Beach Renourishment #46
What’s truly extraordinary about Vernon’s beach week is that there is no drama.
What’s truly extraordinary about Vernon’s beach week is that there is no drama.
Through the viewfinder of her Kodak 35, the mother frames her two sons, standing stiffly in the pre-arranged poses she envisioned.
It gives me a deep measure of satisfaction to announce the winners of the 5th annual Bridge Builders Award.
On May 6, our community will have a chance to explore coping creatively with grieving when two historic Chapel Hill churches sponsor a community-wide event.
The Junior League of Durham and Orange Counties’ Shop | Save | Support fundraiser drives traffic to local businesses, donating 100% of money raised toward local community agencies. Participating businesses…
Like a homing beacon from the past, a century-old snapshot appears in the mail from an old cousin.
As I write this piece, it’s official Scouting Anniversary Day, when I am drawn magnetically to this playful snapshot for its deeper contextual meaning.
Night Teacher is the project of lead singer-songwriter Lilly Bechtel, whose uniquely moving voice and poignant lyrics have combined with the sensibilities of producer and multi-instrumentalist Matt Wyatt to create…
During my summer fellowship at National Geographic Magazine in 1998, I met the great Zen photographer Sam Abel.
Two Chapel Hill High School graduating seniors are the winners of this year’s Bridge Builder Award for community service.
When Martha Flowers passed, I bet there was a band of heavenly angels out there at the Pearly Gates to welcome her to the heavenly chorus.
Join us at the Carrboro Town Commons to celebrate Earth Day 2022! Kids’ activities, including a children’s parade at 6pm—animal and plant costumes welcome, planet-friendly vegan and vegetarian food for…
Before Black History Month slips away, I want to celebrate the pioneering work of a bold and enterprising young Black journalist, Milton B. Robinson…
Silhouetted against the dawn sky, five mountain climbers — all young men — are bent double despite their youth as they labor upwards painstakingly in the thin atmosphere of 16,000 feet, fighting for every breath.
On the kitchen table sprawls a Rand McNally map of the United States, the size of a college dorm room poster.
Join us for online and outdoor events at our 2021 West End Poetry Festival. Friday Oct.15 at 7pm is a Zoom Poetry Writing Workshop led by Crystal Simone Smith. Saturday….
Yes, it’s real. With the safe return Saturday night of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and flight crew of four civilians, I feel good about releasing this extraordinary image,….
Now that we are safely and happily back at home in Chapel Hill and “Greater Carrboro,” we’ve been reflecting on the travel events of August, coined “Mr. Bogey’s and George’s Most Excellent Wild West Road Trip,”…
Having survived a close encounter with the Sturgis, S.D., biker throng, stuffed animals Bogey and George made it safely this week…
Readers familiar with A. A. Milne’s classic “Winnie the Pooh” will remember the tale of the “expotition,” in which Pooh leads his woodland…
By the time you are reading this, Lynne and I will be somewhere in Ohio, on our way to Cleveland, where, by mysterious coincidence, we both lived as 1-year-olds. We are on the road again.
What with the Olympics cranking up this week, it seems appropriate for this scribbler to put my athletic prowess to the test. My…
Roly-poly on the beach, a tow-headed cherub clambers on his disarmed father like the man is his personal playground jungle gym. Of all the snapshots hiding in dusty closets glued to old-school, black-paged photo albums from the ‘40s labeled “Snaps,”…
Nine-tenths of a mile. That’s how far apart the…
For all y’all who’ve gotten your shots, and in light of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new masking guidelines, this week I’m offering…
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.
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.
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…
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…
It’s there. You just have to look closely. Faded after all these years, the unmistakable signature. Roy Williams.
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.
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.
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…
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…
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.
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.
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.
In celebration of Boy Scout Week, let’s unpack this 1953 photograph that captures four of my life-long guy pals and me. New Cub Scout Pack 421 is being formed;
If you’re like me, you are suffering from the secondary malady brought on by the pandemic, HDD. (Hug Deficit Disorder). I am the father/“bonus dad” of five grown children and “G-Pop” to nine grand young’uns…
By the time you read this on Monday, Feb. 1, Walter “Bucky” Horton might be out fishing, playing golf or pumping iron in the gym. That would be fitting since it’s his day. Literally, Monday, Feb. 1, is officially Police Chief Walter Horton Day…