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…
Guest Columns
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…
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…
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…
Blossoms Blooms on Elliott Road
When it comes to children, Margaret Shelton-Foushee is the most gifted person I’ve ever met.
Start With Your Soil
Right now, it’s all about the plants. We’ve sat inside long enough reading catalogs and cleaning our tools. Our fabulous friends are arriving at nearby garden centers, and we can’t wait to bring them home. But wait.
Doing It On Her Own: Kate Franklin’s Blindness Won’t Stop Her
Kate Franklin sat in an examination chair at the Duke Eye Center in Durham, as she had dozens of times before. Dilation drops. Tonometry test. Retinal imaging. Visual field assessment. Snellen chart test. The tests and machines came one after another.
We are off to another season.
In Orange County we are feeling a renewed appreciation of spring. Sun and longer days bring hope and light of better days ahead.
Anyone seen my vaccine?
I’ve gotten my vaccinations. I was fortunate because I had finally qualified for the shots, having been moved from Tier 2, subdivision C, paragraph 9.1, footnote j, to Tier 1b, folder 3D, group IV6, Boy Scout Troop 384. Signing up for the shots, as most of us know, was a fairly easy process, assuming…
Welcome to learning about spices and seasonings
Seasonings, in general, are the supporting cast that you can add to a dish to give it greater appeal.
‘Reelin’ in the Years,’ Senior Night 1984
Last Saturday’s drubbing of Duke on UNC’s Senior Night conjured up a similar image from years past. It is March 3, 1984, and that year’s farewell men’s basketball game celebrated seniors…
Back to Basics: The Need for Well-Draining Soil
This past winter, I began to think that it would never stop raining. Now, rain can be a gardener’s best friend, but a rainy winter can ruin a garden. How can that be? After all, aren’t many of our plants sound asleep in winter?
Soil. The stuff of life.
The future of the Earth and the people who live on it is dependent on the management of land and water. This is essential and something we can all agree on.
Spring Migration is Coming Soon
The change of seasons “officially” begins on March 20, and we’re still waiting to see whether the continuing cold rains will make this the wettest winter on record in our area.
Making an Offer in the Current Housing Market
The housing market has been booming, and 2021 has started off with faster sales than any recent year.
COVID & College
It’s not the junior year of college that I was expecting, that’s for sure. This time last year, I was going home for spring break thinking I’d be back at UNC the very next week. Then the pandemic hit, and I was forced to move out and finish the semester online at my parents’ house.
What We Celebrate Between Birthdays
The idea of the “un-birthday” was first presented by Lewis Carroll in the book we know as Alice in Wonderland (properly, Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There, published in 1872).
How to Order Sustainable Roses
As far as I am concerned, when it comes to roses, planting sustainable roses is the way to go. Do you really want to put on the zoot suits while lugging out the sprayer every 10 days just to prevent fragile roses from falling into the ravages of blackspot?
She interviewed Gen. Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower in 1947
The young reporter leans into the interview, uncowed by the august presence of the hero of WW II D-Day, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The year is 1947, and the kid reporter is Chapel Hill’s own Val Lauder, just 21 and already a star reporter for the Chicago Daily News.
Fitness and Friendship in the Time of COVID-19
I don’t like any of the exercises – the squats, the side planks, the dreaded Burpees, or even the short jog up to the SUV and the karaoke back before a quick water break.
Fighting COVID-19
Orange County tips its hat to many of the North Carolina Tar Heels and local leaders who are shaping the future through activism. Here are their voices, in their own words. These individuals are doctors and scientists fighting COVID-19, advocates pushing for equality and justice, and communicators standing up for truth. May they inspire us all.
Why School Newspapers Matter, and Why We Should Care
When I heard that the Town of Carrboro had proclaimed the last week of February as Scholastic Journalism Week, into my mind’s eye sprang a single photograph from 14 years ago.
Garden Shopping Made Easier
I am happily shopping for plants. To my husband’s chagrin, our kitchen table is littered with lists, dog-eared catalogs and old annotated seed packets. But I may just sweep the mess aside in favor of my new discovery. The North Carolina Cooperative Extension Service has a new online tool…
Maurice Jones: Town Manager, Chapel Hill
What does it mean to manage a town? Is it even possible? A town would seem, by its very nature, to be unmanageable: too many moving parts, too many moving people. That’s why the job is not for everybody and why, when you get a good one, you can count yourself very lucky indeed.
Goodbye Dorm; Hello Camper Van
When you hear the term “off-campus student housing,” you’re probably not picturing a college kid living in a camper van. But that is exactly how UNC senior journalism major Andrew Dundas of Fairview, N.C., has chosen to spend his final semester at Carolina.
Have the Courage of Your Gardening Convictions
A long time ago I mentioned to a rather snobbish gardening friend that I was thinking of planting some gladioli — and met with a withering response that, “No one plants gladioli anymore.”