I'm late to the games

The Hunger Games, that is. While the rest of the world has been talking about this book (and the movie, which opens on Friday) since its publication in 2008, I just read it. I have to say my interest in the book was piqued by the movie trailers and the fact much of the movie was filmed in my home state of North Carolina. Some scenes were even filmed in my hometown of Concord.



For those who might be like I was a couple weeks ago and totally in the dark about this book and film, I give you a short blurb.






Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen lives with her mother and little sister Primrose in what is left of North America. They reside in District 12, which is the Appalachaian region of the former United States. All twelve districts are run by the Capitol, which is located in the Rocky Mountains (NORAD anyone?). Katniss and Prim's father was killed in a coal mine explosion, and it is Katniss's hunting and foraging skills that keep the family from starving.

To remind the Districts who's in charge, the Capitol holds the Hunger Games each year. The names of all boys and girls between the ages of 12 and 18 are put in large bowls and one boy and one girl are selected at random from each District to compete in the ultimate reality game. These twenty-four children fight to the finish, and the last one standing wins a life of luxury.


The selection process is called the "reaping" and the children selected are called "tributes." After assuring her little sister her odds of being picked are slim because it's her first time in the reaping, Primrose's name is drawn anyway. To spare her sister, Katniss steps up to take her place in the deadly competition.





Dictrict 12's other tribute is a boy named Peeta Mellark whose father is the town baker.

Katniss and Peeta are transported to the Capitol, accompanied by Effie Banks (the pink-haired lady who selected the tributes) and Haymitch Abernathy (their mentor and District 12's only Hunger Games victor). There they are groomed and trained and paraded before not only the Capitol but the Districts as well (the games are televised live and watching is compulsory -- the only time television broadcasts are predictable) before being set out to compete in the games.






This former Phillip Morris cigarette plant in my hometown was used for scenes of the Capitol.


So have you read the book? And the two other books in the trilogy (Catching Fire and Mockingjay)?

And are you going to see the movie? As compelling as the book was, I'm still undecided about seeing the film. If I do decide to go, I'll probably wait for the initial hubbub to wane and the crowds to thin.

PS. Smarty Pants kicks off her blog tour today. Check out her facebook fan page for the schedule and links.

Carolina's on My Mind

I'm going to be out of pocket today because last night I went to the James Taylor concert and spent the night with a friend so I didn't have to drive home so late. I'll blog later and let you know how it was, but I wanted to share with you my absolute favorite JT song accompanied by pictures of my home state, North Carolina.

North Carolina is a vacation paradise with beaches on the eastern end and mountains on the western end. It has skiing, whitewater rafting and some of the best golf in the world. The central, or Piedmont, section is home to the Research Park Triangle, the largest research park in the world (and Huntsville's research park is second). This is the section of the state where I grew up. When I was young, the Piedmont also had a thriving textile industry as well as a large furniture industry. The textiles are mostly gone, but there's still a fair amount of furniture made in NC.

The state is home to a number of top-notch universities and boasts any number of famous sons and daughters, including the late, great Dale Earnhardt.

North Carolina is filled with history from the Lost Colony to Old Salem, the first manned flight of Wilbur and Orville Wright and the Trail of Tears when the Cherokee were forced from their homeland.

Want a great place to visit on vacation? How about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which has the most visitors of any national park in the US. Or you can drive the Blue Ridge Parkway for some of the most beautiful scenery you'll ever see. Visit Biltmore Estate and see how the Vanderbilts lived or climb Mt. Mitchell, the highest peak east of the Mississippi.

North Carolina is also home to Krispy Kreme doughnuts and Pepsi Cola.

The state bird is the beautiful cardinal, and the state flower is the dogwood.

The state motto is "Esse quam videri" -- "To be rather than to seem."

And we ARE the great Tarheel state!



Just in case you're interested, here's a list of the slides in the video:

North Carolina map
The Outer Banks
Cape Hatteras Lighthouse
The Wright Brothers Memorial
Concord (my hometown)
A cardinal, the state bird of NC
Dogwood blossoms, the state flower of NC
Fort Raleigh, site of Sir Walter Raleigh's Lost Colony
USS North Carolina Battleship Memorial sign
USS North Carolina
Western Carolina University logo (my alma mater)
NC State Wolfpack logo (my sister's alma mater)
UNC Tarheels logo
Giant chair in Thomasville, which is representative of the state's furniture industry
Dale Earnhardt
Old Salem in Winston-Salem, NC, a Moravian settlement
The Smoky Mountains
Biltmore Estate
Maggie Valley skiing
Rafting on the Nantahala River
#2 son and me at Newfound Gap
Blue Ridge Parkway sign
Cherokee Indian Reservation sign
Carving of Sequoyah, native American who invented the Cherokee alphabet
Great Smoky Mountains National Park sign
Grandfather Mountain sign
Mile High Swinging Bridge atop Grandfather Mountain
Linn Cove viaduct, part of the Blue Ridge Parkway around Grandfather Mountain
Mt. Mitchell, highest peak east of the Mississippi River
James Taylor
North Carolina sign

The Launch of Walkabout Wednesday!

Welcome to the first installment of Walkabout Wednesday, my chance to share some of my travels with the Playground's visitors. Today's featured tourist spot, the Biltmore Estate, is located in my native state of North Carolina and is situated about fifty miles from where I attended college.

The lives of wealthy Victorian era Americans were filled with parties, travel and leisure. One notable name of this Gilded Era was Vanderbilt, a family that made its fortune in the railroad industry.

