Beaver Queen Pageant - Meet the Judges

One of the oldest BQP traditions is the celebrity judge. Now, mind you, celebrity means something quite different in Durham than it does on the pages of, say, Variety Magazine. Durham celebrities are celebrated for their achievements, accomplishments, and how much they add to our community, not for their PR machines. So let's start getting to know our celebrity judges.

2 Beaver Knotubeve kicks it off. Here's what he has to say about himself.

2 Beave (as he is known to his lodge posse) was born in Buffalo, New York back in the before-time when the beaver nation could speak. He learned the language of the Upright People and got his first job in commercial radio at the age of 19 (430 in beaver years).

He moved to Iowa, a place known to the beaver people as the land where nothing happens. And it didn't. He spent four years there working in both commercial and Public Radio. His time in Des Moines taught him a valuable lesson. Never live in a city that starts with "duh."

He moved with his wife and 18-month old daughter to Washington D.C. to work for NPR. Public Radio was under court order to improve its beaver hiring record. Beaver discrimination was rampant at the time and well-spoken beavers like 2 Beave had to fight negative stereotypes such as "beavers can't talk" and "they make good reporters but they eat the furniture."

He now lodges in Durham with his wife. He hosts a radio show called the State of Things on North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. He loves talking to the Upright People who live here and says furniture is really tasty.

And yes, he is also a Shakesbeavian scholar. Here's his favorite soliloquy.

To beave er not to beave—that is the question
Whether tis nobler in the mind to build with sticks and mud or to
Murder the varmints with dynamite that they may build no more
To build—perchance to gnaw—aye there’s the rub—

For in that dam doth lie an undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns.
Unless he wears a snorkle which would make him conspicuous among the beavers—
And he would run from their lodge as the beavers pelted him with the spiney parts of long dead fish.
Thus cod fins doth make cowards of us all . . .

Damn those who would oppose our eager woodland friends because their lodges are here and there. Unruly, . . . unexpected . . . checkered threats to urban sprawl—they who cry---out out spot dam.

How easily I change from Hamlet to Macbeth—
Easier still to say—give me beave er give me death.