Before the day is over, please allow us the opportunity to introduce you to our friend, American Author -- Joel Finsel -- pictured here holding his own personal beautiful Teal Green copy of GROW: A Compilation in Solidarity with Black Lives Matter. Joel is one of the leaders with Third Person Project, the group of students and professionals who have been archiving The Daily Record: the Black owned newspaper that was burnt down in 1898 during the Wilmington Massacre. Their organization rescues any remains of the paper they can find by partnering with UNC to digitize the paper, ensuring its preservation for countless years ahead. Third Person Project is utilizing the GROW album to provide patrons of the vinyl record with a print-out of the earliest version of the paper -- Volume 2, from 1895, when the paper was called "The Wilmington Record" (before it was a 'daily' publication) -- to enjoy while listening to the various music from Cape Fear. You can actually read the news from 1895 while you are listening to new music of today. We cannot thank Joel enough for his contributions to GROW. But in an attempt to do so, we wanted to take a moment this evening to celebrate Joel on his special day, so...
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOEL!