was the ensuing conversation:

"Where are you living now?"

"Chapel Hill"

Blank expression.

"Chapel Hill, North Carolina"

Still no sigh of recognition.

"Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home of the Tarheels, the best basketball team in the United States!"

The moment was an epiphany - not for him, but for me. Something had surely changed. I was still New England born, still New York sophisticated. But I'd also become a southerner of sorts.

Tonight, I tired of watching Olympic lady athletes in shiny tights leaping from great heights into the snow, so I watched the game instead. The Baby Tarheels (mostly fresh-faced freshmen) did just fine for themselves. They won, too.

Ruminations on the Daytona

I have no idea why I watch the Daytona 500, but it's two years in a row that I've done this. I suspect that I'm trying to figure out why this racing business has become the biggest sports attraction in the country.

Perhaps it's that, for many people, it seems accessible. You don't need a perfect body; you don't even have to train. You just have to know how to drive a car real well and find someone who'll fund your ride.

Maybe it's all the machinery, a glorification of the ordinary. The guy who changes the tires becomes part of a heroic team.

Maybe it's the dance with death; the next curve could be your last.

Last year, the Daytona occasioned something truly remarkable. There was the usual religious invocation before the race - "bless us, bless them, bless the machines" - that sort of thing. But the ending was the grabber. In a Southern accent, the minister said..."Shalom!"

It's the New South indeed.