In 1888, George Washington Vanderbilt, grandson of railroad magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, visited the mountains of western North Carolina with his mother and fell victim to the lure of the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains.

Not yet married, George had a dream of building a vast country estate and he found the ideal location in Asheville, North Carolina. The area boasts breathtaking scenery and a climate that’s relatively mild for a mountainous area.

With a bankroll rivaling the gross national product of a small country, George purchased 125,000 acres of pristine wilderness area and set about to create a self-sustaining estate such as those he’d seen in his European travels.

He named his holdings Biltmore Estate from his ancestral Dutch town of Bildt and the English word Moor, which is an open, rolling landscape.

His next decisions were critical ones: who would design not only the house itself, but the gardens that would surround it?


Richard Morris Hunt, the first American to study at the prestigious Ecole Des Beaux-Arts in Paris and one of the founders of the American Institute of Architecture, was selected to design the house. Hunt is also know for his design of The Breakers in Newport, Rhode Island, the pedestal base of the Statue of Liberty and the Tribune Building in New York City, one of the first buildings with an elevator. Together, Hunt and Vanderbilt decided on a French Renaissance chateau design with a limestone façade and a steeply pitched roof.

Vanderbilt and Hunt not only created an architectural wonder, but a technological one as well. Biltmore House had all of the latest technology of its time. Central heating, indoor plumbing for all thirty-four bedrooms, electricity, mechanical refrigeration and two elevators are but a few of the amenities afforded Biltmore’s residents and guests. Some of Thomas Edison’s first light bulbs illuminated Biltmore’s passageways and the house contained an electric calling system for servants in addition to a newfangled gadget called the telephone.

A two-lane bowling alley with equipment by Brunswick and an indoor swimming pool with underwater lights provided indoor recreation for the Vanderbilts and their guests.

Hundreds of local workers and skilled European artisans were hired. Tons of Indiana limestone was brought in as well as imported Italian marble. To facilitate the transportation of these raw materials, Vanderbilt had a private three-mile-long rail spur built from the estate to a neighboring village. A woodworking factory was built on the estate to produce the ornate trim seen throughout the house and a kiln was erected that would produce 32,000 bricks per day.


Construction of Biltmore Estate took six years and while still incomplete, the house was formally opened on Christmas Eve, 1895. The finished product is a mansion that contains 250 rooms encompassing 175,000 square feet. Biltmore’s size earned it the title of “America’s Castle” and to date it remains the United States’ largest privately owned home.

The design and construction of Biltmore’s gardens were entrusted to Frederick Law Olmstead, considered by many to be the father of American landscape architecture. He is credited with designing the U.S. Capitol grounds in Washington, D.C. and the campus at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California. But his most notable design is New York City’s Central Park.

The various gardens cover sixty-five acres and include a shrub garden, walled garden, rose garden and conservatory and Italian garden. Each features various trees, shrubs and flowers, which provide an array of color and texture throughout the seasons.

When Biltmore Estate was completed in late December of 1895, George realized that he had a dream home, but no one to share it with. In 1898 he married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser and their only child Cornelia was born in 1900. Cornelia married the Honorable John Francis Amherst Cecil in 1924 and their children share ownership of the Biltmore properties today.

Not content to simply sit back and enjoy his home, George and Edith Vanderbilt dedicated their lives to helping others. They purchased a nearby town where most of the estate’s employees lived and renamed it Biltmore Village. The town, with buildings and a church designed by Richard Morris Hunt, grew and is today designated as a historic district.

The Vanderbilts also founded the Biltmore Forest School, the first school for scientific forestry in America as well as Biltmore Estate Industries, an apprenticeship program to teach traditional crafts like woodworking and weaving. Edith founded the School for Domestic Science where young women were trained in housekeeping skills, which would give them a distinct advantage in the job market.

Biltmore House is filled with priceless artwork and custom made furnishings and was the scene of many social galas. But despite its grandeur, George strove to make Biltmore a warm, inviting home for his family.

In March 1914, Vanderbilt was rushed to a hospital in Washington, D.C. with appendicitis. An emergency appendectomy was performed. The surgery, however, was not successful and George Washington Vanderbilt died on March 6. He was buried in the family mausoleum on Staten Island. His wife remained at Biltmore until 1925 when she remarried. She left the management of Biltmore Estate to her daughter and son-in-law.

Biltmore Estate operated its own dairy, which provided products for not only the estate, but eventually all of western North Carolina. In 1985 the dairy operation was sold and the dairy barn on the estate was remodeled and turned into a winery, which is the most visited winery in the United States with over a million visitors each year.

William Amherst Vanderbilt Cecil, grandson of George W. Vanderbilt, owns the estate today and accepts no government funding to maintain the house or grounds. Imbued with the same “can do” attitude of his grandfather, he defied those who told him that the estate could not be profitable. Cecil, who had a background in New York banking, returned to Asheville in the 1960s to find it in economic trouble. He rolled up his sleeves, wore many hats and began to market his childhood home. By the end of the decade, Biltmore was showing a profit, a trend that has continued to this day.

Biltmore Estate is open to the public every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas. During the Christmas season, the house is decorated in authentic Victorian tradition and special candlelight Christmas evening events are planned.

For more information, visit http://www.biltmore.com/ to discover the magic of Biltmore Estate.

Have you ever visited Biltmore? Another castle?

P.S. The Playfriends would like to extend birthday greetings to Barbara Vey, a very special friend of the Playground.