Eye on the Triangle

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Grace Gidley 0:20
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Jeanine Ikekhua 0:43
On today's episode, we are going to have two stories that we're going to hear about. The first one is going to be weekly news with Abigail and Avery. And the second one is going to be an interview by one of our content creators Grace. Enjoy today's episode.

Abigail 0:57
Hello guys. This is Eye on the Triangle with Abigail and Avery. I am Abigail Ali. I am the Assistant news editor for the technician. And I'm here with

Avery 1:08
Avery and I'm the news editor at technician. And today we are going to be talking about some news that is happening around the triangle in Raleigh in North Carolina and specifically at NC State.

Abigail 1:24
Yeah, so how this is going to work is me and Avery take turns giving what we call tidbits. And we share our stories and react to them. And yeah, so we're gonna get started. For my first tidbit, I am going to be talking about fish market. And that sounds kind of gross and kind of slimy, but it's actually not. This past weekend, I went to First Friday and event held but every first Friday of each month where art galleries and studios stay open late so people can make a night out of going around and visiting many locations downtown Raleigh. While writing this, I realized First Friday could have been a feature on its own. But unfortunately this past First Friday, I only made it to fish market, so we'll have to talk about that on another time. So for First Friday, my friends and I visited visited fish market, a gallery that is owned by NC State School of Design. It has been around since 2003 and showcases design student's work each time. It is in a really weird location off of Fayetteville Street downtown. It's like in the basement of a building. It looks very ominous when you're entering, but I promise it's so worth it. The first time I went though I was like oh my God, I feel like my friends are taking me here to get murdered, but they weren't. Thank God! So I've been to fish market a couple of times, including a Halloween themed gallery kind of set up kind of like a museum where the students work was just hanging up hung up and displayed like a museum kind of, and then this past one was more like market booths like you would see at a pop up market. And students were selling their work at their little booths. And it was a great time. The venue is so interesting. And it's so so fun to get a peek at the design students's work because as someone who was not in design, you don't always get to see what they're up to. I mean, sometimes you'll see around campus, like different projects they're working on. But seeing individual people's art is always really super exciting, and it's fun to support them. So I highly recommend checking out fish market and follow them on Instagram at @FishMarketNCSU to see the next time they will be open.

Avery 4:01
Yeah, I've heard about fish market, but I've never been. And good thing is I think it happens multiple times a year, so it's not like people have missed out they can definitely stay up to date on it. I know technician actually has a video on his YouTube channel about a Fish Market Gallery from a few months ago. So if you're interested in seeing what it looks like and what the general vibe is, then you could definitely check that out. But yeah, it's always good to go support local artists, especially NC State design students. So pretty cool.

Abigail 4:38
Yeah, go pack.

Avery 4:40
Okay, so I will go ahead with my tidbit. And my first one is actually NC State related as well, so for this I'm going to talk about specifically NC State Student Senate. So I know most people might not give much thought to student Government and I feel you. But that's because I think not a lot of people realize how much student government actually does. And the student senate meets every other week and passes legislation that directly affects NC State. So it's important to know kind of what they're doing at their meetings, what kind of legislation they're passing, because it is stuff that directly affects the university and students. So I'm just going to talk about a few of the things that were recently passed on the March 2 meeting, and it can kind of give you the idea of what kind of stuff they do and propose and pass. So the first thing was a it was a bill that was passed called the Safety Escort Service, and it was created to endorse reinstating the driving element of the university Safety Escort Service, which I didn't realize that no, no longer had going. But they had that before the COVID-19 pandemic, and it's basically where if you're on campus, after a certain hour, I believe you, you felt unsafe, then someone could come pick you up, I think it was someone from the University Police and take you wherever you want it to go. And so I didn't know that was no longer up and running, but they passed something endorsing, getting that back up and going again. And then another protocol they passed is called the Death Announcement Protocol, and it was created to outline postvention protocol after the death of a student TA or professor. So it recommends that after a class death, a representative from the college and from the Counseling Center delivers the news, and offers mental health resources to students. So there's currently a similar plan in place for student deaths, but this Act specifically recommended that this plan includes faculty deaths, and so I think that's really interesting, because it sounds like they have something that they do specifically when a student in your class dies, and they can kind of help you figure out, you know, I know I had a student in one of my classes last year who passed away and they had someone from the Counseling Center come in and talk about it, but I don't know what they do when a professor dies, and that has to be you know, equally as you know, hard. So that's really interesting. Um, but yeah, those are some of the things that the Senate does, and some of the stuff that they're thinking about. They also allocate funds to different clubs on campus, so for example, they recently passed a resolution saying that, you know, the cricket club could have $5,000 towards their equipment and travel and stuff like that, and so the student government has an influence at NC State, so it's good to keep updated with what they're doing. And it's important to vote for the student government officials when they run. So yeah, elections are coming up soon, I believe. So keep your eyes out for that. And, you know, see what's going on.

