Local Surfer Wins Reef Pro-Am!!

Local surfer, Knox Harris has taken First Place in the guys 15 and over division of the REEF Pro-Am Open!!

Knox recently took 3rd place in the Open Juniors division at the NSSA East Coast Championships and then traveled to California for the NSSA National Championships

As an east coast surfer, Knox broke down barriers at the Nationals. Knox put on an impressive performance placing 3rd in the Open Juniors final in a heavily competitive 64-person field.

His dad Ray Harris made the Open Men’s final at the first ever National Championships way back in 1978.

A photograph of Ray taken at that event hangs on the wall at his restaurant, Sharky’s Waterfront Restaurant.

Free Beach Music Concerts

The Ocean Isle Beach Concert Series isn’t over yet!  With five more free concerts between now and October 2, 2011! Read more

The Plant From Outer Space!

News crews have gathered and locals and vacationers are all amazed at the site of this incredible century plant that is currently in full bloom at Bricklanding near Ocean Isle Beach, NC.

Here is a link to a video from WRAL TV in Raleigh NC:

http://www.wral.com/lifestyles/travel/video/9793967/#/vid9810263

Wikipedia says:

Agave americana, commonly known as the century plant, maguey, or American aloe (although it is in a different family from the Aloe), is an agave originally from Mexico but cultivated worldwide as an ornamental plant. It has since naturalized in many regions and grows wild in Europe, South Africa, India, and Australia.

The misnamed century plant typically lives only 10 to 30 years. It has a spreading rosette (about 4 m/13 ft wide) of gray-green leaves up to 2 m (6.6 ft) long, each with a spiny margin and a heavy spike at the tip that can pierce to the bone. When it flowers, the spike with a cyme of big yellow flowers may reach up to 8 m (26 ft) in height. Its common name likely derives from its semelparous nature of flowering only once at the end of its long life. The plant dies after flowering, but produces suckers or adventitious shoots from the base, which continue its growth.
Cultivated varieties include the “marginata” with yellow stripes along the margins of each leaf, “medio-picta alba” with a central white band, “medio-picta aurea” with a central yellow band, “striata” with multiple yellow to white stripes along the leaves, and “variegata” with white edges on the leaves.

Save The Ocean Isle Goats!

The state of NC is going to round up all the goats on three islands near Ocean Isle Beach and Sunset Beach, NC and sell them off.

For as long as anyone can remember, a herd of goats have called these uninhabited islands near Ocean Isle Beach, NC & Sunset Beach, NC home. During the day, they flop down in the sand underneath trees to rest in the shade.

According to one long term area resident these goats have been there since before Hurricane Hazel in the mid 1950s! Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith said she’s seen goats on those islands for more than 25 years.

Since the islands were created when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dredged the Intracoastal Waterway, the N.C. Department of Administration determined the islands were state-owned land and put up signs calling for the goats’ removal.

Update: Responding to the deluge of calls and emails in support of the herd, The state has responded decided to the deluge of calls and emails and all of you who are signing our petition and decided to hold off on its plan to have the goats rounded up and taken off the spoil islands near Ocean Isle Beach.

Gordon Myers, executive director of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission says he thinks the most prudent thing would be to postpone any action as there is so much interest in this. “There’s no reason to be hasty.”

Instead state officials are going to hold a public meeting in the area to get more feedback and lay out their case more clearly as to why they think why the goats need to go. It has yet to be scheduled.

Please keep your friends signing the petition (below) as the fate of the island goats has not been decided yet!

SIGN THIS PETITION & HELP STOP THE MADNESS! SAVE THESE POOR DEFENSELESS GOATS FROM BECOMING SOMEONE’S DINNER!

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Miller Pope’s Vintage/Retro Art

Local Artist and author Miller Pope was born in South Carolina but spent most of his career during the “golden age of illustration” in the New York advertising and publishing arenas, after getting his start on the Marine Corps’ legendary Leatherneck magazine.

Miller studied figure drawing at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., at the Art Students League in New York City.

His works have appeared on novel covers and in major magazines. He was elected to the Society of Illustrators in 1957.

Miller (founder of The Winds Resort Beach Club) was recently the subject of a feature article in the January issue of Our State Magazine.

Miller Pope is making high quality Giclée prints of his original artwork available for sale on Islands-Art.com!

While priced as low as $8.00, all prints are titled digitally and reproduced as high quality Giclées.

A light gray mat is also printed around the white area. All prints fit standard frame sizes found everywhere. Pricing is by frame size.

To view all of Miller’s prints and/or purchase these prints click here!

The first series Miller has released were nature and beach scenes.

Other series now released include prints of his illustrations from his four pirate books and a selection of his retro/vintage art from the 1950s and 1960s.

