Botanizing Finds: The Fascinating Bloodroot
I do my botanizing while walking our dog. Puppy isn’t very patient, so I have to be quick about it, but I regularly manage to find interesting plants…
Guest Columns
Traffic Engineers Say Delays Will Be Reduced at MLK Blvd / Estes Intersection
A mixed-use project proposed by Trinsic Residential Group for the corner of Estes Drive and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd, if approved by Chapel Hill Town Council, would transform…
The Pocket Shrine: Mom in a Matchbox
In my hand I hold a matchbox. The old school kind — wooden matches with cherry red tips inside. But that’s not all that’s in this matchbox, nor is setting a fire its function.
Integrity of Planning Process at Stake in Aura Vote
Planning and zoning are valuable tools intended to guide the town’s development and growth to ensure a livable town that is sustainable, accessible, healthy and safe for all
Choice of Hubert Davis Inspires
Growing up as a kid in the nineties, Allen Buansi remembers watching Hubert Davis, then a member of the New York Knicks, on TV…
Thanks to Service and Hospitality Workers for Delivering Hope
This long and arduous year imposed on us and the world a darkness we have never known, but we…
To India With Love
As the pandemic rages across India, I find myself worrying about a perfect stranger. Her name, where she lives, her situation in life now — of these facts I am totally ignorant.
What on Earth Did I Order?
In the delirium of winter, I tend to go on an ordering spree of plants that will arrive the following April. It’s a good time to order because the nurseries haven’t yet run out of the hot new plants; the winter garden looks relatively bare; and there’s nothing much to do in January…
Sleeping On It
We wake up in the morning and talk about how we couldn’t sleep during the night. My wife notes that she woke at 1:45, 3:19 and for good at 6:53. Competitive as always, I counter…
Post COVID Event Planning in Orange County, NC
North Carolina is continuing to see fast and fair vaccine distribution. Now as the weather heats up, inquiries to the Visitors Bureau have increased with a similar theme…
An Open Letter for the Open Road
I write to you as a neighbor, fellow road user and cyclist. In 30 years of riding in and around Chapel Hill, I have seen and, at times, nearly been the victim of some awful driving behavior…
An Elusive Bird Draws Crowds
The Brumley Nature Reserves (North and South) are popular recreation sites for walkers, hikers, nature observers and birders. Springtime is especially nice when the birds fill the air…
Taking a Busman’s Holiday
With shots in arms and no ill effects and, thus, feeling giddy with liberation, good wife Lynne and I have done what so many other pent-up septuagenarians have done…
Beware of Some Pass-Along Plants
Last week I extolled the virtues of the Southern tradition of pass-along plants. Sometimes the only way to acquire a plant that is no longer at the…
Bringing Tourism Back
Like spring itself, the world feels like it’s rising again, about to bloom in the coming summer sun. In this new and brighter light we have an opportunity to see what’s changed and how we can do what we did before in new and better ways…
Our Southern Spring Unfolds
I love the long unfolding of our Southern springs. My daughter, Lilli Brown, and I recite all the multisyllable Greek goddess-like names of the flowers as they emerge — camellia, hellebore…
Little Big Man 1967
The young boy sits astride his tricycle like a judge holding court. Barefoot, he affixes the photographer with an intelligent, penetrating gaze. Maybe he is thinking…
Pass-along Plants: A Great Southern Tradition
Gardeners are among the most generous people in the world, eager to share their success with other plant lovers.
Buildings Emerge from Model Collaboration
In 2008, the tree-covered and spacious Glen Lennox neighborhood was jolted out of its 1950s family atmosphere when the owner, Grubb Properties, put forth redevelopment plans for the entire 66-acre, 440-apartment property.
The Real College Deadline
By now, most kids in Chapel Hill and in other quaint little towns and big cities across America have already chosen their college. Or, if they’ve decided not to attend college, they’ve joined the military or, at the very least, have planned their next big bank heist.