Abigail 8:15
Yeah, if there's one thing I've learned this past year, just from working at the technician, it's staying up to date with like student senate, faculty, student senate and like the chancellor liaisons meetings. You learn a lot from those and you really see how much those different groups can affect life on campus and what decisions are being made across campus. So yeah, those were really interesting to hear about because yeah, they do a lot.

Avery 8:43
Yeah. And all of the meeting notes for Student Senate and Faculty Senate are always posted online so you can always find everything very transparently and see what they've been up to.

Abigail 8:55
Cool. For my next tidbit, I will be talking about Oak City Meatballs. So another place me and my friends went to this weekend was Oak City Meatballs, and it is exactly what you think it is. It's a restaurant that serves all kinds of meatballs in a variety of ways, including spaghetti, alone, as sliders, in a hoagie, excetera, with sides on or under your balls. The waitstaff is absolutely amazing, they have a huge list of drinks, and as you would have guessed, the word balls is used so much in the menu you cannot help like cackle like an adolescent child is the funniest place to go to and the food was so good 10 out of 10 would recommend.

Avery 9:45
That is really funny. Um, unfortunately, I don't eat meat.

Abigail 9:52
The best part they have beyond and veggie balls.

Avery 9:56
Wow. Okay, that's so exciting. That sounds like something I'm gonna have to check out, because sounds like it's a funny place as well as a yummy place.

Abigail 10:08
Yeah.

Avery 10:10
So according to the news and observer, hundreds of people gathered on the state capitol grounds on March 5, to protest Russia's invasion of Ukraine. I don't know if protest is the right word, because it's not like they're protesting against us or against the government. It's more of like a demonstration and a calling to action, so many of the demonstrators wore blue and gold Ukraine's national colors, and organizers of the protest ask that people contact their, you know, representatives and ask that the US send Ukraine more weapons, enact a no fly zone over Ukraine, and stop buying fossil fuels from Russia. So I know some of these things are a little controversial, but this is what this specific group of people are wanting to happen, in order to help Ukraine, I believe it was put on by many Ukrainians who are living in the area, and who have family there, and are obviously very worried about their country right now, for good reason. But it's just important to stay updated with what's going on the first few days that everything was happening, I don't even think I like really read the news or knew what was going on, and it's when I actually got educated about it that I realized, hey, this is really serious, and it's really devastating for the people who live in Ukraine. And it's, it's very unsettling, so it's just important to stay updated and look for ways that you can help. There are many supply drives that organizations are putting on as well as ways to just donate online to the people of Ukraine. And yeah, just staying updated about what's going on in the world and trying to help even from Raleigh, North Carolina.

Abigail 12:04
Yeah I didn't know that was going on. I've seen some of like the drives and stuff, and it definitely makes sense because it's gotta be hard being in a whole different continent watching all this happen, having family or having your family be from there. Yeah, I can't imagine. For my last tidbit, I am going to be shouting out WKNC event coming up this weekend, the Double Barrel Benefit. Actually, by the time this podcast, or this segment is coming out, it will probably be happening. So like, if it's still happening, as you're hearing this join in tonight, they have tickets out the door. If this is early enough, you can get tickets online. Nevertheless, if you are missing it, you can always join in for WKNC Ease future benefits and other events. You can always follow them on Instagram and listen to WKNC and just check in from every once in a while and see what they're up to because they do throw things like the Double Barrel benefit featuring in the local indie artists, and I can assure it's going to be a great time. So check it out if it's early enough, and if not see what happened and make plans for the next one. Yeah.