Miller was recently the subject of a feature article in the January issue of Our State Magazine. Read more

The Coastal Art Of Miller Pope

Local Artist and author Miller Pope (founder of The Winds) is now making his original artwork, as quality Giclée prints, available for sale on Islands-Art.com!

To view all of Miller’s prints and/or purchase these prints click here!

The first series Miller has released are nature and beach scenes.

Other series (to be released) include prints of his illustrations from his four pirate books and a selection of his retro/vintage art from the 1950s and 1960s.

While priced as low as $8.00, all prints are titled digitally and reproduced as high quality Giclées.

A light gray mat is also printed around the white area. All prints fit standard frame sizes found everywhere. Pricing is by frame size.

Miller was recently the subject of a feature article in the January issue of Our State Magazine.

Miller Pope was born in South Carolina but spent most of his career during the “golden age of illustration” in the New York advertising and publishing arenas, after getting his start on the Marine Corps’ legendary Leatherneck magazine.

Miller studied figure drawing at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., at the Art Students League in New York City.

His works have appeared on novel covers and in major magazines. He was elected to the Society of Illustrators in 1957.

With his wife, Helen, he moved south in the 1970s and worked to develop The Winds Resort Beach Club and Sea Trail Plantation on the Southeastern North Carolina coast.

To view all of Miller Pope’s prints and/or purchase these prints click here!

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The Fort Fisher Hermit

Robert E. Harrill, known as the Fort Fisher Hermit, lived for 17 years under the stars, living off the land and visitors’ contributions. These visitors came by the thousands each year to meet “The Hermit.” A misnomer from almost the beginning, “The Hermit” treated anyone who came by with a warmth and friendly appreciation that was contagious.

The following is from Wikipedia:

Robert E. Harrill or Robert Harrell, (February 2, 1893 – June 3, 1972), was known as “The Fort Fisher Hermit”. He became a hermit in 1955 at the age of 62 after a string of unsuccessful and unsatisfying jobs and a failed marriage. Harrill hitchhiked to Fort Fisher on the North Carolina Coast from Morganton, North Carolina, a distance of 260 miles. He had been committed to a mental hospital in Morganton by his in-laws, after his wife, Katie Hamrick, left him and asked for a divorce. Harrill apparently walked away from the hospital or made a key from an old spoon and used the key to escape the facility.

Harrill becomes the Hermit

The name “The Fort Fisher Hermit” came from Fort Fisher State Recreation Area, where he settled after leaving the mental institution in Morganton. Soon after arriving at Fort Fisher, Robert Harrill was arrested as a vagrant and sent to his hometown of Shelby by the sheriff’s department with the help of the Traveler’s Aide society. He returned the following summer and set up a simple home in an abandoned World War II era bunker near the Cape Fear River along a salt marsh. He was able to gather much of the food that he needed from the salt marsh and the nearby oyster beds. Harrill learned many of his survival skills from Empy Hewitt, a true hermit, who also lived in the salt marshes of the Fort Fisher area.

The Fort Fisher Hermit was not a hermit in the truest sense of the word. A hermit  is a person who lives to some greater or lesser degree in seclusion and/or isolation from society. Harrill was far from isolated, and in fact had many visitors every year. His guest registry, a notebook held down by sea shells, recorded a total of over 100,000 visitors from all fifty states and at least 20 foreign countries.

Harrill planted a vegetable garden to supplement his diet (what he grew and what he was able to gather in his surroundings). Visitors also provided the Fort Fisher Hermit with monetary donations that were placed in a frying pan that he left out for just such a purpose.

The Hermit becomes an attraction

Robert Harrill became the second greatest tourist attraction in the state of North Carolina, trailing only the USS North Carolina in number of visitors.

Visitors to Carolina Beach, Kure Beach, Fort Fisher and Southport would routinely take time to visit the man living in the salt marshes. Many of them were simply curious, others were attracted to his wisdom and words, but others went out of their way to harass him or to try to steal his money.

There were rumors that he had thousands of dollars hidden somewhere in his bunker. He was also arrested by the local authorities on charges of vagrancy. Each trip to court saw the Fort Fisher Hermit defending himself, most times successfully.

A group of men who beat him up and stole his money were convicted on the strength of the hermit’s testimony against them, in a trial that saw the hermit serve as both lead prosecutor and star witness.