Shaped by Black Lives Matter, UNC Student Greear Webb Watches Chauvin Trial and Asks: ‘What’s Next?’
The generation that grew up with Black Lives Matter — increasingly activist, attuned to inequity, see George Floyd’s case as an orienting point for…
Falling Into Place
As we get older, there are many challenges we have to deal with, including fading eyesight, failing memory and an inability to break dance. Then there is the risk of falling.
Roy’s Random Acts of Kindness
It’s there. You just have to look closely. Faded after all these years, the unmistakable signature. Roy Williams.
Which Southern Orange County Subdivisions Have the Most Sold Homes?
Within the last 24 months, at least one home has sold in each of the more than 265 subdivisions within the five ZIP codes that make up…
Comfort Foods – Vegan Style
It is said that food is medicine. But food also brings with it powerful connotations and memories that may be unrelated to health.
Beware of the Floozies
Sex is rampant in my garden, and I’m getting sick of it. This is the time of year that the hellebores wave around their promiscuity as the plants flaunt their swollen seedpods. Soon you begin to realize that there are probably more seeds on one hellebore than there are people in the Triangle. After a couple of years of hellebores taking up residence in the garden, you begin to fear that they will overtake the world.
How Free Transit Works in Chapel Hill and Carrboro
Before the pandemic, an average of 7 million people a year used the Chapel Hill bus system.
Easter 1950
All dressed up for Easter Sunday church and holding a Bible, Nick Lauterer, posing heroically in a hand-me-down suit, grins at the camera with confidence and happiness.
Spring Garden Safety
It’s a dangerous world out there. In the past few weeks, Kit and I have both been injured — nothing life threatening, but ego bruising. I share this because we both know better.
Mobile Home Zoning Succeeds Elsewhere
Opinion: On March 10, Chapel Hill Town Council Member Hongbin Gu petitioned the council to consider a zoning change that would restrict the use of certain land, including the mobile home park on 1200 MLK Jr. Blvd…
The Boom in Zoom
Can you hear me? We’re Zooming for a friend’s virtual birthday party. We’re Zooming after months and months of Zooms — family Zooms, business Zooms, book club Zooms, doctor Zooms.
Orange County Condemns Asian Discrimination
Members of our community gathered last week on the Chapel Hill Post Office Plaza to remember…
Choose Wisely on AURA Proposal or Consign Us All to Gridlock
Opinion: When Chapel Hill’s mayor and Town Council members decide this spring whether to approve AURA, a large, dense new development at the northeast corner of MLK Jr. Boulevard and Estes Drive…
You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught
As I was raised in the shadow of World War II and the Korean War, my first childhood impressions of Asians were negative: They were the enemy and to be feared.
Echinacea
I wish I could grow echinacea as I’m a great admirer of this native prairie plant. It’s a great accent plant in the perennial border, and there’s a spartan quality about it that appeals to me.
The Eno River’s Ribbons of Color
In 2020, a time of deep reflection, recovery and desire for open spaces, more than 1.1 million people took to Orange County’s great outdoors and…
Think Big: Post Pandemic Trail, Park & Greenway Plan
Parks and conservation areas aren’t created out of thin air. They happen because 1) a particular person or group sees the beauty and natural promise of an area, and…
Ospreys – Returning Harbingers of Spring
Not only the emerging daffodils, crocuses, irises, camellias and hellebore flowers are announcing that spring has arrived. The birds returning from their…
Hearth and Home, of Thee I Sing
It’s been raining now for three days straight — that cold nasty chilly winter rain. I’d prefer honest snow any day — the kind we had during my 10 years at Penn State, where Pennsyltuckians understand the…
What’s the Fishy Smell? It’s an AURA.
Opinion: Have you heard of Trinsic Residential Group? It’s a pretty considerable Texas real estate outfit seeking to build a large mixed-use development (400 apartments and townhouses; 650 parking spaces) called AURA…