Avery 13:32
Nice. Um, yeah, obviously I agree support student media, especially if you love tuning in and hearing Abigail and I every week then support WKNC because we're sitting in their studio, so yeah, go student media.

Abigail 13:53
And I'll be there. Maybe. I got my tickets.

Avery 13:56
Come meet Abigail, if you've been wanting to put a face to the voice, this is your time.

Abigail 14:00
Face reveal. Maybe I'll just be like Corpse. You'll never see me. I'm not going there.

Avery 14:11
And my last tidbit is coming a few weeks in advance, but it's enough time to get you, you know, aware, but J Cole's Dreamville Festival is coming to Dorthea Dix Park, from April 2 and 3, and if you're unaware, J. Cole is a very prominent rapper who grew up in North Carolina and so he puts on this Dreamville Festival where he brings other artists and everyone performs and it's a good time. So this is from the visit Raleigh website it says the Dreamville Festivals history goes back to the spring of 2018 when the first edition of the festival was scheduled and announced for September of that year, but then Hurricane Florence forced postponement to April of 2019, but it was a big old hit, a sold out crowd of around 40,000 people turned out to see performances by some A-list celebrities, and so obviously, with the pandemic, doing a follow up festival has been difficult, but after three years after the first Dreamville, the festival is coming back, and tickets start at. It says today tickets start at $300 for both days, and there are also VIP packages available. So, you know, it's really up to you if you think that it's a festival that will be worth it to you. It's really featuring a lot of hip hop artists. I know Abigail talked about the specific lineup and last week's episode, so you can go listen to that, or you can just Google it, but see if it's something that you think would be worth your while.

Abigail 16:05
Yeah, actually, I didn't know that much about the history of the festival, and honestly, I didn't know too much about it before this yea besides that, like J. Cole runs Dreamville. I mean, everybody kind of knows that but it was- that's actually really interesting Inever heard about the history of it, so. Cool, and yeah, check it out.

Avery 16:28
That is it for all of our news tidbits about stuff that's happening in the triangle area. We hope that you enjoyed. If you did, then keep on coming back for more. We'll have another episode next week. Actually, that's not true, because spring break. So we will be there the week after Abigail.

Abigail 16:51
That's all we have for you. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you next time.

Avery 16:55
Thank you, Byeeee!

Grace Gidley 17:02
On tonight's episode, I Grace Gidley sit down with Louise and Ann Jordan mother daughter team based in Raleigh. We'll be discussing their upcoming eco friendly children's book "Sunday the Sideloader", which will be published on March 30, and will be the first book in their clean machine series. Specifically, we'll be talking about their unique illustrations and the impact they hope the book will have on families and the environment.

Louise and Ann Jordan, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.

Ann 17:27
Thanks so much for having us. Great to be here.

Grace Gidley 17:29
To start. Can you tell us a little bit about the book?

Ann 17:33
Yes, so "Sunny the Sideloader" is a children's picture books, and it's an eco friendly book. It's about a recycling truck and his friends, sort of like Thomas the Tank Engine, a group of talking trucks except this has more of an environmental emphasis. So it's about a group of waste management trucks, you know, they have garbage trucks and compost truck, there's a street sweeper, and this book follows Sunny on his first day on the job, and he accidentally makes a huge mess.

Louise 18:09
So we got the idea from this book Ann was the nanny at the time out in LA, and there was a little boy she net nanny that just loved garbage trucks. And she realized there weren't any books almost on the market. And so that's where the idea was born.

Grace Gidley 18:27
You mentioned that "Sunny the Sideloader" is an eco friendly book. Can you explain what this means? And how it sets this book apart from other books on the market?

Ann 18:35
Yeah, so the story itself is very eco friendly. It focuses, I mean, it's actually it's not like the whole book is an educational book. It's really just a fun little story about the trucks, but there are themes sprinkled throughout, like, as you follow the trucks, you know, they go to the different like they go to the landfill, and they go to the recycling center. So kids learn about waste and that way. And also, the book itself is eco friendly.

Louise 19:08
Yeah, it's printed on 100% recycled paper with vegetable inks. And most people don't realize it, but even kids books that don't look like plastic, the pages or the covers are laminated, and so it was important to us for the book to be printed in North America, but also not to be laminated, and to be able to be composted or recycled. So that was a big deal to us.

