Otterblog

Up in Richmond for a conference with other folks at the company on the future of news, newspapers and digital media. We’ll talk more about that at a later date ...

But driving up here and eating lunch here yesterday got me to thinking again about a question that I’ve pondered for a long time.

What is the dividing line between sweet tea and unsweetened tea. Richmond—a clearly Southern town—is an unsweet kind of place. Henderson, N.C. is sweet. Your thoughts on where the boundary is? This might not be as burning a question as the line between Lexington and Eastern N.C. BBQ, or the brown egg-white egg belt in New England, but it’s still one of those random thoughts that bugs me in the middle of the night or on a long drive....

Check out the latest issue of Time magazine. It’s the one with the Google-geeks and their plan for world domination on the cover. Page 28 has a story about John McCain, who is priming the pump for another presidential run in 2008.

The photo of McCain (it’s not online) with some politicos in Spartanburg, S.C., shows him clutching a cup of Krispy Kreme coffee. Faithful readers of OTTERBLOG know my obsession with the way that beverage containers have become part of the backdrop and fabric of our lives.

McCain is a savvy politician with sharp instincts, the Republican that Democrats respect if not like, and a person who survived a political-influence scandal (Remember the Keating Five?). He’s a maverick who often sees openings and opportunities before the other 534 members of Congress.

You don’t want to read too much into McCain’s drink of choice for this photo. Maybe the Starbucks was closed or the mini-mart was out of Blenheim’s, but for battered Krispy Kreme, this is about as good as product placement gets. 

There is nothing quite like a fresh, hot doughnut. Beignets in New Orleans at Cafe Du Monde. Daylight Donuts in Quincy, Ill., A Krispy Kreme at Stratford Road at 6 a.m. Knakal’s in Culpeper, Va. They’re all great. Hard to say any is better than the other. A doughnut lives in the moment.

Krispy Kreme, our local outfit that did, could, and maybe will again, is changing its marketing tactics. It’s hitting the airwaves, a change for a company that in headier times relied on coupons, word-of-mouth, and free publicity from all those glowing stories as it opened stores across the country.

Covering local companies through a boom and then a bust is a difficult job. Contrary to popular belief, we don’t write stories just to kick folks when they’re down. And the story line here is pretty irresistible. Hometown company makes good. Then makes great. Then becomes a national symbol of our town’s hustle and smarts. Then falls. Hard. Lots of careers and investments get wiped out.

It’s not quite on the epic scale of Enron. But it’s a grand tale of how the world works.

We learned Tuesday afternoon that Sen. Ham Horton had died of cancer.

Ham Horton was far from perfect, but he was in many ways a journalist’s dream senator. He understood issues, gave good quotes and wasn’t afraid to be on the wrong end of a losing battle against what many people considered progress. And he saved country ham as we know it.

I thought of Ham Horton when I watched the president’s State of the Union speech last night and the way the Democrats and Republicans rarely seemed to stand at the same time. Our system is one of partisan politics. People talk about making it less partisan, but that’s hard to do. If you read our obituary today, it’s clear that Ham Horton had friends on both sides of the aisle.

Realistically, what works best is partisan politicians who also revere the institution in which they’re elected to serve. In my book, that puts Ham Horton in the same category as U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W. Va. You may not agree with their votes or their positions, but they have respect for the rules of their chambers, are frequently entertaining and enlightening to listen to, and at their best make our government seem more noble.

Life’s too short to argue over where the best BBQ in the state is. Personally, I prefer BBQ from 336 and the northern part of 704, but that’s just me.

But a friend had told me about a little place in the country called Allen and Sons in Orange County, and I went yesterday on the way back from Raleigh. Outstanding. As befits the geography, the food is a bit in the middle as well. Smoky taste, good sauce. Excellent meat. Great sweet potato pie.

Worth a visit. It’s about a mile or so on NC 86 north of Interstate 40 in the New Hope community. 86 itself is a pretty diversion, caught between North Carolina’s past, present and future. In the stretch between I-40 and I-85, you drive past farms selling goats, a volunteer fire department, a Zen retreat and the Wal-Mart.