The Fort Fisher Hermit also attracted a large number of journalists to his bunker with his lifestyle and beliefs. He explained his popularity in the New Hanover Sun in 1968, ” “ Everybody ought to be a hermit for a few minutes to an hour or so every 24 hours, to study, meditate, and commune with their creator…millions of people want to do just what I’m doing, but since it is much easier thought of than done, they subconsciously elect me to represent them, that’s why I’m successful…”

Robert Harrill greeted as many visitors as possible and agreed to pose with them in pictures for a small fee. The Hermit saw each visitor as an opportunity to spread his “common sense” beliefs. Robert Harrill told his visitors that he was writing a book entitled “A Tyrant in Every Home”. His book was a byproduct of his previously stressful life: his mother and two brothers died of typhoid fever when he was a young boy, and his father remarried to a woman that Robert described as “the tyrant in my family.

The Hermit’s troubled youth and equally troubling adulthood were the primary reasons that he “dropped out” of society nearly ten years before the hippie movement began in full force. Robert Harrill stated that he finally achieved the peace and happiness that he sought for so long. He enjoyed living with nature and said, “My life here goes up and down like the tides of this old sea out here… Only nature determines my existence.”

Death The Fort Fisher Hermit died under “mysterious” circumstances in June 1972. His body was found by a group of teenage boys on an early Sunday morning. It was covered in sand, bloodied, covered in wounds and laid spread eagle on a pile of rubbish. Some people believed that he was killed by a group of rowdy rednecks, others believed that it was a prank gone horribly bad. The New Hanover County coroner ruled that the cause of death was a heart attack. Heart attack remains listed as the official cause of death and an official investigation into a possible murder has never been conducted.

Memorial and legacy The story and legacy of Robert Harrill lives on today through the efforts of The Hermit Society, founded by Michael Edwards, Edward Harrill, Harry Warren, Gaile Welker and Vergie Harrill. The Fort Fisher Hermit Society was formed on February 2, 1993 (What would have been Robert’s 100th birthday) and has members in numerous states.

The President and founder is Michael F. Edwards, currently of Satellite Beach, Florida. Since the passing of Edward Harrill, the son of the Hermit, members elected Fred Pickler, a former friend of the hermit, to fill the spot. In the spring of 2007, Pickler co-authored the book “Life and Times of the Fort Fisher Hermit, Through the Lens of Fred Pickler.”

The hermit bunker is still standing and can be reached from the Fort Fisher Hermit Trail at Fort Fisher State Recreation Area.

The Hermit Society and the “Friends of the Fort Fisher Hermit” work to continue telling his story and a film directed by Rob Hill, The Fort Fisher Hermit, was produced by Wilmington, North Carolina-based Common Sense Films partners Hill, Richard Sirianni and Scott R. Davis in 2004.

It has won numerous independent film making awards and airs on American Public Television on PBS. The film was nominated for a 2007 Mid-South Regional Emmy Award.

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Video Irene: Ocean Isle Fri. pm

This video was shot by John Urban of BlueSky Photography on Friday afternoon as Hurricane Irene was beginning to arrive at Ocean Isle Beach NC.

Photographer’s New Book

Ocean Isle Beach, NC is featured in new book by nationally renowned local nature photographer and artist, Ken Buckner! One of many Great Holiday Gifts at Islands-Art.com – a new e-commerce website featuring books, photography and other works by artists and writers of the islands of Coastal Carolina.

Favorite Beach Photos – By Ken Buckner

Hardcover coffee table edition with 128 high quality 8″x10″ pages with 100 full color photographs.

Stroll sandy shores by the sea or the beaches of a lovely lake and see sunrises, sunsets and wildlife just as nationally renowned local nature photographer and artist, Ken Buckner viewed them through his camera.

This is Ken’s journey and you are invited to join him through these pages. Most of the photos were taken near his home in the South Brunswick Islands of North Carolina.

“I explore beauty with my camera. The photos show the journey” – Ken Buckner

The book includes the occasional “story behind the picture.” Ken wants the reader to feel some of the excitement he experienced capturing these special moments in time.

Buy The Book – $35.00

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Sunset Beach A History

Local writers and artists have collaborated on a new hard cover, coffee table edition history of Sunset Beach. One of many Great Holiday Gifts at Islands-Art.com – a new e-commerce website featuring books, photography and other works by artists and writers of the islands of Coastal Carolina.

A full history of Sunset Beach NC with stories from many of the “old timers” who were eye witnesses to events. Some are funny, some are shocking – all are fascinating. No true Sunset Beach Lover should be without this book!

This is the second collaboration between Author/ Illustrator Miller Pope and celebrated novelist Jacqueline DeGroot. World renowned nature photographer Ken Buckner’s photos are used through out the book in addition to the photographs and illustrations of Miller Pope.

Book stores pre-orders in are already surpassing the expectations of the publishers. The release date is October 1st 2010 to coincide with the Sunset at Sunset festival and the opening of the new Sunset Beach Bridge. As soon as they arrive yours will shipped to you.
Hard Cover/Coffee Table Edition – Now Taking Pre-Orders! $29.95

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