Ann 19:31
Yeah, because we didn't want to have a story that was all about how we can help the environment, but then at the end of the day, our book would have to go to a landfill and do harm to the earth. So yeah, so this book is completely recyclable or compostable, except you do have to remove a thread if once the book reaches the end of its life, there is one synthetic thread which would have to be removed if you wanted to compost it. And you know, ideally, we would love to have the book just be completely compostable, and you could just toss it a compost. So that's definitely a goal for future books. But it's, you'd be really surprised how challenging is to make an environmentally friendly product. I mean, it's, there's a lot of obstacles. But you know, it can be done.

Grace Gidley 20:14
You wrote this book as a mother daughter team. What is it like working together?

Louise 20:19
Oh, it was really It was fun, but sometimes it was challenging. And we were very lucky that as we built 3D sets, so we used a 1 to 18 scale, and we built cardboard houses, and we used clay and cardboard and paint to make our sets and our sets are quite large. They took a lot of room, but we were lucky that Ann and I had ended up with different skills. And I had more the architectural and made a lot of the houses, but then she was better doing the doors and the windows and all the details. So and the main thing is, when one of us got discouraged, we never got discouraged at the same time. So that was great, because we held each other up. So that was a real benefit.

Ann 21:10
Yeah, that's definitely true. I agree with that, and when she said, it could be challenging, she didn't mean, we were arguing or anything like that. It was just challenging in the sense of, we took on such a massive project, we didn't realize quite what we were getting into. So yeah, so for the listeners, I think I think this was clear but basically, instead of drawing the pictures, we built a whole town. And then we photographed it. And then we took those images and we put them on the iPad, and we used procreate, and we added skies and speech bubbles, stuff like that. So it was it was a ton of work but it was very fun. And the great thing is now we have this huge set, and we can reuse it for all of our, you know, we can just reuse it.

Grace Gidley 21:56
Yeah, the illustrations in "Sunny the Sideloader" are very unique. What made you choose this medium as opposed to drawing pictures?

Ann 22:05
Yeah, that's a great question. I think the first thing was we just we did draw some trucks at first. But we realize it wasn't that fun for us drawing trucks, and just having to draw those trucks and all those different angles, I kind of I am an you know, I do draw, but I enjoy more like organic kind of shapes, and I was like, I think this is gonna drive me crazy if I have to draw, you know, eight trucks at all different angles. That was that was part of our thinking, but also, I'll let you speak to this mom, but she has always, like, enjoyed building little sets and things as a child, she did that, and it just seemed fun.

Louise 22:43
Yeah, so we just decided we would build the sets. And when I said it was challenging, the trees are good example. We started out thinking, well, we'll just cut little bushes up and we'll use those for trees, and then we realize quickly that the leaves were dying, that wasn't going to work, then we ended up cutting all the leaves out stamping them out with I don't even know how todescribe it

Ann 23:07
A leaf punch, a little metal.

Louise 23:09
Yeah, a leaf punch, and we so we used real tree trunks, I mean, just low branches to make the tree trunks, and so Ann was better at doing the branches, and I was better at doing the trunks, so we just quickly fell into the same thing we did for the whole book that one of us would have one scale and one another. But I would say it took us months to build the trees.

Ann 23:37
The trees. Yeah.

Louise 23:38
Yeah, just the trees.

Ann 23:40
Yeah. Yeah, it's been a very, very big project.

Grace Gidley 23:45
What message would you like readers to take away from this book?

Ann 23:49
I think one of the main messages is that everyone makes mistakes, and that's okay, and it's it's just part of life. I mean, when Sunny comes to work, he's so excited, and he is so excited, he kind of forgets to listen when he's given instructions. And so he goes around, and he accidentally just trashes the town, he's like, you know, knocking over bins. And then when he realizes what he's done, he's really worried, you know, that his new friends aren't going to like him, but it's fine, and they all come and help him and they work together and so I think there's just a message in there that for kids, because, you know, we're all messing up all the time, and it's really okay. And then, of course, there's the environmental message, I think that's when the book started, I don't think we really even had that in our minds, but then, as we progressed, that became more and more important to us, and we became more passionate about it, and we have learned so much during this process. We've done so much research, trying to figure out how different trucks operate and what they really do. And the more we learned, and we were just horrified by a lot of these facts we were learning about about the environment. And yeah go ahead.

