Have you ever heard of Elizabeth Cotten? 🤔 Elizabeth “Libba” Cotten is one of those North Carolina stories that ought to be told a whole lot more. She taught herself to play guitar when she was just 12 years old. And because she was left-handed, she did something that became part of her signature sound: she played a right-handed guitar upside down, keeping the strings in the same order instead of restringing it. She started writing songs as a teenager. Then life happened. Libba put her guitar down when she married and started a family, and for about 25 years, the music sat quiet. Until she picked it back up. And then, in her 60s, something remarkable happened. The world finally heard Elizabeth Cotten. The woman who had been making music since childhood went on to record, tour, and become one of the most influential folk musicians of her generation. At 91 years old, Libba won a Grammy. Ninety-one. And this trailblazing musician who broke through every ceiling put in front of her? She was from right here in North Carolina. Libba was a Carrboro girl. 💫

In September 1918, the Spanish flu hit North Carolina first in Wilmington. Within a week the port city had hundreds of cases. It spread west along the rail lines. But what didn’t happen is as important as what did: No statewide lockdown. No statewide stay-at-home order. No statewide mask law. On October 3, Governor Bickett warned the state about “spit swapping” and staying out of crowds. The State Board of Health told towns where the flu had already arrived to close schools and cancel public meetings. The teeth were local: county and city boards. War plants and most factories kept running. Relief was neighbors, churches, and the Red Cross. A century later, Roy Cooper’s COVID playbook was far more centralized—longer school shutdowns, broader business closures, rules written from the top down and kept on longer. That approach was more economically disruptive than 1918’s patchwork of local bans. And that’s worth remembering.