Louise 25:04
A good example of that is when we were researching the street sweeper, Scarlett the Street Sweeper, we realized how much of the plastic and the debris that's out in the roads, goes to the rivers and goes out to the oceans, and our oceans are just being clogged with plastic, and we weren't really as aware of that as we should have been of all the plastic in the ocean. So as we researched each truck, and we did reading, and we tried to see where people were doing the best with this particular kind of truck. Then we learned all these facts about the pollution in the world and the environment. And so it was really educational for us.

Ann 25:47
Yeah, and like, there's a truck in there. There's a pink truck named Electra, and it used to be that she was just a recycling truck, and then we learned about electronic waste, and we learned basically, it's the equivalent of a laptop is being thrown away every second the equivalent of a laptop, like so much electronic waste. So we decided to make her an electronics recycler, to increase awareness around that issue.

Louise 26:14
Yeah, hoping that people will recycle their electronic devices or even electronic appliances, and that if they can't be recycled, they will dispose of them properly. Because, yeah.

Ann 26:29
Of course, we don't mean curbside. You can't just toss a laptop in the recycling.

Grace Gidley 26:36
You share any practical takeaways, or eco friendly tips that young environmentalists can start to implement into their own lives?

Ann 26:45
Yeah, I mean, there's so many things, I think compost is a really good thing that families can do together. If you're not up for backyard composting. I know here in this area, this is not an ad, but we use compost now, it's so convenient. It's I mean, you do have to pay for it but they just come to your door, and it's so great. You know, and it actually, I think it's great for kids to see that their food gets broken down, and then it helps plants grow. So that's one we have a lot of activities, and tips on our website, sunnysideloader.com. That's S-U-N-N-Y the sideloader .com and there's a whole bunch of ideas for kids. But Mom, did you have?

Louise 27:31
Yeah, I was just gonna say, I think some things can be fun. I know that my granddaughter's Why God's group, that they all brought a favorite toy that they no longer were so in love with, and they talked about what had been so great about that toy for them, and then they donated those toys as a group, I think to a rescue mission, so just getting kids aware of donating, not wasting food, carrying reusable bags, all those things.

Grace Gidley 28:02
You mentioned earlier that the sets you use for the illustrations are reusable. Does this mean that there'll be more books in the clean machine series to come?

Louise 28:14
Yes we're already working. We're already working on the next one but it's hard for us because while we were doing this, we feel so in love with the trucks that we can't decide. I mean, should this should this be Mighty special time? Should it be Starletters, shouldn't be Electra's? So we keep changing our minds on which truck we want to highlight next.

Ann 28:36
Well, we do see it as you know, a full series, we're gonna give each track their turn in the spotlight.

Grace Gidley 28:43
And finally, do you have any author events coming up that you would like to let our listeners know about?

Ann 28:49
Yes, we do. We have an event on April 2 at Quail Ridge books. And it's an outdoor event for people who are nervous about COVID, and we'll do a fun kids eco friendly activity and read the book and sign the books. So that's at 10:30am. And, yeah, we would love to see anybody there.

Louise 29:13
And we're hoping that this little book will get whole families interested in being more eco friendly, and as far as your audience for Earth Day, people can go clean up they can or even for other days, the beach cleanups all kinds of things that we just want this to spark conversation not just with two and three year olds, but with the families just to make the families more aware of the things we can all do.

Grace Gidley 29:40
Okay, Louise and Ann, thank you again for speaking with us today on Eye on the Triangle.

Louise 29:46
Thank you.

Ann 29:47
Thank you so much.

Grace Gidley 29:49
More information on Louise and Ann Jordan and their upcoming book can be found at sunnythesideloader.com This has been Grace Gidley for Eye on the Triangle Well that does it for this episode. This has been Grace Gidley for WKNC Radio. Thank you for listening. You can listen to more episodes@wknc.org/podcasts and you can also tune in every Sunday at 6pm to hear new Eye on the Triangle episodes.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai